by Nova Nelson
“Yes, you do. Seriously, be honest with me. Did you bring back Bruce and Heather?”
He dropped the act. “No, love. I didn’t have anything to do with this. You don’t have to believe me, but I’m telling you the gods’ honest truth.”
I decided to believe him. For now. Besides, I didn’t see any motive for him to start bringing back spirits I’d already helped find peace, unless he was set on driving me mad over time.
“Heather, those things you said about you and Ansel, when did all that happen?”
Please not while he was already with Jane.
“It depends. How long have I been dead?”
“About six months.”
“That’s it? Oh my. Seems like so much longer and no time at all. In that case, what Ansel and I had was about twenty years ago. We were hardly more than kids. I blame my age for my foolishness. I never should have let him go. I can’t believe I did. But now I have a second chance, and I’m not going to squander it.”
“I admire her commitment,” Roland said, weighing in.
“Who’s he?” Bruce asked, looking Roland up and down. “And why is he dressed like that?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
Bruce floated closer to me. “Did you and Tanner end up together?”
“Yes,” I said. “And we’re still together.”
“Then what the hellhound are you doing with him in your home?”
I held up a hand between us. “Okay, first of all, it’s complicated. Secondly, I don’t need a serial philanderer critiquing my romantic choices.”
“Very romantic choices,” Roland added.
I pointed a finger at him. “You, knock it off.”
He backed away slowly, but not before adding, “Not what you were saying earlier.”
“That was a dream!” I said.
Bruce said, “Ah, you’re right. This is complicated.”
“And it’s irrelevant,” I added. “We’re here to figure out why you two are haunting a newlywed couple rather than relaxing in a warm pool of nothingness and everythingness or reincarnating like upstanding spirits would.”
“We already told you,” Heather said brusquely. “We returned because love pulled us back. That’s all I know.”
Roland floated over to her and wrapped a ghostly arm around her shoulders. She took one good look at him, smirked, and then allowed him to continue. “Nora may not understand,” he said, looking at me with the same expression Heather had given Ansel, “but I do. Not even death can sever the bonds of love, so long as one soul remains to pull the other back.” He broke his steady gaze to smile warmly at Heather. “You’re in good company. Nora here is searching for ways to return spirits to their bodies, aren’t you, love?”
My mouth dropped open. “No! You’re talking about illegal necroman—”
A floorboard creaked behind me, and I turned my attention toward the stairs.
Ruby stared at the scene, her eyes narrowed as her right foot remained on the bottom step and her left hovered over the parlor floor.
Everyone froze, waiting for her reaction. While I knew she wouldn’t be thrilled to find a blast-from-the-past-themed party taking place downstairs, I wasn’t sure how her displeasure would manifest.
I snuck a glimpse at Grim, who pretended to be asleep. Smart move. I wished I’d thought of that first.
Ruby cleared her throat. “I would prefer not to know.”
“Sounds good,” I said quickly.
“If they’re staying here for more than a night, I’ll be charging you extra for rent.”
“Makes sense.”
Her gaze locked on to Roland. “He can continue squatting rent-free. But only because I enjoy the view.”
“Much obliged,” Roland said, bowing slightly.
She grunted. “Looks like we’ll be spending tomorrow’s lesson reviewing banishing spells.”
Once she disappeared again, I turned my attention back to the spirits. I was outnumbered, even with Grim backing me up, which wasn’t the case as I suspected that his “pretending to sleep” shtick might not be a shtick after all.
“You know what?” Roland said, removing his arm from around Heather’s shoulder. “These two are anchored. They’re not going anywhere, and you’re clearly exhausted. Why don’t you head upstairs and get some sleep?”
I nodded. “That does sound tempt— Wait. I know what you’re doing. You want me to go back to sleep and pick up where we left off.”
He nodded. “Of course, love. I won’t deny it. What’s more, I can tell it’s what you want.”
Was it? Now that my head was clearing and I’d woken up, I …
… I still wanted Roland.
Fangs and claws!
I’d moved past him! Or at least I thought I had. I could have sworn I had. Those urges were supposed to go away when I woke up. Was nowhere safe from him now? I had half a mind to anchor him, too, but I suspected not even that could stop him from showing up as soon as I nodded off.
“Come on, Grim,” I said, calling my familiar to me when I reached the stairs.
“I’m good right where I am. You two have fun, but I won’t be a party to it.”
“We’re not going to … you know. Anyway, it’s just a dream.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself.” He put his head down on his paws, and I knew there was no more bargaining with him.
When I crawled into bed again, Roland waited patiently by my feet. I mustered one last stern look and said, “No, okay?”
He laughed softly. “Whatever you say, Diana.”
And, of course, what I said once I was in the dream was vastly different than what I’d said while I was awake.
Chapter Five
“So Bruce and Heather are just hanging out in Ruby’s house?” Eva asked the next morning. Hendrix Hardy was the only one in Medium Rare at that hour, which was lucky, considering my head was spinning too much to do anything remotely managerial with any degree of competence.
