by Amy Boyles
“Yes, I’m sorry. Modern women are definitely different.”
“So they are.” He gazed at the home. “Now. Tell me what exactly you would like for me to do again.”
So I described the Spiritus and explained it was the only thing I needed. Fannie would more than likely either be asleep or quickly headed that way given how easily she chugged whiskey.
“I’ll be in here. If you need anything, just poke your head out the door and gesture.”
“Ma’am”—he placed a hand over his heart—“I will do my best to honor you.”
Really, there was nothing else to say except, “Thank you.”
Blount disappeared from the truck. He floated across the street and vanished into Fannie’s exterior wall.
I kept an eye on the house. From the windows, Blount glowed faintly. At least to me he did.
He moved slowly through the house, which was fine. I needed him to take his time. My nerves jumped at the thought of having the Spiritus back in my hands. I could finish this whole thing tonight. Axel and Pepper were here, and Roan could help, too. We could send Jinkins to the afterlife and free the other spirits all in one sitting.
It was the perfect plan.
No, I was not going to think about how perfect plans went wrong. I wasn’t a glass-half-empty sort of person.
Okay, maybe I was, but not tonight. Not when it came to this. I couldn’t be.
After about five minutes Blount’s head appeared through a house window. I curled my fingers around the handle to open the door for him, anticipating what he had to tell me. But Blount drifted slowly, floating at a leisurely pace back to my truck.
I nearly jumped from the Cruiser to harass Blount about what had happened, but then I realized I’d look like an insane woman arguing with the air.
Kency Blount would be called to haul me in for sure.
When Captain Blount was safely tucked inside, I couldn’t wait any longer for an answer. “Well?”
“Ma’am, the device you described is not in that house.”
“What? It has to be.”
“It doesn’t have to be because it wasn’t.”
I slumped into the seat. “Maybe you searched too quickly.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.
“I can feel the presence of other spirits through objects. I would’ve known if it was inside. It was not.”
I took a moment to gather my thoughts. “What about the woman? Was she in there?”
“The home was also empty of a warm-blooded woman.”
I nibbled my bottom lip. Okay, so maybe Fannie had taken the tube out. Out? Where could she be? Most elderly people were home in bed by this time. After all, didn’t they have medicine to take, sleep to catch up on?
I curled my fingers around the steering wheel. The cool leather felt good against my skin. Flexing my fingers helped me to think, and boy, did I need to think.
I turned my attention to the Jarvis house. Inside were two adults and one young girl. If for some reason Fannie freed that spirit, it would return to the home and possibly hurt one of those innocents.
Or me. It might hurt me.
I was innocent, too.
Okay, that wasn’t a lie I tell myself. I was innocent. I’d never done anything to hurt this spirit. All I wanted was to send him on to whatever other side he needed to be sent to.
A sudden streak of color across the Jarvis’s lawn caught my attention.
“What was that?”
“That, madam, appears to be a person perusing the grounds of that home.”
“Thank you, Captain Blount.”
“You are most welcome.”
I slipped from the truck and crept toward the house. Something flashed in the corner of my eye.
“Now I’ve got you,” I whispered.
I plastered my back to the side of the house and slowly slid to the edge.
Whoever was there was only a few feet away in a bush. All I had to do was jump out and scare them.
Wait. What if they had a gun? The neighborhood wasn’t in the best shape, and I was absolutely weaponless.
I motioned to Captain Blount, who appeared to be picking daisies, only he couldn’t quite grab ahold of them.
And he’s the person who offered to retrieve the tube for me?
I would’ve shaken my head, but it would create too much noise.
I motioned for Captain Blount to come toward me. He did, and then I used what I considered noncomplicated hand gestures, like point at myself, then at him, then miming jumping out and scaring whoever hid behind the house, so that the captain would understand the plan.
He looked at me as if I was a talking turkey.
“Just stay behind me, and if I need you to scare someone, do it,” I said in a low voice.
“As you command, madam.”
Bushes rustled only a few feet away. This was it. I curled my hands and readied to leap out. When a murmur cut through the air, I launched myself.
“Stay where you are!” And for some reason I’d pulled my hands into a gun shape like I was a little kid playing cop.
What was wrong with me? Better question, what had Haunted Hollow done to me? Never would I have jumped from behind a house with gun hands in my old life, and I would’ve kneed anyone in the gonads who suggested such a thing.
Funny how things changed.
Anyway, I yelled at the perp, and next thing I knew, something soft filled with hard things bounced against my leg.
“Stay where you are,” Captain Blount commanded. “I am a captain in the Confederacy, and I demand it!”
“Ah!” came a reply.
Hands were thrown up in the air. Someone screamed, and that’s when I yelled, “Stop!”
I squinted. “Ruth. Alice. Is that y’all?”
The two women appeared from behind a bush that hid the HVAC. They were dressed in dark clothing, which was why I didn’t immediately see them.
“Blissful.” Ruth sounded relieved. “I’m so glad we found you.”
“You found me,” I murmured bitterly. “I was hoping you were Fannie Sullivan.”
“Why?” Alice said.
