Duck Duck Ghost (3 page)

Tristan ended up under Wolf’s skin, and part of the argument—most of the argument, if Wolf was really honest—was that he was scared. He was frightened by how quickly Tristan hooked his soul and pulled in Wolf’s heart. He hadn’t been looking for love when he went to debunk Tristan’s ghost-hosting inn, but that’s what he found—and he didn’t want to ever let him go.

And that scared Wolf most of all….

“We had a fight, Mom,” Wolf protested. “Things like that happen—”

“You accused him of hallucinating everything the two of you went through!” She turned on him, setting her cup down. Jasmine tea sloshed over the cup’s rim, leaving a small amber puddle on his desk. “What happened at the Grange was—”

“Mom, the iced tea you gave us to drink had euphoric honey in it, and then you left a quart of it in his kitchen cabinet!”

“How was I supposed to know he’d make baklava with it?” She waved off his disgusted look. “Really? Does he look like he’s the type to bake homemade
anything
? Does one even
bake
baklava?”

“He could have poisoned us with it! Honey’s a major ingredient in that.”

“No, really, how do you make baklava? Does it really go into the oven?” Meegan’s attention had obviously wandered off into the intricacies of Greek pastries.

“Jesus, Mom. That stuff was potent. Hell, no wonder we ate ten pizzas after that damned séance. We had the raging munchies. What were you thinking?”

“Just to calm everyone down after the haunting!” Meegan protested. “I’ll even bet you the baklava was good. It was premium honey. So what if it was a bit hallucinogenic? Some of my best memories were when I was a bit baked. Hell,
you’re
here because of a bit of that honey.”

“That’s not the point.” He rubbed at his face, then dropped his hands to his hips. “And I didn’t say what happened that day wasn’t real. I just—”

“You accused him of drugging you and said the whole experience was a mass hallucination!”

“I did
not
say that.” Wolf kept his voice as even as he could. “When I was done tripping along the Timothy Leary Highway—”

“Something that wasn’t his fault—”

“Mom, will you let me finish one sentence?” Wolf gritted his teeth and took a long breath to steady himself. “
Please
?”

“Fine, go ahead.” Meegan threw her hands up. “Talk, but nothing you say to me is going to fix what you messed up. So you got a little bit stoned. It’s just a relaxer—”

“It wasn’t the five minutes of fun-house-mirror world, it was the hour and a half of me living in the bathroom, wondering if I was going to have to reel my guts back in, after the two hours of trying to talk to Tristan’s monster illustrations,” he insisted. “I might have said a few things I wasn’t proud of, but I never accused him of drugging us that day.
You
did that.”

“Afterwards!”

“I told him I loved him and I’d call him in a bit. Did he tell you that?”

“I didn’t actually talk to him about afterwards. He’s very close-lipped,” his mother hedged. “But I definitely got the feeling things went a bit haywire. Then you hied off to God knows where.”

“Florida. I had a job in St. Augustine, and I couldn’t cancel. I was going to call him this morning.” Suddenly tired, he sat on the edge of his desk, wincing when his leg reminded him of his stitches and bruises. “I just needed to think of what I was going to say.”

“I’m sorry is a good place to start,” Meegan replied tartly. “Then I’m sorry again. Maybe even I love you? You
do
love him, don’t you?”

“It’s complicated.” The weariness of dealing with his mother set in, and he rubbed at his leg. “But yeah, I love him. It’s crazy because I’ve known him for what? A month? And it’s not like he’s totally normal. We’re going to have to come to some kind of middle ground.”

“Well, it’s time to uncomplicate it,” his mother ordered. “And I have just the thing for that. Something you both can do together.”

“Why does that scare the shit out of me?” Wolf picked up his coffee and took another sip. The sugar in it hadn’t magically evaporated. “God, I’m going to kill Nahryn. This is like hummingbird food. I
did
text him while I was in Florida.”

“And what did you say? That you were sorry?”

“That we needed to talk.” Admittedly, his messages had gotten more and more insistent with each unanswered text. He hated being ignored, and Tristan could ostrich with the best of them. “And I was an asshole. He didn’t text me back.”

