Better Homes and Hauntings

by Molly Harper

  She’d left it on her nightstand that morning, distracted by repeatedly making the bed and by Deacon’s rose-scented kisses. Fantastic.

  “Rick, get away from me.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” he crooned. “It hurts my feelings when you look at me like that, like I’m going to hurt you. You don’t think I would hurt you, do you?” He scoffed as if it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. “The only thing I’ve ever tried to do is help you. I gave you a job, didn’t I? I gave you a place where you could work and make your ideas come alive. And how did you repay me?”

  He growled, his fingers curling into claws.

  “You ran off. Without a word, you just left me. What the hell makes you think you have the right? And then you set up your joke of a business, conning people into hiring you with your poor, pitiful, innocent act. Taking jobs that rightfully belong to me. Me. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

  “You tried to ruin me,” Nina said, her voice shaky.

  “You wouldn’t even have a reputation if it wasn’t for me. I gave you everything, and you left me! You never appreciated anything I did for you.”

  “Rick, stop this.”

  “No.” He grinned, an unnatural split of his lips over his teeth, and she knew she wasn’t dealing with Rick. Or at least, not just Rick. Jack was lurking inside her former partner’s body like an infection. How long had Jack been hiding inside poor, stupid Rick? Had Jack been the driving force behind the vandalism, the pranks? Perhaps, but Rick certainly wasn’t innocent in the situation. She could see the hint of familiar cruelty in those brown eyes.

  “I can’t stop now,” he singsonged. “Not when I’ve waited so long for this, to see you again, hold you in my arms. You misunderstood before. I didn’t explain it so you could see things my way. I deserve that, don’t you think? A chance to explain?”

  She backed away, nearly toppling over the steps up to the widow’s walk.

  “Ah-ah-ah.” He chuckled, catching her free arm. “Not scampering away, my frightened little kitten. You owe me. You don’t get to leave until I say so. You left me before, didn’t you?” His lips quirked even higher, making her duck her head. “And we both know how that turned out.”

  Nina didn’t know if Rick was referring to her leaving his company or if Jack was referring to Catherine rejecting him on the roof, but something in the man’s smug assurance made her jaw clench. He was enjoying her fear. He was enjoying toying with her. Her head snapped up, staring Rick right in the eyes. “Not this time.”

  Nina cupped her hands and clapped them as hard as she could over Rick’s ears. Roaring, he threw her against the stairwell. Despite the dull pop she heard in her left shoulder, Nina kicked out as hard as she could, aiming for his crotch. His indignant scream echoed after her as she scrambled up to the widow’s walk and slammed the door.

  She tried to shove one of the large tree planters in front of the door, but it was too heavy. The best she could do was wedge a wrought-iron chair underneath the knob. “Good plan, Nina,” she grumbled to herself. “Make the crazy possessed guy angry and then run up to high ground without an escape route. Excellent work.”

  She ran for the railing, screaming “Help!” and waving her arms frantically. For the first time, she smelled the acrid bitterness of smoke on the air. A billowing gray plume stretched across the sky, hovering over her. She coughed, covering her mouth as the smoke danced around her head. The staff quarters. The staff quarters were on fire and fully engulfed. She could see her friends on the ground, scrambling around with hoses from her gardening shed and trying to extinguish the flames. Deacon was on his phone, apparently calling for his backup security and fire crew.

  Rick had set the quarters on fire. Just as Jack had set the children’s wing on fire. He was following the same plan that had led to Catherine being strangled and dumped into the ocean.

  “Help!” Nina screamed, but no one heard her over the wind and the roar of the fire. Rick’s battering at the widow’s walk door sent the iron chair scraping against the roof tiles. She ran for the only shelter available as Rick shoved the door open and threw the chair aside with a loud clang.

  In the far west corner of the widow’s walk, she made herself as small as possible behind the ornamental pear tree she’d planted just a few weeks before. Slumping against the cement planter, she snagged an abandoned trowel from the soil. Her shoulder throbbed mercilessly. She clutched the trowel in her good hand, wondering if she could really do any damage with it once he made it to the end of the walk.

