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MAREN

THIRTEEN DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

The antique mirror screams my name three seconds before I drop it.

Not metaphorically. Not the creepy little way old houses groan or pipes knock or antique dealers pretend the scratching in the walls definitely isn't rats.

The mirror actually screams.

"MAREN!"

WTF! My hands jerk. The mirror slips. I lunge, bang my hip on a Victorian side table, catch the heavy brass frame against my stomach, and stumble backward into a display of plastic pumpkins.

One rolls straight through the open front door of Bell & Bone.

Right between the boots of my terrifying next-door neighbor.

Gage Corbett looks down at the pumpkin. Then at me. Then at the mirror clutched to my chest like a shield.

"You okay?"

Of course he has to witness this. Whatever supernatural force is ruining my morning has excellent comedic timing.

"I'm fantastic."

His gray eyes narrow.

I shove the mirror onto the counter before it can say anything else. "Great morning. Normal morning. Mirrors aren't yelling at me. Furniture isn't attacking me. Everything's perfect."

Gage bends and picks up the pumpkin. At six and a half feet, he makes my twelve-inch decorative pumpkin look like a grape. His dark T-shirt stretches across shoulders that have no business existing before I've had coffee.

Frankly, they have no business existing at all.

I've lived next door to him for six months, and I still can't decide if Gage Corbett is a contractor, a lumberjack, a motorcycle assassin, or the final boss in a particularly sexy horror movie. Tattoos cover both forearms. A scar cuts through his left eyebrow. He almost never smiles.

He also fixed the loose railing on my porch sometime between midnight and six this morning without telling me.

Again.

I point at him. "You did it."

"Did what?"

"Fixed my railing."

"It was loose."

"So you broke into my yard?"

"It's not breaking in if there's no fence."

"That's exactly what a serial killer would say."

One corner of his mouth moves. Barely. I count it as a victory.

He hands me the pumpkin. Our fingers brush, and heat snaps under my skin, quick as a struck match.