Haunt Improvement (Haunted Properties, #5)

Chapter 1

“SHE SAYS SHE NEEDS more cookies,” Asher, my eight-year-old nephew announced.

The sly appeal was made extra adorable by his Aussie accent.

I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but I’d become the little munchkin’s favorite person.

Though, the fact that I was holding his cousin hostage in my swollen belly might have had something to do with it.

“Is that so?” I chuckled as Asher lifted his head off my stomach and nodded eagerly.

“She’s very hungry,” he said, rubbing his own belly and eyeballing the owl cookie jar on the counter. “So am I,” he added softly.

“Ditto, kiddo.” I sighed.

Thanks to the special pregnancy diet my doula had recommended, the past month had been dubbed the great cookie famine at the Hernández house. If not for the bat baby in my cave, I had a feeling Asher would have adopted Marge, a.k.a. Cookie Witch, as an honorary auntie.

“Well, maybe just one more,” I finally relented.

Asher pumped both fists in the air. “Yes!”

A little foot jabbed the inside of my ribcage as if the baby were celebrating with him.

At least, I thought it was a foot. The sharpness of the poke could have been a bony wing tip for all I knew.

It was either that, or someone had smuggled a pair of heels in there for her.

But if the worst thing she inherited from my side of the family was a shoe addiction, I could totally live with that.

Of course, we wouldn’t know exactly which way the little whippersnapper leaned until she got here—in another four months. But who was counting?

This witch. I was counting.

And, holy poppy fields, I was already bigger than a house.

Which was concerning DeeDee, my deer Shifter doula.

Hence the sweets-free diet. But today was a cheat day.

It was Halloween, and Dylan and I were hosting a party.

Which meant a baking playdate with my nephew while his mother worked at the Assjacket Country Club.

The party had been Dylan’s idea, though I suspected he had ulterior motives. If everyone came here, there would be no need for me to go broom-vrooming around town in my delicate condition. That was assuming Broomzilla would even come out of the belfry when I called for her.

Our last ride had been tense. I wasn’t sure if her bristly bitching had more to do with the extra weight or my awkward balancing act on her handle. The baby bump had appeared almost overnight, and I was still trying to figure out how to navigate around it.

Asher pushed a barstool up against the kitchen cabinets and used it to climb on top of the counter.

He pulled the ceramic owl between his knees before prying its head off.

A rainbow streaked through the window over the sink and painted a glittering path across the kitchen, ending at the cookie jar as if it were a pot of gold.

My magic was a little wonky from the pregnancy hormones, but I’d take rainbows over storm clouds any day.

“One for bitty bat,” Asher said, handing over the first cookie. “And one for me.” He placed his cookie on the counter and reached back into the jar, rearranging the remaining pawpaw-doodles. “If we stack them in a pyramid on bottom, Uncle D won’t be able to tell.”

“Able to tell what?” Dylan asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway, clad in a terrycloth robe.

“What my costume is,” Asher squeaked. He pushed the owl behind him and back into the shadows under the cabinets. On top of having a vivid imagination, the kid was a fast thinker.

I held my cookie close, keeping it out of sight so his ruse wasn’t foiled—and so I wasn’t lectured. Today was a cheat day, but that didn’t mean I could gorge without disapproving looks from the daddy bat—or the granny bat.

“I thought you were going to be a lion, nieto,” Mama Hermosa said, pushing past her son and into the kitchen. “Or was that last week?” She yawned and straightened the hem of her sleep bonnet. It was well after noon, but my husband and mother-in-law had spent the night flying with the bat colony.

“Last week was Dracula,” Dylan reminded her, then fetched them each a coffee mug from the cupboard. I contained my snarl of jealousy. Caffeine was on DeeDee’s no-no list, too. I was lucky she had promised to look the other way at the snack table during the party tonight.

“So, what will you be now?” Mama Hermosa asked as she helped Asher down from the countertop. His cookie was gone, snatched in a stealthy grab that even I had missed with my java coveting.

“It’s a surprise!” Asher’s excitement sounded genuine, though I had to wonder if he was covering for our cookie heist. “Mum will be off work soon, so I better fly home. We have lots to do before the party.” He darted through the kitchen, then backtracked a step and planted a kiss on my cauldron-sized belly. “Bye-bye, bitty bat!”

Mama Hermosa watched him go with a furrowed brow. “Fly home.” She harrumphed. “There are three empty bedrooms upstairs, and a nursery.”

“We’ve offered twice.” Dylan shrugged. “What more can we do?”

“Their home should be here,” Hermosa grumbled.

“I agree.” I nodded and took a bite from my cookie, hoping Dylan’s mother wouldn’t scold me so long as I sided with her. And anyway, I did wish Asher and Daisy lived with us.

It was a rather drastic change of heart, considering I’d hated Daisy’s guts when they’d first dropped in nearly six months ago.

I’d been convinced that Outback Barbie was looking to make my husband her sugar bat.

Thankfully, she’d only been looking to make Dylan—and me—Asher’s new parents, since she’d thought she was on her deathbed.

A hex on the Australian banana farm they’d fled had made her very sick.

She’d been dying, and with no one to rely on for help with her batling.

First, she’d tried to contact Asher’s father, Dylan’s brother Drew, not knowing that he’d succumbed to the Hernández family curse.

Then she’d come here, looking for any remaining family.

Assjacket was not the kind of place I would have chosen for myself.

My late gran’s bespelled broom had dropped me here to find a friendly face that could direct me to the rest of my inheritance: a savings account in the Caymans.

