Tarnished and Torn

by Juliet Blackwell

  My father . . . well, what could I say about my father? When I confronted him with what Johannes had said, that he had witnessed my father kill Griselda with the athame, my father told me that he had left the knife in her hand so she could kill herself. It was horrific, but at least she had been able to choose her own death. Still, I wasn’t entirely sure I could believe him. He also denied sending the Escalade in an attempt to take Zeke out of the equation, but this time he wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I was sure he was lying. He was a ruthless man.

  Then again, I had to remind myself that in the confusing showdown at the Wax Museum, he had worked with me to defeat Xolotl. He had ignored the flames and linked his energy with mine at the final, crucial moment. So I couldn’t condemn him out of hand, even though afterward, as was his wont, he had disappeared just as fast as Clem and Zeke.

  I couldn’t help but wonder: Did he do it for me, or to free himself? Probably a little of both.

  As far as family reunions go, it was less than satisfying. But at least I knew a little more about him than I had before, and I had been instrumental in freeing him from Xolotl. And I decided I believed him when he said he sent me away that time in Germany to keep me safe from the powers of Xolotl.

  All in all, I was glad he’d come to town.

  I wasn’t so sure Aidan would agree. His office had gone up in smoke, but then he’d helped to defeat the demon that had injured him so badly, once upon a time. Last I heard he was shopping around for new office space until the museum was repaired, but despite several obvious hints for an invitation, I wasn’t offering him any of my floor space. Things were way too crowded in Aunt Cora’s Closet as it was. I did, however, agree to go real estate shopping with him, just because it sounded like fun.

  In the meantime, there were clothes to wash, customers to fit, and books to be tallied. As usual, the busy days here in my shop helped me to find my balance, to recover my equilibrium.

  And today, during a momentary lull in customers, Maya and I were trying on dresses for the quinceañera Marisela’s family had invited us to. Maya was herself again, saying she looked back on the last few fire-dancing nights through a dreamlike haze. But she had taken one habit from the experience: She had started playing with the store merchandise, trying on dresses like never before.

  At the moment, we were cracking each other up, trying on one tulle-laden, crinoline-stiff, frothy number after another.

  “I swear, you two are worse than Metzli and her gang!” said Bronwyn, laughing at us as she pushed the rack of prom dresses into the large communal dressing room.

  I blew at the bright pink netting sticking up from the bodice of the gown I had on; hiked up the many layers of voluminous, crinkly skirts; and shambled out to admire myself in the three-way mirror. The puffy sleeves, low scoop neck adorned with netting, and satin roses at the ruched waist appeared to have been inspired by a Barbie fashion design circa 1986. I had no doubt that if I’d been allowed to have a quinceañera, my fifteen-year-old self would have chosen something exactly like this hideous concoction.

  “You’re just being cynical, Bronwyn,” I teased. “I love it. I think I look just like a—”

  “—princess.” A deep voice finished my sentence.

  I spun around.

  Sailor.

  He stood in the doorway. Though the look on his face was brooding and intense—as per usual—he nodded hello to Bronwyn and Maya before returning his scalding gaze to me.

  My heart thudded and my palms started to sweat. I hadn’t set eyes on Sailor since the night we escaped the burning museum, when Aidan had insisted he would make sure I got home safely. Before I’d had a chance to talk with Sailor, he had slipped away into a sudden wall of fog.

  “Sailor, how lovely to see you,” Bronwyn said. “Maya, could I ask you about something in the back room?”

  Subtlety wasn’t Bronwyn’s strong suit.

  “Of course! Hi, Sailor. We’ve missed you,” said Maya. Wearing rhinestone-covered high heels and a butter-yellow princess-style gown, Maya hiked her skirts up and tottered after Bronwyn. “Excuse us while we go talk about important things in the back room, with the radio on really loud.”

  Maya wasn’t exactly Ms. Subtle herself.

  Moments after both women disappeared through the curtains, lilting 1920s-era music came floating toward Sailor and me, not only giving us some privacy but also making the scene eerily reminiscent of another time, with me in my formal gown and the violins swelling.

