Page 21 of Haunt Improvement
A crackle of green electricity spiraled around her torso, and her black funeral dress shredded out of existence, leaving behind a leather catsuit lined with jeweled studs.“Much better,” she sighed.With a second snap of her fingers, she vanished in a limey spark.
“My, people come and go so quickly around here,” DeeDee said, startled by my cousin’s electric exit.
“Can we see bitty bat now?”Asher called from the second-floor landing.
“Patience, bub,” Daisy chastised him.
“But Papa Ernesto says she’s here now!”
“Are you ready for them,mija?”Hermosa called next, already on her way back up with Dylan’s clothes.
I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat, but I nodded to DeeDee without taking my eyes away from our batty angel’s face.
My doula stepped through the doorway and waved them upstairs.
“Yes!”Asher squealed, tearing ahead of his mother andabuela.
“Gently, now,” Daisy warned as he crawled in beside Dylan, stretching over his uncle’s thick arm to get a better look.
“Yup, she’s just a bitty bat.”Asher stroked the little curl on her head with a gentle finger.
“For now,” Dylan agreed.“Give her time.”
“What will we call her when she’s no longer bitty?”Asher asked.
“Anything but Yanet,” a deep voice replied.
Everyone’s heads snapped up, our focus shifting away from the baby with break-neck speed.A ghostly apparition stood at the foot of the crib, one arm reclined over the railing near the bat and broom mobile.His features sharpened, and a vague sense of recognition struck me.
“Dios mío.”Hermosa tried to cross herself, but she fainted halfway through.
Asher clapped his hands, realizing we could all see the ghost.“I told you Papa Ernesto lived in the nursery!”
* * *
“PAPA?IS IT REALLYyou?”Dylan asked, tugging on the shorts and shirt his mama had fetched.Being naked in front of my doula and cousin hadn’t phased him, but somehow free-balling it in front of his ghostly pops was crossing the line.
“Yes, is it really you?”Hermosa wanted to know, too.She blinked dreamily up at her late husband, still incapacitated on the floor where DeeDee fanned her with one of the baby books.My deer Shifter doula was the only one who looked truly spooked.I’d seen too many of Dylan’s late Mamas and Papas to be rattled by them now, but there were worse fears to fret over.
“We broke the curse,” I insisted, but it sounded too much like a question for my liking.“How are you still here?”
“You broke the curse, all right.”Ernesto chuckle, and my skin crawled at the idea of him peeping on the sex ritual Dylan and I had performed to free his family from their involuntary haunting.
“Thenwhyare you still here?”I demanded a second time.
“I wanted to meet mynieta, of course.”He managed to look more annoyed than I was, which was saying something.Then he had to go and add, “All youractividadin the orchard, I knew it wouldn’t be long.What’s another year or two when I’ve been here for over twenty?And then I learned of mynieto!”he said, greeting Asher with a wide smile.“Your father would be so proud.”
“Why have you not shown yourself before now?”Hermosa asked.The hurt in her voice was palpable.If Dylan had succumbed to the curse and then hid from me, I would have brought him back just to kill him again.But maybe that was just the vengeful West in me.
“Mi amor, mi vida,” Ernesto said, kneeling to cup Hermosa’s cheek with his ghostly hand.“You left me so long ago, alone in this house after I’d fallen to the curse.I feared you did not want to see me, that I would only cause you distress.”
“Mi corazón,” Hermosa wept.“I am so sorry.I could not bear to be in this house, knowing it would one day steal our sons away, too.Forgive me?”
“Siempre.”
The tender moment was broken by a cacophony of screams from the batamigas downstairs and panicked screeches in the belfry above.
“We have company,” I said, realizing that having the baby hadn’t zapped my ability to semi-understand the bat colony’s noises.Strange, curly silhouettes cut through the rainbows on the nursery floor.
