by Judi Fennell
Marlee, Zane’s publicist, would relish the PR op, but he had no intention of being part of Gary’s campaign.
Gary, unfortunately, had other ideas. He came over, clasped Zane on the shoulder, and shook his hand as if those twelve years of crap hadn’t happened.
“Local boy makes good. Our star athlete’s returned. What a great day this is for the town.” Gary had yet to let go of his hand, and yeah, the photographer beside the reporter snapped a picture. “Did you come downtown to help out the local economy, Zane?”
Much as Zane would like to tell the prick off, he wouldn’t. He did, however, yank his hand away. “Thanks for the welcome, Gary. It’s nice to be back.”
The reporter flipped a page in her notebook. She looked young enough that the stories of his great-grandfather would only be urban legends to her, which was fine with Zane. “Hi, Mr. Harrison. I’m Cathy Lindt, reporter for The Harrison Daily. Can I ask you some questions?”
“Sure.” He’d rather have said no, but turning her down would be as bad for his image as endorsing Gary.
“Did your family really move away because of the ghosts haunting your home?”
He needed a new publicist if Marlee thought this was a good idea. “We moved because my father died and the place was too big for my mother to keep up.”
“So you never saw any of the ghosts?”
“There are no—”
“Of course he couldn’t see any ghosts,” said Gary, stepping in front of Zane. Not unsurprising because Gary hadn’t liked sharing the limelight on a normal day. Now that he was running for office, he’d be even less inclined to. “They’re ghosts.”
The reporter took a step sideways so she was again facing Zane. “What about other phenomena? Things that moved by themselves, disappearing staircases, bears charging through the house?”
Zane withheld his wince. Man, he hated that story. “I don’t have any stories. I was young when we moved away. I got involved with football soon after and never had the chance to come back, especially once I was drafted.”
“So, are you back to stay now? Are you planning to retire here?”
Either the kid was utterly clueless or she was destined to become an investigative shark. His retirement, injury, and contract were all things he didn’t want to discuss. “I’m back to get the house in shape to sell.”
“You’re selling?” asked the reporter. “But a Harrison has owned that house for over a hundred years.”
“And no one’s lived in it for the past twenty. I think it’s time.” Zane edged toward the hardware store. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Oh, but—” The reporter hadn’t quite honed her stealthy side to the point it’d need to be, so Zane was able to slip inside the store before the rest of the question was asked. He’d let Marlee do damage control on this one if necessary.
“Well, look who it is! Zane Harrison!” said the blue-haired woman wearing a blue-and-white checkered vest behind the old-fashioned cash register. Zane glanced at her back to make sure she wasn’t sporting a tail on the off chance that Merlin could change his form like he could his feathers. “I’d know you anywhere. You look just like your father.”
“Thank you, Miss…”
“Missus, my dear boy. Mrs. Winters. I don’t suppose you remember me. I went to school with your father. Both me and my Johnny did.”
He did remember her. She’d been one of the few who’d believed him about Gary and the bullying. “Of course I do, Mrs. Winters. How are you?”
“Ah, well, my rheumatism keeps acting up when the weather gets damp, but I guess that’s to be expected. A tad lonely, too, now that the old gang is moving on, as we like to say. So much more positive than dying, you know?”
He hmmmmed his reply. This place was a real party. Ghost stories, gossip, rheumatism, and death. Things hadn’t changed at all. “I need a few supplies to fix up the old home, Mrs. Winters. Can you point me to the paint, please?”
“In the back there. I can mix up any color you like. Carl’s son—he took over when Carl passed six years ago, you know—well, he finally broke down and bought one of those new paint-mixing machines since people were willing to drive forty miles to The Home Depot to get their colors made, which was just silly. Now they get them here, and the machine has paid for itself three times over. See? You can teach an old dog new tricks. Or I guess it’s an old dog that can teach you new tricks.” She chuckled, her ample bosom heaving beneath the blue-and-white-checked pattern.
