LVI
When I finally found Penny’s bag, my hands were still shaking.
“FOUND IT,” I yelled, though my voice came out thinner than I meant it to.
The upstairs bathroom was a tactical war zone of steam, glitter, and too many open makeup bags. Penny stood in the middle of it, wrapped in a towel, cheeks flushed, hair pinned half up and half in active rebellion.
“God,” she said, snatching the bag from me. “I was drafting my will.”
“You were preparing to steal my eyeliner.”
“Same thing.”
She dug through the bag, then froze.
“Okay, but this is different.” Her eyes lifted to mine in the mirror. “A blind date with Victor Covington.”
She said his name like an incantation.
“The third,” I reminded her, leaning against the counter. “And he owns a hotel. He’s pretty specific about that.”
Penny pressed a hand to her chest. “A haunted historic hotel. That is objectively hotter than just a hotel, Maddie.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
She caught the sound and pointed at me with a mascara wand. “Good. You’re still alive.”
Then she dumped half the bag onto the counter.
“Tell me how nervous I’m supposed to be about the fact that my date is a dead hotel heir. Also, how old is he, exactly?”
“Nineteen,” I said, catching a lipstick before it disappeared into the sink. “That’s when Heaton said he died.”
Penny stared at me.
“So no,” I added, “this probably isn’t helping your odds of feeling normal about any of it. Just breathe, Pen. Ghosts are usually drawn to the living for a reason. You’ll be fine.”
“Will I?” She whirled toward me, the towel slipping dangerously lower. “Do I flirt? Do I act mysterious? Do I pretend I’ve been on a hundred ghost dates before?”
“You don’t play anything mysterious, Pen. You’re a human riot.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Rude.”
I reached for her arm and squeezed. “Just be Penny.”
That softened her.
“Okay,” she said. “That I can do.”
Getting dressed after that was a blur of satin and hairspray. Penny stepped into a blush-toned dress that made her look all soft edges and trouble.
For me, she held up the dark jade-green slip.
“Oh,” she said when I pulled it on. “It’s like that?”
“You picked the dresses, Penny!”
“Yes.” She caught my eye in the mirror and smiled. “And I have impeccable taste.”
Her voice dropped.
“Hey, is Victor . . . normal?” she asked, dragging a brush through her hair. “I mean, I know the vital signs are questionable, but personality-wise? Am I walking into a total Victorian buzzkill, or does he know how to have fun?”
“He knows how to have fun,” I said. “Maybe too much.”
Her eyes brightened.
“He’s old-fashioned. Charming. A gentleman, technically.” I fastened a thin silver chain around my throat. “But maybe keep him away from the whiskey. Alcohol tends to . . . stir things up.”
Penny grinned. “Noted. No spirits for the spirit.”
The windows rattled.
Not from wind. A familiar vibration rolled through the old glass before the Nova’s headlights ghosted through the trees.
Penny and I looked at each other in the mirror.
Then we headed downstairs, our heels clicking a nervous pulse against the hardwood.
I reached for the front door and stopped with my hand on the knob. The tether had already gone tight. His awareness had become a physical pressure in the air.
I opened the door, and the porch light spilled over two figures by the rail.
Victor stood nearest the steps, coat open, one shoulder tipped lazily against a porch post. Smoke curled in silver threads between his fingers, and the grin he lifted at the sight of us was immediate.
Beside him, Heaton flicked the last of his hand-roll into the gravel with one clean movement of his hand.
Both were dressed for the festival.
Victor looked like a scandal in formal wear—auburn hair, dark coat, trim waistcoat, all reckless old-money charm with smoke still ghosting from his mouth.
Heaton was worse.
Black coat. Black vest. White shirt buttoned clean at the throat. No softness anywhere. Just obsidian and bone, and the cold, controlled violence of a man already holding too much.
Victor saw Penny and lit up like someone had struck a match.
“Well,” he said, pushing off the post and crushing his hand-roll beneath his heel. “My evening has just improved considerably.”
Penny made a tiny sound beside me that was either a laugh or total structural collapse.
Victor stepped forward and took her hand before she could think about it.
“Ms. McCrae,” he said, smooth as bourbon. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, but that feels like a staggering understatement.”
He bowed over her knuckles with maddening elegance.
“Penelope McCrae,” he added. “An honor. At last.”
Penny blinked up at him.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I officially love my full name.”
Heaton exhaled through his nose, a weary fondness slipping through the hard line of him.
“Victor,” he said. “Try to behave.”
Penny tipped her chin. “No promises, Heat.”
Victor crooked his elbow. “Shall we, Lady McCrae? I promise to keep the hauntings to a minimum and the compliments to a scandalous maximum.”
Penny shot me one wide-eyed, helpless look, then slipped her hand through Victor’s arm and let him guide her toward the Nova.
The heavy door shut behind them.
Only then did Heaton turn his full attention to me.
The porch light burned gold across the railing as he started up the stairs, unhurried, each footfall measured. He stopped on the final step—still a head taller than me—forcing my chin up to meet his dark silver stare.
“That dress is a problem.”
“It’s just a dress, Heaton.”
“No.”
He stepped onto the porch, closing the distance until I backed into the doorframe. The night disappeared beneath the colder thing coming off him.
“It’s you in that dress. Entirely different problem.”
His eyes tracked once down the line of my hip to the slit at my thigh before finding my face again.
“And you wore this knowing I’d have to look at you all night.”
A shiver raced up my spine, all ice and fire. I folded my arms, mostly so he wouldn’t see my hands shaking.
“You sound worried.”
“I’m not worried.”
His voice dropped.
“I’m irritated.”
“By the dress?”
“By Ford.”
I looked away first. Bad move.
His fingers caught my chin, cool and controlled, turning my face back to him.
“I don’t think so,” he said softly. “If he said something that matters, I’d rather hear it from you than guess at the shape of it through the bond.”
My throat tightened.
His thumb brushed once along my jaw.
“What did he say?”
His voice was low enough to pass for calm.
It wasn’t.
“Heaton—”
“I don’t want the edited version.”
The words felt clumsy in my mouth, but I made myself look at him.
“He left a door open,” I said quietly. “And I didn’t shut it.”
Heaton went still, a muscle jumping in his cheek.
“But I’m not walking through it tonight,” I added, my voice gaining a desperate kind of honesty. “We’ve talked about this. I know what this is. I know what it isn’t. And I know Ford isn’t something I get to be careless with while I’m still—”
I swallowed.
“Like this. With you.”
His hand slid from my chin to the side of my neck, cool and grounding, his thumb resting beneath my ear where my pulse had nowhere to hide.
“Save it,” he said softly.
Over his shoulder, Ford’s truck was gone.
The drive beyond the porch stood empty, but the silence it left behind still pulled at something sore inside me.
Heaton read whatever flickered across my face—uncertainty, grief, weakness, whatever Ford had shaken loose—and something in his expression shifted.
He stepped in close enough that the satin of my dress brushed his coat, and the tether between us flashed white-hot, searing away every thought but him.
“Whatever he asked for,” Heaton said, “the answer can wait until after tonight.”
He reached past me through the open door for my coat and settled it over my shoulders himself in one decisive sweep of heavy wool and cool fingers.
I opened my mouth.
“No.”
His fingers locked through mine as he turned for the steps.
“Tonight, you’re with me.”