Better Homes and Hauntings

by Molly Harper

  While the staff quarters had suffered considerable damage, the main house remained untouched. The jewelry, save for the wedding set, which had been put aside for Dotty, had been placed in Deacon’s safety-deposit box.

  Dotty hung out in the hospital room all day, reading over Catherine’s last diary and getting some insight into the Whitneys’ final days together. For one thing, there was no second lover in the garden on the night of their first disastrous party. Gerald had asked Catherine about her recent distant behavior. She had insisted that they avoid discussing it until after the party. Gerald had told her he didn’t give a damn about the party if it kept them in this state of limbo for one more moment. A frazzled Catherine had snapped at him for his lack of interest, and the screaming match had grown from there. The last diary entry showed a resolute, saddened Catherine, heading into what would be her final confrontation with Jack.

  I have to explain to Gerald. I have to make him understand that Jack must be removed from us immediately and forever. There is no escaping Jack in this house. He knows it too well. There are too many nooks and hiding places for him to spy from. I won’t get a moment’s peace. I am going up to the dock, to wait for Gerald and explain. Everything. My part in it. My lies. Everything. I have been a fool. I let myself be fooled, if only for a moment, and let Jack exploit the weaknesses in my character.

  I will never again allow my judgment to be clouded. I will do anything to atone. I will make up for my folly. I will prove to my husband that I can be the wife he deserves. I only pray that his love for me has not changed. Wish me luck, diary.

  With Deacon hovering over Nina’s hospital bed, worrying himself into a froth over whether she was comfortable, sleepy, itchy, or otherwise, Dotty had looked up from the diary and said, “So . . . I don’t mean to say I told you so.”

  Deacon had snorted, fluffing Nina’s pillow as she batted his hands away. “Of course, you do.”

  “At least we know for sure,” Dotty had said, squeezing Deacon’s free hand. “We know what happened to her now. We know that we came from a couple who loved each other deeply, that their lives together would have turned out very differently if Jack hadn’t killed Catherine. They would have been a happy old married couple in a photo album. Of course, Gerald’s fortunes might have suffered anyway, and your parents might still have turned out to be tools. But at least we’d have happier ancestors.”

  “Is that better?” he’d asked.

  “It makes me feel better.”

  “And when Dotty finishes her book—which is awesome, by the way; I’ve read the rough draft—people will know who was really responsible for Catherine’s death and why. Is it wrong that I want to have Rick charged with Catherine’s murder, too?” Cindy had asked, pouring Nina a glass of water.

  “No, it’s natural to want someone to pay,” Dotty had told her. “And Rick has been charged with a stunning array of felonies. He’ll pay for the trouble he caused Nina, finally, and that restores the whopping karmic imbalance tilting her way.”

  “I don’t know,” Nina had hedged. “Part of me feels sorry for him. He wasn’t in control of himself when he tried to physically hurt me.”

  Deacon had pushed her hair back from her face. “When you slapped me out of my strangle mood, didn’t you tell me that the choice to resist was what was important?”

  “Strangle mood?” Jake had asked. Dotty had shrugged.

  “Yes, but we’re going to have a problem if you remember every conversation we have in detail,” Nina had muttered.

  “Rick had a choice,” Deacon had said. “Give in to Jack Donovan’s influence or be a decent human being. He gave in.”

  Nina had nudged Deacon with her free arm. “You didn’t.”

  “I love you too much to strangle you.”

  “Aw, that’s so sweet.”

  NOW DEACON SLUNG his arm around Dotty’s shoulders as the early-autumn sun beat down on their shoulders. Jake and Nina discussed the new “nonsubtext, non-Greek” statuary they were planning. Cindy was reorganizing Anthony’s borrowed tools, because she couldn’t help herself.

  “I’m going to miss you, you know,” Deacon whispered into Dotty’s hair. “I’ve gotten used to seeing you every day. I know I give you a hard time sometimes, but, Dotty, I want you to know you can come here anytime you want. I promise. You’ll always have a place here . . . on the weekends . . . when I’m out of town . . . or maybe out of the hemisphere.”

