Page 34 of Demon Loved (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #5)

Anyway, judging by the way his dark blond brows together as he took in her companion, Bree guessed that her initial impressions had been correct…and that Harris’s crush hadn’t lessened too much over the years.

But at least he sounded polite enough as he asked, “Something to drink?”

“A glass of merlot,” she said. No wine by the bottle here, which was probably just as well. She’d have the one glass with her burger and call it a day. At least that way, there’d probably be less chance of her getting too amorous before the end of the evening.

Oh, who was she kidding? Like she would need to be a little tipsy to convince herself to kiss Bill Garrett again.

As rattled as she might have been that day, she knew she still wanted to take his hands and pull him toward her so their lips could touch and she could experience the thrill of that contact all over again.

With the table where they sat squarely in the way, though, she doubted that was going to happen.

He also ordered a glass of wine, and Harris told them he’d get their drinks while they looked over the menu.

Not that Brianna really needed to. She didn’t eat here as often as she did at some other places, but that didn’t mean she still didn’t know what was on offer.

A barbecue burger this time, probably, just because it had been a while since she’d had one and it sounded good to her. She’d only had salad for lunch, so she figured indulging herself for dinner shouldn’t be too big a deal.

However, Bill picked up his menu and studied it for a moment, then set it aside.

“You know what you want?” she asked.

“I was thinking of the mushroom burger,” he said. “Is it good?”

“Everything here is good,” she told him. “It’s just more a matter of what you’re in the mood for.”

His gaze lingered on her mouth for a moment, and warmth pooled in her stomach. Clearly, his thoughts were running along the same lines that hers had been only a moment earlier.

Harris came back with their wine, though, effectively interrupting that moment of connection.

To her relief, however, he didn’t seem to notice the sexual tension she’d thought must have been just as visible as the clouds of pot smoke that tended to hang in the air outside the Spirit Room whenever one of the locals’ favorite bands was playing.

And then they placed their orders, and Harris headed off to the kitchen to take care of things. As soon as he was gone, Bill lifted his wine glass.

“To burgers, haunted or otherwise,” he said, and she couldn’t help grinning.

“Sounds good.”

They clinked glasses and drank. Even though the Haunted Hamburger only served house wine, it was still pretty decent. The merlot sliding down to her stomach helped relax her a little, and she leaned against the back of her chair.

“Do you sense any of the ghosts?” she asked, only half joking.

Bill glanced around them. People were eating and talking and laughing, and Bree had to admit the restaurant didn’t look very haunted…even though she knew better.

“They’re here,” he said quietly. “But I get the sense that they’re not very active when the restaurant is busy.”

A valid impression, since she’d heard pretty much the same thing from the people she knew who’d worked here over the years.

You could get a sense of a presence, but doors didn’t slam and pans didn’t get knocked to the floor by unseen hands until the place was closed and all the customers had gone home.

And there was also her cousin Dayna’s horror story about getting locked in the meat freezer one night while she was at the restaurant cleaning up after her shift.

Luckily, someone had come back because they’d left their phone in their locker and had heard her beating on the freezer door, so Dayna hadn’t been trapped in there for more than ten minutes at the most.

Still, she’d quit the next day and had never set foot in the place since then, even though that had happened more than five years ago now.

“I suppose they don’t want to feel like they’re putting on a show or something,” she said, then sipped some more of her wine.

“That could be it,” Bill agreed. “Or possibly the vibrations of all these people help to keep them away. I don’t really know that much about ghosts.”

Neither did she. That was Angela’s thing, since she’d been talking to ghosts since she was ten years old, long before she became prima. Probably if asked, she would have said every ghost was different, just as all people were different, so you couldn’t expect them to all act the same.

In this particular case, though, Bree could only be glad that the Haunted Hamburger’s resident ghosts were quiescent at the moment. She had enough on her plate already.

“What about the Gold King?” she asked, and Bill’s head tilted to one side, as though he wasn’t quite sure what she was asking. She smiled, then figured she’d better elaborate. “I mean, if you sensed any ghosts there.”

