Free Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) by Krista D Ball

me socks.”
    Jeremy tossed me a pair and I tossed them back. “I don’t like those.”
    “They’re socks.”
    “I don’t like them. Give me the purple ones. No, the other purple ones. No, not those. The purple ones. No, those are lilac. Purple.” Eventually, Jeremy figured out which socks I wanted and handed them over. “All right, I’m ready. Now what?”
    “Grab that suitcase, young lady,” he said.
    I dragged my travel bag down the stairs and out into the car. “I need to stop by Amy’s house before we take off. Is that okay?”
    “Sure, but it’s awfully early, isn’t it?”
    “I just wanted to check on Mrs. Saunders’s bleeding hearts.”
    Jeremy drove, all the while refusing to tell me where we were going. He didn’t even give me a hint. There had better not be tents, or anything remotely resembling a tent. For the record, trailers, campers, and anything hauled and/or on wheels are also tents.
    We pulled up to Amy’s house. It was still dark out, so Jeremy parked on the road. The headlights beamed over the yard, but not into the house, where it could have woken everyone. I checked the bleeding heart plants. I couldn’t see wards and spells the way Dema saw them, but I didn’t want to call her forth while Jeremy was sitting in the freaking car watching.
    He poked his head out of the car and said, “Rach, come on! We’re going to be late.”
    “It’s not even seven o’clock!” I complained, but I reluctantly stood up. Ow. Everything hurt. Ow. What was the point of all this running if I couldn’t dig a few ditches?
    Next time? I’m hiring Manny.
    I can’t see wards and workings, so I needed to ask Dema’s help. There weren’t any spirits in Amy’s front yard, which was a good thing. There were several quasi-forms hanging around the roadside, though. Were they being curious, or had the ward attracted them? Something tugged at me that I’d messed up the ward, but I was too tired to tell for certain. I didn’t have the time to fix it.
    Well, I’d deal with it when I came back. If I was lucky, the other would recognize my work and most would show me common courtesy. Um, could spirits and ghosts have common courtesy? Could they have common sense? I’ll need to ask Dema that.
    Where was Dema anyway? She hadn’t shown up last night, which was no surprise since Jeremy had spent a good half an hour massaging my stiffening muscles before I passed out. She is under strict orders not to wake me, nor to manifest, spook, haunt, make sounds, or be in any way around when Jeremy and I were together in any sense of the word “together.”
    We detoured into St. Anthony for a Tim Hortons. Me a French Vanilla cappuccino. Him, an extra-large quad-quad.
    “How can you drink that much sugar in your coffee?”
    He took a giant slurp before stuffing the cup in the holder. “You can’t have a double-double in an extra-large. This is double the size of a medium, so quad-quad. That’s just common sense.”
    I scoffed. “That’s going to kill you one day.”
    “At least I’ll die happy and caffeinated.” He grinned at me. “And very, very sweet.”
    I made a disgusted noise.
    We did some idle chit-chat about this or that. Mitchel’s store was being renovated. The Andersons’ chip van had a sign that they were closing in a week’s time for the winter.
    It wasn’t until we turned off the main highway that I realized where we were going. “Jeremy! Are we going to the lighthouse?”
    He grinned. “Sort of. The lighthouse is closed for the season now, but I sweet talked my way into getting us the keys to the honeymoon suite cabin on the island for three nights.”
    An unnatural sound escaped me. Not a squeal, not a scream. A squee . I couldn’t even bother to pretend I was embarrassed because I was too excited.
    Goose Cove Lighthouse was a working lighthouse off the shore, out on its own little island. The actual lighthouse itself was moved to one of the automated ones, but the building and