I bent down and picked up Alice’s purse. That’s what she’d thrown at my legs. “Good thing there wasn’t anything harder in there than a tin of shortbread. That could’ve really hurt.”
Alice took the purse gratefully. “Oh, I would never hurt you, Blissful. At least, not on purpose.”
“Thanks.” I smirked. “That makes me feel better.” I stared at the two elderly women. “Just what are y’all doing out here?”
“We came to look for you.” Ruth spat a line of tobacco to the ground. “Tell you that Axel and Pepper were back and waiting for you.”
I groaned. “Right. Well, I don’t have the spirit. So there’s not going to be any sort of ritual tonight that’ll break his hold on this earth.”
Alice brushed off the bottom of her purse. “You can tell them that. I think they’re at the B and B.”
“Thanks. Roan’s probably tried to call. I’ve had my phone off.” I turned to Captain Blount. “Captain, thank you for all your help tonight. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He saluted me. “You are very welcome, madam. If you require my assistance in the future, you know where I can be found.”
I smiled. “Yes. Thanks, again.”
Captain Blount slowly seeped into the fabric of the atmosphere. He disappeared slowly, as if dissolving in water. It was cool to watch.
I turned back to Alice and Ruth. “Have the two of you eaten?”
“Does shortbread count?” Alice said.
“No.” I hooked my arms through both of theirs. “Come on. Let’s go see what Roan’s feeding the guests tonight.”
Alice gasped. “Won’t we be intruding?”
I smiled. “No. I don’t think so. Besides, we’ve got planning to do. First thing is to figure out how to steal the Spiritus back from Fannie. Without breaking one of her hips, I mean.”
Ruth sm
irked. “You know they say that sometimes the hip breaks first and then the person falls.”
“I’ve heard that,” I murmured. “Let’s just hope that wherever she is, Fannie isn’t causing any trouble. She doesn’t know it, but she’s bitten off more than she can chew.”
“A lot more,” Alice agreed. Her brow crinkled in thought. “Do you think Roan will have pie? I’m tired of shortbread.”
I laughed. “Come on. Let’s find out.”
TWENTY-ONE
“Fannie’s disappeared,” I said.
Roan, Axel, Pepper, Ruth, Alice and I sat around the dinner table.
Roan’s brow furrowed. “For good?”
Against my better judgment and plans to keep my thighs trim, I broke open a dinner roll and slathered butter on it.
Only one, I promised myself. I would not resort to stress eating. “I don’t think Fannie’s gone for good, but where is she?”
“Avoiding you.” Axel poured himself a glass of tea from a pitcher. “She’ll be back. Especially if she took the spirit.”
“But why take it?” Pepper said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“She needs something from him.” Ruth stirred green beans around her plate. “Mark my words, that woman needs something from that spirit.”
“Like what?” I spoke between bites of dinner roll. Man, was it heavenly. “The supposed treasure inside that place?”
“Whoa”—Roan flared out a hand—“there’s treasure in the house?”
“Supposedly,” I explained. “But there’s no evidence.”
He hitched a brow. “Maybe there is evidence and we just don’t know it. Maybe that’s why Fannie took the tube.”
“So the spirit could show her where the treasure is,” Alice chirped. She poured half a gallon of gravy on her roast. “If I thought there was treasure and I finally had a spirit under my control, I’d use it to my advantage.”
“You’d use it if the spirit promised to introduce you to a mountain of shortbread,” Ruth said smartly.
Alice sniffed. “I might.”
“Okay, we’re getting off track.” I gazed at each person in turn. “It’s not as if Fannie’s going to run into that house with the Jarvises in there. She needs it empty if she’s searching for treasure.”
“You don’t know that,” Axel said. “How stable is Fannie?”
I laughed. That was the joke of the century. “Oh, she’s as stable as the next person who drinks whiskey like water and has stuffed all her dead cats.”
“Oh, that is strange.” Alice nudged Ruth. “Isn’t it? I might like shortbread, but I wouldn’t stuff my pets. When they’re dead, they’re dead.” She clutched her chest. “You don’t think her husband’s stuffed and hanging out in the attic, do you? Or worse, a bedroom?”
Ruth patted Alice’s hand. “Let’s calm down. I’m sure Fannie Sullivan doesn’t have an army of stuffed people or creatures in her home.” She shot me a hopeful look. “Right, Blissful?”
I shrugged. “I can’t make any promises. I didn’t see anything other than cats, and there’s no evidence of a husband.”
“Thank goodness.” Alice exhaled a breath filled with the sound of relief.
“At least I don’t think so.”
She glared at me. “That’s not encouraging.”
I shrugged. “It’s the best I can do.” I clapped my hands. “Okay. So we’ve got one missing Fannie.”
Alice giggled.
“What?”
She swiped a handkerchief over her eyes. “It’s just you said missing Fannie. It sounds like she’s missing her bottom. Or that someone’s bottom is missing.”
I almost knocked my forehead into the table with frustration. Please. Would it kill these women to take this seriously? At least for five minutes?
Thank goodness Roan took the lead. “Okay, no missing bottoms. But we have a missing woman with a highly volatile, dangerous spirit. We think she’s heading back to the Jarvis place for whatever reason. The reason, we don’t know. So, what do we do know?”
