Betwixt Page 11

  The ghost had once been a tall and thin man, with narrow shoulders and a lanky frame, his limbs just a smidgen too long for his body. His eyes were deep-set and dark, and his large, bulbous nose overshadowed his thin lips. His attire was the most interesting thing about him. He wore an old-fashioned hat which, for whatever reason, reminded me of something a steamboat captain might wear. The rest of his outfit was similar: a pair of linen pants with matching jacket and a button-up shirt, sans tie. I couldn’t say what the colors were, because all of the ghosts I’d met were the same shimmering, silver-purple color and weren’t quite solid. If I’d had to guess, though, I would have said beige.

  Another thing that all ghosts seem to have in common is that they can float through objects and walls as easily as a hot knife passes through butter. While moving, their shapes become fuzzy around the edges, almost like a glittering shimmer. However, as soon as they’re stationary, the details of their appearance sharpen once again. My current spectral visitor seemed to be appraising me, waiting for me to speak.

  I squared my shoulders as I faced him. “What can I do for you, Lenny?”

  The Beechwood Manor was crawling with supernaturals and there was never a shortage of strangeness, but having my afternoon interrupted by a random ghost was definitely a first.

  At least, I’m pretty sure it was. It was easy to lose track of the madness.

  “I like your cat,” he said, eying the still partially opened door where Boots had made his hasty retreat.

  Okaaay.

  “Can’t say I’m sharing your sentiment at the moment,” I said, considering the pile of ruined peppers at my feet. Glancing back up, I cocked my head. “Are you new in town, Lenny?”

  Lenny’s eyes shifted back to mine. “How come you can see me? Hear me?”

  I sighed. Apparently he hadn’t been briefed on how conversations usually worked. “I’m a witch. As such, I’m tuned in to supernatural and paranormal happenings, which includes ghosts.”

  Lenny gave a tiny hint of a nod but didn’t say anything else. His dull eyes went back to searching the room, which suddenly felt too small. I glanced over my shoulder, wishing Boots would come slinking back to offer me a head-butt to the shins as was his traditional apology. “Lenny, is there something I can do for you? Not to be rude, but I have a lot of work to do here and would really prefer to be left alone.”

  Gardening wasn’t exactly a spectator sport.

  Lenny floated back and hopped up to assume a reclining position smack dab in the middle of my workbench.

  I ground my teeth together. Okay, apparently not being rude wasn’t going to work. “Lenny, I—”

  “I grew up here in Beechwood Harbor,” he interrupted dispassionately. “My father helped build this house.”

  I craned my neck to look up at the Beechwood Manor. Dusk was rapidly falling and the lanterns on the wrap-around porch had just turned on, casting a cozy glow over the meticulously maintained yard. Was he looking for an invitation inside? Technically speaking, he didn’t need one. That was more of a vampire-exclusive rule. However, maybe that was what he wanted? I didn’t really want to let him inside, although I wasn’t sure why. Something about him rattled me, mostly his unwillingness to answer direct questions or maintain eye contact.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” I said, turning back to him. If his father had helped build the stately manor, that meant he was likely creeping up on a hundred years old himself. Or, perhaps, a hundred years deceased? There wasn’t exactly a polite way of inquiring about such things.

  “He hated it,” Lenny replied flatly.

  Well then.

  I brushed my hands off on my apron and gave my half-finished repotting project a wistful look. “Why’s that?”

  Lenny shrugged.

  I held up a finger. “Excuse me.”

  He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even move or blink. Creepy.

  I shoved out of the greenhouse and hustled up to the back door of the manor. Hurrying into the kitchen, I bellowed, “Posy!”

  The door on the other end of the large, sunflower-yellow space opened and my boyfriend, Adam St. James, sauntered into the room wearing his signature jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket along with a wide smile. “Hey, gorgeous. Posy’s not here,” he told me. “Are you done for the night? Good timing. I’m starving.” He wandered closer and lifted the stack of take-out menus from the far end of the L-shaped kitchen counter. “Wanna order in?”

