Brandon's Very Merry Haunted Christmas (A Snow Globe Christmas Book 11)

by AJ Sherwood

  The trick to good biscuits was to not overwork the dough. Dinner rolls, you wanted the dough to be consistent and well blended. Not so with biscuits. You mixed it just enough to get everything more or less blended, then you pinched off the batter to make cathead biscuits and dropped them into a well-greased cast iron skillet. My mama had taught me when I was a little over knee-high, and it was more muscle memory than anything at this point.

  I was wrist deep in dough when my cell phone rang in my back pocket. Swearing, I quickly wiped one hand off and accepted the call before it went to voicemail. “Hey, Brandon.”

  “Morning,” he greeted in a rough purr. It sounded as if he was barely awake but still functional. “So where are we meeting for breakfast?”

  “How about you just come over and I’ll feed you? Breakfast foods are a bit challenging for me in restaurants.” Mostly because it all consisted of butter on top of or in something. Butter, man. Butter slays me.

  “Oh, sure. Dairy. Man, that must be a pain to avoid. Okay, I’ll come in about thirty minutes. That sound good?”

  “Yup, see you then.” That would work out about perfectly, in fact. The biscuits took thirty minutes to bake, so he’d come in with them fresh out of the oven.

  I quickly finished those up, popped them in, then went about cooking the sausage and gravy. The fruit was already cut up and in cute glass bowls on the table. Hash browns were going on the back eye, as I had second thoughts about only offering biscuits, fruit, and eggs to Brandon. The eggs, of course, would take five minutes flat.

  Beau wandered in and took a deep breath. “God, I feel like I’ve just stepped back in time to my mother’s kitchen. How come you haven’t cooked like this before, Mack?”

  Hannah must have been right behind him, as I heard her clearly say, “Oh, this isn’t for us. He’s got a man coming in.”

  Beau’s bushy white eyebrows went up. “Is that right?”

  “A man that’s FBI approved to be an anchor,” Hannah added. Because she’s evil and likes to stir the pot.

  “Brandon Havili? That man?” Beau’s eyebrows stayed up. “How come you know all of this?”

  “Because I stayed up to talk to him.” She sailed by him like the queen she was and bent over to sniff at my gravy. “How are you doing that without butter?”

  “Used the sausage drippings,” I admitted, still stirring.

  “You are a clever cook, I grant you. Don’t worry, Mack”—she patted me on the arm—“we’ll get out of here in a few minutes. Won’t cramp your style.”

  While it would have been polite to assure her she was welcome to stay in her own kitchen, I really wanted them both out of here. Because she was right. They’d totally cramp my style. “Merci, Hannah.”

  Even as Hannah put both hands at his back, shoving him out of the kitchen, Beau looked over his shoulder at the oven. “But—but biscuits!” he wailed plaintively.

  “I’ll make you a batch tomorrow,” I promised, biting back a laugh.

  “Maybe they’ll be some left,” Hannah soothed, still pushing him out.

  With Brandon coming, I very much doubted that, but I knew better than to say so.

  It’s rather hard to cook something when you’re expecting company. Murphy’s Law dictated the food wouldn’t come out quite as good as normal, even if it was a recipe you could make in your sleep. Murphy was my guardian angel even on the best days, so I was hyper aware of everything I did to make sure food hit the plates as yummy as possible. I was also swathed in a huge apron to protect my sweater, since I wanted to look as yummy as the food. Priorities.

  Brandon knocked at the door precisely thirty minutes later—was he always this punctual?—and I let him in with a smile. By some miracle, I had everything but the biscuits on the table and nothing had burned. I’d take that win.

  He greeted me with that trademark smile of his, teeth white against the copper of his skin, and I kinda wanted to kiss his face off. Baby steps, me. “Good morning. Come on in. Your timing is good.”

  “It smells great in here.” He stepped through, shedding jacket and gloves, his nostrils flaring like a bloodhound that had the scent. “Wow. What am I stepping into?”

