I groaned. “Can you guys just cool it, please? I’m sick of?—”
“Relax, princess, it’s just me,” a voice called out. “And I come bearing gifts.”
I turned to catch Thorne sauntering through the door. She’d swept her dark hair into a loose side-braid, then perched her sunglasses atop her head, as though to hold her stray curls in place. In her arms, she carried a large plastic tote teeming with cleaning supplies.
Oh, thank everything everywhere. Reinforcements.
She kicked the door shut with the heel of her boot, then strode inside.
“Well,” she said brightly, “at least the ghosts didn’t murder you in your sleep. That’s progress. Perhaps, the only progress.”
I sighed and brandished an arm toward the room. “Every time I clean something, they rebel.”
Thorne crossed the room and set the bin down on the bar with a dramatic thud. Something inside clanked. Or maybe hissed. I didn’t ask.
She popped the lid open and began pulling items out. “Witch hazel. Floor polish. Sea salt. Holy water—blessed by a Ravenspell, not one of those mass-produced frauds. A bundle of sage thick enough to smoke out your chandelier boyfriend. And…” She held up a small, sealed mason jar filled with what looked like moonlit jelly. “Ectoplasm neutralizer.”
I blinked. “That’s a thing?”
“It is now,” she said, then set it down with a flourish. “Figured your roommates needed a little incentive to play nice.”
“I tried that. They threw a stool at me.”
Thorne shot me a glance, her lips pressed together as though trying not to laugh. “Did they now?”
I nodded.
She tsked, pulling out a pair of rubber gloves—pink, elbow-length, and bedazzled around the cuffs. “Well, then. It seems we need to discuss consequences.” She reached back into the bin and retrieved a comically large bundle of herbs, bound tightly in twine and already shedding bits onto the floor. “For instance, I could light this beauty. According to the Ravenspells, white sage is quite off-putting to spirits.”
She held it aloft like a weapon, turning slowly so every lurking spirit had a chance to admire the threat.
Bernard’s chandelier suddenly stopped tinkling, and the stool I’d righted scooted gently—very gently—away from the center of the room and back behind the bar, where I’d placed it an hour ago.
“Well then,” I murmured. “Do you think they’ll start helping next? Maybe mop the floors while I nap?”
A gust of cold air whooshed past my shoulder, rattling the row of empty liquor bottles behind the bar.
Thorne snorted. “That was a no. A very sassy no.”
“They’re lucky they’re already dead.”
She pulled on her own gloves with a sharp snap. “All right, Your Royal Griminess. Where shall we begin?”
It was my turn to stare at her. “You want to help me clean?”
She shrugged. “Why not? It’s half my business now too, right? It would be rude of me to leave you to handle all this by yourself.”
Something in me eased at her words. I’d had support before—family, friends, people who believed in me—but it had all vanished so spectacularly with my ex-mate’s downfall that I’d stopped expecting anyone to stand beside me. Yet here Thorne was, in her bedazzled gloves, ready to tackle this mess of a place without a second thought.
“How about upstairs?” Thorne suggested when I didn’t immediately speak. “The bar is important, but I assume you’d like somewhere semi-habitable to sleep. I can only imagine the state of the upstairs matches the tone down here?”
“Worse,” I admitted. “I think the bathroom is cursed.” Luckily, as a vampire, I lacked all need for a toilet, but there were other amenities I wanted to make use of—like a shower. Unfortunately, the malevolent presence gave me a severe case of the heebie-jeebies.
Thorne arched a brow. “How cursed are we talking? Occasional groaning pipes or full-blown plumbing poltergeist?”
“A toilet demon. It likes to whisper to me in other languages at night.”
That earned me a grimace. “If it starts offering you deals, run.”
