“Poor soul. What are you planning to do next?”
He opened and closed his mouth before shaking his head. Beyond getting him out of his house for one night, Alec had no plan. “It’s not really my responsibility.”
Lilliana shot him a look under her lashes. “Could have fooled me.”
“I’ve got enough problems to deal with without taking on the kid’s too.” He gestured toward her only realizing his misstep when she tossed the sponge into the dishwater, splashing his shirt.
“Did you just refer to me as a problem you have to deal with?”
“Not a problem exactly. More of a complication.”
“A complication I will deal with like every other woman from the beginning of time.” Dark eyes flashing, mouth pinched, she looked like an avenging dark fairy. One that would curse him throughout eternity.
She swept off, her footsteps sounding on the stairs. He didn’t know what to say and wasn’t up to chasing her. He took up the discarded sponge and finished washing. After taking more ibuprofen, he climbed the stairs.
He hesitated at the top. Hunter’s door was cracked, and he tapped, pushing the door open enough to stick his head inside. The boy was asleep on top of the comforter, surrounded by schoolbooks, notebook paper sticking out at odd angles.
He was on his side and curled up with a hand under his cheek, snoring softly. How long had it been since Hunter had slept in a warm, safe room? Even one night spent afraid was too many. Alec stacked the books on the bedside table and pulled a quilt up from the foot of the bed, tucking him in. Alec was an only child, but the urge to protect Hunter made him feel like a big brother. Turning out the light, he backed away and shut the door, a lump in his throat.
No matter the complications, he would to do his best to help Hunter.
7
Lilliana worked on the portrait until her back screamed a protest, and her eyes weren’t able to focus on the fine work anymore. “You’re looking good, Edwin. We’ll get your eye color right tomorrow. And, maybe, if you ask nicely, I’ll trim your belly down. Give you a six-pack.” She winked, but Edwin’s expression remained solemn yet competent.
After she cleaned her brushes and covered her paints, she flipped the lights off and stared out the windows at the small expanse of woods behind the house. Even though she was spitting-distance from town, the woods lent a sense of isolation shading into loneliness. She’d spent a good portion of her childhood as a latchkey kid. Alone until her mother got off work, and even then, her mother’s job left her too exhausted to play games or entertain a kid.
Her summers in Falcon had been heaven. There had been Darcy and Logan and more cousins than you could shake a stick at. And her time in New York had been full of interesting people. Sometimes too many people.
Trapped in her miniscule New York apartment with a constant rotation of roommates, she had often yearned for solitude. Now, ironically, she had too much of it. Her friends were mostly married with lives of their own while she puttered around talking to portraits. She was a few cats away from becoming a town “character.” It was nice knowing Alec and Hunter were under her roof.
A bang sounded. Her heart accelerated, and her stomach fluttered. The dull quiet that followed grew into a buzzing white noise the longer she strained to hear. Nothing came, and the tension along her shoulders ebbed away but didn’t disappear. The old house had always had its share of odd noises. It had probably been the wind. Yet, a glance out the window revealed the treetops were still. Had Hunter or Alec woken and needed something?
She tiptoed into the hallway, but everything was quiet. The doors to the guest rooms were closed with no light shining from underneath.
The bang came again, fainter this time, and followed by a scraping sound. She froze. Her stomach jumped into her throat as her heart plunged to her knees. She looked up. The noises were coming from the attic. The cobweb-filled, creepy attic.
Burying her head under the covers sounded pretty good at the moment. Or she could go wake up Alec and tell him that she was scared of things that went bump in the night. The small measure of pride she had left kept her from running to him.
Silence again. The dark quiet was as stifling as being wrapped too tightly in a quilt. She forced her feet to shuffle toward her room, trying to not make a noise. In the light of day, she absolutely did not believe in ghosts, but in the dark of night, ghost stories told to scare Hancock children through the years took on corporal form.
