Page 9 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

Alice

It was possible that she was just trying to put that horrific phone call behind her.

Franklin and Marilyn had been highly displeased that she’d ignored not just one but four of their morning phone calls, and they did not accept “early customer” as a reasonable excuse to not pick up.

The only thing that kept the sour little knot in her belly from growing was the fact that her grandparents would have been just as upset if she’d answered the phone in the middle of a transaction, potentially offending a customer.

Of course, she hadn’t told them that the customer was a Bancroft, but that was neither here nor there.

In her rush, she didn’t even pause in front of Shaddow House to admire it, something that would have been impossible just months ago, before she’d been welcomed into its secrets.

It wasn’t the world’s most attractive home, due in part to being a mishmash of architectural styles and details added as the Dentons tried to confound the less agreeable ghosts who resided there with perpetual construction.

In the end, it was a large semi-Victorian house sided in a dreamy cornflower blue with huge windows, turrets, and an honest-to-God stone folly attached to the back of the house that had never been finished—which was the point of calling it a folly, really.

While Caroline favored the gazebo, the folly had always been Alice’s favorite feature of Shaddow House, a sort of half-finished tower that only people who had been in the backyard knew about—like a secret treasure. It was one of many weird quirks of the house meant to confuse the ghosts there.

As she had every time she’d visited these past few months, Alice worried that the doors of Shaddow House might not swing open for her in a gesture of sympathetic magic that she and the coven still hadn’t figured out.

The house didn’t communicate with them directly, but it seemed to know things and had opinions.

Every time she approached, for just a split second, she worried that the doors would stay sealed shut and she would know—finally—that the house had decided she was unworthy.

She would be deemed unfit because of her mistakes, because of how she’d betrayed her sisters, because she—didn’t have to wait for this dilemma to be decided, because Edison was currently hurrying out the door, slinging his sport coat around his shoulders…

and wearing a giant purple top hat. With rabbit ears attached.

“Everything OK, Edison?” she asked, trying not to stare at the big violet accessory. It definitely did not mesh with his usual “West Coast academic” vibe. “Are you late for a very important date?”

“Margaret called in sick,” he said, frowning.

Riley and Caroline approached the door from inside, stretching their arms out to welcome Alice into the house.

Josh appeared behind them, shoving blueberry rugalach into his mouth.

He needed all calories available to fuel what seemed to be another growth spurt.

Edison struggled with his jacket, turning in circles until Riley gently stopped and slid the sleeve onto his arm. He huffed. “Margaret never calls in sick. And now I’ve got to go handle story hour at the last minute.”

“She’s been having some health problems lately. Ned said something about her maybe stepping down as lead volunteer at the library,” Caroline told him.

Alice frowned. “Really? It’s kind of sad that she’s spent all this time at the library trying to get hired on as librarian, but never managed it. Even with her husband sitting on the library board.”

Edison shot Alice an incredulous look, which wasn’t surprising considering that she’d just said it was sad he couldn’t be replaced at his job. She grimaced. “Sorry, Edison.”

Riley quickly changed the subject. “So, Collin Bancroft was cute.”

“Cute, and way out of my league, I think,” Alice replied. “Who was it that said the rich are not like us?”

“Rich people are just people with money,” Riley huffed. “He seemed really nice.”

“Says the rich person,” Caroline noted.

Riley, a lifetime paycheck-to-paycheck girl who was still getting used to the concept of having a trust fund, began to protest, “I’m not—”

“You have a butler,” Alice reminded her, nodding inside to the ghost of a pale, gaunt man looking absolutely dapper in his three-piece “service” suit and high collar.

Riley blew a raspberry sound. “A ghost butler.”

“Miss Alice.” Standing at Josh’s elbow, Plover bowed his head to her. “We’ve missed you. You’re such a calming influence on the living and dead residents of Shaddow House.”

There were times that she considered it very sad indeed that her longest-running supportive father figure was the ghost of a World War I–era Englishman, but Plover loved them all so much.

He had no idea how much she needed absolute approval from an older authority figure.

It probably wasn’t healthy, but it was what she had.

