Dream Lake (Friday Harbor 3)

The shadow had been with him for weeks now. Alex had tried to ignore it, tried to drink it away, sleep it away, but there was no escaping its watchful presence. Lately he’d begun to feel a sense of animosity coming from it. Which meant he was either crazy … or haunted.

As the shadow drew closer to him, Alex felt the cold sear of adrenaline in every vein. Purely by instinct, he moved to defend himself. In an explosive motion, he threw the caulk gun. The tube split, white silicone splattering over the wall.

The dark shape promptly disappeared.

Alex still felt the hostile presence nearby, waiting and watching. “I know you’re there,” he said, his voice guttural. “Tell me what you want.” A mist of sweat broke out on his face and collected beneath his T-shirt. His heartbeat was fast and ragged. “And then tell me how to fu**ing get rid of you.”

More silence.

Dust motes salted the air in a slow descent.

The shadow returned. Quietly it assumed the form of a man. A vivid, three-dimensional being.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” the stranger said. “How to get rid of you, that is.”

Alex felt his color drain. He moved to sit fully on the floor, to keep from toppling over like a domino.

My God, I have gone crazy.

He didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until the stranger replied.

“No, you haven’t. I’m real.”

The man was tall, lanky, dressed in a scuffed leather flight jacket and khakis. His black hair was military-short and parted on the side, his features decisively formed, the eyes dark and assessing. He looked like some supporting character in a John Wayne movie, the rebellious hotshot who had to learn to follow orders.

“Hiya,” the stranger said casually.

Slowly Alex got to his feet, his balance shoddy. He had never been a spiritual man. He trusted only in concrete things, the evidence of his senses. Everything on earth was made of elements that had originally been produced from exploding stars, which meant humans were basically sapient stardust.

And when you died, you disappeared forever.

So … what was this?

A delusion of some kind. Moving forward, Alex reached out in a tentative gesture. His hand went right through the man’s chest. For a moment all Alex could see was his own wrist embedded in the region of a stranger’s solar plexus.

“Jesus!” Alex snatched his hand back quickly and examined it, palm up, palm down.

“You can’t hurt me,” the man said in a matter-of-fact voice. “You’ve walked right through me about a hundred times before.”

Experimentally Alex extended his hand and swiped it through the man’s arm and shoulder. “What are you?” he managed to ask. “An angel? A ghost?”

“Do you see any wings?” the man asked sardonically.

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. I’d say I was a ghost.”

“Why are you here? Why have you been following me?”

The dark gaze met his directly. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have some kind of message for me? Some unfinished business I’m supposed to help you with?”

“Nope.”

Alex wanted very much to believe it was a dream. But it felt too real, the stale warmth of the attic air, the dusty lemon-colored light coming through the windows, the caulking chemicals that always smelled a little like bananas. “What about leaving me the hell alone?” he eventually asked. “Is that an option?”

The ghost gave him a glance of purest exasperation. “I wish I could,” he said feelingly. “It’s not my idea of entertainment to watch you get sloppy on a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every night. I’ve been bored out of my gourd for months. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I was happier living here with Sam.”

“You …” Alex made his way to a nearby stack of flooring planks and sat heavily. He kept his gaze on the ghost. “Does Sam—”

“No. So far, you’re the only one who can see or hear me.”

“Why?” Alex demanded in outrage. “Why me?”

“Wasn’t my choice. I was trapped here for a long time. Even after Sam bought the house, I couldn’t leave, no matter how I tried. Then back in April, I found out I could follow you outside, so I did. At first it was a relief. I was glad to get out of here, even if it meant I had to tag along with you. The problem is, I’m shackled to you. I go where you go.”

“There’s got to be a way to get rid of you,” Alex muttered, rubbing his face with his hands. “Therapy. Medication. An exorcist. A lobotomy.”

“What I think—” the ghost began, but stopped at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Al?” came Sam’s muffled voice. His head appeared as he approached the top of the staircase, his scowl arrowing through the cream-painted spindles of the balustrade. Pausing at the top, he rested a hand over the top newel and asked curtly, “What’s going on?”