“I believe you have a rather interesting shade of pink in one of the rooms in that house of yours, if I’m not mistaken, Zane,” she said when she’d recovered her composure.
Unfortunately, her comment nicked his. The empty bedroom on the third floor. He’d forgotten about the paint in that room. Dad and Mom had painted it at least once a year, and every year the pink would bleed back through. Weird.
Or… magic?
He’d have to have Vana fix that. He couldn’t sell the house with a self-painting room; the rumors would never go away.
“That color is long gone, Mrs. Winters.”
“Is it? I could have sworn June said she saw it the other day when she checked the place. She and Jack really appreciate you paying them to take care of the place. Ever since Jack hurt himself at work, well, the money’s been a godsend.”
“She must have meant the color of the curtains. I’m going to change those, too.” As soon as he had Vana un-magick the walls.
Zane headed down the closest aisle toward the paint. He didn’t want to get into any hero-worship discussion. He’d paid June and Jack Ertel because they were the closest neighbors and the house had needed the upkeep. The monthly check-ins he’d made with them had given him peace of mind and allowed him to stay away.
He should have sold the house right after Mom died, but it’d been easier to write the check to the Ertels than come back and deal with it. But life was now pushing him toward a slew of decisions he didn’t want to deal with. Coming here had been about getting things done instead of sitting around and stewing about things he couldn’t change.
Zane made quick work of the supplies and managed to hear only two stories about the eccentricities of his forefathers before he left the store. Mrs. Winters was a veritable font of information when it came to the Harrison reputation. Thank God, there weren’t too many of that old crowd left to remember all the stories.
He’d always been bummed that his parents had been older when they’d had him, a theme among Harrison men. Peter, Jonas, and his father had all married later in life, then had a child—just one, a son—even later. His father had been old enough to be his grandfather, and his age used to bother Zane a lot.
“Zane, you’re really serious about selling your home?” Gary grabbed his arm the minute he stepped outside of Carl’s.
He wrenched his arm away. “Yeah.”
“That’s too bad. Harrisonville won’t be the same without the Harrison homestead.”
That’s because it’d be ridicule free, but Zane didn’t say that. No one needed to think that he was getting rid of the house for any reason other than money. Not because the stories and the ridicule would never stop as long as a Harrison owned the house. He’d like to get married some day and have a family. He certainly didn’t want to saddle his kids with this infamy. He’d promised himself years ago that the Harrison stories would stop with him.
But then he drove home and opened the front door, shooting that theory to hell.
16
He’d walked into a real-life Fantasia.
Zane ducked under the vacuum-cleaner hose that was dancing along the curtain rod, then sidestepped the mop and bucket that were splashing water all over the hardwood floor, gaped at the small rug that was polishing the chandelier, and stared at the squirrels that were using their tails to dust the banister.
But he came to a full-on, mouth-dropping stop at the sight of Vana. She’d changed from the harem outfit into a pair of pink shorts and a lighter pink tank top,
but she still wore her genie slippers. Nothing overly outlandish in that, but what nailed him to the floor was the fact that she was hanging upside down by those slippers from the top of the frame around his great-grandfather’s picture, which was now gracing the second-story wall.
Meanwhile, she just licked the edge of a rag and wiped a smudge of dirt off Peter’s shoe as if what she was doing wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. The gossipmongers would have a field day with this.
Zane dropped his bags with a thud.
“Uh-oh. Company.” Merlin flew from the sconce on the wall and landed on Vana’s heel. Which he pecked.
Vana shook her foot and was now hanging by one—count it, one—curled piece of fabric. “Knock it off, Merlin. You know I’m ticklish.”
“Yeah, well, he’s puckish.”
Vana bent backward as if she were a ribbon acrobat at Cirque du Soleil. Without the ribbon. “Zane! You’re back!”
