Page 38 of Some Kind of Haunted

Like he needs to be wary around me, when he is a whole rugged man and I get lost while sleepwalking in my ridiculous pajamas.

I want to tell him that, but we’re standing in this dim closet with the shelves pressing in, and the way he looks at me makes me almost think, if he was anyone else—

His gaze drops to my mouth.

I think, is Jack Bellamy about to kiss me?

But that has to be certain evidence that my belfry is nothing but bats, because didn’t I follow him in here to find out why he dislikes me so much? The man would probably kiss one of his grandfather’s creepy, vacant-eyed dolls first.

I think about the dolls and shudder, and that’s when his gaze rises again.

His face hardens. That thing in his eyes goes away. I feel the loss of it like a panic all its own.

“Jack,” I begin, and I step closer.

But he’s scowling at me. “Like I said, princess, I’ve got work. You want to ask questions, save them for tonight.”

He grabs a giant tub of what I think might be mayonnaise, because I can’t think what else would look like that, pale and creamy, and my stomach revolts a little at the thought of all that mess slopping about in that gigantic container. He moves past me, carrying the mayonnaise with him, and I follow him into the hall—because I don’t want to molder away in that storage area, because I’m not sure he won’t lock me in there, because of other reasons I can’t really articulate—but I don’t trail him into the diner.

Not only because he is carrying entirely too much mayonnaise.

Tonight, he said. Our meeting at an airport that is somehow wily enough to avoid, say, a simple map search on any given phone. With Cleo and Nora and, no big deal, the common knowledge we all share now that demons are real and might crack out of that clock tower, slurping all the way.

Though it’s not a might anymore, I realize. It’s a when.

Because I came to town, and my being here means it’s happening.

But something dawns on me then.

My grandmother is the reason I came to Midas. She deliberately left her shop not only to Nora and Cleo, but also to the grandkids she didn’t know. The grandkids who didn’t know her. Pretty much guaranteeing we’d show up here.

After Harrison made it sound like . . . I was kept away on purpose. Kept safe on purpose. But leaving us things that require us to come here speaks to something different, doesn’t it?

Almost like a harbinger isn’t a bad thing. A thing to avoid and hide from. Not forever.

Because I might never have met the woman, but I’ve been in her house and her shop. I’ve heard the way people who did know her talk about her.

I can’t believe that she would wish harm upon any of them. There are too many photos in her living room telling stories about joy for me to think she’d want to hurt anyone.

I have to think that if she wanted me here now, she had to have a reason to believe that I’m not going to Grim Reaper everyone she loves. Surely whatever role I play, it can’t all be doom and gloom.

She was a knitter, I remind myself. I may even have inherited my love of fabrics I can make with my hands directly from her, like we’ve been more connected all this time than I realized.

And veteran knitters know that sometimes, you just have to trust the pattern whether it makes sense to you or not.

I feel myself holding on to that as I finally walk out of this building—feeling a lot like it was trying to keep me there, or maybe it’s a green-eyed diner owner who didn’t really answer the questions I asked him, and definitely wasn’t thinking about kissing me, that’s wild—and head toward the knitting shop.

Though I make a note of all the questions Jack is going to have to answer for me tonight, like me or not, when he’s done slinging mayo.

Chapter Thirteen

“I don’t see why we have to ride with her.”

I stare at Logan from where I’m curled up on our grandmother’s sofa. Now my brother’s bed. He can be baffling when he wants to be and apparently today he really wants to be. “Nora said this airport is hard to find.”

“I’m sure I can find it.”

I’m not sure he’s wrong, since everything seems to work out for him so easily, but . . . “I have seen you treat actual criminals with more courtesy than you use with Nora. What’s the matter with you?”