She was a few feet inside her room when a cry echoed down the hall. Unearthly and surreal, it sounded like a baby’s cry trailing into a woman’s anguish.
“Screw pride,” she muttered and ran back into the hall, aftershocks of the cry reverberating in her head.
A huge shadow-lined figure in white stood in the middle of the hall. Her nerves already frayed, she squealed and backtracked, tripping on the fringe of the hall rug and landing on her butt. In a panic she crab-crawled backward a few more feet.
“What the hell?” Alec’s raspy drawl stalled her, and she sat down. Leaning against the leg of a long, narrow table, she took a deep breath and dropped her head between her knees, lightheaded.
Before she could reassemble her scattered wits to offer an excuse, a scraping sound filled the space between her too-quick breaths. She popped to her feet, drawn to the only source of logical strength in the hallway. Alec. She wrapped her hands around his biceps, now recognizing he wore a simple white T-shirt and shorts.
“What the hell is all the caterwauling about?” He ran a hand over his face and yawned.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.” She clutched handfuls of his shirt and tried to pull him toward her bedroom.
The cry came again, mournful and piercing. His warm hands circled her upper arms. “Hold up.”
She moved closer to the heat of his chest, and his arm came around her shoulders. Her courage-stealing terror erased any annoyance she’d felt toward him in the kitchen.
“It’s coming from the attic. Is that the access?” He pointed down the long, dark hallway where a rope hung from a panel hiding the recessed ladder.
He didn’t wait for her to answer, taking two steps down the hall. Her fingers refused to loosen their grip on his T-shirt. “Have you ever seen a single horror movie? The dudes they send to investigate are the first to die.”
He chuckled. “You’re funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. I nearly peed myself, I’m so scared.”
The wail started again, growing in amplitude then petering out like a tornado siren. Sometime during it, she’d pulled him to her, letting go of the front of his shirt to lock her arms around his waist.
“You think some boogeyman is up there ready to murder us?” Even in the dark, she could make out the flash of his smile.
“It might be a ghost.” Now that she said it aloud, the ridiculousness of her suspicion made her hesitate and pull back.
“Have you heard this ghost before?”
“Well, no.”
“Why would it suddenly appear tonight?”
Lilliana swallowed, not sure his logic was helping her state of mind. Now, instead of fearful, she felt foolish. “One of my ancestors died brokenhearted and young in a fire. Her ghost is said to be wandering the house looking for her lover. Maybe she’s here because of you.”
“Why me?”
“Because . . . we’re . . . I’m mean, we’re not really lovers, but we have had sex.”
“Once.”
She chuffed and rolled her eyes, knowing he couldn’t see her. But nothing could keep the teenagelike sarcasm from infusing the words. “Yeah, right.”
He tensed against her, his smile no longer visible. The cry came once more, and she jerked.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered and fumbled for the light switch. The single-bulbed fixture cast a hazy light around them, the far end of the hallway still in shadows. An elemental relief poured through her, muffling the clawing terror. Darkness was evil; light was goo
d.
“I’m going to check the attic. Do you have a flashlight handy?”
“I have one in my room.”
She hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to step out of the light and into the darkness. Giving herself a mental pep talk, she skipped over to her bedside table and flipped the lamp on. With shaky hands, she riffled through the drawers, coming up with a black flashlight.
He led the way. Lilliana hadn’t been into the attic since shortly after she inherited the home. Her dream of finding expensive antiques or relics from the Civil War or even a box of real silverware had been dashed. She’d sifted through moldy, rotting curtains and rugs and sprung couches.
Alec pulled the cord. The groan of seldom-used hinges echoed into the dark space above. A tingle zinged down her spine, the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention.
Alec was halfway up when she grabbed his upper thigh. He stopped and looked down. “What’s wrong?”
What was she supposed to say? She didn’t even believe in ghosts. Not really. Yet, an unnatural fear roared through her veins, pumping her blood hard and loud in her ears. Being alone was untenable. “I’m coming up too.”