She did a half-kick move that would have had her taking a header onto the first floor if the chandelier-polishing magic carpet hadn’t flown under her feet to float her gently down in front of him.
She hovered right at eye level. “What do you think?”
What did he think? What did he think? He couldn’t think. Well, actually he could. About what would have happened if anybody but him had walked through that unlocked door. About trying to explain her slipper trick, the mop, the squirrels, the vacuum, and oh hell, were those rabbits sweeping dust bunnies off the floor with their tails?
This place was insanity.
He’d been completely crazy to come back. Utterly loco to open her bottle in the first place, and completely out of his mind to have even entertained the idea of allowing her to do anything around this house.
“That’s it. This is over.” He grabbed the mop, ignoring its squeal of protest—he wasn’t even going to go there—and started shooing the rabbits and their dust counterparts out of the foyer, flicking the vacuum switch off in the process. Which had zero effect on the vacuum.
Neither did pulling the plug from the wall; the vacuum kept sucking dust mites as if everything were fine.
Everything was not fine.
“Zane, what are you doing?”
He scattered the squirrels with a sweep of the mop along the spindles as if he were playing a harp. “I’m putting an end to this craziness.”
She shoved her hands onto her hips. “It’s not craziness. It’s magic.”
“In your world maybe. In mine, it’s crazy. Insanity. Foolishness. And the best way to get me committed, never mind all the bad press I can’t afford.” He shooed a raccoon out of the storage space under the stairs. “Vana, this has to stop.”
She clasped her hands in front of her chest, her eyes sparkling. “But it’s working, Zane. My magic is working! And I did it without kissing you.”
He didn’t find that cause for celebration.
God, just shoot him now. He either had to knock down her happiness or put up with… this. And as for no kissing, well, he’d already decided kissing was a bad idea, so maybe it was a good thing that she’d gotten a handle on her magic and was finally in control.
An image of her out of control flashed through his mind. Vana, naked and writhing beneath him, her hair fanned out on a silk sheet beneath her, sprinkled with rose petals.
Where the hell was this coming from?
He shook his head—and the mop. The one whistling, “Whistle While You Work,” if he wasn’t mistaken. Or out of his mind.
“Vana, look. I’m sorry. This…” He waved his hand toward the vacuum that was now playing cobra to a snake-charming squirrel. “Is not working. I wish you’d make it stop.”
Vana glanced at the vacuum, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and when she looked back at him, it was as if the sun had turned in on itself and sucked all the life from the room. “If that’s what you wish.”
“It is.” Wasn’t it?
Vana blew a half-hearted kiss and the vacuum fell to the ground, undulating as gracefully as a ballerina at the end of a performance. Only instead of applause, there was a deafening silence.
Nothing had ever sounded better. Until he realized the room was too silent.
Vana and Merlin were staring at him. So were the bunnies and squirrels. Maybe even the vacuum, too.
Oh no. They didn’t get to make him feel guilty. He had a right to call the shots in his own home. And for now, that’s whose it was.
Zane grabbed the stuff he’d bought and strode toward the kitchen to get away from the looks. “What happened to just painting the back of the house?” he muttered, then slammed to a halt on the threshold of the kitchen.
Forget the foyer; this room was a disaster.
He dropped the bags and braced himself in the doorway, trying to take in the scene in front of him. A fine coating of flour decorated the walls, every cabinet door hung lopsidedly off its hinges, the drawers were pulled open, and a flock of pigeons had made nests in them.
“What. Happened. Here?” He hadn’t been gone long enough for birds to make nests in kitchen drawers.
“Holy smokes!” Vana bumped into his back. “I… I don’t know. I didn’t do this.”
“And the leprechaun who lives under the front porch did?” Zane pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a hellacious headache. “Think, Vana. What magic did you conjure while I was gone? Besides the menagerie out in the foyer, that is.”
Vana ducked under his extended arm and shuffled around the kitchen, tapping her teeth with a fingernail.
