Page 10 of Dead to Rites

“Let me make you some tea,” Celeste went on, now heading back to the kitchen. “That’s supposed to help, right? There’s got to be some in the pantry.”

“I think so,” I said faintly. “Let me come look.”

“You should really be sitting down — ” she called to me.

“I can sit down at the kitchen table while you make the tea,” I offered.

That seemed to mollify her, because I heard a distant “okay” from the direction of the kitchen. I pushed myself up from the couch and headed toward the back of the house, where she’d already produced a box of Lemon Zinger and was filling the kettle using the pot filler over the stove. Her current expression of glee told me how much she appreciated that pot filler.

As I sat there, Chauncey at my feet, she bustled around, putting away groceries, chatting about shops she’d seen while she was driving around and how we needed to go out and explore after I was feeling rested up and ready for an excursion.

Hazel appeared to have followed me, because she stood in the doorway, watching the scene with some amusement. Celeste still gave no indication that she knew my dead great-aunt was observing us, so it seemed that I really was the only one who could see Hazel.

What I was supposed to do about that, I had no idea.

Chapter 3

That’s the Spirit

My suspicions had been right — I’d crashed that night almost as soon as I pulled the covers up to my chin — but I woke up earlier than I would have liked. The world outside was gray and fuzzy the way it was right before dawn, and part of me wanted to roll over and will myself into another hour or two of sleep.

But no matter how much I tossed and turned, my body seemed to think it had gotten enough rest, and somewhere around six, I pushed back the covers, slid out of bed, and went over to the closet.

Since the bee had been accommodating enough to sting me after I’d unpacked my things, I was able to pull a robe off the hook by the closet’s door and slide my feet into a pair of slippers. The big house felt chilly to me, and I knew I’d have to figure out the heating system sooner rather than later. I hadn’t noticed any radiators — contraptions I only recognized from home improvement shows, since they definitely weren’t a thing in Scottsdale — so I guessed the place had been converted to a more modern central HVAC system sometime over the years.

But first things first. A quick check of my phone told me that the prescription for the EpiPen was ready and that I could pick it up at CVS later that day. I didn’t have any other messages of any real import, so I left the phone on the nightstand and headed out.

The door to the room where Celeste was sleeping had been left open a few inches, so I could see that she was still dead to the world, face down in a pillow, the way she always slept. I had no idea how she didn’t suffocate herself in the middle of the night, but she claimed she liked that position.

Anyway, I knew it would take a bomb going off to wake her before her body decided it was time to get up, so I didn’t have to worry about the one creaking step somewhere around the middle of the stairs or the sound of Chauncey’s toenails clicking on the wood floors. He’d spent all night at the foot of my bed — I’d had to help him up when he looked up at me and whined, since his little legs were too short to propel him all the way up there — and he’d been a very good dog, not restless and not trying to snuffle his way under the covers the way I’d worried he might. I was already attached to the little guy, but that didn’t mean I wanted him under the sheets right next to me.

When I got to the kitchen, Hazel was there, gazing out the window at the garden, which was just beginning to glow with the first light of dawn.

Chauncey immediately went over to his water bowl and started slurping away, and Hazel gave an approving nod.

“He likes his water changed twice a day.”

“I know,” I said. “Doreen told me.”

That comment earned me a smile. “Yes, she’s taken good care of Chauncey these past few weeks. And of you, it seems.”

I thought about Doreen’s joke that Hazel would haunt her if she allowed anything to happen to me. That remark had been more prescient than she knew.

“You should make some coffee,” Hazel went on. “We need to talk.”

She’d already made that ominous reference the day before about needing to talk more, so I wasn’t entirely surprised by this command.

And yes, I definitely needed some coffee. Celeste and I had only shared one bottle of Chianti the night before, so it wasn’t as if we’d gone crazy. Still, I had a feeling Dr. Emerson might have had a few choice words about me drinking even a single glass of wine after what I’d gone through with that bee sting.

Then again, some wine was exactly what I’d needed. We’d drunk the Chianti and eaten her amazing pasta carbonara and some salad so we could pretend we were being remotely healthy, and then we’d both gone to bed much earlier than we normally would have.

I’d almost forgotten that the ghost of my great-aunt was wandering around the house.

But not quite.

Coffee was one thing I took very seriously, so I was glad to see that Hazel had bags of the whole-bean stuff in the pantry, along with a grinder. I ground enough French roast that there would be some left over for Celeste whenever she made her way downstairs, and got a pot going.

During all this, Hazel waited quietly. It was still weirder than weird to see her looking just like herself, not floating a few feet off the floor or being translucent or any of the other oddities you might expect to see from a ghost. She looked the way I remembered her from my childhood, actually, maybe in her mid-sixties, still hale and hearty and nowhere close to frail.