First Contact

By Kat Green

Sloane Osborne is a paranormal realtor in the business of selling haunted houses but, in truth, she’s only searching for one ghost. And her time is running out. It’s the 366th day after her fiancé’s death. Michael used to like putting things off for “a year and a day”—so tonight’s the night. Sloane will do anything to make contact with him before the clock strikes midnight. When she gets a call to check out a home in Waukesha, Wisconsin, it’s the last place she thinks Michael would contact her. Sloane is dead wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781509207848

Kat Green

Kat Green is a board-certified, licensed psychologist with dual specializations in OCD and anxiety disorders for kids, teens, and young adults, as well as ADHD and other behavior concerns in younger kids. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology from Brigham Young University, and has done a two year post-doctoral fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, specializing in OCD, anxiety, and ADHD. For more content from Kat Green, visit TherapyNutshell.com

Book preview

Inc.

Hello? Sloane’s voice was tentative,

even to her own ears. It was one thing to talk to Michael, but he was a ghost she’d known in life. It was another thing to start a conversation with a dead stranger. Can you hear me?

The woman didn’t turn, her whole body focused on the next drop of water until it had floated through her hand again.

The woman sighed, sitting back on her heels as she watched the wall.

Water, she rasped. Do you have any water?

I’m sorry. I don’t have anything. Sloane said. I tried to give you water last night, but no one drank it.

What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here. The woman’s voice was so raspy Sloane could barely hear her. She turned her head slowly as though tearing her gaze from the little bit of water seeping through the stone was painful. When her gaze finally rested on Sloane, her eyes were dark black pits, swirling with tiny dancing lights.

Sloane stepped back involuntarily, then gathered her courage to approach the apparition. She could sense the poor girl wasn’t dangerous. She was trapped here as much as Sloane was herself.

I found the secret door and got pushed in. Sloane said. Then the door shut behind me and I couldn’t get out.

Ah, you must have been at Alvin’s house. The woman rose to her feet. Not a safe place to be. Though nothing about this area is safe.

Praise for Kat Green

The ghosts are creepy, the bad guys ooze with slimy evilness, and the haunted house scenes had me both riveted and repulsed. Green does an excellent job with both her villains and the creepy factor of the restless spirits.

~Amazon bestselling author Katie O’Sullivan

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I absolutely loved this book and devoured it in one sitting!

~Book Passion for Life

~*~

I want to be a paranormal realtor when I grow up! What a fabulous job that would be, and what a unique idea for a book! Sloane Osborne is a likable realtor with a smart mouth and a spine made out of steel, two qualities that should be required in her line of work. The ghosts were creepy, and I enjoyed watching as the mystery of the house unfolded.

~Lindsey Loucks, author

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This book struck an ominous note from the heroine’s first encounter with ghostly activity and didn’t let up until almost the last page. The writing combo comprising Kat Green wove a tight story with plenty of plot twists to keep me reading without stopping, and their voice together is excellent—a difficult feat to pull off!

~Author Ashantay Peters

First Contact

by

Kat Green

Haunts for Sale Series

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

First Contact

COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Kat Green

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Debbie Taylor

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

Previously published by Crescent Moon Press, 2014

First Fantasy Rose Edition, 2016

Print ISBN 978-1-5092-0783-1

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-0784-8

Haunts for Sale Series

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

Thanks a million to Jody Nordby, our beta reader extraordinaire. We appreciate everything you did for us! And a big thank you to our paranormal experts:

James Aaroen and Stephanie Fischer.

Acknowledgments

We’d like to thank Rhonda, RJ, and Lisa of The Wild Rose Press for believing in our book. Not to mention the awesomely amazing Lill Farrell, editor extraordinaire, who went above and beyond to take this story to the next level.

~*~

Another big thank you to Debbie Taylor, for making exactly what we asked for in our cover. We couldn’t have asked for a better artist.

~*~

R. A. Green would like to thank Kat de Falla for being an inspiration and guiding light. For pushing me to go beyond what I knew I could do and being a great friend. Also, thanks to my husband for loving and believing in me, even when I disappear to write all day with Kat. Thanks to my two amazing children for allowing mommy to have a time out with the computer. And to my parents and in-laws for all their support.

