Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Iago tapped away on his laptop, trying to look like he was actually working.
Really he was waiting for Xander to get back from his house and tell him what had happened.
The guys were all over there and had been most of the night doing some sort of walk-through filming again.
They had sent a few notes, but it was like, all of a sudden, since they knew he was pregnant, they were handling him with proverbial kid gloves.
Nothing scary for Iago.
Don’t work too hard, Iago.
He wanted to kick something.
Especially since he was worried about Xander.
So while he was waiting, he did a bunch more searching about Xander’s house, when he wasn’t distracted by looking at his phone or pacing or texting Gent to bitch about the guys.
It was a reverse image search where he actually hit paydirt, though, and he frowned when all sorts of articles popped up about Hot Springs Junction.
He’d put in a picture of Sebastian’s house, which he had to admit was way more distinctive than Xander’s sort of later issue Craftsman-mining-town house.
Sebastian and Colton lived in a shotgun-style mining row home which was one of the original houses that had been built in town. So honestly a lot of pictures of it had been taken over the years.
It wasn’t the flashy ghost stuff that had come from their show, or the sweet little history piece about shotgun mining houses, or even the retrospective about the alpha who had killed all those omegas in Sebastian’s house which caught his attention.
It was the fact that the better part of downtown Hot Springs Junction had actually been built over top of the mine…
He grabbed his phone and texted Xander.
Have you found the blueprints yet?
And I haven’t had a chance to talk to the ghost yet either because I’m not doing it in front of your crew and the cameras
Okay send them to me. I’ll show them all my research and distract them with sandwiches
You can make sandwiches???
Shut up or you don’t get to know about my research. It’s fascinating.
He grinned, because he was willing to dangle that carrot.
OK OK. Sending guys now. Will be over once I chat with ghosts. Alone
k <3
Okay, sandwiches.
He grinned at the bags of food he’d ordered from Xavi’s coffee shop. This was a perfect idea. One of the teenagers had run it down to him from up at the pass, and he hadn’t had to smell anything or see weird meat and mayo and…
Iago stopped, breathing in deep through his nose before letting it out. He had soup in the fridge if he couldn’t deal with his sammy.
It was late enough in the day that he should be okay, but there was never an absolute surety with his belly. Some things just set him off.
Soup in the fridge. Don’t forget
Aw. Xander was so good to him. Even if he had been grumbly this morning having to share a bathroom with the guys.
Xander was used to having a place of his own, his space, his privacy. Iago wasn’t sure if Xander was ready to live with him. To let him in.
He hoped so, but he wasn’t going to push too hard until he started showing, maybe. They could ease into it.
Hell, he didn’t know if Xander was into more than long-term co-parenting, so he’d need to figure that out.
Thank goodness he had his whole family here.
Speaking of which, they all trooped in a few minutes later, including Gent and Colton. Yep, he’d gotten extra sammies just for that eventuality.
“Hey, guys! I have lunch!”
“And info, which is even better.” Law went to pass out food. “Talk to us, man. Tell us our story.”
“So I got to looking — did you guys know we’re sitting literally on top of part of the mine?”
“Huh?” Colton grabbed a chicken salad on a sub roll. “Explain.”
“Well, as you know this area is riddled with hot springs, hence the name of the town. So the mine had to be dug creatively. And the houses had to go somewhere since the town is bounded by the river and the mountains and couldn’t spread.”
“Uh-huh.” Mason traced a line on the mine map he’d found.
“Well, the row of houses that Xander’s is on is literally on top of part of the mine, see?” He showed the map, pointed it out. “And here’s the drawing of the map to scale.”
He had scanned them both and put one on top of the other. The map of the mine showed… a tunnel going up right into Xander’s house.
“Shit. Where does that come out? I mean, we put the cabinets in, and the stove. What else did he tear out that he might have disturbed that?”
Iago chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t really know. I asked about the renovations pretty extensively, and he said he didn’t find any major holes in the drywall or anything like that when he pulled out all the cabinets and the appliances.”
“Well it sure has a mineshaft under there.” Gent studied the plans. He had a mostly-finished degree in architecture. If anybody was going to know what he was looking at, it was Gent. “And it looks as though it’s centered under the kitchen and dining room.”
