Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
Cassie couldn’t figure Nick out.
That first night, at the ghost tour—she kept thinking of it as their first date, but maybe she was reading too much into it—he’d kissed her afterward. More than once. And it had been…well…The feel of his lips on hers, the slow stroke of his tongue against hers, the way his hands had slid up her back—all those sense memories now had starring roles in her dreams. Dreams that she awoke from panting, desperately trying to draw in enough oxygen while the rest of her body calmed and cooled.
But he hadn’t so much as kissed her since that night.
Cassie would think he wasn’t interested, but all the other signs indicated he was. He was always happy to see her when she dropped by the café with her powered-down laptop. He knew she liked the cinnamon banana bread, and the way she liked her coffee. He wouldn’t have taken her on a romantic moonlit walk on the beach after a dazzling sunset last night if he wasn’t interested, right? Right?
She was just getting her workday started—i.e., packing up her dead laptop and bringing it to Hallowed Grounds for power, coffee, and a nice ogle—when there was a knock at the door. She blinked for a long moment at Buster, standing there on her front porch.
“Nick said I had to come by,” he said, with the air of an old man who didn’t like his work being questioned by whippersnappers.
“Oh.” She remembered now. “It’s just that my laptop still won’t charge. I don’t know what—” She trailed off because Buster had walked right past her into the house, to where her laptop sat by her bag on the dining table. He took the cord out and plugged it in, and the damn thing betrayed her once again as it beeped to life.
“What is the deal ?” She put her hands on her hips, disgusted. Was her outlet a misogynist or something?
“No charge.” He waved a hand as he walked back out the door. “But Nick’s got a point. I must have missed something. Let me get my tools.”
“But I…” Her protest died as he thumped down the front stairs toward his truck. “I have work to do…” she said, mostly to herself.
It was a noisy morning. While Cassie answered emails, and even took a Zoom call on her phone out on the front porch, Buster tested her outlets and then tested them again. He joined her on the front porch, leaning on the doorjamb as she clicked Leave Meeting.
“I found one loose wire. One. And I am almost positive that it has nothing to do with your problem.”
Cassie had to agree. She couldn’t continue like this, having Buster come over every day to plug in her laptop like she was doing it wrong. So once he was gone she found that business card from Nick’s bulletin board. Simpson Investigations. She set an away message on her laptop and headed downtown.
Simpson Investigations was a small clapboard building on the main drag, past The Haunt and around the corner, tucked between a smaller T-shirt shop and a place that sold discount crystals and wind chimes. There was nothing about it that looked particularly uncanny, just a plain black sign with the name in stark white letters. It was so nondescript that it could have been a law firm or an accounting agency. Cassie checked the card in her hand against the building. Address was the same, name was obviously the same. She was in the right place to talk to someone about getting rid of the ghost in her house. So why did it feel like she should have a shoebox full of receipts under her arm?
Then again, what was a ghost-hunting business supposed to look like from the outside? A Halloween haunted house? Should it be festooned in plastic skeletons? Plastic-bag ghosts? Dry ice machine fog?
Inside, a woman not much younger than Cassie who sat behind the receptionist’s desk gave her a brisk, professional smile, which only heightened the whole shoebox-of-receipts feeling. “Good morning. How can I help you?”
“Hi.” Cassie held up the card. “I got this from the coffee shop. Hallowed Grounds? And I—”
“You have questions.” The receptionist’s smile remained bright and professional, but dipped a fraction. She ticked the sentences off on her fingers one at a time. “No, it’s not a joke. Yes, it’s real. Yes, my grandmother can communicate with the dead. No, you can’t make an appointment to watch her do it. She can’t, as she likes to say, pull a ghost out of her ass.”
Cassie blinked. “If she could, I hope she’d charge extra for it.”
That got a laugh out of the receptionist, and a little of that professional attitude sloughed away. “Okay, I like you. What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Cassie said, “I do have a question, but nothing like those. Nick said I should come by and talk to you…or talk to your grandmother?…about a ghost in my house.”
“A ghost in your house? Now, that’s the kind of thing we’re here for.” The receptionist’s blond ponytail swung over her shoulder as she turned to her computer screen. “So where’s home?”
Cassie pointed down the street, but the receptionist’s gaze was locked on her computer, waiting for the actual address. “1334 North Beachside Drive.”
She typed it in. “City and state?”
“Right here and…right here.”
