Thorfinn did something to the disclaimer telling you that I don't own any Ghosts characters. This takes place shortly after most of the events in Isaac's Book. Before of course the shocking revelation in the basement. I just figured both Sam and our resident Viking could use a win.
Thorfinn's Revenge
"Sam your book is actually getting published now?" Sasappis gasped. He was with Thorfinn, Alberta and Flower in the foyer. "That's amazing!"
Jay was in the room as well on his phone. "Who would have thought ghosts posting fake news online would become real? I gotta text Bela about this!"
"Of course," Alberta remarked. "Some people only want something if they think someone else is gonna have it! It's just like the time I wanted to perform at the Golden Dragon on New Years and told them I had another gig at their rival club. They couldn't book me fast enough!"
"Wait, you had two gigs on New Years Eve?" Flower blinked. "Wow how did you choose?"
"No Flower," Alberta explained. "I didn't have nothing going on. I just told that story so that I'd get the job. And it worked!"
"It's really amazing," Sam told them. "It's my first book ever! Isaac is thrilled!"
"HUZAAH!" Isaac was heard shouting outside.
"And best of all you can rub your book into Isabel's smug little face," Jay added.
"I can't say that all of the sudden my book is being published after confessing to her," Sam explained. "She probably thinks I'm crazy enough as it is. I'll just have to wait until my book is actually published. Then she can find out. After I accidentally tag her on Instagram."
"You know getting a book published isn't the same as selling a lot of copies, right?" Sasappis told her. "A lot of books get published. Not all of them become best sellers."
"Really Sass?" Alberta gave him a look. "You couldn't give her a day without dropping the truth bomb?"
"Way to harsh the mellow," Flower agreed.
"You forgot I read excerpts of the book," Sasappis pointed out. "I'm just saying…Don't hold your breath for it to be a best seller. You already had one humiliating experience with Isabel."
"Don't remind me," Sam grumbled. "Wait a minute you ghosts caused that!"
"Technically that was Trevor…" Sasappis coughed.
"No, it was your idea!" Alberta pointed at Sasappis.
"It was your idea to put it on Facebook Sass?" Sam snapped.
"Figures," Jay remarked. "Sam, Sass is always causing drama. Remember the whole tree incident?"
"Nobody's going to let me forget that are they?" Sasappis groaned.
"And the other tree incident," Jay added. "Remember when he talked Trevor into messing with the webpage so he could put in his tree idea and they erased it?"
"Uh huh," Alberta nodded.
"That was you," Flower said at the same time.
"Sass also the one who talked Trevor into moving a pen in front of Freddie," Thorfinn added. "Which led to Thorfinn and Flower getting trapped in deadly ghost trap!"
"That's right!" Flower gasped.
"Okay so what I'm hearing is that Trevor can be a bad influence," Sasappis coughed.
"Nice try," Sam gave Sasappis a look. "Getting back on topic…I can't just brag to Isabel now that my book is being published. At least now. I just have to put up with her lording over me how great her career is. And how much better it is than mine."
"Maybe Isabell not that great after all?" Thorfinn told her. "Maybe career might hit a tiny rough patch?"
"What do you mean?" Sam asked him.
"Thorfinn may have channeled his anger to help Samantha deal with her rival," Thorfinn smirked. "New tactic Thorfinn is trying out. Being productive with anger."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked. "What did you do?"
"I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!" Isabel was heard shouting.
"This is going to be good," Sasappis grinned as Sam and Jay went to investigate. The ghosts of course followed them up to the room where Isabel and Soren were staying.
Soren was comforting his wife. "It's not the end of the world darling!"
"NO! JUST THE END OF MY CAREER!" Isabel screamed as she paced back and forth.
"What's going on?" Sam asked as they all arrived.
"Is anything wrong?" Jay asked.
"Understatement of week," Soren groaned.
"I was just about to send my article when all of the sudden my damn laptop shorted out on me!" Isabel shouted as she pointed to her laptop. "It completely fried up for no reason! I lost everything!"
"Oh dear," Sam said, intentionally keeping a straight face. "Was it an old laptop?"
"No! I just got it!" Isabel snapped. "State of the art my…AGGGH! I'm going to have to rewrite everything! Not that it matters! I'll miss my deadline for sure! DAMN IT! Not again!"
"Awww," Thorfinn mocked. "Isabel lose important article. What a shame."
It was all Sam could do to not laugh out loud.
Soren remarked. "Your boss is not going to like this. After you failed last three deadlines…"
"You get nominated for one damn award and after that everyone expects you to be perfect every single time!" Isabel grumbled. "Samantha you are so lucky you don't have that problem!"
"Gee, thanks…" Sam said sarcastically. Any sympathy she had for Isabel evaporated at that moment.
Isabel went on. "It's always the same from my editor. It's good but not as good as your last article. Why isn't as good as your last article? There's only so much you can do to punch up an article on the economic slump in the economy without making up flying monkeys or aliens!"