Plover was everything she could have asked for in a champion.

“Still counts,” Alice insisted.

“Collin Bancroft is basically a unicorn,” Caroline told them. “A funny, cute, wealthy guy who’s actually nice… Oh, shoot. No offense, Edison. Sometimes I forget you also have money.”

“No offense taken,” Edison said. “This is what happens when I neglect to wear my monocle. Wait, Collin Bancroft? As in the New York Bancrofts? Yikes.”

“Why ‘yikes’?” Riley asked. “Wait, do all rich people know each other? Is there like a secret social media platform the ‘normies’ don’t know about?”

Edison waggled his hand back and forth. “My family is comfortable and nouveau riche by comparison. The Bancrofts are well beyond that. They own a little bit of everything and have done for generations. Real estate, tech, mineral rights. I think they bought part of Antarctica once, just to prove they could. If Collin is who I think he is, my grandfather was intimidated by his grandfather, and my grandfather was rarely intimidated.”

“Your brow is pretty heavily furrowed there, hon,” Riley noted.

Edison shook his head. “It’s just that Collin and I are around the same age. When I was in school, my parents warned me not to hang out with him if we ever crossed paths.”

“Why?” Alice asked.

Edison frowned. “I only saw him a few times growing up, and he seemed fine. Good guy. But I guess he went through a wild period when he hit college. The rumor was that it got so bad, his guardians threatened to disown him—which would have taken considerable legal maneuvering.”

“Did anything happen while he was in college?” Alice asked.

“No…oh… oh ,” Edison gasped, looking stricken. “His parents died when he was in high school. I never made that connection. I know this sounds bad, but I barely knew the guy. I was getting these updates from my parents at intervals.”

“Also, your parents aren’t great at making connections via human emotion,” Riley said, patting his arm.

“I would say you’re wrong, but they do occasionally ask how my girlfriend, ‘Miley,’ is doing,” he conceded. He kissed Riley soundly. “I’ll text you, let you know when I’ll be home.”

“How very domestic,” Caroline teased her as Edison practically ran down the square, purple hat catching the wind.

“I’m not going to take any shit from someone who made smiley-face pancakes for her kids this morning,” Riley replied.

“It’s not like I did it in heels and pearls!” Caroline shot back. “Besides, they’re Josh’s favorite!”

“She makes them with love,” Josh said. “And shit tons of sugar.”

“Language,” Caroline retorted, then clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, good grief, I sounded just like my mother just then. It just slipped out. What are you kids doing to me?”

When Riley smirked and opened her mouth to reply, Caroline pointed a finger in her face. “If you answer, I’ll show you how I cleared that lacrosse team out of the Rose last Memorial Day weekend.”

Riley cackled. Caroline groaned. “Thank goodness Mina is working lunch shift at the bar right now, or she’d have a field day.”

“Miss Alice, would you care to join us inside?” Plover asked. “There are crowds milling about on the sidewalk. The less they can see into the environs, the better.”

Alice glanced at the large Superior Antiques shopping bag in her hands.

In general, it wasn’t a great idea to introduce antiques into Shaddow House without vetting them.

Because of the nature of the house and the power of the Welling locks, bringing a haunted object within the walls could result in the ghost attached to that object getting trapped inside with the coven.

And given the creepy ceiling ghost, that could be very unpleasant.

“Yeah, maybe we could adjourn to the backyard?” Alice suggested, waggling the bag.

“Aw, man, when you do that, we miss out on so much!” exclaimed Natalie, a smartly dressed brunette office worker who haunted the dry-erase board in the kitchen. Like Plover, she couldn’t travel beyond the walls of Shaddow House.

“We’ll leave the door open,” Josh promised her as he followed the coven into the backyard.

It was sort of a miracle, Natalie not only appearing but communicating directly with them instead of using the board, which had been her preferred method for years.

Josh had that sort of effect on the ghosts. He had a gift for listening.

The bag seemed heavier as Alice carried it through the house, and she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or if this hideous object was responding to the house.

The locks were ritual items that the Dentons’ magical rivals, the Wellings, had hidden in Shaddow House when it was just a stone footprint.