But the city fit Dana’s personality to a T.
She too was loud and had a lot of concrete walls up around her emotionally. It had taken me twenty years to fully break through them, not that she’d admit anyone had achieved such a thing. I let her live in denial, and she let me live in my own version of reality.
It worked out well for the both of us.
A chunk of my sweet potato facial mask slid down and onto the top of my breasts before plopping into the tub water. The mixture that I’d made myself got lost in a sea of bubbles in the bath. It wasn’t the first glob to fall in, and it surely would not be the last. While I couldn’t see them, I knew there were at least four more globs floating beneath the mountain of bubbles surrounding me. The facial mask was great for the skin and was no cause for concern. I’d made the bubble bath bomb as well, when I’d been out visiting my other bestie—Poppy Proctor.
She, like me, loved to make natural products and avoid unnecessary, often harmful chemicals.
Dana didn’t really care what she used.
Thankfully, she had Poppy and me around to keep her from putting toxins all over her face.
Various candles were set about the bathroom, giving it a soft glow. The ones nearest me were on a small walnut table. I knew a thing or two about antiques, having spent a decent amount of time traveling the world with a collector friend of mine from Chicago. Claudia loved to travel as much as I did.
The table, unlike most of the furnishings in Dana’s swanky apartment, was old. It had been a gift from me. Since I didn’t have a place of my own, I never bothered much with furniture hunting when I wasn’t with my Windy City friend. But one day, several years back, I’d found myself being drawn to a sale, waking at the crack of dawn and taking several buses to reach the estate sale location.
At first, I’d felt pulled to a back table with several boxes of old jewelry. None of it had been separated or tended to. In the mass of necklaces and bracelets, I’d found an antique rosary. The minute my fingers had skimmed over it, I’d felt a connection to the object. Interesting, since I wasn’t raised Catholic. That didn’t matter. The draw to the rosary was simply too strong to ignore.
The beads were wood with a green glass one every ten. The cross was made out of a sheet of rolled silver. I’d clutched it close to me and bought it straightaway, keeping it with me always in my main go-to bag. On my way out of the estate sale, I’d walked by the table and instantly thought of Dana.
I bought the table and managed to haul it all the way back to Dana’s place. That had been nearly five years ago. Much to my delight, she’d put it in the large bathroom. The last time I’d seen a table like that, it had gone at auction for nearly seven thousand dollars. I didn’t tell Dana as much. She’d have freaked out that I used it to burn candles on while I was there.
The table currently held four large candles. Each candle had its own purpose. The white one was for a new beginning. That was what I would be doing in Grimm Cove—starting anew. The purple candle was to sharpen psychic abilities and possibly help me understand why dreams that had always been wonderful had taken on such a sinister vibe as of late. The two black candles were to aid in protective energy. I wasn’t sure I could call upon too much in the way of protective spells. Especially not with the nagging feeling I had that something was off.
I just wasn’t sure what.
My gut said I’d know exactly what was wrong sooner rather than later, especially with the upcoming move Dana, Poppy, and I were doing. We were going to share a home in South Carolina and start the next chapter of our lives. Some called us middle-aged, but I preferred to think of us as aged to perfection. Slicing us open would be like looking at a tree ring. For every year we’d aged up, the lines would tell our story. And oh what a story it would weave.
The reason I was in New York was to help Dana finish any last-minute packing of personal items and iron out any details before the movers showed. She was giving up a position as assistant district attorney, and an apartment she loved, only to put most of her things in storage once we were down in South Carolina. It was a huge undertaking for her, and I was proud to see her stepping out of her comfort zone. She’d even surprised me and had already made arrangements to take over a law practice where we were headed.
Dana had all her ducks in a row, and that made her happy. She craved order in the face of chaos, and had OCD tendencies that left her cleaning to the point the skin on her hands cracked when she was in high-stress situations. Needless to say, her apartment, even with moving boxes everywhere, was spotless. Unless you counted my bags. They didn’t have a proper place in her world, and Dana’s heavy amount of huffing and shuffling them around said as much.
Already she’d moved my three bags around several times, trying to find them the perfect spot (no doubt tucked far from the view of any others, since they didn’t fit her decor) since I’d been here. She’d also offered to give me her expensive luggage—that was a matching set—to replace my worn “hippie bags,” as she liked to call them.
I’d made them myself years ago, and they served their purpose. I didn’t have any need for fancy luggage. What I owned fit in the bags perfectly, and I didn’t want for anything more.
That was hard for Dana to wrap her mind around. She liked the finer things in life. I just enjoyed life—material possessions didn’t factor in.
Okay, I was partial to the side table in the bathroom, but still.
There had been a point in my life when I’d had a huge home and all kinds of things. Granted, it had been brief, but long enough for me to know it wasn’t for me.
I valued people, not possessions.
There was a light tapping on the door. Since it didn’t sound like someone was about to bang it down with one blow, that ruled Dana out of the equation. I loved her but she had some aggression issues for sure.
“Yes?” I asked as the smell of nutmeg, citrus, and faint notes of cedar filled the room, letting me know who was there.
“You doing okay in there, love?” asked a man, his English accent prevalent. It was something I’d had to overcome when we’d first met because his voice reminded me of that of my ex-husband, who also happened to have been born and raised in London. Thankfully, the voice’s owner wasn’t a sadistic prick like my ex. “You mentioned wanting to soak until half past the hour. That time came and went thirty minutes ago. Wanted to be sure you didn’t fall asleep and drown. We both know I wouldn’t see you if you crossed over right now. I’m no expert, but I think we’ve met our dead-people quota for a spell.”
His concern warmed me and his attempt at a joke made me smile. It didn’t matter how morbid the humor was.
“You can come in,” I said, loud enough for him to hear but so Dana, who at last check was in the living room, wouldn’t. Granted, the bathroom I was in was nestled off her bedroom, but sound traveled, and Dana had great hearing.
Her tolerance level for my ability to see and hear the dead was low, and telling her she had a spirit hanging out in her apartment would go over as well as a lead balloon. She wasn’t what anyone would call at peace with there being more to life than met the eye. In fact, she pretty much walked around with blinders on and the equivalent of her fingers shoved in her ears, all while humming.