Page 31 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

Kissing him, she hooked her legs around Collin’s hips, enjoying her taste on his lips as he fumbled with a square foil packet he’d snagged from his wallet.

After protecting them both, his hard length notched against her in the best way.

He wasn’t even inside her and he was nudging against just the right spots.

She scratched his back, making his hips buck.

He licked the hollow of her throat, spread her knees, and drove home.

She shrieked with relief and clapped her hand over her mouth.

She’d always had to be so quiet with Clark.

Her bedroom at the shop butted right against another apartment over the row of Main Street businesses. And her neighbor was a busybody.

“They soundproofed in the nineties,” he muttered against her lips. “Be as loud as you want.”

She threw her head back and cried, “Yes!”

***

Alice awoke to clanging and cursing on the stairs. She inhaled sharply, sitting up. The other side of her bed was empty, but Collin had been there just a few minutes ago. Wait, how long had she been out?

Collin nudged the bedroom door open. He’d gone downstairs to fetch their dinner trays, and he was obviously not used to carrying heavy objects in the dark.

“It might be a little cold,” he said.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m starving,” she told him, tucking the sheet over her bare chest. With a dramatic flourish, Collin set the tray across her lap. He whisked the silver dome off her tray and handed her a little ramekin filled with rainbow sprinkles.

“You didn’t.” She burst out laughing.

“No, it’s just a club, extra bacon, and chips,” he said. “I can ask the kitchen for something hot, if you need something more substantial.”

She pulled him closer by the waistband of his pants and kissed him. “It’s perfect.”

He shimmied out of his clothes, tossing them aside and sliding under the sheets.

He situated his own tray over his legs and pulled blankets around them.

They ate in companionable silence. When they were done, she let him curl around her, marveling at the sheer size of him.

She felt so small in comparison to the length of his body, but…

somehow, still safe. That felt like a rare and lovely thing.

“I know this probably wasn’t a good idea, considering that you’re technically my employee and I plan on offering you future employment,” he told her, tucking his chin over her shoulder. “But I’m not sorry.”

She slipped her hands over his. “Me either. What was the future employment?”

“Coordinating historical and educational events for the hotel,” he murmured.

“It would be an employment alternative, but it’s not just to get you out from under your grandparents’ thumb.

That’s just a side benefit. You’re also the most qualified person on the island.

But I’m going to have Julie talk to you about the details, to at least reduce the overall power-dynamic problem a little bit. ”

“That seems more appropriate,” she agreed.

“You were pretty upset earlier,” he noted. “And if I’m going to help you fix whatever it is, I’m going to need some details.”

Alice took a deep breath. “I’ve betrayed my friends. And I think I’m going to lose them.”

It all came spilling out. Clark, the locks, Kyle, her knocking Clark to near unconsciousness before running to Collin.

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,” he assured her. “You’re a good person, Alice.”

She turned to him and he ran his hand down her side. “You don’t know that.”

“Have you intentionally done anything to hurt Riley or Caroline?”

She shook her head. “No, never.”

“Even when Clark asked you to?” he asked.

“ Especially when Clark asked me to. But I never told them, not even when we broke into his office.”

“So, see—” He paused. “You did what?”

“It was mostly to prove a point,” she told him. “And the point was Riley could psychically fling a knife at his crotch.”

“She can do that?” he asked, grimacing. “Can you do that?”

“Not so far,” she admitted. “But I think I can fling people, which might be better?”

He waggled his hand back and forth. “So, you just didn’t tell them of your suspicions, or when your suspicions were confirmed.”

“I told him things about Riley, about Caroline,” she said, rolling her head back against his shoulder.

“Things about the house. Stuff I thought was harmless. I wasn’t trying to help him.

It was before I knew he was working against us, and I felt bad for him.

He’d been wanting to go into the house for so long and I’d been inside.

He probably used what I told him to help Kyle break in.

Things that he probably used against Riley and Caroline while he was working for the Wellings. ”

“Before you knew that he was working for the Wellings,” he noted.

“But I haven’t told them about our…history,” she said.

“Has Riley or Caroline told you about all of their previous partners?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Are you going to tell them about this?” he asked. “About us?”

“I think they would be even madder about me not telling them about this than they would be about me not telling them about Clark,” she sighed. “And if he tells them about it, I’m going to lose the only people who have ever loved me for me.”

He cupped her jaw in his hand. “Love isn’t conditional, not the way Caroline and Riley love you.”

“That is not what I’ve experienced,” she told him. “When you’re raised to see every mistake as something that can be weighed, measured, cataloged, and then brought up later to wreck your entire relationship… It’s hard not to panic when you make them.”

“Well, I know a little something about unhealthy relationships,” he said. “I’ll go with you if you want to go tell them. They’re all over at Shaddow House right now.”

“How do you know that?” Alice asked.

“Because I got a text while you were asleep, asking if I could bring you over for a coven meeting. ‘No excuses accepted.’”

“You’re on the group chat?” Alice asked.

“I am now.” He held up his phone. “It’s mostly nonsensical emoji combinations from Mina, and Josh telling me his theories about, quote, ‘what the ceiling ghost is all pissed off about,’ which I’m going to need you to explain later. And also a bunch of memes involving witch puns.”

“It gets better,” she promised. “Josh is just sort of…testing your boundaries. He does that.”

She pointed a casual hand at the door. “Are we going to talk about the guy currently standing in the hallway?” she asked.

