I blink at him. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah. A hundred grand. I’ll write you a check right now.”
He starts reaching into his coat and the movement snaps me out of my daze.
“Hold on, wait a minute,” I say, raising my hands, trying to think.
Is he fucking serious?
A hundred grand?
Just to attempt to talk to his dead wife?
I hate the way my heart is beating fast at the thought of a hundred thousand dollars and how many fucking problems that would solve for us.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says quickly. “That it’s a lot of money.”
“Fucking hell it’s a shitton of money. How would you even—”
“I have money,” he says quickly. “Don’t worry about that. It’s legitimate. It’s worth it to me.”
I shake my head, knowing there’s a catch.
“Let me get this straight, before my mind starts running away on me. You want to give me and my wife one hundred thousand dollars to go into your old house and talk to your dead wife? What if we can’t make contact? What if nothing happens?”
“Then you keep the money,” he says gravely. “It will be worth it just to see you try.”
Worth it? There’s no way I could keep the money if we were unsuccessful. I mean, I’m no saint, of course I would be tempted, but I’m pretty sure Perry would refuse. Hell, she might refuse this idea at any rate.
“I’m going to have to think about it,” I say after a moment.
“You think about it,” he says. “But it’s Halloween in a couple of days and I’ve been doing my research. I think that’s when you should do it. That’s when it’s easier to communicate with spirits, where the Veil is thin. The witches call it Samhain.”
“Uh huh,” I say carefully, running my hand over the stubble on my chin. I’m not exactly how true that is since the two of us have tussled with the dead and undead on ordinary Tuesdays. Plus, we already have plans on Halloween. “I’ll see what Perry says.”
“Please do,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and hands me his business card.
Harry Cox.
Accountant.
“I knew it,” I mutter under my breath. The guy has numbers dweeb written all over him.
“Not for a band. Just an ordinary accountant, I’m afraid.”
“An ordinary accountant with a hundred grand to spare?” I raise my brow.
He gives me a curt nod, quickly ties his coat shut over his rotund belly, and then says, “I really hope I’ll be hearing from you, Mr. Foray.”
And then he turns around and disappears down Cedar Street past the 5 Point Café. I watch him for a moment, then almost head back to the apartment until I remember the pizza and the fact that Perry would kill me if I didn’t come back with our dinner. I don’t think any amount of money would suffice her hanger.
I grab the pizza from Zeek’s, and then head back down the street, walking alongside the monorail and back to our building
When I walk inside our apartment, Perry’s leaning against the island in the kitchen, her dark hair flowing around her face, blue eyes wild with hunger.
“What took you so long?” she asks, practically ripping the pizza box out of my hands.
“I ran into someone,” I tell her, grabbing the plates from the cupboard and placing them on the counter.
“Uh huh,” she says, shoving a pizza slice in her mouth. Her eyes fall close with pleasure as she chews, which makes me smile. She has a strained relationship with food sometimes, so to see her enjoy it so hedonistically is a relief.
Okay, it’s also a bit of a turn-on.
“Aren’t you curious who?” I ask, pulling a slice toward me and sitting down on the stool. “Or whom.” That fucker.
She finishes chewing, swallows, and looks at me with her full attention. “Yes.”
“Harry Cox.” I can’t help but snicker as I say it.
Perry, however, isn’t smiling. “What?”
“I take it you’ve heard of him? Least that’s what he told me.”
She frowns. “How did he find you?”
“Our address is on the website. Is there a reason you didn’t tell me about him?”
She sighs heavily and looks away, worry on her brow. “Because the man is a joke.”
“Is he now? What makes you say that?”
She gives me a sharp look. “If you met him, I’m sure he told you what he’s been emailing and calling me about.”
“Emailing and calling us. This is an us, kiddo. We’re a team here. You should have told me. You know nothing good comes from keeping secrets.” I pause, biting my lip. “It’s not exactly fair that you can access my mind anytime you want but I’m often shut out of yours.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”
Yeah, yeah. She says that all the time. It’s her go-to excuse, but I know that since she has the ability to read minds at will (not everyone’s mind, and not always very clearly), it’s made our marriage a little one-sided at times.
“Anyway,” she continues, “you can pick up on feelings and energies. It’s pretty much the same.”
“It is very much not the same. If I meet someone and they’re giving off the vibes that they’re afraid of me, the buck stops there. I don’t know why they’re afraid of me. I just know that they are. But you do.”
“It’s because you’re a weirdo,” she says with a smirk.
“I’m not asking you why they’re afraid of me. Anyway, point being…you’re the fucking weirdo here.”
She laughs and then grows serious, her gaze sharpening. “Back to Mr. Cox.”
“Really? You’re not going to use his full name? Cheap laughs may be cheap, but they count.”
I can tell by her steely gaze she’s not finding me very amusing at the moment, nor the name of Harry Cox.
“What did he want?” she asks.
“For us to go into his old boarded-up haunted house and have a fucking séance with his dead wife.”
She presses her lips together into a thin line. I already know that it’s going to be an uphill battle to even get her to consider this. Hell, I can’t blame her. It was absolutely out of the question until Mr. Dick started waving his check book around.
“And you wondered why I didn’t pass the messages along?” she asks, reaching for another slice of pizza.
“Did he tell you he wants to pay us?”
Her hand freezes in mid-air, her eyes flitting up to mine. “No.”
I grab her hand and hold it, giving it a squeeze. “He wants to pay us a lot of money to do this. I know it sounds fucking ridiculous, the whole being paid a bunch of money to spend a night in a haunted house, but that’s pretty much the deal.”
“How much money is a bunch of money?”
“A hundred grand.”
Her hand goes limp in mine, her mouth gaping. “What?” She takes her hand back, eyes round. “A hundred grand?”
I nod. “That’s what he said.”
“And you believe him?”
“I think so. The man is desperate, Perry.”