Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Nick was in the best damn mood the next morning.
Sure, Cassie was still struggling with the whole “ghosts are real” thing, but she seemed to be getting past her initial skepticism. And then, of course, there was the way they’d said good night…
Damn, but that woman could kiss. The memory of her mouth was the reason Nick had woken up with a goofy smile on his face. It was the reason that smile had stayed intact through his shower, his first cup of coffee, and getting ready for the day. Maybe Vince was right. Maybe Nick did need someone special in his life. Maybe this was the beginning of something real. The end of situationships.
It wasn’t until he clattered down the stairs that he realized he hadn’t gotten her number. So much for a “good morning” text or similar. But that was okay. He knew where she lived. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if he dropped by sometime. Like later today, after the café closed. He could bring her an iced hazelnut latte. He could…
Nick rounded the corner and there she was, like a remnant of his dreams the night before. She was still in the sundress she wore last night, with a camel-colored oversize cardigan thrown over it. It was way too hot for a sweater, even this early in the day, but Cassie had her arms wrapped around herself, and her eyes were huge in her face. Even bigger than usual. She looked scared. She looked…
“You look terrible.” He drew in a deep breath through his nose as he tried to keep a neutral expression, when all he wanted to do was pinch the bridge of his nose. He was really the worst at talking to people sometimes.
If Cassie was offended, she didn’t let it show. “I need your help.”
“You look like you need coffee.” He took his keys out of his pocket. “I can help with that. Let me just open up and we can…”
“No.” Her brittle voice stopped him in his tracks. “I mean, yes,” she continued, “coffee sounds amazing. But…” She hooked a hand around his elbow, and her touch sent a chill down his spine, and not in a good way. Her hand against his skin was ice cold.
He turned his head slowly and stared hard into her face. Hauntings manifested in all kinds of ways; he was well aware of that. It was a fact he lived with on a daily basis. One of those ways was with extreme cold. Was she…? Could she possibly be…?
But no. She was too real, her eyes were too wild, too alive in her face.
“I need help.” Her voice faltered as she repeated the words. “Please.” She tugged at his arm weakly, like a child who’d had a nightmare, and Nick’s senses went on high alert. This wasn’t like last night, when she’d been mildly creeped out by the idea of ghosts in this town. Something was wrong .
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He put his keys back in his pocket as he let her lead him up the street. He could open a little late; who was going to reprimand him?
It felt weird, walking through the white picket gate to the Hawkins House. For years—decades, even—it had been the place to avoid. Even long after Mean Mrs. Hawkins had died, it had never been a house anyone wanted to linger near. But the night before, he’d stood in front of the house on the ghost tour and he’d been…charmed. It didn’t look like a creepy old house anymore. There was a wicker love seat and matching chair on the front porch, with purple cushions and a plethora of throw pillows, and the falling-down porch swing from decades past had been replaced with a brand-new solid wood one that was painted white. It had been a cozy scene, lit up by her porch light.
This morning the cushions were rumpled, some of the throw pillows were scattered on the porch swing, and a crocheted afghan was half tumbled to the floor.
“Did…” He paused on the porch. “Did you sleep out here?”
“Yeah.” Her keys rattled in her hand, and Nick realized she was shaking. This was serious.
“Hey.” He covered her hands with his, took her keys. “Cassie, what happened? Did someone break in? Did you call the cops?”
She shook her head. “I think…I think someone was already here. Like…before I got here.”
“Before you got home last night?” Nick couldn’t believe this. Boneyard Key wasn’t known for its crime sprees. Sure, sometimes tourists got rowdy during the height of the season and fights broke out, stuff like that. But breaking and entering? Theft? The citizens of Boneyard Key mostly kept to themselves and respected each other’s space.
“Before I moved in.” Cassie’s voice was full of meaning.
“Oh. Oh. ” It took a second for Nick to catch up. “Did you get a visit from Mrs. Hawkins?” This was big news; no wonder she was freaked. “What did you see? Did she say anything?”
But Cassie took his eager questions as mockery. “Don’t you dare make fun of this.” Her eyes were pleading.
“I’m not, I swear!” He held up defensive hands. “She’s never made contact with anyone before. And usually it’s, you know, members of the Founding Fifteen that have the strongest ties to the ghosts around here.”
“Then maybe I should do a 23andMe, because she came through loud and clear!” Emotion blazed in Cassie’s eyes, which seemed to burn away her fear and steady her hands. She snatched her keys back, unlocking the door and pushing it open. “There.” She pointed inside, but her feet stayed firmly on this side of the threshold.