Collin glanced up and jerked back, ramming his head against the wooden slats of the bed frame. “Ow.”

The ghost was barely visible in the dim light.

He was a young man in a sort of a Henley work shirt and flat cap.

He was tall, with coltishly long arms and legs that he probably would have grown into eventually.

Dark shadows under light eyes gave him a melancholy, tired air.

He was staring down at them with a wistfulness and seething anger that made Alice’s chest hurt.

This was a man who had been denied something he wanted, and he’d never gotten over it.

It was a feeling she recognized. Hell, it was a face she recognized—from the photo at the Historical Society. This was Samuel Proctor.

Alice supposed she should be grateful that Samuel was just waving at her, motioning for her to follow, instead of trying to inhabit her brain like Emily had done to Caroline when she’d wanted to communicate a message.

“Shhh,” Alice whispered. “Don’t startle him.”

“Don’t startle him ?” Collin said, throwing his hands toward the door. “Pants. I need my pants.”

Samuel’s ghost motioned with a hand that was bloodied at the fingertips. Alice whipped off the covers and grabbed the nearest T-shirt.

“The ghost waves to you and you’re just going to follow?” Collin said, scrambling to find something that would fit him. “Do you also click on ‘You may have already won an iPad’ links? OK, seriously, my pants?”

She shushed him, following the ghost out of the room and down the stairs. “Hello, do you need help?”

Samuel didn’t respond, so she followed. Collin stumbled after her, trying to fit into a pair of purple seersucker pajama pants she’d thrown in the laundry hamper. Between that and her rain jacket, he was at least partially covered when they left the guesthouse and slipped down the service hallway.

“You realize that while there are no guests, the construction crews are still here, right? They could be awake and see their boss dressed like this,” Collin said, motioning to his improvised ensemble. Because of the difference of leg length, her pants were basically capris on him.

“So go back and change,” she told him as the ghost silently glided along the hallway.

“I’m not leaving you alone in the dark with a ghost, no matter what I’m wearing,” Collin insisted. “Even if it does destroy what little credibility I have with the construction dudes.”

“You’re very brave,” Alice said.

“I don’t need your pity,” he grumbled, making her snicker.

“Do you need our help?” she called again to the ghost, who ignored her.

Samuel turned and walked through the door to the storage area behind the kitchen. Collin frowned as they approached the locked storage door. He showed her a large ring full of keys in various sizes.

“You located a huge key ring, but not your pants?” Alice asked.

“The keys were out on a table. My pants were harder to locate.” He unlocked the door and they entered the darkened room.

It looked like…a storage room, with neatly organized shelves stacked with canned goods and staples.

Alice made a note to come here if there was ever a severe ice storm or a zombie apocalypse.

The ghost seemed to be hovering near the rear wall of the room.

“This would be a lot easier if you would just talk to us,” she told the ghost. He gave her one last sad look and melted into the wall.

“Is that normal?” Collin asked.

“Usually, they’re a little more talkative,” she replied. “What’s behind the wall?”

“No idea,” he said. “I think the storage area was added when I was a kid. Why did this ghost sort of pointedly ignore us while still acknowledging our existence? The other one acted like she couldn’t see me at all.”

Wait. Collin was seeing other ghosts at the hotel now? She looked up at him. “Stop. Explain.”

“I’ve been seeing Victoria, running down a hallway.” He looked around. “Uh, this hallway, now that I think about it. I had a minor sleepwalking episode the other night where I sort of dreamed I was her. And I was being chased.”

Her jaw dropped. “You what?”

As if on cue, the shadow-form woman ran out of the guesthouse area as if she was being chased.

A dark figure emerged from the orange wall behind her, hands outstretched.

The woman’s features were less discernible than those of the silver woman they’d met at Shaddow House—like she’d been diluted.

And the menacing darkness behind her was hardly discernable at all.

But when the ghost stopped in front of Alice, her head turning and her eyes darting around as if she was looking for a way out of a trap, there was a desperation that Alice understood in a way that broke her heart.

“Victoria?” Collin called. But the woman ignored him and continued to run, looking behind her as she bolted for the stairs. Her panicked pants echoed in the long, open space. The shadow chased her and grabbed her hair, throwing her to the floor. Then the figures disappeared like so much mist.

“Like that,” Collin said, frowning. “It wasn’t like the other ghosts. It’s detached. Victoria shouldn’t be here if her ghost is ‘stored’ at Shaddow House, right? It shouldn’t be possible for ghosts to be two places at once, right?”

“You’re questioning the physics of ghosts ?” Alice asked.

He pursed his lips. “Good point.”

Just then, the woman emerged from the wall again, running down the hall, looking behind her shoulder, as she had just a few minutes before.

“You can’t even hear us, can you?” Alice asked loudly. Victoria didn’t respond, running away from them without a word.

“It’s like she’s on a loop,” Collin said, wincing when the larger figure snagged Victoria’s hair and threw her to the floor. “Maybe she was triggered somehow by the other ghost showing up?”

“I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here,” she told him. “We should probably go to that coven meeting after all. It will give me a chance to explain myself to everybody. And try to figure out what the hell is going on here.”

He slid his fingers through hers. “I’ll be right there with you. We’ll make them understand.”

She stood up on her tippy-toes and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Collin replied.

She pointed at his exposed calves. “But first, you should put on some pants that don’t belong to me.”

Collin glanced down. “Yep.”