A Little Spooky (Small Town Lovers #7)

Luna 1

It was a dark and stormy night… to quote a cliché… but I saw the shadow of the light and heard their voices as I approached the barn.

“Do you think it’s long enough?”

“Absolutely, but what about the girth?”

“It might not be wide enough.”

“Oh stop. I think by now, we know it’s more than wide enough.”

“But how does it feel?”

“Mmm, do I really have to answer that question?”

“Yeah. I want to know. Are you comfortable?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Why would I kid about something so important?”

“Yes, I’m comfortable. I’m more than comfortable, but it’s not moving. It’ll be a different story when it’s moving.”

“Fine, if it’s moving you want, then moving you’ll get.”

“Wait, that might be too much. It’s moving too fast.”

“It’ll be faster than this once the race starts.”

“She might need to be strapped in.”

“That could get dangerous.”

“That’s the problem with these things; there’s more to it than trust.”

“Like what?” Vince asked as I reached for the door.

“Like fucking running into another racer,” I reminded my best friends as I entered the well-lit barn and shut the door behind me. The wind blew in, causing my long, brown hair to twist around my face, as sawdust swirled around our feet. What we were making inside the barn was top secret, at least when it came to the residents of Cricket, our small town in northern California. “If I didn’t know you guys were talking about the coffin you just built for the race, I’d think there was something deliciously dirty going on in here.”

It was October, and that meant contests, dances, and spooky fun. The four of us had been participating in almost all the events ever since we were kids, and now that we were either already in our thirties or sliding into them, we still participated, especially the in the coffin derby.

“That’s because your mind is always on sex, while we’ve more or less given it up for the time being,” Vincent or rather Vince Stoker said. He was the first of the three guys to take a break from all things sexy about six months ago when his latest woman up and left him for another. And to make matters worse, he had dated that other woman the previous year as well. Both those women had stomped on his heart like it was a spider in their bed and never looked back.

Even though everybody knew these two women belonged together, Vince took it personally. Like he was a bad and inadequate lover. He believed, and probably still did, despite the last six months of therapy, that he was the cause. We’d all tried to make him see his view was jaded from the two massive dumps, but he refused to hear us.

“Define more or less.” I loved to tease them, Vince in particular. He never could tell the difference between my asking a serious question as opposed to trying to get a rise out of him.

“Satisfying yourself is never part of the equation,” he said, looking as if he was about to give me a lesson in masturbation, which I enjoyed just like any other healthy twenty-nine-year-old.

“It’s sex with another person that’s been banned in this barn,” Bram Crow said, and I knew he meant it. Bram’s problem with sex was that once he started down that road, he couldn’t get enough. He’d been into porn so badly, it nearly broke him financially. Then there was the whole syphilis scare that had us all running for the hills. In the end, he didn’t have it, but that was just some kind of miracle because the last woman he’d been with, did in fact have it.

That scared him. He willingly joined forces with Vince, making a blood pact like we had when we were kids, and decided to never tell anyone what we saw inside Stoker House, a house that had been in Vince’s family for well over a hundred and fifty years. The four of us made that blood pact. To this day, we’d never told anyone, even each other what we saw on that Halloween night when we were borderline teens.

So, if they made a blood pact about abstaining from sex, no way would they break that pact.

“Well, take me off the list, boys. I just met the man of my dreams.”

“You were never on the list,” Bram said.

“And I don’t intend to be… ever,” I assured them, visualizing my most recent encounter. Okay, so it was a bit awkward, and I didn’t actually come… I faked it, but he had potential.

“So, who is he? Someone we know,” Freddie Graves asked.

Freddie and I went all the way back to being born only a couple of hours apart at the same hospital. Our moms were still best friends, and we even shared a crib for a few weeks when we were babies, and my parents were first settling into Cricket. We always thought of ourselves as best friends from the time we first started walking and talking. Our moms claimed that we taught each other how to walk and even potty trained each other. Thing was, I always had a crush on Freddie with his sexy bourbon-colored eyes and a hug that sometimes brought me to my knees. Still, I would never, ever allow myself to go there. It would ruin our friendship, and that was more important than sex… at least I wanted to believe that.

“No one you’d know,” I told him, not wanting him to start down that protector path that he always played with me. Whenever I dated someone new, he had to know all the details and would even do research on the guy to make sure he was legit. His intrusion was a double-edged sword. I never liked it, but there had been times when all that intrusion had paid off, especially with some of the more freakier guys I’d dated.

“Try us. We know a lot of people,” Bram said, encouraging me to tell. They hated it whenever I kept my boyfriends a secret. It’s like they were my three brothers instead of my best friends.

