The Gravedigger's Brawl (23 page)

“Like burning down the house?” Wyatt asked, smiling gently.

“Sometimes, Dr. Case, that's all you can do,” Gwynn said, and again it was difficult to tell if she was joking. “Blessed be,” she said with a bow of her head, and she and her three companions gathered the bags they had brought and departed.

Ash rubbed his hand over his face. “That was weird. This is weird.”

“You're weird,” Noah said.

“Stop,” Caleb said before the discussion could degenerate further. “What now?”

Wyatt shrugged, and no one attempted to answer for a long time. The wind picked up and pushed leaves and bits of paper around their feet. The ash along the doorway began to scatter. Wyatt looked up at the house, for the first time feeling uneasy about the whole business. It felt so anticlimactic.

“I guess . . . we wait?” Ryan finally said.

Wyatt met Ash's eyes, seeing the same uncertainty there. They all seemed to feel as if something still hung over them, waiting to be untethered and fall.

“Great.” Caleb grunted as he stood. “I'm going home to get laid.”

Noah raised his hand like a child in school and pushed himself out of his chair to follow. “That's me.”

Ash smacked his forehead and Ryan groaned. He offered his hand to Delilah, and just like that, the group dispersed, leaving Wyatt and Ash sitting there alone.

Wyatt reached out to take his hand. “Feel better?”

“No.”

Wyatt snorted. “Hey. How would you like a private tour of the Virginia Historical Society?”

Ash smiled gamely and raised a sardonic eyebrow. “You think a creepy old deserted museum will make me feel less haunted?”

Wyatt winced. “Not when you put it that way.”

The wind picked up again, plucking at Wyatt's pants legs and ruffling his hair.

Ash squeezed his hand and gave him a more genuine smile. “If you're the one giving it, Dr. Case, I'd love a creepy tour.”

The museum was dark and quiet, heavy with the sense of time and history that inundated every corner and crevice of the buildings. Wyatt loved the museum at night. He loved the fluttering feeling in his belly that came from knowing he was the only one there, that he had the entire sprawling sanctuary to himself.

Only this time it was ten times better, because he wasn't alone.

Ash looked around in the dim illumination that came from the few lights still on. “I have to tell you, Wyatt, this is one of the more impressive dates I've ever been on.”

Wyatt grinned and wrapped an arm around him. “I've never brought anyone here like this.”

A fond smile curled Ash's lips. “You can be quite charming, you know that?”

Wyatt turned to face him, letting his hands settle on Ash's hips. “Thank you. I didn't deserve a second chance, but you gave it to me anyway. I promise you won't regret it.”

Ash smiled, eyes warming, biting his lip as he stepped closer. “I don't regret it yet.” He kissed Wyatt briefly, then gave him a tap on the chest. “Okay, show me the creepy parts so we can go find your office and do unseemly things that will make it smell like sex.”

Wyatt burst out laughing even as his body responded to the suggestion. “Come on.”

He led Ash toward the hall where the new exhibit had been set up, holding his hand and letting his fingers play over Ash's. Ash had surprisingly strong, callused hands. But then, Wyatt assumed he had to, considering some of the things he'd seen Ash do with a flair bottle.

Wyatt skimmed over most of the exhibits, realizing that the displays were inordinately creepy at night while the museum sat in otherworldly silence. Ash seemed grateful to be able to hurry past most of them.

Wyatt stopped him at his favorite display, though, turning to Ash with a proud smile. “This was all your idea.”

Ash looked over the case, taking in the various and sundry tools of the ghostbusting trade. Just as Ash had suggested to him, Wyatt had implemented a display that went over the ways to rid a house of ghosts and to repel spirits, both good and bad.

There were smudge sticks and a plaque describing what they were and how to use them. There was a vial of salt and another plaque that outlined why it was effective: supposedly, a ghost couldn't cross a line of salt. There was a clove of garlic, a jagged spike of pure iron, a large door painted red, sticks of incense, and a bowl of holy water on a shelf.

Ash looked over all of it, nodding and sighing heavily. “Where's the white mind bubble?”

Wyatt laughed and slid an arm around his shoulders. “I'll have to add one.” He turned his head to nudge his nose against Ash's cheek. “Are you okay?”

“I'm not sure. I'm uneasy. I feel like nothing's settled yet.” He met Wyatt's gaze, his eyes weary and imploring. “Will you take me home with you?”

“Of course.”

“I'm sorry, Wyatt, I thought I'd be okay. But it really is freaking creepy in here. Makes me feel like there's someone looking over my shoulder.”

Wyatt laughed and nodded as he turned Ash toward the exit and started walking. “It is. It's better during the day.”

“I'd like to come back and see it. I know how much work you put into this.”

“We'll do that. But for tonight . . .”

“Tonight, I'll let you take me home and do peculiar museum-type things to me.”