She looked up from her computer. “You live here? You’re a local?” She covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I just assumed you were a tourist.”
“I get that a lot.” What was she doing wrong around here to make people think she was from out of state? This whole conversation could use a do-over. “I’m Cassie.”
“Libby.” Her professional smile had melted away by now, replaced by one that was a hundred times more genuine. “You said Nick sent you over?”
Cassie nodded. “He said that Nan…er, Mrs. Simpson…? Your grandmother? That she might be able to help me hammer out some peace with Mrs. Hawkins.”
“Hawkins?” The name was a squeak coming out of Libby’s mouth. “You live in the Hawkins House ? Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t clock the address when you said it!” Computer forgotten, she put her elbows on her desk, cradling her chin in her hands. “This is great. Tell me everything.” Libby’s entire demeanor had changed from the professional receptionist Cassie had first met. Now she was less “filling out an intake form for a new client” and more “fishing for some great gossip.” But Cassie could roll with casual, and there was something so friendly about Libby’s big blue eyes, like she was the kindest cheerleader on the squad. The one who’d do your hair for you in the bathroom between classes and always had gum. It didn’t take long to tell her everything that had been happening since she moved in.
Partway through the story Libby had turned back to her computer, typing things in. “And nothing’s happened since then?” She didn’t sound judgmental, or like she didn’t believe Cassie. They could have been discussing symptoms of a cold.
“No. Things have been pretty quiet.” Sure, Cassie held her breath every time she went anywhere near the fridge, but nothing had changed since last Friday night. None of the magnetic poetry words had moved; my house remained in the middle of the refrigerator door. Cassie sure as hell wasn’t going to touch them. And at this point, they were, what, evidence? “Do you think she left already? Like made her point and then got the hell out?”
The thought gave her hope, but those hopes disintegrated when Libby shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. If she went to all the trouble to let you know it’s her house, she’s not planning on leaving anytime soon. But don’t worry,” she hastened to assure Cassie. “If she was going to hurt you, she would have done it by now.”
Cassie wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She hadn’t even considered that being hurt was on the table. So she settled for a feeble “Yay?”
“That’s the spirit. No pun intended.” Libby grinned as she picked up the phone on her desk—an old-fashioned push-button landline that looked like a movie prop—and started punching in a number. She held up a finger to Cassie as the call connected. “Hey, Nan? I’ve got someone here with a job. I think you’re really going to want to—”
“Have the boy do it.” The voice on the other end was cantankerous, and loud enough that Cassie could hear it through the receiver.
“No, I think you’re going to want to—”
But the woman on the other end wasn’t letting Libby finish a sentence. “You know I’m getting too old to travel, Liberty. Like I said, let the boy do it. He should be able to handle—”
“ The boy is doing that job up in Savannah, remember?” Libby was finally able to cut in by speaking a little louder, a little firmer. “You sent him up there last week.”
There was silence on the other end before Nan spoke again. “Shit. I forgot.” Her voice was contrite, and there was a little wobble in it.
“It’s okay, Nan,” Libby said smoothly. “I have the calendar right here in front of me. That’s why I remembered. And you pay me to remember, right?”
Another silence, broken by a sigh. “Right. So where is it?”
“It’s right here in town. The Hawkins House.”
There was no silence this time. “What?” Nan barked. “Are you shitting me?”
“I am indeed not shitting you.” Libby glanced up at Cassie with a grin, and Cassie couldn’t help but grin back. She tried to picture having this kind of relationship with either of her grandmothers. One had died when she was too young to remember her, and the other had called Cassie a slut in the seventh grade when her bra strap showed under her sundress. “The new owner’s here, and we think she may have met Sarah Hawkins. Had a couple run-ins, and she’d like us to come check it out.”
“Damn right I’m going to check it out. Tell her I can be there on Monday. Noon or so.” Libby raised her eyebrows in Cassie’s direction, and she nodded in confirmation. Once they hung up, Libby bounced in her seat, clapping her hands together like a child on her way to Disney World. “I knew she’d be excited. She’s been dying to get into that house for years. No pun intended.”
“People do that a lot around here.” Cassie had never realized until now how many ghostly idioms existed in the English language. If she stuck around she was probably going to hear them all.
First things first. Before she decided if she was sticking around, she needed to get these ghostly distractions out of her life. And out of her house. Enough was enough. It was time to confront Sarah Hawkins.