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I tried to look contrite. And failed.

“Listen to me, you absolute dick.” His finger punctuated the point by poking me in the chest. “You love him, yes?”

I nodded.

“Then what thefuckis wrong with you? Fuck’s sake, Val, you have a chance tobe happy. A chance to have that man—” He pointed down the hall, presumably in the direction Taavi had gone. “—in your life. For some reason I can’t fathom, he loves you. You love him. So pull your head out of your goddamn ass andstop this shit.”

I had no idea what to say.

“You want to do me a goddamn favor? You fuckingwork it out. You put on your big boy pants and you talk to him or fuck him or whatever you need to do, but you work it the fuck out because even if you don’t deserve him,hedeserves whatever the fuck he wants, you hear me?”

I kind of felt like I’d just been smacked across the face with a fish, but he was right. “But—”

“Goddamn it, Valentine, don’t make me bite you.”

And then my entire face flushed, because Taavi had walked up behind him right as he said that.

Elliot didn’t look in the least surprised, which I resented, because I knew Elliot had either heard or smelled him, and had said it anyway.

Taavi carried another bag over to the kitchen table, this one having clearly been packed by my mother, because it contained her usual selection of towels and washcloths, which Taavi calmly pulled out and put on the table before pulling out a bottle from the bottom.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Mescal.”

“Where the fuck did you get mescal in Shawano?” I asked.

“Your dad had it,” came the answer.

Elliot looked surprised. “Why does Marshall have mescal?”

Taavi pulled out three shot glasses.

“Becauseyourdad brought it back for him from Cancun a decade ago,” Taavi answered. “And told Val’s father that he was supposed to save it for when they retired.”

Elliot looked like someone had just drained the blood from his face.

Taavi looked at me. “Call Ward,” he said.

“Uh—”

He responded to my hesitation by walking over and stealing my phone out of my pocket, calling Ward, and hitting the speaker button. After he’d scooted far enough away that I couldn’t reach him.

“Hart,” Ward answered the phone. “What can I do?”

“It’s Taavi,” my boyfriend answered him. “Val is being an ass.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“What’s new?” came Ward’s teasing response.

“I’m going to get them both drunk,” came the answer, and Elliot and I shot each other a slightly panicked look. “It seems like a good time to just get it all out there.”

“Let me send Sylvia over,” came the answer, and I gaped at Taavi, suddenly realizing that he had absolutely been planning this—whatever the fuckthiswas—with Ward behind my back.

“The dead lady?” Elliot asked, sounding slightly alarmed.

“Yes, the dead lady,”came the familiar—but still creepy as fuck—tones of the dead Victorian woman.