“Leopold’s is always a thing,” Charlie said, stepping up behind an older couple debating butter pecan versus rum raisin with the intensity of a hostage negotiation. “Tourists don’t care about the weather. Hell, half of them probably think thisissummer. Probably warmer here than wherever they came from.”
I laughed, and he squeezed my hand.
We shuffled forward in increments. Nancy sat between us, panting dramatically, performing her best impression of a dog on the verge of collapse. A little girl in a tutu crouched down to pet her, and Nancy—despite being a known terrorist—leaned into it like she’d been starved for affection her entire life.
“She’s a con artist,” Charlie muttered.
“She’s a professional,” I corrected.
By the time we made it to the counter, I’d already changed my order three times. Charlie got a single scoop of salted caramel in a cup, because of course he did—practical, contained, no risk of dripping. I got a banana split loaded with hot fudge, whipped cream, and enough toppings to require structural engineering.
“You’re gonna regret that,” he said as we stepped back onto the street.
“Probably.”
But I didn’t. We strolled toward Monterey Square, weaving through the evening foot traffic, Nancy trotting between us like she’d orchestrated the whole thing. I ate my ice cream too fast, and Charlie kept glancing over, half-amused, half-concerned I was going to choke.
When we hit the square, the light had shifted again—deeper now, the kind of gold that made everything look like a painting. The Mercer House loomed ahead, wrapped in tasteful garland and bows. Charlie steered us toward a bench, and I sank into it without thinking, pulling my legs up under me.
He sat beside me. Not on the opposite end. Right beside me, close enough that our knees touched.
And it didn’t feel new. It felt like something we’d been doing for years. He leaned over and took a spoonful of my banana split, eyes on mine the whole time as if daring me to stop him. He shot me a playful wink as he licked the spoon clean.
“Not what it used to be, back in the day,” Charlie said, nodding toward the sprawling mansion. A streak of whipped cream clung to the corner of his lip, and it took everything in me not to lean over and lick it off. Slowly.
“Jim Williams used to throw insane parties around Christmas,” he continued, totally unaware of the internal meltdown I was having beside him. “Or so I’ve heard. I was too young to remember.”
I forced myself to look away from the sweet cream slinking down his beard and up at the house instead. “Does anyone still live there? It looks like the kind of place that’s definitely haunted.”
“It’s a museum now,” he said, leaning back into the bench with a little grunt. We were both crammed into the right side of it, even though the left side had a perfectly good seat just waiting for him. “Magnolia, Lee, and I broke in there once when we were kids. We wanted to see if the ghost stories were true.”
I whipped my head toward him. I didn’t need a mirror to know my eyes were wild. “And? Were they?”
He grinned, eyes crinkling from the sun. “Not haunted by ghosts. Cats, though. Dozens of ’em. Lee’s mom was working on the restoration at the time. She’s an antiquarian.”
I squinted. “I thought she just made that title up and threw parties all the time. That’s a real job?”
“For her, yeah.”
I snorted and looked back at the house, dragging my spoon through a streak of fudge. “Dig and I used to charge people fiftybucks to do séances in their rent-controlled Upper East Side apartments. Rich old ghosts are the chattiest—probably because they’re used to having people listen to their nonsense.”
Charlie’s laugh melted into me. I didn’t hear it often, but when I did, it curled around the edges of my chest and warmed some aching part of me I didn’t know had gone cold.
“I’m not breaking into Mercer House again, if that’s where this is going.”
“It’s not,” I said, pointing to a row of houses off the square. “I’m asking you to break into that one. The blue one. That’s the most haunted house on this street.”
He turned toward me fully, and his arm, already draped across the back of the bench, dropped slightly so that his fingers brushed the bare part of my arm. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. His touch was light, casual, but a slow current buzzed beneath my skin, steady and unrelenting.
“And how exactly would you know that little tidbit from all the way over here?” he asked.
I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant even though my insides were doing cartwheels. “I just know these things. Call it intuition.”
He huffed. “A séance would not be good for your blood pressure. Wouldn’t want to go breaking any more of Doyle’s rules.”
I leaned into his side, nudging him with my shoulder. “He didn’t say anything about séances. He said to watch my salt intake, try not to pass out, and stay hydrated. That’s it.”
“And that you need to eat actual food. Don’t forget the gourmet meals I’ve been making.”
