For just a moment, a flicker of horror swept through me and I scrambled to open the bag and make sure that the money was still there. I’d totally forgotten I’d been packing it around since the house auction. “Idiot, you’re an idiot.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Corb said. “A fool, maybe, but not an idiot. You’re too smart for that moniker.”

I turned to see him in the doorway. He had on pants and a shirt, so maybe he hadn’t been sleeping, even if he had some good dark circles under his eyes. I zipped up the bag with one long swipe. “Well, yeah, today we can call me an idiot.” When was the guilt trip coming? The one where he complained that he didn’t know where we’d been? Maybe it wasn’t coming.

And maybe hell had frozen over.

He looked around me and saw the bag, leaned over and picked it up. “Because you’re leaving?”

“No, that’s not why I’m an idiot,” I said. “There are other reasons. Like packing my money around with me. I need to get it into a bank or something.”

He nodded and let my bag go. “Funny. I thought you were going to say you were an idiot for disappearing without a trace for nearly a day,” he drawled softly as he stepped into the room and crowded my space. There it was, the guilt trip. And damned if I wasn’t feeling it right to my core. “I thought you were going to say you were an idiot because you could have died, and no one would have known where to even look for you.” Another step closer, and then he was looking down at me, and not in a condescending way. More like an I might just eat you kind of way. Shit, he was super-duper angry.

“Well,” I tucked my hands behind me to keep them from touching him. Because despite all the signs that he might be interested, and my hormones’ insistence that I should take him up on any and all offers he might be making, I was not a total idiot. I was sure it had something to do with the spell the O’Seans had laid on everyone. “I didn’t think you’d miss me. Just a few weeks ago you would have been happy to see me disappear from your life. So why should now be any different?”

His jaw ticked, and the way his chest rose and fell made it obvious he was struggling to breathe evenly. “Is that what you think?”

“I dropped into your life without an invitation.” I shrugged. It was hard to act casual when a man of his size was crowding the tar out of you. Especially when my fingers wanted to dance all over him. Bad, bad Breena! He was kind of on the taboo list. Just like Crash. Crap, I’d really fallen into the “I like bad boys” trap. I cleared my throat and dragged my bag across the small bed to my side. “I know that you’ve got people—sorry, things—to do.” I made myself give him a casual wink. As if I didn’t feel the urge to strip my clothes off and roll around on him—if only to feel sexy and wanted for a change. “You’re well stocked, and I don’t want to walk in on something I shouldn’t.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Oh, Gawd, he was going to make me say it, wasn’t he? Well, he’d left me with no choice. Like a Band-Aid I’d left on for long enough it had glued itself to my skin, I was going to have to rip this sucker off. Time to lay it on the line.

“Oink and Boink? Boy Butter? Sorry, but I’m not sure I’m up for the amount of lubrication you apparently require.” And just like that, I turned my back to leave before he could notice my red cheeks and realize that maybe I wouldn’t mind all the stuff that went with his stash under the sink.

15

I didn’t wait around for Corb to come up with some lame excuse for why he had so much lube in his bathroom. I grabbed my bag and my boots and was out of my bedroom, down the hall, and out the front door even as I heard him swear from the bathroom.

Here’s the thing, I know what you’re thinking. Get it, girl! Take him up on the offer! I mean, that’s the advice my bestie from Seattle, Mavis, would have given me. And a teeny tiny part of me, right at the center of my libido, was urging me to do exactly that. Buff. Young. Hot. Dangerous. Damn it. He checked all the boxes for a fling, but I was not a fool. He was out of my league.

I’d just been shown how much it hurt to get your hopes up via Crash and his two ladies. Hell, Crash hadn’t even spoken to me, as if he’d be embarrassed for people to know he knew me. Whether it was because I was human, or not eighteen going on twelve, I didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.

But I was not going to fall for another bucket of bruised ego with Corb.

I was across the street and in Centennial Park Cemetery before I heard the door of his loft open. What in the world possessed me to do it I don’t know, but I ducked behind one of the bigger tombstones and slid to my butt.

“Are you really hiding from Corb?” I asked myself. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

Movement to my left snapped my head in that direction. “Robert!”

The skeleton swayed side to side as if he were on a ship at sea. “Friend.”

“You’re okay? I thought you were done for when you got blasted!” I held a hand out to him as if to high five, and he mimicked the motion, only he had skeletal digits and no real palm. I high fived him anyway.