Eva rolled silverware at the counter alongside the new trainee. It was Cassandra’s first day on the job, and while she was only twenty-three, she struck me as incredibly competent for her age. With thick chocolate hair and a creamy olive complexion, she had a subtle natural beauty that almost made me feel guilty for keeping her inside when she should be out enjoying life. But I guessed that even if I’d paid her to go have fun at the lake, she would have refused. She was just one of those wise-beyond-her-years types, which were rare to come by in the service industry. So, I welcomed the nice surprise. After all, most surprises were anything but nice.
I took advantage of my authority just a smidgen and sat my butt on one of the countertop stools, sucking down coffee.
“Yeah,” I said, “they’re firmly anchored. Luckily, they don’t have anywhere else to be.”
Eva nodded and grabbed another fork and knife. Both she and Cassandra had taken my description of the events of the previous night in stride. Or at least the ones I told them. The details with Roland seemed unrelated to the mystery with Heather and Bruce (and totally not safe for work).
Okay, so there were some undeniable similarities, but I was reluctant to open up about that to Eva, let alone Cassandra. Nothing worse than getting TMI from your boss on day one, and I was already toeing that line.
“You can use your wand if you want,” I told Cassandra. “Usually, we try to keep wands out of sight, but what’s the point of being a witch if you have to do everything manually? Same to you, Eva. Not like Hendrix will care.”
Cassandra nodded, but said, “I prefer to do it by hand. It’s sort of meditative.”
“And I don’t know how to do it with a wand yet,” Eva said.
“Your tutor needs to step it up,” I replied, knowing full well her lessons with Donovan likely included little actual tutoring.
“I think he’s doing just fine,” she said.
Cassandra steered the conversation back to the previous topic with, “So two past loves just appear from the
other side of the veil? Are you going to send them back?”
I shrugged. “I guess eventually, but how do I know they’ll stay gone this time when they didn’t the first time? I thought I’d brought them the closure they needed to move on for good, and now suddenly they’re back?”
Eva was the one to point out the obvious. “Can you ever really get complete closure on a past love, though? It’s like a wound that you think is healed, then something happens and you realize you’re not as healthy as you’d hoped.”
“It sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” I said.
“Yep. But I got lucky and ended up here before I could relapse again.”
“Relapse?” I asked, arching a brow at her. “Sounds healthy.”
“Healthy like a drug,” she said. “I even knew he wasn’t good for me, and I kept going back. I kept thinking that this time he was really sorry for what he’d done. All those other times when he’d lost his temper were just anomalies. I told myself he could have done so much worse to me, and he didn’t. Surely, that was a sign of love, right?” She rolled her eyes at herself. “Honestly, I would probably still be crawling back to him if I hadn’t walked through that door and ended up in Eastwind.”
“Wait,” I said, perking up, “what door?”
“The one to Eastwind.”
“Riiiight. You never told me about how you got here. You came through a door?”
She paused in her task and looked up at me. “Not as dramatic as your entrance, admittedly. As far as I know, I didn’t die.”
“What happened?”
She sighed and leaned her elbows on the countertop. “That wonderful gentleman I just mentioned? I tried to break up with him again. He told me if he couldn’t have me, no one could. I didn’t believe him. Then, lo and behold, that night, my house randomly caught on fire. By the time I woke up, the flames were already coming under my bedroom door. I wrapped the sheet around the door handle so it didn’t burn me, but when I managed to pull it open, expecting to see a wall of fire, what I found was … well, this will sound strange, but the door opened up into a forest. I thought I was hallucinating, but I didn’t have much of a choice other than to go through. So I did. The door shut behind me, and I found myself on Fluke Mountain. I wandered for a while until I found Darius Pine’s cabins, and the rest is history.”
I snuck a glance at Cassandra to see if she was as stunned as I was, and was pleased to see that she was. Good. It wasn’t just my novelty with inexplicable magic that made that story incredible.
Eva laughed when I met her eyes. “Exactly,” she said. “Now you see why I don’t go around telling everyone how I ended up here. Not exactly the most pleasant story. And, to be honest, I’m embarrassed that I ever ended up in a relationship like that. I should have known better, right?”
“No,” Cassandra said firmly. “You can’t think like that. Anyone can be manipulated, Eva. It’s not a matter of intelligence. I don’t know you that well, but I can already tell you’re a loving person, and that’s a strength. It only feels like a weakness when someone bad comes along and abuses it.”
“What she said,” I added. “I’ve never been in a relationship that bad, but I know plenty of smart, capable people who have, and it was never their fault.”
Eva nodded but said nothing as she returned to her work.
I could tell the memory still haunted her, as one might expect; it sounded harrowing, to say the least.
So, maybe it was my desire to make her feel less alone in what she perceived to be poor judgment that made me gush, “I may not have been in an abusive relationship, but I know about relapsing to past loves more than I’d like to admit.”
Eva looked at me sideways. “Are you talking about who I think you’re talking about?”
“Who are you—” A sharp memory of Donovan’s lips crashing into mine on the edge of the oceanside cliffs jumped into my head, sending adrenaline through my arms. “Oh. Ohh. No, not him.” I wiggled my fingers to work the strange rush through my muscles. What was that? “Another one. From much longer ago.” Then, in a flash, the image of Roland pressing against me, his warm lips on mine as a bitter wind rushed past us and down the emerald green cliffs. A jolt of adrenaline ran through my body again, this time stronger, leaving me lightheaded.