~*~

Kat de Falla would like to thank Rachel for being more than a writing partner and friend, but someone who has pushed me to become a better person. Also, thanks to my four beautiful children, parents, and sister for always supporting my writing. And above all, I thank my muse, soul mate, and husband. A man made of stardust and dreams that turned out to be flesh and blood and not a mere figment of my imagination: Lee is the summit of my life’s hopes and dreams. Without him there is no success, as only when he is by my side is my life complete. I love you Lee! My love, loyalty, and friendship is yours alone.

Chapter 1

Waukesha, Wisconsin

Sloane Osborne desperately needed to find a haunted house.

Exactly two hours and thirty-three minutes to make contact before he would be gone forever.

Pausing on the rickety wooden steps of a house whose chipped and faded paint didn’t quite match with the rest of the houses on the street, she sighed before opening the lock box and retrieving the key. As one of the only paranormal real estate agents in the United States, it was part of her job. Search out haunted homes for people to purchase. An acquisition, of sorts, so they can say they own a haunted house.

What her clients didn’t know was she was the one searching, for one particular ghost.

And tonight was her last chance.

This wasn’t where she would have chosen to see him again. Why couldn’t it have been a romantic bedroom in a classic Cape Cod style house lost in the windswept sands of coastal Maine? Instead, she was in Wisconsin of all places.

And it was hot. Wasn’t Wisconsin supposed to be cold? July did that to the Midwest though.

Even this late at night, sweat dripped from her forehead, soaking her bangs and stinging her eyes. She brushed it away with a tired hand. She was already late. Her plane from Denver delayed because of a storm. Tonight was not a night to be running behind. Still so much to do.

The house didn’t look like much. It was an average two-story gable front with an enclosed front porch and two dormer windows peeking out off the roof. It strongly resembled the rest of the houses crammed onto the street. Only here, unlike the other houses, there were signs of wear and neglect. The gray paint was faded and cracked, the white trim peeling around the front door and windows. No, it wasn’t much, but it was her last hope.

This ordinary house in nowhere Wisconsin was her last chance to make contact with Michael.

She knew it.

Michael Bain had been her fiancé.

Had been.

Past tense.

As in, they’d been driving to get their marriage license, just weeks before the wedding when a drunk driver smashed into them. She lived, he hadn’t.

He’d always told her to be patient. If things weren’t working, give it a year and a day to come out right. Try this job, but give it a year and a day. Let’s move here, but just for a year and a day. It had always driven her crazy, but now it was her mantra.

Just before the squealing tires and crunching metal changed her life forever, he joked with her. Said if they didn’t get their license today, they’d have to postpone the wedding. Call all their friends and family and tell them to save the date for a year and a day.

She hadn’t had time to laugh.

And now she’d been waiting three hundred sixty five days, twenty-one hours and—she paused to glance at her half of the set of matching watches they’d given each other as engagement gifts—thirty-six minutes. Less than three hours left for him to come back and haunt her or to make contact. She smiled to herself. She’d always known he’d take a year and a day to do it. It was just like him to make her wait.

Sloane’s paranormal research partner, Jonah Prescott, thought she needed help—psychiatric help—but he just didn’t agree with her chosen profession. Michael and Jonah may have been best friends, the three of them doing everything together like some kind of bad sitcom, but his death was different for her. She didn’t have any family to fall back on since her parents had died years before. Michael had been her family, best friend, and lover all rolled into one.

She still wore the engagement ring Michael had given her two years ago on Halloween. Couldn’t take it off. That would mean admitting defeat and letting go completely and she wasn’t ready for that. His spirit was out there somewhere. She knew it. He was waiting for her. She just needed to find him.

When Michael died, she was completely destroyed. It took a month for her to stop crying. Jonah had even staged an intervention. All he wanted was for her to get out of bed and take a shower. Instead he motivated her into a decision. She decided to stop waiting for Michael to come to her and to find him instead. She combined her recently acquired real estate license with the knowledge she gained in her paranormal group.

Jonah had informed her no one would pay to verify if a house was haunted before they purchased it. Boy, was he wrong. There were people out there who wanted to own haunted houses. Lots of people. They didn’t always want to live there. One couple had actually called and said they wanted the prestige of being able to say my summer home in Nantucket Bay, oh, it’s haunted.

