Page 1 of Some Kind of Haunted

Chapter One

“I’d suggest you just drive,” the very bored man behind the airline counter tells me.

His level of interest in my plight is subzero, and my temper intensifies in inverse proportion to his apathy. I consider jumping the counter. Or—more realistically and less likely to alert Homeland Security—I could simply rely on my rapier wit, which is equally damaging.

My brother gives me a sharp warning glare before looking back down at his phone. Not just my older-by-three-minutes brother, but a lawyer to boot, he’s gotten me out of a small “temper tantrum” or two.

But he’s in no mood to help me out of anything right now.

This obviously makes counter jumping all the more tempting.

He’s turned his attention to his phone and I can see he’s mapping the distance to our destination from Des Moines International—because somehow, yes, I, Lexi Darling, am in Des Moines.

As in Iowa.

One of those flat parts of the country I fly over, not to.

None of this is exactly on my bucket list. Particularly not Midas, Iowa, where we would never be going if someone hadn’t died.

That someone being the grandmother we never met, whose funeral we weren’t invited to, who our father has never mentioned.

Who also, oddly, named us in her will.

Logan looks up from his phone and fixes the airline attendant with a look of astonishment. “It’s four hours to Midas from here.”

Because there were no direct flights to Midas, or even the closest airport in Dubuque—places I’d never heard of before this strange debacle—we had to book a flight into Des Moines and catch a connection into Dubuque.

A connection we missed. Admittedly, this is slightly my fault, because I slept on the plane, and when I sleep, I sleep hard. I wasn’t exactly moving at the speed of light when our flight from New York deplaned.

Logan has already pointedly not mentioned it about fifty times.

This is far more annoying than if he had.

“Four hours, give or take,” the airplane attendant agrees. “That’s why I’d just drive. There’s not another flight to Dubuque until tomorrow. Then you gotta drive to Midas anyway.” The guy shrugs. “I can refund your ticket. Then you can get yourself a rental car and get it over with. Cheaper to drive anyway.”

I’m not sure what part of us screams that cheaper is our preferred option. Logan is glaring in New York City lawyer. I am frowning in Prada.

He must sense we are waiting for another option. “Or I can rebook you in two days.”

“You said the next flight is tomorrow,” Logan points out.

“Yeah, but it’s full.”

Full? We are in the middle of nowhere. “Are you always this—”

Logan steps between me and my first Midwestern road trip “tantrum.” I suspect it will not be my last.

“We’ll take the refund and directions to where we can get a rental car,” he tells the guy, sounding much calmer than I think he really is.

But I decide to let Logan handle it. I’m very good at letting people handle things. Particularly things I want nothing to do with.

Like every single person in this godforsaken airport and the idea of driving four hours to still be in Iowa.

I put my earbuds in to drown out the din of the flatlands. I try to center myself, a goal I have pursued for years yet never achieved. I want to give myself the best possible chance at not committing murder.

I let Logan lead the way as I become one with a folklorian cabin.

When he finally leads me outside the airport, into a frigid drizzling rain that looks even worse out here in all this vast emptiness, it’s with car keys in hand. Apparently, we have to go hunt down the car we rented.