“Fine.” He tossed the word down unworriedly, almost absentmindedly, continuing his climb upward, his body slowly engulfed in shadows. She followed him up, the weak beam of the flashlight acting like a lighthouse beacon.
While the light offered a certain measure of comfort, the unilluminated darkness seemed dense and heavy. Not caring what he thought, she grabbed his shirt and pressed close to his back, standing on tiptoe to peek over his shoulder.
He cast the light from one corner of the attic to the other. Two couches were piled on each other against the long wall, where the roof slanted down. An oblong floor mirror, tarnished and chipped, reflected light and blinded her for a split-second before moving on to a trunk set up on its end, lid cracked and hinges dangling uselessly. The dulled aluminum of an air duct reflected light, revealing a circular hinge hanging loose and a split between two joints, insulation fuzzing around the edges.
“You need to get that duct repaired. Have you started running heat yet?”
“Not yet,” she whispered, but he only hummed in response, the light bouncing back over the room.
The silence was unnerving. Only her too-fast, shallow breaths registered in her ears. The flashlight stopped its exploratory arc and focused on the far end where a small window, no more than two square feet let in a small amount of moonlight. Alec’s body was taut, and she tightened her hold on his shirt. Did he see something?
He cried out, his body jerking forward as if lassoed. Her already fraying nerves broke. She screamed and tried to pull him back with her, her feet slipping on the dusty floor.
The flashlight beam wavered across the room until he’d pinned her. His laughter stilled her frantic tugging. “Jesus, your face.”
She shoved at his arms, blind and furious. “Get that stupid light out of my eyes, jerk-wad. You terrified me.”
The light dropped, a circle around their feet, but enough permeated upward so Lilliana could see the grin on his face. “I’m sorry, but that was hilarious. Did you think your ghost had me in her clutches?”
His ploy had been adolescent, and so was his smile. She’d never seen him look so happy. A different sort of nerves fluttered in her stomach. Weakly, she said, “Even barring the supernatural, we could fall through the flooring or something.”
He stomped a boot, rattling the uneven plywood. “Seems stable enough.”
“Here maybe, but—”
He shushed her, his finger up. “I heard something.”
“Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me—”
“Hush.” The word hissed through his teeth, his grin gone, his gaze tangling with hers, his face a picture of still concentration. He stomped his foot again.
The silence weighed on her, stretching so long she felt compelled to say something, anything. A low, throaty growl came at them from all directions. Her adrenaline surged, her heart tapping hard against her ribs. Yet, under the shot of fear, her mind searched. She’d heard that sound before.
He stomped again, and again the noise reverberated. He moved his finger to his lips and trekked farther into the attic, toward the old trunk, keeping the beam of light at his feet. Lilliana held onto the tail of his shirt and stepped exactly where he stepped.
“A-ha,” Alec whispered.
Lilliana shifted to his side. “Ghost,” she said on a huge exhale.
He waved a hand in front of her face. “Hello? It’s not a ghost. It’s a cat.”
Now it was her turn to laugh, relief giving her a high like stepping off a rollercoaster. “It’s a cat I’ve been trying to tame. I named it—her—Ghost.”
Considering a half-dozen squirming still-blind kittens fell over each other trying to reach the mother cat’s teats, Ghost was undeniably female. Her eyes glowed red in the beam of the flashlight. Lilliana crouched and crawled toward the little family, her hand outstretched. Ghost hissed, her ears flat.
“She’s scared. Let’s leave her for now,” he said.
“She looks too skinny, doesn’t she? Let me get her a can of food.” Lilliana carefully descended the ladder and made a run to the kitchen.
She was climbing back up in less than a minute, out of breath.
Alec pulled the top off and slid the can toward Ghost. The cat yowled, the cry melancholy and fearful and echoing through the split duct. Lilliana tugged Alec’s shirt, and they left her to eat without fear. He followed her into her room, clicking off the flashlight and handing it over.
