Page 8 of Unbearable Attraction
It was vague but gave Leenah the feeling that a lot happened here in that time period and she wasn’t sad she had missed out.
But after that, nothing. No records, no mentions, no explanations for why the ceremonies had stopped.
A soft scratching sound drew her attention to the front door. Probably just wind-blown branches, but after hours of supernatural disturbances, she wasn't taking any chances. Leenah wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and peered through the peephole, finding nothing but empty darkness beyond the porch light.
When she opened the door to check for damage from the storm, a white business card fluttered to the ground at her feet.
Luka Ashe - Custom Woodworkingread the simple black text. Below it, someone had written in careful handwriting:If you need anything.
Leenah stared at the card for a long moment, her pride warring with the growing realization that whatever she'd awakened was beyond her ability to handle alone. The cottage was actively haunted now, not just by curious spirits but by entities with urgent demands she didn't fully understand. Her necromantic abilities were responding to their presence in ways that felt increasingly unstable, as if prolonged contact with so many manifestations was stretching her gifts past their normal limits.
She should call someone. Should swallow her independence long enough to ask for help from people who understood supernatural crises better than she did. The Council, perhaps, or at least someone with experience dealing with magical emergencies.
Instead, she found herself running her thumb across Luka's carefully written message, remembering the way he'd looked at her in the cemetery. Not like she was fragile or incompetent, but like she was magnificent. Dangerous, maybe, but in the way that powerful things were dangerous—worthy of respect rather than condescension.
A crash from the kitchen interrupted her thoughts, followed by Minerva's indignant yowl. When Leenah rushed to investigate, she found her spice rack overturned and herbs scattered across the floor in patterns that looked almost like protective sigils. Her cat sat in the middle of the chaos, tail twitching with annoyance.
"Okay, apparently the spirits have opinions about my cooking supplies," she said, kneeling to scratch behind Minerva's ears. "What do you think, Min? Do I call the nice carpenter and admit I'm in over my head?"
Minerva purred and rubbed against her hand, then padded purposefully toward the front door where Luka's business cardstill lay on the floor. The message was clear: even her familiar thought she needed backup.
Leenah sighed and picked up the card, turning it over in her fingers. Her grandmother's warnings about the dead asking too much of the living echoed in her mind, but so did the urgency in those whispered voices. Whatever the spirits wanted, they weren't going to give up just because she was too proud to admit she needed help.
And if she was being honest with herself, the idea of Luka's steady presence in her chaos-filled cottage didn't sound entirely unwelcome. Even if it meant acknowledging that some problems were too big for one person to solve alone.
The whispers rose again as she stood there debating, carrying what sounded almost like encouragement. As if the spirits themselves approved of her considering reinforcements.
"Fine," she said aloud, tucking the card into her pocket. "But if this goes badly, I'm blaming all of you."
The temperature in her cottage warmed by several degrees and the whispers carried what sounded distinctly like relief.
7
LUKA
Luka knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into his workshop at dawn. His tools lay scattered across the concrete floor in patterns that defied explanation—chisels arranged in perfect spirals, hammers positioned like compass points, his grandfather's hand plane balanced precariously atop a stack of sandpaper that hadn't been there when he'd locked up the night before.
"What the hell?" He picked up a carving knife that had somehow embedded itself point-first in his workbench, the blade driven so deep it took considerable effort to extract. The wood around the entry point was black with char marks, as if the metal had been heated to temperatures that should have melted it entirely.
His bear paced restlessly beneath his skin, every supernatural sense on high alert. The workshop felt different—charged with an energy that made his hackles rise. Not threatening, exactly, but present in a way that suggested forces beyond the physical world had been paying him a visit.
The memorial piece he'd been carving for his lost clan sat in the center of the chaos, but the thirteen small bears hadbeen rearranged. Instead of the tight family grouping he'd been working toward, they now formed a protective circle around something invisible. Their wooden faces, still rough from his preliminary shaping, seemed to be looking outward as if standing guard.
Against what, he couldn't begin to guess.
"Okay, this is new," he muttered, setting the scattered tools back in their proper places. His workshop had been many things over the years—sanctuary, therapy session, monument to grief—but never the target of supernatural mischief.
The fact that this was happening less than twenty-four hours after Leenah's cemetery encounter couldn't be coincidence. Whatever forces she'd awakened were spreading throughout Hollow Oak, affecting places and people connected to that initial manifestation. Places and people like him.
His bear approved at the thought of being connected to the fierce necromancer, even if that connection came with supernatural complications. The animal had been agitated all night, pacing behind his ribs with the kind of restless energy that usually preceded territorial disputes or mating season. Since there were no rival shifters threatening his space, that left only one explanation.
And that explanation had striking blue eyes and a stubborn streak wider than the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Luka spent the next hour restoring order to his workshop, checking each tool for damage and cataloging the strange rearrangements. Everything seemed functional despite its midnight relocation, though he found protective symbols carved into several wooden surfaces that definitely hadn't been there before. Crude but effective warding marks that looked like they'd been burned rather than cut into the grain.
Someone, or something, had been trying to protect his space. The realization should have been unsettling, but instead hefound it oddly comforting. As if whatever supernatural forces were stirring in Hollow Oak considered him worth defending.
By the time he'd finished cleaning up, weak morning light was cracked through the frosted windows. November had arrived with its usual sharp bite, promising the kind of winter that would keep most tourists away until spring. Good for the permanent residents who valued their privacy, but bad for businesses that depended on supernatural tourism.
