Countdown to Karma! Recap #2: The Ghost Exterminator

T-minus five days until Karma!

Today, in preparation for the TUESDAY release of Naughty Karma we continue our Karmic Consultants refresher course with The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story (the book in which we first learn of the existence of Prometheus).  

Enjoy!

**WARNING: LOTS OF SPOILERS**

 

The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story

Six months after the events of The Ghost Shrink, Jake has popped the question and he and Lucy are planning a big engagement party... but it's Lucy's cousin, ghost exterminator JO BANKS whose life is about to be thrown for a loop.

Another ghost wrangler working at Karmic Consultants, Jo specializes in forcibly transcending reluctant ghosts who might be causing trouble with their haunting.  (Lucy is all about finesse and talking about your feelings, but Jo is definitely a "buy a bigger hammer" type girl when it comes to problem solving in the ghostly realm.)  But in this new job, a bigger hammer might not cut it.

Bajillionaire hotel magnate WYATT HAINES is having some trouble with his newest posh boutique inn.  He doesn't believe in ghosts, certainly doesn't believe his inn is haunted, but after a series of inexplicable pranks keep disrupting the renovations efforts on the old Victorian mansion, desperation forces him to accept his secretary's suggestion that he bring in someone to clean out the ghosts.

Enter Jo.

The rigid, control-freak CEO and the defiant, punkette ghost exterminator immediately butt heads. He doesn't trust the rebel with the body of a playmate anywhere near his property and she's reasonably certain that the stick up his ass must be interfering with his internal organs.  But eventually he lets her inside to work her mojo. 

Unfortunately, her mojo is no match for the Big Bad inside the Victorian.  Somehow hundreds of child ghosts have been trapped in the house.  She manages to transcend most of them - but Wyatt distracts her at a critical moment and somehow the last two young ghosts are catapulted into the CEO himself.  

 

She's never unhaunted a person before - and she's not sure she can open a portal that will suck out the two ghost souls without also sucking out Wyatt's in the process (supposing soulless businessmen actually have souls, of course).  Wyatt doesn't want to believe in ghosts, but every time he falls asleep, the young spirits take over his body, pulling all manner of pranks.  

 

Until Jo can figure out how to safely exterminate the ghosts, they are stuck with each other.  She drags him along with her as her "date" to Lucy and Jake's engagement party - where Wyatt's ghosts take over and toss one of Jo's brothers-in-law in the pool.  Jo confronts the ghosts - and realizes that the two pranksters are actually the original residents of the Victorian, trying to protect their home.  

She believes that the ghosts will have more impetus to vacate Wyatt's body back at the Victorian, but when they return to the inn, they discover that there are suddenly hundreds more child ghosts haunting the house.  Something is very wrong at Casa Haines. 

Jo is worried that she has completely lost her ghost exterminating mojo - and it is Wyatt, of all people, who comforts her.  Their antipathy has given way to sizzling attraction - though they both know they are far too different to ever have a functional relationship. 

Wyatt has to go to another of his inn's grand opening and he takes Jo along as his ghost babysitter and date.  At the reception, Jo catches Wyatt's secretary hiding a charm at the new inn - and the woman confesses that she hid a similar one at the Victorian.  Believing the charms were simple good juju, she didn't realize the one she left at the Victorian (sold to her by an unscrupulous warlock named Prometheus) was actually designed to lure the ghosts of children onto the premises.

Jo and Wyatt fly back (with a time out for romance on the plane) and immediately go to the Victorian to destroy the charm.  Jo transcends all the ghosts in the mansion - except the two in Wyatt which are released into the tower room where they have always lived.  Wyatt decides to keep the two prankster on, marketing the new inn as a haunted B&B.  And he invites Jo to stick with him as well, as his ghost consultant.  

Their relationship isn't traditional, but he accepts her, ghosts and all, and she keeps his workaholic side from consuming his soul.  And they all live happily ever after... until the next adventure.

Buy The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story Now from Amazon :: B&N :: Samhain 

Up next... Finder's Keeper