Chapter Twelve #2
“That I can do.” I reach for the current of magic, but I find myself stopping short. It doesn’t feel right that this is goodbye. “Actually…would you mind hanging around this general area for the next week or so? I think you’d be a great fit for the B&B. There’s a chance I can get Elle on board.”
Laney runs a hand through their teal hair as they consider me. “Could you come let me know either way? Turns out anxiety doesn’t go away when you die, which is bullshit if you ask me. I’ll drive myself nuts wondering if I took off too soon if you don’t come back. Time can be a little intangible.”
“You got it. Any special sensory requests for next time?”
“I’d kill to smell brownies again.” They grin. “Metaphorically, of course. And I wouldn’t say no to the new Taylor Swift album instead of whatever that noise is.”
I laugh. “Didn’t peg you for a Swiftie.”
Laney grins. “I contain multitudes.”
I’m in the middle of cussing out a hot-glue gun when there’s a knock on my door Sunday night.
“What did those craft supplies ever do to you?”
Xander’s voice cuts off my stream of profanities as I finish peeling the bit of hot glue from my fingertip.
I turn around and find him leaning against the doorframe, but it’s the clownish makeup and tiny ponytails sticking out all over his head that capture my attention.
I bark out a laugh, feeling instantly lighter. “Have a good time babysitting?”
“The best,” he says, the simple words full of sincerity and deep love. He steps into my room. “What’s all that?”
I turn back to face the mess I’ve made of my little office table.
It’s covered with the supplies I gathered yesterday.
I spent the entire day running errands outside the manor, partially because I needed supplies to start testing ideas for making the ghosts visible… but mainly to avoid dealing with Elle.
We haven’t spoken since our failed ghost hunting on Friday. On the way back to the manor, I told her that I was waiting for permission to visit the next haunted location—since it’s on private property—and her bitter, clipped fine was the last I heard from her.
Despite whatever’s going on with Elle, I won’t let her accuse me of shirking my duties. The several burns on my fingers, courtesy of the hot-glue gun, are proof of that.
“I’m working on a way to see your dead roommates.
” I hold up the in-progress prototype, a pair of cheap reading glasses I got from the pharmacy.
I’ve removed the lenses and spent ages gluing shards of crystals to the frames.
“I realize this version is absolutely hideous, but I want to make sure the concept works before I streamline the look.”
Xander sits across from me at the table and examines the glasses. “How do they work?”
“If I wanted to communicate with ghosts myself, without trapping them inside a summoning circle, I’d use an amplification sigil over my third eye and another behind my ear to hear them, too.
I’m trying to reproduce the same effect with the glasses.
Hence the crystals across the bridge and along the earpiece. ”
“Why can’t you use the sigil with the glasses?” Xander slips the prototype onto his face. “Fuck, these are heavy.”
“As I said, it’s the first iteration.” I take the glasses back from him, careful not to get his hair tangled in the jagged edges of crystal shards, and set them on the table. “As far as the sigils, without me here to funnel magic into them, they’d end up depleted and useless.”
Xander leans back in his chair, confusion creasing his brow. “But you used sigils to ward all our bedrooms. I watched you do it.”
“Yes, but those sigils influence the space and impact ghosts. The glasses have to manipulate an actual living person.”
“Why does that matter?”
I shrug. “Who knows. This application falls outside the traditional use of magic, so NACOW hasn’t bothered to study it. All I know is that whenever I’m looking to provide long-term magical influence to a person rather than a space, sigils alone don’t cut it.”
The smile that blooms across Xander’s face reminds me of the boy I first met at Oak Spires University. “Tell me everything,” he says, echoing our first meeting, when he caught me doing magic in the dorm common room in the middle of the night.
So I do. I explain the bits of garden quartz I’ve incorporated, since they were helpful as part of the summoning circle on Friday.
There are shards of angelite, the soothing blue stone known to facilitate communication with the spirit realm, and bits of howlite—a white stone with veins of black coursing through it—to encourage peaceful communication in particular.
“And by using the crystals instead of sigils, the ghost goggles won’t get depleted?” Xander asks once I’ve finished explaining the different uses of crystals, including the options I discarded based solely on my intuition.
“Ghost goggles,” I repeat, chuckling. “That’s a good name for them.