  “Biscuits, sausage gravy, hash browns, easy over eggs, and fruit,” I answered, taking the coat and hanging it up on the rack nearby. “If you don’t like eggs that way, tell me, I can scramble them real quick.”

  “All that sounds great.”

  My timer on the oven went off, and I quickly ushered him into the breakfast nook off the kitchen so I could pull the biscuits out. They were nice and crispy golden on the surface, and it was an easy flick to get them out of the pan and onto a plate. I used a second plate to flip them over again, right side up, then carried it to the table with a butter knife so we could ease them apart. They’d baked into each other, as biscuits do.

  Brandon settled at the table and looked over the spread with a delighted smile.

  “Bon appétit!” I encouraged.

  He loaded up his plate and dug in, chewing with a blissful expression on his face. “I wasn’t sure how it would taste with no butter or dairy, but damn. I can’t tell the difference.”

  “I have a butter substitute I use that tastes just like butter. It’s a rare thing in dairy-free products, but this one’s solid. Can I make you up some coffee?”

  He waved me down. “Sit, sit. I already had my hit of caffeine for this morning. This is good, Mack. Really good.”

  Stage one of winning over Brandon: success. I might have been a bit smug as I sat down and fixed my own plate. It was so much more satisfying watching him eat than eating, myself.

  As he ate, I filled him in. “I texted the ghost hunting team this morning. They came in late last night, and they’re more or less awake now. They want to meet us this morning, get a tour for where to put cameras, and figure out the hot spots. They apparently use quite a bit of equipment. I warned them about Jon, but they said they put EMP shielding over some of their equipment to keep it from being drained by ghosts.”

  Brandon paused with his spoon solidly in the biscuits. “Ghosts drain electronics?”

  “Ghosts don’t have a lot of energy in and of themselves,” I explained. “So if they want to manifest or do anything, they drain battery power in order to use it. Which is a great sign you have a ghost nearby but makes it hell on your equipment and hard to record anything.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. So they’re partially shielded already.”

  “The boss of the group—his name is Dave, by the way—said he’d run us through their setup and get our take on it before they planned things out.”

  “Smart of him. Okay, that’s fine.”

  “Brandon, just so I know, what’s your background? I mean, I don’t know what you were doing for work before the FBI recruited you.”

  “Fair enough question. I was SWAT with the Denver PD.”

  I was somewhat surprised by that answer. Unexpected, and yet, it made sense in a way. He was built like a fighter. “That’s kinda a switch, going from SWAT to ghost wrangling.”

  “Yeah, you’re not the first to say that. SWAT was fun, don’t get me wrong. Breaking down doors and charging into a place was a nice adrenaline rush. But it…got uncomfortable for me there.” Brandon eyed me, weighing something before he spit it out bluntly. “I figured out I was bisexual about eight months ago. The guys I worked with didn’t take it all that well.”

  7

  One of the things my siblings have always chided me for is my blunt approach to life. I’d rather lay all my cards on the table with someone, see where they stood, before moving along. I didn’t have a lot of patience with the slow approach on getting to know someone. It often upset the cart, but I figured I’d rather know where someone stood on things before I invested a lot of time trying to make friends. If our moral codes didn’t match, I’d rather know sooner than later.

  Mack was gay—Jon had mentioned that little tidbit in passing last night; not that I hadn’t already picked up on
it—so I didn’t expect an adverse reaction from him about that. But I wanted to see how he took the information.

  It surprised him, certainly. He blinked at me like a deer caught in headlights. “Wow. They seriously gave you grief over that? So much you felt like you needed to leave?”

  The tension in my shoulders slowly eased. “Yeah. Well, some of them were okay with it. Others…. Funny how it only takes a handful of people to make an environment turn bad.”

  “Yeah, I hear you there. I’m sure they argued you were just going through a phase, that no one your age suddenly has a sexual identity crisis or some such rot.”

  “Heard that more than a few times, yeah.” It was part of the reason why I’d had such a hard time wrapping my head around it. Because what if they were right? I’d only had the one guy I was attracted to. But their reaction to anything non-straight was repulsive to me. Even if I wasn’t bisexual, I couldn’t stand that they were so set against it.

