by Amy Boyles
“But that I would be bored with you, Blissful?” he asked.
“Yes,” I grudgingly admitted, “that’s what I was trying to say, though it didn’t come out right.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
My heart shattered even more.
“Hey, don’t look so sad.” Roan hooked his finger beneath my chin and lifted it until I was forced to look at him. “What I mean to say is, maybe I would, but I doubt it. We have so much in common, and if we keep working together fighting ghosts and demons, I’m pretty sure life will continue to throw surprises at us.”
I took his hand and pressed my cheek into his palm. “I know you’re right; it’s just there’s been a lot of uncertainty in my life. I don’t know my real parents—the man who raised me is dead, and not long ago a couple appeared impersonating those parents.”
They had wanted my ghost-hunting abilities and figured the best way to nab me was to lie about who they were. Needless to say, I still felt raw on the inside, as if someone had scrubbed a Brillo pad down my veins.
“I’m not those people,” Roan reminded me gently. “I’m me and you’re you. I’ve never hidden who I am and neither have you. All I’m saying is, what would be so bad in taking our relationship to the next level?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Roan settled his guitar in the stand beside him. He rose and took my hand, hoisting me to my feet. “Just think about it.”
He wrapped me in a hug, and I melted, letting my shoulders sag and my body soften. “Oh, you may be the best hugger ever.”
We parted and Roan winked at me. “I’m also great at making cinnamon rolls. Now,” he said, taking me by the hand, “let’s get you to your car.”
I stopped. “I’m not staying here tonight?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Until you figure your stuff out, I think it’s best that you don’t take advantage of me.” He grinned. “Turn that frown upside down because you still get all the cinnamon rolls your heart desires. Be here at eight a.m. Tell Alice and Ruth, too. We’ll have breakfast and then head over to the park to see what’s going on over there, exactly.”
I tried not to be hurt at Roan’s rebuke, but I couldn’t blame him. He was pushing me out the door to protect his own heart, or to punish me—I wasn’t sure which.
We reached the entrance of the inn, the only sounds the floorboards creaking as I shifted my weight.
Roan brushed his lips against mine. I wanted more, a deeper kiss, one that suggested everything would be all right. But all I received was little more than a peck.
He smiled; it was genuine. “Don’t forget, cinnamon rolls tomorrow morning.”
As I walked away, I couldn’t help but think that cinnamon rolls were a poor consolation prize for a broken heart.
Blissful
Things were pretty much the same the next morning. Roan was nice, congenial even, but I still felt as if there was a wall between us.
I started to wonder if any of this was even my fault, really. Yes, I’d said that forever was a long time and I wasn’t sure about it, but personally I didn’t think anything was wrong with that. It was better to be honest than to lie and tell him I was ready for something that I wasn’t.
Wasn’t it?
Either way it didn’t matter to me. I still stalked right into the inn, smacked my lips on Roan’s and gave him my most dazzling smile.
“Did you miss me? I missed you.”
Roan’s eyes widened for a moment before he wiped his hands on a dish towel and tossed it on the counter. Then he whispered in my ear, “Of course I missed you.” Without skipping a beat he glanced over my shoulder at Alice and Ruth. “Come in, ladies, there’s a whole spread prepared. Have some breakfast.”
Axel, Pepper and Betty joined us a few minutes later. Ruth made sure to keep her distance from Betty. I had a feeling Ruth was worried that Betty would ask to drive the ATV again, and she didn’t want to have to tell Betty no.
After we sat down, I made a big show of eating my cinnamon roll in front of Roan. “Best cinnamon roll ever.” I practically moaned. “I could eat these every day of my life.”
“Forever?” Roan said sarcastically.
“Let me think about that.” I licked icing from my thumb. Roan’s eyes widened. “Maybe, I could. Just maybe I could eat them forever.”
He clicked his tongue. “You sure you wouldn’t get bored with them? Seems to me you might get bored eating the same thing day in and day out.”
I glared at him. “I don’t think so.”
Roan folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Are you sure about that? It seems to me a little somebody whispered in my ear the other day and said exactly that—that forever seemed like an awfully long time to commit to anything.”
“Nope,” I said.
Roan leaned forward. “Prove it.”
I cackled. “Oh, you would love that, wouldn’t you?”
The rest of the table sat in silence while Roan and I verbally sparred.
I could feel their gazes volleying between Roan and me. Finally Ruth spoke. “Um, Blissful?”
I dragged my gaze from Roan to her. “Yes, Ruth?”
“I think we should be getting to the park, don’t you?”
I glanced around at everyone else. They were all finished with their meals, and their gazes were locked on me. I had a half-eaten cinnamon roll sitting on my plate with a few pearls of scrambled eggs stuck to it.
I rose, plucked the roll from the plate and shoved it in my mouth. I swallowed, licked my fingers and said in my most challenging voice, “Forever.”
Everyone stared at me.
I brushed my hands, snatched my jacket from the back of the chair and said, “All right, y’all. Let’s go.”
We walked to the park since the entire circumference was covered with cars.