“You should have called. It’s been over a week, Wolf,” Meegan huffed. “Okay, we can fix this. I have just the thing.”

“I’m already going to go up there, Mom. I don’t think I need—” He intercepted her simmering glare. “Fine, what is it?”

“Do you remember Sey? Your second cousin from your Great-Aunt Natty?” Meegan frowned at Wolf’s clueless look. “The one in San Luis Obispo.”

“Sey with the toys? Yeah, I love her. We’ve kept in touch.” A slender, brash woman known for her boisterous laugh and nearly endless energy, Sey was one of the few relatives he positively adored. He’d spent more than a couple of summers as his older cousin’s satellite, a tall lanky girl with sharp elbows and freckles. She’d been the one who’d taught him how to shoot a crossbow… and more importantly, how to run away from a charging bull when he’d accidentally fallen into the temperamental bovine’s corral. “Why? What’s up with Sey?”

“Funny you should ask that,” Meegan practically cackled as she rubbed her hands together. “Because she’s got a problem, and it’s one that is totally up your alley.”

T
HE
PRETTY
older woman wore her years mostly on her shoulders, even though they were straight and pushed back with an innate graceful pride. Her coppery hair was penny bright, curled up into a chignon, and a cameo hung from a shiny black ribbon around her neck. She carried a rosary, her fingers traveling soundlessly over the beads while she stood at the Grange’s threshold. A wind somewhere else caught at her clothes, and Tristan could almost hear the crinolines rustling beneath her full skirt. She smoothed the frock, erasing imagined wrinkles. In life, her fitted dress might have been a vivid color, perhaps a pink or a green to go with her vibrant hair.

In death, it was a bleached white with a turquoise glow about it, shimmering in a trail behind her as she stepped into Hoxne Grange’s main hall.

She hesitated at the threshold, casting one final look behind her. Tristan smiled in what he hoped she would perceive as a welcoming gesture, and when she glanced at him, her shoulders relaxed. The woman crossed over to the Grange’s vintage reception desk, her pale sensible pumps oddly silent on the foyer’s gleaming floors. Reaching forward, she flattened her hand and struck the old-fashioned bell sitting on the counter, its bright jangling startling the young woman standing next to Tristan.

“Do you see her, Ophelia Sunday?” Tristan asked the woman next to him, keeping his voice down to a soft whisper.

“Yes, a little bit. Mostly red hair and her hands.” Her bright eyes, so much like her brother, Wolf’s, studied the hazy image standing at the desk. “But definitely there. Oh, this is so cool. I always sensed them, but this—Gods, thank you, Tristan.”

“It’s—” he started to say.

The bell jingled again, and Ophelia Sunday winced at its shrill ring. “Of course, there’s no missing
that
.”

“I’m here about a room,” the ghostly woman announced imperiously in a lush Irish accent. She was shorter than the slender woman behind the desk, but she still managed to look down her freckled nose. “And I want one of the best, ye hear? None of the back stairs mousetraps ye hear about in these fine places. If it’s going to be me last, then I want something fine. Something posh.”

Tristan smiled and pulled up the Grange’s register. “Of course, I have just the suite for you. If you’d like to sign in?”

“Or I can if you like,” Ophelia Sunday offered. Her nod reassured Tristan of being able to hear the woman, and he grinned, relaxing at her wink.

“I can write me name. Or I’d been able to when I was alive. It’s harder to grab at things now.” The woman struggled to pick up the pen. Like many specters, she had little control over physical objects, but after a few seconds, she gripped the instrument and left her name on the ledger, a scrawling cluster of letters in blue ink. “Ah, it’s much easier here than in Galway. I had a devil of a time moving a scrap of paper off a desk back home.”

“Missus Lisa McInroe,” Tristan read off. “Welcome to Hoxne Grange.”

Then he stepped back and let Ophelia Sunday finish checking Mrs. McInroe in.

There’d been a sense of—relief—when Meegan showed up the week before with her daughter in tow, especially when Ophelia Sunday
saw
Cook arrive, and the dead cockney woman spoke with Wolf’s younger sister. It was like Tristan was suddenly a bit more…
normal
.

