Authors: Rhys Ford
Charity’s scream shattered the windows into thousands of speckled shards, and Wolf’s ears crackled in pain. He was sure he was bleeding out of his nose at the very least. Wolf heard Cin cry out, but his focus was solely on Tristan. Wincing from the cacophony hammering at their senses, Tristan squared his shoulders and murmured something Wolf couldn’t hear. Gripping the doll by her ankles, he heaved her into the fireplace.
If Charity’s scream was of pain and anger, the doll’s caterwauling was one of release. Tristan’s powerful swing smashed its porcelain body up against the fireplace’s brick back wall, and it broke, falling in an avalanche of fabric and shattered ceramics into the hungry flames.
There was one final cry, and then the room went white as Charity’s body unraveled before their eyes. Bit by bit, the noise of the advancing dolls in the hallway fell off, but Wolf couldn’t take his eyes off the ghost as she disintegrated before them. A cold wind poured into the living room through the broken windows, and Charity’s ashen remains were caught up in a gust. Before either man could say or do anything, she was gone—carried off on the midnight breeze.
T
HE
CAMEL
was back. So was the small frolicking red calf, who seemed more interested in pissing off the camel than eating any of the sweet alfalfa Sey’d laid down for them in the paddock’s trough. Tristan was still moving slowly, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t extinguish with a good dose of aspirin.
Wolf’s kisses seemed to work just as well—and those’d come fast and furious since they’d tossed Charity out on her ass.
The cousins were saying their final good-byes. Cin was heading back to Las Vegas to clean up a few things. Then he’d join them at Hoxne Grange so Wolf and Tristan could begin official Hellsinger lessons.
Or at least as official as they were going to get. Gildy’d left them the day after they’d evicted Charity from Sey’s house and somehow ended up at the Kincaid main compound, carrying tales about what the cousins had been up to. A stern phone call followed. Then Cin chewed someone apart through the lines, his deep voice ripping past arguments and pleas alike. Tristan hadn’t stuck around to see what the outcome was. From what he could hear, someone was in trouble, and knowing what he did of Wolf’s family, it seemed like they were looking for someone to blame.
Cin wasn’t having any of it, and neither was Sey or Wolf.
“They can have the crazy old woman,” Sey grumbled. “She tried to kill us!”
“I want to know where she kept getting guns from.” Wolf poked Cin in the stomach. “How many of those damned things did you bring with you?”
“That one wasn’t mine,” he refuted. “I only do sawed-offs. I’m shooting salt, anyway. Might as well make as wide a splatter as I can. Long barrels get too clogged up. She probably stole it back from Sey.”
“Sure, blame the hauntee,” the woman said. “See if I cook you another chocolate chip cookie for the rest of your life.”
“Sey, I love you,” Cin drawled softly. “But if ever I run out of ammunition, I could use your cookies to take down a grizzly bear.”
That’d been nearly a week ago. Tristan’d spent the time communing with the camel, throwing the rubber ball into the pasture for Jack to chase, and sketching out a whole community of crimson monsters who looked remarkably like Highland cattle, right down to the square-bodied baby poking its head where it would be caught on a stile.
“Well, at least the bridge is up.” Cin hefted the last of his bags into his rented Jeep. “You sure you don’t need anything else, Sey?”
“Nah. The guys I’ve got working here will help with anything else. You all go on with your lives.” She stretched, then ruffled her hair until it stood up nearly straight off her head. “The holes in the hall are boarded up, and well, you all certainly cleaned up a bunch of my old junk stock.”
“Yeah, next time, just ask for help to get rid of it,” Wolf grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against his SUV. “You don’t need to call up a poltergeist just to get us down here.”
“Hey, better than dinner and a movie,” Sey laughed, kissing Cin on the cheek as he bent down to hug her. “Bye, kiddo. You come visit more often.”
“Promise,” he said with a nod. He and Wolf had a quick hug that could barely pass for a manly second. Then they broke away, shoving at each other’s shoulders. Cin craned his neck and called out, “Tris!”
“Yeah?” He was ambling slowly over, more from a reluctance to leave than anything else.
“You did good, kid.” Cin cuffed him on the shoulder when Tristan drew in close. “Looking forward to what you can do up at that place of yours.”
“Just remember, the ones that live there are off-limits,” he cautioned.
