In The Autumn Spirit (Happily Haunted Afters #3)

Prologue

Sylvie

Two weeks ago

The letter came on a late summer day, when the air was thick enough to cut with a knife, the sticky sort of heat that has you craving ice the minute you pull the curtain back.

The humidity made the fact that I’d just been laid off from my job as an assistant librarian even worse because I simply couldn’t afford to crank up the AC anymore.

Not that I really could afford it in the first place.

I walked down to the little mailbox I shared with my neighbor, already soaked in sweat from merely considering going outside, and pulled it out, just like it was any other junk mail or credit card offer or random catalogue.

Lumped in with the normal haphazard assortment, though, was something very out of the ordinary.

The letter—or more accurately, what the letter told me—changed everything.

I had inherited a property in East Texas, and enough money that I could fix it up, according to the documents.

On the condition that I live there for one year before selling it, if I so chose.

There was a number at the bottom of the letter, for some lawyer in Houston I’d never heard of, and I dialed it with shaking fingers as the sun beat down on me.

I’d never been one for unexpected adventures, or trips without itineraries, or to-do lists.

Life just gave me a new plan, though, and I wasn’t going to ignore it.

Especially when this kind of financial help meant I could use as much AC as I wanted.