Page 11

Summer

“ L et me find you some clothes. Then we can talk about getting you some help.”

His shoulders drop in relief, and he activates the deadly dimples again, smiling broadly as his eyes sweep over me, warm and unhurried. “Not sure your clothing will fit me.”

“Don’t worry. My housemate’s brother stays here when he has blow-up arguments with his girlfriend and needs a peaceful night’s sleep. You look close enough in size. Although, his shirts might be a bit tight around your chest. Wait there for a few minutes.”

I race up the stairs, and footsteps thud behind me. “Hey, having a naked guy on my tail is a little… uncomfortable to say the least. Go wait in the kitchen.”

The footsteps stop, a wooden stair creaking in complaint as it bears the full load of his weight. I continue along the hall to the left, then duck into Kurt’s bedroom. Light illuminates dust motes as I fling open the dark blue curtains .

“There you are,” a deep voice says, causing me to fling around expecting to see another pesky ghost. Nope, just Wyn the self-proclaimed wolf shifter, leaning on the door frame and looking hotter than a naked bat boy on steroids.

“I thought I told you to stay put twice ,” I scold.

“Stay put ? What does that mean?”

I blink. Is he serious? Who hasn’t heard that line before? Wolf shifters, I suppose. Not that I fully believe his muddled ravings. Or at least I hope I don’t.

“Stay put means don’t move. You’re not from around here, are you? Where’s home?”

His gaze slides over the birds and blooming florals on the peeling damask wallpaper like he’s stalling for time. “I’m from a land of green and gold.”

I frown. “ Green and gold ? Australia? Your accent’s almost American, but there’s something... off. You from Ireland maybe?”

“Um… Not Australia or Ireland. Somewhere in between the two.”

Hm, feels like he’s lying. Or something. “So, like… the Indian Ocean?” I say, hoping my limited geography knowledge lands the joke.

Dark brows knit together, his expression suggesting he thinks I’m insane. Fair enough. I think I might be more than a little crazy, too. But I’m still not the one loitering in a stranger’s doorway, naked, with all my muscles on display.

“Do you and your friend live alone in this castle… house ?” he asks, stumbling over his words and walking into the room with no sign of shame in his slow nude swagger .

To avoid another eyeful of his show-stopping assets , I dig out a pair of black jeans from the closet, then throw them on the bed. “That’s right. Just me and Zylah live here. And as I mentioned earlier, sometimes Kurt.”

God, this sounds like the start of every awful horror movie. Why am I telling him these things?

“Bit big for you, isn’t it? And also old and eerie.”

“Nothing wrong with old and eerie,” I say, thinking of my high school science teacher, wrinkly as a raisin, dressed like an undertaker, but one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.

I rustle through Kurt’s chest of drawers and pull out a pair of boxer briefs and a dark gray T-shirt emblazoned with an orange surfboard leaning against a green palm tree.

“Put these on,” I say, passing him the bundle of clothes and keeping my gaze locked on his eyebrows and begging my eyes not to flick downward.

Wyn raises one of the aforementioned eyebrows and tosses the underwear on the bed, then his head disappears beneath the T-shirt. Before it has a chance to reappear, I hurry through the door, calling out, “I’ll be up the hallway if you need me. Meet me in the kitchen when you’re dressed.”

My bedroom with its own private bathroom is a few doors along the corridor, and Zylah’s is at the very end, next to the gigantic arched window that overlooks the old swimming pool my grandparents added back in the forties.

When empty, it was the stage for many drunken late-night skating sessions—and a few too many broken bones, including my own wrist. Twice.

Gravenshade has a second wing of bedrooms with their own bathrooms at the front of the house.

If we wanted, we could easily spread out for more privacy, but given the house’s ghostly inhabitants and general creepy vibe, we prefer to sleep close together.

That way, if one of us screams, there’s a greater chance of someone coming to our rescue.

As I enter my bedroom, the lace curtains flutter in the warm breeze, sunlight breaking through the rain clouds. The bougainvillea outside the window casts barbed, tangled shadows over the floor.

I hurry past my four-poster bed into the bathroom, hoping to scrub away the image of the six-foot-five naked guy loitering in my hallway—possibly from Australia, Ireland, or somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean—from the back of my eyeballs.

“What a time to be me,” I say out loud, my shoulders dropping as I wonder how much crazier my life could possibly get.

When I look up, a pair of judgmental green eyes are staring back at me.

Great. Just what I need right now, my ghost-mom’s bleak opinion on the situation.

She has the same pointy chin as me. Same steely glare.

Same tendency to shut people out. But at least I never left a child to rot alone emotionally.

“You’ve always been drawn to chaos, Summer. If you ask me, you bring it on yourself. Always did love getting into embarrassing fixes.”

“Well, I didn’t ask,” I reply, masking the usual flare of guilt I always feel when I see her—that flicker of doubt that maybe I’m the reason she ended up like this…

you know… technically dead. “Anyway, you can’t talk.

Remember at Nana’s seventieth birthday party when your false teeth shot across the table and landed in Dad’s chicken parmigiana?

Some would classify that as embarrassing. ”

“Accidents are different. And how many times have I asked you not to bring your father into our conversations? The gray ladies say he doesn’t like to hear you speak his name. ”

Of course he doesn’t. Like most people, he probably thinks, or knows , I killed them both. Yeah, that’s me, just your average possible-parent-killer. Some life I’m living.

