AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Steven looked left to right. “Who were you talking to?”
I closed my eyes and silently cursed myself for letting her stay. No good deed went unpunished. “Nana Pratt,” I told him.
To my astonishment, Steven nodded, as though this information was expected. “Does she… Does she look well?”
“She looks dead,” I said truthfully. I wasn’t one to sugarcoat a situation.
“Hey!” the old woman objected. “I look very good for my age and condition.”
Steven swallowed again. “Like there are worms coming out of her eye sockets and such?”
“No. She looks the way you’d remember her.” I sighed. “Why don’t you come in, Steven? Tell me what crazy thing I can do for you.”
“Can I come, too?” Nana Pratt asked. “I want to know why he’s here.”
I motioned for her to join us, but only because she’d asked permission first, and I had a feeling she’d press her ghostly face to the window if I refused. It would be distracting.
Steven took his time walking through the foyer. He seemed to find something new to gape at with each step. To be fair, it was a massive house that needed a lot of work to restore it to its former grandeur, not that I was planning to restore it. My goal was only to make it habitable.
“I never expected anybody to buy this place,” Steven remarked. “I heard it was a pit.”
We entered the kitchen, which was one of the only functional rooms in the house at present.
“And have you seen anything to change your mind?”
He snorted. “Not really.” He seemed to feel bad about the insult because he added, “The moat is cool though. I don’t know anybody with their own moat.”
“I prefer to think of it as a lazy river.” Or I would once I managed to add fresh water. Right now, the moat was problematic; the swamp-like feature drew mosquitoes during the hot and humid months. We were only at the end of June, and I was already lighting torches with citronella and cedar.
“Speaking of lazy, tell him he needs a haircut,” Nana Pratt said.
“That’s the style,” I told her, without passing along the message.
“Any longer and he’ll be parting the Red Sea.”
I smiled. “I think it was more than a hairstyle responsible for that.”
Steven glanced at the empty air. “Is she ragging on my hair again?”
“She is.” I gestured for him to sit at the small square table. “Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Mind if I have a cup? I’ll consider this my break.”
“It’s your house.”
I filled the kettle and set it on the stove, praying that when I turned on the gas, the house didn’t explode. There were still a lot of unknowns. “You don’t seem too shocked by my ability.”
“No, ma’am. It’s the reason I’m here.”
Interesting. There was no way he could know the full extent of my powers. “First, I’m only thirty-five, so please ditch the ‘ma’am.’ Second, how could you possibly know what I can do?”
He lowered his gaze and ran his fingers along the patina of the wood. “A few friends were up here one night awhile back.”
“At the house?”
“Outside the cemetery. There’s a wooded section where people go to drink, now that they can’t drink in the Castle anymore.”