  “Catherine,” he whispered. His voice was too low, roughened by the force of the murderous spirit lurking inside him like an infection. “Why are you hiding from me? I love you. I just want to talk to you, to make you see. Please, Kitty, don’t make me beg.”

  The voice was so familiar, the words so soothing, that she struggled to remember that she wasn’t dealing with the man she’d trusted. He was a killer, an insane, possessive monster who had strangled the woman he’d supposedly loved on this very spot.

  Nina could hear his footsteps coming closer. No one was coming to help her, she knew that much. The others had run to the servants’ quarters to put out the fire. She was cornered and alone, as Catherine had been.

  Nina leaned her forehead against the smooth, curved surface of the planter. She was more exasperated with herself than afraid. She should have known this would happen. Her life was not a fairy tale. She wouldn’t end up with the prince. She was cannon fodder, the servant girl who got kicked in the head by the knight’s horse as he rode away with the fair damsel. She winced as she gripped the trowel, scraping her finger against the sharp bottom edge.

  No.

  She wasn’t that weak, injured woman anymore. She wasn’t Catherine.

  “Hey.” She stood, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as she planted her feet. “If I come out, will you stop the insane chatter?”

  He grinned at her, a cocky smile that could have been mistaken for flirtatious. “Catherine.”

  “No,” she said, brandishing the trowel like a blade.

  His dark eyes radiated mad glee as he swayed, a cobra hovering in front his prey. “I’ve missed you.” His hands shot up as if to embrace her. Nina swung the trowel upward, nearly catching him across the throat, but he ducked out of the way. As her weight shifted, she threw her good shoulder against his chest. He caught her arms, dragging her down with him and slamming her injured shoulder against the marble tiles. “Really, darling,” he sighed, pinning her against the cold, unyielding surface. “Why do you have to make things so difficult for yourself?”

  “I’m not Catherine,” Nina growled.

  “Maybe not,” he whispered, trailing cold lips along her cheek. “But you’re going to die like her.”

  With a final kiss at the corner of her mouth, his hands closed around her throat. Nina clawed at his hands, kicking viciously at his shins. She threw her head forward as hard as she could with his hands around her neck, catching his chin between her teeth and sinking them into his flesh until he bled. Rick howled and shoved her away, slamming her head against the marble. Rick’s enraged scowl swam before her eyes, and for a second, his features shifted into another face—Jack’s face.

  She’d wondered what Catherine had thought of in those last moments on the roof, and now she knew. Catherine had thought of Gerald and the children. Because all Nina could think of was Deacon. His face. His smile. His last words to her. She could almost hear his voice.

  Oh, wait, that was his voice. The pressure around her throat eased just enough that she could focus on the image of Deacon standing over Rick with a shovel in his hands. Rick dropped to Nina’s side, gripping his head in both hands as Deacon ordered, “Get your hands off my girl.”

  It would have been such a resounding badass moment, had Rick not used his position on the ground to knock Deacon’s legs out from him and make Deacon whack his head against a planter.

  Deacon landed with a thump on the tiles. “Ow.”
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  “She was mine first, you know,” Rick snarled, his voice weakened by what was no doubt a wicked concussion. His dark eyes drifted lazily, but the angry intelligence inhabiting him kept him talking. “She always belonged to me. No matter what you gave her. She was always mine.”

  Deacon slowly sat up, wiping at the blood dripping down his face. “I’m not a broken man, haunted by the wife he lost. And I’m not a little boy you can scare anymore. Nice try, setting my house on fire. You think I wouldn’t see the pattern? I’m a math nerd. I live for patterns.”

  Rick’s voice changed, doubling, slithering along the ground like fog. “Everything your family built I destroyed. Every failure, every wasted coin, every heartbreak for the last century. I touched it all. I ruined you all through sheer will. Do you really think you can send me away, boy? I will take everything you have. I—”

  Rick’s tirade was cut short when a tiny mote of light between them grew into a pulsing white star. The light whirled and blurred, taking on a human shape, a woman in a long pale blue dress, her blond hair mussed and falling around her shoulders. She glared down at Rick, whose eyes rolled up into his head as he fell back to the floor. In his place stood the ephemeral form of Jack Donovan, his face twisted into alternating expressions of anger, awe, and feral aggression. It finally settled into a smug grin as he whispered, “Catherine, I’ve waited for you, for so long. All of these years, you wouldn’t let me see you. I’ve missed you so.”

