Chapter 6
Dinner at the Warren house was an unusually somber aff air.
It was taco night, the smell of chorizo and vinegary salsa filling the kitchen, never failing to conjure content, full-stomached feelings of home.
But a cold front had settled since Miles’s “betrayal.” His mom was pissed about Gabriel —but for the record that no one seemed to care about, Miles was mad at her too.
He was being punished when he’d done nothing wrong, and refused to apologize to appease her.
They’d hit a stalemate, and everyone in the house was suffering for it.
Sarah was resolutely silent as she ate. Aunt Robin and Jenna were talking quietly on the other side of the table, Amy failing to act like she wasn’t listening in as Adam tried to talk to her about school.
Miles didn’t bother joining the conversation. He couldn’t discuss anything that was on his mind.
Beside him, Charlee methodically broke a tortilla chip into tiny shards.
She hadn’t said much on the ride home, even when they’d pulled up to drop Gabriel off outside the Hawthorne estate’s massive iron gate.
Whatever was waiting for him inside—if his brothers were going to be furious with him, if Edmund had told Felicity everything—Miles was too tired to worry about it. Let it be a problem for future him.
All he cared was that he’d see Gabriel at school on Monday. He’d made him promise to be there before letting him out of the car.
“Miles.” Sarah caught his attention from across the dinner table.
Her tone was cool but noticeably less barbed than it had been.
That probably had to do with the meaningful glances from Miles’s dad.
“We have a job for you Monday night. There’s a house over in Glenwood the owners suspect might be haunted. ”
Miles despised going to Glenwood. It was one of those rich-person areas where all the houses looked identical, the grass an artificial bright green, trash cans lined up perfectly on the curb.
Sprinklers went off at the same time every morning, there was a minimum of one patriotic decor item for every three houses, and anyone out walking was a potential HOA spy in disguise.
Every time he went, he could feel himself being judged from all sides.
Even the dogs in that neighborhood tracked his movements with critical eyes.
He caught his scowl before it could grow. He’d been practicing Gabriel’s expression of cool disinterest, but he wasn’t very good at it yet.
“It’d be a big help if you could go check it out for me, see if it needs my attention,” his dad added with a tired smile. “I’m swamped right now.”
Most presumed-to-be-haunted houses could be blamed on regular old house things—groaning pipes, mice in the attic, creaky floorboards—and his dad didn’t have the time to determine if every potential client had a real ghost on their hands.
He’d send Miles over to check it out, see if there truly was a ghost hanging around before scheduling a visit to deal with it.
When Miles crawled into bed at night and let his anxious brain catalogue the pros and cons of leaving the family business, not having to creep around other people’s dank basements in search of bloodthirsty poltergeists always landed firmly at the top of the pros.
“Okay.” Short and sweet. Nonconfrontational. Miles kept his gaze on his plate, two uneaten tacos staring back up at him, cilantro wilted from the heat.
He could sense his mom’s frown. Either she didn’t like his tone, or she’d been expecting an argument.
What could he do? She wouldn’t care that he had more important things going on. A frustrated, vindictive part of him wanted to tell her that it was his life at stake now, see if that got her attention, made her worry.
It was already going to be difficult enough to see Gabriel outside of school, with Blanche gone and Miles grounded. Antagonizing his mom further would be a stupid move. He stabbed his fork into his beans and tried to listen to his own logic.
Adam murmured something to Sarah, and she cleared her throat. “Thank you. We appreciate it.”
She was only playing nice because she was being pushed into it. Miles didn’t know if he should continue to be mad, or accept the truce she was offering. He’d never done this before, never even had his mom truly angry with him. He was treading unsteady ground with no idea where to step next.
He took the coward’s way out, defaulting back to the job. “Are Amy or Jenna coming with me?” After his parents had mentioned it was time for the twins to start getting more involved, he’d been waiting for the inevitable moment they were pawned off on him.
Adam shook his head. “Not this one. We don’t know what’s there.”
Sure. Send Miles into the jaws of a potentially evil, murderous ghost, but let the girls stay home.
