Archer’s grin got even bigger. “My side panel is quite warm and cozy, too. Plus my front panel, and even my back panel.”
His flirty words ignited a fire inside me. I felt my resident spirit, Jo, take notice. She was excited to have the attention of such a handsome man. I was also enjoying the interaction, but not like Jo. She made my cheeks flush hotter than they’d ever been, hotter than a sunburn. I had to say something before I burst into flames.
“You’re kind of a flirt, aren’t you, Archer Caine?”
He looked surprised, or at least he play-acted that he was surprised. “You remembered my name.”
“I remember everything.”
He did a double take. “You do? Everything?”
“Sure. You took my shoes hostage. Then we were having a nice conversation, and when I turned around, you were gone.”
“Oh. That.” He looked relieved.
I pointed to his ice bucket. “Are you having a party, or are you preparing to illegally harvest someone’s kidney?”
He feigned horror. “That’s kind of a personal question.”
We stared at each other for a moment. I didn’t have a followup question. Accusing someone of harvesting organs at four in the morning kinda backs you into a conversational corner. I unwrapped my knees from the blanket I’d dragged down from my mother’s suite. Using the corner of the ice machine for support, I got myself up into a standing position.
“I suppose I should be getting back to my room,” I said.
Archer looked down at my bare legs. The shorts that Charlize had sent me were shorter than typical for a woman my age. I was showing a lot of skin—skin that was now tattooed with the nubby pattern of the hallway’s commercial carpet.
“Nice rug burn,” he said.
“That’s not rug burn,” I said. “I’ll show you rug burn.” The words were Jo Pressman’s, coming from my lips. She’d said those words to Nash, and a few other guys, too.
His eyebrows shot up. “You will?”
“Any time. Rug burn is one of my specialties.” I hugged the blanket to my chest with one arm while Jo made me use the other hand to twirl a lock of my hair flirtatiously.
He gave me a confused look. Either I’d gone too far for his level of flirtation comfort, or he’d sensed the change in my voice when the ghost had taken over. I cooled a few degrees and yanked my hand out of my hair.
Warily, he said, “I’ll keep your offer in mind.” He opened the hatch for the machine’s ice supply, watching me out of the sides of his eyes while he scooped cubes into the silver ice bucket he’d been carrying.
“You do that.”
He shook his ice bucket. “Now I’ve got everything to make iced coffee in the morning.” He gave it another shake. “Plus I’ve got a soft couch in my room if you need a place to crash.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I think my roomie should be finished with her boyfriend by now.”
“Oh?” He seemed genuinely interested. We were back to Turbo Flirter mode. Game on.
My hand shot up to my hair again and resumed twirling. “I bet when I walk in there, the poor guy will be a dried-out husk.”
Archer snorted in surprise. “Your roommate sounds like my kind of people.” He bounced his eyebrows suggestively.
“Maybe I’ll introduce you to her,” I said. “You’d make a fun stepfather.”
He stopped laughing. “I’m confused.”
I smiled at him while cringing inside. Jo was insatiable. Apparently, she used to flirt with older men by telling them about her adventurous roommates or offering to introduce them to her mother. I guess she had plenty more to say, if I let her. What if she took control of my whole body? I hadn’t minded a full takeover when ghosts wanted to pay my bills or weed my garden. But Jo’s favorite hobby could get me into the beds of strangers. Inside my mind, I shouted, Young lady, go to your room! It seemed to work, because she backed off and let me have control of my mouth again, even if I couldn’t stop the hair twirling.
“It’s no wonder you’re confused,” I said. “It’s four in the morning. It’s a confusing time of day.”
He shook the ice in his bucket. “It’s almost daybreak. Care for some early-morning iced coffee?”
The offer did sound good, but I’d promised both my mother and Charlize I’d be careful around the guy. Plus there was the ghost inside me who wanted to throw my body all over Archer Caine like he was toast and I was jam.
“Thanks for the invite, but I should be getting back to my roomie.”
“And her badly dehydrated boyfriend.” We smiled at each other for a moment, then his expression grew more serious, and he looked exactly like Chet again. “You really shouldn’t be sleeping in a hallway,” he said in a low tone. “That poor girl’s killer is probably still here, loose inside this castle.”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m tougher than I look.” I gave my blanket a shake and loosely folded it. “But you could walk me up to the third floor.”
“I’d be honored.” He walked ahead and held open the stairwell door for me. “M’lady,” he said, bowing chivalrously.
I walked up the steps, by his side, my eyes on him instead of the stairs. Good luck disappearing on me this time.
“Archer, what brings you to Castle Wyvern, anyway?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He kept looking straight ahead and walking up.
“Try me.”
“The truth is, I work for a clandestine underground paramilitary operation, and I’m here on special assignment.”
I laughed. “Aren’t we all.”
“Not really,” he said, also laughing. “That’s just the craziest thing I could think of. The extremely boring truth is, I’m here on a genealogy project.”
“Genealogy? Does that mean you’re trying to track down long-lost relatives?”
“Not exactly.” He slowed his pace but kept progressing up the stairs. “Have you ever felt like a part of you was missing?”
