I’d pay for it later, but I smiled to myself and enjoyed the newfound silence. I slipped the spray bottle back into the bag and went back to eating.
For whatever reason, Flapjack abhorred the scent of lemon and would flee from it in any form. So, when he really got under my skin, I made it a point to use lemon-scented cleaners around the house. It guaranteed me a sarcasm-free afternoon and came with the side benefit of having a clean apartment. A few weeks ago, a woman had come into my shop pitching her essential oil company, and I’d purchased a few vials of lemon oil and the small mister bottle.
The trick had just lost its sneak attack effect, but I also knew that next time I’d only have to brandish the bottle to get the mouthy cat off my case.
Win-win.
And now, I could enjoy the barbecue and the sunset in peace.
* * *
Tuesday’s ghost meeting kicked off at seven o’clock once the shop was closed and Lizzie had punched out. I held the meetings in Lily Pond, mostly because I didn’t like the idea of a horde of strange ghosts upstairs in my apartment. Besides Flapjack, Hayward, and Gwen, I preferred to keep my home as a sanctuary away from nosy ghosts. For the most part, the local ghosts respected my ground rules largely because they knew that if they strayed outside the boundaries I’d put in place, I wouldn’t help them, no matter how much they begged and pleaded. If they wanted my attention, they had to attend the weekly meeting and make their petition that way.
Every now and again, a pushy ghost would come along and force me to put up precautionary measures inside my house, usually a ring of salt around the baseboards, windows and doors. Of course, Hayward and Flapjack didn’t appreciate being effectively locked out of their home, but they kept their grumbling to a minimum until a solution could be reached.
Gwen didn’t stay at my apartment with us. She had enough haunts that she never slowed down long enough to ghost-sleep. Even when most of the town’s residents were asleep, she’d be out exchanging information and gossip with other ghosts. I had no idea how they found enough to talk about. Beechwood Harbor wasn’t a hip and happening hotspot. Beyond the occasional cheating spouse or new love affair, what could there be to talk about?
“I just wish I could get the hang of it,” Loretta, a ghost in her mid-sixties, complained after listening to one of the new members talk about learning to channel energy into making things move. “All I want is to read a book again without having to hover over some patron’s shoulder. It’s so maddening waiting for them to catch up with me and turn the blasted page!”
Loretta had been a librarian in life and haunted the town library, fretting over the way her replacement stacked books and bemoaning the squeaky wheel on the metal cart. I had no proof, but I firmly believed that if she stepped away from the library, she’d find peace and be able to cross over into the Otherworld. Her desire to control every minute detail of the goings-on in her library was the tether keeping her here on this plane.
So far, she hadn’t made it a day without darkening their door.
As the regular’s discussed the benefits of being able to move small objects, I moved around the shop, dusting and polishing. I preferred to use the meetings as a time to catch up on the tasks that easily slipped through the cracks, especially over the weekend, which tended to be busy. I usually took Sunday and Monday off and kept the shop closed altogether on Monday so both Lizzie and I could have a dedicated day off each week. Though, with Lucas in Seattle, I was wondering if I should renegotiate the schedule with Lizzie and see about taking Saturday and Sunday off in order to have a proper weekend off. It was still early enough that Lucas didn’t have his schedule down pat, so I was biding my time.
“Scarlet—”
I turned at Gwen’s voice, feather duster stilled. “Hmm?”
She pointed at the door just as Sabrina slipped through the glass, a strange look on her face as though she still weren’t entirely used to passing through solid materials. “Welcome, Sabrina,” I greeted.
“I’m so glad you came!” Gwen said, surging forward to stand beside her. “Let me introduce you around.”
Sabrina shied away before Gwen could reach her. Her silver eyes flashed as she looked at me. “It might have been nice if you’d told me what happened!”
I looked to Gwen but she looked caught off guard as well. “I—I’m sorry, but—”
“You played dumb, like you didn’t know I’d been killed! Murdered in cold blood!”
