I sighed. “I was drowning and being crushed by a sea monster, but it was all magic — all in my head, you might say.”
He still didn’t smile. “And you want to do this again.”
Not a question. “Want to? Nope. If my instinctive strike hadn’t worked, I’d be dead now — and if that patron knows what I did, it’ll be ready for me next time.” I started walking again, sure that Haris would walk, too. “But it has to be done. You know that.”
“I know that you should not be alone when you face it.”
“Are you volunteering?”
His lips twitched briefly. “I thought I had already done that, but clearly you need things spelled out more clearly. Yes, I had expected to help with that first ghost, and I will not let you face another by yourself.”
Light warmth bloomed in my solar plexus, a mere shadow of what I usually felt in Haris’s presence, but welcome.
“Thank you.” I walked a few more feet before I said, “And thanks, too, for giving me the space I asked for. Do you know Beth doesn’t remember you being at dinner on Friday? And might think I’m crazy because I said you were a woman.”
He gave me a wide-eyed mock innocent stare. “I’m sure I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve no idea how you managed to do that genderflip. Is that a muse thing?”
“Still no idea.”
“You’re sexier as a man.”
That got a response — a slow, seductive smile that moved my internal warmth somewhat lower. “You didn’t seem to mind me as a woman, either. Didn’t you want to jump up and kiss me?”
I blinked. “How do you do that? Can you read my mind?”
“You do weird things to me.”
“That’s mutual.”
Chapter 17
I’d been so focused on Haris that it was a bit of a miracle I remembered to stop at the dry cleaner’s to drop off the dress. His knowing look as I took it out of the garment bag to hand to the woman behind the counter almost undid me. Would it be safe to touch him now, with my power at its ebb? So very tempting, but I kept my hands to myself.
We paused across from the parking garage, but it felt like just another building to me, which is to say that I felt nothing.
Reluctantly, I asked, “Did you want to see whether the ghost is still in there?”
He shook his head. “If she is, she has no power, but it feels empty to me. Did you call the police to come get the bodies?”
It had completely slipped my mind. “Maybe someone smelled them and called?” Guilt assailed me, though. I still didn’t know who the woman was, but the maintenance man’s family deserved to at least know what had happened. More guilt — why should a name and a face mean better treatment? The woman’s family deserved to know, too, so I hoped the police could identify her.
He shook his head. “Discovery of two bodies would’ve been at least a brief mention in the paper.” He turned away and started walking. “You’re sure there was no touch of magic on the maintenance man?”
“Nothing. Just a crushed skull — I’d guess he surprised the culprit.” I thought about it for a minute. “No, because it was the back of the head that was stove in. The killer sneaked up behind him and got him out of the way, but the presence or absence of the maintenance man clearly wasn’t important to the ritual.”
“Ritual?”
“There’s more than one ghost, and they feel the same, at least the ones I’ve found so far. Okay, one other one so far, although I do intend to look for more. And other than the influence of the killer’s patron, I still have no explanation for how these people were drowned on dry land.”
“You said you felt like you were drowning. Obviously, it’s the magic.” Haris paused. “You’re not going to go looking for more right now, are you?”
I turned toward home. “Even if I had the energy to, I don’t have the time. I have responsibilities.”
I hadn’t mentioned Gavin and Tina to him. I didn’t know if this was the right time. They were six years old, and I still didn’t know the right time to bring them up to a person I was interested in. I mentally shook my head at myself. I really wasn’t very good at this dating thing.
The other complication of “the dating thing” hadn’t even occurred to me — until Haris said goodbye right outside the restaurant, in full view of Wei — and Matt, who was talking to her. Haris and I still didn’t touch, but the intensity in his gaze and the way I leaned toward him were unmistakable, even when our conversation was anything but personal.
“You’ll let me know when you’re going after another ghost?”
“Thursday, I have to take that dress back to the person I borrowed it from. There’s another ghost near her. In Cambridge. I’d do it tomorrow, but you heard the dry cleaner; the dress won’t be ready.”
“I’ll wait for you in Cambridge, then.”
Nothing personal. Nothing I would be ashamed to have someone else overhear. Nothing but another quasi-stalker sentiment of wanting to know where I would be and checking up on me. Yet instead of worry, I felt contentment.
At least until I stepped through the door and wound up face-to-face with Matt’s glare.
“Who was that?”
Talk about proprietary! Rather than firing back in anger, I said, “Someone Beth introduced me to. Oddly, it turns out the twins’ godfather knows him, too.”
He hesitated at that, pulling back before leaning in, his face angry once again. “Is that why you’re so late getting home?”
I glanced at the clock on the wall, a kitschy thing set into a replica of a portion of the Great Wall. “Three minutes, which I used to stop at the dry cleaner. Maggie was insistent that I get the dress cleaned before returning it.”
“Did he need to stop at the dry cleaner too?”
“I don’t think his dress was dry clean only.” Which was both true and probably the single most flip response I could have given. Predictably, Matt did not take it well.