  Dotty dug her knuckles into Deacon’s side, making him yelp.

  “OK, OK, I give,” he said. “But since we’re talking about spending time here together, what would you think of us unveiling the house on Labor Day? I’d thought about inviting my competitors and the old Newport families for a big open house as sort of a neener-neener. But maybe we should invite my employees and their families instead. We can have one of those old-fashioned lawn parties Catherine had envisioned—plenty of good food, games for the children, and no one being murdered on the roof.”

  “That sounds great. I’ll help plan.”

  When Deacon snorted, Nina elbowed him in the gut. “What he means to say is, ‘Thank you, Dotty, that would be nice.’ ”

  “And we’ll finally be able to tell people the truth about Catherine and Gerald, in the book we have planned, which should go a long way to settling the spirits and clearing up the curse,” Dotty said.

  “If the curse ever really existed,” Cindy teased.

  “Skeptical Cindy is skeptical.” Dotty sighed, rolling her eyes.

  “And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jake said, pulling Cindy into his lap and kissing her neck.

  “Is there a chair shortage?” Deacon asked dryly as he took a seat beside Nina and threaded his fingers through hers.

  “Yes, it’s tragic, really, that a billionaire wouldn’t anticipate this sort of seating crisis,” Jake said.

  “Hey!” Dotty exclaimed. “We’ve talked about that. No PDA. It’s like watching someone make out with your sister.”

  “You’re going to have to live with it,” Cindy said. “Because it will be a regular occurrence at family gatherings, holidays, and birthdays.”

  “Family gatherings?” Deacon said, his voice cracking with discomfort.

  “Sure, you think the five of us will be able to spend Thanksgiving with anyone else?” Dotty said. “Who else will want to sit around and talk about that time Jake almost climbed into bed with a waterlogged ghost?”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that. That has to be the memory we all relive over turkey and stuffing?” Jake asked.

  “Yes,” the group chorused.

  Nina knew this wasn’t a pie-crust promise, made in the moment by friends bonded by an extreme experience. They would be close for the rest of their lives. There would be holidays and parties, weddings and children, all together, all looking out for one another. Because who else would understand them?

  “Well, since we’re talking about scheduling future events.” Deacon cleared his throat and knelt in front of her with an elegant silver box. Nina eyed the box—which was too large to hold jewelry—with suspicion. Deacon popped it open to reveal what appeared to be the latest-model cell phone, encrusted in tiny peridots, her birthstone.

  Deacon held the phone aloft, ignoring Cindy’s hushed “What the hell?”

  “I have programmed all of your contacts,” he said. “The phone is virtually indestructible, but if you ever break it, I will be the one to take it to the store to get it replaced.” Nina lifted an eyebrow. “Of course, I would send Vi out to do it, but you wouldn’t have to deal with it. You will never have to do your own tech support. I will take out the garbage, fix broken appliances, go to the post office; basically, any errand you don’t want to do, I will do. Or I will pay someone I trust to do it for you.”

  “Really?”

  “I can’t bring you flowers,” he said, gesturing to the garden. “You seem to be afraid of expensive jewelry. So making your life a little easier is going to be how I show
you I love you, all day, every day, for the rest of our lives.”

  “You’re proposing to me with a cell phone?” she said, her eyebrows raised.

  “If you think about it, they’re both long-term contracts.”

  “Well, how could a girl resist an offer like that?” she asked, taking the phone out of the box. She turned it on and sighed. “You put a Master Gardener app on here.”

  “The ‘all day, every day’ speech didn’t get her, but a gardening app did?” Jake whispered as Nina threw her arms around Deacon’s neck and kissed him, whispering “Yes, yes” against his lips.

  “Everybody has their thing,” Cindy told him.

  Deacon turned to them. “If the phone thing didn’t work, I had a mint-condition Qui-Gon Jinn action figure in my office.”

  Nina gasped. “You got me a tiny posable Liam Neeson? You really do love me.”