On the way over I kept far from Roan, who walked on ahead with the witches and Axel. I found myself totally ticked off by him. Maybe I had made a mistake when I said what I did about one of us losing interest, but now he was plain old punishing me. He could have pulled me aside and said, Let’s forget we ever talked about it, but he didn’t. Instead he sat at the breakfast table and continued to spar with me.
“Blissful?” Ruth said.
“What?” I snapped.
She flinched.
I rubbed my forehead, frustrated with myself for lashing out at my friend. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“You and Roan had a fight?” Alice asked, flanking me to the left.
“Was it that obvious?”
“Unless you were blind and deaf, it was obvious,” Ruth said.
“I don’t know,” Alice added. “If I couldn’t see, I might not have gotten it. I think it was when Blissful shoved the cinnamon roll in her mouth and said, ‘Forever’—that was the moment the nail really hit the coffin.”
“If you couldn’t see,” Ruth reminded her, “then you’d be blind. That’s what I was saying. If you were blind, you might not have understood that Blissful and Roan are fighting.”
“Oh, right,” Alice said. “What are y’all fighting about? A lover’s quarrel?”
“You could say that,” I said through gritted teeth. “Roan said something about us being together forever.”
“And let me guess,” Ruth said, “you didn’t like that.”
“No.”
“But Blissful,” Alice argued. “That’s what life is about—meeting someone and getting together with them, if not forever then at least for a little while.”
I scoffed in agreement. “That’s what I said. I asked him—what happens when we get tired of each other?”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Part of love is falling into routine—so I’m told,” she said. “The two of you are lucky to have found each other. And bored with Roan? Are you kidding? I don’t think Roan could be boring a day in his life.”
I had no argument against that. “We argued and when I tried to apologize, he didn’t accept it.”
“Seems to me you hurt his feelings,” Alice said. “He suggests possible marriage and you tell him that he’s boring. No wonder he’s hurt and raw.”
I rubbed my hands down my face. “When you put it like that, I sound awful.”
Ruth patted my shoulder. “No one thinks you’re awful, Blissful. We all know you’re a little rough around the edges sometimes.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
“You’re welcome,” Alice answered for Ruth. She pulled a tin from her handbag. “Want some shortbread? It’s got caramel on top of it.”
I pressed my hand to my stomach. “No thanks. I think that cinnamon roll was enough sweets to last until tomorrow.”
“When you had the second one of the forever ones?” Alice asked. “That is what you said, isn’t it? That you could eat cinnamon rolls forever?”
I tried to keep the annoyance from my voice. “Yes, the second of the forever ones.” Finally we reached the park. “All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Camera crews were set up around the perimeter of the block-sized park. We slipped past them onto the green. The police had all the golden statues circled with yellow tape, and some crews were working on the objects themselves, as if trying to see what had happened in the middle of the night.
“Don’t get too close,” Kency Blount said as we picked our way around a golden bench.
My body jerked. Panic serrated my insides, and I wondered for a moment if she would remember anything about last night.
Her gaze swept over Axel and Pepper with disinterest, and I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“Don’t worry about us,” I murmured. “We’re only here to look.”
I broke off from Ruth and Alice. Alice mooned at the objects as if they’d dropped from heaven. The only place they had dropped out of was a man’s finger—quite literally.
Pepper approached as I stepped around the bench. “If it makes you feel any better, Roan isn’t too happy about what happened this morning.”
My gaze flickered to her before landing on a birdbath. “That’s too bad for him, because I feel great.”
She made a little sound in the back of her throat as if she didn’t believe me. “You know it was hard for me to finally get together with Axel. The idea of the rest of your life is scary.”
“Forever is scary,” I admitted, “but the more I think of the alternative”—my gaze cut to Roan—“the worse I feel.”
“Hmmm,” Pepper agreed. She nodded to Axel. “You’ve got a point there.”
I stepped around the birdbath and headed over toward a statue in the middle of the park. “Why did he do this?”
“So that he could look like a god?” Roan suggested quietly as he walked up.
“But why now?” I said. “What happened that made him do this?”
Betty strode up, her pipe sticking out of her mouth. Smoke curled from the bowl, and the light scent of apples filled the air. “Maybe he doesn’t have as much control over his power as he thinks he does.”
I nodded. She had a point. “So you think he ran through the park and whatever he touched turned, which may have scared him?”
“Possibly,” she said. Betty nodded to the statue. “That may tell us more.”
We slowly made our way to the figure in the very center of the park. It was cordoned off, like all the other objects, but none of the police seemed concerned about it, which struck me as odd.
Perhaps they assumed there was nothing particularly different about it. But as we approached, cold dread washed through me.
It was a golden statue of a human, to be sure. The gold man had turned someone into a metal. Was it an accident, or was it on purpose?
“He’s trying to cover his tracks,” Roan said. “That’s why he went through and touched the other objects.”
“But is the power going haywire?” Pepper asked Betty.
“It’s hard to tell,” the old woman said. “Was he angry? Is that why he touched the woman? Or did his gift go all cattywampus?”
It was most definitely a woman. I could see that simply from her form. As I walked around the statue, I realized there was something oddly familiar about her.
