“Bingo,” I said softly as I strode in. Matilda stared into the room, her eyes on mine, her face sad. She lifted a palm to the glass and pressed her hand against it.

“What does she want?” Gran appeared by my side and glowered at the other ghost. Like two dogs stuck in adjacent apartments, they had taken to barking back and forth on a daily basis. They seemed to genuinely dislike each other. But this was different than the usual. Matilda had never come up to this window before. She’d mostly stayed in the lower levels of her house. She pointed at us, then made a slashing motion across her neck at Gran.

Gran lifted both fists, her long skirts swinging with the motion. “Matilda, stop being a bitch!”

I fake gasped and put a hand to my chest. “Gran! I can’t believe you cussed at her.”

“Ah, well.” She turned from the window with a final wave of her hand, like a queen dismissing the court. “It’s not like she can hear me. And she really is being a tyrant lately, trying to draw me out of the house so I’ll engage with her.”

She strode away, her form going transparent in a splash of sunlight, then solidifying again as she stepped into the shadows. I was lucky, so very lucky, I still had her with me. She’d died seven months prior, and I hadn’t been able to even attend her funeral—courtesy of Himself. I’d thought I’d lost my last chance to talk to her, to lean on her advice, to tell her I loved her. But I’d found her here in the house we’d lived in together.

I turned back to the window, fully expecting Matilda to be gone. But she wasn’t. Her eyes locked with mine, because like Gran, she knew I could see her.

Worse, she’d been joined by a much darker figure that cast a shadow on her from behind. Long spindly fingers wrapped around her upper body, digging into her spectral flesh and slowly pulling her deeper into the darkness of the house. The malevolence of the deliberately slow movements, the look of fear and horror etched into Matilda’s eyes, the lack of fight in her—it all sent chills through me that left my knees a little wobbly. This certainly hadn’t happened before.

“Duck me,” I whispered as I stepped back, too, away from the window. On second thought . . . I reached forward and grabbed the sash, pulling the curtains closed, blocking the view of Matilda and her new friend that I didn’t want to meet, never mind see. Gran had never mentioned a darker entity next door.

Sure, the supernatural world wasn’t new to me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t affected by it, or the special shades of ugliness that occasionally popped into my line of view. I didn’t realize I’d backed all the way out of my gran’s room and into mine across the hall until my hand touched the side table by my door.

My fingers brushed against the yellow manila envelope that lay there. The one I’d meant to open a week ago—and several times since—but like I said earlier, every time I picked it up, I seemed to chicken out at the last second. My eyes were locked on the window across from me, even though I could no longer see Matilda or the critter pulling her into the darkness. I slowly picked up the envelope and pulled it to my chest as if it would somehow block them from seeing me.

The envelope felt heavier than it actually was, a literal weight in my hands.

“You’re freaking yourself out,” I muttered as I backed up the last few steps and shut the door. The minute the barrier was in place the tension slid out of me. As if I’d cut off prying eyes. I shuddered. “I gotta ask Robert if he can get rid of her,” I mumbled to myself.

A tap on the door about stopped my heart. I took a step back, crouched, and peered under the oversized crack at the bottom. Shadows of a pair of feet, nothing more. If it had been any of my friends, they would have announced themselves.

Who the hell had broken into my house this time with Eric downstairs?

“What in the world are you doing?” Gran said behind me, and I squeaked . . . and maybe peed myself a little.

“Damn it,” I whispered. “I’m trying to see who’s out there.”

“Well, isn’t it obvious? You said his name. It’s Robert. He’s like a damn golden retriever. Irritating as Matilda if you ask me,” Gran grumped and promptly walked past me, through the door and out of view. I frowned after her.

“Who put a murder hornet in your panties?” I muttered after her.

I opened the door up to see the swaying form of Robert. His long dark hair hid his face, and the rags he wore—if he could be said to be wearing anything—covered his literal skeletal frame. Enough so that if you didn’t look too hard, you wouldn’t notice that he was a skeleton. If indeed you could even see him. Like Gran, he didn’t seem to be visible to everyone.

“Robert, what are you doing here?” Was Gran right? Was just saying his name enough to pull him in from his hiding spot? I usually left him outside in the garden. He liked it under the new, larger-than-it-should-have-been oak tree, although maybe it was something about the magic of the fae relic buried beneath it that spoke to him.

