Page 30 of Haunted Ever After

Her hand tightened in his, and she leaned her head against his arm as they continued up the beach. Yeah. He hoped that she could get used to this. Because he really, really could.

Fourteen

Cassie couldn’t figure Nick out.

That first night, at the ghost tour—she kept thinking of it as their first date, but maybe she was reading too much into it—he’d kissed her afterward. More than once. And it had been…well…The feel of his lips on hers, the slow stroke of his tongue against hers, the way his hands had slid up her back—all those sense memories now had starring roles in her dreams. Dreams that she awoke from panting, desperately trying to draw in enough oxygen while the rest of her body calmed and cooled.

But he hadn’t so much as kissed her since that night.

Cassie would think he wasn’t interested, but all the other signs indicated he was. He was always happy to see her when she dropped by the café with her powered-down laptop. He knew she liked the cinnamon banana bread, and the way she liked her coffee. He wouldn’t have taken her on a romantic moonlit walk on the beach after a dazzling sunset last night if he wasn’t interested, right? Right?

She was just getting her workday started—i.e., packing up her dead laptop and bringing it to Hallowed Grounds for power, coffee, and a nice ogle—when there was a knock at the door. She blinked for a long moment at Buster, standing there on her front porch.

“Nick said I had to come by,” he said, with the air of an old man who didn’t like his work being questioned by whippersnappers.

“Oh.” She remembered now. “It’s just that my laptop still won’t charge. I don’t know what—” She trailed off because Buster had walked right past her into the house, to where her laptop sat by her bag on the dining table. He took the cord out and plugged it in, and the damn thing betrayed her once again as it beeped to life.

“What is the deal?” She put her hands on her hips, disgusted. Was her outlet a misogynist or something?

“No charge.” He waved a hand as he walked back out the door. “But Nick’s got a point. I must have missed something. Let me get my tools.”

“But I…” Her protest died as he thumped down the front stairs toward his truck. “I have work to do…” she said, mostly to herself.

It was a noisy morning. While Cassie answered emails, and even took a Zoom call on her phone out on the front porch, Buster tested her outlets and then tested them again. He joined her on the front porch, leaning on the doorjamb as she clicked Leave Meeting.

“I found one loose wire. One. And I am almost positive that it has nothing to do with your problem.”

Cassie had to agree. She couldn’t continue like this, having Buster come over every day to plug in her laptop like she was doing it wrong. So once he was gone she found that business card from Nick’s bulletin board. Simpson Investigations. She set an away message on her laptop and headed downtown.

Simpson Investigations was a small clapboard building on the main drag, past The Haunt and around the corner, tucked between a smaller T-shirt shop and a place that sold discount crystals and wind chimes. There was nothing about it that looked particularly uncanny, just a plain black sign with the name in stark white letters. It was so nondescript that it could have been a law firm or an accounting agency. Cassie checked the card in her hand against the building. Address was the same, name was obviously the same. She was in the right place to talk to someone about getting rid of the ghost in her house. So why did it feel like she should have a shoebox full of receipts under her arm?

Then again, what was a ghost-hunting business supposed to look like from the outside? A Halloween haunted house? Should it be festooned in plastic skeletons? Plastic-bag ghosts? Dry ice machine fog?

Inside, a woman not much younger than Cassie who sat behind the receptionist’s desk gave her a brisk, professional smile, which only heightened the whole shoebox-of-receipts feeling. “Good morning. How can I help you?”

“Hi.” Cassie held up the card. “I got this from the coffee shop. Hallowed Grounds? And I—”

“You have questions.” The receptionist’s smile remained bright and professional, but dipped a fraction. She ticked the sentences off on her fingers one at a time. “No, it’s not a joke. Yes, it’s real. Yes, my grandmother can communicate with the dead. No, you can’t make an appointment to watch her do it. She can’t, as she likes to say, pull a ghost out of her ass.”

Cassie blinked. “If she could, I hope she’d charge extra for it.”

That got a laugh out of the receptionist, and a little of that professional attitude sloughed away. “Okay, I like you. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” Cassie said, “I do have a question, but nothing like those. Nick said I should come by and talk to you…or talk to your grandmother?…about a ghost in my house.”

“A ghost in your house? Now, that’s the kind of thing we’re here for.” The receptionist’s blond ponytail swung over her shoulder as she turned to her computer screen. “So where’s home?”

Cassie pointed down the street, but the receptionist’s gaze was locked on her computer, waiting for the actual address. “1334 North Beachside Drive.”

She typed it in. “City and state?”

“Right here and…right here.”

She looked up from her computer. “You live here? You’re a local?” She covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I just assumed you were a tourist.”

“I get that a lot.” What was she doing wrong around here to make people think she was from out of state? This whole conversation could use a do-over. “I’m Cassie.”

“Libby.” Her professional smile had melted away by now, replaced by one that was a hundred times more genuine. “You said Nick sent you over?”

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