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“What if we get it wrong? I don’t want to get Edward’s hopes up if we chase a dead end. He’s convinced himself it’s impossible, but we know it’s not.” I squeeze her hand back. She feels so amazing, soreal. “Nothing is impossible with you, Bree.”
When Bree speaks to me, her voice is soft. “Ambrose, why do you want to do this for him? After he kept the secret of your book…”
“Because…” I shrug. “I think it will be more fun.”
And it’s true. I love being alive, and I can’t wait to share all these remarkable feelings and sensations with my dear friend Edward. How can I possibly hate him for hiding that book from me? If he’d given it to me years ago, I would have crossed over and never have met Bree. I wouldn’t be alive now.
Edward hates himself for what he did to me, but truly, he saved me.
“This plan is excellent,” Pax says. “Legionnaire-level stuff, worthy of great Caesar himself. There is but one problem. How do we find out who might have wanted to kill Edward if we can’t ask him? I suspect everyone who ever met him wanted to kill him, and that is a very long list.”
“Well, it can only be people who were at Grimwood Manor that night,” Bree says. “So that narrows down our suspects. I bet one of the history books has a guest list, although I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to narrow it down.”
“I bet we can figure it out. We don’t need to ask Edward a thing – Pax and I have been listening to him harp on about these so-called friends of his for years. We know everything there is to know about them.”
Pax snorts. “You mean you listen when Edward talks?”
“Fine.Iknow everything about them. And Mina and Quoth could help, too. I think that between us, we can put together a list of suspects and start crossing them off.”
Bree laughs and throws her arms around me. “Okay, Ambrose. We’re going to do this. You’re officially in charge of our Make Edward Human Again campaign.”
I lean my head against her shoulder, revelling in the warmth of her arms around me, so solid and trusting. My stomach rumbles, a novel sensation that I remember indicates that I’m starving. I turn to Bree. “Did you say something about drop scones?”
18
Bree
“No. no, no, no. This won’t do at all. We’ll need to change outallthis furniture for the staging.”
Gwen, the real estate agent who’s stepped into Annabel’s shoes now that we put her behind bars for fraud, glares around the purple guest room, hands on hips.
“Why?”
The word slips from my mouth before I can stop it. Mum glares at me, but I don’t take it back. There’s nothing wrong with this room. It’s one of our most popular guest rooms. Dad painted the walls a vibrant purple to match the purple and gold drapery Mum made. There’s a heavy old four-poster bed and some old antique furniture we picked out at jumble sales, and Dad painted a mural on the wall behind the bed with a bunch of gold dancing flamingos.
Why would Gwen want to change it?
Gwen makes a face. “This room is too…kooky. With all these dark colours and this heavy wooden furniture, I feel like I’m on the set of the Addams Family. Today’s buyers are looking for modern, light, airy. They don’t want a lot of clutter everywhere. Trust me, all this…” she frowns as she gestures to a grinning monkey lamp my dad found on the side of the road, “…personalitymay work for the B&B guests, but buyers don’t want to see it. We need to give them a blank canvas where they can imagine their own life.”
I don’t want them to imagine their own life. I want them to get out of ours.
“What do you propose?” Mum’s taking notes on a little clipboard while Dad pats the monkey lamp lovingly on his fuzzy head.
“We’ll paint all the bedrooms in a nice cream, something with a hint of warmth to it. I’ve got some furniture you can use for staging. You have that old outbuilding down the back of the garden? Put all this…” Gwen glares at the monkey lamp again, “…flairinto it. I’ll keep the prospective buyers away from the outbuilding – I can tell them there are spiders. Buyers hate spiders almost as much as they hate flamingo murals.”
“We have to take out all the furniture?” I remember the day they purchased the bed frame, and Dad rigged a makeshift pulley system so we could winch it over the balcony since it wouldn’t fit up the staircase. “How do you suggest we do that? Take the roof off and helicopter it out?”
“Bree, hush.” Mum looks forlornly at her drapes. “The curtains, too?”
“Yes, definitely. And thishasto go.” She gestures to the mural.
“No,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Bree, but this isn’t about what you like anymore.” Gwen puts on a voice that suggests she’s had this conversation with a million other clients’ stubborn daughters before. “These manor houses are notoriously difficult to sell. There aren’t many buyers with the cash to take on the upkeep of an old property. If your parents want a hope in hell of getting a good price for this old pile, they’re going to need to make some drastic decor changes. And that definitely includes any murals.”
“But…” I glance at Mum for help. She’s biting her lip. She doesn’t want the mural painted over, either.
Pax’s head appears around the door. “Is there a problem? I heard voices raised, which usually precedes an evisceration…”
