“Have a seat. I need to water my plants. They’re looking a bit parched.”
I sat in one of the chairs, the folder of research in my lap. He moved stiffly as he filled the can from a hose and poured water into one of the hanging baskets, balancing on his cane. I offered to help, but he shook his head.
“It helps calm me. Taking care of something else. Makes up for all the times I can’t take care of myself.”
It was an opening to ask him more, but I decided to start with the least personal of the questions running through my mind.
“How did you know the numbers to that safe?”
“I didn’t know. I can’t even remember what they were now.”
“But you got it right on the first attempt. How?”
“Do you think that place is haunted?”
The abrupt change in topic caught me off guard. “I went with a friend to a party there once. I never saw anything out of the ordinary, just loadsof drunk teenagers.” I had been too much of a rule follower to drink. Just trespassing had made me anxious. “Why?”
“Maybe this will sound crazy, but it felt as though someone else’s hand guided mine, making me turn the dial to the correct numbers.” He paused mid-drizzle of the hydrangea. “Part of me thought maybe … maybe it was Edwin’s ghost.”
My heart thumped hard. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, but I hated to think my grandfather had died so restlessly that he’d come back to haunt the living. It was meant to be quite a painful experience for the spirit.
“Did you find something in there?”
He blew his fringe out of his eyes while shaking out the last of the water from the can on some lavender. “I couldn’t read through the documents quickly enough to find anything in particular, but some of them didn’t look like normal contracts. There were runes on some, and it felt … off. A magical signature, but not like yours. More tinny, like the sound your ears make after a concert.”
“What’s mine like?”
Kessian focused steadily on refilling the watering can. “Smells like burgamot, makes you feel like you’re drinking sangria by the sea.”
I shouldn’t read too much into that, but I’d never been so flattered.
Kessian rushed on to say, “So if we didn’t take that contract, who did? Edwin’s ghost? Someone else?”
“I don’t know.” We didn’t have any clues to follow on that front. Perhaps my grandfather’s autopsy would provide a new direction, but until then, the only lead I had was to talk to my family and go through the research to see what could be used.
Before any of that, I still had another question. The worst one. “Kessian … What did Warwick take from you?”
He had his back to me. It went rigid.
“You don’t have to tell me. I know you like your secrets.” And I was trying not to take that personally. I had no right to them, and I hadn’t exactly been consistent about whether I wanted more intimacy from him or less.
But after that kiss, something had changed. I’d spent my life sacrificing my well-being to keep others protected. That was the first time someone had protected me.
“It’s not a secret. Not really. It’s just—humiliating.”
I waited. Eventually, he set the watering can down and slumped into the chair across from me. “When I moved here, I didn’t have much. You saw. My whole life fit inside my car. While I was sick with Bowen’s Wane, I couldn’t work as much, so I couldn’t make much money.”
“Did you have any family that could step in?”
“Nope. Single child to a single mum, who sold our council house and went backpacking across Europe to live out the youth she couldn’t as a teen mother to an extremely high-maintenance queer kid.”
“You don’t strike me as high-maintenance.”
“Maybe not anymore. Back then, I wanted to be in every school activity, try every new hobby, and not only could she not afford to kit me out for whatever latest craft project had taken my fancy, I wanted her involved. I was a stage ten clinger. A bad case of wisteria, and the people I climbed all over couldn’t hold me up, so they all left. I can’t even really blame them. I’d have probably done the same.”
My heart ached with the parallel cut of my own family history, only I’d been the one to leave. Forced out, more like.
“Dom too?” I guessed.
