“Sugar, you’re more than welcome. I just wish this were under better circumstances.”
She turned to Libbie and hugged her, too. “And you,” she whispered in her ear, “are a blessing and a treasure. Thank you so, so much. I know this is hard on you in more than one way.” Poor Libbie suffered from fibromyalgia and arthritis. In addition to being Julie’s friend, she’d insisted on providing the food for the wake. It had to be a strain on her.
“Anything you need, I’m right across the square,” Libbie said. “Anytime, day or night, call or come pound on my door if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
She saw them out, then turned to everyone else. “Thanks for being here today. You guys are fantastic.”
Sachi returned. “They didn’t want anything to drink. Are you sure you want to do this?”
She forced a smile she didn’t feel. “I’m sure.”
“I’m not leaving until they do,” Sachi insisted. “Then you need to go lie down.”
“I will. Can someone please walk Pers for me? He’s up in the apartment. And be careful not to let Damiago out of the bedroom, either.”
“I’ve got it,” Sachi said, bolting for the stairwell door. Sachi seemed to have two speeds the past several days—run, and sit. Mandaline didn’t blame her. The events had to be triggering bad flashbacks for Sachi, who had past horrors of her own she dealt with.
Mandaline stopped in the downstairs bathroom and washed her face. She glanced in the mirror.
I look horrible.
After a deep breath to settle herself, she grabbed a notepad and pen from the office, then headed to the room to talk to the men.
Chapter Two
“I feel horrible,” Brad whispered.
Ellis barely heard him. He nodded, still fingering the appointment card. He couldn’t believe the vibrant, bubbly, red-haired woman they’d talked to days earlier was now dead.
It hadn’t been the best weekend. He’d spent it trying to decompress after helping his parents board up their large house, and then unboard their house once the storm didn’t hit, followed by making sure he was at the VA for all of Brad’s tests Monday and Tuesday.
And still they had no answers.
He’d spent the past several days either inundated by storm coverage or trying to wrap his head around medical information. Yes, in retrospect he remembered hearing something about a murder in Brooksville, a famous author or someone snapped, but it honestly hadn’t taken priority over everything else going on in his life.
Brad was his priority, and would be as long as they were both alive. Especially since he blamed himself and felt responsible for his friend’s condition.
The sound of the door opening jarred him from his thoughts. He didn’t remember seeing this woman when they were in the store the other day. Under better circumstances he suspected he’d be trying to corral his lewd and lascivious thoughts about the short, slim woman. Between his shock and her obvious grief, sexy thoughts felt wrong and out of place.
Her sweet brown eyes looked red and bloodshot, with dark, puffy lines under them. She’d pulled her long brown hair back into a braid. Dressed in a loose, black blouse and a floor-length maroon skirt, she almost seemed to drift into the room. She sat across from them and offered them a sad smile.
She extended her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m Mandaline Royce. I…” Her voice faltered a beat. “I now own Many Blessings. Julie was my best friend as well as my employer.”
He gently shook her hand. “Ellis Fargo. Well, I guess you know us now.” She shook with Brad. “This is Bradley Sawyer.”
She took up her pen. “Let’s start with the basics. You said you’re having trouble with your house?”
He nodded, running the tip of his tongue over his teeth. I’m doing this for Brad. “We think there’s something wrong with—”
“It’s possessed,” Brad said with quiet certainty.
Ellis fought the urge to groan. “We don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
Brad looked down at his hands, where he worked the tissue back and forth through his fingers. “It’s not right,” he softly said. “There’s something wrong with it.”
Brad was obviously upset over the news about Julie and in no state of mind to tell the story. Ellis laid a hand on his shoulder. “Let me tell it, buddy. Okay?”
Brad nodded but didn’t look up.
He returned his attention to Mandaline, glad that she wasn’t looking at him or Brad like they were nuts. “It’s an old house, one of the oldest in Brooksville. It’s on ten acres north of town. Two stories plus the attic, lots of gingerbread, that kind of thing. We bought it at a bank auction. It sat empty for several years and was in pretty bad shape even before that. We had it tented for termites, put a new roof on it, started getting things like plumbing and electrical updated. We’re in the process of renovating it. Top to bottom.”
She jotted something on her notepad. “How long have you owned it?”
“We bought it early last year, but we didn’t move in until eight weeks ago, once we had a usable bathroom. We’ve been staying at my office.”
Her brow furrowed. “Office?”
“I own the law firm four blocks down from here. The old two-story mansion? I have other offices rented out in the building. We were using part of the upstairs as an apartment.”
“Ah.” Recognition dawned across her features. “Oh! Okay, now I know why your name sounds familiar.” She offered him a kind smile. “You renovated that building, too, didn’t you? I really like how it looks now, the light blue with the yellow trim. Everyone loved how you decorated it last Christmas.”
He nodded. “Thanks. It wasn’t in as bad of shape as this house is. I like rehabbing old houses, although Brad deserves most of the credit for the work.”
“He’s good at it,” Brad softly said with a smile. He looked up at them. “Rehabbing things.”
