Page 131 of Love at First Fright

“I know.”

“Like, monumentally bad.”

“I know.”

“Brad’s an absolute bellend.”

“I know.”

Bat floated in front of me, blocking my path. “So why are you going along with it?”

“Because—” I hefted the shovel, adjusting my grip. “Because I don’t know what else to do. He’s technically my supervisor. And he’s obsessed with this witch being the source of the problem. A.k.a. you guys.”

“We’re not the problem! It’s the thing in the basement.”

“Well, I can tell Brad that, but he’ll pry that sealed door open if it’s the last thing he does.”

Bat’s brown eyes flashed wide. He opened his mouth to respond, then flickered slightly, gaze fixed on something behind me.

I turned.

Brad approached through the garden, transformed. Gone was his ExorSquad jumpsuit. Instead, he wore a black tank top that clung to his chest and arms, and tiny navy shorts that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The fabric stretched tight across his thighs, riding up slightly as he walked.

I tried not to stare. Failed completely.

“You’ll be cold,” I managed.

Brad laughed a bark of amusement. “Cold? Mate, we’re about to work up a sweat. Trust me, five minutes in and you’ll be wishing you’d stripped down too.”

He carried an enormous bag of table salt in one hand, the shovel in the other. When we reached the apple tree, he set both down and hefted the salt bag.

“Stand back.”

He circled the grave, pouring salt over every inch of it. Then, in a thick white line that enclosed the bare earth entirely. The wrongness radiating from the ground pulled back, as if the salt created a barrier between it and the rest of the garden.

Bat flinched away from the salt circle, face twisted with discomfort.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“Salt. Doesn’t hurt exactly, not me at least, but it’s… uncomfortable. Like standing too close to a fire.” He glowered at Brad. “I don’t like this.”

I shrugged helplessly. What could I do? Brad had already started digging, driving his shovel into the earth with glee.

“Come on, then,” Brad called. “Don’t just stand there.”

I stepped into the salt circle, shovel raised, and jabbed it into the ground. The cursed earth didn’t seem to affect me through the metal shovels. Or perhaps Brad’s salt nullified whatever malevolent energy radiated from the grave. Either way, I managed to dig without that horrible sensation of wrongness crawling up my arms.

Immediately, Brad stopped. “No, not like that. You’ll strain your back. Here—” He demonstrated, foot on the edge of the shovel blade, using his body weight to drive it deep into the soil. “See? Let gravity do the work.”

The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of corrections and increasingly creative swearing. Apparently I held the shovel wrong, lifted wrong, turned wrong, and deposited the dirt in entirely the wrong place.

“Not there! We need clear piles, Charlie. Organised. Otherwise we’ll just be shovelling the same dirt twice.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“And bend your knees more. You’re going to wreck your lower back.”

“Got it.”