"That is a challenge," Sam remarked.
"And then there was the time my editor told me one of my articles wasn't zazzy enough!" Isabel snapped. "What the hell is zazzy? And how does that relate to an article on the rising cost of school lunches? School lunch prices? How can you make that zazzy? What in God's name is supposed to be zazzy about higher prices for a freaking lukewarm pizza?"
"Sounds like your editor likes to make up words," Sam shrugged.
"I knew it! He does do that!" Isabel pointed. "I told you it wasn't a real word Soren!"
"To be fair it does sound like an English word," Soren remarked. "Let's be honest. A lot of your English words do sound very strange."
"I think your editor meant jazzy?" Sam suggested.
"I think he meant to give me a heart attack!" Isabel snapped. "Oh, and let's not forget the brilliant assignment he gave me last week so our newspaper could get more online subscribers. The effect of Paris Hilton's singing career on modern music. You know what the effect of her singing is? TINITUS!"
"To be fair it wasn't that bad," Soren paused. "The auto tune really helped."
"I have to do either the most boring assignments or puff pieces so full of sugar it could rot your teeth!" Isabel snarled. "And all the time there's a bunch of younger, hungrier brats just fresh out of journalism school with perkier breasts just waiting to take my job!"
Trevor appeared out of the walls. "What was that? I heard something about perky breasts!"
Alberta rolled her eyes. "Trust him to catch that one."
Isobel rambled on. "There's Cheryl Lafontane who's always bribing what few contacts I have to get the scoop. Terrance Hill who snuck around behind my back beating me to the punch about the inside story on a murder of a high society matron! That was supposed to be my story! My story! And he stole it from me!"
"Oh yeah I read about that," Jay realized. "Everybody thought at first the husband did it and then it turned out to be the butler who was actually her illegitimate half-brother! That was nuts!"
"That was on the news the other night," Sam remembered. "Yeah, they interviewed Hill who broke the case wide open. He might get nominated for an award."
"Good hit Sam," Sasappis smirked.
"He seemed very poised on camera," Sam went on. "Looked really good."
"Oh! That was just perfect!" Sasappis grinned as Isabel screamed. "Right for the jugular! Great job!"
"And then there's that little bitch Abbie Stone," Isabel snarled. "Always nipping at my heels. She wins one minor journalism award last year and suddenly she thinks she's the next Barbara Walters!"
"Darling please calm down," Soren told her. "You know you break out in hives when you get stressed."
"I'm going to be demoted to covering lame human interest stories again I know it!" Isabel moaned. "I can't take another cat show or Pine Scouts singing at a senior center. I can't!"
"Oh, she is not handling this well," Alberta smirked.
"No, she is not," Sasappis grinned.
"I didn't even win the stupid award!" Isabel started to scratch her arms. "Which Abbie loves to remind me every single week!"
"It's always the ones that think they're the toughest that fold first," Trevor agreed. "This is exactly what happened when Trent Balesworth the Third lost one of our biggest accounts. By the end of the week, he had so many hives he looked like one of those aliens from Star Trek."
"Maybe you can get another laptop and…?" Sam began.
"The article is due half an hour from now Sam!" Isabel interrupted. "Even if I got a laptop in thirty seconds it would still take me two hours to write it!"
"How long is this article?" Jay blinked.
"There's a lot of nuances Jay!" Isabel snapped. "A lot of nuances I have to remember and re-write and I can't! I can't do it! I can't just re-write an entire article from scratch! I'm not in the zone!"
"Look I call your editor and explain…" Soren took out his phone.
"Thorfinn don't think so…" Thorfinn grinned as he used his powers. "HUNNGGGGGGHHHAAAAH!"
"AAAAH!" Soren gasped as his phone shorted out. "My phone! It went kaput!"
"You say something about Norway being No Way?" Thorfinn mocked. "How about no way your phone will work now! HA!"
"That is so strange…" Jay played dumb.
"Was it an old phone or…?" Sam suggested.
"Eh kind of. Actually, I have been meaning to get a new one…" Soren admitted. "Now I have to."
"It wouldn't have done any good anyway!" Isabel told him.
"I'm sure if you explain to your editor that your laptop broke…" Sam suggested.
"I can't tell him that!" Isabel told Sam.
Sam asked. "Why not?"
"Because that's the excuse I used the last two times I missed a deadline!" Isabel told her.
"Your laptop went out two times…?" Jay blinked.
"No!" Isabel admitted. "One time I went to this party and I drank too much and I overslept…It was a boring article on…Something to do with cost projections of New York's transportation system…It wasn't that good anyway. The other time it did actually break."
"When you threw it against the wall," Soren pointed out.
"I learned I lost a major journalism award!" Isabel snapped. "I wrote a brilliant article on the latest corruption scandal in the DMV…They were just handing out licenses to anybody who paid them an extra hundred bucks. It was perfect! People were fired over that article! There was an investigative hearing into that incident! There was no way I was going to lose!"
