A Haunting Is Brewing: A Haunted Home Renovation and a Witchcraft Mystery Novella Read Online Free PDF

himself?”
    The girls shook their heads; the boys shrugged. “I don’t even know,” said Byron. “It’s just so . . . random. You want to know what I think? I think those creepy dolls really did come alive and—ow!”
    Tess hit Byron on the back of the head. “Shut up! Just shut
up
!”
    “Did he have any enemies you can think of? Anything at all?”
    More shakes of the head. I reminded myself that this wasn’t any of my concern: Adam had Inspector Annette Crawford on his side. If anyone could get to the bottom of this tragedy, it was Annette.
    I should mind my own business, literally. So after a round of good-byes to the students, I hopped in my Scion and went to check on a couple of my paying jobs. My crew was putting the finishing touches on an Italianate bed-and-breakfast remodel in the Castro—haunted, too, of course—and we were in the middle of demo on a kitchen remodel in an old Victorian in the Excelsior neighborhood.
    But I found myself driving past the Spooner Mansion before heading home that evening. It loomed above me, looking dark in the pale yellow beam of a streetlamp, illuminated only by a single porch light.
    I was surprised to see the forensics van was still out front. Inspector Crawford was speaking to two men, who were packing up their equipment. When she spotted me, she came over to talk to me through the car window.
    “What are you doing back?” Annette asked, raising one eyebrow.
    “I, um . . .” I said eloquently, looking up at the tower window. “I was wondering . . . if the forensics crew is done, could I take a quick walk-through?”
    “Why?”
    “You really want me to answer that question?”
    “Huh. Want me to come along?”
    “I’d better go by myself.”
    Annette glanced at the forensics team, the members of whom were slamming the doors of their van and waving good-bye.
    She nodded. “Make it quick.”
    ***
    I paused at the front door and rubbed my grandmother’s wedding ring, which I wear on a ribbon around my neck as a talisman. I wasn’t as freaked-out by ghosts as I once was, but it was still unnerving to have spirits approach me and try to communicate. Knowing what to say to them, how to react, did not come naturally to me. I wanted to find out what had happened to Adam, how the death of such a promising and kind young man could have occurred. But I wasn’t expecting much; in my experience, the dead didn’t remember their last moments.
    I walked slowly through the foyer, skirting the spot where Adam’s body had fallen. Climbing the broad sweep of the stairs, I headed for the tower window where his apparition had appeared to me as I sat in the garden.
    And there he was, wearing his costume, his hands pressed flat against the pane of glass.
    He looked over his shoulder at me, and his shoulders sagged in relief.
    “Oh, Mel, thank
goodness
. I can’t get out. Everything’s locked up. I don’t know what happened. Do you have the key?”
    Super
. I wasn’t all that smooth when it came to normal social interaction, and now I had to tell a ghost he was dead? I needed a how-to book: how to make friends with, and influence, dead people.
    “Adam, I have something to tell you. Something . . . hard.”
    “Is the fund-raiser called off? I heard Mrs. Gutierrez was balking. We’re too much, aren’t we? A lot of people don’t love the performing arts; I know Byron can be a little over the top.”
    “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s . . . do you remember what you were doing here last night?”
    He shook his head. “I was . . . I mean, I had dinner with the gang, and I guess I might have had one too many margaritas. . . .” With an oddly rolling gait, he started down the stairs, then crossed the foyer toward the front door. I followed behind him. “We were sort of freaking each other out at the idea of spending the night here at the house, and then . . . it’s weird, after that I can’t really remember. Do you think I blacked out or