Hellsinger 01 - Fish and Ghosts (P) (MM) (24 page)

“When you said you hadn’t been up here since, I thought it would be more… Addams family-ish. You know, cobwebs and stuff,” Gidget murmured, slipping past him to get into the room.

“No, remember? I have staff that comes and dusts once in a while.” He felt as if he was caught in a trance, moving slowly through a space he knew intimately where everything seemed achingly unfamiliar. “Mara comes in here and sits sometimes. They were together for a long time. I think she misses him too.”

“Mara?” Meegan looked up from her perusal of a large tome his uncle had been reading the week he’d died. Nearly the size of a toddler, its thick pages were yellowed, but their gilt edging was still bright and glowing with a metallic sheen.

“The housekeeper,” Wolf answered from his spot by the windows. “Really nice woman. Sweet.”

“She lives in the carriage house.” Another few steps in and Tristan was struck by how still the room was, empty of the man who’d filled it with his quiet presence. “Matt’s grandmother… Winifred… scares her. She said she was going to stay, but I think the attack on me changed her mind. She’ll be at her sister’s or something until this blows over.”

“Damn, I’ll miss those scones she makes,” Matt grumbled.

“I make those scones,” Tristan said absently, running his fingers over the back of the studded leather chair his uncle had often fallen asleep in. “Mara doesn’t cook. It’s better that way.”

“Ah, so she and my mother have a lot in common,” Wolf muttered, crossing over to Tristan’s side. Ducking Meegan’s teasing slap, he touched Tristan’s face with a delicate skim of his fingers. “You don’t have to be here, Pryce. Not if it’s too much for you.”

“No, the Grange is mine. I should be a part of this. What kind of coward doesn’t defend his own home?” He smiled, catching Wolf’s cocky smirk. “And if your mom is right, my uncle created this… portal… for the spirits to come through. If that’s true, then I should know about it. I’ve kind of just been operating on faith and blind luck up until now. I’m lucky something like Winifred the Crazy hasn’t happened before.”

“Well, not everyone carries around a serial killer’s ring on their finger and then tosses it into a pathway for spirits to leave the earth.” Wolf kissed his neck lightly, and Tristan smiled, feeling the tip of his lover’s tongue dab at his skin. “So this is where your uncle—”

“Passed.” Tristan murmured. “This is where I found him.”

“I was going to say
lived
.” His arms snuck up around Tristan’s waist, a band of warm comfort. “It’s a nice place. Kind of looks like you, actually. A little bit. Without all the grinning, happy monsters but still, a bit of you.”

He’d spent so many months, years really, sitting with his uncle in the tome-packed room. Tristan could name off each of the vintage pinned butterflies trapped beneath their glass panes above the enormous fireplace. He knew the location of each hand-spun marble he’d pressed into the mortar between the river-tumbled stones when his uncle had the facing redone. His feet had scuffed at a row of faded violet tulips on the long rug under the room’s cluster of mismatched chairs, rubbing at the nap while Mortimer went over his finished lesson before his tutors saw it the next morning. The room’s walls had seen him take his first sip of whiskey, a coughing, smoky affair that burned his nose hairs more than warmed his belly.

It was also the room where he’d haltingly confessed his attraction to men to the stoop-shouldered man who’d offered him a place to live, only to be told it was about time he realized it for himself.

“Yeah, this is where he lived.” Tristan leaned back into his lover’s embrace and closed his eyes, drawing in the scent of the man and the sweet tang of the old books surrounding them.

“He died doing what he loved,” Meegan murmured happily. “Like your dad did, Wolfgang.”

“Mom, my father was eaten by a polar bear.” Wolf’s exasperated breath ruffled Tristan’s hair, and he opened his eyes to give the man a curious look. Kissing the end of Tristan’s nose, he sighed heavily. “I was eight. I think I’d seen him maybe three times in my whole life.”

“Tristan, don’t listen to him. Ocean was a visionary. He went to the Arctic circle to protest the encroachment of the polar bear’s natural environment.” Meegan squared her shoulders, tossing back a length of her hair with a smug expression. “Besides, he froze to death on the ice floes. It was a sacrifice he chose to make to highlight their plight. Very romantic.”

