Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Ghosts
    Ghosts
    Ghosts
    Ebook48 pages39 minutes

    Ghosts

    By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    He calls himself Ben…sometimes. Mostly he avoids thinking of his name so other people won't remember him. 

    He kills people for a living, but he has standards. He uses astrology to help him follow the right path. 

    But when someone targets him, Ben realizes his methods might just get the astrologers who have been helping him killed.

    "Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark."

    —The Times of London

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateMay 9, 2018
    ISBN9781386859581
    Ghosts
    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.

    Read more from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    Related to Ghosts

    Related ebooks

    Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Absolute Best

      Apr 30, 2021

      Absolute Best
      20 min read

    • Article

      The Unauthorised Version

      Mar 28, 2021

      The Unauthorised Version
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Few Words to the Graduates

      Jun 11, 2018

      A Few Words to the Graduates
      7 min read

    • Article

      Freedom

      Aug 6, 2020

      Freedom
      7 min read

    • Article

      LOVE, Virtually

      Feb 16, 2020

      LOVE, Virtually
      5 min read

    • Article

      Peter Mountford

      Dec 15, 2017

      Vivian spends most of the afternoon naked and strapped to the giant ottoman in the interior decorator’s office in Bethesda. When he finally unties her, the sun is low and she’s shaky and exhausted. He paddled her hard at some point, and that hot stin

      28 min read

    • Article

      La Bohème

      Mar 1, 2022

      ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

      13 min read

    • Article

      I Used to Give Men Mercy

      Feb 12, 2018

      I Used to Give Men Mercy
      12 min read

    • Article

      Australia Reads At Home

      May 18, 2020

      Australia Reads At Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      Stranger Danger

      May 18, 2022

      Stranger Danger
      10 min read

    • Article

      Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

      Dec 11, 2023

      Out Of The Mouths Of Babes
      9 min read

    • Article

      Stranger Danger

      May 18, 2022

      Stranger Danger
      10 min read

    • Article

      Celeste Ng

      Nov 2, 2020

      Celeste Ng
      12 min read

    • Article

      On Our Hands

      Feb 10, 2024

      Ten months, two weeks, and one day ago, on a clear cold day in late October, I set my plastic cup of cocoa down carefully on the Formica tabletop by the window of the ReddiStop, lowered myself to the bench, pulled off my windbreaker, and stuck my can

      19 min read

    • Article

      Mark Strong On Acting, Insecurity And Life Without A Father: ‘I Got Angry As I Got Older. It Took Years To Fix’

      Oct 28, 2021

      Mark Strong has a good face for villainy – spare and inscrutable, with thin lips and “eyes like tunnels”, as Arthur Miller might have put it. On camera, he gives a sort of fractional disclosure, expressions altering in tiny increments, so that watchi

      8 min read

    • Article

      In The Beginning

      May 7, 2020

      In The Beginning
      6 min read

    • Article

      On Our Hands

      Apr 10, 2021

      Ten months, two weeks, and one day ago, on a clear cold day in late October, I set my plastic cup of cocoa down carefully on the Formica tabletop by the window of the ReddiStop, lowered myself to the bench, pulled off my windbreaker, and stuck my can

      19 min read

    • Article

      'You Think It, I’ll Say It' Shows Curtis Sittenfeld At Her Best, Where Gender Meets Class

      Apr 24, 2018

      Sittenfeld trafficks in the minor humiliations of fictional women who often self-sabotage, or at least overthink.

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Ghosts

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Ghosts - Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Ghosts

      Ghosts

      Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      WMG Publishing Inc.

      Contents

      Ghosts

      Newsletter sign-up

      Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      About the Author

      Ghosts

      It goes like this:

      Fifteen layers between him and the client. His people mostly, from the front that gets the order to the hacker who checks it out. Not everyone who wants to hire a hit man should be able to find him. That’s why there’s redundancy upon redundancy—for every hacker, there’s another who double- and triple-checks. After all, he’s not going to risk his life, his freedom, on the word of some nobody with a computer, a nobody he’s never met.

      The order comes through the system—or systems if he wants to be more accurate—and if all the information matches, he considers the job. The timetable is necessarily flexible: anyone who wants a quickie goes somewhere else. Quickies get a man in trouble. Check the evening news. Any time a pro gets caught, it’s someone who specializes in quickies. Sure, they get top dollar, but they also take maximum risk.

      He tries to eliminate risk. He’s Aries with Virgo Rising, Moon in Libra. Born for his job, at least according to his chart. Perceived as detail-oriented, almost fussy, a pain-staking perfectionist, he is at heart a warrior, brave, impetuous and independent. His true self, his emotional self, is a judge, coldly calculating, always striving for balance.

      He has a superstitious side as well, and isn’t sure where it comes from. In the past, he tried to bury it, but he finally gave in ten years ago and his business improved.

      That was when he discovered Glenna. She had a New Age bookstore in Sedona, Arizona, and an uncanny knack of seeing his future. The first time he entered her store, intrigued by a book in the window, she’d said from her table in the back, Should I be afraid for myself, old friend?

      The question had both startled and intrigued him, and when he answered no, she smiled and said, My chart was uncertain. It told me that today would introduce me to Death.

      He hadn’t heard of a chart, knew nothing about astrology except for the goofy write-ups in the newspapers, write-ups which never seemed to be about him. But she had encouraged him to have his chart done and after careful consideration, he’d given her his birth date, time, and location. She promised to have a reading for him in three days.

      It was that reading which changed his life, and added one more layer between him and a job.

      Now he compares his client’s chart, the chart of his intended victim, and his own chart, searching for the optimum day, the appropriate venue, and of course, any hint of failure. If he’s not compatible with a client, he passes the work to someone else. If his read of the victim’s chart makes the victim seem personally powerful, dominant over him, or just plain lucky, he passes on that job as well.

      He has learned, through trial and error, that he is not right for every job, nor is every job right for him. His perfectionism serves him well,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1