  Catherine didn’t answer, her face never wavering as she stared through him, as if he were beneath her notice, undeserving of her time. This was the face of the lady of the manor. And Jack Donovan’s incorporeal ass was about to get evicted.

  Deacon crawled over to Nina, blood dripping down his temple and staining his collar. He scooped her up from the floor, cradling her in his lap. He checked her bruised neck, her eyes, her forehead, kissing each place as he assured himself that she was breathing. She was alive. He wouldn’t suffer the fate of his great-great-grandfather, finding that the woman he loved had been murdered in his home. Nina tucked her battered face against the curve of his shoulder. She blinked sleepily at the spectacle before them, unsure whether she was imagining these odd white figures and their ethereal glow.

  Catherine hovered protectively between Deacon and Jack, silently staring down the evil spirit.

  “Even now, you won’t speak to me?” Jack hissed. “After all that I’ve done for you? After the vengeance I took in your name, destroying the Whitneys’ line and their fortunes? I deserve more than this, Catherine. I deserve what you denied us in life. I deserve your love. We can be happy together here, in this house I built for you.”

  Catherine glanced down at Nina and Deacon, clutched together on the widow’s walk floor. She smiled gently at Deacon, threading her fingers through his curly hair, sending a chill down his back. “I couldn’t see my Gerald. He’d already moved on,” she murmured in a gravelly smoker’s tenor, the afterlife result of being strangled, Deacon supposed. She sent Jack a disdainful look. “Why would I want to be trapped here with him?”

  “Catherine!” Jack howled. “You can’t just ignore me. You can’t do this to me again!”

  Catherine stroked a hand down Nina’s bruised cheek, making Nina shudder from the cold touch. “I needed to hold on for my children, for the generations of children to come. I needed you to understand the truth of what happened to me, to my Gerald. I couldn’t let them believe that I’d abandoned them. You came from a family rooted in love. Now that you’ve seen that, I can rest.”

  Jack shouted, enraged, and flew toward her, arms outstretched. Catherine looked almost bored as she simply raised her palm, stopping him in his ghostly tracks. She drifted closer, and her fingers curled around his near-transparent throat and tightened, reducing his furious growls to a squelched grunt.

  Her once bell-like voice came out as a rasping whisper: “You deserve nothing.”

  Jack struggled against Catherine’s hold, striking out at her with all of the energy he possessed. But she had waited too long for this moment. Her eyes went completely black with the force of her intention as she concentrated on snuffing out Jack’s presence from her home. Jack’s fury seemed to drain away as he saw the hatred in his “true love’s” face. She despised him. She stared at him, through him, seeing nothing. He was nothing to her.

  Catherine kept her grip on his throat, repeating, “You deserve nothing,” over and over as Jack’s form faded. It collapsed on itself, condensing into a tiny white star that blipped out like a defective twinkle light.

  “You saw that, too, right?” Deacon whispered, staring up at the triumphant, pearlescent form of his ancestor.

  Nina’s eyes fluttered shut. “We should put that on a T-shirt,” she muttered.

  Catherine turned toward Deacon, smiling sweetly at him. She tilted her head as she studied her great-great-grandson and the woman he clasped to his chest. Deacon felt as if he should say something, but he wasn’t sure what. What exactly did one say to one’s deceased great-great-grandmother after solving the mystery of her century-old murder?

  He waved awkwardly, carefully shifting Nina’s weight. “Hi.”

  Brilliant.

  Nina’s eyes snapped open when she heard Dotty shriek, “Deacon!” from downstairs.

  Catherine’s silence was filled by the thundering footfalls of several people running up the widow’s walk steps. Dotty and Jake burst through the stairwell, only to skid to a cartoon halt when they saw the ghostly figure hovering near their friends. Cindy appeared behind them, calling, “Are they OK? Are they O—Oh!”