Wyatt laughed, and the happy sound echoed through the lofty halls, reverberating back to them as a more sinister noise. Wyatt waved to the poster of Thurston he had hung near the entrance to the hall as they passed it, and they headed out of the museum into the chilly October night.

“I'm closing down the bar for the week.”

Ash looked to Ryan before turning his attention back to Caleb, who stood behind the bar with boxes of liquor and other supplies.

“Why?” Delilah asked.

All three of them were sitting on barstools, looking at Caleb with their mouths hanging open. It was the third week of October. They were through Oktoberfest, but they still had Halloween. The Gravedigger's Brawl. Even the World Series. It was the month that paid a year's wages.

“Well for one, Ash is fucking losing his mind.”

“I am offended by that statement,” Ash said. He could still smell the sage from yesterday's cleansing.

“I don't bloody care. And you're high, you can't flair anyway.”

“Can't, my ass.”

“Ash is losing his mind, the fucking appliances are breaking down one by one—even the new ones—and has anyone noticed that the electricity has been doing odd things?”

Delilah shook her head and Ryan grunted a negative.

Caleb walked over to the electrical box hidden behind a wooden panel at the end of the bar. He opened it and flicked one of the switches. Sparks flew out of it and Ash jumped as he watched them sputter through the air.

“That can't be safe,” Ryan said, standing to peer down at the floor where the sparks had arced and landed.

“Really?” Caleb said. “You think? You think that's not safe?”

“So what do you want to do?”

Caleb ran his hand up along his neck, wincing. “We'll close for a week, rip the place to shreds, and redo all the wiring.”

“Are you serious?” Ash said before he could stop himself.

“It's a better option than having the place go up in flames.”

“You really think faulty wiring is doing all this?” Delilah asked.

“All what, Lilah? Making Ash lose his fucking mind?”

“Again,” Ash said, “I am offended by that.”

“A week won't hurt us. You two will be gone three days as it is to that Flair Vegas competition, so it's not much longer.”

“Caleb, we're right in the middle of our biggest month of the year,” Ryan said as he drew circles on the bar with his finger.

Caleb growled under his breath.

Ash cleared his throat. “Look, let's get through October, close it down after the Brawl, and do everything you want to do during November. We'll be back up and running by Thanksgiving and cash in on all the family drinking angst.”

Caleb snorted and pursed his lips, looking between the three of them.

“Please, Caleb,” Delilah finally said, batting her purple false eyelashes.

Caleb rolled his eyes and slammed the electrical panel shut. “Fine. But if I hear one more word about ghosts, electrical fires, or watered down beer, I'm burying all three of you in the basement too.”

Ash pressed his lips together and nodded. Above them, a rumbling noise started in the attic. They all looked up with the sense of impending doom that had hung over their heads for the last few weeks, and Ash half expected to see a string of ghosts doing the rumba on the ceiling.

The rumbling became a growl, and the cord of lights hanging from the ceiling began to vibrate.

“Okay,” Ryan said, sounding defeated. “I am not going up there this time.”

“What the hell is that?” Delilah asked. Her hand landed on Ash's forearm.

A dark stain began to spread on the ceiling, barely discernible from the shadows and ambient light of the room, but Ash could see it getting bigger as they stared. To his horror, a drip of blood red liquid formed out of the center of the stain, and it took its sweet time as it bulged out of the ceiling and finally plunged to the floor. When it spattered on the worn hardwood, it was the color of a bruised tomato.

“Oh my God,” Delilah whispered. Her fingers dug into Ash's arm.

“Good call on closing the bar,” Ryan told Caleb as another drop joined the first. “I'm down with that.”

Ash nodded as he watched, almost numb to the spectacle. The pool spread until it was a literal stream from the ceiling.

“I'll write up an announcement,” Caleb said.

“I have to tell you, Dr. Case, I wasn't sure you would be able to pull this off,” Emelda said as she and Wyatt stood at the entrance to what the interns had been calling the Haunted Hall.

“I'm still not sure we have.” Wyatt glanced around uneasily. The exhibit was done, and it looked good on the surface. Things like this should take months of preparation, and Wyatt wouldn't exactly say he was proud of what had been done here. But there were droves of people here on a weekday for the invite-only preview, and they weren't just filling up the Haunted Hall, but filtering out into the rest of the museum. That alone made the hit to his professional integrity worth it.

They had yet to discern whether the exhibit was enough of a success to save Wyatt's job, but it was out of his hands now.

Emelda put a hand on his shoulder. “I can tell there's somewhere else you'd rather be.”

Wyatt turned to look at her, surprised by the words and wondering if they were true. It seemed like his entire life had been about the museum for so long, he'd never wanted to be anywhere else. But now, his thoughts drifted more and more often, ambling down the road to the tavern and to Ash. They had spent last night and the night before tangled together in Wyatt's bed, their first night together in which neither of them had to get up and go right after sex. Waking up to find Ash next to him, all warm and sleepy and oddly sweet, had been enough to whet Wyatt's appetite for a lifetime of more.