Page 13 of The Magical Bed & Breakfast

Kate shook her head slowly.

“About the inn being a kind of focal point, where everything goes down.” Rory shook his own head. “I still can’t believe Granddad dropped me off here. Especially after what happened to me in high school.”

Kate got chills. What did everyone in town know about her inn? And why was none of this part of the disclosures she’d been given when she bought it? Had she been too rash? Moved too fast? Was there some massacre or uprising or terrible crime committed on what was now her property? And yet, she loved it here. She loved her inn, even every inconvenient moment of its restoration. “What happened?” She choked the words out.

Rory shook his head. “It was terrifying. Come on. This had to be part of the disclosures when you bought the inn.”

“No!” She was breathing fast.

“No? You really didn’t hear about the teenage boy who got trapped in here while it was boarded up? Who fell down the stairs and lost consciousness? Whose friends got so spooked by something, they took off and left him? Something they would never speak of? How it was hours before the boy was found? When he didn’t come home, a search began, but his so-called ‘friends’ refused to admit they’d been hanging out here and had abandoned him.”

“Someonediedin my inn?” Horrified, Kate nearly whispered it.

“Oh, no doubt,” Rory scoffed. “This place is ancient. There’re probably generations of people who breathed their last here. But no,Idid not die in the inn. See, I’m right here,” he threw out his arms, “and I still can’t believe I’ll be sleeping tonight in the place of my worst teenage trauma.”

“You?” Kate blinked at him. “You were the boy?” she swallowed. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.” She bristled. Despite being disturbed by what he was telling her, she remained strangely offended that anyone could find fault with her home. She loved the vibe of the inn: warm, welcoming, with a hint of mystery.

Or maybe she was ridiculous. Maybe she’d been bewitched by the inn, the only hitch for her being the basement. Everything else about it intimated coziness and security. Odd that she had such a visceral reaction to the property, but it was why she purchased it in the first place, despite all the work needing to be done. Slowly she met Rory’s eyes and realized he had been watching her as thoughts flitted through her brain.

He shifted in his chair, no longer relaxed, no longer joking. “Look, I don’t want to be the one to tell you this.”

She’d lost patience. She hated being kept in the dark, out of the loop. It’s what her father had done when she worked for him. He had always hidden the dangers involved, letting her in only on what he deemed necessary for her to know. She was through with all that. “Spit it out.”

Rory took a slow drink of the long-necked root beer in his hand. He shrugged. “Your inn is haunted.”

Chapter Seven

Rory watched Kateas she took in his proclamation. Really, she took it pretty well, but maybe she didn’t believe him. The general consensus in town was,Oh, poor Rory Throckmorton got stuck in the creepy old inn and scared himself into a frenzy.Everyone would rather act like they didn’t believe him when he said the inn was haunted, even though they’d shift uncomfortably and not quite meet his eyes. Then they would bark out a laugh trying to convince themselves he was joking. It was much easier to believe he’d dreamed up what happened to him.

He hadn’t.

As crazy as it sounded, he’d been there, there in the past with the British occupying the inn. He had watched Prudence Worthy betray her father and the rebels’ cause. His experience had to be real. No way could he know what he did—know what he had spent the next several years researching and verifying—if it hadn’t happened to him.

“Tell me,” Kate said.

He wondered if she was humoring him, yet something in her dark brown eyes told him she was willing to listen. He realized she was the first person who had ever really given him permission to share what he knew.

“I’ll do you one better,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He stood, strode toward the inn, and paused briefly to glance over his shoulder. Kate still sat in the Adirondack chair, her white T-shirt and tan shorts in bright contrast to the dark blue of the chair, watching him. She hadn’t moved, but he could tell she was tense, poised to jump up and follow, yet hesitant to go down this path. He understood.

Who really wants proof their home is haunted?

But what he had to show her was better. Because he was pretty certain this secret had not been in her real estate disclosures. “You want to see? You want to know the truth about your property? About what you now own? Because I know the answer to the enigma of the wind you hear at night, where it comes from, and why. I can answer the riddle of the Hazard Inn.”

“Mayfield Inn.”

He gave her a half-grin at being corrected. “Sure, if you say so.”

She shot up, like a jack-in-the-box just released. She even wavered a bit before she steadied herself. Rory took off again, knowing she would hustle to catch up.

“Where are we going?”

“Down into your basement.”

They were on the back porch, and from the sudden creak in the wood he knew she halted. He could almost imagine her suddenly growing roots where she stood. He turned back and took her arm. “Come on, it’s your inn. You need to know.” He tugged lightly. She blinked up at him, her eyes growing darker even as they widened. But then her lips tightened in determination. She had a beautifully expressive face. At her quick nod, Rory started moving again, notexactlydragging her with him. He could sense her reluctance.

At the entrance to the basement, he stopped.

“You have to want it,” he told her.

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