  Cindy shook her head, glancing at Dotty. “Sweetie, I never thought I’d say this, but out of everybody here, you may be the normal one.”

  Jake cleared his throat. “With all this talk of long-term commitments, do you think you might want to . . . get a phone contract together . . . someday . . . eventually?”

  “Only if you plan on calling me long-distance. If and when you propose, there had better be roses and a string quartet and a clever hiding place for the very tasteful yet expensive ring. And doves.”

  “Doves?”

  “I don’t particularly like them, but I want them. So when I say yes, they can be released in a crescendo of romantic fluttering.”

  Jake’s lips twitched at her assurance that she would say yes, but he tamped down his smile quickly. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble for a simple question.”

  “Well, you did forget that you dated me. A little extra trouble doesn’t seem so unreasonable.”

  Jake slid his hand over his face. “Never going to live that down, am I?”

  Cindy shook her head and kissed the tip of his nose. “Nope. But for right now, I am willing to date you anyway.”

  Nina helped Deacon up from his kneeling position, tucked the phone into her back pocket, and threw her arms around him. Dotty practically tackled them from behind, which turned into a group hug when Cindy joined in, squealing in their excitement over the engagement. Deacon shot Jake a pitiful look over the ladies’ heads. “Little help?”

  “I don’t do group hugs,” Jake said, wrinkling his nose.

  Cindy’s golden head popped up from the huddle. “Yes, you do!”

  Rolling his eyes at the cloudless blue sky, Jake huffed, “Fine.” He wrapped his arms around Cindy and Dotty. “Yep, this is totally comfortable.”

  “Have you set a date yet?” Dotty asked.

  Deacon frowned down at her. “I asked her to marry me ten seconds ago.”

  “June 19,” Nina said confidently.

  “Can we let go now?” Jake asked, pulling Cindy out of the people knot.

  Peeling Dotty off of them, Deacon asked, “Why June 19?”

  Nina shrugged. “It was Gerald and Catherine’s wedding anniversary. I can’t think of a more appropriate day for us to get married.”

  “You want to have the wedding here?” he asked, his face splitting into a wide grin.

  Nina made a sweeping gesture toward a set of flower beds she’d just turned. “Right in the middle of the memorial garden I’m planting. I think it would be nice to look out of our window every morning and see where we got married.”

  “So you’re ready to live here, full-time?”

  “Well, I think we’ll need to spend some time on the mainland for business purposes,” Nina said. “But yes, I think we’ll be happy here, and I think that would make Catherine and Gerald very happy.”

  “I think the point is to make the two of us happy.”

  Nina giggled as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. “I thought that was a foregone conclusion.”

  With the laughter of friends echoing from the grounds to the eaves of the enormous rooftop, the Crane’s Nest remained peaceful for the night.

  Enjoy this sneak peek at Molly Harper’s next Half-Moon Hollow romance

  The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire

  1

  You never get a second chance to make a first exsanguination.

  —The Office After Dark:

  A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace

  THE SENSIBLE BEIGE pantsuit was mocking me.

  It hung there in my closet, all tailored and boring. And beige. “Yes, wear me to work and let all of your new coworkers know that you have no personality!” it jeered at me. “Look at you, all nervous and twitchy. Why don’t you just bail on this job and work for the Apple store, you big baby?”

  “You are one judgmental pantsuit.” I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Ever since I’d received the “you’re hired” call during Christmas break, I’d been trying to convince myself that I deserved this job. I was qualified for it. I’d gone through a particularly difficult test of my intelligence and ingenuity to get it. So why was I so nervous about my first day?

  “Because, Gigi Scanlon, you are the Queen of All Neurotics,” I grumbled, scrubbing my hand over my face. “Long may you reign.”

  Honestly, I was nervous because this job, programming an in-house search engine of vampires’ living descendants for the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, meant something. If I played my cards right, this would be the only first day of work I would ever go through. The Council was known for offering attractive perks and salaries to hold on to competent human employees, resulting in lifelong appointments. And if I played my cards wrong, this would be my last ever first day of work because I would be dead.