The other ghosts in the circle collectively moved back, some sliding through the front display window and vanishing into the night. We’d had unstable ghosts before. It usually ended in a mess.
“Sabrina, I didn’t know,” I replied, lifting one hand in surrender while the other slipped under the front counter and wrapped around the handle of the small omelette-sized cast iron pan I kept there for such occasions. Flapjack could be scared off with a splash of lemon, but other ghosts tended to need a little more convincing.
The business end of an iron pan did the trick.
“I only found out about the murder after I delivered the flowers. I swear.”
I held the pan but kept it out of sight. I didn’t want to use it on her. Though I wasn’t entirely sure what the sensation was like, I had to assume it wasn’t pleasant. But then, the last ghost that had gone berserk in my shop had blown out the glass on the front door and cost the landlord a pretty penny in the insurance deductible—a fact he reminded me of every time I dropped off my rent check.
Sabrina advanced on me, the light still blazing in her eyes. “I talked to some other ghosts around town and they told me about you.”
Oh, brother. This ought to be good.
Hayward took a valiant step forward, arms outstretched as if to intercede. “Madame, this is—”
Sabrina ignored him, brushing right past him. “They said you can send me forward, into this … this Otherworld. Is that true?”
My fingers loosened their grip on the iron handle. “I’ve helped spirits cross over, but it’s not some easy, flip-of-the-switch thing. I can’t snap my fingers and send you off into the next realm.”
“Then how does it work? How do I get out of this place?” The anger in her voice gave way to desperation. “I can’t stay here another minute!”
“I’m not an expert,” I started, my voice calm, “but like Gwen said at the funeral home, there’s usually some sort of unfinished business keeping spirits here, in this realm, and the option to cross over only presents itself when that business is resolved. Now, seeing as you met death as the result of an act of violence, I’d guess that might be the thing holding you back. Do you have any idea who might have killed you? Any memory of that night at all?”
“No! I told you. I woke up in that funeral home. I don’t know what happened to me.” She began to tremble and her voice wavered. “Just—se—set me free—”
Without warning, she swelled and then dissolved into a cloud of silver-hued particles. The mist scattered through the room until it became invisible, like dust settling back to the ground. Only the echo of her voice lingered, the word free resounding through the air for an unnerving second before it was swallowed up in silence.
I blinked. “What just happened?”
Everyone started talking at once. The half dozen regulars, Gwen, and Hayward all offered up theories.
“She dispersed!” Gwen exclaimed.
“But how?” Loretta asked, staring at the place Sabrina had just stood. “There was no catalyst.”
“Can one self-disperse?” Hayward asked, also studying the place on the floor.
I held up a hand. “Wait, if she dispersed, wouldn’t she reboot back to where she first woke up as a ghost?”
“It’s likely. Or, to a space she feels safe,” Loretta replied.
“The funeral home?” Gwen suggested.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was after hours. No one would be at the funeral home to let us inside. Well, no one would be there to let me inside. Gwen and the others
could charge in without hesitation.
“We’d better go check,” I said, reaching for my keys.
* * *
The front room of the funeral home was aglow when we arrived, Loretta, Gwen, and Hayward at my back. Flapjack preferred not to attend the weekly meetings, and the other attendees said goodbye as we left the flower shop.
“Someone’s working late,” Gwen said. “I’ll bet it’s Karla. Poor thing hasn’t had a date in over a year.”
I rolled my eyes. As someone who spent the majority of my life happily single, it grated when Gwen pitied the unattached as though they’d contracted an incurable disease.
“Who’s going inside?” I asked the trio of ghosts.
“You’re not coming with us, Lady Scarlet?” Hayward asked, concern etched in his distinguished face.
“I don’t have a good reason to be here,” I replied. “Karla will think it’s weird if I knock on the front door without cause.”
