roll my eyes. “You just want me to keep him so that you can play with Mabel.”
A quick grin. “Yup.”
I grab one of the protein bars that Blue makes us eat when we’re out of baked goods. “Find your own guy with a ghost.”
Her lips quirk. “What makes you think I haven’t?”
It’s entirely possible. Violet’s dating life has always been interesting. And full of too many knives. “Find one who is also a decent human being, then.”
Her eyes gentle. “Drew is really decent. I know you’re scared about how much you need a nest right now and that it might be making you stupid, but don’t let it make you doubt what you can feel.”
I’ve always had lots of feelings. I’ve never trusted them like she does. Charts are my backup. My second opinion. The trusty steed who makes sure that slaying dragons doesn’t just leave me covered in nasty dragon guts. “My feelings keep writing poetry that makes no sense.”
She chuckles. “Try giving the blue couch pillow to Mars. That should help.”
I’ve been trying to love that pillow for six years, ever since I dragged it all the way back from Morocco. “That feels like passing on a curse.”
Violet grins. “Mars could use a good curse in her life.”
I roll my eyes again. This town takes Violet more seriously than most, but they still have no idea what’s hit them. “I could give it to Gruesome. It would make a better courting gift than whatever he’s still sniffing at down there.”
She slides her arm into mine, linking our elbows. “Are we destroying more walls or making a run to the bakery?”
I grin. “Bakery. We can drop off the pillow on our way.”
She sets down her glass. “See? You know how to be decisive.”
I set mine down a little more slowly, absorbing the advice that she really came out here to give. To me, and maybe to Gruesome, too.
Chapter Twenty-Three
DREW
I hear her laughter before I feel the light greeting on the back of my neck. Which takes some doing—it’s well wrapped in the scarf I scrounged out of the closet before I headed out here.
I’ve never been any good at brooding while I’m cold.
“Nice view.”
I shrug, not sure I’m ready to be interrupted. “There are nice ones closer to town.”
A snort. “Someone might join you there, and you needed your windswept moor.”
She’s always known. “Someone did join me. Although I’m not sure that talking to a ghost on a windswept moor makes me any less of a character in an Austen novel.”
“Jane was a nice girl. I liked her.”
I blink. “Didn’t she die before you were born?”
“Of course she did. She stayed around to watch herself become famous. That always seems to happen after writers and poets die. It didn’t make her happy, though.”
I push my hands deeper into my pockets. This is a really cold moor, and Mabel is poking at old, uncomfortable scars. “Why did she leave?”
“No one knew.”
That was the monster that lived under every single one of my childhood beds—but Mabel was always still there when I woke up. I look out over the waters of the bay, rippling under the wind just like my imaginary moor, and try to process all of the feelings she’s just stirred up.
A brush of air on my cheek. “You’re cold. Go home.”
That’s feeling like more of a place that actually exists, these days. Which is part of what I need to process. “Not yet. I’m thinking.”
A snort. “Let me help you think, then.”
I roll my eyes, which won’t have any effect on her whatsoever. “I have some feelings to sort through. Privately.”
A dense warm spot just over my heart. One of Mabel’s very rare hugs. “Fine. But remember this, Andrew Bartholomew. Just because you haven’t felt something before doesn’t mean it’s trouble.”
I swallow as her words fade. I don’t say anything. There’s no point. She’ll be gone already. Those hugs cost her two days, sometimes three.
Which is why she never hugged a small, angry boy.
I sigh into the wind. She’s right about many things, but she’s wrong this time. I’ve felt this way before. Just once.
It began the day I cut out a construction-paper heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Mercury is going retrograde. Increase your chocolate stash, put on your big-girl underwear, and try not to be stupid.” Indigo, age 37.
INDIGO
This client is a hot mess. Again. Which he already knows, but he thinks the fix is some organization and a clear direction for his life. Which I’m supposed to provide, along with