“Jenna can help me,” Aunt Robin suggested. Since she’d come out of her room, she’d been taking Jenna under her wing. It was kind of her, and Jenna was blooming under the attention. “I wanted to sort and refill our herb stash, and could use an extra pair of hands.”
Charlee stared down at her plate, a muscle in her jaw twitching.
She found it weird her mom was showing such interest in Jenna all of a sudden, but Miles thought it was sweet. He knew his aunt could connect with feeling useless; taking Jenna under her wing was good for them both. She’d had a new sense of purpose these last few days.
“I can help Miles,” Amy insisted, forgetting that she’d pitched a huge fit over the whole thing. She gave him a wide grin, wiggling her eyebrows like a dork.
Great. Between the séance yesterday and being told they’d successfully found Gabriel, Amy clearly thought she was part of the team now.
“No,” his mom stated decisively, turning back to Miles. “Take Charlee with you if you don’t want to go alone. But it doesn’t seem like a two-person job. The clients reported only low-level haunting stuff.”
“I’ve got better stuff to do than waste my time crawling around someone’s dusty attic,” Charlee declared, her tortilla chip now a pile of yellow dust. “You can take my car, though.”
Miles also had better things to do, but he wasn’t about to tell his mom that.
After dinner, he followed Charlee upstairs into her room. She sidestepped a stray pair of shoes and tugged off her sweater, tossing it onto a pile of clothes. Wordlessly, she crawled into her bed and under the comforter, holding it up for Miles in clear invitation.
He joined her, tucking his socked feet under her legs so they didn’t hang over the edge.
Breathing in the scent of her coconut shampoo and lavender pillow spray, Miles’s agitation melted away. He was warm, he was safe, and Charlee was beside him.
She shifted closer until her head rested against his shoulder. A stray red curl tickled his neck. They lay there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the rain pounding on the roof and dripping outside the window, the sky a plummy, bruised purple.
“I’m scared,” she exhaled, an admission meant for only his ears. “I don’t want you to die.”
A painful lump formed in Miles’s throat, a burning hot coal. “Don’t be silly,” he managed. “I’m not going to die. Not anytime soon, at least. Check back in fifty years.”
She didn’t laugh. “What if this is karma for judging my mom when she gave up after losing my dad? What if the universe is trying to teach me a lesson?”
“Charlee. I’m not going to roll over and let death come for me.
I can’t… I don’t know what to do.” His current plan was to try not to think about it too much.
Keep it in his periphery without looking at it head on.
“All I can do is keep moving forward and find a way to change things. We believed I could do it with Gabriel. It’s not any different. ”
Now he understood Gabriel’s infuriating nonchalance after finding out he was going to die. What else was there to do but compartmentalize and push forward?
“But what if you can’t?”
He stared up at her fairy lights, willing himself not to cry. “C’mon, don’t make me do this. I already had to give Gabriel a big speech and convince him not to give up. My brain is about to start leaking out my ears. Nothing is set in stone, okay? The future can always change.”
Charlee sniffled. The shoulder of his shirt was wet from her tears, but neither of them mentioned it. “What am I supposed to do?”
“What you always do. Stick with me. Have my back.”
“That’s bullshit. Give me something I can actually do. A way to help.”
He understood how unbearable it was to sit around doing nothing.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m not blowing you off, I just…
I’m not sure what the plan is. We’re back to square one on the murderer with no leads, but we still have the grimoire.
I guess we’ll focus on trying to break the curse.
” He muffled his yawn into Charlee’s hair.
“I’ll talk to Gabriel on Monday, okay? We need to regroup and re-plan. ”
“I don’t like that we’re supposed to work on the curse when you’re the target of a killer now. They could pop up at any time and murder you,” Charlee muttered. “That should be our priority.”
“What a comforting thought.”
She dug her knuckles into his side. “You don’t get to act all nonchalant about this now because the target’s on your back instead of your boyfriend’s.”
“Ow!” He wiggled away from her attack, one of her fuzzy blankets slipping onto the floor.