He reached out a finger and tapped the yellow envelope. No questions, just a tap of a single finger bone, followed by a waggle of said bone.

“Yeah, I know. I know! Okay, I should open it and see what it says, right?” I nodded even though I didn’t want to open it. Robert tapped the envelope again. I sighed. “Fine, I’m opening it. Don’t get pushy.”

“Friend,” Robert said.

“Friend,” I said as I put my finger to the opening of the envelope that held not only information on my gran’s death, but on my parents’ deaths thirty years ago.

The minute I opened it, this quiet we’d been enjoying would be gone—I just knew it. Whatever darkness was trying to dig into Savannah would wake up, like peeling back the curtains and staring into the eyes of a demon. I shuddered and shook my head.

“Like a Band-Aid, just rip it open,” I whispered.

2

I backed farther into my room, slid my finger through the edge of the yellow manila envelope, popped it open and dumped the contents onto my bed in a quick move before I could yet again change my mind. A whoosh of air seemed to fly through the room, dancing across my skin like a whole army of tiny ants crawling across it, biting me here and there. I smacked at my arms and legs, shuddering as the sensation slowly faded, leaving me tingling all over.

That’s what I got for freaking myself out.

The paperwork had its back to me, as it were. Maybe that was good. I could put off looking at it for a few more moments.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” I glanced at Robert. “I mean, I know that Gran’s death was probably a murder. And I know that it’s likely my parents were offed by someone too. And it’s one thing to think about that and want justice. It’s another entirely to look at pictures that might show them dead.” Or worse, not just dead but altered beyond recognition, something horrific enough to change what memories I had of them. I put my hand against the papers as if I could sense how bad it was just by touching them.

Shaking more than I cared to admit, I forced myself to pick up the stack and start to turn them over.

A boom of something against the front door spun me around, breaking my concentration, and I scrunched the papers then stuffed them back into the envelope. The banging on the door continued, quickly becoming a heavy-handed fist by the sounds of it. “Get that, Eric, would you?” I hollered down.

Only there was no Eric answering the door. Where the hell had he gone?

The banging thumped again and I hurried down the stairs. “Hold your horses, would you? You’re going to break the damn door!”

I grabbed the knob and swung the door open. The person on the front porch was someone I would have happily kept on avoiding if she weren’t trying to hammer the door down. Her hair was pulled into a neat-as-a-pin bun, tight enough to give her a facelift. Her eyes were narrowed and she leaned heavily on a cane I wasn’t entirely sure she truly needed.

Missy, Gran’s old frenemy. The literal witch who used to strike me with that very cane.

“That’s quite the knock you have there.” I leaned against the door jam.

Her entire body vibrated with energy. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

I grimaced. “Seems like a bad idea, inviting bad mojo into my home, don’t you think?”

Her eyes went from narrow to furiously bug-eyed in a flash. “I am . . . this book . . .” She kept starting and stopping with her words. I’d seen her this angry only once before.

When I’d lit the bottom of her long skirts on fire for telling me I was a stupid, useless git. It had gone better than expected because she hadn’t noticed the fire right away, giving me time to put enough distance between us so I could feign innocence. Not to say that she didn’t suspect me, I’m sure.

She held up the red leather-bound book I’d exchanged with her for information. “The spells . . . where is she, I want to speak to her.”

I turned my head, fighting a grin. The book I’d given her was, of course, useless. Truly nothing more than a book of spells for beginners wrapped in the crimson cover that had originally bound Gran’s book of spells and information about the shadow world. I’d been waiting for this visit, to be honest. I hadn’t thought Missy would want to talk to Gran, though. I’d figured she’d be pissed at me for pulling a fast one. She’d given me help for a bum book. “Gran, Missy is here to speak with you!”

Gran floated down the stairs, stopping just behind me. I stepped back so the two old “friends” could talk. Curiosity kept me close, that and the fact that I didn’t trust Missy further than I could throw her.

“Yes, Missy?” My gran clasped her hands in front of her. “What can I do for you?”

Oh, that was pretty formal even for Gran.

Missy held up the book with one hand and jabbed at Gran with her walking stick with the other. Not that it would hurt her, but the indignity of it was meant to wound. “What clouding spell is on this book? I’ve tried them all!”