Page 3 of Demon Loved
It’s not the house, she thought as she told her mother that everything was going fine.
It’s you.
Well, she wasn’t eighteen anymore. In less than a month, she’d be turning twenty-four, and that was around the time when you were supposed to be figuring out what to do with the rest of your life. Shane had always been committed to learning his craft, going so far as to attend culinary school in Phoenix even though his magical talent practically made him a Cordon Bleu chef without breaking a sweat. But he’d wanted the credentials to back up his gift, so he’d gone ahead and gotten his certification.
Next to him, Bree felt like a big lump of nothing.
Chicken cacciatore tonight, a nod toward the cooler weather that was coming despite temperatures that didn’t want to drop out of the mid-eighties. Bree dutifully got out the bag of spaghetti after her mother asked her to fetch it and then dumped it into the big pot of boiling water that had been waiting on the stovetop.
“You’re sure everything is all right?” her mom asked. Hayley McAllister was just as blonde and blue-eyed as her daughter, and still almost as slender as she’d been when she first met her children’s father back when she was in her early twenties. More than once, the two of them had been mistaken for sisters rather than mother and daughter.
“I’m fine,” Bree replied. Sure, that was a little white lie, but she didn’t want to get into her current sense of near-angst, especially since she couldn’t even say for sure why she’d been feeling that way in the first place. “Busy. I had a lesson with Cailie this afternoon, and then I’ve got a couple of gigs this week and the folk festival on Saturday.”
Her mother nodded, although something close to concern flickered in her clear blue eyes. “Make sure you don’t spread yourself too thin.”
“Oh, I won’t,” Bree said. She only taught music two days out of seven, and most of her mornings were free. It wasn’t as if she was putting in sixty hours every week like Shane. “But it always gets slower once we’re past the holidays, so I figured I might as well get what bookings I could this fall and bank the money against the slow times.”
The ebb and flow of the tourist trade in the Verde Valley was something all of them were used to, understanding it as intimately as the rhythms of their own bodies. Hayley nodded, lifted the lid of the crockpot so she could spoon out an experimental taste, then nodded. “Maybe not quite up to your brother’s standards, but I think it’ll do.”
“I’m sure it’ll do more than that,” came Shane’s voice, and both women turned to see him standing in the entrance to the kitchen, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.
At once, Hayley put down her spoon and went over to give her son a quick hug. “I didn’t think you’d be coming tonight.”
He shrugged. “Things are pretty quiet at work. Besides, it’s nice to have something every once in a while that I didn’t have to cook.”
About all Bree could do was shake her head. That was such a Shane kind of thing to say.
Like everyone else in the family, her brother had blond hair and blue eyes, although his hair was a few shades darker than hers and his eyes a cool, deep blue that looked almost dark if the lighting was dim enough. Right now, his shoulder-length locks were pulled back into a ponytail, although she’d seen him sport a man-bun from time to time…and had teased him mercilessly about it.
Not that the man-bun had proved to be much of a deterrent to any eligible cousins in the McAllister clan…or any unattached tourists who happened to catch sight of the man working in the kitchen at The Asylum. No, they would have followed him around like a bunch of sheep if he’d allowed it. Things were probably even worse now that he’d broken up with his girlfriend of several years, a civilian woman who managed one of the wine-tasting rooms in Cottonwood. Bree had been a little worried that the rift might have made Sara think twice about continuing to hire her ex’s sister to perform at the tasting room, but so far, those fears hadn’t materialized.
But Shane was now the focus of a lot of speculation among the clan as to when he might start dating again. It had been a couple of months since the breakup, and any cousins who were distant enough relations and in the right age bracket were starting to look at him like a dog might look at an especially juicy steak sitting on the counter…all the while praying that some mishap might send it flying to the floor so they could run off with it.
“It’s nice to have the whole family here,” their father put in, materializing somewhere behind his son. All right, he hadn’t actually appeared out of nowhere…although he had the ability to do so…but had wandered in from the dining room, where Bree assumed he’d been busy getting the table set.
Yes, it was nice. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d all been together like this, but she thought it had probably been for their parents’ anniversary dinner back in July.
“Many hands will help get all this on the table that much faster,” her mother said, sounding brisk. “Shane, could you get the salad? And Bree, can you check on the pasta?”
Everyone went to handle their various duties, and soon enough, they were all sitting at the big dining room table and passing around the food. She’d always loved the space, loved the big picture window that looked east toward Sedona and the Mogollon Plateau many miles away. There had been so many family dinners here where they ate and talked and paused from time to time to watch the moon rising.
No moon tonight, though; it would be nearly half full, she knew, but it wasn’t due to rise until much later, long after they were finished with their meal.
That was all right, though. They chatted about the renovations her parents had planned for the empty bedrooms their children had once occupied — Bree’s old room would become a kind of meditation space, while Shane’s bedroom would be turned into the office their father had been wanting for years — and chatted about Jerome and the plans to finally update Spook Hall and make it a little more elegant than just a big, empty gathering place.
“They’ll keep the floors, of course, and just refinish them,” Hayley said as she passed the bowl of salad to her daughter. “But they’re going to take out that awful drop ceiling and see if there’s maybe some original tin underneath. If not, they’ll probably put in real plaster so it’s in keeping with the age of the building.”
Bree thought that sounded like an excellent idea. Spook Hall — well, Lawrence Memorial Hall — had always been an important part of her life, since that was where the huge McAllister holiday potlucks were held and where the annual Halloween Ball had been taking place for decades. The spot was as familiar and comfortable as an old shoe, but she agreed that it could use a bit of a glow-up.
And while she’d experienced just the slightest pang at hearing that her old room here at home would be transformed into something utterly different, she told herself it was for the best. Knowing that she couldn’t just move back in whenever she wanted would force her to face this new adult life head-on…even if she wasn’t all that comfortable with it yet.
After dinner, Levi and Shane handled the dishes, while Bree and her mother headed into the living room. Because the house was so old — it had been built in 1899 — it was definitely more compartmentalized than more modern homes, and her parents had never wanted to knock down walls and open it up the way many other people had done with their vintage houses. No, they respected it for what it was.
Right now, that was probably just a good thing, because if the kitchen and dining and living rooms had been one big open space, then the two women wouldn’t have had much privacy as they sat down near the fireplace. No fire tonight, of course, because the weather was far too warm for that, but Bree’s mother put a candle rack in it during the hot months so it would always have some sort of flame dancing there.
The candles glowed cheerfully, and something about the flickering light they gave off made Brianna feel a little more at ease. No, she didn’t live here anymore, but this place would still always be home to her.
Her mother crossed her hands over her knees and sent Bree a very direct look. “I was hoping you’d feel more settled in by now.”