“Hey, just the fact I might see them is exciting,” Wolf’s cousin drawled. “It’ll be nice to come into contact with a ghost that isn’t trying to either kill or scare the shit out of me.”
“Can’t promise Mara won’t try to kill you,” Wolf warned. “Track mud on her floors, and you’re going to go the way of the dodo.”
“Oh, Sey. I forgot to give you this.” Tristan opened the SUV’s door and dug around in his backpack until he found the nanny’s ledger. “Didn’t mean to walk off with it.”
“Hell, you might was well keep it. Who knows what that woman saw?” She shivered. “Can you imagine raising that kid? That nanny deserved a medal.”
“Or a huge retirement package,” Wolf interjected. “Never did find out what pissed Charity off. Was it just another kid stepping on her place? And really, how many wives and kids did the man end up having?”
“Her father had two wives after Charity’s mother,” Tristan said. He’d spent a good amount of time reading through the unnamed nanny’s notes, and he’d been shocked by the pervasive callousness the Sinclair family seemed to possess. “Leona had two sons after Charity died, but she was his final wife. The nanny wrote Leona suffered from melancholy on the anniversary of her daughter’s death, and she wouldn’t let her sons near a body of water larger than a bathtub.”
“All because Simone drowned, and Charity caught pneumonia trying to save her—maybe.” Sey sighed. “That family sounds cursed.”
“Charity didn’t die of pneumonia,” Tristan corrected, and the Kincaids turned to stare at him, their piercing eyes stripping his defenses. “Well, at least the nanny said she didn’t. That’s what they told Mr. Sinclair. She believed Leona smothered the girl with a pillow. Charity wasn’t even sick. Sinclair was away when this all happened. By the time he got home, both the girls were dead and his wife was in shock.”
“Fucking hell,” Cin exhaled. “That is one sick screwed up family.”
“Yep, good to know there’s one more fucked than ours,” Wolf said. “Okay, Thursday. Time to head back to the Addams mansion and see what Cousin Itt is up to.”
T
HE
TRIP
back to Hoxne Grange went by in a blur. Tristan played nearly all of the music he’d loaded onto a couple of CDs and then teased Wolf about the massive library of seventies rock living in his glove compartment.
Hoxne Grange appeared through the fog, a smatter of turrets, weathered brick, and green lawn, and Tristan felt a small flutter of happiness course through him. As much as Sey’d been welcoming and warm, he’d missed the Grange and its quirkiness. Rolling Jack’s red rubber ball on his leg, Tristan sighed as they circled up into the driveway.
“Good to be home?” Wolf asked as he threw the car into park.
“You have no idea,” he replied softly. “You?”
“I’ve never really had a home, babe. We moved around too much.”
The sadness in Wolf’s eyes made Tristan want to kiss away the shadows. Leaning over the SUV’s cab, he pressed his mouth to Wolf’s cheek, his lips tickled by Wolf’s stubble.
“You’ve got a home here, Kincaid,” he whispered.
“Thanks, Pryce,” Wolf whispered as he squeezed Tristan’s hand. “Okay, let’s get unpacked and hope Ophelia Sunday’s got dinner planned. I don’t think I could choke down another slice of pizza.”
“If you guys hadn’t damaged the stove when we were trying to get the kitchen floor clean, that wouldn’t have happened.” Tristan took the steps two at a time, then threw the front door open when he reached the top.
The lobby was exactly as he’d left it, with the exception of new fresh flowers decorating the space. The reception desk was unmanned, a troubling state considering two filmy shapes were standing in front of it. A broad-shouldered man hit the desk bell once, its jingling chime echoing up into the high ceiling. Beside him, a long-haired young woman with flowers in her hair adjusted her tiered gypsy skirt around her legs, her bare toes tipped with orange nail polish. His smile was bright against his creamy brown skin, and the love in his eyes was thick enough to be poured into a champagne glass.
“Ray?” Tristan gaped at the man as he walked down the lobby to greet the ghosts. “Petal?”
“Hello,” Ray replied, but the confused, polite look on his face told Tristan the young man didn’t remember him.
“Someone called ahead to let me know you were coming,” Tristan lied. “Let me check you in.”
He went through the motions, old familiar chatter, then handing over the keys to the honeymoon suite to the enamored couple. Wolf stood at the end of the desk, listening to him and smiling. He didn’t know if Wolf saw Ray and Petal or if the conversation was one-sided, but it no longer mattered. Wolf didn’t think he was insane and was willing to go toe-to-toe with him against his uncle.
