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I COULD CERTAINLY UNDERSTAND why the Hernández house inspired so many ghost stories. The shadow of the three-story home—four if I counted the attic-formerly-known-as-a-belfry—swallowed me whole as I crossed the street. It sent an unnerving chill up my spine.
Ivy vines had taken over the front porch, growing through the busted boards and clinging to the stucco façade. Several of the windows were broken, and the paint on the front door was so faded, it was anyone’s guess what the original color had been. At least the deadbolt lock looked new. I climbed the uneven porch steps and wrapped my hand around the doorknob, trying to determine if a lockbox would fit over it.
“It’s open,” a deep voice said from behind me.
“Flying monkeys!” I squeaked and spun around, wielding my ink pen like a wand.
“Easy there.”
The man was a demigod. He had to be. They weren’t that gorgeous by accident. His sweep of raven hair hung just past his brows, shadowing dark eyes lined with even darker lashes. Strong, calloused hands rose in surrender.
“Dylan Hernández,” he said, eyes fixed on my pen. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Sorry.” I winced and lowered the pen. “Didn’t you see there.”
He gave me a skeptical frown, taking in my heels and the clipboard I held in front of me like a shield. “A little jumpy for a witch, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t expecting you for another twenty minutes, and there isn’t a car in the driveway,” I said defensively.
Dylan shrugged. “I flew in this morning.”
“I wasn’t aware this town had an airport.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Oh? Oh!” I pressed a hand to my chest. “I didn’t realize you were a warlock.”
“I’m not.”
Winged Shifter it was then. Not that he was in any big hurry to spell out what kind.
“Oookay.” I loosed a nervous giggle, unable to summon a more dignified response, especially with my mouth going dry at the sight of him.
Sun-kissed skin covered his muscular arms, and more muscles pressed through his thin, snug, white tee shirt. He was the kind of guy girls threw themselves at after a single shot of tequila. Hell, he was the kind of guy most girls would beg to strip so they could drink the shot off his washboard abs.
As I stared at Dylan’s stomach, envisioning doing just that, he cleared his throat.
“Sorry, what?” I asked.
“You are Ms. West, right? The real estate agent?” he said, sounding less than impressed.
“Yes! Absolutely.” I tucked the clipboard under my arm and descended the porch steps with my hand outstretched for a shake. Hopefully, it would help us start over on the right foot. I made it all the way to the second-to-last step before the toe of my high heel snapped through a rotten board.
Next thing I knew, my face smooshed into my new client’s chiseled-from-stone chest. My purse flew through the air, ejecting makeup and random knickknacks, and my clipboard clattered to the sidewalk. I pawed at Dylan’s arms, trying to regain my footing until he took hold of my shoulders and lifted me upright.
“I’ve been meaning to fix that step,” he said apologetically. Then his eyes twinkled with amusement. He feigned a cough, but I heard the whisper of laughter beneath it. “Your, um... You might want to”—he pressed a finger into the pillow of his bottom lip, momentarily distracting me, until he turned the finger at my mouth and made a twirling gesture—“fix your face.”
I blinked and glanced down at the front of his shirt. A ruby red smear cut across the white cotton. “Toto shitting in a cyclone,” I grumbled and squatted down to collect the contents of my purse from the sidewalk, searching for a tissue in the process. “Sorry about your shirt,” I added over my shoulder.
“It’s fine. I have a dozen more just like it.” Dylan bent over to fetch my rogue tube of mascara and handed it to me. I accepted it without looking up at him, too embarrassed by what I assumed my face must look like after our collision.
Nervous desperation was not a great way to put clients at ease, but a man like Dylan Hernández was probably used to women throwing themselves at him—though maybe not quite so literally.
A second later, I found a wad of tissue and quickly wiped it over my mouth and cheeks. I inspected the slapdash job in the mirror of my powder compact before gathering up my purse and clipboard. Then I stood and turned to face Dylan again, sans lipstick. Only a shimmery, pink residue remained on my skin, and while it still drew his attention, he seemed less tickled by it.
I held my hand out to him a second time. “At your service, Mr. Hernández.”
“Please, just Dylan,” he said, wrapping his dry palm around my moist one.
His shake was firm, and he smelled like an orchard. I would have called the fragrance feminine, if not for the underlying notes of earth and salty sweat. He withdrew his hand and ran it through his dark sweep of hair, drawing up the hem of his shirt and further scrambling my brains.
“Look, Zelda said if anyone could find a buyer for this place, it was you. So...tell me what you need.”
To have your babies, I thought, then shook my head. More like, an ice-cold shower.
“Why don’t we start with a tour of the house?” I suggested, fanning myself with the clipboard. Fall had settled in, and it couldn’t have been more than sixty degrees outside, but my skin was balmy.
