Page 164 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

“Like this?” Glenda’s question cuts out as she disappears, only to come back when she returns. “Guess you’ll have to rely on your smarts and your secret sources.” She preens. “It helps to have ghost friends.”

“No kidding, and there should be plenty of ghosts around willing to talk. While the manor is missing a normal history when it comes to blueprints or building plans, it’s infamous for murders and seances.” I’m ready to launch into highlights of its gruesome past when a burst of pain across my temple has me gasping.

“You sure you should start a job with your headache so gnarly it practically called me to you?” Glenda asks. “I mean I stayed for the monster smut and the company, but you really should be curled up in a dark room.”

“Is it that obvious?” The traumatic brain injury that brought me my sexy reaper and the ability to see ghosts also brought non-fun times like migraines, light sensitivity, and vertigo. The massively dark shades I wear everywhere help, but the California sun is brutal even while sinking into the ocean. All its rippling waves shimmer like bright, blinding little blades.

“I sensed your pain across the Veil so…yeah, I would call that obvious.”

So much for thinking I could soldier through another migraine. “The treatment center needs that donation, I’m almost to the manor, and I’m super early. I’ll pop a pill and close my eyes while I wait for the corporate type I’ve been talking to about the consulting job. A corporation called Underworld, Inc. bought the house. Wild, right?”

“Ugh, why would a company need a house? I hate the greedy more than actual demons.”

I snap my gaze to her. The movement sends sickness rolling through me, yet I can’t miss a chance to ask her, “You’ve met actual demons?”

She snorts a laugh. “You crush on a reaper and talk to ghosts. But yeah, some of the demons are kind of rad. I met a demon princess once. She has a major thing for reality television.”

“Okay,” I drawl. Because what else can I say tothat? “We’re here.” I swing the van into the drive and stop in front of an iron gate. “Let me enter the code, and we’ll?—”

“Noooo.” Glenda vibrates with a magical energy field I’ve never seen before. It radiates fear. But what could scare a ghost? “Wren isn’t for a bird or an architect. It’s for Render.”

“What’s a Render?”

She vanishes, leaving my question hanging unanswered in the air.

The gate swings open. I’m so rattled by Glenda’s terror that I make it halfway up the drive to the magnificent manor in all its ruin and disrepair when I realize I didn’t finish entering the access code.

What kind of place is this? Chills race over my skin, and lines zigzag across my vision. Adrenaline spikes the agony already screaming in my head.

Clearing the trees, I spot a man standing atop the few stairs leading to the front door of the house, staring as though he has been waiting for me.

When I’m hours early.

There’s no car, no obvious way for him to have arrived. Yet there he stands, a few miles from the nearest town.

At least his presence explains the gate opening without a code. He must’ve done it remotely after he saw or heard me pull in from the main road. Except the crashing ocean below would’ve muffled the quiet sound of my top-of-the-line electric van, and the trees blocked my view so how could he have seen me?

The pain roaring through my head has to be what’s making me spiral into crazy conspiracy-level suspicions.

I take a deep breath and stare at the manor, trying to reason through at least the one thing that has made sense no matter where I travel or what historical weirdness I unearth. But the architectural mishmash of this house doesn’t compute. I’ve toured the world, yet I’ve never seen another cobbling ofcontradictory towers, dilapidated balconies, and clashing eaves to rival the jumble before me.

Worse, not a single ghost comes out to see who has arrived. Ghosts are nosy by nature. If none have rushed to get the gossip first, the house isn’t haunted.

Which means I’ll need to pray to the history gods I can find some architectural clues inside.

My headache just got exponentially worse.

I pull to stop at a point close enough to give the guy who is way too hot for a corporate gig a friendly wave while I dig in my purse for my pills. Let him think I’m a social media diva who needs to touch up my lipstick before climbing out of the van.

I glance into my bag. It takes me two—okay, maybe three—seconds to grab my meds from the zippered pocket where I always keep them, but when I look up, the scarily hot guy is outside my driver’s door window. My heart flies into my throat which doesn’t help my growing nausea.

How in the world did he get down the stairs, across the drive, and around my van so fast?

I shove at the door, ready to ask him, when he sweeps it open for me.

“Hello, Hayden.”

I swear a flash of scarlet gleams in his eyes.

---