Chapter 12 #2
Yasmin and Miranda stayed in the shed until night fell.
When Annabelle and I brought them dinner, both seemed legitimately surprised at how long they’d been working.
In front of them were two open spell books and a stack of yellow legal notepads with scribbles.
They had cleared a space above the desk and made it into a murder board of sorts, pinning notes and drawings to it.
All they needed was a spool of red thread to connect whatever conspiracies they were uncovering.
“Bring these back,” I said as I handed over the plates of food. “The last thing we need is mice out here.”
Both women nodded, then turned back to their work. Annabelle and I shrugged, then went back to the main house to eat at the table.
All through dinner, Annabelle’s smiles were flirtier than usual.
She watched as I ate, making encouraging noises and asking me to describe the texture of the food.
I tried but blushed under her scrutiny, stuttering until I made her giggle.
When the dishes were done, she asked me to play her a song before bed.
We sat in the living room, carefully avoiding the pink sofa, and I tuned the guitar while I thought about what to sing.
“Got it,” I said at last. Annabelle sat across from me, hands on her lap, her feet tucked away and almost invisible.
I sang “Our Day Will Come,” a song I knew from Amy Winehouse’s cover. I guessed that Annabelle might have a version of it on one of her records, too. This time, I had the courage to look at her as I sang.
Annabelle didn’t join in. She just watched me, her full lips parted in rapt attention.
Her eyes glistened in the low light of the not-quite-full moon.
When the song ended, she didn’t say anything.
She just smiled at me like I’d parted the Red Sea.
Or brought Lazarus back from the dead. I knew I was a good player, but she made me feel like my fingers worked miracles on the strings.
I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling my cheeks flush. I’d performed on stage hundreds of times, both solo and with a group, but I’d never felt like this. Like I was truly being seen .
When we said goodnight, she followed me up the stairs. At the third-floor landing, Annabelle remained visible for a few seconds longer, lingering in the periphery of my vision.
“Goodnight,” she said softly.
“Goodnight, Marley.”
I couldn’t make myself go to sleep. The smile on Annabelle’s face haunted me. The same kind of nervous energy thrummed through me that I felt before a show, especially one where I played a new song. The sort of fuck-it feeling that makes you do brave things. Or stupid things.
I put on a barely there bra and the best pair of panties I’d brought to Michigan.
Then I sniffed under my arms. Could Annabelle smell me?
She smelled her tea in the morning, so, yeah, she probably could.
I splashed some water under my arms and wished I’d brought perfume, even though I normally never wore it.
Satisfied, I pulled Annabelle’s chair closer to the bed. It was within arm’s reach of the mattress now. If she showed up, there would be no question as to why.
I climbed into bed, pulled the sheet so that it barely covered my waist, and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
The sense of her was intense. It hit me a split second before she appeared, prim as ever, standing in the corner.
Something was different—I had just seen Annabelle not five minutes earlier on the landing, but in those five minutes, she’d changed her clothes.
She was still wearing a gauzy, white blouse but of a different style.
This one wasn’t the high-necked number she always wore.
It had notched lapels and was unbuttoned to her navel, showing her pale cleavage.
If she usually wore a casual Marlene Dietrich look, this was the sultry version.
Looking down at my own tiny chest and then back up, I said, “See something you like, Marley?”
Suddenly, she was seated in the chair next to the bed. She hadn’t bothered to walk the three paces it would’ve taken, as if she couldn’t bear to waste a second. A rush of desire coursed through me.
“I think you know the answer to that, my dear,” Annabelle whispered.
“Fuck,” I whispered back. She actually wanted me .
I scooted back on the bed, pulling back the sheets and leaving enough room for another person—or ghost. Positioning my hand deliberately on my thigh, I said, “Do you want to join?”
Her gaze swept up and down my body, and she had the same hungry look in her eyes that she had when she watched me eat. But she shook her head. “I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not right.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, the same cold bucket of water crashing over me anytime someone talked about my sexual business being right or wrong. Even though she was two hundred years old, I thought Annabelle was different. “What do you mean?”
“I’m dead, Gibson. I can’t ...” Her glow dimmed. “I’m not real.”
“Come here.” I patted the spot next to me and smiled as she flowed into it. The edges of her didn’t quite touch me, but I could feel the coolness of her. This was probably the closest we’d been since the very first night we met when she helped me fix my head.
I reached out my hand with my palm facing her. She held out her own hand, placing it carefully to mine. The familiar electric tingles went through my palm and down my arm, causing me to shiver in anticipation. She may be dead, but her touch made my whole body feel alive.
“I can see you,” I said. “I can certainly hear you.”
Annabelle smiled at that.
“I can smell you.”
“You—”
I nodded. “Yeah, I can smell you, Marley.” I moved my hand into hers, making her flow through me. Our hands joined as if they were one. “I can’t touch you but I can feel you.”
Annabelle exhaled. Her breath was cool against my face.
“Can’t taste you, which is a damn shame.”
She looked confused, which made me smile. My chest was bursting with the desire to ... I wasn’t even sure what I wanted; I just knew that I wanted . I moved my hand to her face and carefully cupped her cheek, wishing I could feel the softness of her skin.
“That’s three out of five senses. You’re pretty close to real. But would you want someone like me? If you were alive?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Oh, my darling, I wouldn’t be able to resist you. That’s for sure.”