His expression turned thoughtful. “No, I didn’t. Not that I was trying to, either, but that place didn’t feel haunted, unless you’re talking about haunted by the memories that were made there or the memories of what it used to be.”

“Makes sense,” she said. “I’ve never heard of any real hauntings at the Gold King, unlike at least half the buildings here in Jerome. Maybe the encampment there felt too temporary to any of the people who might have died in that spot, and they didn’t see any need to stick around.”

Bill nodded, but Harris came back with their food then, effectively cutting off any answer he might have made. And after Harris told them he’d check back in a while to see how they were doing, there didn’t seem to be much point in pursuing that particular topic.

No, they were quiet for a few minutes as they bit into their cheeseburgers and stopped every now and then to eat a French fry or drink some wine, and Bree thought she was okay with that.

She was hungrier than she’d expected, and the vague notion she’d had pass through her head of saving half her burger for later evaporated almost right away.

And even when she and Bill spoke again, it was about commonplace things, like her gig at Tantrum wines on Thursday evening and the way she’d been stewing over whether to hold a recital so her students could show off their talents.

She didn’t have that many pupils — only five at the moment — but Callie’s mother and Luke’s father had asked about a recital as well, and she thought maybe it would be a good idea if she could find someplace to hold the event.

Since it wouldn’t be a very big crowd, the living room of her childhood home would probably work…

if she could get her parents to agree to let a group of civilians into the house for an evening or maybe a Sunday afternoon.

Bill seemed interested, and agreed that a house seemed like a more likely place rather than trying to book a real performance hall. And once again, he deftly snagged the check before she could even reach for it, a knowing little smile playing around his mouth as he did so.

Well, the Haunted Hamburger had been his idea, so she supposed she should go ahead and let him pay.

Afterward, she slipped on her jean jacket and they headed outside.

He didn’t seem to need anything other than the T-shirt he was wearing to protect himself from the cool evening air, but she’d known lots of guys like that, men who would only lower themselves to put on outerwear if temperatures dipped into the forties or lower.

“I’ll walk you home,” he said, and his tone was firm enough that Bree guessed there was no point in arguing.

Especially since he’d already been to her place and knew exactly what kind of climb it entailed.

They went a little way past the restaurant so they could get to the steep staircase that led down to Main Street.

Even though she’d lived here all her life and knew there was nothing to fear from those steps…

or the little alley that awaited them at the bottom…

she always felt her heart speed up a bit as she made the descent.

It was just creepy, no matter how you looked at it.

Especially now, with the sun gone down and no one anywhere around them. Some orange-hued light from the sparsely spaced sodium vapor street lamps down on Main Street made its way here, but not enough to truly illuminate anything. No, it was mostly to keep you from tripping over your own feet.

Oddly, the air felt colder the lower they went, which didn’t make a lot of sense.

Her mind playing tricks, she supposed, although she didn’t know why she should feel so hinky when she had Bill there with her.

Any would-be mugger would probably take one glance at the width of his shoulders and the muscles of his biceps as they strained against the sleeves of his T-shirt and decide to look for easier prey.

When they reached the bottom of the steps, Bill stopped abruptly, head up in the air like a dog detecting a strange scent.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

Brianna hadn’t yet lifted her hand from the stair railing, and her fingers curled around it, the metal cold against her skin. “What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

“Just…wrong.”

Before she could respond, the air in the alley at the base of the steps appeared to shimmer, almost like heat waves rising from the pavement on a hot summer day.

Except it wasn’t hot. In fact, the air seemed to be getting colder by the second.

The shadows darkened, becoming blacker than black, almost as if they weren’t shadows at all, but gaping tears in the fabric of reality.

A figure emerged from one of those shadows — as tall as Bill, so she guessed it must be male even though she couldn’t see the person’s face, thanks to the hooded cloak it wore.

Something about it seemed not quite real, though, the edges of the black fabric seeming to bleed into nothingness, as if it wasn’t quite anchored to this plane.