“What else is there in the kitchen that he hasn’t pulled out?” Colton asked.
Iago was glad to have a bit of an eidetic memory for this.
He closed his eyes, letting his thoughts flicker like a movie reel.
“There’s the built-in china cabinet in the dining room.
There’s the big pantry cabinet in the kitchen, and then there’s the butler’s pantry, which is that little door between the mudroom and the pantry cabinet… ”
“We explored the butler’s pantry, but we didn’t like moving shelves or anything because they’re all attached to the wall.”
“Same with the pantry cabinet, although it’s not a built-in in the way that the one in the dining room is.” Mason murmured, his voice taking on an excited note. “Maybe we should move that.”
Everybody started to stand up, and Iago cleared his throat.
“Not until after you eat the sandwiches I bought for you.” He had spent money on this food, and Xander needed enough time to talk to the ghosts because Iago really wanted to be able to spend the night in a house where they didn’t have to be quiet.
Because he and Xander needed to really connect again.
They grumbled, but they all sat right back down and ate their weight in sandwiches, chips, and fruit, which was fantastic.
Iago enjoyed being able to engage with them all without feeling weird and sad and self-conscious like he had for such a long time.
Now he just had to convince Xander to let him back in that house even though he was pregnant.
Xander breathed a sigh of relief when everybody left the house to go grab lunch. Those guys were big, they were loud, they were messy in their own weird way, and they just made him itch a little bit.
And lots of people in general made him itch. That was why he worked alone in the kitchen most of the time instead of being out schmoozing with the guests or working in a retail kitchen situation like Xavi did at the shop and coffee thingy.
Xavier adored people, loved them, wanted to meet all the different ones who came through the area, which was why he’d put his gift shop next to the hotel up at the pass.
That way pretty much everybody had to stop there and use the restroom at least, and he got to talk to dozens of people pretty much every day, even in the winter.
There were always truckers who needed to stop and get a nice hot cup of coffee, too.
Once the sound of the guys tromping away toward their own house had drifted out of hearing, Xander went to the kitchen, standing right in the middle of all of the work he was trying to get done, and put his hands on his hips.
“Okay, you guys, I need to know what it is you’re trying to tell me.
Subtlety is lost on me, you know? Obviously you’re trying to warn me about something, but I’ve tested all the stuff like methane and natural gas, and there are no leaks.
There’s nothing weird going on in the air quality in the house. So what is the deal? What’s going on?”
Surely they could tell him something. Show him a passage in a book or throw something at his head that would give him an ah-ha moment but not give him a concussion.
He waited and waited and nothing happened.
Pursing his lips, Xander turned in a full circle, studying all the places where he’d changed something.
He had made sure there was nothing weird and hollow behind the places where he put the cabinets because he needed them to hang well.
They were actually quite a bit heavier than the really lightweight pine cabinets that had been there for decades.
Same with the appliances. He’d had to make sure there was space for the new ones because he’d wanted a much bigger stove with a strong gas line and a refrigerator that took up way more space than the last one had. He’d had to make sure the floor joists were good and that the walls were solid.
He pondered the butler’s pantry, but everybody on the team said the little closet that had a place to lay out tea trays and whatever, and polish the silver, was not the place where the activity was coming from.
“Seriously, guys. I need help! He’s pregnant. Iago is pregnant. I need to know what you want.”
He waited, still standing there with his hands on his hips. Of course, his ghosts couldn’t be like Sebastian’s and just give him some sort of a sign. They’d gone completely silent. “Please guys. It’s not just the baby. I love him.”
The pantry cabinet door flew open so hard that one of the hinges came loose, and the door sagged in on itself.
“Oh shit.” He grabbed his phone, FaceTime Iago. “Babe, look. Send help.”
“On it! We’re coming.”
“No! Wait, you have to—”
Iago hung up on him.
He whirled to look around wildly. “Okay, my pregnant omega is on his way here. Please don’t hurt him. Please.”
The door closed with a slam, then opened again. Bang.
“So whatever is lurking in the house is back there?” Hunting around, he found a crowbar, but he really hated to destroy the old cabinet and shelves. Much as it annoyed him, he would wait for Mason to help. The guy had muscles on muscles.