this room too. Maybe if we tell the story of the women—”
“Well yeah—that’s why I said check everything, remember?”
Some of Angel’s dispiritedness faded. “You’re very smart,” he said, and the sincere admiration in his voice made Tucker’s stomach turn over.
“I’m not,” he said stiffly, putting on the cotton gardening gloves he’d bought that day. “Here—I’m going to put everything out on top of the desk, even stuff I find under the bed and in the closets. What we need is a rating system. You’re going to hover over the thing and give me a scale of one to five. Ones are the hole punch or the letter opener—so boring it almost stops my heart. Fives are the snuff box—so awful it makes me want to stick an ice pick up my nose for a DIY lobotomy. Everything else—”
“Wait!” Angel said, surprising him. “What about the good things?”
“What?”
“You know… the….” Angel blushed. Color actually washed across his face, and a faint sheen of sweat appeared on a forehead that was, for all intents and purposes, a psychic oil painting.
Tucker was so fascinated watching something that shouldn’t happen that it took him a moment to realize what Angel was talking about.
And he blushed himself.
“The glass bottle?” he asked, fastening his eyes on the acres of repeating chrysanthemums on the wallpaper.
“Yes. That. That wasn’t bad. That was… good.”
“Oh yes. Yes, it was.” The chrysanthemums were gold and orange and brown and white, with glimpses of green stem and lined in black. The black lines took on a life of their own, writhing sensuously, becoming a buxom woman with blazing red hair, a slender woman with shining gold. They rolled across the wall, laughing, making love, or became flowers with long skirts as their stalks, great hats as their flowers, walking the halls of Daisy Place primly, arm in arm.
Tucker stared at them, fascinated, a sexual flush heating his body in the preternatural cold of the mansion, and tried grimly not to think about the form-shifting ghost playing with a kitten on the bed.
Because he was starting to emanate sex vibes in the worst of ways.
“So do you want those separate?” Angel’s voice sounded constricted, and Tucker tore his gaze away from what seemed to be haunted wallpaper and met his eyes.
And gasped.
“Again?” he asked, none of his arousal dissipating.
Angel was a chrysanthemum—a woman—with glossy blond hair and limpid green eyes, wearing a slim green dress that showed generous cleavage at the V of the neck.
“Oh damn!” She sounded both plaintive and surprised. “I was not supposed to do that.”
Tucker held his hand to his mouth, trying hard not to laugh. “But you’ve been doing it since I got here. This is my second day, and you’ve been three people already.”
“I’m still the same person,” she muttered, white teeth sinking into a tender pink lip. “I just… I was the same form for your aunt for fifty-five years. A teenage boy, sandy hair, green eyes. I have no idea why I can’t hold it together around you!” Impatiently she pushed imaginary hair from her eyes and frowned.
“Whatsamatter, Angel? Do you need a cosmic scrunchy?”
Angel glowered at him, her green eyes sparking with irritation. Tucker stared into them, mesmerized. They were the same eyes she’d worn in her last form—bright bottle green that seemed perfect until he saw the little flecks of rust brown in the iris—and Tucker realized that even if they hadn’t been the same color, there was something in there, a clear green sort of light that had been in his eyes when he’d been not-Damien and when he’d been the hot young roughneck and here, now, the blowsy blond in the green dress.
“Your eyes,” he said softly. “Your eyes are the same.”
This Angel had a soft jaw and the beguiling round face of a woman in her early thirties. Her sweet little mouth made a delicate moue. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Tucker said, lost in those eyes. He suddenly wanted the hot young roughneck back so he could see if they were as beguiling in a man’s form. He remembered Angel’s delight at the kitten, his earnestness then, replacing the driven workaholic, and thought that maybe they would be.
“Ouch!” Angel’s sharp word broke the spell, and she grimaced at the kitten, who continued to chew on her red-tipped, manicured fingers. “So.” She shifted uncomfortably and shook that amazing hair back again. “Do you want a different pile?”
Tucker had to shake himself back into what they’d been talking about, and he squinted at the objects