  “You won’t find that attitude in the FBI,” Mack said confidently. “They didn’t even blink at me, and I’m gay.”

  “I figured. I mean, Marc and Javier were good indications on that. And they’re still trying to figure out a way to somehow recruit Jon and Donovan. Anyway, I’m confident I’ll like this new career much better. Besides, I get to play with ghosts every day. How cool is that?”

  Mack grinned at me, as I expected he would. “I’m really excited to work with you because of that, you know. Your love of spooky. So many people are weirded out about it. Even people who like to watch ghost shows don’t actually want to be there live and in person for a haunting.”

  “I know what you mean.” I went back to eating, as the food was amazing. “Okay, so tell me what I can do as your anchor.”

  “Basically, it boils down to two things. Keep track of me. Help me block people when I need it.” Mack paused in eating, gesturing with one of his hands. He did that a lot. If I tied his hands behind his back, would he still be able to talk? “You know mediums sometimes have trouble discerning flesh from spirit and how driving is difficult for us. Well, that’s true of me just walking around, too. Sometimes I get caught up speaking to a ghost, or sometimes I’ll see something not quite right and want to go investigate. I tend to lose situational awareness when I do—it’s a common failing with mediums—and I collide with things. Other people. Doors. Sometimes walls.”

  I snorted a laugh, trying to bite it back. “Walls?”

  “Ghosts aren’t restricted by doors and walls and things like we are,” he muttered, a flush on his cheeks. “And if you’re walking and talking with them, and they pass right through a wall, you sometimes don’t realize until it’s too late that you’re too close.”

  Oh boy. And I thought Jon’s situational awareness was bad. “Wait, then why did you salt the window and door to my brother’s room?”

  “Just because spirits can walk through walls doesn’t mean they think to do so. They retain their common sense from when they were alive, for the most part. Sealing the entrance is a sort of no-go zone for them, a sign to stay away. They normally respect that. Beau told me that in his career, he only had to do a full salt circle maybe a half dozen times; the spirit was that hell bent on reaching him.”

  “That’s good info. Okay, so I keep an eye on you. What about blocking people?”

  “Not everyone can see what I’m doing. With a weak enough ghost, if a person walks through it, the disturbance can dissipate the energy, and the ghost will temporarily scatter. It’s aggravating, since that means I have to wait for it to rematerialize and try again. And not all ghosts are nice. If there’s a dangerous one in an area, I need help clearing the room quickly before people get caught in the crossfire.”

  That sobered me. “So…how often have you been hurt?”

  “It’s just scratches and welts most of the time.” He passed this off as if it were nothing. “I’ve never been hurt seriously.”

  I had the feeling I’d either been lied to or misdirected. There was something he wasn’t telling me. But I couldn’t demand answers from him, not two days into knowing each other. I bit my questions back. For now. “Okay. Just those two things?”

  “Basically. You’re my support team. Is this anything like anchoring with a psychic?”

  “Yes and no. There’s a lot of similarities from what I’ve seen, but Jon told me point blank he’s not like other psychics. They stuck me with him in the first place because Donovan’s more like a medium’s anchor than anything.”

  “Huh. That is interesting. I really want to sit down with Jon and hear all that he can do.”

  “He’ll tell you. You’ll be unnerved for about three days afterwards, but he’ll tell you.”

  “I got the impression he can be a very blunt person.”

  “He can be tactful, but yeah. Pretty blunt. It’s part of the reason I like him.” I looked down at my plate and only found a single, lone strawberry left. How the hell had that happened?

  Apparently able to read minds, Mack volunteered innocently, “There’s more biscuits and sausage gravy on the stove.”

  “You’re my new favorite person,” I informed him happily.

  With full bellies, we finally managed to get out of the house. Mack had clearly not gone anywhere after I dropped him off the night before, as the seat and mirrors didn’t need to be re-arranged for me to get in. As I backed out of the driveway, I double-checked, “What about our ghost?”