“Can’t you take anything seriously? You’re so irresponsible, Pepper!”
“Excuse me?” Being annoyed at my smart-ass remarks was one thing. Calling me irresponsible because I was three minutes late and had walked home with another guy? Totally out of line.
“You took the kids to school today. I can’t believe you.”
He’d been getting louder and edging closer, although I hadn’t noticed how close until his mother tried to slip between us and stopped short. Her voice was soft and controlled and utterly firm. “Take it upstairs. You will not cause any more of a scene in this restaurant.”
Matt turned a wounded look on Wei, as if she’d taken my side in this argument he seemed determined to start. “But she—”
“Up. Stairs.”
I didn’t look to see if Matt was coming, and I didn’t really care. I’d just barely started feeling human again, and instead of being allowed to rest and recharge, I was under personal attack. If I had the energy to lash out in return, I might have, but being out of energy was the problem.
Halfway up the stairs, Matt grabbed my arm. “If you think I’m arguing in front of the kids, you’re out of your mind.”
“Great. I don’t have the energy to argue right now anyway.”
He didn’t let go of my arm. “Then you can just listen. With all that you told me about what’s going on out there, I would think you would have the sense to keep the kids here where it’s safe.”
I sighed, too tired to do anything else. “I kept them home yesterday. Today, the neighborhood menace is gone. It’s going to take a little longer to get the rest of the city.”
His grip tightened. “You can’t know that!”
“Oh, do you know more than I do about banishing ghosts, or magic?” My voice was as sweet and deadly as I could make it. “You really must mansplain it all to me sometime.”
His face tightened, but before he could say anything, I pried his hand off my arm. “If this is an example of us doing good things together, I think I’ll
pass.”
“You’d rather do ‘good things’ with that guy I saw you with, I guess.”
I was still working on sorting that out, but it wasn’t any of Matt’s business regardless. “What I’d rather is be able to come home, see the kids, and have some dinner after a long day at work. Not wind up with bruises on my arm that I’m going to have to explain to everyone tomorrow.”
I didn’t know if I was actually going to bruise, and I didn’t really care. I walked up the stairs to greet the twins. Matt didn’t follow.
Halfway through the dinner, my phone chirruped to let me know someone was texting. Texts, unlike calls, did not have distinctive ringtones.
“No phones at the table,” Gavin warned me, as though I’d forget. I was the one who set the rule. The rule was no distractions when eating with others — no games, no phones, no magazines, and no TV. Family meals were for family.
I winked at him and ate another forkful of pilaf. I might be curious about who it was — Rich, with another complaint about something I’d done at work? Kendall, wanting to know why the contractors weren’t painting yet? My mom, still trying to get me to move back in? — but finding out would wait.
We all cleared our own dishes from the table, and I sneaked a peek at the phone while the twins argued whose turn it was to wipe off the table. Beth, with a coy, “Guess where I am.”
“A gallery opening?” I typed out quickly, though it had been several minutes since she sent the text. Who knew if she was even looking at her phone any more?
The reply was fairly prompt. “Nope.” I’m sure if she’d sent a voice message, it would have had a giggle.
She clearly was waiting for another guess, rather than telling me. If she were working late, it wouldn’t be worth texting me over — or rather, she’d only bother texting me if we had plans for a movie or something, and she’d lead off with “Am at work L8.”
Which only left a date. Given what she’d told me two days before, I could guess with who. “Where R U & Clay?”
“Not telling.”
I sighed. She’d dish sooner or later, but she wanted me to ask. Tonight, this week, I didn’t have the energy to humor her. I dropped the phone onto the kitchen counter and went off to supervise the twins as they brushed their teeth, somehow managing to get toothpaste all over the wall in the process. I could only imagine the mess if I wasn’t watching them.
After the usual cuddle and story time (more Frog and Toad, although Tina had taken to reading Magic Tree House when she thought no one was watching), I kissed them and told them goodnight, then left the room.
I still needed to decide on the best sort of hex to send to the contractors Kendall had picked out. Could do simple eye-for-an-eye and have them get fined for doing work on their own business without the requisite permits. Have scaffolding collapse under them on the rare job they actually worked? But that wouldn’t be fair to their customer, and the people doing the painting might not have anything to do with the office setting the policies. Maybe if the company had done its own electrical work, encourage a short leading to a fire—but I didn’t want anyone to be hurt, let alone killed, and fires could get out of control quickly, which would endanger other businesses and homes in the area. Something less extreme, then.
My scheming was interrupted by another text from Beth. “There’s a lovely moon out tonight.”
I glanced out the window. The half moon was in the western half of the sky, and I couldn’t think offhand of anywhere that it would be particularly noteworthy. Just about any of the parks, I suppose, or maybe if Beth and Clay were out on the water.
“So you haven’t gotten a room yet.”
“Funny. Oops — GTG.”
Just as well. I didn’t want a blow by blow account of her time with Clay. Not even if it was all hints and innuendo. Perhaps especially if it was all hints and innuendo.