“I don’t think that’s how it works. There isn’t a serial killer breathing down my neck, waiting to strike.
Gabriel and I are both going to end up in that tomb and at some point, I guess whoever’s going to kill Gabriel might change their mind and go for me. It’s fifty-fifty.”
“Those odds aren’t remotely comforting.”
Miles wasn’t sure how to explain that in a way, it was. “I don’t want to waste time on something with zero leads when we could be breaking the curse.”
She didn’t agree, he could feel it, but she didn’t argue. “Then you tell Hawthorne to get his head in the game. We can’t afford to waste time chasing after him again.”
“You know why he did it,” Miles argued, trying not to sound like he was defending Gabriel, because he wasn’t.
He was still so mad at him. But if Miles was being honest with himself, he was also touched that Gabriel had tried so hard to protect him.
That he cared enough to put Miles first. That seeing Miles’s death had affected him in such a visceral way.
God, he was a terrible person. A rotten, selfish person.
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she grumbled. She fidgeted with her hoodie tassel before saying carefully, “You really don’t have any suspects?”
He stared straight up at the ceiling so she wouldn’t see the answer. Jocelyn had given them two vague clues: it was a woman, and she needed to be kept away from the grimoire. Only one woman came to mind who would potentially use the grimoire’s magic for her own gain.
Felicity.
Florence’s taunting words to Gabriel had haunted Miles since he’d been warned that the future remained unchanged: If I’m not the one to kill you, someone else will be. I imagine someone close to you, one of your family perhaps, will do the deed. After all, murder is in our blood, isn’t it?
But he didn’t have anything more than an awful intuition. That wasn’t proof, certainly not enough to drop the bomb on Gabriel that his own mom might be the person to kill him.
He’d keep it to himself for now. But from Charlee’s pointed question, he wondered if he wasn’t the only one who suspected Felicity.
“Nope,” he made himself say. “I really thought Florence was the one.”
“We’ll have to be extra careful, then. If anyone comes at you, I’ll pepper spray first, ask questions later.”
A laugh escaped Miles. It was impossible not to feel safe with Charlee watching his back.
“That tactic isn’t as effective as you think. Nadia sounded kinda into being threatened.”
“Of course they were.”
Miles waited, but she didn’t continue. “So…” he prodded. “Are we going to talk about them?”
“You’re trying to change the subject.”
“Sorry I don’t want to talk about being murdered anymore.” He tugged one of her stray curls, getting swatted for it. “You kept their number. Were you just being nice, or are you going to text them?”
Charlee was silent for a second. “I haven’t decided yet.”
That wasn’t a no. Miles had absolutely zero right to be touchy with anyone for not sharing the details of their sexuality, but it still stung a little. Did she not trust him?
Charlee knew him too well. “Don’t do that. It just didn’t come up. I like who I like, and I don’t think it’s anyone’s business. I shouldn’t have to explain myself.”
“Sorry… I guess it felt weird to not know that about you, that’s all.”
She sighed. “It honestly didn’t seem worth telling. I realized I like everything. Anything. Whatever. I’m not picky, good for me. That’s not newsworthy.”
A snort escaped Miles and his tension slid away. Outside, a car alarm went off down the street, horn blaring.
“For the record, I think they’re cool,” he told her. “You should ask them out.”
The look she gave him scorched the side of his face. “Are you seriously giving me relationship advice when your boyfriend ghosted you for half a week?”
Ouch. “That’s different and you know it. And we haven’t really talked about what we are or… what happened.” Charlee made disgusting kissy noises in his ear, and he elbowed her away. “I don’t want to push him.”
Especially after Gabriel recoiled from him earlier. Miles was trying to not get in his own head about it or let his worries run rampant, but he kept replaying it. Gabriel had refused to even look at him.
“Talking isn’t pushing.”
That was easy for Charlee to say. She wasn’t potentially destroying a relationship before it got a chance to really start.
“Can we go back to talking about my death?” he begged miserably.
Charlee snickered.