  “No, actually.” I stomped to the sink and flicked on the hot water, using my only slightly-dirty elbow. “I’m not done. I was interrupted,” I grumbled, waiting for steam to rise from the spray of water. Once it was hot, I rinsed my hands and then lathered them up with a healthy amount of dish soap, working to scrub away every flake of potting soil and fertilizer.

  “What happened?” Adam asked, perusing the menu for a Chinese place one town over. He flipped it over. “I think Evie and Teddy said this place was all right. Wanna give it a try?” Evie, one of two roommates, is our take-out connoisseur because, even though she’s a witch, she can’t even magic a piece of toast without burning it.

  I flicked off the water, and went to the stove to retrieve the kitchen towel. I dried off my hands and threw the wadded up towel on the counter. “There’s a strange ghost in my greenhouse.”

  Adam glanced up from the menu. “What?”

  “He says his name is Lenny. I don’t know much else. Oh, except that he likes cats.” I cast a look around the kitchen. “Speaking of, where’s Boots?”

  Adam grimaced. “I caught him hacking up some green stuff in the foyer so I put him out in the front yard.”

  I sighed. “He’s definitely getting turned into a hat.”

  “You want me to talk to this ghost?”

  “I’m not sure what good it will do, but sure.” I shrugged.

  Adam pushed off the counter and returned the paper menu to the top of the stack. “All right, but then we’re ordering some food.”

  “Fine, fine, fine.” I followed him as he opened the back door. “Where is Posy anyway? She’s sure been gone a lot lately. I remember, back when I first moved in, I thought she had more of a ghostly Miss Havisham thing going on. Now she’s rivaling Lacey in the social-life department.”

  Adam chuckled. “Next thing you know she’ll be joining up with some ghost gal-pals and entering beauty pageants.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Oh stars … can you imagine two of them under one roof?” Lacey was our other roommate; a vampire and a diva beauty queen. Sometimes the combination was enough to make a saint swear.

  Adam jogged down the back steps and crossed the yard. “Given Posy’s disdain for all things sparkly and frivolous, I think we’re safe. It’s a fun thought, though.”

  He pulled open the greenhouse door and slipped inside.

  I sent up an orb of light and frowned at the empty space. “Okay, that’s weird.” I looked around one more time. The atmosphere still felt off. Lenny had to be somewhere nearby. “He was just here and from the looks of him, he wasn’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “What all did he say?” Adam asked over his shoulder as he scanned the tree line at the back of the property.

  “He said his name is Lenny Knowles. And that his father helped build the manor. Other than that, not much more than he used to have a cat.” I shook my head. “It was bizarre, to say the least.”

  Adam shrugged, satisfied with his search. “I don’t know, gorgeous. Maybe he was just passing through.”

  “Maybe, I guess.”

  A scratching noise sent me jumping back against the workbench, one hand raised, magic at the ready. Adam laughed. “Steady there,” he said, moving to open the door. Boots squeezed through and made a beeline for the peppers.

  “No!” I lunged forward and caught him around the middle. With a grunt, I heaved him up into my arms and marched out of the greenhouse. “You’re banned. Seriously, Bootsie, you have no self-control!”

  “You’re just now
figuring that out?” Adam snorted.

  “Remind me to set a cat-proof ward on the greenhouse tomorrow,” I told him as we climbed the back stairs.

  Boots scowled up at me.

  Adam pulled the back door open and I deposited Boots inside with a bop of my finger on his pink nose.

  “Uh, Gorgeous …”

  I glanced up and straightened with a jolt. Lenny was propped up against the kitchen counter. “What are you doing in here?” I demanded.

  “I wanted to see your cat,” Lenny said, fixated on Boots.

  Boots recoiled and wound around my ankles. Something was definitely not right.

  Adam stepped forward and folded his arms over his broad chest. “You have five second to tell us why you’re standing in our house uninvited. Unless it’s for a very good reason, you’re not welcome here.”

  Lenny shrugged. “I’m welcome anywhere I want to go.”

  I blinked. Was this guy for real?

  Adam snarled. “You need to leave. Now.”