"And then you lost…" Sam remarked.
Isabel snapped. "I lost to some lucky little twerp out in Portland who writes this article about some rich members of a philanthropy club secretly running a drug ring and framing the help and I lose! It's ridiculous! Apparently, the lawyer for the woman who was falsely accused basically dropped the story into her lap! Practically wrote everything for her but the headline! IT'S NOT FAIR!"
"Gee rich people selling drugs and other illegal substances," Alberta quipped. "How unusual! Nice to see some things never change!"
"I'll be lucky if I don't lose my job over this!" Isabel groaned.
"I'm sure even if you do lose your job, it's not the end of the world," Sam said. "You probably could land something else."
"Well not all of us have the option of being an heiress as a fallback plan, Samantha!" Isabel shouted.
"Technically it was just the mansion I inherited," Sam corrected her. "No actual money."
"This job is all I have!" Isabel shouted. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a job at a real newspaper?"
"Really?" Jay said innocently. "Sam got picked up by the Ulster County Review pretty quickly. Within a few months of us moving here."
"Are they hiring?" Soren asked.
"Sam even has a podcast with them now," Jay added.
"Good hit Jay," Sasappis grinned. "I really like this guy!"
"He bought a car for you," Trevor pointed out. "You should!"
"Yeah, I know!" Isabel snapped. "Again, not everybody has a house where a bunch of people died!"
"I wouldn't say a…" Sam stopped herself when she realized that wasn't true.
"I think technically we're over a bunch," Alberta groaned. "By a half dozen people!"
Sasappis realized something. "We never really did count how many ghosts are in the Cholera Pit did we?"
"AAAHHHH!" Isabel screamed in frustration. "I CAN'T THINK! I CAN'T THINK!"
"I'm surprised Sam didn't offer her computer," Flower remarked.
"And have Thor short that out too?" Alberta pointed out.
"Oh good point," Flower nodded.
"I'd offer my computer but it's kind of on the fritz…" Sam took the suggestion.
"I just said I couldn't type anything anyway! I'm not…I've got it!" Isabel gasped. "Traffic! We can tell my editor we were stuck in traffic and couldn't get the article out! He'll believe that! It's happened to him and several reporters a dozen times! He's made that exact same excuse himself! He'll believe it!"
"If he's drunk enough again," Soren remarked.
"It's a fifty-fifty shot!" Isabel shouted as she ran around packing. "Hurry Soren! Pack up! Sam get my laundry!"
"It's on your bed," Sam pointed, annoyed to be ordered like that.
"Let's move it! Move it! Move it!" Isabel screamed as she ran around.
"God you're gorgeous when you're bossy!" Soren remarked.
"NOT NOW SOREN!" Isabel shouted.
"They paid right?" Sam asked Jay as they left the room.
"Payment went through this morning," Jay told her.
"Good!" Sam said as they walked away. "I'll be so glad to see Isabel drive away in that fancy electric car of hers!"
"Electric car you say?" Thorfinn raised an eyebrow.
"Uh oh," Alberta snorted. "Here we go!"
A short time later outside…
"HUNNGGGGGGHHHHHAAAAAH!" Thorfinn focused his powers.
"AAAAHHH!" Soren and Isabel screamed as the car malfunctioned. The horns blared and the windshield wipers went off. Then the power went dead.
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS CAR?" Isabel shouted.
"IT WAS FINE WHEN I GOT IT FROM THE MECHANIC!" Soren shouted.
"HAA! HA! HA! HA!" Thorfinn laughed.
The other ghosts watched. "There goes Mr. Hothead again," Alberta remarked. "Sorry Flower…"
"It's cool," Flower waved. "Soren was a jerk saying all that stuff about Norway. Let Thor have this one."
"Clearly the mechanic ripped us off!" Isabel shouted. "AAGGGHHH!" She got out of the car and started kicking the tires. "Stupid hunk of junk! Electric cars are the future my…AAAAGGGHHH!"
"I called you an Uber," Jay said calmly. He and Sam were outside watching. "Should be here in ten minutes."
"NO TIME!" Isabel shouted as she got out of the car and grabbed her luggage. "We'll meet them on the road!"
"We do have time," Soren blinked.
"JUST GRAB THE BAGS AND RUN!" Isabel shouted.
"Uh okay…" Soren winced as he did so.
"I'll let the driver know you're headed their way," Jay texted. "Have a nice day!"
"RUN! RUN!" Thorfinn whooped as they ran off. "RUN DANE RUN! RUN FROM THORFINN'S WRATH! HA! HA! HA!"
"Thank you for visiting Woodstone Mansion," Sam said cheerfully as they ran off. Under her breath she added. "And thank you for leaving!"
"That is one happy Viking," Sasappis remarked.
"It's good to see the big guy so happy," Trevor nodded.
"THORFINN STILL GOT IT!" Thorfinn whooped. "WHOOOO!"