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Chapter One

Buck

“Mr. Harry’s going to kill you,” Stevie hissed.

I looked up at him from where I knelt in the closet. “No, he won’t. This is perfect.”

“You’re going to freak the guests out. How many times do they have to tell you to keep the hauntings to footsteps in the hall, some banging on the walls, and maybe a spooky noise or two?”

Stevie and I had become good buds since I’d become Mr. Harry’s official trainee, and he’d stayed on to live with his little brother, who was also an employee of the B&B. Not that I actually thought of myself or Harry as real staff, but he sure did.

“Relax. This is going to be great. You’ll see.”

The B&B had slowed down a lot during the winter, but with the introduction of the spring, we were booked back up. Which meant party time for me. With only one or two rooms occupied at a time during the slow season, the hauntings had really gotten boring. Plus, Harry hadn’t had as much to do, so he’d monitored my every move.

Trust me when I say, I loved being in that man’s space. I even enjoyed him bossing me around. Anytime Harry was willing to exist next to me, I was there for it. We’d developed a nice rhythm in the kitchen with him cooking meals while I did all the baking. Scotty had been interested in the baking side of things, so I’d spent the winter walking him step by step through breakfast yumminess, and we’d filled the alive ones up on muffins and cinnamon rolls and other delights.

As much as I loved that, Harry was an anal taskmaster when it came to the cleanliness of the old house. You’d think we were getting ready to host royalty with the militant execution of his cleaning schedule. It was fine when we worked on a project together, but I’d been relegated to bathroom duty by myself, and that was a complete drag. I swear I was being punished in the afterlife for not being the best about keeping my own bathroom clean during life.

Outside of Harry though, this is why I’d really stayed at the manor. Haunting those with a heartbeat made me giddy. Since I never had a spooky experience while I had a pulse, I tried thinking up all the creepy things that would’ve given me a rush. Then I cut the ideas in half and then halved them again so I wouldn’t get on Harry’s bad side. This idea was a winner.

Stevie looked down at me, shaking his head like he was disappointed in me. “I’m telling you. Mr. Harry isn’t going to be happy.”

Jumping up, I surveyed my handiwork. A couple had checked in for their second honeymoon. At breakfast, they’d told Jetty and Chance how they were going hiking this morning, then coming back to change clothes and go to the boardwalk this afternoon when it was warmer. They’d probably be back at any minute, so I’d finished just in time.

The lady had been super cute, hanging up all their clothes as outfits and lining their shoes on the bottom of the closet as soon as they’d arrived yesterday afternoon. Harry had been thrilled. There was nothing that he liked more than a tidy guest who treated the manor with respect. His joy at her order had given me the best idea.

Their clothes and shoes were now grouped together—his and hers. If I left her skirt on a hanger, then I replaced the little top with one of his button-down shirts. His dress pants now hung with her crop top. Her right high heel now paired beautifully with his left flip-flop. They were here for the week, so they’d given me plenty of items to work with. They’d brought enough clothes for two weeks, but that was typical in spring. The weather could be such a toss-up.

Flirty chatter and laughter came through the door from down the hall, and Stevie groaned. “No time to fix it now. Mr. Harry’s going to—”

As the room to the suite opened, Stevie poofed away. Oh well, his loss. He’d miss all the fun. The woman headed to the bathroom, and the man dropped down on the edge of the bed with a groan. Sitting down on the floor, I leaned against the wall and waited for the show.

Technically, Harry had forbidden me from hanging out in the customers’ rooms since they deserved their privacy for sexy times. I had no problem with that. We’d pop in to haunt them once the rooms were dark and quiet. But this was different. It was the middle of the day, and they had a plan that didn’t include an afternoon delight. Hopefully. Shoot. If they had sexy time, I’d have to leave, and I might miss the moment they realized their stuff had been re-arranged. That would suck.

In the blink of an eye, Harry stood in front of me with his arms folded over his chest and a rather impressive scowl on his face. “What are you doing?” he hissed quietly, like the husband and wife might hear us. Let’s be clear, they couldn’t. Only the people close to Chance, since he owned the property, could feed off his gift and see spirits.

“Waiting.” I pointed vaguely toward the closet that the wife was just about to—

“Brian! What the hell did you do?”

Ha! The husband, Brian apparently, had one hiking boot half off and blinked up at his wife. “Huh?”

She gestured at the closet. “Did you do this earlier? You said you had to go to the bathroom. Did you come up and destroy all my hard work?”

Harry rounded on me. “What did you do?”

“I may have re-arranged their stuff a little.” I snickered.

“Why?” he asked, throwing his arms up in exasperation.

Okay, I seriously adored Harry, but was he kidding? “To spook them.”

He stared at me, then shook his head. Well, what was his problem? He told me not to scare the crap out of people, just creep them out a little, and this wasn’t that bad.

Harry

This…this right here was one of the reasons it was so hard to take him seriously. “Why on Earth would this scare them?” I gestured behind me where Trisha, the wife, was full-on chewing her husband out. “She’s angry, Buck.”

