Page 105 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

“What were we going to do?”

“Watch the sunset from the open deck and see the skyline and harbor light up around us.”

“That sounds beautiful,” I say. Not generically beautiful. Miles beautiful. Carefully selected and timed and designed around giving me a memory he believed I would keep.

We keep walking, but more slowly now. Just meandering. Neither of us suggests going home. We pass restaurants, old brick buildings, and strings of lights reflected in the dark water.

Then a loud voice carries through the night.

“—and to this day, residents insist they hear her footsteps crossing an empty room on the anniversary of her death.”

I turn. A man in a long black coat stands beneath a streetlamp, addressing a group of about fifteen people. He has silver hair, a lantern in one hand, and the bearing of a man who has personally interviewed several ghosts. There’s a sign beside him.

Harbor Haunts Walking Tour

History. Mystery. Restless Spirits.

Scan to Join Tonight’s Tour

I grin, and my hand tightens around Miles’s. “It says we can join the tour.”

“We’re not dressed for a ninety-minute walking tour.”

“I’m wearing comfortable shoes.”

He looks down at my ankle boots. And my wet jeans. “Those don’t look comfortable.”

The guide raises his lantern and says, “We depart in six minutes.”

I scan the QR code. “We missed the boat, but the universe just handed us an alternative plan for the night. If we don’t take it, the universe will think we’re ungrateful and stop handing us golden opportunities like this. Ghosts, Miles.”

He gives me that smile of his that I know so well. I give him one right back and sign us up.

The tour begins on a narrow cobblestone street, and within twelve minutes, Miles is proven correct about my shoes. They were not made for cobblestone or long walks. I don’t say anything, but Miles notices anyway.

Our guide—Cornelius Blackwood, according to the dramatic name embroidered onto his coat—leads us past eighteenth-century buildings, shuttered taverns, hidden courtyards, and alleys where allegedly murdered sailors still search for the men who betrayed them. I love every second of it, even if it means I won’t be able to walk again for days.

Cornelius tells us about a widow who waited thirty years for a ship that never returned.

I lean toward Miles. “She eventually discovered he’d opened a bakery in Portugal under another name.”

At the next stop, a woman in white supposedly appears in upper windows before storms. This time, Miles is the one to lean in and whisper. “She only wants you to think she’s a ghost. She’s actually conducting illegal meteorological experiments.”

A beagle belonging to an older couple in the group begins following Miles. At first, the dog only sniffs his shoe. Then it sits on Miles’s foot. When the group moves, it walks beside him instead of its owners.

“Winston,” the woman calls. “Leave that poor man alone.”

Winston refuses.

“He senses something,” Cornelius says gravely.

“He senses beef,” Miles says. “I had steak for dinner.”

Cornelius studies Miles’s swollen jaw, the Ziploc bag of ice our waiter insisted we take with us, and the way Miles keeps checking every alley we pass. “Animals are often drawn to those with heightened spiritual awareness.”

I cover my mouth to smother a laugh. Miles gives me a warning look.

A light rain begins twenty minutes later. No one on the tour leaves. Cornelius lifts his face to the sky as though the dead have personally arranged atmospheric effects. My wet jeans are cold. My feet hurt. My hair is expanding in the moisture. And I have never been happier on a date.