Hayward glanced up at the illuminated window. “Hmm. Perhaps you’re right.”
“Just go see if you can find Sabrina. If she wants to talk to me, I’ll be out here.”
Gwen looped her arm through Hayward’s and gently tugged him into motion. “Come on.”
Loretta hesitated. “I think I’ll wait here, with Scarlet.”
I glanced at her but didn’t say anything.
Hayward and Gwen surged toward the doors and slipped inside the building. I stuffed my hands into the front pocket of my sweatshirt. The official beginning of autumn was still a few days away, but already the evenings had chilled dramatically from a week or two ago.
Loretta swayed in place beside me, a nervous energy radiating from her as she stared up at the historical home that had been converted to the town’s funeral parlor somewhere along the way. “This is where my own memorial service was held,” she said quietly. “It feels like only yesterday.”
In reality, nearly twelve years had passed since Loretta’s death. She’d been alone in the library, drinking tea while she worked through a stack of book returns from the busy day, when she’d suffered a stroke. When her part-timer came in the next morning, he’d found her and called the paramedics, but there was nothing that could be done. She’d already gone. Loretta, in her new form, had hovered nearby, watching the scene but powerless to say or do anything.
It was a tragic though not uncommon story. I’d heard variations of it dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times before.
“I’ll bet it was a lovely service,” I replied, giving her a small smile.
Loretta’s strong type-A bent could be trying, but at heart she was a sweet woman and had been beloved by the entire town while she’d been alive.
She nodded. “It was. I remember being surprised at how many people attended. Some of them were children I’d read stories to on Saturday mornings, though now grown with children of their own.”
“You’ve left a beautiful legacy,” I said, wishing she’d find the strength to fully leave it behind. She wasn’t happy and thriving as a spirit, like Gwen or Hayward. She spent her days wandering aimlessly, reminiscing about the past instead of looking to the future.
Suddenly, the urge to take her hand swelled up inside me. Logically, I knew that I couldn’t touch her, though there’d been times where I felt almost able to reach out and stroke Flapjack’s fur.
But that was because he’d been my cat in life. Wasn’t it?
The urge thrummed through me, more urgently than before, and I reached for Loretta’s hand. Our hands met, an electric shock radiating up my arm. Loretta looked up, her eyes round. “What are you—”
Before she could finish her sentence, her eyes fluttered closed and the sound of a long exhale filled my ears. I gripped her hand a little tighter and then released it. Loretta faded, her semi-transparent form breaking apart into a silver-purple mist. A bright light followed and I squinted against it. When my focus returned, I was alone on the sidewalk.
“Loretta?” I whispered, already knowing she couldn’t answer.
She was gone.
Crossed over.
“Well, that was a bust.”
I jumped at the sound of Gwen’s voice and whipped around to find her and Hayward standing behind me.
“The young woman wasn’t inside, as far as we could tell,” Hayward added with an apologetic look.
“Where’s Loretta?” Gwen asked.
Hayward heaved a sigh. “Back to her library, I imagine. You know how agitated she gets when she’s been away for too long.”
I stared, unblinking, at the place where she’d last stood, still not sure myself what had just happened.
“Scarlet? Are you all right?” Gwen asked, concern threading her voice as she swooped a little closer.
“She—she—I mean, I was standing here, she was there, and then, I touched her hand and she—poof.”
“Lady Scarlet?” Hayward said, thick eyebrows raised. “What are you saying?”
“I—I just helped her cross over to the Otherworld.”
Chapter 5
Loretta’s crossing echoed through my memory on a loop as I tossed and turned in bed. It didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t the first ghost I’d witness cross over. Far from it. But she was the first one I’d actively participated in. In the past, I’d been a spectator. Why now?
Reaper.
I pressed my pillow against my ears, as if that could drown out the terrible word. It raked against my nerves and swirled my stomach in a way that made me feel out at sea on a less-than-seaworthy boat.