Dylan licked the corner of his mouth thoughtfully, and I held my breath, resisting the urge to swoon. I needed something other than him to focus on. The creepy old house would have to do.
“Sorry I didn’t dress up for our meeting,” he said, giving me a once-over before turning toward the porch and taking the stairs ahead of me. “I’ve been doing a little work on the house. You may have noticed it’s not in the best shape.”
He paused halfway up the steps and glanced over his shoulder, holding his hand out to help me over the boobytrap of busted boards. I rubbed my palm down the side of my skirt, attempting to dry it first before hooking my fingers over his. The orchard smell engulfed me again, making my head swim.
“You’ve been working?” I asked breathlessly. “On what?”
“I’ll show you.”
He pushed open the front door, and a stale gust of dusty air rolled out to greet us. Then a nest of spiders scrambled over the doorjamb and scattered across the porch. I squealed and hid behind one of Dylan’s beefy arms, stamping my heels to hopefully discourage any of the nasty creatures from crawling up my legs.
“Just spiders,” he said with a tight smile. “Not even the poisonous kind.”
“But definitely the icky kind!” I raked my hands over my face and hair, sure that one or fifty of them had made it past my spaztastic defense dance and were now on their way to feast on my eyeballs. Dylan merely stared at me until I regained my composure.
“Are you...sure you’re up for this?” One of his dark, broody eyebrows hitched.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from trembling. Heat crawled up my neck and into my cheeks. So much for first impressions. I straightened my blazer before turning my attention back to the house.
The open doorway revealed a dark, ominous foyer that promised more spiders and other ickyness. If only I’d brought Broomzilla with me. She would have gladly cleared the creepy-crawlies from my path.
Dylan opened his arm to one side. “Ladies first.”
I snorted at the obvious taunt. Of course he thought I was a scaredy-witch now. How could he not? I’d taken on houses with backed up sewage, sinking foundations, and hyena cult graffiti. What could I say? Spiders were my kryptonite.
But was I really about to let a few creepy crawlies send me packing? I side-eyed Dylan again, ogling his broad shoulders and the way his jeans hugged his nicely-shaped butt. Then I thought of the stack of bills sitting on my coffee table.
Not today, Dorothy.
I swallowed and stepped over the threshold. Nothing jumped out to grab me, and I didn’t die, but I reserved my relief. Just in case.
Dylan moved past me and pushed back the curtains over one of the windows, allowing the waning daylight to filter through the streaky glass.
The front of the house was open concept. I could easily picture the sanctuary it must have been back in the place’s church days. A dining table was centered near the back wall, and formal sitting space flowed off to the right side of the room. To the left, a parlor-esque area with more seating and an old, rolltop desk was situated inside the boxy, paneled walls beneath the u-shaped staircase.
“The electric company is coming to turn the power on tomorrow morning,” Dylan said. “But at least the water is working.”
“Good.” I needed cleaning supplies to scrub muck the same way I needed ingredients for my recipes. Of course, the Hernández house was going to need a lot more than hot water to get it ready for sale. My blinky, dust-zapping trick wasn’t going to get us very far either.
There were holes in the walls. Lots of them. Dylan followed my gaze past the sheet-covered furniture scattered around the room and winced.
“I’ll be patching a lot of drywall tomorrow, too.” He paused to scratch the back of his head. “My brother was... He thought that he heard... Well, it’s not important. Let me show you the kitchen.”
“Oookay.”
I followed him through an arched opening just beyond the dining table without further comment on the whack-a-mole condition of the walls, though I couldn’t help but wonder if the crazy ran in the family. Was I walking deeper and deeper into a house with a hot psycho? Did a few loose screws matter as long as he had a tight ass? Maybe my dry spell was getting out of hand.
The kitchen was in better shape and looked more recently updated. Cozy even, with a breakfast nook tucked along the back wall under a bay window. A narrow island divided the cooking area, and a hanging rack displayed cast iron pots and pans strung with cobwebs. I blinked, zapping them out of sight along with a thick layer of dust.
“I’m replacing that window,” Dylan said, pointing at the broken pane over the kitchen sink. The pieces were still intact, but a long fracture ran diagonally across the glass.
“No need.” I blinked a few more times, and the crack mended seamlessly. As long as all the pieces were there, and not shattered into a zillion tiny shards, I could put it together in a snap.
“Nice. Thanks.” Dylan gave me an impressed smile, and I blushed—half from the flattery and half from the fact that I knew where things would go from here. Straight downhill.
“It’s nothing,” I said, brushing off the compliment.
“Don’t suppose you have a similar...spell that works on drywall?” he asked.
“Sorry.” Casseroles and quick fixes were one thing, but my tricks didn’t get much fancier than that. He’d find out soon enough. “Not everything mends so easily,” I added at his crestfallen frown, and then breathed a sigh of relief when he shrugged.
