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“Well, it’s great,” Marco said, looking me up and down. “It fits the part, you know? Not that funeral directors have to look a certain way. I suppose a lot of them just dress in suits or something else that blends into the background. But this is so much better. It really says something.” He stopped abruptly, then laughed. “Sorry. I tend to talk too much when I’m nervous.”

“There’s no need to be nervous,” I said in my sympathy voice, the way I always did to people in mourning.

Marco froze again, a flush coming to his cheeks and a sparkle to his eyes.

A moment later, it was gone as he shook his head and made a random gesture with his hands. “I kind of do have a reason to be nervous,” he said. I wanted to wince, but I folded my hands and listened instead. “I just bought a house, you see. It’s a few blocks from here. It’s one of those big, old Victorian houses that was built at the end of the nineteenth century.”

I sucked in a short, thrilled breath. “Those houses are incredible.”

“Yeah, they are,” Marco said, then rolled his eyes.

“Which one did you buy?” I asked in an attempt to put him at ease.

“The one on Kenmore Ave, close to the park.”

“The big white one?”

“It needs fresh paint, but yeah.”

“That’s the old Fairfield house,” I went on without considering whether Marco was the least bit interested. “Built by Josaiah Fairfield in eighteen-eighty-two. Rumor had it that he built the house when this area was much less populated to get away from a bride who jilted him in Philadelphia, but the research I did years ago makes it pretty clear he had a male lover who broke his heart. But you’re not interested in all that.” I blushed as I realized I’d been rambling.

Marco’s eyes had gone wide and sparkly, and his cheeks were flushed. “No, I’m super interested in that! Huh. I’m living in a house built by a gay man.” He chuckled, then said, “It’s a bit of a disaster at the moment, though. It needs a lot of work, which I’ve already started on. I like a good challenge. But there’s one thing about it that’s, well, weird.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the way he looked at me when he said that word, especially since I wanted him to like me. “Weird how?” I asked.

Marco rolled his shoulders. “I think…well, maybe….” He sighed in exasperation. Closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and stared right at me. “Okay, I’ll just say it. I think the house is haunted.”

Everything within me tightened and shivered. Blood shot to all the wrong places. I should absolutely not get a boner for a haunted Victorian house, but I was weird, so…yeah.

And maybe it wasn’t the house that caused the reaction.

“What makes you think the house is haunted?” I asked, trying to keep myself together.

Marco turned serious again. “Strange things keep happening. Doors open and shut without me doing anything. Some of the windows fog up. And I think…I think I hear voices from other parts of the house sometimes.”

I nodded, accepting everything he said as fact instead of debating it, like most people would. “Have you felt cold patches in the house?” I asked.

“Yes!” Marco’s eyes went wide.

“How about creaking floorboards that should be silent.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard those things, too.” His eyes grew as wide and round as harvest moons. “Hey! Do you think Josaiah Fairfield is still hanging around, waiting for his lover?”

“You never know,” I said, heart beating harder at the idea. “Does this happen all the time or was it only once?”

“All the time,” Marco said. “Or almost all the time. I have a dog, he’s a rescue greyhound named Polo, and he⁠—”

“You have a dog named Polo?” I asked, my heart positively melting in my chest.

“Marco Polo, I know,” Marco laughed. He made me want to laugh, too, and that never happened. “I think Polo senses it all, too,” he went on, leaving my head and heart completely spinning without knowing it. “His ears perk up at weird times, like he’s heard something I can’t hear. And sometimes he barks at nothing in corners of rooms and things, but he’s never been a barker.”

“That could definitely be supernatural,” I said, my soothing voice gone wispy. “Pets often sense things we can’t see or hear.”

“Right? That’s what I thought,” Marco said, inching forward on his seat. “I was telling the guys at Common Grounds about it, and they said I should talk to you, that you’re an amateur ghost hunter.”

My instinct to protect myself from bullies flared up before I could check it. Bullies had sent unsuspecting people to talk to me in the past. The Meyers brothers had never been anything but nice to me. I doubted they’d be jerks, but you never knew.

“They sent you to the right person,” I said, showing confidence in the hope that I’d feel it, too. “I am, indeed, an amateur ghost hunter.”