Page 55 of Haunted Ever After

But then the typing bubbles appeared, followed far too quickly by a paragraph that took up Nick’s entire screen.

She liked music. The windows in her house were almost always open, and you could hear music playing. Classical pieces on a phonograph, and sometimes she played the piano. You could see her from the street when she played. She always had roses growing by her garden gate. Big, round ones. She loved those roses. Sometimes kids would sneak into her garden and pick them, and she’d chase them out. But she didn’t sound angry. She sounded almost scared. Like the roses were poison, and she was trying to keep the kids from getting hurt.

For a long moment neither Nick nor Cassie spoke. “The roses were poison?” Cassie finally said. “That…that doesn’t make any sense.”

It was LIKE they were poison, not really poison. Damn Nick, you’re right. It’s hard to get your meaning across like this. Which is weird, since it’s nothing but words.

“It’s all in the tone of voice,” he murmured, something he had said to Elmer more than once. But had Elmer ever listened? Nope. What a surprise.

Point is, Elmer continued, I always had the feeling she wasn’t trying to keep people away to be mean. It was more like she was trying to keep them safe from something.

“Could have fooled me.” Nick’s mind went to last night, to the bees and the static that kept him from going too close to Cassie’s house. Was this Mrs. H’s way of chasing him away, since she couldn’t get her hands on a stick? He didn’t give a fuck about her roses that weren’t there anymore anyway.

Cassie obviously remembered too. She slid an arm around his, hugging his arm to her. “I couldn’t get any answers out of her last night. She said she didn’t want to hurt you. Then she said ‘get him out’ again, just like…” She swallowed hard. “Just like she did that other time.”

“Yeah.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “So she still doesn’t like me, and now she’s lying about it.” He squinted at the phone. “Can ghosts lie?” He directed the question to Elmer, who responded almost immediately.

Sure we can. I said I liked the color you painted the café, remember?

“Hey.” Nick looked around the pale blue of the café. He’d closed down the place for two weeks during the off-season a couple years back, giving the inside a fresh coat of paint and updating some of the appliances. He was still paying off that small business loan, but it was all worth it. At the time, Elmer had said he liked the color. What an asshole.

But Cassie wasn’t buying it. “Why would she lie to me, though? All this time, she’s wanted to be heard. And she’s never been outright aggressive toward me. I mean, she’s weirdly insistent about the house being hers. I’m about to leave my closing papers out in a conspicuous place just to get her off my back on that. But she’s never actually been unfriendly.”

“Even though she scared the shit out of you?” For as long as he lived, Nick was never going to forget Cassie’s face that early morning after Mrs. Hawkins had first made contact. Cassie’s haunted expression was the most chilling thing he’d ever seen, and he lived in a town populated by ghosts.

But Cassie’s memory was shorter. “That wasn’t her fault,” she said. “She was trying to get her point across.”

“She sure did that.”

“No, I mean it. Can you imagine being this…this incorporeal spirit, unable to make anyone realize you’re there, and suddenly there’s all these words on the refrigerator and you can send a message? Like, Elmer…” She directed her words toward the ghost inside Nick’s phone now. “It had to be amazing when you realized you could text people, right?”

Nick swallowed a chuckle as Elmer responded You have no idea. He still didn’t have a firm grasp on how it all worked when it came to Elmer, and he doubted that Elmer did, either. Before he’d died, Elmer had interfered with the running of “his” café the old-fashioned way: by showing up daily, criticizing the coffee, and badgering the new owner with feedback until he gave up and sold the place. Then Elmer started in on that new guy, until Elmer’s sudden death from a heart attack. Not long after that, the second new owner made a crucial error: he got a cell phone with texting capability. And then the texts started coming.

Nick had been the first one who could roll with all this. And while he’d patted himself on the back more than once for being so nice to the grumpy old ghost, this was the first time he’d really considered what it must mean to Elmer. To have his voice heard, in a time when you should be silent forever.

Nick could relate, after all. Sure, he was surrounded by friends here in his hometown, but there were times when he’d never felt so alone.

He looked down at his phone with new eyes. If Cassie could put all this effort into helping the ghost in her house, one she wasn’t even sure she wanted hanging around, the least he could do was listen to Elmer a little more often. That was what friends did for each other, right?

Twenty-Three

“Good morning, Sarah!” Cassie clattered down the stairs and into the kitchen, sending her thanks, as she always did, to Past Cassie, who had set the timer on the coffee maker the night before. Past Cassie was so good to her sometimes.

She stuck two slices of bread in the toaster and poured herself some coffee, talking all the while. “Now, Buster is coming by in the afternoon to talk about the kitchen floor, so I hope you have some opinions on that for me. I want to—” Her voice trailed off as she opened the fridge for the milk.

man for pink girl is bad

“Oh, for…” Cassie poured milk into her coffee and reminded herself to be patient. This was all very new to Sarah. The twenty-first century, communicating with the living. Reality television. “You mean Wanda, right? The one in the pink bikini on Romance Resort? You know as well as I do that girl has terrible taste in men. It really shouldn’t have been a surprise when she ended up picking Noah.”

Cassie slathered butter on her toast. “I’m sure she’ll get tired of him soon. Don’t worry about her, okay?”

She put the butter and milk back in the fridge, in time for a new message to appear. bad man. Sarah seemed really hung up on this. Didn’t she know how reality TV worked? No, of course she didn’t.

“Listen,” she said. “These relationships aren’t permanent. They last maybe three days, tops. And those are the committed ones. She doesn’t have to stay with him forever.” She crunched through a piece of toast. “In fact, I bet by the end of the week Noah will be history. He’s kind of a dick, you know? And Wanda may be horny right now, and blinded by a perfect set of abs, but she’s not stupid. Now about those flooring choices…”

Cassie took a long sip of coffee before looking back at the fridge, letting Sarah take her time. But the words, when they changed, made Cassie’s heart drop to the shoes she didn’t have on yet.

my man bad

---