“I didn’t use any magic to paint, just like you asked. I did as much as I could with the paintbrush, but painting that way isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be. Nothing like painting a canvas. There are bugs and mildew and broken siding, not to mention climbing a ladder…” She dusted some flour off the edge of the table. “I was going to paint the front-porch spindles, too, but figured working on the inside would be easier. I found Peter’s picture in the attic. Since you weren’t here and neither was anyone else, I figured magicking it onto the wall wouldn’t be that big of a deal since he would love to have it hanging in his favorite place in the whole town. And then there was all the dust your cleaning lady couldn’t reach, and well, I could get it done before you got home.
“No one would be suspicious of a clean foyer. That’d be the first thing you’d touch up to make the house warm and inviting to prospective buyers, right? So I be-wished the vacuum to get the job done. Such a handy device. We didn’t have them the last time I was out of my bottle, and I’ve been dying to try one. Faruq would never fulfill that part of my requisitions list.”
With good reason. Zane could just imagine the thing getting clogged with rose petals.
What was it with him and rose petals? That damn image of her on a sheet surrounded by them rolled like a movie through his mind.
The one he was losing.
Vana picked up a dish towel and the rose from earlier rolled off, its petals cascading over the counter. That had to be what had gotten him thinking about rose petals.
“But, Zane, I don’t have any idea what happened in here.”
“Never mind, Vana. It doesn’t matter. Just… can you clean it up? Get rid of the birds?” And the dish towel.
“Oh, sure.” Merlin flew into the room and landed on the open door of the old-fashioned iron oven. “Blame it all on the birds. Surely it can’t be the genie’s fault. That ‘bird-brained’ term hurts, you know. And you know who came up with that? Obo. A cat. Tossed that into the lexicon centuries ago, and it stuck. And now you’re playing right to the stereotype, Tarzan. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, we birds are victims of circumstance and not the instigators you and Hitchcock are so ready to brand us as? Besides”—he nodded at the pigeons—“do they really look capable of attempting something this grandiose, let alone actually pulling it off?”
“Vana, I wish the phoenix would be quiet.”
“Oh, no, you di-in’t.” Merlin was in the middle of a h
ead waggle when Vana kissed the air, and his swagger turned into mimed sputtering.
Zane enjoyed watching the bird’s head undulate back and forth in direct counterpoint to the wing feather he was waving in Zane’s face.
“I’m sorry, Zane.” Vana spun around, her long hair fanning out behind her and brushing over his skin in one long sensuous movement that brought those rose petals and silk sheets and scented candles to mind again, this time with her hair no longer fanned out behind her but trailing down over his chest, his abs… lower…
God, he could almost feel it. Her lips, too. He swore he could taste them. Feel them against his. Feel them tracing down his neck and over his chest in delicious torture.
Zane scratched his chest for a second, then his head. What was wrong with him? Maybe he had taken one too many hard hits on the gridiron. Hanging out on the bench half the season might be a good thing.
Okay, now he really was going nuts.
He grabbed a set of steak knives from where they’d imbedded in the wall and dropped them into the closest open drawer. “Let’s just get this place cleaned up.” That was his focus. Not the woman in the clingy, pink tank top.
He sucked in a breath when she bent over to sweep up the rose petals.
Clingy pink shorts, too.
He blew out that breath and looked for something to straighten. There. The basket of apples that had overturned on the floor. When had he gotten apples?
Beneath the apples he found raisins. Thousands of them scattered on the floor like ants.
Which were also all over the floor.
This was going to take forever.
Merlin hopped off the oven door and onto the drainboard, knocking all the pots onto the floor in a loud mess, the only good byproduct of which was that it startled most of the pigeons into making a beeline out the open screen door.
The phoenix then started tapping his beak against the window, the staccato pings damaging to not only the glass, but also Zane’s eardrums. And then Merlin began sweeping his wings together like a giant bellows, sending the flour swirling in a mini tornado.