Darling . I grinned, unable to stop the feelings from appearing on my face. Shifting, I lay back on the bed and kicked off the sheet. Undoing my bra, I threw it across the room, then slid my hand slowly down my chest. “Then come get me, Marley.”
Suddenly, she was above me, hovering in the air. Her pale face was so close to mine, and every inch of my body felt alive with the almost-there contact. She felt like a thin fresh sheet draped lightly over my body, tickling where it made contact. “If I could, I would touch every inch of you.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, a new rush of desire coursing through me. I kicked off my underwear and parted my legs. I was intensely wet, and I couldn’t help but moan when my fingers found the spot that drove me wild.
“I’m going to . . .”
“Yes, you are.” Her voice was soft but firm.
She was still hovering above me, whispering directly into my ear.
Annabelle trailed her hand down my body until it joined with my own frantic movements.
Her fingers were like shadows as they passed over and through mine, then pressed into the deepest parts of me.
“Come for me, darling,” she said, pressing ghost kisses to my cheek and down my neck as I cried out, lost in bliss.
***
Breakfast the following morning was a solo affair.
Yasmin showed up in rumpled clothes while I was still drinking my first cup of coffee.
Her hair was sticking out from her head at even more angles than usual.
Nate walked her to the front door, then waved at me sheepishly.
As soon as her tea water boiled, she was out the back door, heading to the shed for more magical mystery homework.
Annabelle was nowhere to be found. I told myself that was fine. I wasn’t very convincing.
The cable internet guy came and went, then the mailman delivered a mountain of Agatha’s junk mail.
I saved the weirdest newsletters for Yasmin and chucked the rest. The day passed slowly, with me in the living room or Annabelle’s alcove working and the rest of my strange companions elsewhere.
In between conference calls and working on documents, I Googled “were there lesbians in 1812” and “what did people in Mackinac do in the 1800s,” then “how not to get rid of a ghost.”
I played a selection of my favorite songs on my phone but soon grew tired of them.
I took out Agatha’s guitar and played a few Call Me Kate Kane songs to keep them in my head but couldn’t find a connection to them.
Playing felt rote, like I was just going through the motions.
Then I flipped through Annabelle’s records and found a Nina Simone album.
I put it on the Victrola, and her version of “The House of the Rising Sun” filled the alcove.
I struggled to concentrate; my thoughts scattered like the dust particles I could see drifting in the light of the afternoon sun.
Seymour Anderson arrived five minutes early to our meeting. He rang the doorbell, then knocked three times. When I opened the door, he grinned and said, “Hello!” somehow pronouncing the exclamation mark.
I let him in, and he let out a loud whistle.
“Been wanting to get inside this house for ages. How are you holding up out here? I heard you called the Doofus Army to do some work for you. Surprised they didn’t burn down the place!”
“Hmm, yeah.” I frowned, reluctant to insult Old Pete even though he’d been strange and off-putting. He’d never made my nose scrunch like I was smelling bad cheese though, and that was my reaction to Seymour.
I led him through the house, explaining what I remembered about the square footage and basic construction details from the paperwork I had read before I arrived.
By now I had a spiel practically memorized about the house—one that left out the haunting and the witch in the shed.
I hoped she stayed out there like she had been the past few nights.
And I had to trust that Annabelle knew not to make a sudden appearance with a stranger in the house.
He grimaced at the bloodstained sofa and said, “Yikes. These furnishings would make for a great bonfire.”
I smiled a tight-lipped smile but otherwise didn’t respond.
When we’d toured all the rooms except Yasmin’s, I led him back to the sitting room. I kept an eye on Annabelle’s library alcove and tried to position him so that he faced away from it, just in case.
Seymour took notes on his phone, then said, “You could get two mil for this place.” He added, “Maybe. Thereabouts.”
I almost choked on nothing but spit and surprise. “Excuse me?”
He smiled that unnerving Cheshire-cat smile. “You couldn’t be in a better location, after all. You know what they say about real estate!” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say. I considered telling him about Yasmin’s challenge to the will but kept my mouth shut. She hadn’t actually filed any paperwork yet, to my knowledge. I realized that meant she was freeloading and I was letting her.
Seymour continued. “I’ve got your email address to send the offer. Look it over, and we can haggle if we need to.” He wagged his eyebrows as he said the word “haggle” like there wasn’t anything he’d like more than to fight me over the details of a real estate transaction.
“Right.”
“I’ll give you time to decide, of course,” he said, checking the calendar on his phone. “Let’s say, sign by the end of the month, and close the fifteenth. That’s a week for you to say yes to becoming a millionaire.” He flashed me another Cheshire-cat grin, then added a thumbs-up.
“End of the month,” I repeated. “Close on the fifteenth.”
“Easy peasy. I’ll be in touch.” With a wave, he left, jogging up the lane that joined the main road.
I stood in the doorway, my brain struggling to catch up to the offer he’d just made.
It would net me two million dollars if I agreed with Seymour’s terms, whatever they were.
I could leave and be back in New York just in time for the big show with Brooke.
Then when I returned for the closing, it would be the last time I ever needed to see the Mackinac Bridge or smell the overpowering scent of flowers and horse shit ever again.
Or Annabelle.
Unable to stay in the house, I slammed the door behind me and walked downtown to find a place to drink. Alone.