She did laugh. It was a low noise, like the drone of a hummingbird’s wings. It didn’t last long enough. “I hated when you called me that.”
“I knew it,” he returned. “Anyway, you were...different. I thought it was kind of badass that you didn’t care.”
“Just like you didn’t?”
Gavin lifted a shoulder in answer. Yes—they had more in common than it seemed either of them had anticipated.
Quiet fell. The gulls droned from the shore. Tires moved over gravel in the parking lot beyond Briar’s garden. The world moved, lively and fierce. But there was a measure of quiet in Gavin’s head. He’d forgotten what quiet, in its purest form, was. Damned if he wasn’t grateful—and a little spellbound.
Mavis spoke again in a sober light. “Look. I might’ve overheard what went on upstairs with the vase.”
Gavin’s frown returned. He sought the inn, the place he’d known he shouldn’t come back to. He hadn’t fit in before the RPG. What had made him think he could fade into the wallpaper now with his face a veritable grid of violence?
“Before you think about disappearing again,” Mavis continued, “you don’t have to leave Fairhope entirely.”
He moved his shoulders in a brusque motion, the tension climbing up the back of his neck again. “You know a good bait bucket I can crawl into?”
“You’ll break their hearts if you skip town like all the times before,” she said.
“Yeah, but think of the antiques,” Gavin said, gesturing to the pristine white building and the treasures it held. “At least they’ll live long and happy lives.”
“If you knew your parents at all, you’d know that when it comes to your well-being, they’d burn every single one of their antiques if it meant having you here.”
Judgment had a bite to it, he found. He didn’t much like it. Remembering the tone he’d struck with his father and Briar upstairs, he scowled. Okay, maybe he deserved it. But in spite of the steadier ground he found himself walking on after the detour with Mavis under the bougainvillea, the coals still burned, low and blue.
“I might know a place you can stay,” she continued. “While you take the time you need to decide what the future holds. It’s close enough to town to keep your parents happy, but far enough and quiet enough to give you the freedom to piece your thoughts together.”
“Where is this place?” he wondered.
“On the river,” she told him. “Fish River.”
“You live on Fish River,” he remembered.
“Along with a slew of other folks,” she pointed out. “The place is at the end of my road. There’s a catch, though. You’ll have to put up with a roommate.”
“I think we all know I’m no good at sharing,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but this is just temporary,” she said. “And your potential roomie is very into feng shui. No antiques, few breakables. Plus, she’s likely to stay out of your personal space.”
She rounded out the last words nicely. “Huh.” Gavin considered. “Is she hot?”
Mavis’s laugh was full-throated. When it didn’t end quickly this time, Gavin asked, “What’s funny?”
“You like a good joke, right?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and backtracking to the inn.
“Normally,” he replied. “Don’t leave me hanging on the punch line.”
“Her name is Zelda Townes.”
“And?”
“And you can find the rest out for yourself,” she tossed back, intriguing in all her unsolved mystery.
Gavin frowned at her back. “Is this because I can’t stop calling you Freckles?”
“No,” she said. “It’s because you won’t.”
PEOPLE NORMALLY PERFORMED hot yoga in a studio. Thanks to the heat and humidity July had to offer the Gulf Coast, Zelda Townes’s Bikram classes were held on the wide veranda of her old river house. The sun fell through the square slats of the pergola, fighting through a canopy of hanging ferns and fuchsia. If the screens didn’t keep the wolfish mosquitoes at bay, the plantings of lavender, mint and thyme would have made the pests turn tail.
Not only did Miss Zelda’s porch offer the perfect environment for hot yoga. It smelled like the inside of an apothecary. With the backdrop of the river and the grand weeping willow in the yard that spilled down to its fishy shores, achieving peace of mind wasn’t difficult here. The happy burble of shallow fountains, the hollow knock of bamboo chimes, and the light refrain of kirtan devotional music brought the morning class to its culmination.
Despite this and the stalwart nature of each of Miss Zelda’s advanced students, nearly all of them shrieked and fell out of their standing bow when a loud bang rent the quiet river air.
“What in the holy name of Babylon...?” Zelda scowled, her svelte spandex-clad form straightening from her mat. “That sounded like a Desert Eagle .50.”
Mavis felt the frisson of alarm go through her fellow classmates and injected a note of sardonic cool into the scene. “Yes, because Desert Eagles are a dime a dozen.” A chorus of barks reached her ears. “Damn it,” she said, already up. “That’s my dog.”
“Water’s still as molasses,” Zelda said, peering down the lawn to the river’s surface. “Go ’round back and see what’s doing. The rest of you, a few sips of water before we pick up on the last vinyāsa.”
Mavis wove her way through the sweaty bodies to the barn doors that led into Zelda’s sparse domain. The house had been built before hurricanes were named and outhouses had died. Zelda had done well to update the place. The water ran fine, just like the electric. Two large bathrooms had been added to the floor plan, with an additional powder room near the patio and sunrooms where Zelda held her classes, depending on the season.
The house had once been crammed wall-to-wall with furniture. Zelda’s parents and grandparents had been notorious hoarders. They’d run a down-home antiques business from there. Long before the business passed to her, Zelda announced she had no intention in furthering the enterprise. She’d cleaned house, burning most possessions before cheerfully planting the willow amid the ashes.
Longtime river residents still spoke about the great bonfire of ’76 and how it had lit up the night sky like the Second Coming. Of course, all this was decades before Mavis joined the river community. She’d grown to know the strange woman living in the old house at the end of the road, so much so that she and Zelda had started their own enterprise—Greater Baldwin Paranormal Research & Investigation. More commonly, they were known to locals by the tongue-in-cheek nickname the Paranormas.
The office to the right of the house’s entry point housed most of the ghost-hunting gear that Zelda and Mavis had carefully invested in. When Zelda wasn’t a yoga guru and Mavis wasn’t filling time cards at any of her parents’ small-town industries, they could both be found screening calls, dissecting claims of activity or out doing fieldwork in Zelda’s vintage red Alfa Romeo.
Mavis peered through the window to the right of the door. The pane of glass was old and waxy, but the distortion of smoke over the cracked drive and the fits of excited barking made her snatch the door wide. She looked right, then heard the cursing to her left and crossed the porch to get a better look.
“No, Prometheus!” someone said. “Back away! Down!”
Mavis broke into a run upon hearing her dog’s yelp. She opened her mouth to yell for him