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    Ghosting
    Ghosting
    Ghosting
    Ebook50 pages40 minutes

    Ghosting

    By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Cudahay tracks ghosts. Not the ethereal kind. The regret-dating-you-so-they-disappear kind. He makes a business out of it with his partner, Serena. She deals with the losers and their sob stories, he tracks down the rather-not-be-found to provide proof of life so the losers can move on.

    When a real ghost from Cudahay’s past turns the tables and tracks him, however, Cudahay must decide just how seriously to take the threat. Cudahay doesn’t scare easily. But he soon discovers that perhaps he should.

    “Rusch is a great storyteller.”

    —RT Book Reviews

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateOct 23, 2017
    ISBN9781540102287
    Ghosting
    Author

    Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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      Book preview

      Ghosting - Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Ghosting

      Ghosting

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      WMG Publishing Inc.

      Contents

      Ghosting

      Newsletter Signup

      Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      About the Author

      Ghosting: The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date.

      —Urban Dictionary

      It was always the losers who showed up. Losers, male and female, tentative and quiet, sneaking into the brownstone as if they were ghosts themselves.

      Cudahay couldn’t stand them. They were whining, sad, pathetic creatures. He couldn’t understand how they caught someone’s interest in the first place.

      But he didn’t have to deal with them. That was Serena’s job.

      Serena had the front office—the one with the bay windows, the comfortable couch, the warm lighting designed to mimic sunshine. Just sitting in that soft warm room, done in the right tones of blue (for calm) and gold (to catch the light) made the losers feel better. Or, probably, made everyone—winner, loser, non-player alike—feel better.

      Which was why Cudahay never went in the place. Besides, he had a personal rule about avoiding rooms with boxes of tissues strategically placed on every single end table. Those boxes encouraged crying, something he never did.

      His office was in the back—more of a broom closet with windows. Done in shades of brown with a bit of added red—fighting colors, Serena said—the office felt like his space, the only private place he had in a world increasingly focus-group tested.

      He could sit in on the interviews with the losers, if he wanted to. Serena felt he needed to get a sense of the client. But Serena also recorded the interviews, mostly to cover her ass on what she promised and didn’t promise. (Losers weren’t that trustworthy. A lot of them were lawsuit-happy.) After the first month of trying to catch facts between the sobs, he had Serena ballpark the interviews for him.

      Ghosting Solutions didn’t guarantee confidentiality, after all. It didn’t even guarantee privacy. What it guaranteed was that it would find the person who ghosted someone, and find them in record time. Time was the most important factor, Serena had learned. These losers, dumped unceremoniously, wanted information now more, and were willing to pay to get it.

      Cudahay had no idea why the losers even cared. They met someone—often through some dating app or one of those hook-up sites—and got involved. It got hot and heavy. One side got emotional. The other side pretended at it, probably to get some. (Okay, that was his interpretation, but still.) Then, the situation evolved into a relationship. The get-some party didn’t want a relationship, and would fade away.

      In Cudahay’s day, before all the cell phones and apps and online tracking, there would be attempted ghosting. The get-some party would stop answering the phone or would walk past, eyes avoiding the clingy party.

      But in Cudahay’s day, there would always be a last-ditch interaction. Usually the clingy party would show up at the get-some party’s door (or locker or dorm room) and ask what happened. And the get-some party would have a few options.

      The best, Cudahay always found, was saying: I’m not that into you, sorry, and walking away. Because saying more always went into rounds of recriminations or worse, what’s wrong with

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