If ghost-dad doesn’t like to hear himself mentioned, he should just stop eavesdropping on Mom all the time and agree to actually meet with her.

Always happy to get under her non-existent skin, I continue with the subject that most irks her. “But at the time, Dad didn’t even know you had false teeth… so… if you ask me, that was pretty dishonest and very chaotic of you .”

With a superior sniff, Mom’s face wavers, dissolving into the mirror’s surface at the same time the floorboard near the doorway creaks.

“Who are you talking to?” Wyn asks, fumbling with the zipper on his jeans.

Seriously, I wish he’d stop sneaking up on me like that.

“Just myself. What are you doing in here?”

“I need help. How do you fasten these… pants ?” he asks as if he’s never seen a zipper before. Or a pair of jeans either, for that matter.

“First, do up the button. Then hold the material below it. See the metal tag? Pull it carefully upward, toward the top, keeping tension in the denim,” I say, waiting for him to laugh and fire back a shut-the-fuck-up-I-know-what-I’m-doing response.

Instead, he follows my instructions to the letter, brow furrowed, then gives me a sweet grin when he accomplishes the task.

Wow, this guy is seriously challenged in the life-skills department. “Well done,” I say out loud, and for a moment he looks even prouder. I toss him a pair of Kurt’s boots—the ones he wanted me to sell online. “Here, try these on for size.”

Sitting on the bed, he slides his feet into the shoes, handling the laces like a pro. With an inquisitive mraow , Ollie springs out of nowhere, lands on the bed, and blinks a series of cat kisses at Wyn, having decided it’s safe to befriend the intruder.

“Is that a cat?” Wyn asks with a frown. “Where I come from, they’re sleeker… beautiful to look at.”

“Hey, leave the love of my life alone. He’s perfect as he is.”

While Ollie purrs and rubs his head against Wyn’s knuckles, Gravenshade’s other feline residents enter the room.

Wyn laughs as three wind around his legs, and the grumpiest, Mr. Smiles, a cantankerous orange boy, stands guard just inside the door, glaring at the newcomer with disdain.

He’s a hard guy to win over but very loyal once he’s decided he can bear your company.

“Is Summer your true name?” Wyn asks, his tone intense as he lifts his gaze from the cats to focus on me.

True name? He certainly has some unusual turn of phrases. “Everyone calls me Summer,” I say, my eyes shifting to the floor between us.

No way I’m telling him my real name. He might look me up online and find the news articles about my parents’ murder.

Or stalk my socials and flag my posts about haunted mansions, where I jump on tours and share what the real ghosts actually say about the attendees.

It’s not my fault ghouls have shockingly foul mouths.

Wyn says, “Given your answer, I’m guessing Summer isn’t your birth name. Why do you call yourself that?”

Damn it .

Internally, I roll my eyes. “My dad started the nickname when I was young because I loved the sunflowers in our garden and called them summer suns.”

“You remind me of a sunflower,” he says, giving me an underwear-vaporizing grin.

Who says stuff like that? Also, it’s kind of sweet. Dammit.

Then he continues, “One trapped in a vase and wilting. As all lovely things must eventually.”

My breath catches. What the hell does he mean by that ?

Forcing a smile, I say, “Nice. An insult wrapped in a compliment. Quite a skill.”

“I meant only that this life and this realm are stifling you.”

I laugh. “Come to spirit me away to a better place, have you?”

“If only I could tell you who I really am,” he mutters, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking up at me beneath dark bangs, his eyes gleaming with something like hope, or madness. Hard to tell which.

“So… you’re not a wolf shifter?” I say with a smirk.

“I am, but…”

“Go ahead, then. Shift and prove it. I asked you to earlier, and you ignored me.”

Closing his eyes and balling his fists over his knees, he mouths a jumble of words that sound suspiciously like a spell or an incantation.

“I tried to shift back to my wolf immediately after I changed into my current form in your basement. But I think the arrow injury has drained my power. I’m sorry. I still can’t do it.”

“Didn’t think so. And if you were Hank, you’d have quite an obvious wound healing on your shoulder. ”

“Nope. My magic is weak, but it managed to heal the injury all the same.”

Despite feeling sorry for his state of delusion, a laugh rushes out of me. “All right. Enough of that nonsense. We need to find you a shrink as soon as possible.”

He grins as though I’ve just paid him a compliment. “I have no knowledge of these shrink creatures you mention. Are they mages? Healers perhaps?”

“Hm. Maybe the second option. Let’s go downstairs and workshop whether to call Animal Control or Mythical Beings Anonymous.” I head toward the door and turn back, finding him still sitting on the bed, staring at me. “Are you coming?” I ask.

“Are you going to send the dog catchers after me? Yesterday, I heard your orange-haired friend say you should.”

“If you do change back into a wolf,” I joke, not believing that he actually can shift into a magical creature, “then, yeah, maybe I will.”

His footsteps trail me down the stairs, followed by his gravelly voice. “You have a forge in the house?”

I blink. “Forge? Like… for making swords?”

“Yeah, metal forge. The workshop you just mentioned.”

“I used the verby version of workshop. It means to throw ideas around when faced with a problem. See if any of them stick and can help solve it.”

“Oh. Right,” he says, a confused but handsome frown still decorating his face.

I’ve no doubt this Wyn guy is crazy, but honestly, I kind of like him.