might pull you away.”
Oh. Naked self-interest had never bothered Angel before, but realizing that his agenda might take him from Tucker sure did bother him now.
“I hadn’t considered that,” he said. And then he remembered that when Tucker had arrived—hell, for most of Ruth’s life—Angel had wanted nothing but to clear out the souls so he could leave. Tucker would have figured out that was the ultimate endgame.
He felt a weight in his shoulders, a tightness in his back, as though he were bearing something unsupportable, and his head drooped.
“You’re right, Tucker. We should save Ruth’s room until you and I have more of a handle on what we’re doing. Your powers are very different. Your perceptions are very different. I….” He tried not to look out over the property as they drove alongside it. He knew that the dark cloud of distorted souls and malice would loom to the northeast, where the graveyard stretched into the unmentionable beyond. “I think you and I need to figure out how to clear the graveyard together. I need to be here for that.”
Tucker’s sigh almost rocked the cab of the truck.
“And of course I want to stay for you.”
And the atmosphere lightened again—even the weight on his shoulders.
They pulled into the driveway at Daisy Place with an almost unbearable optimism… considering what followed.
JOSH INSISTED on helping Tucker haul the sander up the stairs while he was there. He also wanted to see if his efforts with the humidifier had made the wallpaper as easy to pull as he hoped. They parked the sander in the hallway across from the bed, where Josh paused.
“Hey now,” he said, looking at the bed. “That’s a real nice frame. Are you putting that back into the roo—”
“Don’t touch that!” Tucker and Angel both cried together.
Josh eyed them dryly and stuck his hand out like a grade-schooler to touch the bed with one finger. Nothing happened, and he rolled his eyes.
Tucker shuddered. “You will never know,” he said. “You will never know how lucky you are to be psychically blind.”
Josh laughed and shrugged, but he looked a little wistful as well. “You say that. But you’ve been surrounded by people your whole life who don’t see what you do. I’ve been surrounded by people who see way more than I do, and I gotta tell you, it hurts sometimes.”
Angel felt the hurt then, rolling off him, and wondered what to say.
“Well, yeah.” Tucker nodded. “But they share it with you, right? And I’m telling you, that brood of yours? Even I’d get creeped out by all that witchiness. They need you. You keep them grounded. People need to eat, and they need a roof over their heads. You make that happen. That’s gotta be worth it, right?”
Josh smiled kindly, and although most of the time he just seemed like a big goofy kid, Angel could suddenly see the “dad” in him that Tucker seemed to gravitate to.
“Yeah, it is. But it’s nice of you to point that out. So, this room of yours…?”
Tucker swung the door open, and Squishbeans, who had been gamboling at their heels as they walked in, suddenly hissed, spat, and darted away. That didn’t bode well—Tucker and Angel ignored the curling wallpaper and the floor. While Josh went to assess the workload, their eyes swung immediately to the desk, and the paperweight on top of it.
It was almost black.
“Oh my God,” Tucker muttered. “Angel, that’s not good.”
“I know it.” It wasn’t just black—it was sentiently black—the crawling, angry black of a trapped and tortured soul.
They both looked at Josh, who was rocking back on his heels and whistling. “So, you just planned on grabbing the paper and ripping it off?”
Tucker looked around. “There’s a putty knife in the kitchen,” he said. “Two of them, actually. And it’s coming off plaster, right? I mean, a lot of it’s been hanging from the ceiling since you did the thing with the humidifier.”
“Yeah.” But Josh didn’t sound sure. He was, in fact, eyeing the paper with cool assessment. “But it’s dried out since then. This old stuff, it gets really attached to the surface. You’re lucky this place is plaster—it’s one of the reasons it keeps so cool, which is nice. If it was drywall, you’d have to buy sealant and sandpaper and a thousand other things, but this…. You still might need sandpaper and probably some base paint, because if it sticks you’re going to want to paint over the plaster to keep it smooth.”
Angel’s