“I lose my car keys all the time.”
He gave me a quick grin. “For a long time, I’ve been bottled up and kept in the dark. Now that I have some freedom again, I want to find something.”
“Your missing piece?”
We’d reached the landing for the third floor. He shook his head and looked down at his feet. “Never mind. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He turned to walk back down the stairs.
“Archer, wait.” I caught him by the arm.
Or at least I thought I did.
My hand was on his sleeve, and then it was passing through the air.
He was gone again.
Like a ghost.
The door to my mother’s room was unlocked. I walked in cautiously, keeping my eyes down on the floor. The bedroom was connected to the sitting area by an open archway—no door—so I was careful not to get an eyeful of anything I didn’t want to see, such as Bentley’s naked butt.
I settled back on the sofa, which was much more comfortable than the ice machine, and let my body melt into relaxation.
I closed my eyes and replayed my conversation with Archer. I laughed and cringed as I remember what Jo Pressman had made me say. That’s not rug burn. I’ll show you rug burn.
Jo Pressman had loved flirting with men when she was alive. As I drifted deeper into sleep, snippets from her history came to me. Jo discovered boys at a very young age. On her eleventh birthday, she’d insisted on having both boys and girls at her party, and she’d come up with a Spin the Bottle game that gave her five minutes in a dark closet with each young man in attendance. When word got out to the other children’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pressman knew they had a problem on their hands. Their marriage, which had already been rocky, didn’t survive what happened next. At fifteen, she’d gotten her history teacher fired. That was how Jo remembered it. I could stand outside of her memories and see that she hadn’t gotten anyone fired. The man had gotten himself fired, since she was only fifteen, whereas he was old enough to
know better.
As I came to understand Jo better, I felt pity for the girl. When her peers hit puberty, she’d been able to fit in better, but life was still challenging. If only she’d found something else that had given her as much pleasure as chasing one bad boy after another. If only she’d been interested in sports, or choir, or anything. Near the end of high school, she’d visited a natural history museum and taken a sudden interest in taxidermy. Her father was elated because taxidermy was a relatively inexpensive hobby. He bought her boxes of supplies and instructions, including a stack of old books about death that he won in an online auction. Weeks later, Perry Pressman was horrified to discover the books he’d purchased and had shipped to the house at great expense hadn’t even been opened. Jo’s interest wasn’t in taxidermy after all, but in the spiky-haired young man who ran the museum’s waterfowl department and maintained the exhibits.
And that was when Perry loosened up on trying to manage his daughter’s life. He took the stack of strange, dusty old books with their occult-looking covers up to the attic, and he left her on her own. If anyone asked how Jo was doing, he’d say he was busy working on his invention, and surely his daughter would eventually figure things out.
Jo graduated from high school, packed her suitcase, and left Wisteria in search of the excitement she couldn’t find at home. She found plenty of excitement, and she also found trouble, with guys and with money. And there was something she wanted to show me. One specific memory with one overwhelming emotion.
Except she couldn’t show me. The shame was too powerful. Every time the memory started to bubble up into my dream, it would fill me with dread and then cut to black. I could tell it had something to do with New York, and her time there, but I couldn’t get anything else.
When I awoke in the morning, the shame lingered. It took me a while to shrug off the lingering emotion and assure myself it wasn’t my own.
I had to wonder, what could Jo have done that would make her feel so ashamed? The woman had no shame about throwing herself at every man around. Whatever it was, it had to be bad. Really bad.
Chapter 17
MONDAY
On a typical Monday morning, I would be at the Wisteria Public Library before it opened to the public, sharing coffee, gossip, and way too many pastries with my pink-haired coworker Frank Wonder before tackling the day’s planned tasks.
Instead, I’d shared instant coffee and minibar snacks with my reanimated mother, and my day’s planned tasks didn’t involve any books. Plus, I would be nude for some of them. Very different for a Monday.
“I feel so guilty,” I said into my phone.
My boss, head librarian Kathy Carmichael, replied, “I don’t mean to diminish your value to the library, but it’s only a few days. I’m sure we’ll manage to neither implode nor explode without you here.”
“But we were going to review some new themes for the genre fiction subject stickers.”
“I promise not to let Frank decide without your input. Is that really what’s bothering you?”
“Sure,” I muttered, pulling away from my phone’s microphone. “Just the stickers. Not being trapped in a castle with my mother. I mean, with a killer.”
There was a noise on the other end of the line. Kathy cried out, “Not again!”
“Did someone put Popsicles in the book return slot again?”
“No. I’m at a sidewalk cafe, and a huge thug of a squirrel jumped on my table, looked me straight in the eyes, and stole my acorn-hazelnut muffin.”
“That’s Petey the Squirrel,” I said. “Now stop telling me these things. You’re making me homesick.”
There was a clatter in the background and the sound of other customers yelling about being robbed by the squirrel. Petey had probably gotten word the local law enforcement agents were up the coast in Westwyrd, and was currently enjoying an unfettered crime spree.
Once the racket had died down, Kathy said, “Try to make the most of your time there, Zara. You should get a mud bath.” She hooted excitedly. “Whoooo doesn’t love a good mud bath? I’m sure you’ll come back to us in a few days, refreshed and better than ever.”