One last text came through, a photo of a roof that still looked under construction with the blur of the moon overhead. When was she going to learn that her cellphone just couldn’t take good pictures of the moon? I gave a mental shrug; I didn’t need to spend any more time tonight thinking about what my best friend was up to, and as long as that was the only photo she sent, I would be happy.
And I would be happy for her, too. It had been at least a year since she’d been serious enough about a guy to date him more than once. Lots of one-offs, nothing serious. It was good that she’d connected with someone, even if I couldn’t see the attraction.
As long as I had my phone out, I opened up Bitter and searched for the contractor’s social media accounts. They didn’t have any; they probably didn’t want to face the heaping scorn they would receive if they had a public face. On the other hand, I did have their phone number. That was enough to work with. I just had to decide the best way to send their business up in metaphorical flames without sending it up in literal flames.
In the end, I used a short video clip of a collapsing building. There were no people in the video, so I was confident that even if their workplace collapsed, there would be no injuries when it did. Could the video apply to other buildings that they’d worked on as contractors? Possibly, but intent mattered — nobody was going to die, and the magic was going to be confined to what I intended. I wasn’t going for collateral damage; I just wanted the contractors to suffer for their predatory business practices.
I probably didn’t even have enough magic on hand to cause collateral damage, but better to be safe than sorry. “No persons harmed,” I breathed, invoking a protection even as I pushed the “Send” button in Bitter and felt the tug at my gut a slip of power being pulled from me, more than I usually felt.
Still, I wasn’t as hollow today as I had been yesterday, so there was hope. I let the worry go. I still had one more task to complete — sending an untraceable tip about the dead bodies in the garage to the police. Only the garage I’d cleared — I wasn’t sending them in to deal with unrighteous ghosts.
It used to be anonymous tips could be given to the police by using a payphone. These days, they had a web form, but with IP logging, that wasn’t really anonymous. A tiny pulse erased my data and filled each identifiable field with random data from elsewhere in their database. Put together, it shouldn’t point to anyone in particular, but the police would still feel the need to check out the reported bodies — and the maintenance man’s family would at least know what had happened to him, though I doubted that would give them peace.
I needed a break, I needed magic, I needed direction. I put down my phone. Sleep would help. Sleep always helped.
Chapter 18
When I got to work in the morning, keys out to open the front door, I was surprised to find it already open and Kendall inside, arms crossed and toes tapping impatiently. “What are you going to do about this mess?”
The shop didn’t look any worse than it usually did in the mornings. “I can see Rich didn’t straighten up in front, but he doesn’t usually. What am I missing?”
“Not the coffee shop.” She sniffed dismissively. “Our contractor — whom you still haven’t convinced to come start painting, I might note — was in the Globe this morning. Their building collapsed, and word is that all of their work activities are suspended indefinitely.”
“Probably just as well that they didn’t start, then, or we’d have a half-painted coffee shop.”
“That’s not the point! Now we don’t have a painter, and we don’t have money to pay one, and you have to figure out a solution. Or else.”
Or else Rich would get the manager position? I was pretty sure he already had a solid lock on that. It had been a week already, which was the deadline she gave me.
“We can start by getting the money back.”
“Ha. Like they’d let go of one dime. They stacked the deck in their favor.”
So she had actually read all of the paperwork before she handed the mess to me. Not that I was surprised. “They don’t have to agree. The bank will reverse charges. All you have to do i
s fax them the quote, which clearly states that work will start within thirty days of receipt of a deposit, and point out that with the contractor’s work suspended indefinitely, they’re in breach of contract.”
“That … might work.”
Without another word, she turned and headed to her office. I let her go — the door had to be locked before some early-bird customer decided we were already open, the front area needed to be tidied, and I had to put the first pots of coffee and hot water on. Later, after we were ready for the day, I’d see about finding someone else to do the painting. Maybe she had a list of contractors she’d checked out, a list that hadn’t made it into the work file. I could hope.
Work first, though. We were busy, although not as busy as we had been Tuesday — I guessed that with the ghost gone, people weren’t seeking out the brightest spot in the neighborhood. The locals — the students, the people popping over from Tufts, the people who worked in neighboring shops — all seemed much calmer, their smiles easier, less tension held in their faces.
Ximena, though, was — if anything — worse. Her face was so full of rage when she came in that I set her to work baking cookies that we didn’t need yet. With luck, she wouldn’t burn them, but I didn’t want her out front scaring off the customers, and an hour or two shielded by my ward should help her calm down. It left me short-handed up front, but I could live with that. I made a mental note to check out Ximena’s home address in the employee files later. I was willing to bet the promotion I didn’t have that Ximena lived close to a parking garage, maybe right next to one. And that garage was going to have to be next on my to-do list, after the one in Cambridge.
I’d figure out later where I was going to get the power to deal with that one. Think about it after Haris helped me solve the one in Cambridge later today.
Warmth washed over me at the thought of the muse. Would Haris be male or female today? And did it really matter? No, I admitted. I wanted to see Haris — I wanted Haris, period. Not that I was willing to say so out loud.
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