I was finally starting to breathe again after almost being murdered.
The lights were low, the couch was warm, and Kade—husband, detective, bringer of calm—was stretched out beside me with one arm slung over my shoulders. Bandit was curled in a tight ball on my lap, twitching, murmuring something that sounded like “marshmallow army.” Thor lay draped across the back of the couch, shifting with a disgruntled huff. For once, everyone was quiet.
Which was wild, considering I’d been nearly strangled to death not that long ago.
But here we were. Still standing. Still breathing. Still…
A ghost walked through the living room.
Not Ben.
Seb.
I sat bolt upright, sending Bandit tumbling to the floor with a squawk and a flurry of fur and cereal crumbs. “Mom! I was sleeping!” she wailed.
“Sorry, sweetie. Emergency. Maybe. Probably not. Definitely maybe.”
Thor opened one eye. “If it’s an emergency that involves feeding me, I’m all in. If not, kindly pipe down.”
My heart did something unpleasant in my chest—stuttered, twisted, forgot how to beat. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.
Because if I were seeing Seb? He was dead.
“Nope,” I whispered. “Nope, nope, nope.”
Seb didn’t so much as glance my way. Rude. Instead, he calmly, brazenly walked across the room and through the far wall, a plush rabbit dangling from his fingers.
Kade stirred beside me. “You okay?”
I could barely hear him over the roaring in my ears. “I saw Seb.”
Kade blinked, still half-asleep. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I just saw his ghost,” I snapped. “Right here. In our living room. He’s dead. Oh God, Kade, he’s—he’s dead.”
Kade was on his feet in an instant, all traces of sleep gone. “Wait—slow down—”
“I can’t lose another friend.” My voice cracked as I sped down the hallway and yanked open the front door. “Not again.” And then I ran. Barefoot. Bruised. Panicked. Because I’d already found one dead friend. And once in a lifetime was more than enough.
I sprinted across Seb’s front lawn like a woman possessed—which, given the current circumstances, wasn’t far off. Kade was hot on my heels, yelling for me to slow down, Bandit galloping along behind, muttering, “Seb lets me raid his recycling and never tells! He’s a good neighbor!”
Thor brought up the rear at a dignified stroll. “If this ends in another corpse, I’m going to need emotional compensation. In pâté.”
I didn’t stop. I didn’t knock. I didn’t think. I burst in, throwing Seb’s door wide open—unlocked because, of course, it was—bracing myself for carnage. For blood. For anything but—
“Hi!” Seb called from the couch, not even looking up. “How goes the investigation? Figured out who killed Sandra yet?”
I stopped so fast Kade collided with me, his hands clamping on my shoulders to steady us both as I staggered forward a step. Seb was alive! Very much alive. Feet propped on the coffee table. Laptop on his thighs. A mug of tea resting on the arm of the couch. He was still in the same outfit from earlier—pink linen shirt sleeves now casually rolled, dark jeans slightly wrinkled, and his loafers kicked off by the door. Stylish, comfortable, and irritatingly well-rested.
He glanced up casually, then his eyes narrowed. “Audrey?” He set the laptop aside and stood. “What the hell happened to your neck?”
“I—I thought you were dead,” I croaked.
Bandit barreled in behind me and threw herself at Seb’s legs. “You’re alive! Oh, thank goodness. I like you too much for you to be dead. Plus, your trash is chef’s kiss.”
Seb didn’t blink at the raccoon chittering at him and clinging to his leg, bless him. Instead, he looked at Kade over my shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Kinda irritating that he was asking Kade and not me—what, because he’s the man? Or was it the whole detective thing? Probably had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the fact that I came bursting into his house like a madwoman. Still. Rude.
“You fill him in,” I waved to Kade. “I have a rabbit to find.” I started yanking the couch cushions off one by one, peering underneath before tossing them aside with absolutely no regard for Seb’s carefully curated throw pillow aesthetic.
Seb’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “A rabbit?”
“Not a live one,” I assured him. “A soft toy.” Because ghost Seb had been holding it, it had to mean something, didn’t it? The living room was a bust. I spun on my heel and headed for the kitchen, opening cupboards willy-nilly.
“Is she okay?” I heard Seb ask behind me.
“Possibly a lack of oxygen to the brain,” Kade responded. “But to answer your earlier question, yes, we caught Sandra’s killer. It was Samantha Craig, and she nearly made Audrey her next victim.”
“Oh, my GOD!” Seb shrieked, his voice jumping ten octaves. “Sit, sit, sit. Tell me everything!”
The kitchen was a bust. No plush rabbit. There was only one place it could be. His bedroom. Hurrying down the hallway, I pushed open his bedroom door and scanned the bed, the bedside table, the dressing table, before dropping to my knees beside the bed, my heart still hammering at an unnatural speed—was I having a heart attack? Was that bringing on what had to be a hallucination? Because Seb wasn’t dead, why then did I see his ghost in my living room?
Leaning down, I peered under the bed, expecting—what? A cute plush bunny staring back at me. No such luck. Instead, I found a few dust bunnies and a missing sock.
“You know,” said a voice from behind me, dry as ever, “for someone who regularly tells people not to panic, you’re having a full-scale freak-out in the man’s under-bed region.”
I jumped, banging my head on the bed frame. “Ben!”
He stood with arms crossed and one eyebrow raised. “What in the actual hell are you doing?”
