Page 19 of Seer

I clapped my palm to my forehead. Fuck my life.

After messaging Ellis and Shane to be on the lookout for Cal’s harasser, I texted Lloyd to call me when he’d finished his lunch with Silvia. Since he was already in town, Mom had asked him to track Cal down and see what his Wonder senses could tell him regarding Cal’s magic. But Taylor had already done that, and seeing another Wonder might freak Cal out even more.

While I was stressing over the reactions of a man I’d never met, Craig walked into the office.

“Come on,” he said. “All of today’s arrivals are here, and Kat and Melanie have everything under control.”

“Where are we going?”

He flashed me a grin. “To look at a house for you.”

I groaned. “Craig....”

He tugged on my arm. “It’s just the one, and it’s right down the street from Foster’s and my place. You owe it to me to look at it. And when we’re done, we can have drinks at my house while we wait for Lloyd to leave Silvia’s.”

I shuddered. “I donotwant to know how long he stays over there, thank you very much.”

But I let Craig pull me to my feet and drag me out of the office.

The house... needed a lot of work. Like, alot. It had been foreclosed on and sitting empty for a couple of years. From the outside I could see the roof was missing some shingles, the ugly green paint was faded, and a couple of the shutters had fallen off. Just looking at it made me itch to start repairs.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for a fixer-upper,” I said as we walked up the cracked and stained driveway. We’d parked at Craig’s, which meant we’d had to walk past Lloyd’s car sitting in front of Silvia’s house.Don’t think about it.

“Give it a chance,” he chided. “We’re here so we might as well look.”

I frowned doubtfully at the weed-filled lawn. I didn’t have OCD, but I did have significant issues with needing my personal spaces to be peaceful, which to me meant neat and tidy. I wouldn’t be able to move in somewhere like this until it had been practically torn down and rebuilt.

A bright red BMW sedan pulled up to the curb.

“This’ll be the realtor.”

She was tall and blonde, and she eyeballed us like a greyhound getting ready to chase a rabbit.

“Which one of you is Greg?”

“Fuck you, Craig,” I muttered under my breath. “Uh, that’s me.”

“Great! I’m Barbara. Let’s look at this house!”

The inside was slightly more promising than the outside, even if the mismatched colors and caked-on dust made all the muscles in my neck go tense. But as long as I squinted past the dreadful flowered wallpaper in the kitchen and the orange-brown carpet in the living room, I could tell it would be livable. The rooms were good-sized, and big windows overlooked the fenced—and even more weed-filled—backyard.

A sudden longing hit me. I’d put off having pets of my own, even cats. I’d told myself I’d have pets when I moved into a house. It was easy to imagine a dog running through thisbackyard, once the weeds had been removed and new grass put down, of course.

The main bedroom was on the ground floor, and upstairs there were two average-sized guest bedrooms. All three of those could be easily fixed up with some paint and new flooring. The main bedroom’s bath and the guest bathroom on the second floor would need remodeling.

The rest of the upper floor, covering half the house, was the only thing that had been updated in the last few decades. It was one huge open room with beautiful hardwood floors. The interior wall sported three doors, which I assumed were closets. The outer walls were lined with windows.

“What was this, a ballroom or something?”

Barbara shrugged. “The listing says it’s a game room, but you could do whatever you wanted with it.”

“Oooh,” Craig said, slowly spinning around to take in the room. “If you added a wet bar in the corner, this would be a fantastic space to host game nights in.”

I scoffed. “We could have game nights for thirty people in here.”

Craig nodded. “Half the space could have tables for board games, and you’d still have room for a seating area and a big TV for gaming consoles.”

I glanced at Barbara. “This is a lot of house for one person. And it needs a ton of work.”