Save a Prayer

By Dayle A. Dermatis

Former Hollywood party girl Nikki Ashburne sees ghosts—in fact, many of them are her friends. Okay, they’re kind of her only friends. Most ghosts stick around because they’re happy here and have no desire to move on. So when she encounters a trapped and, quite frankly, batshit insane member of the formerly living, she’s driven to help...even though she hasn’t a clue how.

Another story in the Ghosted urban fantasy series featuring Nikki Ashburne.

"Save a Prayer" is part of Uncollected Anthology, Volume 4: Portals & Passageways.

DAYLE A. DERMATIS has been called “one of the best writers working today” by USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith. Under various pseudonyms (and sometimes with coauthors), she’s sold several novels and more than 100 short stories in multiple genres. She lives and works in California within scent of the ocean, and in her spare time follows Styx around the country and travels the world, all of which inspires her writing. She loves music, cats, Wales, TV, magic, laughter, and defying expectations. To find out where she is today, check out her website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Soul's Road Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310583032

Dayle A. Dermatis

Dayle A. Dermatis is the author or coauthor of many novels (including snarky urban fantasies Ghosted and the forthcoming Shaded and Spectered) and more than a hundred short stories in multiple genres, appearing in such venues as Fiction River, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and DAW Books.Called the mastermind behind the Uncollected Anthology project, she also guest edits anthologies for Fiction River, and her own short fiction has been lauded in many year's best anthologies in erotica, mystery, and horror.She lives in a book- and cat-filled historic English-style cottage in the wild greenscapes of the Pacific Northwest. In her spare time she follows Styx around the country and travels the world, which inspires her writing.To find out where she’s wandered off to (and to get free fiction!), check out DayleDermatis.com and sign up for her newsletter or support her on Patreon.* * *I value honest feedback, and would love to hear your opinion in a review, if you’re so inclined, on your favorite book retailer’s site.* * *For more information:www.dayledermatis.com

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Table of Contents

Uncollected Anthology

About the Author

Copyright Information

RUDY’S TEXT WAS straight to the point: Need yr help. Galleria.

Before I could respond, a second text made a whooshing noise on my phone: You owe me.

He was right, which was how I found myself in the exhaust-stinking, dim parking garage connected to the Sherman Oaks Galleria Mall, having battled rare Southern California rain to get here.

It rains only a few times a year in the Los Angeles area, and when it does, it’s a dump of water that the parched ground doesn’t have time to accommodate, so streets flood and every driver turns into a raving idiot (er, more so than usual). I was amazed I’d made it here in one piece.

But like I said, Rudy was right. I’d roped him into helping me when I was trying to figure out who was trying to exorcise the ghosts of Hollywood—many of whom were my friends. Then again, I’d offered him the option of helping me or I’d call the police and have him arrested for breaking and entering, because I had found him in my 1920s ghost-infested hotel one night. Rudy Schwabach’s a ghost hunter, you see.

He can’t see ghosts, though. He has contraptions for that.

I, on the other hand, have more ghost friends than I do living friends.

Rudy had been after me to help him with his ghost-hunting gigs ever since he found out I could communicate with ghosts, an ability I acquired after briefly dying, thanks to—

Hang on. Let me start at the beginning.

I’m Nikki Ashburne—sigh, yes, the daughter of mega-producer Edward Ashburne and former famous-for-being-famous person in my own right. At least until my beloved grandmother died, and I accidentally overdosed. When I woke up in the hospital, my grandmother—the slightly less-recently dead person in the room—slapped me and called me an idiot, then disappeared.

I thought it was an anomaly until I met a girl in rehab who had also shuffled off this mortal coil…in the 1970s.

So I gave up my partying ways, bought a 1920s hotel occupied by ghosts I came to love, and started doing ghost tours of Hollywood.

Long story short, that all went