Page 88 of Treasure and Tarot

She shook her head. “No. Him’s not in his room.”

Colton frowned. “He’s not in his room? Are you sure?”

Sebastian had been sleeping the sleep of the well-loved when Colton had left this morning to go out and shovel.

“Uh-huh. I looked because I was hungry. No Daddy.”

“Gent, could you keep an eye on Miss Abby here. Maybe get her a glass of milk and a little handful of cereal while I go find out where her daddy is?” Colton was a bit uneasy.

“Of course.” Gent’s eyebrows lowered. “I could go, because your leg…”

“No, it’s getting better every day.” He headed upstairs and, sure enough, the master bedroom was empty. Sebastian’s robe was gone and his house shoes were gone too, so he wasn’t dressed, ergo he was not outside.

Colton checked all the other bedrooms, expecting to find him in the nursery because they were in mid-paint, but no.

Okay, odd. “Sebastian, where the hell are you?”

He heard a giggle, and he knew that Abby was downstairs. He also knew that the children never went downstairs, not the spirit ones, they stayed up here.

So that meant that somebody was playing a trick on Sebastian, and he needed to not get all riled up or they would just make it worse.

The ghosts were assholes. All of them. They thought they were cute, and they weren’t very solid on the whole appropriate thing, either…

“Sebastian, can you hear me?”

He heard a thud, and then another very definitive thud.

He looked up. “All right, I hear it. I got you. I’m on it. You’re on the third floor. Let me tell Gent.”

He got his phone, called Gent.

“Are you lost?”

“No, but I think that somebody locked Sebastian up on the third floor, so I’m going to go up and get him. If I get locked up there, could someone come and get both of us?”

“Maybe you should take that door off.”

“I think this is an exceptional idea. Either that or start putting a key around everybody’s waist. I’ll be right back.”

Sure enough, the door to the third floor was shut and locked, the key just hanging out there on the outside.

“That’s a really mean trick. This wasn’t funny.”

He heard another giggle.

He unlocked the door, finding Sebastian sitting at the top of the stairs.

“Oh, I’m so glad you decided to come and find me. I was looking for something slender, and I got a piece of paper. I was going to poke out the key. Slide it underneath the door because I’ve seen this before and it?—”

That wasn’t important, dammit! “What were you doing on the third floor?”

Sebastian shrugged and stood, heading down to him with an easy smile. “I come up here sometimes and try to imagine what it is I’m going to do with it. It’s such a neat room. It’s such a cool space. I just can’t think of anything to do with it.”

“Weirdo.” He chuckled. “Getting stuck is no bueno.”

“Nope.” Sebastian blinked at him. “Where’s Abby?”

“Downstairs with Gent. He came in because the guys showed up to do the rest of the shoveling.”

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