I dropped my voice to a whisper-shout. “I saw Seb’s ghost. Just now. In our living room. Holding a plush rabbit. But—get this—he’s not dead.”
“Riiiiiight. And you’re looking under his bed because?”
“Because ghost Seb was holding a plush rabbit.” I sank back on my heels. “Oh, God, Ben. I think I’m losing my mind.”
Ben paused, blinked, then said, “Okay, but have you checked his closet?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Would I dare?” he grinned.
I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. “I saw him, Ben. He was a ghost. That’s not supposed to happen unless they’re—”
“Dead, yes, I know the rules,” Ben said, his voice gentler now. “Which is why this is very weird. Even for us.”
Very weird didn’t begin to cover it. Ben stayed quiet for a beat, which in itself was weird. He didn’t even make a snarky comment about dust bunnies or my tragic state of mental decline. Eventually, he said, “You should go back out there. Pretending you’re not rattled won’t convince anyone you’re fine. You look like someone who just licked a live wire.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
He offered me a sympathetic smile. “I’ll poke around while you’re gone. Maybe your rabbit’s playing hard to get.”
Back in the living room, Seb and Kade were still discussing Samantha’s attack.
“So she tased her?”
Kade nodded. “After head-butting her.” There was a tinge of what I hoped was pride in his voice.
“I’d expect nothing less,” Seb grinned, then spotted me hovering and gestured toward the couch. “Sit. You look like you’re going to fall over.”
I sat, more because my knees were wobbly than because I was ready to admit he had a point. Bandit hopped up beside me, peering at my face. “You okay, Mom? You look like you do when you decide to bake.”
I snorted, smoothing my hands over my thighs. “I don’t know. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe that headbutt did more damage than I thought, or…”
“I think tea is in order,” Seb declared, heading for the kitchen.
“I’d prefer coffee,” I called after him.
“I’d prefer you didn’t have any more caffeine,” he shot back. “Perhaps something milder? A herbal tea to soothe the nerves.”
“I do not want tea that tastes like grass,” I grumbled.
“Trust me.”
Kade moved from the armchair where he’d been sitting to the couch beside me. “You may not have passed out today, but you did take quite a knock. You’ve been through a lot. What you saw… maybe it wasn’t what you thought.”
“I know what I saw,” I whispered. “It was Seb. He walked right through our living room. Clear as day. And he was holding a toy rabbit.”
Kade gave me a slight nod. Not exactly in agreement, but trust. “Okay. So then we figure it out.”
Seb reappeared with a steaming mug of tea and one of those fancy oat milk chocolate biscuits he liked. “Here. Drink this and eat something with antioxidants.”
Reaching up, I accepted the tea and gave it a tentative sniff. It didn’t smell like cut grass, which was promising, but rather than take a sip, I set it on the coffee table in front of me. Seb immediately lifted it and slid a coaster underneath. “What kind of rabbit are we talking?”
Pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes, I said, “Floppy. Pink. With long ears.”
“Luxurious? Designer? Because if I’m going to have a plush rabbit, it’d better be good.”
I snorted. “Actually… no. This rabbit looked like a dime-store toy. About the size of a football. A little bit dirty, like it’d been dropped on the ground a time or two.”
Seb shot me a look that reeked of reproach. “Audrey Fitzgerald, do you even think for one second that I would bring home a filthy stuffed rabbit? Nuh-uh, I don’t think so.”
“That’s why it’s so weird,” I whispered, leaning forward to take a sip of my tea, almost spitting it out when the unmistakable flavor of rose petals hit my tongue. “Gah! What is this?”
“I told you. Herbal tea. Chamomile with rose, to be precise.”
“This tastes like I just put an entire flower garden in my mouth.”
“Oh my God, you are so uncouth,” Seb flopped back into his seat. “If it’s not coffee, you’re not interested.”
“Damn straight.”
Seb shook his head with a sigh and reached out to relieve me of my cup of herbal tea. “Fine, I’ll drink it. My nerves could use a bit of calming.”
“Sorry.” And I was. How must I look, dashing in here all crazy-eyed, expecting to find his lifeless body on the floor, then turning his house upside down looking for a toy rabbit? Crazy didn’t even begin to cover it.
Seb turned, pointing toward the hallway. “There’s a coat closet by the front door. Feel free to search it if that’ll help you sleep tonight. But I swear on my subscription to Architectural Digest, I do not own a pink stuffed rabbit—dirty or not.”
Bandit hopped off the couch with an enthusiastic, “I’ll help, Mom!” and promptly knocked over a stack of magazines on her way out.
I got up more slowly this time because if I moved too fast, my brain might just leak out of my ears. I opened the coat closet. No rabbit. Coats, umbrellas, reusable shopping bags—it was all distressingly normal. When I returned to the couch, Seb watched me with an expression that wasn’t smugness or snark. More like… concern. Which was somehow worse.
“I swear I saw it. You,” I said softly.
“I believe you,” Kade said, at the same time Seb said, “Maybe it was a dream?”
We both turned to Seb, and he held up his hands. “Hey, I’m just saying, if someone tried to murder me, I might be a little twitchy too.”
Ben reappeared then, standing in the doorway with a thoughtful look on his face.
“Well?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No rabbit. But this isn’t nothing. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s not nothing.”
And somehow, that helped. Not much. But enough.
Kade gave my knee a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s go home. I’ll order pizza, and we can have an early night.”