Ellis smiled at the joke. He realized Mandaline didn’t get it. “Brad’s been through a lot the past few years.”
“So, tell me what kind of things are happening at your house?”
Ellis thought back to the litany of Brad’s claims. “Noises. Ah, apparitions. Things being moved.”
“You’ve both experienced this?”
“I have,” Brad said. He looked down to his lap again. “Ellis thinks I’m imagining it.”
No, not exactly correct, but he didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Brad. He suspected Brad genuinely thought he heard and saw things, but that the source of the disturbances came from inside Brad’s battered brain, not from the house.
“I never said that,” he told Brad. “We wouldn’t be here if I thought you were imagining it.”
“He’s humoring me.” Brad turned one of his thousand-megawatt smiles on the woman. “So I’m humoring him by pretending I don’t know he thinks I’m having problems again.”
* * * *
Holy fecking Goddess! Mandaline didn’t know what Bradley’s issue was, but her panties suddenly grew damp under his playful smile. Her heart raced. Despite the circumstances, Mandaline welcomed the distraction.
It felt good to actually feel something besides grief for a few moments.
It felt good to feel.
She looked from one man to the other. She didn’t get a gay vibe from them. They weren’t partners in that respect, but there was definitely a deep, strong bond of love and caring between them. “Are you brothers?”
“No,” Ellis said. It took every ounce of Mandaline’s being to pull her attention from Bradley’s deep, sweet brown gaze and back to Ellis. “Good friends. For years. Like brothers, I guess. As good as brothers.”
“He takes care of me,” Bradley said, still wearing that smile.
Dammit. If she’d met Bradley in a bar and he flashed that smile at her, she’d likely be in bed with him in a heartbeat despite her reservations of getting involved with anyone.
Hell, she’d do him in the backseat of her car.
Of course, Ellis was no slouch himself. He wore jeans and a blue pullover short-sleeved, collared knit shirt. But with his neatly styled blond hair and blue eyes, he looked every bit as handsome as Bradley. Bradley wore jeans with splotches of paint on them, and a white T-shirt under an open, long-sleeved chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His shaggy brown hair brushed his shirt collar. He also had long, sinewy, graceful fingers she imagined could…
Her pulse thundered as she shoved that vision out of the way. “What do you do for a living, Bradley?”
“Brad.” His soft voice pulled at her every bit as strongly as his smile. “Just Brad. Not much.”
“He’s an artist,” Ellis said, glancing at him.
“Oh, that’s neat,” Mandaline said, wanting to know more about both of them. The vibe she felt intrigued her more every second she spent with them. She felt loath to release the distraction. Outside the room, once they left, she’d be forced to deal with reality again.
For now, she could distract herself with these two cuties.
Brad shrugged. “I try.” His gaze had returned to his lap.
“He sold six paintings last month at a show in Miami for over seventy-five thousand, total.”
Mandaline’s brow rose. “Wow! That’s impressive. I take it he refuses to toot his own horn?”
The sad smile Ellis wore as he looked at his friend nearly broke her heart. She longed to find out what bound these two together. “He won’t even play his own horn, much less toot it. Art is just fun for him.”
“Like I said,” Brad spoke up without looking up, “he takes care of me.”
She didn’t miss the intensity of the look Ellis gave her. It didn’t take her witchy senses to see what was going on. “Brad, tell me about what’s going on at the house.”
At that, he looked up and met her gaze. She felt something subtle shift inside him, as if he was more there than he had been a moment earlier. “I think the renovation stirred something up. That happens, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it can. It’s not uncommon.”
“We know a little about the house’s history. Nothing gory or horrific, but one of the early owners, nearly half his family died there during a flu epidemic back in the forties.”
Mandaline jotted it down, relieved. Likely nothing dark, nothing creepy, just sad energies. “What have you experienced?”
“Most of it’s in the attic. I see shadows moving during the day. And at night. I hear sounds, like voices but not, when I’m alone in the house during the day, and sometimes at night, too. I’ve had stuff like brushes, charcoals, pencils, things like that, I’ll go to find them and they’ve been moved. I have periods where it feels like someone’s watching me when I’m home alone.”
While Brad spoke, Mandaline watched Ellis from the periphery of her vision. Yes, he was humoring his friend. And he was doing it out of love and concern.
She kept her focus on Brad as she jotted notes while he talked. “Have you noticed any pattern to the activity?”
He shrugged. “It happens only to me.”
“Does the activity get worse at night or daytime?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t noticed. It just…happens. Julie said maybe she could do a house cleansing ritual?”
“That is definitely one option. She…we have a two-pronged approach. Have you ever watched Otherworlds?”
Brad smiled. “I love that show. They’re based in Tampa.”
That smile would be devastating to her panties. She couldn’t help but smile in return. “We use equipment to go through a space and see if we can catch anything. But we also try to debunk what we can. When we finish that process, then we can go through and do a ritual cleansing of the space for you, if you’d like.”
Brad nodded before abruptly turning to Ellis. “You want to talk to her alone now?”