Glancing from his brother to the ghost, who was standing only a few feet away from him, Alex was tempted to ask Sam if he could see him. The ghost was human and solid and so absolutely there that it seemed impossible for Sam not to notice him.

“I wouldn’t,” the ghost said, as if reading his thoughts. “Because Sam can’t see me, and you’re going to look crazy. And I’m not all that keen on the idea of sharing a padded cell with you.”

Alex dragged his gaze back to Sam. “Nothing,” he said in answer to Sam’s question. “Why are you up here?”

“Because I heard you.” An irritable pause. “I asked you to keep it down, remember? My friend Lucy is resting. What were you shouting for?”

“I was talking on the cell phone.”

“Well, you should probably go. Lucy needs peace and quiet.”

“I’m right in the middle of fixing your damn attic for free, Sam. Why don’t you ask your girlfriend to postpone her nap until I’m finished?”

Sam gave him a hard warning glance. “She was sideswiped by a car while she was riding her bike yesterday. Even you should have a little sympathy for that. So while an injured woman is trying to heal up in my house—”

“Okay. Keep your shirt on. I’m leaving.” Alex’s eyes narrowed as he stared at his brother. Sam never lost his cool over a woman. And come to think of it, Sam never allowed any of his girlfriends to stay at the house overnight. Something unusual was going on with this one.

“Yes, he’s falling for her,” the ghost said from behind him.

Alex glanced over his shoulder. Before he thought about it, he asked, “Can you read my mind?”

“What?” Sam asked in bewilderment.

Alex felt his face heat with embarrassment. “Nothing.”

“The answer is no,” Sam said. “And I’m glad. Because it would probably scare me to know your thoughts.”

Alex turned to start packing away his tools. “You have no idea,” he said gruffly.

Sam began to descend the stairs, then paused. “One more thing—why is there caulk splattered all over the wall?”

“It’s a new application method,” Alex snapped.

“Right,” Sam said with a little snort, and left.

Alex turned to the ghost, who was watching him with a smart-alecky smile.

“I can’t read your mind,” the ghost said. “But it’s not tough to guess what you’re thinking. Most of the time.” His gaze turned speculative. “There are times you don’t make any sense. Like today, the way you acted around that cute little blonde—”

“That’s my business.”

“Yes, but I have to watch anyway, and it’s irritating. You liked her. Why not talk to her? What’s the matter with—”

“I liked it better when you were invisible,” Alex said, turning away from him. “Conversation’s over.”

“What if I want to keep talking?”

“Talk your head off. I’m going home, where I’m going to drink until you disappear.”

The ghost shrugged and leaned nonchalantly against the wall. “Maybe you’ll be the one to disappear,” he said, and watched as Alex went to scrape off the caulk splatters.

Four

“Justine,” Zoë said severely, “don’t eat any more of those. I need at least two hundred for the cupcake tower.”

“I’m helping you,” Justine said around a mouthful of pink velvet cake with Chambord buttercream frosting. With her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, and her slim form clad in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, she looked more like a college student than a successful businesswoman.

Zoë glanced quizzically into her cousin’s brown-velvet eyes. “How exactly are you helping?”

“Quality control. I need to make sure these are good enough for the wedding guests.”

Smiling wryly, Zoë rolled out a yard of ice-pink fondant with an aluminum rolling pin. “Well, are they?”

“They’re terrible. Can I have one more? Please?”

“No.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell you the truth. Given the choice between eating this cupcake or watching Ryan Gosling and Jon Hamm wrestle each other for the privilege of ha**ng s*x with me, I’d choose the cupcake.”

“I’m not even finished yet,” Zoë said. “I’m going to cover each one with fondant and top it with pink roses, green leaves, and clear sugar dewdrops.”

“You are the baking genius of our time.”

“I know,” Zoë said cheerfully. When the fondant was an eighth of an inch thick, she began to cover each cupcake in a smooth, perfect casing, trimming the excess with a spatula. She had worked at Justine’s bed-and-breakfast for more than two years, handling the cooking, grocery shopping, and food orders, while Justine managed the business side. Immediately after the failure of Zoë’s brief but disastrous marriage, Justine had approached her with an offer that included a share in the business. Zoë, still shell-shocked by the dissolution of her marriage, had hesitated at first.