  “You’re still here.” My voice sounded calm, not matching my inner turmoil. “I . . . I thought you’d left town again.”

  “Apparently I’m welcome back in San Francisco,” Sailor said as he slowly strolled across the shop floor toward me, one outstretched hand passing over the silks and satins hanging on the racks, leaving the garments swaying slightly in his wake. “Even got my old apartment back, the one in Hang Ah Alley. Seems no one wanted to rent it.”

  “I guess a lot of tenants are put off by haunted murder scenes.”

  “Cowards,” Sailor said with a shrug, coming to stand very close to me. Too close. “Luckily, a simple haunting doesn’t faze a manly man like me.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Nothing scares you.”

  “Nothing at all.” His smile faded as he reached up and traced the line of my jaw with one finger. His voice dropped, quiet but gruff. “Nothing, except seeing you in danger. The thought of something happening to you . . .” He shook his head. “That scares the hell out of me.”

  “Sailor . . .” I began, but didn’t know what else to say. I moved toward him ever so slightly. His arms wrapped around me.

  I tilted my face to his, and his mouth came down on mine. I tingled from my head to my toes, passion and joy coursing through my veins. Though I couldn’t cry, I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes; it was so good, so very right to be with him again.

  After a long moment he lifted his head and whispered, “Promise me you’ll stop scaring me.”

  “I can’t do that.” By now it was clear my life in San Francisco would never be without excitement—sometimes dangerous excitement—and I refused to make a vow I couldn’t keep. “But I can promise to keep kissing you.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, woman,” he chuckled, then sighed, eyes searching my face. “But since I’m new in town, and currently unemployed, I guess I’m no prize myself. So I’ll take what I can get. Unlimited kisses. It’s a deal.”

  We embraced again, locked together for several minutes until a pair of customers walked in; and Oscar ran in to greet them; and the music was lowered; and Bronwyn, Maya, and I got back to work. Sailor took a seat on the velvet bench near the dressing rooms, watching over me—and the suddenly busy shop—with a slight, reluctant smile.

  As far as I was concerned, banishing minions could wait. Sailor was back, my friends were safe, Aunt Cora’s Closet was bustling . . . and at the moment, that was all that mattered.

  Don’t miss the new book in Juliet Blackwell’s

  Haunted Home Renovation series,

  HOME FOR THE HAUNTING

  Available in December 2013, wherever books and e-books are sold!

  Keep reading for a special preview.

  You know your job sucks when you find yourself escaping into a Port a Potty for a minute alone.

  The blue outhouses are indispensable on a jobsite, and, like the old joke about growing old, are a darned site better than the alternative. But they’re not normally a place I choose to spend much time.

  Today, however, I found myself lingering in the bright blue toilet. Warmed by the early-spring sunshine, it reeked of hot plastic and a sickly-sweet air freshener, but offered me a few minutes’ respite from the steady barrage of questions and demands from the dozens of eager but singularly unqualified volunteers I was directing.

  “Mel, was I supposed to apply a coat of primer before pai
nting?”

  “I think I stepped on a rusty nail. Is that bad?”

  “Mel, there’s this thing inside that’s marked ‘Biohazard.’ What should I do with it?”

  “Where’s the dust mask/safety glasses/respirator/firs – aid kit?”

  “Is this mold toxic? Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Um . . . Mel? You should probably come see this.”

  Running a renovation project involves answering a lot of questions, and since I renovate houses for a living, I’ve grown accustomed to fielding rapid-fire inquiries about building details, design issues, and bureaucratic snafus. Usually, though, I work with professionals who know which end of a miter saw is up.

  This current project, I had come to realize, was as much about wrangling well-intentioned volunteers as it was about home repair.

  A few months ago, in a burst of charity inspired by a champagne-induced New Year’s resolution, I had volunteered to help a local organization that renovated the homes of the elderly and the disabled. It was a wonderful cause, seemingly tailor-made for me, the general director of Turner Construction. I figured I would show up a few weekends a year, tools in hand, go where I was pointed, and do as I was told. By the end of the project, my conscience, and someone’s house, would be shipshape, and I could relax for another six months or so, until the next project came along.

