CHAPTER THREE #2
“Really?” Adam asked, his voice ice cold.
“The more the merrier,” the mayor shouted with a laugh. “No, wait. The more the spookier. Woo!”
“Ha, good one, Jim,” Adam said before turning his silver-ice eyes on Raj. “Good luck with your experience, Mr. Choudhary.” He gave a tight-lipped smile, then phased into the crowd until he was once again at the center of it all.
Somehow, Raj wound up on the outside without taking a step. A committee meeting? In this small town where everyone knew everyone’s business? That was…that sounded like a very bad idea.
“Yes!” Logan leaped over, slamming his hands to Raj’s shoulders until the poor man feared he might buckle. “You did it.”
“I did?”
“Get on that committee, and you can convince them to put our hotel on the official itinerary. This is perfect.”
Get? Convince? Raj’s eyes bugged out at the idea that he’d not only have to join a group, but be personable enough for them to listen to him and do what he wanted. “Logan, I don’t—”
“This is perfect. Woo! I’m celebrating. What are you drinking? Scotch?”
Raj should be looking to the mayor kind enough to extend him the invitation, but his eyes kept skipping over to the lithe man in the torn waistcoat conducting the people like a maestro. “Whisky,” Raj yelped.
?
A haunted hotel?
Not just a haunt but a hotel too?
And an invitation onto the Halloween committee?
“Ma?” Adam’s mind reeled as he stumbled through his old front door.
On instinct, he glanced at the preserved sitting room, expecting to find her on the couch knitting another blanket for the grandchildren that would never come.
The ancient, rabbit-eared TV played an episode of Bewitched to an empty room.
Dropping his bag, Adam called out. “You awake?” It wasn’t that late, right?
He moved to check his phone, and a crick he’d been ignoring all night turned into a full-body cramp.
Hissing in pain, Adam swung around to escape the agony.
Light glinted off the edge of a three-foot-long butcher knife.
It slashed through the air at the end of the hall, red juice dripping from the blade.
The knife turned, a black gloved hand clinging to the handle. “Mom!” Adam shouted.
“Yes, love?” White curls stuffed under a sleeping bonnet, and the cherubic face of his mother poked through the doorway. She smiled warmly at him, paying no mind to the murder weapon in her hand.
Adam stared at the knife, then into her eyes. She blinked a few times, then blushed. “Oh, sorry, dear. I was slicing up cherries for my pies.”
“The harvest sale isn’t for a few weeks.”
“I like to give them time to sit. Really soaks in the flavor.”
“And turns your pies into cherry liquor,” Adam mumbled to himself. To distract from his heart pounding a million miles an hour, he slumped onto the old couch across from the TV. Samantha wiggled her nose and made everything worse.
“What brings you by?” his mom asked, still carrying the knife like she was about to disembowel some randy teens.
He had no idea. After his triumphant performance at the parade, all Adam wanted to do was crawl into a deep, dark hole and bury himself.
But he had to laugh it off, convince people he meant to fall off of his float and crush his pumpkin.
Laugh with them laughing at him. Alcohol was supposed to help.
Then he showed up.
Rubbing his temples, Adam stared at the fake drawer that hid his parents’ VCR. “What do you know about that old hotel out by Round Lake?”
“Oh, it was marvelous back in the day. Your father nearly proposed there.”
Confused, Adam spun around to his mother. “I thought Dad got down on one knee on a shrimp boat in the Gulf.”
“Not to me, of course.” She gave a little laugh, then wandered back into the kitchen. His mother had a supernatural knack to answer a question by only giving him more questions. “What about the old Rushford hotel?”
“Someone’s bought it,” Adam said.
“That’s wonderful. They aren’t going to tear it down and put up a mall, are they?”
A mall? He had no idea how his mother, born in the era of disco, acted like she was a nineteen-fifties housewife. “No, ma. I really doubt they’ll make it into a mall.”
“Good.”
Adam’s fingers crept along his neck. “It’s, uh, it was bought by a haunter.” He started to wrench the muscle before remembering the huge bruise where the pumpkin head bashed into it. Gah!
“A haunter?” She said that with so much emphasis, Adam swiveled in his seat and stared her in the eye.
“You already knew that.”
“Of course not, love. I had no idea there was going to be a haunted B&B out near Round Lake.” She patted his knee like she was about to get him a glass of milk and a cookie.
Adam bent over, nearly folding in half. “You were at the parade.” Maybe the couch would eat him. Sprout teeth and chomp down on his bones.
“I was at the front. You did a wonderful job.”
“Ma…”
Her lips twisted to the side like she bit down on a sour lemon drop.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
“No. Well, not in person. You see Bertie’s granddaughter—Stephanie—she’s got the Tock Ticks and…”
“Great. I’m internet famous.” Please, don’t let me become a meme.
His mom sensed his abject humiliation and tried to comfort him the only way she knew how. “It was tastefully done with music and everything.”
“Ma, that’s how Tik… No. Not worth it.” In times of trouble, when the world came crashing down on the skinny freak of Anoka, Adam reached for one thing.
His body moved before he realized what he was doing.
The little door hiding the VCR fell down, its handle clacking against the metal.
Tucked to the side was the only tape anyone watched in this house.
“Did you see that nice gentleman ahead of you?” his mother asked with her disinterested voice that gave her away every time.
“Yeah. It was a little hard to miss him,” Adam said as he fished the old tape out of its tattered cardboard box. That swoosh sound as the black plastic finally escaped its cardboard trap was a weighted blanket on his soul.
“He’s quite talented, don’t you think?”
“Yep.” Adam shoved the tape into the VCR. Incredibly talented, and connected, and rich. And gunning for his crown.
The tape sank into the player, and Adam scooted back. Rather than sit on the couch next to his mom, he huddled up on the rug, his knees cupped to his chest. Static caught on the screen, then a warning label from the FBI. Adam kept watching.
“And…” His mom paused like she was about to drop the bass. “…handsome.”
Oh, yeah. Even as he’d cut Adam down to size with his little ‘entrance’ joke, Adam couldn’t stop thinking how soft those lips mocking him were. And what he could do to that mouth to shut it up.
The screen jerked through trailers for fifty-year-old movies, and Adam frowned. “How can you tell he was handsome? He was wearing a mask.”
His mom shrugged and picked up her knitting. “Don’t you think—?”
“No.” Adam interrupted. “Ma, you are not hooking us up. He’s…
” Enraging. Dangerous. Devilishly handsome in a cinnamon roll body.
“He’s straight.” It wasn’t a lie. Probably.
Every other haunter Adam had ever met had a wife, three kids, and a spare tire around the middle. Why would Raj be any different?
“Oh. That’s too bad. All the good ones are.”
Adam snorted. He dropped his legs as the TV screen opened on a dark night in the meadow. Lighting flashed, and a goat bellowed in the distance. “Evil Sheep 2: Ewe Are Dead” filled the screen before the title cracked open and demonic sheep bones climbed out of a grave.
Sighing in relief, Adam lost himself in his comfort movie. It was schlocky horror, sure, but he adored every second. Especially the sheep puppet.
Raj slipped from Adam’s mind. The crown, the haunt, the committee—he could solve that mess tomorrow.
For now, all he needed was a terrible B-movie to crawl across his brain and rewire his trauma.
There was no chance a man as handsome and talented as Raj Choudhary would enjoy the blood splatter of a chainsaw.
They had nothing in common.
“Help, help! My ram. It’s—” Two horns pierced through the chest of the farmer, and Adam sighed.