“Say yes and you’ll never regret it,” Justine had said. “It’s everything you like to do, all the cooking and menu planning, without all the business stuff.”

Zoë had regarded her uncertainly. “After what I’ve just been through, I’m afraid to make a commitment to anything. Even an offer that sounds as nice as this one.”

“But you’d be making a commitment to me,” Justine had enthused. “Your favorite cousin.”

Zoë forbore to reply that technically they were only second cousins, and furthermore, out of all the Hoffman cousins Justine hadn’t necessarily been her favorite. In early childhood Zoë had been intimidated by Justine, who was a year younger but infinitely more daring and confident.

One of the things Zoë and Justine had in common was that they were only children being raised by single parents … Justine was being raised by her mother, and Zoë by a father.

“Did your daddy run away from home?” Zoë had asked Justine.

“No, silly. Parents don’t run away from home.”

“My mother did,” Zoë had said, glad to finally have some bit of superior knowledge over her cousin. “I don’t even remember her. My daddy says she left one day after dropping me off and never came back.”

“Maybe she got lost,” Justine had suggested.

“No, she left a good-bye letter. Where did your daddy go?”

“He’s in heaven. He’s an angel and he has big silver wings.”

“My grandmother doesn’t think angels have wings.”

“Of course they do,” Justine had said impatiently. “They have to have wings or they’d fall out of the sky. There’s no floor up there.”

In third grade, Zoë’s father had moved her to Everett, where her grandmother lived, and it had been years before she had seen Justine again. They had stayed loosely in touch by exchanging birthday and holiday cards. After graduating from culinary school, Zoë had married Chris Kelly, her best friend since high school. At that point, Zoë was busy with her job as a sous-chef at a Seattle resturant, and Justine was trying to make a success of Artist’s Point, and they had completely lost touch. Approximately a year later, however, when Zoë and Chris had filed for divorce, Justine had been an unexpected source of comfort and support, and had offered her the chance to make a new start in Friday Harbor. Tempting as the prospect was, Zoë had been more than a little apprehensive about the idea of working with her headstrong cousin. Thankfully the arrangement had worked out beautifully, playing to each of their strengths. They argued rarely, and when they did, Zoë’s quiet stubbornness usually won out over Justine’s bluster.

Artist’s Point was just a two-minute walk away from downtown Friday Harbor and the ferry landing. A previous owner had converted an old hilltop mansion into a bed-and-breakfast, but the business had never taken off, and eventually Justine had been able to buy it at a rock-bottom price. She had renamed and redecorated the inn. Each of the twelve rooms in the main house had been turned into a homage to a different artist. The Van Gogh room was painted with rich colors and furnished in a French provincial style with a sunflower bedspread. The Jackson Pollock room was decorated with modern furniture and prints of drip paintings, and over the bathtub, Justine had hung a clear plastic shower curtain that she had covered with splatters of acrylic paint.

Justine and Zoë shared a two-bedroom cottage in the back of the main building, a scant seven hundred square feet with one bathroom and a cupboard kitchen. The arrangement worked because they spent most of their time in the bed-and-breakfast, with its spacious kitchen and common areas. To Justine’s chagrin, Zoë had brought a companion to live with them: her white Persian, Byron. Admittedly, Byron was a little spoiled, but he was an affectionate and well-mannered cat. His only flaw was that he didn’t like men—they seemed to make him nervous. Zoë understood exactly how he felt.

In the past couple of years, the bed-and-breakfast had become popular with both tourists and locals. Justine and Zoë held monthly events including cooking classes and a “silent reading” party, and they also hosted weddings and receptions. The event that would take place tomorrow, on Saturday, was what Justine privately referred to as the wedding-from-hell, in which the bride’s mother was an even bigger bridezilla than the bride. “And then you’ve got a whole collection of bridesmaidzillas, and the groomzilla and the dadzilla,” Justine had complained. “This is the most dysfunctional wedding I’ve ever seen. I think they should invite a psychiatrist to the rehearsal dinner tonight, and turn it into one big group therapy session.”