"Right." I leaned back in the itchy horsehair seat. I was squished next to Lilith. "Why don’t you modify it to have more seats?"
Morticia turned to me, teeth sharp. "Then we wouldn't have room for our art pieces… or a coffin."
* * *
Salem, the twins'black cat, wound around my legs after I staggered out of the hearse. I looked up at the creaky old Victorian house. It was the closest place in the world I had to a home. Four stories tall, with a glass-enclosed turret, the huge house was a true Victorian mansion. It had tall ceilings, a wraparound porch, and a third-story ballroom that Mimi had always used to host big holiday parties.
I picked Salem up while Morticia dragged my duffel bag up the steep wooden steps to the front door.
"Watch that third step," Lilith warned. "The board is rotten. You'll crash right down to the cellar."
Morticia fitted an ornate skeleton key into the lock. It turned with a loud clank, and the front door creaked inward.
The first time I'd ever come to this house, I’d been barely a teenager. Mimi, Morticia and Lilith's grandmother, had welcomed me with open arms. She had been my foster mother until I’d aged out of the system. Even after, I would always come back to the house for holidays. Halloween was Mimi's favorite. She would dress up as a witch and turn the whole foyer into a mini haunted house and decorate the yard. She had died a year ago. I missed her every day.
"Did you have issues with the house when you moved in?" I asked the twins.
"A bit. It was vacant for months," Morticia explained as I followed her into the kitchen.
"I told her we should have sold it," Lilith added.
"No!" I protested. "You can't sell this house! I love it!"
"It's so large," Morticia said, setting the kettle to boil water for tea. "We really only need the carriage house out back. It wouldn’t be right for the house. It needs a rich couple to fix it up."
"If I had money, I would buy it, and you could live in the carriage house," I said wistfully.
Morticia snorted as she measured tea leaves. "Honestly, we’d give it to you, but Mimi took out multiple loans on it. Plus the upkeep costs are insane. It really needs a full remodel. And art doesn’t pay that much."
"You have some work for the Harrogate art trail," I countered.
"It's not going to last," Lilith said, passing out cups. "We’ll be done with our contract by Christmas."
"After that," Morticia said, sipping her tea, "who knows."
"Thanks for letting me crash here anyway," I said.
"How long is your temp position?"
"Until I get fired probably."
Lilith smirked. "Maybe you'll find a rich man. There are loads of them bopping around Harrogate now. We have quite the startup scene."
"I can't rely on a man. I need to make my own fortune. If I could make my baking YouTube channel profitable…"
"Your sex ASMR baking channel?" Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response videos, short hand for videos that feature sensual sounds like whispering, soft petting, or nails running across silk, all usually done by pretty girls. But of course if you asked the men that watched them, it was totally about how relaxing the sounds were. Girl? What girl? You mean a girl was doing it? Nope, never noticed.
"It's not sex baking!" I exclaimed, face red. "I just talk in a soft, calming voice while I make cakes."
"Yeah, but I've read the comments on your videos. You have a lot of guys who get off on watching you bake and do your sexy voice."
"I don't read comments," I sniffed.
"Start a Patreon and do baking in your underwear for your paying subscribers," Lilith suggested. "I bet you'd make enough money to buy this house in no time."
"That's unsanitary! No, I need something else."
I looked up at the ceiling. It was cobwebby and needed to be cleaned. And I needed to come clean to the twins about my mother.