“That the Jarvises need to be evacuated,” Axel said. “The spirit is dangerous. There’s no telling what it’ll do when it finds itself free.”
“I agree,” Pepper said. “We’ve got to get that family out of there.”
“Think they’ll leave?” Roan directed the question to me.
I twisted a strand of violet hair around my finger. “I don’t know. They’ve just moved back into the house. Would they want to pack up and leave?”
“Brownie said they were going to sell the place as soon as they could,” Pepper said. “Maybe they wouldn’t mind leaving again.”
Silence crept into the room.
Roan tapped a finger on the table. “I don’t think it’s that simple. We can’t just walk up and say there’s a crazy woman who may or may not unleash a bad spirit back into your house. Would you like to leave so that none of you become a target of its anger?”
We all exchanged glances.
Roan hitched a shoulder. “Maybe it is that simple.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “What do y’all say we clean up and head on over to the house for a stakeout?”
“Fannie could already be inside,” Axel said. “She might be waiting for the right time to do her work.”
I picked up my plate. “All the more reason to get over there ASAP.” I nodded to Ruth. “Do you still have Brownie’s phone number?”
Ruth pulled a notepad from her purse and thumbed through it. “Let me see. Let me see. Aha! Here it is.”
“I’ll take that.” I nodded at the impromptu team of paranormal investigators—one witch, one wizard, two elderly women, a demonologist in training and myself.
Something akin to pride swelled in my chest as I gazed at the crowd. How amazing and wonderful it was that we’d come together to help this family—and that we each had individually different talents.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to cry about it. Only appreciate it.
I glanced at the number. “I’ll call Brownie on the way so she knows we’re coming. That’ll hopefully give her time to inform Wallace about what’s going on.”
Axel rose and picked up his plate. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s get rolling.”
I rode with Roan while Ruth and Alice rode with Axel and Pepper. I hadn’t had any real time alone with him since the whole demonologist thing had happened.
“So how are you?”
Roan took a left out of the inn’s driveway. “It’s weird. I feel like my brain is rewiring itself. Sort of like new synapses are being made that allow me to smell on a different level.”
I quirked a brow. “Smell better?”
His gaze slid over to me. “You know what I mean.”
I bit down on my lips to stop from laughing. “No, I’m not sure I do. Not sure how smelling has anything to do with spirits and ghosts.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why me? Why does every conversation with you have to be like pulling nails from my mouth?”
“Why do you have nails in your mouth?”
“You know, if I didn’t care about you so much, I’d let you ride with someone else.”
I relented. “Okay. I know the smell thing was a joke. But what do you mean?”
His eyes flared with excitement. “It’s like I can see the world around us more deeply. I can see connections and fragments lingering in the air. As if a ghost had just passed through and all I saw was the residual power. It’s strange. And mesmerizing.”
“So that’s part of your ability. You can now see things more deeply than most people.”
“I guess.” He raked his fingers through his hair, ruffling up the back. “And I never, not in a million years thought I’d be going on a ghost chase like this. But—” He bit down on his lip.
“But what?”
His brows pinched, and I could see a tidal wave of emotion battering his insides. My heart did some sort of weird skipping thing. I wondered for a second if that’s what a heart attack felt like, and then I r
ealized I was too young to have a one.
Well, most likely I was too young. But no matter how much I told my brain that, my chest constricted and my breathing quickened.
“Are you inhaling?” Roan squeezed my arm.
I sucked a deep breath. “Yes. It’s just, I felt really weird for a second.”
“You got a creepy look in your eyes.”
I punched his arm.
“Ow.”
“I’m not sorry. I didn’t have a creepy look. I was just…I don’t know. My chest tightened.”
“You too, huh?”
“Are you having a heart attack, too?”
Roan threw back his head and laughed. “No, Blissful, I’m not experiencing a heart attack. I’m talking about feelings.”
“I don’t know what those are.”
He chuckled. “Even you have feelings.”
I folded my arms. “I’m not sure about that.”
Roan squeezed my shoulder. “I hate to reveal this secret, but I’ve seen your feelings.”
“How dare you suggest such a thing,” I said dramatically.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. But you know what?”
“Am I going to like this question?”
“Probably not.”
I stared out the window, debating whether or not I wanted to get into this sort of discussion with Roan. My father always said what good are hearts for if they can’t be broken? What’s the point if you don’t experience the depth of scope that our hearts are capable of?
I disagreed. Hearts were made to be protected and kept close as if they were something sacred.
After all, wasn’t love something sacred?
Why in the hellapaloosa was I thinking about love? What was wrong with me?
“So you don’t want to know what I think?” Roan prodded gently.
“If it’s something about feelings, then no.”
“Oh, it’s definitely about feelings.”
We hit a stop sign. I sneaked a glance to Roan and found him staring at me outright. His big brown eyes reminded me of a puppy dog’s, except the face they were attached to was much more handsome.
I held my breath as his gaze lanced me through the heart. It took me a minute to find my voice too, and when I spoke, it was nothing more than a whisper. “What do you think my feelings are?”