  Lenny smiled and I saw that he was missing a tooth. As infuriating as he was proving to be, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn someone had knocked it right out of his mouth. “You gonna make me, pretty boy?”

  “That’s it.” Adam surged through the swinging door that led to the living room. I stayed glued in place, wondering if there was a spell I could cast to disperse the specter. Before I could come up with something to try, Adam returned, wielding a fire poker. He held it up with a victorious grin. “You know what this will do to you, don’t you?”

  Lenny’s smile faltered.

  My eyebrows shot up. “Adam?”

  He held out a hand to me. “I got this, gorgeous.”

  “Fine!” Lenny said, rising up. “But this isn’t the last you’ll see of me.”

  “Wanna bet?” Adam growled, waving the poker at the ghost.

  Lenny pulled a face. “Wait until I tell Earl what you’ve done to his home!”

  The poker passed through the ghost and the silver particles burst apart. Lenny’s face registered the shock and then, poof. He was gone.

  Boots hissed at the series of sharp popping sounds that followed.

  Adam’s chest heaved as though the strike had required a lot of energy. “There!” he said to himself. Without another word, he left the kitchen, reappearing moments later without the poker.

  “What did you just do?” I asked nervously.

  “An old trick I learned. My college frat house was haunted.”

  I blinked. “College frat house?”

  I wasn’t sure which was more shocking, that Adam had just destroyed a ghost, or the revelation that he had been in a fraternity.

  “It was a phase,” he assured me with a sheepish grin.

  “What does the poker do? Is Lenny …” Dead wasn’t the right word. He’d already been dead.

  “I’m not sure where they go, but he’ll be out of commission for a little while. Displaced. The iron is what does it.” Adam shrugged. “If he’s stubborn, he’ll come back, but we bought ourselves enough time to have a peaceful dinner.”

  I twisted the end of my long, auburn ponytail as I mentally replayed the scene. Something about it was nagging at me. Suddenly, it hit me like a physical punch in the head. “Adam! Did you hear what he said? He said to wait til he tells Earl what we’ve done to his home!”

  “So?”

  “Tells? As in, present tense?”

  Adam’s eyes widened. “You don’t think—”

  I nodded. “He knows Earl! Posy’s Earl!”

  Adam’s eyes shifted guiltily back to the spot Lenny had been hovering. “Stars.”

  I clamped a hand over my mouth. This was bad.

  “We can’t tell her,” Adam decided.

  “How can we not?”

  “Holly, we don’t know how she’ll take it. A bombshell like that could send this whole manor toppling to the ground.”

  He had a point. Posy’s soul was somehow linked to the manor itself and when her emotions went haywire … well, things got ugly. Last time she’d been set off, every lightbulb in the entire house had shattered in one loud pop. If she found out her long-deceased husband was in fact a ghost but hadn’t bothered to come looking for her, I couldn’t be sure the foundation would be left intact.

  “Maybe she’d be happy?” I ventured.

  Adam frowned at me. “If Earl is a ghost, why hasn’t he come back to the manor in all this time? Posy’s been dead for over a hundred years. She’s hanging around here because she can’t—or maybe won’t—pass into the Otherworld. If she finds out Earl’s been gallivanting all over the world this whole time, never coming back to find out what happened to her, she’ll flip out! I doubt one stone would be left stacked on another. We’ll all be homeless.”

  Chapter 2

  Bat wings.” I started pacing. Boots trotted behind me. “So what do we do? You said the dispersion thing might not last forever. What if Lenny comes back and Posy’s here? He’d obviously know who she was if his father helped build this place. Posy was very involved in the construction, from everything she’s told me.”

  Adam rubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw. “I don’t know. Maybe we should go see that ghost shrink of hers.”

  Posy had recently started attending a ghost support group at the urging of her friend Gwen. “That’s a good idea.” I nodded. “Any clue where this ghost whisperer lives? Posy hasn’t told me much about the group or how it works.”

  “They meet at that new florist shop on Hydrangea Lane.”

  “They do?” I stopped pacing. “How do you know that?”

