Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery (28 page)

Cocktails
. Of course.

“What could possibly go wrong?” said Maya, smiling but shaking her head. “The Welcome coven, cocktails, and the spirits of angry gunshot victims?”

“You two will join us, won’t you?” Bronwyn asked.

“I say this with the greatest of respect and affection, my friend,” said Maya, “but: No. Freaking. Way. How ’bout I take you out to lunch for your birthday? Empanadas?”

“Well, I’m disappointed you won’t be there, but I accept your offer of lunch with pleasure. Lily? How about you? This sounds right up your alley.”

“Bronwyn,” I began, “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Why not?” Bronwyn looked crestfallen.

“It just . . . seems like a bad idea, that’s all,” I said, unable to articulate the peril I sensed lurking on the dark horizon of my consciousness, elusive but no less real. But then, as I had just been telling Aidan, I wasn’t a fortune-teller. I was probably just put off by the idea of a haunted house. “Won’t you rethink it?”

“But everything’s all arranged. The whole coven’s going! Please say you’ll come! I know it’s late notice, but they had a cancellation, which is how we got in. It’s next Saturday!”

Traipsing around haunted tourist venues on a lark wasn’t my idea of a good time. I dealt with enough supernatural weirdness and danger as it was. But could I let my friend—and her coven—go into a potentially hazardous situation without me?

I rubbed the back of my neck. It was barely noon, and I’d already been served with a piggy lawsuit, burdened with Aidan’s bureaucratic responsibilities, and now faced the prospect of chaperoning Bronwyn’s coven overnight in a haunted mansion.

As my mother used to say: Don’t some days just starch your drawers?

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