Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
What? I hadn’t even proposed yet. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her.” Though, it wouldn’t do any good. My mother was beyond pushy. “Thank you. Thank you for being such a perfect woman.”
Suddenly, Zarda had a concerned look in her eyes. “I’m all out of potion. Hopefully you’ll stay asleep until we get more.”
I frowned. “What was that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I heard a man say over my shoulder. “We’ve got at least a few more days before this last batch wears off.”
I turned my head, but there was no one behind me.
“I hope so,” Zarda said, staring past me. “He looks…so peaceful lying there. I’d hate to disturb that. Oh, crap. Look at the time. I need to pick up the kids.”
“See you tomorrow,” the man said.
“What the fuck is happening?” I asked. She was speaking to a man I could hear but not see, and she was talking gibberish.
She turned and started walking down the hill. No goodbye. No acknowledgment of my words.
“Zarda!” I called out.
“All right, Draco,” said the man. “I’ll be back later to read the next page. The nurse will be here at ten to wash you. I also found an excellent new documentary about the history of the cell phone. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
Huh? I blinked and was suddenly alone in a dark, dank room with stone walls. There was a big bookshelf in the corner next to a TV. On the screen was some woman talking about cell phones.
I sat up and looked down. I was lying in a hospital bed, tubes sticking from my arms. My chest was bare and pale, and my ribcage was sticking out.
My heart slammed inside my chest, panic taking over. “What the fuck?” What was happening? Had I been in an accident? A coma?
I touched my face, feeling a long bristly beard growing from my chin and jaw. I’d never had a beard. Whose face was this? Where was I?
CHAPTER THREE
Piper
“Thank you, Maurice!” I gave him a big hug, clutching the keys to Leo’s and my future in my hand. “Sorry again about Leo not being here.” He’d had to go to some last-minute meeting with a client. Poor guy. His days at work kept getting longer and later. I didn’t know how he was going to add more to his plate.
I guess that’s what weekends are for. Plus, I only held class four days a week. Plenty of time to work on the house.
“My pleasure,” said Maurice. “Are you sure you don’t want company until Leo gets here?”
Why? We’d already done the inspection and walkthrough. It wasn’t as if the home was unsafe, though I couldn’t claim that the place didn’t have vibes. It had oh so many of them. But I wouldn’t have sunk my life’s savings into this property if I had doubts.
“I’ve got tons of measurements to take, and honestly, Maurice, you’ve already gone above and beyond. We couldn’t have done this without you.” We’d scored the property for half the appraisal. Meaning we still had a huge mortgage, but with the money we would set aside each month from our salaries, we could squeak by and complete the renovations. The only difference from our original plan was that we’d have to do the cosmetic work ourselves—landscaping, painting, changing out fixtures, and even tiling.
I kind of loved it. It meant that the home would have more of us in it. More memories. More pride of ownership.
Maurice stared for a long moment, and I could guess what he was thinking: we were crazy to buy this money pit.
He leaned in and whispered, “Piper, you can still back out. You have a few hours until the sale’s recorded.”
“Why would I do that?” I scoffed.
“I had a friend come by here yesterday. His specialty is cleaning. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“You cleaned our new house?” How generous. But also, a waste of money. We were about to start demolition on the kitchen.
“Not the type of cleaning with a mop.”
It took me a second to catch his drift. “Oh… You mean spiritual, like with sage and stuff.” Who the hell believed in that? Not me. But Maurice was from a small town in Mexico originally. He believed that houses had souls—something he’d mentioned more than once while we were checking out properties.
From the first moment we stepped foot on this lot, I could tell he didn’t like the house. He’d said the ground was ice cold, like it repelled life. I hadn’t noticed anything, but after my little incident when I’d hit my head, Maurice kept trying to talk us out of buying it.
“Well,” I offered a sincere smile, “that was really nice of you, but I don’t believe in that—”
“My friend said he was about to come inside, and then he blacked out and woke up in his car down the hill.”