  As with so many of my life plans, it hadn’t exactly worked out as I’d anticipated. Ashley, the perky and deceptively shrewd Neighbors Together recruiter, had taken one glance at my business card and appealed to my vanity. Merely volunteering my labor was a waste of valuable and rare expertise, she had suggested. Wouldn’t it be a far better use of my talents if I agreed to be a “House Captain”? That way, Ashley insisted, I would “more fully experience the joy and unique sense of accomplishment that comes from giving of one’s self, working with a homeowner in need, overseeing the project from beginning to end, and supervising the eager volunteers.” I think she probably knew she had me there, but not willing to leave anything to chance, she finished with, “Imagine turning a loving grandmother’s house from a daily nightmare into a warm and safe home sweet home, as only someone with your skills can do.”

  I’m such a patsy. I fell for it.

  I spent the next several months inspecting the project house, prioritizing repairs and improvements, and gathering materials preparatory to this project weekend, when a horde of volunteers descended upon a modest but charming two-bedroom cottage on a quiet street in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights. The scene was reminiscent of an old-fashioned barn raising: folks swarming over the place like ants as neighbors dropped by to watch and kibitz. The untrained volunteers would be able to accomplish an astonishing transformation in one short weekend because even though most had never held so much as a paintbrush, many pairs of hands could be turned to good effect when directed by a House Captain who knew what she was doing.

  And this House Captain had been up since four a.m., organizing food for the volunteers, gathering tools and the blueprints for the wheelchair ramp, checking on the arrival of the Dumpster and the Port a Potty, and running around picking up supplies.

  And if all that weren’t enough to occupy my mind, I was also focused on ignoring the big abandoned house next door to the sweet stucco cottage . . . where flickering pale faces kept appearing in the windows.

  Ghosts.

  Why does every interesting building in San Francisco seem to be infested with ghosts?

  Ignore them, Mel.

  I knew they weren’t figments of my imagination. I seem to have a knack for attracting souls from beyond the veil, whether I like it or not. Besides, Dog also kept looking at the house, barking up a storm.

  I had found Dog, abandoned and starving, on a construction site some months ago. Despite my initial reservations, we wound up adopting each other. It wouldn’t be so bad, I thought: He could ride around with me during the day, come to sites and hang around, be my constant companion. Mel’s best friend, and all that. But then it turned out Dog got carsick, and had a tendency to wander off when I wasn’t watching. He didn’t play ball, catch Frisbees, or fetch sticks. He wasn’t much of a dog, really, as dogs go. We adored him.

  But, like me, he appeared able to see—or hear or smell—ghosts.

  This morning Dog’s barking got so bad, I had to confine him to the car. The canine lovers in the crowd kept visiting with him through the half-opened window, sneaking him snacks, and glaring at me for being mean. Luckily, as a general contractor, I wasn’t particularly fazed by dirty looks.

  But the neighbor’s ghosts were not my problem—not today, anyway. Today I had seventy-two volunteers to coordinate and put to work before their enthusiasm flagged, plus a house with peeling paint, a warped roof line, and a sagging porch to repair and spruce up, a wheelchair ramp to build so the disabled homeowner would no longer be a virtual shut-in, and one weekend to do it all.

  Which is why I was hiding in a plastic outhouse. I needed a moment to steel myself to ignore the ghosts next door.

  “Sooo,” my friend Luz said, catching me as I emerged from my ignominious Port a Potty break. She was clad in the bright yellow T-shirt of the “Tool Czar” because, by gosh, if I’m going to sink into the quicksand of do-good volunteerism, I’m taking my friends and family down with me. In fact, after my father had razzed me about “giving away” my services one time too many, I had goaded him into joining himself. As the (unofficially) retired founder of Turner Construction, Dad offered a wealth of construction know-how to Neighbors Together, and Ashley had swiftly appointed him House Captain for the renovations on the rose-covered bungalow across the street—a project that appeared to be humming along quite nicely, darn it all.