A throng of people surrounded us, all of them murmuring about the wonder that had befallen Haunted Hollow. I didn’t know if it was a wonder or a curse. As my stomach cramped, I knew it was more curse than anything else.
Beside me, Roan sucked air. “Blissful,” he said, “don’t you recognize her?”
I cocked my head right and left.
“The glasses,” he whispered. “Yoo-hoo!”
I gasped. Roan was right. The statue was none other than Gigi, the woman from the antique store. My stomach quivered. Not one to be deterred, I reached out and brushed my fingers against the cold metal.
A shiver ran all the way from my fingertips to my shoulder. “No, it can’t be.”
Roan nudged me with his elbow. “It is. It’s her.”
I thought of Gigi, about how kind she had been, how nice. Anger bubbled inside me at the thought that she had been attacked. But maybe it hadn’t been an attack. Perhaps his power had gone cattywampus as Betty had suggested. Maybe what happened had been an accident. If that was the case, then we were looking at an even worse scenario—no one in Haunted Hollow was safe from this man. We had to find him. We had to stop him from creating more victims.
“Can she be helped?” I asked.
Axel pressed the flat of his hand to her arm. “I can feel her inside. She’s trapped. It’s possible to save her, but we need to move quickly, and we can’t reverse her form unless we have the piece of the heart that did this. It’s the only way.”
Alice worked her bottom lip. “If only we had a clue as to where he is.”
“Maybe I can help with that,” came a gravelly voice from behind us.
I turned to see Francine hovering amid the onlookers. She smoothed her hair and moved her hips from side to side. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be human again and cash in on some of this gold. I know I would love being rich. That would make my day, darling.”
Roan turned with me. He said to me with a sparkle in his eyes, “Would you like to pretend you’re talking to me so that you don’t look like a crazy person?”
That was part of the deal when it came to seeing spirits. I couldn’t talk to them outright since most people couldn’t see ghosts. So I often had to either pretend to be on the phone or simply stand around talking to myself like a crazy person.
I smiled at Roan but directed my statement to Francine. “I don’t think you’d like to be a statue. Not sure it would be as great as you think.”
She tutted in disagreement. “I don’t know, Blissful. It might have its benefits. I wouldn’t have to put up with Granny Mildred’s bickering, for one.”
I folded my arms. “You’ve got a point there.” Time to cut to the chase. “But tell me, I know you’re not here to gawk at the gold.”
“Well, you never know. A girl does like her bling.” Francine held out her hand and laughed. “But you’re right. I’m not here to talk about that. I’ve come because I’ve got news.”
My eyebrows rose with interest. “What sort of news?”
Francine’s mouth curled into a wide smile. “The kind that says I may have found your gold man.”
My heartbeat drummed in answer. “Where? Where have you found him?”
“With a boy and his mother. Oh, and also there’s a demon.”
My heart nearly stopped. My gaze swept to Roan. “Did you hear that?”
Roan’s eyes narrowed. “The demon returned.”
I nodded. “And now the gold man is with them. Roan—”
He grabbed my hand. “Let’s go. Now. There’s no time to waste.”
Pepper
Blissful and Roan motioned for us to leave the park. “Did you hear what’s going on?” I asked Axel.
His jaw tightened. “Something about a demon and a boy.”
“And t
he gold man is supposed to be involved, too?”
“You never know where you’re going to find gold,” Betty said.
I reached for Ruth. “What’s going on?”
Alice answered. She pointed at the rows of ATV’s lining one part of the road. “They’re getting ready for the big race. It happens in a couple of hours.”
“That’s not what she means,” Ruth snapped. “And will you stop worrying about that silly race? I know you’ll end up in it, one way or another.”
“Well, I don’t see your ATV parked near here,” Alice whimpered.
“It’s at the inn. I was going to get it after we went to the park,” Ruth said, her voice scolding. “I told you not to worry about it.”
“If you say so,” Alice said.
“I do,” Ruth countered. She turned to me. “To answer your question, Pepper, there was a boy we had to help before y’all arrived this week. He was possessed. We got rid of the demon, and I thought we’d done so in a way that the demon wouldn’t come back, but from what Roan and Blissful said, it sounds like our work isn’t finished.”
“And the gold man is there?” I asked. “Why?”
Ruth shrugged. “Beats me.”
When we reached the inn, my questions were answered. Blissful grabbed a belt from her SUV and met us inside. The belt held crosses and vials of what looked like holy water.
“I plan on being ready this time,” Blissful said.
“What’s going on?” Axel said. “There’s a demon?”
Roan opened a wooden box and pulled out his own vials of holy water, securing them in a vest that he had slung on. “There’s a demon that took over a boy named Cecil. I thought we’d saved him, but it turns out I was wrong. The demon is back, and that’s where a spirit told us the gold man is.”
“Then we’re all going,” Axel said.
Blissful nodded solemnly. “Yes, everyone come, but we have to be careful. Demons are not something to be trifled with, y’all should know.”
I stepped forward. “We know and we’re ready to help—no matter what.”
We took a few minutes to come up with a plan, one that would ensure we were able to get up close to the gold man, but also one that would hopefully protect us all.
