Page 36 of Haunted Ever After

“Sorry!” Cassie said. “Sorry. Were you there long?” She gestured at the massive pair of black headphones hanging around her neck. “I thought I heard the doorbell, but I couldn’t tell if it was part of the music or not.”

“You listen to doorbell music?”

She smirked and rolled her eyes, gesturing him inside. “I listen to lo-fi mood music. You know, while I’m working. Helps me get in the zone. They just put me on this new ad campaign, some hippie granola company, and they want us to completely redo their social media. I have permission to make as many Grateful Dead puns as I want.”

“Groovy.” Warmth bloomed in his chest in response to her smile. Ugh, Libby was right. He liked her. Like, liked her. Nick closed the door behind him and held out the bag. “There was some leftover—”

“Oh my god, is that banana bread?” Cassie snatched the bag and peered inside. “You are a lifesaver. I’m just now realizing that I forgot to eat lunch.” She cocked her head. “Actually, I’m not sure I had breakfast. Does coffee count?” she asked as she led him toward the kitchen.

“No.” So much for freaked-out Cassie. She was either taking this whole ghost thing much easier than anyone suspected, or she was pushing it down in favor of her job. “I think maybe you work too much.” That wasn’t something he usually said, at least not out loud. He started work at the crack of dawn, after all. Who was he to criticize anyone’s work habits? Then again, he usually remembered to eat.

“Probably,” she agreed easily. “But it’s either that or obsess about my haunted house, right? Speaking of which, check this out!” She dug among the papers on the table for a moment, emerging with a scrap of paper that she pushed into his hand.

At first he thought it was a torn receipt, but it felt thicker. “Wallpaper?” He ran a thumb over the surface before holding it up to the light. He could almost make out the pattern, but it had been painted over with white paint.

“Wallpaper,” Cassie confirmed with a nod. “But she doesn’t want new wallpaper. It’s the color she misses. Which, thank God, because repainting a room is so much easier.”

Nick shook his head, as though that would jar a thought loose. He knew the words she was saying, but not the context. “What…?”

“The wallpaper,” she repeated, as though that would make it clearer. She opened the fridge and took out two bottles of soda, offering him one. “Nan Simpson came by yesterday, right?” She bumped the fridge closed with her hip. “And she kept talking about cabbage roses and wallpaper. But I didn’t find this”—she indicated the scrap of wallpaper in his hand—“till after she left. They missed it when they were remodeling. Looks like they painted over it instead of getting it off the wall.”

“Sounds about right.” Nick had gotten a few quotes from contractors when he’d first bought the café, and he knew all about ones that cut corners.

“But then. Then! I asked her. Does she want the pink and green colors back? Or does she want the cabbage rose print? And she answered me! Look!” She pointed to the mess of words on her fridge, and sure enough the word color was in the center. The word flower lay on the floor in front of the fridge, obviously rejected.

“Damn.” Nick was impressed. “She answered you. That’s…” He couldn’t put into words what he was feeling. And he really wished he could, because the feeling swelled something in his chest. It was like pride, but warmer than that. Deeper than joy. But there was something buzzing in his chest too. Like the aftermath of a swarm of bees. Something that felt tight. Felt like panic. “Cassie, this is huge. There are people that have lived here their whole lives—Founding Fifteen and everything—and haven’t been able to communicate like this.”

“What?” Her forehead furrowed. “I thought it was normal around here to talk to ghosts. Isn’t that this place’s whole…thing?” Her gesture encompassed not just her kitchen, her house, but the entire town.

Nick shook his head. “It depends. I think of it as more like a talent. Like drawing or being good at tennis. It can be trained, for sure, but natural ability helps a lot. Family members in the Founding Fifteen can have the talent in spades, but it’s still going to vary from person to person. And then, of course, not everyone cares or wants to develop it.”

“Ah.” She looked at the fridge for a long moment. “And your family’s part of the Founding Fifteen?”

He nodded. “Neither of my parents have the ability, therefore they think it’s a load of crap. They live over in The Villages now. And my sister Courtney left for college when she turned eighteen and never came back.”

Cassie gave a low whistle. “So you’re the last Royer standing, huh?”

Nick tried to give a casual shrug, but his jaw had suddenly clenched tight. “Something like that.” It was a sore subject, and not one he’d meant to bring up. It was weird sometimes, to be the only one in the family who took the legacy seriously. Sure, Boneyard Key had become a cheesy tourist destination, but it was also their ancestral home. As much as anything in Florida settled barely at the end of the nineteenth century could be called “ancestral.” People in Europe would probably laugh themselves into hysterics at the notion.

Anyway, he felt possessive of the town. In a way that no one else in his family did.

If Cassie noticed any of this inner turmoil, she didn’t let it show. “Nan thought it might have to do with the magnetic poetry. Makes it easy for her to communicate.”

“She’d know better than I would, for sure.” He followed her gaze to the scattered words on the fridge. “Not all ghosts communicate the same. Elmer’s never moved stuff around. He talks to me in my head. Or on my phone.”

“In your head?” Cassie’s eyes widened. “That sounds creepy.”

She had a point. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. I guess I got used to it.”

“I think I’d prefer the words on the fridge.”

He chuckled. “You’re in luck then. Looks like she can move things, and you have things that she can move. Who knows, maybe it really is as simple as that.”

Cassie considered that while Nick turned his attention back to the wallpaper scrap in his hand. “So she wants you to paint, huh?” He scraped at the white paint with his thumbnail, trying to get to the…what did she call them? Cabbage roses? He didn’t know the difference between that and a regular rose.

“Yep. Pink and green. I’ve already called Buster, and he’s got a few weeks free. He’s going to come by soon, and we’re going to put a list together.”

“A list of what?”

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