Free Must Love Ghosts by Jennifer Savalli Page A

“I think he blew a transformer.”
    â€œOh good,” Tia said. “I thought I was imagining fireworks.”
    Dec quirked his lips at her and she whirled on Billy. “What do you mean you were ‘having some fun’? You tried to terrorize my guests!”
    â€œPfff. No one was scared. I must be losing my touch.” He tried to grin again, but his mouth drooped.
    â€œChrist.” Dec shoved a hand through his hair, his breathing still not back to normal, sexual frustration etched in his tight features. Tia’s knees went a little weak. “What’s up with the giant power draw? You didn’t need to knock out electricity on the whole street to manifest.”
    â€œI was distracted,” Billy said defensively.
    Tia narrowed her eyes, remembering Cassandra’s frozen shock when she’d stared at Billy’s photo on the mantel. “Mrs. Jameson recognized you. Spill it, Uncle Billy. What’s going on?”
    Her great-uncle pressed his lips together and suddenly a tiny gold key appeared in his hand. He turned it on his lips then threw it over his shoulder. The key disappeared before it hit the red bricks of her fireplace.
    Tia crossed her arms. “I’ve got all night,” she said as menacingly as she could.
    â€œYou owe her, Billy.” Dec put his arm around her. Despite herself, she burrowed into his warmth.
    The ghost sighed. As he expelled air—or whatever happened when a ghost exhaled—his body rose, still cross-legged, a few inches off the brick hearth. “Of all the haunted houses in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
    â€œSpare me the Bogart,” Dec said. “You told me a million stories last night, but not this one?”
    â€œIt’s personal.” Billy drew himself up, as though giving himself an internal pep talk. “All right. Here goes. Remember I told you I met a girl the night The Maltese Falcon came out? That was her. Cassie.” Apparently interpreting their blank looks correctly, Billy continued. “Cassandra Howard Jameson. We fell in love that night.”
    Tia tried, and failed, to picture a young, lovestruck Cassandra.
    The creases in Dec’s forehead suggested he was struggling with the same image. “I guess she wasn’t always a hundred and five.”
    â€œShe’s ninety-one, ya mook. And show some respect, will ya? She’s had a hard life.” He fell into a brooding kind of silence, apparently reliving some memory or other.
    â€œHard life?” Tia was incredulous. “She married an extremely wealthy man and, by all accounts, they lived happily ever after. Six children, eighteen grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren popping up. She wanted to fund my work—incidentally, a big step in my career that you destroyed—because she believes in the benefits of long-term, stable marriages.”
    Billy’s lower lip edged out. “It broke her heart when I died. She moved on. She loved that husband of hers enough, but it wasn’t like what the two of us had.”
    Tia snorted. “Is that why you’re still here? You think she hasn’t gotten over a broken heart in, what is it? Seventy-something years?”
    â€œNice, Tia. Romantic to the core.” Dec gave her a disgusted look and took a seat next to Billy on the hearth. He slapped him on the back, his hand sinking into Billy’s iridescence and making no sound. “Ignore your grand-niece. She doesn’t believe in love.”
    That was so unfair. “I most certainly do. But I happen to understand that what we call love is only a biochemical response that evolved to ensure the perpetuation of our species.”
    â€œYou can do better than this pill of a woman,” Billy said to Dec. His shoulders sank. “She wouldn’t recognize love if it slapped her on the can.”
    Dec met her gaze and his dark eyes danced in amusement. “I’ll have to try