  “That is not helping,” I told my brain, closing my eyes.

  OK, if I continued this line of thinking, what would the final outcome be? Not taking the job with the Council. And then I tried to picture my sister Iris’s face if I told her that I’d decided not to take the job after all. First there would be elation, and then relief, and then the “I told you sos.” I really hated the “I told you sos,” which were sometimes accompanied by interpretive dance.

  Even after months to adjust, Iris was displeased about my employment—if thunderous expressions and muttered threats when the job was mentioned could be considered “displeased.” She didn’t trust my supervisor, Ophelia Lambert. She didn’t trust the vampires I would be working with. She’d met and didn’t trust some of the humans I would be working with. She wanted me to have a nice, safe office job that didn’t involve coworkers who might drain my blood. I knew Iris felt guilty for dragging us into the vampire world years ago, and how it may have ruined me for corporate America. But honestly, her worry was getting annoying.

  “You can do this. You are more than the post–glory days high school jock. You are more than Iris Scanlon’s little sister. You just need to figure out what the hell that is.” I launched myself out of bed, slipped into the suit, and pinned my hair into a responsible-looking chignon. I was thankful, at least, that I didn’t have to deal with Iris’s hair. Her dark curly hair was beautiful—especially now that she had all that vampire makeover mojo on her side and looked like a sexy undead Snow White—but I could barely handle my own heavy, dark hair. I couldn’t imagine throwing crazy, sentient curlicues into the mix.

  Iris and I shared our mother’s cornflower blue eyes and delicate features, though I’d inherited Dad’s height. It really irritated Iris when her “little sister” propped her elbow on top of Iris’s head. Which meant I did it every chance I got.

  Yawning, I picked up my equally practical beige pumps and checked my purse for the third time that afternoon. I’d stayed up all night, then slept through the morning in an attempt to adjust my schedule to my new hours working from two P.M. until two A.M. This was considered the “early bird” shift for vampires, and it was going to take some adjustments for my very human body clock. But at least I would see more of my recently vampiri
zed sister and her equally undead husband.

  The house, as expected, was pitch-black, thanks to the heavy-duty sunshades Cal had installed to protect them from sun exposure. Carefully, I clicked a circular button at the end of the hall and waited for the circular tap lights to illuminate the stairs.

  I turned the corner into the kitchen and punched my personal security code—3024, the number of a check I bounced for a gym membership I never took advantage of, because Cal and Iris had never let that go—into the security pad. Before I could use my clearance to open the downstairs windows, I felt a sudden strike at my neck, the sensation of hands closing around my shoulders. I gasped as my unseen assailant yanked me back against his chest, hissing in my ear. I curled my fingers around the offending hands and dropped into “base,” the stable fighting stance taught to me by the jiujitsu instructor Cal had insisted I train with for the past five months. Spreading my arms wide to loosen his grip, I thrust my hips back, knocking him off balance. Dropping to the floor, I stopped my face-to-floor descent with my palms, cupped both hands around his foot and yanked—hard. The force of my pull was enough to send him toppling back on his ass.

  Springing up, I flicked the lights on to see my beloved brother-in-law sprawled on the floor with a big stupid grin on his face.

  “Damn it, Cal!” I yelled, giving him one last kick to the ribs before climbing on one of the barstools. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I just wanted to get your blood going with a pre-work reflex test,” he said, pushing to his feet. “Well done, you. Your reaction times are much faster.”

  I threw a banana at his dark head, which of course he caught, because he had superhuman reflexes. Totally unfair. Cal had thrown these little tests at me nearly every day for weeks. Always at a different time, always in a different mode of attack. The fact that Cal had probably downed a half-dozen blood-laced espressos just so he could get up at this hour was somehow very sweet and super irritating all at the same time. I understood that he wanted reassurance that I could defend myself if necessary—and that the insane amount of time and money he spent on my martial arts education wasn’t wasted. Seriously, though, I just wanted to make coffee without someone putting me in a choke hold.