Eva stared at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Just got a chill. Not, like, a ghost chill, don’t worry.” I forced a smile.
“Who are you talking about then? Someone from before you came to Eastwind?” she asked.
“Farther.”
She scrunched up her nose and shared a confused glance with Cassandra. “Farther?”
“Yep. Past life.”
Eva waited patiently for me to elaborate, but I didn’t want to get too into the nitty-gritty of how Roland ended up here, considering part of it involved him taking possession of Eva’s body and causing her to light a giant wooden stake in front of Medium Rare—something she had no clue she’d done until Deputy Manchester had confronted her about it.
“It’s a Fifth Wind witch thing, apparently. You can only be a Fifth Wind if you’ve died from all the other four elements in past lives. I know, I’m not really sure how it works, either. The point is, we’re past lovers and I sort of pulled his spirit into this world and now he just hovers around and— Well, doesn’t matter what else.” I grabbed the reins on my tongue, but perhaps too late.
So much for not delivering a steaming pile of TMI to the trainee.
Cassandra’s mouth hung open in a gentle O while Eva strained to keep from laughing. “Does Tanner know about this spirit?”
I shrugged. “Sort of. I started telling him about it, and he cut me off, saying he didn’t want the details and that he trusted me, which you and I both know is a huge mistake.”
“Do you have feelings for him?”
“Who, Roland? I did, and then I didn’t. I was so sure I didn’t, too, and now … I think I do again. Memories have started to come back to me, and, boy, do emotions saddle up those things and ride them.”
Eva nodded understandingly. “Welcome to Unfinished Business 101, Nora.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, “any suggestions for what I should do about Heather and Bruce?”
“They’re not the ones you need to worry about,” Eva said. “Jane and Ansel are. You should talk to each of them, but separately. It sounds like there are a few things about their pasts that they haven’t told each other, and it’s their prerogative to tell each other when they’re ready. Or never.”
“Have you told Donovan about—”
“No,” she said firmly. “And I’d appreciate it if you kept it between us. I like the way he treats me, and I don’t want him to start acting like I’m some delicate china doll, which is what men tend to do when they hear about women going through bad relationships like mine.”
“Of course I won’t tell him,” I said. “And you won’t mention that I told you about Roland, right?”
“Right.”
We both looked at Cassandra, who appeared confused by the sudden attention before she nodded and said, “Oh, of course! I won’t tell anyone.”
Whether she would or wouldn’t, we’d just have to find out. It was too late to do anything about it now.
It was not too late, however, to grab another cup of coffee and see if I couldn’t get on top of the day.
Chapter Six
There was so much I didn’t understand about Heather and Bruce’s reappearance, and until I could make it home and pick Ruby’s brain for information, I would have to work with what I had in the Medium Rare regulars. Luckily, the town’s death expert appeared at his usual time and took a seat in the corner booth. I motioned to Eva and Cassandra that I would pick up the table, and I hurried over.
“Morning,” I said.
Ted tilted his head my direction. “Good morning, Nora! Oh, thanks,” he said as I set down a fresh cup of coffee. “I’ll have the usual, I think.”
“Great,” I sai
d before sliding into the booth across from him. “I have a question that you might know the answer to.”
He sat up straighter. “And that is?”
“I know the Winds of Change have been making people act a little funny, but are they capable of bringing back spirits who’ve already moved on?”
“Hmm …” His gloved fingers disappeared under the shadow of his hood, and I imagined they were stroking his chin. “Yes, that seems entirely possible, especially in October, when the veil is thinning. After all, not all change is in a positive direction. Heh. Sometimes swift change takes us backward, retreating to the familiar, to safety. Forward progress generally moves slowly and is a struggle every step.” He paused. “Are old spirits revisiting you?”
“Yep. Not malicious ones, thankfully.”
“Yeah, that’s good. Heh. Hey, I have to ask, the new waitress you’re training …”
I cast a glance over my shoulder at Eva and Cassandra chatting with Mr. and Mrs. Tomlinson. The couple were without their kids, who were probably at school at this hour. “Yeah?” I said, returning my attention to Ted. “What about her?”
“I’m just wondering what her deal is. I don’t think I’ve ever met her.”
Ah. I knew where he was going. “She’s off-limits, Ted. I know she’s cute and, yes, as far as I know, she’s single, but if you’re going to come in here every day, I can’t have you getting involved with the staff. It goes south, and then what? I’m not firing her just so you don’t feel awkward.”
He jerked his head back toward me, straightening his spine with a series of pops. “No, that’s not what I meant. She’s not my type anyway. Too … lively. It would never work. I like my women a little more morbid. Heh.” I forced a smile and pretended that wasn’t yet another not-so-subtle subtle pass at me. “All I mean is it’s strange that I haven’t met her before. I thought I knew just about everyone in Eastwind.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. She said she grew up on a farm a ways out of town.”
“And she’s a witch, correct?”
“Yep.”