The word was still there, tumbling through my mind, accompanied by terrible Grim Reaper silhouettes accompanied by long scythes.
I am a Shepherd, I reminded myself, fighting against the shadows.
Loretta was ready to cross over. She’d been ready since I’d met her, when Gwen corralled her into one of the first meetings we’d held at Lily Pond. Loretta had hated being a ghost. All she’d ever done was hang around the library, reading over people’s shoulders and wringing her hands every time someone misplaced a book or dog-eared a page. She could spout off for a solid hour of the daily infractions, as if they were being presented before a judge and jury.
“He had the audacity to remove the dust jacket! A child in aisle ten was sneaking Doritos from the front pocket of a backpack and put his cheese dust-riddled fingers all over a first-edition Harry Potter hardback!”
On and on and on. And if I’d let her, she would have gone on like that for years. Decades, even! She was holding so tightly to her library that she would have lingered forever, waiting and watching, her anxiety and despair plaguing her until the end of time.
I’d done her a favor. She was at peace now.
I’d done my job.
That’s what it was, after all. I was a Shepherd and I’d successfully herded Loretta into the Otherworld.
Then why did I feel so crappy about it?
“Ugh!” I flipped the covers off and flipped on the bedside lamp. My black Lily Pond sweatshirt lay discarded at the foot of the bed and I pulled it on. A pair of jeans and sneakers followed. I clicked off the light and tiptoed out into the hallway. According to the shiny tech watch Lucas had sent me a few weeks ago, it was 2:30 in the morning. Flapjack would be back from his gallivanting. Hayward tended to fall into a ghost sleep around midnight and would likely be snoring on the couch.
Silently, I moved into the main living area, a three-hundred square foot space comprised of a kitchen, dinette area, and a small living room. The one-bedroom apartment sat directly above my flower shop and was a little cramped for my taste. I wasn’t a hoarder—despite what my mother might say—but I’d collected an array of trinkets and art pieces from my world travels and wished I had enough space to properly showcase them all. As it was, I had three storage boxes wedged into my closet and another one downstairs in the broom closet of the flower shop. Someday I’d have a home of my own and could finally unpack everything into artful displays, rather than shove everything together on the squ
atty bookcase in my living room.
Using the light from my smart watch, I peeked over the back of the couch. Hayward wasn’t there. Hmm. That was odd. With a shrug, I went to the front door, not minding my footfalls. My fingertips just grazed the knob when Flapjack’s purr cut through the darkness. “Where are you going?”
I stilled, mentally muttering a curse. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. Something Flapjack would not understand.
I hit the switch beside the door and turned to find the Himalayan perched on the dining room table. I frowned. “What have I said about getting on the table? It wasn’t acceptable when you were alive and you don’t get a pass now that you’re not. Off!”
With a roll of his silver eyes he made a melodramatic show of getting down. “Happy?” he asked as he sat on the floor, his thick tail swishing back and forth like a metronome.
“Overjoyed,” I replied flatly.
“Where are you going? It’s the middle of the night.”
I sighed. “I’m going to a rave. I’ve been meaning to try Ecstasy for a while now.”
Flapjack scowled, his tail still. “Is this about the thing with that nerdy ghost lady?”
“Her name is Loretta,” I said, acid in my tone. I folded my arms. “And how do you even know about that?”
“Gwen and Hayward said you were freaked out. He’s staying out with her tonight to give you some space.”
“Then why are you here?”
The cat flashed his teeth. “Got bored.”
“Do I even want to know what you were up to this evening?”
If Flapjack was bored, that meant he’d run out of obnoxious pranks to pull. He particularly liked bothering Holly and the other residents of the Beechwood Manor at the other end of town. I’d given Holly my blessing to put up whatever wards or security measures she wanted around the stately home’s perimeter, but she’d waved off my concern and assured me the supernatural residents could more than handle the cantankerous cat.
Big Ghosts Don’t Cry Page 4