“Let’s see what you can do in the basement then,” he said, opening a door in the back corner of the kitchen.
More darkness greeted us, but as I neared the doorway, I spotted a pale shaft of light at the bottom of the stairs, likely coming from a dusty window. Or one covered in spiderwebs.
“What’s out here?” I glanced through the tiny window of a door that looked like it might lead to the backyard, wondering if I could convince him to show me the rest of the exterior first. Maybe there was a shed that we could kill some time by measuring while I worked up the nerve to inspect the basement.
Dylan waved a dismissive hand at the back door. “The garden is overgrown, but I’m going to clean it up tomorrow—or maybe the day after, depending on how long the walls take.”
“Oh...” I pressed my lips together and glanced back the way we’d entered the kitchen. “What about the upstairs?”
“There’s less work needed up there, and I wanted you to see what I’ve already done.”
“Right. Of course.” I clutched my clipboard closer to my chest and took a deep breath.
“The stairs are a little rickety,” Dylan confessed, holding his hand out to me as he descended the first few steps beyond the shadowy mouth of the doorway.
I let him take me by the hand again, ignoring the way my pulse jumped at the feel of his skin against mine. My knees wobbled, but it had little to do with the unstable stairs we were navigating in the near dark, and my train of thought charged ahead on autopilot.
Please don’t be a serial killer. Please don’t let there be dead bodies down here. Please don’t let there be any more spiders. Please let the HVAC be up to code.
Dylan let go of my hand as soon as we reached the bottom of the stairs, and he turned to click on a spotlight hanging from a beam overhead. The clunky device was neon yellow, like one used at a construction site. It flooded one side of the basement with stark light, revealing every nook and cranny. Something skittered under an old washing machine in the far corner, but I swallowed my scream.
“Here,” Dylan said, thankfully leading me into the opposite corner. “I replaced the thermocouple for the hot water tank and added an insulation blanket. Repaired a few leaky pipes, patched a foundation crack—”
“What is that?” I asked, my eyes snagging on a monstrous contraption that loomed in the shadows behind the stairwell, a dozen tentacle-like arms reaching up into the ceiling.
Dylan put a hand on his hip and sighed. “Yeah, I know. The furnace is ancient—but the right antique collector would love it. When my cousin George lived here, he had the asbestos ducts replaced and converted it to natural gas. So, there’s that.”
“That thing heats the whole house?”
“Sure—well...” he scratched the back of his head and gave me a sheepish grin. “Mostly. The rooms on the second and third floors have radiators.”
“Ooh, boy.” I clicked open my pen and jotted a few notes on the page fastened to my clipboard. “You wouldn’t happen to have any of the most recent utility bills from when the house was occupied, would you?”
Dylan shrugged. “We could check the desk upstairs.”
“Do you know how well the walls are insulated?”
“Uh....”
“What about the attic?”
“Attic?” He scratched his head again. “You mean the old belfry?”
“Whatever you wanna call it. Is it insulated?”
“It’s not really—well, see—” Dylan sighed again. “The bats don’t like to be disturbed.”
“About that.” I clicked my pen a few times and glanced up at him. “I have numbers for two services that give free quotes.”
“Services?”
“Yeah, removal services.”
“Whoa there! Hold your horses, lady.” Dylan shook his head. “That bat colony has been living in the belfry for over a century.”
“Rent-free, I assume?”
“They’re not hurting anything or anyone.” His face flushed, and a deep crease appeared across his forehead. “I can’t just evict them. Why the hell do you think I’m working with you and not letting the bank bulldoze the house?”
I stared at him. “What exactly do you think the next owner is going to do about them?”
“Can’t you write a clause in the contract or something?” he pleaded. “These bats... They’re a different species, and they’re not Shifters, but they’ve been around here for so long that they might as well be family.”
“Different species?” I frowned, and then it dawned on me. “You’re a bat!” I announced as if it were the answer to a million-dollar trivia questions.
“Uh, yeah.” Dylan snorted. “It’s not a big secret. Everyone in town knows.”
“Everyone except the new girl.” I gave him a tight smile and stuffed my clipboard down into my bag. “Well, considering this town’s interesting circumstances, maybe we’ll get lucky with an understanding buyer.”
“Now we’re talking.” He rubbed his hands together and headed back toward the stairs. “And if they can see past the bats in the belfry, maybe the ghosts won’t be such a big deal either.”
“Great.” I sighed as I followed after him. “I was really hoping that one was just a rumor.”
“Nope, but most of them are harmless. You really only have to watch out for Papa Nando.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“He’s a bit...prejudice.”
“Against white people?” When he didn’t confirm, I tried again. “Women? Non-flying Shifters?”
The door at the top of the stairs slammed so hard that the entire house shook. I gasped and clung to the stair railing. Dylan gave me an apologetic smile.
“Try witches.”