It had been Dylan and his Shifty—mostly ghostly—family that had convinced me to stay.

Selling houses in a small town wasn’t a super lucrative profession, but it paid the bills.

And with Dylan’s construction experience, flipping a few fixer-uppers would keep us comfortable and pad the retirement fund.

Of course, he was keeping those handy skills close to home lately, remodeling the third-floor nursery.

Dylan, his brother Drew, and their cousin George had spent their childhoods in the large, open room below the belfry.

I’d left it mostly untouched when we had fixed up the house the first time around.

But with bitty bat on the way, and Asher’s playdate plans, it had needed some serious updating, including proper insulation, new flooring, a few baby monitors—and a lock on the dumbwaiter door that led to certain heart failure.

The Hernández house had a lot of quirky charm and history, and I loved it.

I loved that Dylan and I would be raising our daughter in his childhood home.

But Assjacket didn’t have much else to offer.

Well, besides the Country Club and the community theater.

It could have used a decent shoe store, and maybe a Target.

But the place wasn’t entirely without perks, especially for Shifters.

Zelda, the Shifter Whisperer, protected the two-natured citizens of these parts.

Her magic healed them when they were injured or sick.

It worked for Daisy, too. And my magic—with the help of Dylan’s great-great-grandmother’s sex ritual grimoire, and Dylan’s magic wand—had broken the Hernández curse. So Asher was in the clear as well.

Dylan frowned at the half-eaten cookie in my hand. But rather than scold, he lifted my wrist and took a healthy bite, reducing my sugar consumption more diplomatically. It still earned a grunt of displeasure from me.

“Miiine,” I grumbled, then shoved the rest of the pawpaw-doodle into my mouth as he leaned in for another bite. The baby rolled and delivered another kick, this one aimed at her father. “See? Even bitty bat says to get your own.”

“Oh, you can hear her now, too?” He snorted.

Usually, it was Asher translating pretend conversations with the baby, discussing all the games they were going to play with their Papa Ernesto in the nursery.

We’d tried to explain to him that the family ghosts had departed after the curse was broken, but Asher was insistent that his abuelo lived in the nursery with the vintage G.I. Joes and Tonka trucks.

I wasn’t one to dismiss spectral sightings, and this house had certainly seen its fair share of ghosts.

But Asher also had an invisible pet dingo.

If there was a ghost, at least it wasn’t streaking through the living room like Papa Diego had or dropping phantom duces in the upstairs toilet like Papa Mateo used to before he’d crossed to the other side.

So long as Asher’s ghostly pal was a good house guest, I supposed he could stay.

Dylan helped himself to a cookie from the cookie jar, which Mama Hermosa promptly relieved him of.

“Gracias, mi cachorro,” she cooed, dipping the pawpaw-doodle in her cup of coffee.

“Of course, Mama.” He grabbed a second cookie, which I snatched next.

“Thanks, honeybat.”

“You’re welcome, carino.” He grinned and shook his head before reaching into the jar a third time, but when he turned around, his expression grew serious. “We really should talk about names again. Fruit bat gestation is considerably shorter. DeeDee said you could go into labor any day now.”

“Only if our daughter inherits your Shifter genes,” I snapped, forgetting Mama Hermosa was in the kitchen with us.

“Dios mío,” she groaned pitifully into her coffee mug and then crossed herself. “Please, don’t wish my poor nieta wingless.”

Dylan waved his hands around my stomach, keeping a cautious distance in case our daughter chose violence again. “Do you really want this for another four months?”

I pointed my cookie at him. “You said my bump was cute!”

“Very cute,” he confirmed with a nod. “But it’s also turned you into an accident waiting to happen.” He pointed out the bruise on my arm where I’d fallen on the front steps last week.

“It was slick, and Broomzilla hadn’t swept the leaves up yet,” I said, yanking my cookie back when he moved to bite it. I stuffed it into my mouth and continued my rant with bulging cheeks. “I don’t think we should decide on a name until she’s here. It’s a West family tradition.”

“But your family disowned you,” he reminded me. And not for the first time.

“Uh, what do you call Glinda?”

“They disowned her, too.”

“But she’s still family, and our gran would want us to honor some West witch traditions.”

“You’re a Hernández now.” Mama Hermosa patted my shoulder and tutted sympathetically. “But I see no harm in waiting to officially name little Yanet.”

The pawpaw-doodle suddenly felt like cement in my mouth. I swallowed hard and tried to smile, but from Hermosa’s fearful expression, I hadn’t quite pulled it off.

“No? You’re sure, mija? But Yanet is such a popular name in Cuba,” she protested.

“I’m going to take a bath,” I said, making a beeline out of the kitchen before I said something that might hurt her feelings.

We were so not naming this baby Yanet. Though, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about giving my daughter a traditional West name either. That was a lot to live up to, or a lot to live down, depending on who you asked. And I should know.

Dylan had made a fair point, though. I wasn’t looking forward to four more months without cookies and midnight broom rides.

But I was also having a mild freak-out over the idea of a Shifter baby that could sprout wings and fly out a window.

As long as she stayed in my belly, I could keep her safe and sound.

On the flip side of that coin, the longer she stayed in my belly, the more likely she was to make her debut with a pointy hat. Which came with the real fear that she might inherit the wicked streak that was all too common in my family.

No matter how we sliced it, the sky seemed full of falling houses.

Hopefully, we would have a better idea of what to expect once bitty bat—or wittle witch, as I sometimes called her when we were alone—finally came along. Then maybe Zelda could have a peek and let us know just how Shifty things were going to get for our little girl.

Or how wicked.