Cassie may have been rattled, but this wasn’t Nick’s first rodeo. He knew to take stock of the temperature of the room as he stepped inside. Nothing out of the ordinary; no ice-cold breeze brushed his skin as he took tentative steps into the living room.
“The kitchen,” Cassie called from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see that she hadn’t followed him inside; she stayed on the front porch, hopping from one foot to the other while she watched his progress.
“It’s okay,” he said. “There’s nothing here.” Of course, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that. Despite having a ghost roommate of his very own, he wasn’t a true expert in this stuff. But he did a slow circle of the kitchen, taking in the unopened Diet Coke bottle in the sink, the neat and wiped-down counters…and the magnetic poetry on the fridge. my house .
Ah. Okay. To be fair, he probably would have spent the night on the porch too.
Cassie picked her way into the house, her big cardigan wrapped around herself like knitted armor. “I got home last night, and everything was cold. And that was just… there . Like a message.”
“The words?” Nick studied the fridge again. That would be an awful lot for a ghost to manifest. “There’s like hundreds of them.”
“Not the magnetic poetry; that’s mine. They help me think, you know? Something to mess with. But…” She swallowed hard and clutched more tightly to her sweater.
Now he was starting to follow. “But you didn’t arrange the words like this?”
She shook her head. “First it was just the word ‘wrong.’ Then I looked away for a second and…” She let out a shaking breath. “And then I decided that I’d go sit out on the porch for a little while. And then it was morning. I didn’t sleep a whole lot.”
“Hmmm. I bet.” He looked back at the fridge. It was an older model, and it seemed awfully loud, humming away here in the kitchen. “Do you hear that?”
“No.” Cassie looked alarmed. “Hear what?”
“You said Buster looked over the electricity, right?” He took a step closer to the fridge, his head tilted, listening intently. Could a kitchen appliance be haunted on its own?
“Yeah, he said it was fine. Which…” She gestured angrily at her laptop, on the table next to where she’d tossed her sweater. It was hooked up to the charging cord, but the other end lay next to the outlet. He bent for it, plugging it in on instinct. He didn’t expect anything to happen; it was like that idle light switch flicking you did when the power was out right after a hurricane.
But the laptop gave a chirp, and Cassie gasped.
“What did you do?” They both looked, dumbfounded, at the green light on her laptop, indicating that it was charging just fine.
“I plugged it in. Just…” He gestured, miming what he’d just done.
“And it’s working?” Cassie stared at her laptop and the outlet as though they’d both betrayed her. There was a low-level buzzing coming from the laptop as it charged. It sounded a lot like the fridge, come to think of it. Maybe there really was something wrong with the electricity in this house. Nick made a mental note to give Buster a call, ask him to come back and make sure he hadn’t missed something.
“Maybe it just needed a man’s touch.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “You’re welcome, ma’am.” It was a stupid joke, but Cassie gave a thin laugh. This was good; if she was laughing at bad jokes that meant she was coming off the ledge.
She looked a lot better, in fact. Nick had been worried when he first saw her this morning, but now the color had come back into her cheeks, and as she sat in one of her kitchen chairs, her cardigan clutched in her lap, she already looked steadier.
“Okay.” Nick took the chair opposite her. “Let’s look on the bright side here.”
“Really? There’s a bright side?” Despite her sarcastic tone, her eyes were pleading.
“You’re inside your house again,” he said. “That was something you couldn’t do last night.”
“Huh.” She looked around the kitchen, as though just realizing she wasn’t still on her front porch. “Good point.”
“Are you still afraid of the place?”
“No…” She sounded surprised. “Everything looks so normal in the daylight.” She leaned an elbow on the table, resting her forehead on her hand. “God, you must think I’m a lunatic. Freaking out like that.”
“Not at all.” He dared to reach out, run a hand up and down her forearm. Her skin was reassuringly warm now. “You’ve had a lot of ghosts thrown at you in the last twelve hours or so. It can be intense.”
“You think?” She heaved a sigh, but her voice was stronger. A far cry from the terrified woman he’d been confronted with this morning. “I don’t know if I’m cut out to live in a haunted house.”
“Not many people are,” he said lightly, but an uncomfortable feeling began to swirl in his gut. He could almost hear what she was going to say next. This town wasn’t going to do it for her. He wasn’t going to do it for her. Whatever was between them would be over before it even had a chance to start.
But this wasn’t about him, he reminded himself firmly. This was about Cassie and the fright she’d had last night. She was running on probably an hour of sleep and had a ghost in her house. It wasn’t the best time to grill her on her future plans.
Meanwhile, the time was at the forefront of his mind. He still had to open the café, and he needed to get going. While his heart wanted to stay with Cassie and do anything to make her feel better, everything else inside him needed to leave. He wasn’t a “take a personal day” kind of guy.