“He got lost going out to take a piss and couldn’t find his way back into camp. That isn’t romantic. It was stupid.” Wolf sighed. “Either the ice or the bears got him. Neither of which would be a way I’d want to go out. I’d take Uncle Morty’s sitting back in a chair and sipping good whiskey. ’Course, a hot blond named Tristan in my lap wouldn’t be too bad.”

Wolf squeezed Tristan once before letting him go. Gidget and Matt shared a laugh before moving to the bookshelves to investigate the antiques crammed in between volumes of mythology and fairy tales.

“What are you hoping to find here, Mrs.…?” Tristan paused when Meegan shot him a warning look.

“Either Meegan or Mom,” she said, padding over to the wide table nearly covered with stacks of books. “I have a good feeling about this room. About you.”

“Meegan, then,” Tristan murmured softly. “What do you want us to do?”

“First we’re going to go dredge that pool. Wolf and Matt, you two go suit up and see if you can find rakes or something. How deep is the water, Tristan?” Meegan frowned, spotting the folly at the end of the garden. “Can they get in it without drowning? Wolf will haunt me for the rest of my days if he dies suffocating on a lily pad or something.”

“Maybe four feet in the middle?” Tristan guessed. “Maybe deeper now that it rained so much. We can drain it off. It’s man-made. It might take a bit, but it’ll help. The release valve is right next to the path. You can’t miss it.”

“Draining would make it easier,” Wolf agreed. “Especially if I’m going to be wading into freezing water to look for this thing.”

“Go get that started, Wolfgang.” Meegan rubbed her hands, her rings chiming as they struck one another. “Tristan, Gidget, and I will be going through Uncle Mortimer’s books. I have a feeling that somewhere in this room we’ll find the Grange’s secrets and maybe even a way to get rid of that Winifred bitch.”

Chapter 14

“T
HE
DAMNED
thing nearly bit my balls off!”

Wolf could hear Matt going on about the turtle to Gidget in Tristan’s library and smirked, shaking his head at his mother, sitting on a couch in the main room.

“It nibbled his ankle. And I told him
not
to take off his shoes,” Wolf shouted toward the library’s open door. Making a face at his mother, he shook his head. “We started draining the pond, but the rain’s probably filling it up as fast as the water’s going out. It’ll take a bit.”

“Every little bit will help.” Meegan gestured over to the stacks of books and papers piled high on the coffee table in front of her. “You can help me read some of this. My Greek isn’t as good as yours.”

“I’ll be right there.” Taking Jack’s ball from his pocket, he bounced it on the floor a few times, then launched it down the hall. Tristan’s eyes followed the red streak for a moment before drifting back to Wolf, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. “I’m going to salt the door so Winifred can’t come in. I just want to make sure Jack’s here first.”

“Ah, good plan. Thanks.” The blond stood up from the couch and stretched, his back popping loudly. “I’m going to throw a frozen lasagna in the oven and then get back to Uncle Morty’s books.”

“Did you guys find anything?” He snagged Tristan before the man could sneak past him, drawing him into an embrace. Tristan ducked his head, shy at showing affection in front of Wolf’s mother, but he didn’t let the blond pull away. It was too important to hold him, especially after he’d been in the maelstrom of one Meegan Ocean-Kincaid. “Don’t you go anywhere until I get a kiss. I braved an angry terrapin for you. He could have ravaged me.”

“You
like
getting ravaged,” Tristan whispered, but his lips pressed against Wolf’s in a delicate kiss. “There.”

“
So
not good enough. Jaws that could cut steel. His claws were rakes, sharp enough to cut through skin and down to bone.” Wolf grinned. “We barely escaped with our lives and I get a little peck? What am I? Your elderberry-perfumed aunt?”

He didn’t quite dip Tristan. The man wasn’t that much in need of romance, but it was close. Curling one arm around Tristan’s waist, Wolf slung him back, enough to rock him on his heels and tilt his head a bit. Gasping slightly in shock, Tristan’s mouth parted, and the small puff of air escaping his lips was enough to pucker them into a willing shape Wolf recalled from the time they’d spent in bed. His cock ached from the memory of that mouth and what the man’s tongue could do to Wolf’s body, but for now he would have to be satisfied with a simple kiss.

