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Sonya ran out to fetch the bags, then stopped, breathed in air that tasted of spring.

She’d first come to the manor and the coast of Maine in the dead of winter. Now the air warmed, and daffodils bloomed. The big, bony weeper beside the house had fat buds, still closed and secret, on its branches.

Holding out her arms, she turned in a circle.

“This is my place now.”

The view of the sun streaming down on the water, hers. The sound of waves crashing against the rocks, hers. Flowers blooming or budding, hers, too.

And if the curse on it was hers, too, now? She’d deal with it, somehow, some way.

She grabbed the bags and sailed back into the house.

In the kitchen, Cleo put groceries away. “That’s a big slab of meat, Son.”

“I know. It’s scary, but I can do it. You bought an awful lot of apples. Are we getting a horse?”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be sweet? But no. I’m making an apple pie.”

“You’re making an apple pie? From actual apples? Who are you, and what have you done with my Cleo?”

“I’m now Cleo, chief cook of the manor. Owen doesn’t think I can do it, and I thought, well, I’ll never know unless I try. So I called Mama, and she texted me her recipe while I was in the store. We had most everything except the apples anyway.”

After getting out a bowl, Cleo began to put the apples in it. “And if I screw it up, nobody knows but you and me. And a houseful of ghosts.”

“I’ll never tell.”

Sonya’s phone popped out with Maroon 5’s “Secret.”

“Good, that’s settled.” Cleo tucked the cloth grocery bags away. “What time do you need to get started on that big slab of meat?”

“I think about one, one-thirty. I’m going to work until one for sure, then get it on.”

“Then I’ll meet you here by one-thirty. I’m grabbing a Coke and heading up to my studio. Want a Coke?”

“Yeah, I could use the boost. Don’t go near the Gold Room, Cleo.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. It’s mermaids for me today, not witches. And if the illustrations go well enough, I might work some on the painting.”

They started upstairs together.

At the library, Cleo tapped her Coke to Sonya’s. “Let’s go get our art on.”

Back at her desk Sonya put the Ryder proposal aside. While she didn’t consider it pie in the sky, she needed to get down to her bread and butter.

She worked on her newest job, a store down in Poole’s Bay.

Consistency, creativity, user-friendly, she thought as she disregarded Gigi’s current, clunky, and altogether boring website.

Fun should be the theme there, she decided. Fun, casual clothes, surprising and fun scents in soaps and lotions, candles and bath salts. Toss in some—again—fun accessories.

She started a new mood board, keeping the fun up front.

The place really needed a fresh new logo. Though that hadn’t been part of the package, she decided what the hell. She already saw it in her head.

The silhouette of a long-legged woman in heels, a short skirt, swinging a handbag, a scarf trailing behind. Just a hint of Paris, she thought as she worked. It fit with the name of the shop.

It said casual sophistication, female energy. And, of course, fun.