I agreed to try to make the most of my stay, but I knew I would feel guilty, not to mention weird, walking into the health spa at ten o’clock for a mother-daughter spa treatment.
There was a lot of whispering in the changing rooms. I had never been to Castle Wyvern before, so I didn’t know if people always spoke in such hushed, respectful tones, or if they were feeling self-conscious due to the ongoing investigation. The quiet reminded me of the library. The nudity, not so much.
A naked woman showering next to me asked, “Have you been to the waterfall yet?”
I had to admit I didn’t know what waterfall she was referring to.
“It’s just a short hike from the castle,” she said while shampooing her hair. “The cute detective said to bring a friend and don’t go off the grounds alone.”
“Sounds fun,” I said. “Do you really think the detective is cute?”
“Yes, but I hear he’s dating someone here at the castle. Have you seen someone of indescribable beauty?”
“Just whenever I look in the mirror.”
She turned off the water and gave me a funny look before she walked away.
I finished my shower then pulled on the bathing suit my mother had loaned me, along with the five-dollar flip-flops I’d purchased from the gift shop. I flip-flopped out of the changing rooms and toward the sound of gurgling water.
The castle had been brought over from Europe stone by stone, and situated on a cliff, next to natural caves. According to the signage I read in the hallway, the current owners had expanded on the caves by building new, man-made caves with wondrous stone archways and water pools, both hot and cold. The new stonework was convincing, and I had to look closely to see what was real and what was man-made. I passed through a chamber filled with enormous stalactites pointing down like daggers. The distant ceiling had been playfully decorated with prehistoric-looking lizards.
A woman passing through the chamber paused to follow my gaze upward. She was the same woman who’d been talking to me in the shower. Upon spotting the lizards, she shrieked and clutched her robe.
“They’re not real,” I told her. “See how the light is flickering? It makes the shadows move.”
“Something’s up there,” she said. “I know the difference between a shadow and a monster.” She shot me another dirty look and ran from the chamber, her flip-flops slapping comically.
I stayed where I was and peered up at the darkness. “Ribbons?”
There was a scraping, and then the wyvern dropped from the ceiling like a blob of green, glittering liquid. He landed on the top of a stone water fountain. He held very still, like a statue, as two more women came into the chamber. The women followed my gaze, and one cooed to the other, “It’s so realistic! I love how the staff are always moving the wyvern statues around. It really brings a sense of fun to the place.”
Her friend replied, “And goodness knows we could use a little fun.” She leaned in and looked at the wyvern’s clawed feet. “The detailing is just exquisite. Did you know my son took a pottery class once, and his ashtray didn’t even look like an ashtray?”
The two women laughed and gave me polite smiles on the way out.
Once I was alone again with Ribbons, I turned to chat with him, but the fountain was missing its wyvern.
I asked the empty chamber, “Ribbons, are you connected to Archer Caine? Both of you are very skilled at the whole disappearing act.”
There was no response.
“Fine,” I said with nonchalance. “Be mysterious. Maybe I don’t even want to be your friend.”
I found my mother soaking in the third hot tub of a trio of elegant tubs. The air temperature in the cave chamber was comfortably warm, yet visible plumes of steam were rising around her.
“Hot enough for ya?” I kicked off my flip flops and jumped in, only to jump right out aga
in. “Hot, hot, hot!” The billowing steam should have been my warning that the water was practically boiling.
Zirconia Riddle carefully set aside the paperback novel she’d been reading and gave me a pained look. “You need to work your way up. Go start in the first pool.”
I snorted and climbed back in with her. “It’s fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Just surprising, that’s all. I didn’t see the sign warning me this one was built on top of hot volcano lava.”
“Oh, please,” she sighed. “The water’s not that hot.”
“Are you sure you should even be in here? Isn’t this how soup stock gets made? Two more hours and they’ll have to get the giant colander to strain this tub for bones and swimsuits.”
She gave me her first-warning look. I hadn’t seen that one in a while.
I settled in across from her and let the warm bubbles lift my lower body until my toes floated above the surface. Unlike the other women staying at the castle, I didn’t have nail polish on my toenails.
My mother didn’t pick up her paperback. She watched me for a minute before asking, “So, what do you think of Teddy? What does Zoey think?”
“Bentley? I dunno. Zoey’s only met him once, and she thought he was nice enough. He’s all right. Kind of square. For a while, I tried to set him up with Zinnia, but she wasn’t interested.”
My mother snorted. “Zinnia’s not his type.”
“And you are?”
She smiled. The amber pendant on her clavicle glinted in the soft lighting provided by lanterns positioned throughout the caves.
I stared directly at the pendant. “What else does that pendant do to people?”
“The magic alters perceptions.”
“So, if you’re altering Bentley’s perceptions, then his feelings for you can’t be genuine.”
Her smile froze. “Of course his feelings are genuine.”
“Are you really his little blueberry muffin?”
“What a rude question, Zarabella. Why can’t you be happy for me? Is it because you’ve never been able to sustain a relationship yourself?”
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