And yet, he’d given Gran’s house back to me (sort of—his name was still on the title too), and I’d heard him and Gran talk about me while I was asleep. Still, he’d been gone for a week, and every doubt I’d had about him had come crashing back. Wordplay intended. On top of it all, I had no real desire to choose between the two men. There was a part of me that very much enjoyed flirting with both.
What can I say? It had been a long time since I’d felt this much sexual chemistry, and my mature libido was out of control and pushing me to keep my options open.
“Hello, earth to Breena,” Eric waved a hand in front of my face. “You in there?”
“Sorry, wandered off in my head, fell off the path, and got sucked down the hole of where the hell did I go wrong in my own love life?” I laughed, turned, and dunked my hands back into the soapy water. “Just tell Kinkly,” I said again. “That’s the best way to find out. And then you can move on if it isn’t a fit.”
Which it literally could be in so many ways.
He sighed. “I know you’re right. Of course I do. I just never thought it would be so hard to tell someone how you feel.”
“What would you suggest to one of your clients?” I asked. From where I stood, I stared out the window at the house next door. Eric answered, but his voice slid into something of a drone, a buzzing that filled my ears as I fixated on the eyes that could only belong to Matilda. The ghost had tried to push her way into Gran’s house last week, but we’d managed to keep her out since then by maintaining the garden and the protective spells Gran had laid on the house via the plants. Unfortunately, it didn’t keep Matilda from watching us.
Which was what the freaky neighbor ghost was doing now. She stared at me from the window of the Sorrel-Weed house, clear as day . . . until she disappeared. One of the windows on the upper floor of the infamous house seemed to flicker. I leaned over the sink to see better, and there she was on the second floor, looking at our house again. I found myself turning away from Eric and hurrying out of the kitchen. “I’ll be back, hang on a second.”
Up the stairs I went with only a slight twinge in my right knee. No matter that I was getting stronger every day, that knee was being a pig about not hurting. I used the banister to help me get to the top of the stairs faster, then hobble-jogged to the windows on that side of the house. I ducked into the first room, which was now Suzy’s. She wasn’t there—she and Feish were out shopping.
The window didn’t line up with any in the house next door. I ducked into the next room, which was Gran’s.
“Bingo,” I said softly as I strode in. Matilda stared into the room, her eyes on mine, her face sad. She lifted a palm to the glass and pressed her hand against it.
“What does she want?” Gran appeared by my side and glowered at the other ghost. Like two dogs stuck in adjacent apartments, they had taken to barking back and forth on a daily basis. They seemed to genuinely dislike each other. But this was different than the usual. Matilda had never come up to this window before. She’d mostly stayed in the lower levels of her house. She pointed at us, then made a slashing motion across her neck at Gran.
Gran lifted both fists, her long skirts swinging with the motion. “Matilda, stop being a bitch!”
I fake gasped and put a hand to my chest. “Gran! I can’t believe you cussed at her.”
“Ah, well.” She turned from the window with a final wave of her hand, like a queen dismissing the court. “It’s not like she can hear me. And she really is being a tyrant lately, trying to draw me out of the house so I’ll engage with her.”
She strode away, her form going transparent in a splash of sunlight, then solidifying again as she stepped into the shadows. I was lucky, so very lucky, I still had her with me. She’d died seven months prior, and I hadn’t been able to even attend her funeral—courtesy of Himself. I’d thought I’d lost my last chance to talk to her, to lean on her advice, to tell her I loved her. But I’d found her here in the house we’d lived in together.
I turned back to the window, fully expecting Matilda to be gone. But she wasn’t. Her eyes locked with mine, because like Gran, she knew I could see her.
Worse, she’d been joined by a much darker figure that cast a shadow on her from behind. Long spindly fingers wrapped around her upper body, digging into her spectral flesh and slowly pulling her deeper into the darkness of the house. The malevolence of the deliberately slow movements, the look of fear and horror etched into Matilda’s eyes, the lack of fight in her—it all sent chills through me that left my knees a little wobbly. This certainly hadn’t happened before.
“Duck me,” I whispered as I stepped back, too, away from the window. On second thought . . . I reached forward and grabbed the sash, pulling the curtains closed, blocking the view of Matilda and her new friend that I didn’t want to meet, never mind see. Gran had never mentioned a darker entity next door.
Sure, the supernatural world wasn’t new to me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t affected by it, or the special shades of ugliness that occasionally popped into my line of view. I didn’t realize I’d backed all the way out of my gran’s room and into mine across the hall until my hand touched the side table by my door.
My fingers brushed against the yellow manila envelope that lay there. The one I’d meant to open a week ago—and several times since—but like I said earlier, every time I picked it up, I seemed to chicken out at the last second. My eyes were locked on the window across from me, even though I could no longer see Matilda or the critter pulling her into the darkness. I slowly picked up the envelope and pulled it to my chest as if it would somehow block them from seeing me.
The envelope felt heavier than it actually was, a literal weight in my hands.
“You’re freaking yourself out,” I muttered as I backed up the last few steps and shut the door. The minute the barrier was in place the tension slid out of me. As if I’d cut off prying eyes. I shuddered. “I gotta ask Robert if he can get rid of her,” I mumbled to myself.
A tap on the door about stopped my heart. I took a step back, crouched, and peered under the oversized crack at the bottom. Shadows of a pair of feet, nothing more. If it had been any of my friends, they would have announced themselves.
Who the hell had broken into my house this time with Eric downstairs?
“What in the world are you doing?” Gran said behind me, and I squeaked . . . and maybe peed myself a little.
“Damn it,” I whispered. “I’m trying to see who’s out there.”
“Well, isn’t it obvious? You said his name. It’s Robert. He’s like a damn golden retriever. Irritating as Matilda if you ask me,” Gran grumped and promptly walked past me, through the door and out of view. I frowned after her.
“Who put a murder hornet in your panties?” I muttered after her.
I opened the door up to see the swaying form of Robert. His long dark hair hid his face, and the rags he wore—if he could be said to be wearing anything—covered his literal skeletal frame. Enough so that if you didn’t look too hard, you wouldn’t notice that he was a skeleton. If indeed you could even see him. Like Gran, he didn’t seem to be visible to everyone.