  Adam shrugged one shoulder. “I followed her one night.”

  “Adam!”

  “What?”

  “You shouldn’t have done that. If she’d have caught you …”

  Adam folded his arms. “Hey, it’s not like I followed her into the meeting and spied on them or something. Yeesh, Gorgeous.”

  “You’re right.” I buried my face in my hands. “Sorry.”

  “Come on. We’ll go see if there’s anything going on, then we can pick up dinner at McNally’s on the way back.”

  I nodded and then glanced down at myself, remembering that I was still caked in potting soil. “Let me shower first. I’m a grubby mess.”

  Adam gave a half-cocked grin. “The cutest grubby mess I’ve ever seen.”

  I rolled my eyes but smiled as I placed my hand on the kitchen door. “Aw, that’s the sweetest compliment I’ve had all week.”

  Adam chuckled. “You know me, a real Casanova.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Lily Pond Floral Design Studio is a quaint shop nestled between a small art gallery and Mr. Milton’s old-fashioned barber shop. The three shops are a newer addition to Beechwood Harbor and were built with small apartments over the shops, likely rented out by the tenants of the respective shops below. As we approached, I slowed to admire the window displays. Lily Pond’s windows were filled to bursting with colorful collections of wildflowers and potted plants. I smiled wistfully, flooded with a longing for spring, my favorite season.

  Adam held the door open for me and jerked his chin to get me to hurry it up. I scurried forward and entered the shop, taking a deep breath to savor the aroma that rivaled the sweet, earthy fragrance of my greenhouse and would likely send allergy-sufferers into shock.

  A tiny bell jangled as Adam let the door fall closed behind us. A bright voice from somewhere behind the counter called out, “Be right there!”

  I glanced around in awe at the variety and quality of the blooms around me and whispered to Adam, “Oh my gosh! It’s so cute! Why haven’t I been in here before?”

  “It just opened a few months ago,” he pointed out, glancing around with disinterest. Flowers weren’t really his thing.

  I sidled up next to him and looped my arm through his. “Is this where you got my Valentine’s bouquet?”

  “Yeah. Although I think your eyes got bigger when you saw the dozen bear claws I got you.�
��

  I laughed. “That’s entirely possible.”

  A dozen bear claws were stiff competition even for a bouquet of wildflowers.

  “I liked the flowers too, though,” I added, squeezing his arm.

  “Sorry about the wait.” A striking young woman stepped out of the narrow hallway and appeared behind the counter. She had long, copper hair that was tied back in a low ponytail. Her bright blue eyes glittered like sapphires against her fair complexion. As a fellow redhead, I was envious that she didn’t seem to suffer from the freckle outbreaks that cropped up on my face as soon as the sun started hanging around for more than an hour or two a day. Her peaches-and-cream skin tone was clear, not a freckle or spot in sight. She placed her hands palms down on the glass surface and offered us a warm smile. “How can I help you?”

  Adam took the lead. “This is going to sound … strange … but do you know anything about the support group that meets here on Wednesday nights?”

  The woman bristled but immediately masked her initial reaction with a serene smile. “I’m not sure I know what you mean. Let’s start over. My name is Scarlet and I’m a floral designer.” She waved a hand around the shop, as though reminding us of our surroundings. This wasn’t a psychiatrist’s office. There wasn’t a chaise lounge or box of tissues in sight.

  Adam glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. We couldn’t risk blowing our cover if she really didn’t know what went on in her shop once the sun went down on Wednesday nights. There was a chance the ghost whisperer might be another employee or maybe a ghost was running the whole thing. All of it could be happening behind the scenes. After all, ghosts didn’t need keys.

  I stepped forward. “Do you know someone named Posy Williamson?”

  Scarlet’s eyes went wide.

  Bingo.

  “How do you … are you …” Scarlet sputtered. “How do you know Posy?”

  “We’re residents of the Beechwood Manor. She’s our landlord,” Adam added carefully. There was still an air of plausible deniability in the statement.

  Scarlet glanced from Adam to me and then back again, skeptical. “Adam and Holly?”