“Okay. Healed,” he rumbled. “Friend.” He stayed where he was and so did I.

“Yeah, well, your friend is an idiot,” I said. “I disappeared for a day and a half. But we were only gone an hour on our end.” I rubbed my head. “And I drank something wicked that knocked me on my butt.” I winced, thinking about how all that liquid had come out. “I’m still sore.” I patted the ground next to me and Robert sat, crossing his bony legs, still swaying.

I sighed and leaned my head back against the tombstone. “What am I doing, Robert? Am I too old for this?” Yeah, that worry was still hanging over me. I couldn’t help it. Each day that passed took me a day closer to forty-two, then forty-three, and before I knew it I’d be like Hattie and Gran, unable to stand the heat, complaining about aches and pains and stupid men . . . I snorted. Who was I kidding? I was partway there already.

A quick peek over the edge of the tombstone showed that Corb’s blue Mustang was gone. I hadn’t even heard it start up. Then again, I’d been busy feeling sorry for myself. “And then, to top it all off, Crash had two women hanging off him whose combined age is probably still not as old as me. How the hell do I compete with that?”

Robert slowed his swaying. “Don’t.”

I frowned. “Don’t compete?”

His swaying continued. Only it took on a more circular motion as he repeated that one word. “Don’t.”

Don’t compete with them. Damn, when a skeleton had more emotional intelligence than you did, it was a sign that you did indeed have some social issues. I smiled. “Thanks, Robert. You’re right, I shouldn’t be competing with anyone. That’s not why I’m here.”

I pushed to my feet, my lower back seizing halfway up. Too many years of hard physical work grooming dogs were catching up to me now. I had to pause there, crouched like Quasimodo, and breathe through the tightness as it slowly released and allowed me to stand all the way up. The first few steps sent tingles up and down my legs, and I hobbled as if I were a heck of a lot older than forty-one. Robert walked with me to the far edge of the park/cemetery and the gate that led out to the east end.

“You coming with me, or staying?” I asked, much to the amusement of more than a few tourists. Of course, they couldn’t see Robert.

“Coming.” As he finished the word, he collapsed down into that same small finger bone that I scooped up and slid into my leather bag. Hoisting a bag over either shoulder, I stepped out of the cemetery. The walk back to Gran’s wasn’t long, but felt longer with the duffel bag.

Suzy beat me back to the house, and miracle of miracles, the backseat of her car was mostly empty. I only saw one bag still in it. Damn, she’d moved in fast.

Feish stood on the top step of the house as I let myself in through the wrought iron gate. “She has a lot of stuff. Lucky that I like her.”

Eric was in the east side of the yard, working away, humming to himself. “This is great, I love this garden!”

That made me smile. At least someone was happy.

I dropped both my bags at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m going to work in the garden, Feish. We all need to take care of it. If the ghosts from next door can come over now, it will only get worse the more we let the garden slide.”

Feish’s eyes went wide. “That would be bad.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think too.”

I pulled the finger bone out of my leather bag and set it on the ground. “There you go, Robert.” I blinked and he stood there, swaying in the sunshine.

Feish flapped her arms as she all but flew down the steps. “What are you bringing him for?” So she could see him, then.

“Because he looks out for me. And I think he might be lonely.” I grimaced. “Don’t you think you would get lonely if everyone was afraid of you all the time?”

Her face almost collapsed under the sadness that washed over her. “Yes. I think very lonely.”

Crap, I’d stepped in it there. I cleared my throat. “So we stay together, all of us. Friends.” I grabbed her webbed hand and gave it a squeeze as Robert muttered “friends” under his breath. Not Friend, singular. Friends, plural.

Before I could acknowledge the tears that welled up in those big round eyes of hers, I hurried into the front yard, which was all garden, all over the place. Feish, I was beginning to realize, had a lot of pent-up emotion that I wasn’t always sure what to do with.

My grandmother’s garden was made up of four sections, one for each direction on the compass. Not that there was any one type of plant in each section. Nope, far as I could see there was no rhyme or reason to what was growing there.

I recognized most of the plants, if not by sight then by smell. More than anything, I wanted to make sure whatever was keeping the next door monsters out continued to do so. Which meant I started on the fence line against the Sorrel-Weed house. I bent down by a patch of sage and began weeding around the edges of it, stripping the invasive plants out by the roots. The heat of the sun soaked into my back as I gave up and went to my hands and knees.