He had to stop himself from hugging Ophelia Sunday, but it was close. She’d hugged him instead and whispered in his ear, “You look like you need one.”

So Tristan told himself he wasn’t going to cry either.

Unlike her brother, Ophelia Sunday was enchanted by the prospect of ghostly interaction, and Tristan immediately asked if she would like to stay for a few days or years—just to see if he’d been broken somehow by the encounter with Matt’s poltergeist great-grandmother. Things were off at the Grange, and he’d begun to worry if it was him or the mansion itself. Ophelia Sunday was like a gift from some God who’d finally taken pity on him.

“Ah, I have the crystal shop, but oh—” she’d started to say, but Meegan hushed her daughter.

“I can take care of the shop. It’s not like we don’t have help and managers,” Wolf’s mother said, clasping Ophelia Sunday’s hands in glee. “You can
see
Tristan’s guests. Do you have any idea how fantastic that is?”

“They’re hazy, but I can certainly see them. It has to do with the desk, I think. For me, anyway. Maybe because so much activity is there?”

Her eyes lit up, and Tristan was struck by how similar her smile was to her brother’s.

“I’d love to stay. Actual metaphysical contact is so rare. This is just so… incredible! I’d only gotten impressions before—and some mists, but
this
!”

Unfortunately for the Grange of late, its ghostly contact was now extremely rare. Mrs. Lisa McInroe made only the fourth spirit to walk through the mansion’s double doors following the exorcism of Winifred Culpepper, and that was if Tristan counted the weekly reappearance of Heather Cook, the repeater who’d attached herself to the Grange’s kitchen.

The exorcism of Winifred Culpepper.

Tristan couldn’t stop thinking of that time as a turning point for the Grange—and himself. Summoned by a fierce argument between Wolf’s technicians, Matt and Gidget, the haunting brought with it some serious damage to Hoxne Grange’s interior, and Tristan’s heart suffered probably as much if not more.

“Fucking Kincaid,” he muttered, then gave Ophelia Sunday an apologetic look when she glanced up from explaining about the Grange’s setup to the visiting ghost. “Sorry, different Kincaid. Your brother.”

Ophelia Sunday nodded knowingly. At least he had an ally in Wolf’s sister. It was odd—allies and family seemed to cross over lines Tristan had no experience negotiating, but the women were clearly on his side. If only he understood what his side
was
and why was it important he even take one?

Thinking about Wolf pissed him off, and Tristan longed for another cup of coffee, possibly even a walk out in the mist-coated gardens in the back. He needed to take a breather, but Tristan didn’t want to leave Ophelia Sunday alone. As if knowing what he was thinking, she waved him off, flashing him a thumbs-up as she listened to something the ghost was saying.

“Okay, a walk it is.” Tristan slapped his leg to get his wolfhound’s attention. “Come on, Boris. Let’s go.”

Boris opened his eyes—well, one eye—and gave his owner a skeptical glance. The shaggy dog huffed, his lips flapping over his massive teeth. Then he stretched his legs out in a mighty stretch before easing back into a boneless heap. Giving up, Tristan snagged his travel mug from behind the counter and headed to the back of the house.

After a refill of his mug from the coffeepot in the main kitchen, Tristan headed out to the large terrace overlooking the Grange’s rear gardens. The mist had turned to a light drizzle while he’d been in the kitchen, and the cold dew clung to his face and clothes, cooling him down slightly. Thankful for his heavy sweater, he leaned his elbows on the balustrade and brought his mug to his lips, taking a tentative sip at the hot brew.

“Your wolfhound is a waste of fur and bone.” Mara appeared at his elbow, her mouth pursed into a disapproving moue. “And you should be wearing a coat. You’ll catch your death from a cold.”

The phantom housekeeper pressed her hands down into the pockets of her apron, her bony knuckles poking through the ethereal fabric. She was what a man would have called a comfortable woman a few decades ago, pillowy and soft where needed, with a face that could go from maternal to icy schoolmarm in a second flat. In a lot of ways, Mara’d been Tristan’s mother, or at least his aunt, someone to talk to when he’d spent his childhood summers at the Grange.