Page 49

“Must you be a grumpy asshole before I’ve had my coffee?”

A fair question. One I have no intention of answering.

“It’s interesting that you can reach my head when I’m all the way downstairs in the kitchen.”

Indeed.

I am currently positioned in the upstairs hallway, where I spent the night after yesterday’s unsuccessful attempts to break my curse. It is not much of an improvement over the balcony.

There are no squirrels, admittedly, but I am now forced to stare at a particularly hideous painting Eleanor acquired sometime during the nineteen seventies.

It depicts a bowl of fruit. I have been looking at it for nine hours. The bananas are blue. I find this deeply offensive.

There’s a painting in the upstairs hallway that needs to be removed.

“Good morning to you, too.”

The one with the blue bananas.

“Oh, I love that painting.”

Of course she does. Why are the bananas blue?

“For whimsy, I suppose.”

It’s hideous.

“So are you, but I’m keeping you.”

I would smile if I could. I have been a statue for one hundred and forty-three years, and somehow, in the span of a single week, this woman has managed to make me want to smile more than I did in the entirety of my previous life.

Unacceptable.

“Hey, Rocky?”

Gabriel.

“Whatever. You want some coffee?”

Coffee. Hot, bitter, fragrant coffee. I haven’t tasted it in more than a century.

Yes.

“Okay. Give me a minute.”

I wait.

Something I have become exceptionally good at over the last century.

After a few minutes, I hear her footsteps on the stairs. April appears in the hallway wearing a tiny pair of shorts that barely qualify as clothing and a faded T-shirt with a cartoon cat on the front.

Her pink hair is piled on top of her head. She’s carrying two mugs. And smiling.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Good morning.

She stops, raises her eyebrows. “Whoa.”