All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,25

and Tucker managed a weak grin.

“You should try living next to it,” he said.

And finally they came to the bend in the road. Tucker slowed the truck down so that he didn’t rip the transmission out of it, and the road became paved and leveled out considerably.

The dimensional porthole visible from the east side of the road had vanished.

Even though the psychic darkness remained, casting a patina of despair over the entire property, the graveyard appeared much as Josh had probably seen it—disorganized, haphazard, but entirely human and earthbound.

Tucker fought an audible swallow and resisted the temptation to wipe his clammy hands on his jeans.

“Okay, so about a mile down this road, then?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t crack with the excess brightness.

“Yeah, then we’ll see the southbound road and we can get back on the highway. How’d she drive on the dirt road, though? Like a dream, right?”

“She was an angel,” Tucker said fervently. Because if this truck could deal with that amount of supernatural interference and not self-destruct, it was a keeper.

“Yeah, anything newer, with all of that electronic shit that goes into it, usually sort of shorts and dies on that road. I didn’t want to tell you about it, because I figured you’d think I was just a crazy yokel, but you gotta know, folks think your place is haunted.”

Tucker didn’t consider himself a brave man, nor one particularly invested in self-control, but he managed to keep himself from laughing hysterically for the rest of the trip, and he would always be proud of that.

THEY WENT to Auburn for a bigger selection, and by the end of the trip to the hardware store, Tucker had managed to relegate the dimensional porthole to where-the-fuck-ever into the mental column of “home improvement.” He was renting a sander, buying floor stain, gloves, chemicals to strip the walls, some paint so he could make the trim in the Chrysanthemum Room gold and orange, to keep the room’s original tone, and all of the tools he thought he’d need. By the time he’d finished, he was looking forward to fixing the house up, one room—and one set of ghosts—at a time.

He also threw in a spade and a post-hole digger from sheer instinct, because the graveyard had to be a part of that, right?

Angel had said the property was a portal to the afterlife. His job with Ruth had been to clear the ghosts, and after seeing that graveyard, Tucker could appreciate his urgency in the matter. The graveyard was clogged, like a highway or an artery—or a toilet. Obviously, it was so clogged that even ghosts like Angel, who were self-aware, couldn’t find the way home.

Tucker’s brain didn’t even trip over the concept of a self-aware ghost—but it should have. Because that was what Angel had to be, right? A ghost who knew he was a ghost?

Or was he something else?

It didn’t matter. Angel was his helper now, and one of the things he had to help Tucker do was to get the entire back forty of Daisy Place’s occupants able to find their goddamned way home. He figured that each ghost he cleared would make that portal a little easier to tackle, right?

And if not, well, he was here for the duration. He’d figure something out.

Catharsis was his gift—and maybe in his old life, it had meant getting close to people and helping them find a new way through their life. Apparently here, where there were more ghosts than live people, catharsis was still his gift. But his karmic mission had changed to helping the spirits on their way.

Whatever. As long as he didn’t have to sleep with the ghosts of old prospectors, he was going to call it a win.

JOSH WAS good company through the store, telling him what he’d need for the projects and how much of something to buy. He even offered to lend Tucker a floor sander, which Tucker took him up on just so he’d have a reason to reconnect. By the time they were done, it was twelve o’clock, and Tucker stopped by a sandwich place so Josh could bring food home for his wife.

“She’s a local artist,” Josh said proudly. “Three stores on the boardwalk sell her jewelry, and four in Auburn—she’s real popular. And it sounds like she could create her own hours, right? But she really can’t. She’s got orders to fill, so she needs to get shit done.” Josh worked at a car dealership in Auburn, fixing up