Tristan’s mouth became a silken trap his tongue would gladly have been caught in. Just beyond the faint burr of his lips lay a smooth slickness Wolf sought out with an exploring jab. Teasing the man’s jaw with his fingers, Wolf coaxed Tristan open, then plunged in, pulling out a long, simmering moan from deep within the blond’s warm chest. A brush of his fingers at the start of the sound was enough to draw Tristan’s nipple to a hard peak, and Wolf returned to it, plucking at the nub until it was rigid beneath Tristan’s cotton shirt.

He only pulled back when he felt the force of Tristan’s breath in his mouth, the man struggling to inhale while not breaking their kiss. Drawing away only enough to give his lover air, Wolf murmured, “
That
was much better.”

“Your mother’s right here,” Tris muttered back.

“She’s had three kids,” he mumbled against Tristan’s throat, eager to feel the man’s Adam’s apple jump beneath his lips. Tristan gulped again, and Wolf straightened him up, setting Tristan back onto his feet. “Pretty sure she knows what kissing is, and I’m really certain she knows I’m not going to get you pregnant, although I sure as fuck would like to try. Need help with the lasagna?”

“No, I’ll….” Tristan shook his head, stepping away from Wolf’s arms. “You, Kincaid, are very dangerous for my blood pressure. Go sit by your mom and help her. I need to learn how to breathe again.”

“Anytime, babe.” Wolf shot him a lascivious wink, liking the faint pink he could pull out of Tristan’s fair skin.

Spotting the red ball on the living room floor, he laughed and threw it again, waiting for it to bounce someplace off the hallway wall. After grabbing an open box of rock salt he’d left by the door, Wolf lay down a thick line of it near the door seam, sealing the apartment off from unwelcome spirits. Dusting off his hands, he sauntered over and flopped down on the couch next to his mother and gave her a foolish grin.

“I like what he does for you. He makes you a little silly.” Meegan patted her son’s leg. “Silly looks good on you.”

“I thought I was being romantic.” He sniffed, picking up one of the dusty books they’d dragged in from Mortimer’s library. Crossing his eyes at the scrawl of Latin on its pages, he sighed and settled in to read.

“Romantic isn’t dipping him for a kiss before he goes to pop a frozen meal into the oven,” she teased him with a bubbling laugh. “It’s taking him to an Italian dinner and sharing a spaghetti noodle with him.”

“And rolling a meatball over with my nose?”

“Only if you really love him,” Meegan replied tartly, tapping his nose with her fingertip. “And it should have a ring in it for him to find.”

“He’d probably end up choking on it. Or I would.” Wolf scanned the page, trying to find the beginning of the passage. “We’re not at any rings yet, Mom. Hell, I’m just glad I can make him smile. We started out kind of rough.”

“That’s your way, Wolfgang.” She pursed her lips in mock disgust. “You’re not happy until you press everyone’s buttons and set them off. I’m surprised Tristan even puts up with you.”

“Trust me, he gave as good as he got,” he grumbled under his breath, then leaned over to his mother. “And he bites too.”

“Good,” she whispered back, nudging him with her elbow. “Maybe you’ll learn to be nicer once in a while. Honey versus vinegar, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” He was flipping forward a page when he felt something hit his bare foot. Looking down, he spied the red rubber ball rolling slowly toward his heel.

“You have to have more faith in yourself, Wolf,” his mother continued. “And faith in Tristan. I feel good about the two of you. I really do.”

“Mom, I’m playing ball with a dog I can’t see.” Picking up the ball, he winged it again toward the end of the hall, hooking it around the corner. “How much more fucking faith can I have?”

The evening passed slowly. From beyond the apartment door, howls and rattles shook the Grange, and the night was pierced once by a shrill keening that whispered away into the storm’s winds as they picked up once again. By ten, the rains were pounding against the manor’s outer walls, rattling at its windows as if furious at the lack of entry, and periodic flashes of lightning crackled above them, bleaching the room with a drowning light.