Blind Speed Dating #43 (A)

Title: PAST MISTAKES

Genre: Paranormal Mystery

Word Count: 101, 000

Query:

Lindy Cameron, blight of her scattered family and former tenant of only the finest flophouses, is looking for a white-picket fence. Taking out her nose ring, strapping a muzzle over her smart mouth, and throwing on a fancy blazer helps her land a job, and even catches her the rarity of a friend.

But when Lindy’s mom is murdered, she inherits the family curse — a ghost who’s been eradicating the women of her bloodline for over a century. And he can’t wait to get his hands on Lindy. Again.

To salvage any chance of a dream-life, not to mention not dying, Lindy has to ditch this inheritance fast. Assistance comes in the form of a Samoan “southern belle,” Hanna Lee, and Sasha, a male psychic who smells faintly of cigarettes and reeks of sex appeal. With them steadfastly by her side Lindy reevaluates what her white-picket fence should really look like. But more pressing, if she can figure out what went wrong in the history books, she might save the family — and herself — by fixing her ancestor’s past mistakes.

First 250:

“I think this just made me vegetarian.” Lindy appraised the decapitated chicken dangling in her kitchen doorway. “Why’d you hang it from one leg?”

“I’m just following the picture, sugar.” Hanna Lee thumbed through the pages of the how-to guide and pointed a thick, brown finger to said picture.

Sure as shit, the ghost-be-gone arrangement looked right. Except that photo was taken in some Haitian voodoo hut, and Hanna Lee had rigged this up in a historical residence-turned-museum. 

Lindy stepped back from her own contribution to the madness—chalk etchings on the flagstone floor that extended out onto the covered back stoop. In the center of the circles and vaguely obscene shapes, a Hello Kitty cereal bowl balanced precariously on the threshold and was filling with chicken blood.

She grimaced at Hanna Lee’s handiwork. And here she’d thought this management job would herald a move toward normalcy. 

“That’s the last step.” Hanna Lee thwacked the book shut and used it to fan herself as she teetered atop her stool at the butcher block counter.

She wiped at mascara that had started to sweat off. The eyeliner stayed in place though, and from what Lindy could tell, both that and Hanna Lee’s dark pink lip-liner had been tattooed on during a teenage chola phase. Based on the tribal ink hidden by the ankle socks on her plump feet, Lindy was pretty sure her boss was Samoan. Regardless of the past, when they’d met, Hanna Lee was fully entrenched in Southern-sass as if she’d been raised on the teat of Tara itself.