“It’s beautiful,” Kieran remarked.
“Black Tourmaline,” Zora told them. “A powerful stone for deflecting paranormal activity and negative energy.”
“Since you guys live in a haunted house,” Marquetta added.
Kieran held the stone to the light, turning it over and over in his fingers. Addy recognized his furrowed expression—he was pondering a weighty question.
“You know,” he said at last, “I’m not sure I want to chase the White Widow away. After all, this was her home before it was ours, and she brought Addy and me together.”
Beneath the table, Addy gave Kieran’s leg a squeeze. She’d had similar thoughts about their resident ghost since moving in. Though shivers always chased over her skin when the pale specter appeared, the widow’s presence held no threat, only the echo of heartache.
“That’s a lovely way to look at it.” Zora folded Kieran’s fingers over the stone. “But it’s not a ghost repellant. Put this stone anywhere you want to transform negative energies into positive.”
“I’ve got just the place.” Kieran chuckled. “Beside Addy’s phone charger. Those knucklehead cousins of hers haven’t given up yet.”
“Amen.” Giggling, Addy placed her phone on the table and set the crystal on top of it. “Begone, evil spirits!”
Surrounded by friends old and new, they spent the rest of the night laughing and chatting and eating too much pie. Everyone showered Snoot with affection and snuck him treats. When the last guest departed and the overstimulated, overstuffed pup collapsed in his bed, Kieran brewed a pot of tea and grabbed woolen blankets from the chest. “Shall we kiss under the moon?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.
Addy smooched his cheek. “Yes, please. A quiet moment with you is my favorite nightcap.”
Out back, they snuggled on the bench and cupped their mugs, watching their plumes of breath twine with the tea’s steam.
Addy leaned onto Kieran’s shoulder, her heart wrapped in his calm, steady affection and her body wrapped in cozy wool.
“Happy, love?” he asked.
“Very. Tonight was wonderful. I feel…” she trailed off, and he waited, silently patient.
“That’s one of the many things I love about you, Keeper. You always give me time to figure it all out.”
His low laugh rumbled against her cheek. “Questions worth asking don’t come with swift, easy answers.”
“Except for one: who I want to spend the rest of my life with.” She set her mug on the bench and cupped his face in both hands. “Thank you, Kieran.”
Eyes glimmering with moonlight, he smiled. “For?”
“For loving me.”
“Ah.” He pulled her legs across his lap. “Likewise, Addy.”
He glided his lips over hers, tender, unhurried, savoring their connection. With a happy sigh, she opened to his velvet tongue—until a familiar tingle raised the hairs on her nape.
Addy gripped Kieran’s arm and broke their kiss on a sharp inhalation. “She’s here.”
The White Widow floated just past the railing, her transparent skirts trailing in the wind, her spyglass raised toward the horizon.
“Mary,” Addy whispered.
In a slow, fluid motion, the spirit lowered her telescope and turned toward them, her eyes bottomless, dark pools. For a long, silent moment, she hovered there, and Addy was filled with an eerie sense of connection to a woman long gone but still present.
Funny, she thought, how time flowed endlessly, out and back like the tides. Love lost and found, anchored to this beautiful place, once Mary’s home, now theirs.
“Thank you,” Addy murmured.
Like fog fading in the sunlight, the ghost evanesced, then vanished.
They never saw her again.
