Page 1 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

Alice

Starfall Point, Michigan

Alice Seastairs grew up in a household where having her hands slapped away from rare antiques was an expected occurrence, but no one expected to have their hands slapped by a ghost. No one.

Such was life as Starfall Point’s least relevant witch-slash-ghost-wrangler.

Her morning had started off so normally.

Well, normal for Alice. She’d barely slipped on her sensible gray blazer when a maple cabinet just sort of materialized at Superior Antiques’ front door.

Her grandparents hadn’t seen fit to tell her that they’d secured several pieces from the estate of Matilda Thigpen.

They didn’t bother to tell her the pieces were scheduled for delivery before the island’s late-summer tourist crowds besieged the cobblestone streets.

Mitt Sherzinger and his veritable train of pedal-wagon drivers were delivering it before her grandparents’ usual morning call from Boca Raton.

Sherman Thigpen had the good grace to look embarrassed, being caught peering through her front-door glass as she descended from her apartment above the shop. “Sorry, I thought the lawyer would have called you, the one who’s handling my grandmother’s estate?”

Alice sipped her blessedly hot, life-giving coffee while Sherman explained that her grandparents had liked several of Matilda’s pieces so much that they’d purchased them from her estate for a prepaid price.

Matilda was able to keep her beloved antiques until she passed, while using her newly acquired pocket money for several trips to Vegas and a week in Antigua.

It seemed like a strangely patient, altruistic move from Franklin and Marilyn Proctor—who tended to be, well, neither.

“Mitt and his crew were willing to get up extra early to help me move this stuff…but I am paying them by the hour,” Sherman said, nodding to the yawning college kids.

Mitt, whose muscular bicycle-pushing thighs were legendary on a tiny island that restricted the use of motor vehicles, grinned and waved. “Morning, Alice!”

Alice lifted her hand awkwardly, turning to Sherman. “Was Clark Graves your grandma’s lawyer?”

Sherman smiled. “Yeah, how did you know?”

Alice tried so hard not to let her annoyance show, because she was unwilling to explain why exactly Clark Graves would want to complicate her morning by sending a client by the shop before she’d had an appropriate amount of caffeine.

She preferred to tell herself that it was something to do with the letter opener her coven-mate Riley Denton-Everett had telekinetically flung at Clark’s… legal briefs.

“Small town. Not many options.” Alice sighed. Despite the fact that they hadn’t bothered to warn her about this “shipment,” she was sure her grandparents would expect to see each of these pieces displayed to their best advantage when they arrived. Whenever that would be.

It took an hour and considerable sweat equity from all involved to get the dozen or so pieces situated in era-appropriate clusters with the current stock.

Alice’s dove-gray suit—which looked pretty much like every other article of clothing in her wardrobe—was a dusty shambles by the time they were done, but she was happy with the overall effect of blending Matilda’s things into the showroom.

The trick was to make the room look like little conversational clusters of furnishings, so customers didn’t feel like they were crashing through their grandma’s garage sale.

Swiping at her wrinkled blazer, Alice supposed she was lucky Clark didn’t come along to oversee the delivery and watch her squirm in discomfort. Frankly, she was surprised he had passed up the opportunity.

She stepped in front of the most formidable piece in Matilda’s collection.

The tall maple armoire was basically elegant, freestanding towel storage.

Alice doused a soft cleaning cloth in her own custom polish blend, a beeswax base that left wood surfaces bright and smelling of lemon.

Her grandparents preferred an older brand that left the entire showroom reeking of synthetic flowers, but she was allowed some secrets.

Rubbing down the cabinet’s gleaming front panels with the cloth, Alice wondered what she was going to do about the Clark situation.

She’d betrayed her sisters, her coven, in so many ways, big and small.

She’d lied, by omission and outright. She could have told them so many times about so many things, and she’d chosen not to.

And now she was in so deep, she wasn’t sure they’d ever forgive her, even if she confessed everything.

Grace was a gift she wasn’t familiar with, on several levels.