  Catherine’s gentle smile broadened to an all-out grin. She floated closer to Dotty, cupping her hands around her great-great-granddaughter’s cheeks. Over Catherine’s insubstantial shoulder, Jake saw a small light flickering into a solid mass. It grew into a male shape with piercing dark eyes and a lopsided grin. The man was older, wearing a long tailored coat and what Jake was sure were very fashionable sideburns when Gerald Whitney had lived.

  “Catherine,” he whispered reverently.

  Catherine turned to see her long-dead husband, letting out a hoarse, triumphant cry. She moved so quickly to throw herself into his arms that Jake’s eyes couldn’t track her.

  “Can you come home now?” Gerald asked. Catherine laughed, and the light surrounding the two forms grew brighter as their lips connected.

  Cindy sighed, wrapping her arms around Jake’s waist as the figures turned together across the roof. When they finally broke apart, the spirits turned to the younger people. Gerald gave his great-great-grandchildren and their friends a fond wink, wrapping his arms around his wife and burying his face against her neck. Catherine leaned into his embrace.

  The couple’s white-hot glow brightened that much more, a blinding supernova of celestial light. Deacon threw his arm over his eyes and shielded Nina from the glare. Jake pushed Dotty and Cindy behind him.

  Catherine’s paper-thin whisper sounded against the background of the group’s labored breathing: “Be happy.”

  With that, the light winked out as if a switch had been flipped. They all blinked into the sudden darkness. Dotty wiped at her cheeks, tears trailing down her face. Jake surreptitiously wiped his own eyes until a smirking Cindy handed him her blue handkerchief.

  For her part, Nina was too exhausted to digest the mind-boggling wonder of what she’d just witnessed. For right now, she wanted a shower and a stiff drink . . . and maybe a CAT scan. She would try to sort through how she felt about watching two souls cross over into the afterlife at another time.

  “Tell me you hit that little button on your watch,” she said.

  “Way ahead of you,” Deacon murmured into her hair. “I really love you, woman. But you’re never allowed on this roof again, OK?”

  “No problem.” She sighed. “Love you, too.”

  “Everybody OK?” Jake asked.

  Deacon said, “Nina—” but the patient in question interrupted him.

  “I’m
concussed,” Nina told him, her eyes closed. “A lot.”

  “Nina’s concussed,” Deacon said. “And I think my ancestor sent Jack Donovan to hell.”

  “What about him?” Cindy asked, nudging at the unconscious Rick with her foot.

  Deacon winced. “I forgot he was there.”

  “He’s breathing,” Cindy said, kneeling over him. “Damn it.”

  “Some people have all the luck,” Nina muttered.

  A House Undivided

  NINA PLACED A bouquet of lilies and rosemary at the feet of the memorial statue of Catherine Whitney, standing tall, smiling with her hands open and slightly outstretched. A perfect circle of low-slung white begonias surrounded a wide round bed of forget-me-nots. Wide stone benches flanked the little blue flowers. They’d moved the solarium statue of the children outdoors, so that the figure of Catherine seemed to be watching over them as they played.

  The artist Deacon had commissioned to carve the stone figure had worked double overtime to finish it. The team gathered around the statue, watching as Deacon and Jake attached a plaque to the base: “In Loving Memory of Catherine Whitney, Cherished Wife of Gerald, Mother of Josephine and Gerald, Jr., Taken from Us Too Soon.”

  Nina smiled at Deacon as he pushed up from the ground and slid his arm around her waist. “Having spent some time in Catherine’s head, I’m sure she would have loved this,” she told him.

  “Is it strange that we don’t have a statue for Gerald?” Dotty asked.

  Jake said, “I think he would be more pleased that Catherine is finally being seen as a loving wife and their marriage is known for the loving union it was.”

  They stood staring at the newly installed plaque. All in all, they had managed to escape the confrontation with Rick relatively unscathed. Nina had a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder. Jake had some considerable burns on his hands from fighting the fire in the servants’ quarters. And while Anthony had insisted he was fine, Cindy had checked his pulse and found that his poor damaged heart was racing. Deacon had demanded that all of them be checked out at a hospital and had pulled several I donated a bunch of money strings to have them assigned to a private suite.