She plopped on the bed and lay back, her legs dangling off the side, laughing softly. “What a night. I can’t believe the ruckus didn’t wake up Hunter.”
He joined her on the bed, tucking his hands behind his head and staring up at the gossamer fabric of the canopy. “My guess is this is the first warm, safe place he’s had to sleep in a while.”
A strawberry discolored his elbow, an inch from her lips. Before she could embarrass herself more than she already had, she transferred her attention to his face. As if sensing her, he turned his head to face her. They stared into each other’s eyes so long, a knot wound itself tighter and tighter in her chest until she felt close to breaking. She had no idea whether or not he was going to kiss her or get up and walk out.
He did neither. Instead, he flipped off the lamp, lay back beside her and whispered, “Tell me the ghost story.”
The unexpectedness of the request jumbled her mind. “Which one?”
“Hancock House boasts more than one?”
A deep breath ordered her thoughts. “You mean poor Beatrice. It’s all very romantic and tragic.”
“Isn’t it always?” Sarcasm weighed his words.
“Maybe so. She fell in love with a slave who was a hostler—”
“Hostler?”
“You know, like a stable boy. My ancestors bred horses at one time. Beatrice would sneak in and out of her room at night to be with her lover, and eventually she got pregnant.”
“I assume her parents weren’t very understanding.”
“They paid a free black woman who was rumored to be a witch to give her herbs to cast the baby out. Beatrice decided to run away with her stable boy instead. On the fateful night, something went wrong. A fight with her parents? A dropped lantern? No one remembers. One wing of the house caught on fire and Beatrice died.”
“Beatrice’s ghost wanders the halls looking for her stable boy? Did he commit suicide in true Shakespearean fashion?”
“Of course not. Aunt Esmerelda says he married a housemaid and they ran north together for freedom.”
A few beats of silence passed before Alec said, “Good on him. Hope he was happy.”
She giggled. When she heard his rumbling laughter, she rolled toward him and propped her head up on her elbow, tucking her legs on the bed. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she could see the ease of his smile. Happiness looked good on him.
“You should laugh more.” The words popped out without thinking of anything beyond the light in his eyes.
His laughter stopped like water dammed, yet his smile stayed in place. His heat seemed to travel across the space separating them, flushing her body.
“What were you doing up so late?” he asked.
“Talking to Edwin.”
“Who’s Edwin?” Suspicion wiped his smile away.
Her knee-jerk reaction was to tell him none of his business, but the quote permanently inked on his body came to mind. Like Ghost, she had to earn his trust because of past mistreatment.
“Don’t get your shorts in a wad. Edwin is a real man, but I haven’t actually met him. I was commissioned to paint his portrait.”
“Does he live in Falcon?”
“Nope. He’s some bigwig banker in upstate New York. A good friend of mine runs an art gallery in New York and funnels work my way. This painting will hopefully pay for the electrical upgrades.”
“I told you’d I’d help with those.” He turned to face her, mimicking her stance, his knees curling up and bumping hers. “If you hadn’t inherited this house, would you still be in New York?”
“Probably. But New York was hard. There are so many amazing artists, and I was never sure if my stuff measured up. Inheriting Hancock House felt like an opportunity. I didn’t realize what kind of state it was in, of course. I hadn’t been home in a long time. Too long. My father . . .” Her throat clogged. The weeks after her father’s death had been a confusing mish-mash of regret and longing and sadness. Why was she telling him this?
He skimmed callused fingertips down her forearm until his hand landed on top of hers. “Were the two of you close?”
Her unexpected tears eased and her throat opened, but her voice emerged reedy and tremulous. “Not really. But he’d been trying to get me home for a visit, said he wanted to spend time with me. I kept putting him off, too busy, too broke to fly home. Then one night, he wrapped his car around a tree, and my ‘someday soon’ was never going to happen.”
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