He rolled his eyes, one of my least favorite of his habits. “Right, but eventually, he’ll convince her he didn’t do it. Like really, when would he have had time? Then they’ll go downstairs and find out that no one here did it, and voila! Ghosts!”

Good grief. I hated the slow season. I really did. It got so dull around here without lots of people swarming the property. Plus, when there weren’t a lot of people, Chance and Jetty usually cooked for themselves and Scotty. It was only when Chance’s parents and their best friends joined them that they let me step in and take over. The alive ones spent so much time watching TV in the winter months, and I didn’t want to intrude too much on Scotty and Stevie so that left me with Buck.

We cleaned together, and thankfully, he spent parts of each day out at the pond catching up with old friends—or making new ones with the recently deceased—and evenings doing puzzles with me or playing cards, but it got boring. It was so much better when the manor was bustling, and there was laundry and cleaning and cooking to do.

Except for this. Ever since we told Buck that he wasn’t allowed to give people heart attacks by floating around with a white sheet on and other obviously unexplainable things, he’s made it his mission to find some creative way to be spookier without provoking outright terror. And so, this idiocy is what we ended up with.

“Buck, do you really think once she believes her husband, she’s going to take Scotty’s and Chance’s word for it that they didn’t come up and mess around in their room? We’ll be lucky if they stay and don’t leave a bad review.”

“No, you’re wrong.” He rubbed his hands together. “Once they realize…” He trailed off, then his juicy bottom lip pouted out. Wait. Juicy? I meant plump. Uh, lush. Wait. No, not that either. Large. His big bottom lip. Not that I’d ever noticed his mouth in any way.

“You just figured it out, didn’t you? Unless they’d been staying here completely alone, without another human with a heartbeat to be found, they’ll never believe someone didn’t just break into their room.”

The argument behind my back escalated as Trisha stomped over and ick, right into my body. Not that she’d known that she’d done that, but still…annoying.

“I can’t believe you, Brian. You have no respect for how hard I work to take make our lives nice,” Trisha complained.

He threw his hands up in the air. “You? I take every bit of overtime they’ll give me and work ten-hour days, six days a week, so that you can have everything you want. Can we not have one peaceful day, Trisha?”

A noise of pure indignant outrage poured out of her throat, and Buck mumbled, “Uh-oh.”

I swear, I had to fix everything around here. Zipping across the room, I ran my hands through the curtains, making them billow. They didn’t notice, and the heated argument continued, so I pushed the alarm clock on the bedside table onto the floor. “You created this mess, Buck. Help me.”

A huge dopey grin split his face, and he moved to the closet, running his hands along the top of the hangers, causing them to jangle together and clothes to slide off onto the floor. I went back to the curtains for another sweep, and finally, we had their attention. Between one breath and the next, their raging ceased as they moved and clung to each other in the center of the room.

Satisfied, I brushed my hands together. “That’s one potential disaster avoided. They might still leave, but at least their review will be that it was too scary to stay.”

Buck nodded happily. “Right? Which is still good for business.”

Huffing, I tugged down my suit vest. “That doesn’t make it alright, Buck. What have I told you about taking the hauntings into your own hands? You’re still thinking too much like a heartbeater, and you go too far.”

He hung his head. “I guess you’re right.”

“I am. Now come on. We don’t let you stay around here to make trouble or shuck your duties. I overheard Mr. Jetty saying he was craving key lime pie. That’s your department, so I need you in the kitchen.” Where I can keep an eye on you, I added in my head.

He nodded happily, because of course he did. I swear the man was never upset for more than ten seconds. How aggravating. I’d get on my own nerves if I was like that. “What about them?” he asked.

I glanced at the couple still huddled together in the middle of the room and shrugged. “They didn’t run out of the room screaming or call the front desk. Let them figure it out. Let’s go.” Then I blinked out, picturing my destination in the kitchen.

Buck

After Harry left, I looked fondly at Brian and Trisha. She was trembling uncontrollably while he rubbed her back and soothed her. I could see that he was literally shaking in his own boot—since he’d managed to get one off—but he was ignoring his own fear to comfort his wife. How sweet.

This was what it was all about. Harry thought I wanted to torment the guests for my own personal thrill, but that wasn’t it at all. They booked into a haunted hotel for a reason, and I wanted to give them something to remember.

I knew Harry would be back in a minute if I didn’t shake a leg and get down there, but I wanted to leave the happy couple with one more little burst of excitement to get their anniversary going. Running around the room fast enough to create wind, I folded back the top of the bedsheets before I popped out of the room. I reappeared in the kitchen a second later.

“What took you so long?” Harry asked. “And why are you laughing?”

Upstairs, Trisha screamed.

“Sorry, Mr. Harry. Can’t talk now. I got pie to make.”

But he was already gone, off to check on the happy couple. Stevie appeared, jumping up on the counter and shaking his head. “You couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

Well, no. No, I couldn’t. I had hours and hours of lectures ahead from Harry, and I wasn’t one bit mad at it. After all, he was my favorite grump.