Page 7 of Housesitter

He plunked Shithead down on the nightstand. Her eyes clicked open. Age had bleached most of the color out of the glass orbs, leaving them milky-blind with a pinprick dot of a pupil. Her disgust with that suggestion was palpable.

Shepherd shrugged.

“Look, keep it up if you want,” he said. “God loves a trier. Maybe not you, but in theory.”

The smell of sour meat had warmed. Shepherd could taste it in the back of his throat. He gave Shithead a pat on the head, the dry stubble of wheat-blonde curls rough against his palm.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You stay out of trouble until I’ve got the books calmed down, and I’ll let you have coffee with breakfast. Even though you aren’t meant to. Deal?”

Shepherd waited.

Shithead gave him nothing.

He squinted at her for a beat and then shrugged.

Whatever. She’d play along. She loved coffee. Besides, there was only so much trouble she could get into as long as he kept her 500 feet away from a church, school, or pickleball tournament.

“Coffee, with cream,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “Final offer.”

The books on Dio Madden’s shelves whispered to Shepherd as he worked. They whispered of power and influence and dark delights that he could not— yet—even imagine in paper-dry murmurs.

“Yeah,” Shepherd said as he plucked the Sour Taste of Honey from a Dead Man off the shelf. The binding was warm and velvety as he flipped it over to wipe the bloody sweat that accumulated in the Witching Hour off the pages. “Don’t get me wrong, I would. Definitely. I am technically married, though.”

The books tittered at him.

He stopped mid-wipe and gave them a disapproving look.

“OK, so I’m not book-hot. But if you were incarnate supernatural things? You’d be all over me. This?” He waved his hand from shoulder to mid-thigh to indicate the wares. Most supernatural creatures didn’t care about anything below the knee or above the jaw unless it was being BBQ’d. “This is gentrification in motion. I am prime meat real estate.”

He flicked the last of the red sweat from the spine of the book and turned it upside down to give it a quick shake. A lightly chewed mouse tail fell out and thumped on the floor. He looked at it. He looked at the book.

“I hope that was a snack and not a bookmark,” he said, as he slid Sour Taste back into its spot. It was hard to explain how a book could shrug, but it managed it.

The smell of rancid meat had faded. It smelled less like a slaughterhouse about to be condemned and more like a mouse had died under the floorboards (or, in a book). Shepherd had just started to dust the edges of a sickly compendium with dried blood when he heard a distant, tinny ding-dong.

He stopped mid-sprinkle and cocked his head to the side, mentally running through the checklist of ‘aberrations to be aware of’ that had been in the service packet. For one of these jobs, it was relatively short. The Hell House was an easy keeper; as long as everything was kept fed and teenager-free, it was fine.

The ding-dong echoed through the house again.

Shepherd gave the books a baffled look. Then he swore under his breath as the penny dropped.

It was the doorbell.

He gave himself the mental equivalent of a slap to the forehead. It hadn’t even occurred to him. He’d been doing this job too long. The whole concept of a ‘doorbell’ had apparently completely slipped his mind. An eerie, slow rap at the door, even at this unexpectedly seemly hour? Sure. But the tinny, electronic chime had triggered no associations for him.

He capped the blood powder—didn’t want the healthy books getting into that and over-indulging—and shoved the ailing tome back onto the shelf. As he turned to go, the few untended books rustled threats at him.

“Don’t start with me,” Shepherd warned them as he peeled the apron off over his head. “I’ll be back when I’ve dealt with this, but if you play up…you know where you go.”

He pointed to the naughty shelf.

It was a row of entirely mundane paperbacks, dog-eared and well-thumbed, that he’d picked up at various thrift stores and charity shops over the years. Danielle Steel, Enid Blyton, and a handful of old Point Horrors. A particularly intractable tome of foul knowledge had been shelved right in the middle of them two days ago. It looked embarrassed by the company.

The shelved books audibly clamped their covers tighter at the threat.

Shepherd left them to think about it as he loped down the stairs. He passed Shithead perched on a side table in the hall, propped up against an antique banker’s lamp. She looked accusing.

“I said with breakfast,” Shepherd told her on the way past. She glared with implacable malice. “Chores come first. You know that.”