HELENA
I HAD a few days that were actually normal. Thank goodness. I needed to get some stuff done. I had to toughen up. Every girl who got banged by an incubus got bedazzled. Sure, sometimes the love was real, but…
He’s a ghost. You knew that going in.
There are certain moments in my life when I realize that it might be a little creepy how good I am at turning off my emotions. But I also had the sort of mom that locked us in the closet for discipline and would actually put coal in our stockings, topped with all those years of boarding schools.
The highlight was making some calls and getting a lead at a local salvage place on a new-old clawfoot tub. It passed the lead test and it was even prettier than the one we had to get rid of. It needed a good scrub and nothing more. I loved shining up an old tub and seeing it placed in a new home. The tiles were delivered on Monday, and the brickwork was almost done.
At night I would start to feel just a tiny bit freaked out. Byron sat and read to me every night, although I worried that this was more intimate, and almost more dangerous, than the sex.
“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” I said. “I’m not afraid of the dark or anything. I don’t need to be read to like a kid.”
“I enjoy it. Fiore’s eyes were bad near the end of his life so I sometimes read him his novels when I visited. It’s nothing,” he said.
“And when you weren’t ‘visiting’…you were in the realm of the dead? Purgatory? Where do you go?”
“Well, I have my own home to haunt,” he said, a little dryly. “Back in Sinistral.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“I just haunted Fiore out of respect for our friendship.”
“That was nice of you. It must be sad to see your friends grow old when you’re a ghost.”
“I was glad to help him. He was too stubborn to ask anyone else for help. And he was a tough old man. You would liked him, and he would have liked you,” he said decisively. “I think his spirit must rest easy with you here.”
Still, my sleep was so bad that I often stole a nap while the work crews were around, because I knew magical folk wouldn’t attack me with humans around.
I had no dreams of the garden during that time. Byron seemed to be giving me space so I could recuperate. Since incubi gained power through sex, it took a lot out of me. That was the reason vampires and incubi would never be welcome in Etherium, no matter how decent they might be otherwise.
But it was still me curled up under my warm blanket and a hot incubus reading to me in a low sexy voice. It was only a matter of time before I started wishing he was under the blanket with me.
In the dream world, he is alive…so very alive. How could he be dead?
Nope. Nope. First rule of magical house flipping. No falling for ghosts. Even Caleb knows that.
I had to admit, I was relieved to see Graham’s BMW pull up on the promised Saturday, because he was equally attractive but also more alive. Even though I knew I didn’t want to get involved with any guy in his position, so if we ended up getting flirtatious, I had to shut it down fast.
If nothing else, because Byron could be lurking in the wall. See how complicated things get when you mess around with ghosts?
“Hey! Perfect timing!” I went out to meet him as he peeled out of his car from a long ride, whipping off his sunglasses and sliding them in a pocket to meet my eyes. “The parlor is really taking shape! I hope you don’t feel like your childhood was betrayed when you see the shag carpeting ripped up.”
“I’m sure I’ll survive,” he said, grabbing a stapled paper grocery bag from his passenger seat. “The food out here is terrible, so I brought Italian subs. If you don’t like them, I’ll eat them both. Just so you know that I’m not a total health nut.”
“I never met an Italian sub I wouldn’t eat.”
Then he handed me a bottle of red wine. “Can’t forget that either.”
“Oh, thank you. Wow, this is good stuff too.”
“You know your wine, do you?”
“It’s not me so much as my parents had—an interest.” To be specific, one of my great uncles bought a vineyard so our summer vacations in a valley by the Danube. I heard a lot of dinner talk about soil and weather and there was never any question that children should drink wine too, in moderation.
“Have you fixed up the garden yet?” Graham was looking around. He seemed antsy. In all seriousness, I hoped he didn’t hate what I’d done. Or was he sorry he came, for some reason? I wondered if he was also feeling some attraction between us and trying to resist.
“I’m saving it for last. I wish it was earlier in the year. Only so much I can do in the fall when everything’s dead.” I proudly opened the double front doors of Lockwood House. In just a few weeks, the ground floor was well on its way to a stunning transformation. I had cleared out all the junk and spent the last two days cleaning and polishing the wooden floors until they glowed. My arms were still aching.
“Wow,” Graham said, walking into the parlor. “Holy crap. It doesn’t look like an old man den anymore. Are these the original floors?”
“You bet. See, they match the rest of the house. Nice wide boards. You just can’t get those anymore.”
“I can’t believe the floors were in such good shape and Grandpa covered them with that carpet.”
“Happens all the time.”
“And no more wood paneling. It’s so much brighter in here.”
“I had to drywall it. The plaster was too far gone. I really really wish I could