  We had a friendly rivalry going: Team Mel vs. Team Bill, Turner vs. Turner. Whoever finished first got control of the television remote for one full week. If Dad won, he was going to watch repeats of NCIS from dawn to dusk. If I won, I intended to keep the television turned off.

  The stakes were high.

  I had also strong-armed my friend Claire, a landscape architect, into running a yard crew. She was gleefully barking orders to a group of New Age Berkeley types planting a drought-friendly garden of native California grasses and flowering bushes. My buddy Stephen, a clothing designer and barista, was the project’s health and safety coordinator. It was perfect casting: Stephen was a world-class hypochondriac who fussed over the smallest splinter with a wad of gauze and Neosporin. He also roamed the jobsite, slapping gobs of sunscreen—donated by a civic-minded local drugstore—on necks and noses. Although it was only April, the sun shone fiercely on the jobsite, which meant reminding everyone to keep hydrated, as well.

  “The frat boys have arrived,” Luz said, nodding toward the street, where half a dozen young men in UC Berkeley T-shirts and Bermuda shorts leaned against a huge SUV. Others had stretched out on the dry brown sorry excuse for a lawn, apparently napping.

  “Oh, good. They were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

  “Yeah, well . . . ,” continued Luz, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but half of them appear to be hungover. Drunk frat boys—what’re the odds?”

  “Isn’t the fraternity here to do community service because of an alcohol infraction?”

  She grinned. “Gotta love college students.”

  “If half are hungover, what about the other half?”

  “Still drunk.”

  “Let me get this straight: You’re saying my dad gets assigned the engineering students, the Eagle Scouts, and Turner Construction’s best, while I end up with drunken frat boys and a sorority of girls more interested in fashion than construction?” I washed my hands with water from the hose in the jerry-rigged stand on the lawn and clamped my mouth shut to keep from repeating one of my father’s favorite sayings: No good deed goes unpunished.

  “And this surprises you—how, exactly?” asked Luz, l
ifting one eyebrow. “He’s a crafty old coot, your dad.”

  She was right about that. While I was busy wasting time working for a living, Dad had cozied up to Ashley, the Neighbors Together point person, and nabbed the most skilled volunteers. I’d also been so consumed bringing to conclusion several paying Turner Construction projects that I hadn’t noticed when Dad convinced our best construction workers, and even my stepson, Caleb, to join his team.

  I’d been lucky to get Luz. She was my best friend, but she and my dad adored each other. Sometimes I thought he liked her better than me. Fortunately, my semi-sort-of boyfriend, Graham, was out of town. I’m not sure I would have liked the outcome had his loyalty been tested.

  “Hey, Mel?” Monty Parker, the homeowner, rolled up to the front door, two large, scroungy-looking dogs of dubious ancestry attached by leashes to his wheelchair. After a motorcycle accident had paralyzed the forty-one-year-old a few years ago, he had lost his job and couldn’t afford to maintain his home, much less to build an access ramp or other modifications that would make his life easier. That was where Neighbors Together came in.

  I felt for the man, but my stomach clenched at those two little words: “Hey, Mel?” I’d heard them so often the last few months. “Hey, Mel? What do you think about building a small deck out back when we make the ramp so I could sit outside and watch the world go by?”“Hey, Mel? I hate to ask, but would you change these lightbulbs?”“Hey, Mel? I heard maybe some of the other families are getting new linoleum for their kitchens?”“Hey, Mel? My dogs could really use a flea bath; think you could put a new tub in the bathroom?”

  Today Monty was trying to be helpful by relaying questions from the volunteers. But he was driving me crazy. Not for the first time, I wondered why my father got sweet Ms. Etta Lee, who appeared accommodating and grateful and had baked him fresh cinnamon cookies, while I was stuck with the needy, grasping Monty.

  “Hey, Mel? The folks fixing the kitchen sink found a problem,” he said. “Maybe dry rot? Hey . . . Are those boys taking a nap on the lawn?”