Since she started the website promoting herself as a paranormal real estate agent, she had more hits than she expected, but was waiting for a first sale. She needed to build up a reputation as a polite, respectful agent who just happens to talk to ghosts before she got any real deals where they’d pay for her flight, accommodations, and an enormous commission, of course.

He may not have believed in her but, as a good friend, Jonah helped. Sending her leads whenever he came across them. She usually followed his leads because he was everything she dreamed of being. He was a sensitive, which meant he could see ghosts. He first saw a ghost just after his grandfather passed away. Jonah had come home from the funeral and found Grandpappy sitting on the front porch in his old rocker. He’d been able to see spirits ever since. He was seven at the time.

Sloane was still waiting for that first contact.

But she knew it would happen.

She found this job on her own, without Jonah’s help. The contract came from a Mr. G.M. Spencer who was interested in purchasing this property as soon as possible, whether the house was haunted or not. It had thrown her when she got the email from the man, completely out of the blue. At first she didn’t want to accept. For some reason, maybe it was how the email was worded, but goose pimples crawled across her skin every time she read the short request for her expertise. But she really hadn’t had a choice. She’d already blown through all of her savings and most of the wedding money she and Michael had saved.

The balance in her account was surprising, even to her, especially since she didn’t do anything fun. She didn’t date. She didn’t go out. In fact, she was what was classically termed as someone with delayed sleep phase disorder, which in English meant she was up at night and slept all day. Luckily that was her only vampiric tendency. But in her line of work, sleeping all day and working all night worked out perfectly.

That was one of the reasons she agreed to have him fly her halfway across the country. But mostly, it was timing.

Her year and a day were up so Michael had better be there.

There had been conflicting beliefs on whether or not this house was haunted. From the research Sloane had done, she knew no one was reported to have died in the structure. Up until six months ago, the place had been the residence of the original owner, for over fifty years. An old man who had just moved into a nursing home across town. Sloane had already spoken with the nurses but had yet to meet the man. From what she heard, he kept to himself, was never married, and purchased the house just after a tour in Vietnam.

Not exactly the history she expected in her profession. There was usually a lot more murder and bloodshed

Reviews for First Contact

[dabofdarkness · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Part murder mystery, part ghost story, this tale had me interested from the beginning. Sloane is an independently minded woman with one exception: she’s still grieving and still attached to her dead fiance Michael. She’s taken a job investigating a house for paranormal activity and she is hoping that dead Michael will put in an appearance. I guess if you’re a paranormal investigator, you would have issues letting go of the dead above and beyond most people.So while Sloane is pining away for Michael, there’s definitely some ghost action going on in this house and that leads her to start asking questions. Apparently this little Wisconsin town has several unsolved disappearances. These young ladies went missing and now Sloane believes she has found their ghosts.Even as the murder mystery spins up, it quickly spins out. The cast of characters is small and it quickly becomes apparent who the culprit is. I would have liked a bit more time for the mystery to develop and play out. I didn’t get much suspense because the culprit was quickly revealed (and it wasn’t a big surprise either).The rest of the tale is about Sloane trying to escape the bad guys and that’s about half the book. There’s added drama over Michael and her undying love for him. But then there’s a silly love triangle tossed in too. FBI Agent Jonah, Michael’s best friend, is the guy that taught Sloane most of what she knows about the paranormal. They usually do paranormal investigations together but Sloane is branching out a bit now with her business of investigating potentially haunted houses that are on the market (because buyers want to know if they have to live with spirits). And then the love drama is even a little more silly because Jonah’s FBI partner is a knock-out and Sloane is jealous of her. I really didn’t care for the romance drama because it took Sloane’s character down a notch. She went from this savvy paranormal investigator, independent business woman, etc. to being this childish, jealous idiot who makes fun of Jonah’s coworker. Sigh… ugh! Sloane, you’re better than that!By the end, I was glad that the ghosts got some payback and that Sloane had worked out her romantic issues. The pacing started off good but then dragged a little with romantic entanglement stuff but then picked up again at the end. 4/5 stars.The Narration: Kate Tyler was OK. She has a good voice for Sloane and she did a decent job with emotions. Her other character voices were sometimes spot on and sometimes not. Her pacing was just a touch off as she hesitates here and there. 4/5 stars.I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Kat Green. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.