“Why don’t you come back to the café with me? Maybe get a cup of coffee? A latte?” Anything. Anything she wanted. He’d learn to shake an espresso—whatever the hell that was—if that’s what she needed right now.
But she waved him off with a weak smile. “I have coffee here. Maybe I should stay home, stop being so scared of the place. Exposure therapy and all that.”
“Could work.” He hated leaving her alone, but he was already rising from his chair. He really was running late. “You sure you’ll be okay?”
“Yeah.” Cassie sighed as she spoke, but her nod was firm. “I should probably take a nap or something.”
“Might be a good idea,” he said. “Your porch looks cozy and all, but probably not for sleeping.”
“Definitely not. I don’t want to think about all the places I have wicker marks.” She rose from her chair and walked him to the front door. “Thanks,” she said, grasping his hand. “For everything.”
He squeezed her hand. “It’s what I’m here for.” It wasn’t until he said the words out loud that Nick realized it was the truest thing he’d ever said. She’d needed his help, and he hadn’t hesitated. He wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing again. “Here.” He held out his other hand. “I can give you my number. Text or call if you need anything else.” He’d hoped for a smoother, more romantic way to get his number into her phone, but this would have to do.
She handed her phone over immediately. “You don’t mind?”
“You kidding?” He pulled up a new contact entry and tapped in his info. “Unless you want to loiter outside the café all night.” He handed her phone back. “Seriously. I’m here. For whatever you need.” His cheeks flamed at the insinuation. He didn’t mean it like that, but at the same time he did mean it like that.
“Thanks,” she said again. Her voice was lower, and maybe she meant it like that too. If Nick were a bolder man he would have kissed her, but there was still something in her eyes that looked shaken. He didn’t want to push.
Instead he leaned down, brushing his lips across her forehead. “Sweet dreams.” When he pulled back, her eyes were closed, as though savoring the touch of his lips, and she gave a small hum in response. Work, Nick reminded himself. You have to go to work. The people in this town depend on you for caffeine. It was the only thing propelling him out the door and down the street to Hallowed Grounds. He was five minutes late unlocking the door and flipping over the OPEN sign, but there was no one there to care.
Except Elmer, of course. Where the hell have you been? It doesn’t take that long to walk down the stairs.
Emergency , he texted back. Cassie’s not used to this town being so … He hesitated before finishing the sentence. Would Elmer be offended? Ah, the hell with it… haunted.
There was a pause before Elmer replied, and Nick spent the time rushing through his opening duties right before the first customer showed up. In fact, it was a good few minutes before Nick’s phone rumbled in his pocket. It can be a lot if you’re not ready for it.
Wow. That unexpected insight from his ghostly friend made Nick pause, setting down his phone while he steamed some milk. He passed the latte across the counter before ringing it up and wiping his hands on a clean kitchen towel. Are you speaking as one of the haunted or the hauntee?
No comment.
Nick snorted. Elmer certainly had experience being both, and was probably the one person that Nick knew who had that kind of perspective. He’d never thought about what it must be like in Elmer’s metaphorical shoes. Had becoming a ghost taken a lot of getting used to? He suddenly had so many questions.
But before he could formulate any of them into a text, Elmer sent another message. The trick is to ease her into it. Show her it’s not all scary. Because you and I both know it’s not. But she doesn’t.
He had a point.
Nick was used to his mornings being punctuated by texts. Elmer knew that Nick was a captive audience and usually took full advantage. But today his phone stayed quiet until halfway through lunch, when it buzzed again in his pocket. He pulled it out, surprised to see that the message was from a 407 area code. Orlando.
It’s Cassie , the message read. Thanks again.
You feeling better?
She didn’t answer right away, and Nick wasn’t sure what to read into that. But he could be patient. Give her time, he told himself. Maybe she was figuring out the nicest way to say that she’d spent the day packing her shit and was halfway back to Orlando.
Nick was always fantastic at hyperbole.
Her response, when it finally came, wasn’t nearly as drastic. I’m not scared of my kitchen anymore, so that’s progress.
Baby steps , he replied before clicking his phone off. He had an idea. Elmer was right. Cassie needed to see more of Boneyard Key. Beyond the gimmicky ghost tour, and away from what went bump in the night in her house. Nick knew exactly what Cassie needed to see.
He allowed himself a quiet smile as his plan took solid shape in his head, then he turned back to the kitchen. “Still waiting on that chicken Caesar salad, Ramon!” He raised a hand in acknowledgment to the guy in the baseball cap by the window who looked more like a cheeseburger guy than a chicken Caesar salad guy, but what did Nick know? Tourists were weird.