She dragged a hand through her thick coppery hair, gone slightly wavy thanks to her early-morning exertions.

Nope, she definitely hadn’t drunk enough coffee to think about Clark.

Alice tugged at the deep storage drawers, but they appeared to be wedged shut, which wasn’t entirely uncommon with pieces this old.

Wood swelled over time, with temperature and humidity.

Or sometimes, extremely old internal metal bits just decided they didn’t want to do their jobs anymore.

Over the years, Alice had quietly become an expert in how to coax those old bits out of their retirement.

Besides, she had to search the cabinet thoroughly before she officially put it up for sale.

It wouldn’t do to sell a piece that could contain Matilda’s belongings—old quilts, financial records, vintage erotica.

She’d seen enough of that to want to avoid the screaming phone calls from upset clients at either end of the transaction.

She pulled carefully at the drawer, listening for the telltale squeak of distressed hardware.

No sound came forth, because the drawer refused to budge.

“Come on,” she whispered, wrenching the drawer pulls just a little harder, nudging the drawer back and forth. She sighed in satisfaction when she managed to open the drawer just an inch.

“Get your grubby hands off my Bessie!” a voice shouted directly into her ear just as cold, insubstantial hands slapped her own. She jumped, as much from the noise as from the unsettling pins-and-needles sensation of a ghost touching her.

Alice tumbled back, knocking into a side table as she sprawled on the imitation Aubusson carpet.

Hissing, she rubbed her elbow where it had smacked into a lower shelf.

The ghost, standing over her in all his silvery-gray transparent glory, was dressed in a workingman’s version of Charles Mulworth’s clothes: loose lawn shirt, homespun breeches, leather work apron.

Though Shaddow House’s resident Regency-era ghost gentleman would never wear something so coarse and vulgar as sportswear, she supposed.

Stop. Breathe. Think , she commanded herself.

Considering that she worked in a store full of other people’s cherished furnishings, it was shocking she didn’t see more “attachment objects”—items that held so much significance in a person’s life, or sometimes in their death, that the person’s ghost stayed connected to them rather than move on to the afterlife.

Still, she’d never encountered a ghost without her coven before; at least, not a hostile one.

How would Riley approach this?

Alice pasted on her best customer-service smile. “Hello. How can I help you?”

“You can tell me what you think you’re doing, yanking at me drawers like that!” the ghost yelled.

Caroline Wilton would have laughed at such an obvious and unintended double entendre.

Also, Caroline would have done it silently, but Alice lacked the ability to effectively snicker under her breath.

This spirit had an East London accent as rough and hardened as his hands.

He would not appreciate being condescended to.

Alice wiped the shopkeeper’s smile from her face and held her hands up as if to shield herself. “I’m sorry. I meant no offense.”

“You can see me?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

“It’s been ages since anyone has been able to truly see me.

Normally, I’m just a shadow or a cold draft.

When I want to make contact, I give people a good smack and they think it’s static or some such thing.

Makes ’em uncomfortable enough to leave my Bessie alone. ”

Alice was weirdly charmed at the tumble of words coming out of his thin lips. She replied, “Yes, sir, I can see you.”

The ghost scoffed. “‘Sir’ is for fancy lords and snobs. My name is Arthur. I must be rusty at this ghosting bit. Matilda hasn’t paid attention to me in years.”

Alice conceded, “I’m a witch, with magical skills that allow me to communicate with you.

In most cases, ghosts have to choose for people to see them, but my magic—well, my coven’s magic—lets us work around those rules.

Most of the time, at least. Your lovely piece has been purchased by this antique shop, and I have to open the drawer so I can make sure the previous owner didn’t leave anything inside,” she explained, careful to keep her tone polite as she pushed to her feet.

The carpet was disheveled by her fall, revealing the much-preferred wooden floors underneath.

“The previous owner,” Arthur scoffed, imitating Alice’s formal tone. “Awful woman. Spent her entire life harping at her husband about their equally stupid children. Never had enough money to suit her. Of course, holding on to money wasn’t a skill any of the Thigpens had a knack for.”