That was all for tomorrow. Today, he was going to enjoy having ghosts who didn’t want to kill him and a good helping of lasagna after a nap.
With Ray and Petal checked in and gone, he leaned on the reception counter and wiggled his eyebrows at Wolf. The whole gay thing was getting easier, but then he’d had some practice. If he was lucky, he’d get in even more practice before Cin arrived, and Tristan said as much to Wolf when he walked around the desk to hug him.
“You think Cin’s going to kick our asses?” Wolf murmured into Tristan’s hair.
“Yeah, but we’ll need it. Wonder where Ophelia Sunday—”
“Tristan! Good, you’re home.” Mara announced herself with a long squeak of her crepe-soled shoes. “You need to go to the downstairs study. Your uncle is here, and I think the young lady you left here is about to clobber him across the head with that brass monkey your Aunt Margaret got from Borneo.”
“I think that monkey came from the swap meet. The Borneo story was so no one would throw the thing out. It’s beyond ugly,” Tristan grumbled to Wolf. He extracted himself from Wolf’s embrace and straightened his shirt. “What’s Uncle Walt doing here? How many times can he sue me? Shit, I’m going to owe your sister big time for having to deal with his crap.”
“Not that uncle. The other one. From your mother’s side—Will,” the housekeeper hissed. “And they’re going at each other. She reminds me of how I was at her age. We might have to dig a hole for his body when she’s done.”
“Uncle Will?” Tristan drew up short and stared at the gray-uniformed woman. “Here? What the hell?”
“You’ve got more than one uncle who’s an asshole?” Wolf ate up the distance between them with his long strides. “And my sister is in there with him?”
“Did you miss the part where I said she’s going to kill him? Don’t know what he said to piss her off, but it’s a gale in a coffee cup in there.”
“Tempest, and it’s a teapot,” Tristan corrected absently. “And I don’t think that means what you think it means.”
The hallway to the downstairs study was bright and cheery. If it hadn’t been for the shouts coming from one of the open doors, Tristan wouldn’t have thought anything was up at all. But there was definitely an argument, and from what he could make out, it sounded like Ophelia Sunday and his uncle knew each other.
“What’s up with this uncle of yours?” Wolf snagged his arm to stop Tristan before they went in. “What are we walking into?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen Uncle Will in forever. He’s my mom’s baby brother. He was eight when I was born.” Tristan glanced worriedly at the study. If anything, the shouting was escalating, and he wanted to get in there as quick as he could. “I don’t know that side of the family. My mom wasn’t exactly fond of them. But then again, she wasn’t very fond of me either.”
“Great. Okay, well, just remember, Thursday,” Wolf said, pinching Tristan’s ass. “I’ve got your back.”
“That is
not
my back.”
“Close enough. Back. Rear end. Either works.” Wolf winked, then swept his arm toward the door for Tristan to enter. “It’s a nice one, by the way. Just in case you were wondering.”
Ophelia Sunday’s cheeks were a bright red, and she’d been in midrant when they came into the room. Like most of the Grange’s spaces, the downstairs study was heavily furnished with antiques used by no one but ghostly guests and methodically dusted by the daily staff. It’d been the one room Ophelia Sunday’d taken over—with Tristan’s blessing—and he felt odd walking in without knocking.
“It’s a good thing you’re here, Wolf.” Ophelia Sunday planted her hands on her hips and scowled at her brother. “Look what was hiding in the woodshed.”
Even after not seeing his uncle for years, Tristan would have guessed the long-limbed blond man sprawled on a velvet love seat was his relative. He looked a bit like the pictures Tristan had of his mother. They shared the same chameleon green eyes, and while Tristan’s face was leaner, their bone structure was similar. The man’s blond hair was cut short, with a few silver strands glinting at his temples, and other than some laugh lines near his eyes, there was little to show the eight-year difference between him and his uncle.
“I’ll be damned.” Wolf stared at the man lounging indolently on the couch. “Will fucking Harker.”
“Hello, Kincaid.” His Uncle Will stood, and Tristan nearly took a step back at the darkening fury in his relative’s hard gaze. “Guess the rumors are true. There
is
a Kincaid trying to pull a con at the Grange.”