  “I’ve got her on me,” Mack answered, patting the bag at his feet. “She really likes the snow globe. Refuses to leave it. But she said she’s ready to move on, too. I figured she’d be a good way to test the ghost hunters’ equipment. If they can catch her on film in some way, then they’ve a good chance of doing more on their hunt.”

  “That and they’d probably love to see what you do.”

  “And that.”

  “None of it’s trade secret?”

  “Naw. The FBI didn’t come up with any of this. It’s all techniques handed down for centuries, one generation to the next. It might actually do some good. People have a lot of misconceptions about spirits passing.”

  “That’s true.” I certainly had no idea what to expect.

  Mack’s phone rang and he answered it in a language I’d never heard before. Creole French, I had to assume. There was a smile on his face and affection in his tone, although he gave an exaggerated sigh once. “Mama.”

  A woman’s light voice spoke a mile a minute and grew more heated by the second.

  “Ça va,” Mack tried again, firmer this time. “Mama, I will not. It’s not like I have a choice where I’m going. The FBI assigns people places.”

  That was not what she wanted to hear. Funny how much you could pick up from tone alone, even when you couldn’t understand a word.

  Mack shot back with a long string of syllables that sounded half guttural, then stopped abruptly, making a face. “Fine. You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it. Brandon, say hello to my mother.”

  I leaned sideways a bit in the seat and pitched my voice so she could hear it over the road noise. “Hello, Mrs. Lafayette. I’m Brandon Havili.”

  “Oh. Oh my,” she said, flustered. “I thought my son was just storytelling. You’re really his anchor?”

  “Yes ma’am, at least for this assignment. If he likes me enough, he gets to keep me,” I added, just to make Mack squirm. Which he did, and blushed, and had trouble looking at me. It made me want to poke him. And kiss him. And as I was driving, I should probably pay attention to the road.

  Mack cleared his throat and said, “See, Mama? Now, I really can’t talk any longer. We’re almost at work. I’ll call you later.”

  Since we had another five minutes before we would actually reach the hotel, I found it amusing he hustled her off the phone. “I take it she’s arguing with you about something?”

  “My mother,” Mack explained with a groan, slumping in his seat, “is the type who wants all of her children close to her. None of my siblings
have moved more than two or three streets away. It’s why she delayed getting me tested for so many years. She knew I’d be off somewhere else, studying, and that I’d probably not move back soon.”

  I had wondered about that. “And she’s anxious for you to move back now that you’re almost done?”

  “That’s the size of it. But no part of me wants to return to Opelousas. I’ve gotten a glimpse of what the world is like outside of that place. I’d rather see more of it. Part of her argument, though, is that it isn’t safe for me to be wandering around by myself. So, thanks for speaking up. It derailed her.”

  I got the sense there was a lot of background he wasn’t telling me. If he’d been that deep in the Bible Belt, just how rough had his childhood been? A gay medium couldn’t have been very welcome. His mother might want him home again, but the adamant way he stood his ground said a lot. My parents had been good about raising their kids to be independent, to search out their own dreams, but if they asked me to come home? I’d do it in a heartbeat. Mack’s refusal spoke of trouble.

  I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and silently promised myself I’d figure that little mystery out later. The parking lot was well plowed and salted, but there were still icy patches. I came around the car, giving Mack my arm. “Slow and careful. I’m seeing some black ice.”

  Even as he took hold of me, Mack sassed, “I can walk unassisted, you know.”

  “It’s our snow globe ghost I’m worried about,” I deadpanned, not letting go of him. “She’s breakable.”

  “Uh-huh.” Even though he didn’t really believe me, he still took my arm.

  I was a little sad when we went through the main doors and I had to let go of him. He didn’t go far, though, and walked close enough that our arms kept brushing up against each other.

  “Morning,” my brother greeted us. He came out of the dining room with Jon, a coffee cup in his hands.

  “Good morning,” Mack carefully slid his messenger bag to hang behind him. “No visitors last night?”

  “No, fortunately,” Jon answered with a smile. “I understand we’ve got a meeting set up with the boss of the ghost hunters. Dave?”