Chapter 3
The back of my head throbbed. Something watery was dribbling down my neck to my shoulder, pooling in the collar of my shirt.
Instead of being smashed to bits on the floor, I’d landed on the arm of an ugly pink couch. I was lying on my side, arms and legs strewn across the uncomfortable Victorian sofa like a fainting maiden. The throbbing in my head was joined by a quick stab of pain behind my right ear.
Wait— Was I dead? My head wouldn’t hurt if I was dead, would it?
I winced and opened my eyes.
Above me, a woman’s face hovered, lit by moonlight drifting in from the windows and the mottled light thrown by the chandelier that had tried to kill me. Her face wasn’t quite solid. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.
“So, I am dead,” I said to the angel hovering over me. “That’s a fucking bummer, I guess.”
She frowned, then gave me a skeptical look, like she thought I was being very stupid. “No, you’re not.”
I tried to sit up, but the whole room started spinning, so I closed my eyes and set my head carefully back on the arm of the sofa. When I opened them again, the woman was still staring at me. I could see through her face to the ceiling. “Okay, but you’re an angel, so...”
“I’m not an angel,” she said in a prim English accent.
Her voice was clear as a bell, but it was like someone had turned down the opacity setting on her body.
Her eyes were a brilliant pale blue with perfectly curly lashes.
Her blond hair flowed to her shoulders and hovered there like it knew this was the perfect length to frame her face and it had no intention of growing any further.
I breathed in deeply, fending off a panic attack. That was the last thing I needed. I counted to five and focused on my breaths, willing my heart to stop pounding. I could feel my pulse throbbing in my scalp behind my ear in the spot where I hit the couch.
“I’m really not dead?” I said this as much to myself as to the strange woman hovering over me.
“No.” She huffed, turning her full lips into a pout. “Though you would be if I hadn’t been watching.”
I managed to sit up, and she flowed backward to give me space.
Her body wasn’t anchored to the floor, which was similar to how I felt at the moment.
But in her case, her legs just... weren’t there.
She was wearing a white neck-tie blouse with bell sleeves.
I wasn’t so out of it that I didn’t notice how nicely she filled out the blouse.
She also wore high-waisted navy trousers, but after her shapely thigh, her legs faded.
The ghostly woman’s concern turned into an exasperated expression—like she was the one who was put out by this situation instead of me.
“Okay, I get it.” I pressed my hand to the tender spot on my head, realizing as I did how much I was still bleeding.
It dripped down my hand onto my forearm in a bright line.
Although I knew it was my blood and not some intruder’s, the whole thing felt like it was happening to someone else instead of me.
I giggled, feeling lightheaded and silly. “I’m being Scrooged. I probably deserve it.”
“Scrooge?” She shook her head. “No, dear, Marley was the ghost in that novel. Do they not teach Dickens to young Americans?”
“I know A Christmas Carol ! I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said you were. I said you’re not dead.”
“But—”
“You’re not dead, Gibson. I am.” She reached out as if to pat my arm, but stopped the gesture a few inches from me. “Let’s get you some tea.”
The woman stood. Her legs went all the way to the floor now, and her pant legs swished as she walked straight through the sofa. She called over her shoulder, “Do you like Earl Grey?”
A stream of blood pooled in my elbow, tickling the skin there. My head throbbed, and I was still halfway convinced I was dead.
Earl Grey. The tea I’d seen steaming in that stupid angel wings mug.
I turned and stood, still holding my throbbing head. The motion made me dizzy, but I threw out my other hand to balance the unsteady rocking of the room.
“It was you! You were the one making tea.”
“Yes, dear.” She disappeared into the hallway, literally fading for a moment before reappearing in the doorway of the kitchen. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Do keep up.”
“My house is haunted. I have my own Jacob Marley,” I said, latching on to that name. Dead to begin with.
“No, my name is Annabelle. You should get checked for brain damage tomorrow.”
I stood in the hallway, looking down at an ugly couch, now with a dark patch of my blood staining the arm.
Abaddon Cottage was haunted. And its ghost was a beautiful woman who shoved a couch under my ass to save me from splattering my brains all over the hardwood floor.
She was humming a tune as she poured water in the kettle.
The strangest feeling came over me, but it wasn’t fear or the visceral displeasure I felt on the journey to this strange house. I couldn’t give it a name.
As if in a dream, I followed my ghost into the kitchen.