” I get up and unplug the hot-glue gun. There’s not much else to do with the ghost goggles until we have an actual ghost in residence to try them on.
“As far as how long they’ll last…I’m not sure.
They’ll be more stable than sigils, but interfacing with different guests will take a toll.
It’s possible they’ll need to be recharged regularly. ”
Xander winces. “How regularly?”
“Only time will tell.” I stretch, my back screaming at me for spending so many hours stooped over the table breaking crystals into tiny shards to glue to the glasses. “I wish I lived closer. I could pop in for a weekly recharge if I needed to.”
“I mean, if you wanted to move to Oak Spires, I wouldn’t complain,” Xander teases, and the fact that it’s a joke, not a real offer, tugs at my heart in ways I’d rather not look at. “What does Lou think of the ghost goggles?”
“She doesn’t know anything about them. That would require her to speak to me,” I grumble, sinking back into my chair.
“What do you mean?” Xander’s eyebrows climb up his forehead, which looks wild with the garish makeup his nearly six-year-old twin nieces gave him.
I wave off his concern. “Never mind. I don’t want to put you in the middle of this.”
“In the middle of what exactly?”
Fuck. I should have kept my mouth shut. If Elle didn’t say anything about our fight at the baseball field, I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to bring it up. But then Xander levels me with a look that makes it clear that saying nothing won’t fly, either.
“She didn’t tell you what happened on Friday?”
“Lou said you had a hard time finding a spirit who’d be a good fit.
” Xander props one arm on the table and leans his chin on his fist, drawing my attention to the bright blue eye shadow running from his lashes to his brows.
The pink circles of blush on his cheeks.
“Why do I get the feeling that there’s more to the story? ”
The frustration from Friday roars back to life inside me.
How could she seriously pretend there weren’t any good fits?
Yes, we ran into a couple shitheads, but there were at least two good choices that she turned away.
Hell, I bet a few of the ghosts who turned us down only did because she was short with them.
It would feel good to unload, to tell Xander how horrible and disappointing the whole thing was. How useless I felt. How much her dismissals picked at old wounds.
But I can’t say any of that. She’s Louie. His childhood best friend and business partner. I won’t give him any reason to have to choose between us.
“We had a slow start,” I say, hedging my words.
You promised to give me the benefit of the doubt.
That you wouldn’t make me the bad guy without cause.
But she did give me cause, didn’t she?
I clear the emotion out of my throat and focus on Xander. “There were some duds along the way.”
Xander raises one eyebrow at me. “And?”
And she has completely unreasonable standards. She stood there, her cheeks pink with cold, gorgeous and infuriating and impossible.
“You have to wash your face. I can’t take you seriously looking like that.”
He flutters his lashes. “Oh please. I’m adorable.”
“Sure you are.” I roll my eyes and lean back in my chair. “Can I ask you something?”
“Obviously.”
I worry at the inside of my lip, trying to find the right words. “Am I missing something here?”
Xander sits back, his expression going suspiciously neutral beneath the makeup. “What do you mean?”
“There were ghosts the other day who could have been great here, at least on a trial basis. But Elle…I can’t get a clear answer about what exactly she’s looking for.
I feel like I’m spinning in circles.” I pause, waiting for a reaction, but whatever Xander’s thinking is kept off his face.
“Do you know what she wants? If you can give me some parameters—”
“Ghost selection is Lou’s thing.”
“But if it’s up to her, this place will be empty on Halloween,” I snap, the frustration bubbling out of me before I can stop it.
But now that the dam is broken, I can’t hold the rest back.
“You put just as much into this place, Xan. All your money. Everything you’d saved for retirement.
You should have a say in making sure this place is a success.
In making sure the investors actually invest.”
“It’s complicated, Pip.” The neutrality has slipped into something bordering on pity, which makes it worse.
“Then uncomplicate it for me! I’m working my ass off because she begged me to haunt this place, and now she’s sabotaging me at every turn”
He shakes his head. “I promise, she’s not sabotaging anything. The success of the B&B means more to her than anyone.”
I bury my face in my hands and massage my temples. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have kept my stupid mouth shut. But in for a penny, in for a pound, right? “At least come with us next time. Help us compromise on some ghost standards so we don’t miss the deadline.”