She didn’t think she imagined that Ellis went a little pink in the face. “Sure, buddy.”
He got up. “I’ll go sit out there.” He quickly left the room.
Once the door closed, Ellis slumped in his chair and let out a long breath as he rubbed his forehead.
This was the mystery Mandaline truly felt drawn to. She suspected it was part of the reason Julie had designated their case as urgent.
“Thank you for humoring him,” he said.
She put down her pen. “I know it’s none of my business, but since I suspect you and I are now technically in collusion or whatever it’s called, can I ask what’s going on?”
That earned her a wry smile as he met her gaze. “How long you got?”
* * * *
Brad walked out to the front of the store and sat on one of the sofas, where he could look out the windows and see the center of town. The courthouse complex stood in the middle of the main square. Across the way he spotted the bakery.
“Libbie,” the woman whispered in his mind.
He nodded, listening. The woman had started coming to him a few days earlier, but Brad hadn’t said anything to Ellis about her.
He’d only think it’s another problem.
He loved Ellis. He loved him for taking care of him when he didn’t have anyone, and he loved Ellis for humoring him when anyone else would have simply had a court commit him to an assisted living facility.
He knew he had his good days and his bad. Today was actually a good day. If he’d wanted, he could drive.
Not that he’d tell Ellis that. It would give Ellis indigestion.
The woman softly laughed at that thought, which made him smile.
Behind the counter, a woman—
“Sachi,” the woman whispered.
Sachi. He mentally rolled the name around for a while. He’d remember that name. As he would Mandaline. Beautiful names. He sometimes had trouble remembering names. It frustrated him, because before everything, before, then he’d had a perfect memory.
Before.
Of all the things he missed about his old self, he missed his mind the most.
He almost giggled aloud at the thought. He knew it was a common bumper sticker saying.
From behind the counter, Sachi watched him with a wary eye. He let his gaze drift around the storefront, until it fell upon a beautifully carved wooden box sitting high on a shelf next to the counter. Beside it, a small vase of wildflowers.
Before his brain processed it, he stood and walked over to the box.
No, not box.
“You’ll think of it,” the woman whispered.
Then, the lightbulb moment.
Urn.
The woman laughed as if delighted with him.
“You’re Julie.” He knew it was right as soon as he silently spoke it to her.
She hadn’t told him her name, going quiet every time he’d asked. He’d quickly learned to stop asking.
Now he knew who she was. He felt glad about that. He didn’t often have voices in his head, but he preferred knowing their names when he did. “I thought you sounded familiar.”
She gently laughed.
Chapter Three
“We’re not gay,” Ellis said by way of starting. “I don’t know where else to begin but there, so you can understand. As I said, he’s like a brother to me. We’ve been friends since first grade. His dad was arrested on drunk driving charges. Manslaughter. He went to jail.”
“Yikes.”
“Oh, that’s the good part of the story.”
“The good?”
“It goes downhill from there. His mom obviously had a hard time after that. His dad killed a bicyclist. She filed for divorce when it happened. He’d been drinking off and on for years, but that was the last straw for her. She lost everything when the family sued her husband. She basically had to start over as a single mom.
“My parents are good people. They didn’t turn their backs on her like a lot of people did. They knew her husband’s sins weren’t hers, or her son’s. My parents included Brad in everything, my after-school stuff, taking him on the weekends so she could work, became his
family. He spent more time at our house than at his. So when I say we’re like brothers, that’s because we are.”
She sensed a great sadness envelop him. “He has good days and bad days,” he softly said. “He’s not crazy. He’s not autistic or mentally disabled. He’s suffered traumatic brain injuries. And it’s my fault.”
“What?”
“Long story short, his mom died when we were in high school. She couldn’t afford medical insurance. She had cancer, but she didn’t know it. By the time she was so sick she had to go to the ER, she was too far gone for the doctors to help her. My parents took him in and were granted custody of him, but they couldn’t afford two college tuitions. Fortunately, he scored an academic scholarship. Which was great, because we were both going to be lawyers. Our dream was to open an office together.
“But in college he kind of slacked off. I was busy with my own stuff and should have been riding his ass. He ended up losing his scholarship.”
“That’s not your fault.”
He slowly nodded. “Oh, yes it is. One night we were talking about options for him to try to make money to afford tuition. I made the mistake of suggesting he could enlist in the military and then go back to college after he did his time.” He looked down at his hands. “I didn’t think he’d really do it. I don’t even know why I said it. I wish I hadn’t said it.”
He finally looked up at her again. “He went and enlisted early the next morning without talking to me or my parents about it first. Ten months later, he was sent over to Afghanistan.”
She suspected she knew where this story was going, but she didn’t interrupt him.
“He served in the Middle East for nearly four years. One day, the vehicle he was in ran over an IED. After three weeks in a hospital in Germany, he was stable enough to be shipped stateside, where he spent a few more months in the hospital before they gave him a medical discharge.”
“He looks good.” She winced. “That came out wrong, I’m sorry.”