Of course, when they were still dating, I wanted to know everything about their women as well, and admittedly, I’d get a bit jealous. Mainly when I saw them together. There were even times when I’d go home and cry.

What the hell?

“Okay. Fine. His name is Gary Framer. He’s not from around here, so this time, no way can any of you know him.”

“Right. Um, he’s from Sweet Whiskey, and he’s married to Tina Mullans who travels all the time for her job. He’s a total shit,” Freddie said, then went back to sanding the coffin.

“That’s not possible. We spent the entire afternoon together. We made plans for the Witches Ball. It must be another Gary Framer. You’re so wrong on this one, Freddie.”

“Let’s see… sandy colored hair, and scruffy chin. A big guy, about six four or five. Rides a black Harley, something we all know you’re immediately attracted to, and he has a tatt that goes up the side of his fat neck?”

My eyes widened. He was describing Gary, my Gary, the Gary I thought had potential.

My heart skipped a beat, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I merely stared at him.

He continued. “Yeah, I remodeled his kitchen just this last summer when they bought a small house not too far from the Sweet Whiskey’s cemetery. He owns a company that takes care of the landscaping inside that cemetery. He’s a ghoulish guy when you get to know him, which I did during the reno. Wife is sweet though. That sound like your Gary?”

I blinked a couple of times, and for a few awkward moments, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’d slept with a lying, cheat of a fucking shit. Not wanting to believe this was the same guy, but the tatt… that was the cincher.

“Fuck it. Fuck it all! Okay, I’m fucking done!” I was pacing now, as I ripped off my jacket and unfurrowed my scarf, while I walked over the hard-packed-dirt barn floor, staring at the ground. Mentally berating myself for being such a fool. “I’m joining forces with you guys. And to think, I had… Oh, I’m soooo fucking done. So, what do I have to do to join your covenant of the sexless gang? Is there blood involved? You know how much I hate the sight of blood.”

I didn’t want to admit anything. It was about saving some small shred of my dignity. I hoped they’d gloss over everything else that might have happened with Gary and tell me about their covenant or the looming casket race instead.

“We’re not entirely sexless. We’re just not allowing sex to force us to be with self-centered, mean-spirited people,” Freddie began. “Gary’s freaky as fuck. If he had an open type of marriage, then his shit would be acceptable, but his wife has no clue he cheats. So be honest. Did you have sex with the freak?”

They were all staring at me now. Their big, beautiful eyes gazing my way. Waiting for an answer. Sometimes I hated that we were friends, and even worse, best friends. Why couldn’t I be normal and have best girlfriends instead of best guy friends? Yes, they were sometimes intimidating, and yes, sometimes I thought about what it would be like to take our friendship to another level, and fuck all three of them at once, but I never acted on it because I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship. I didn’t think I could get through life without these three loving, spirited, gorgeous, muscle-bound, one hundred percent all men by my side. They meant everything to me.

So yeah, I had to tell them the truth or risk losing their friendship.

It was our pact, our blood pact that we made when we first started hanging around together and saw our Carrie Ann’s ghost inside her playroom in Stoker House while it was all boarded up. Not only did we promise to never talk about what we saw to anyone else, we also promised to be loyal and truthful to each other.

“Fuck you, Freddie Graves. Yes, I had sex with him, but, in my defense, it was just sex. Nothing more than that.”

I was flat-out lying about how I’d felt. I thought it might go somewhere. I was hopeful. Excited. And anticipated an actual relationship.

I’m so fucking naive.

“You were glowing when you walked in here. That tells me it was more than just sex,” Bram said. He could always tell whenever any of us were just coming off a good round of hot sex. It was like he had some sort of radar for the stuff. Weird as shit.

I wanted to change the subject. “I was glowing from the conversation I heard before I walked in here. You guys sounded like you were having some kind of orgy.”

“We were… over this damn coffin,” Vince said. “We want it to be perfect. We’re determined to win this year. This will be three years since our last win. So, it’s time, baby! It’s time.”

It worked. We were done talking about Gary and my stupid mistake and onto more important matters… coffins.

“Just tell me what I have to do,” I told them, anxious to get our coffin brigade off and running.

I’d usually push the coffin in front on the right side, while Bram would be behind me, and Freddie and Vince would be on the other side, with Vince leading him.

“Okay, this year, they’ve added an edge to the race. We get to take ten full seconds off our time if we have someone inside the coffin,” Vince explained, causing my breath to catch.

“Shit, and you want it to be me?” I asked, already feeling the tension of the idea of it.

There have been many years when a coffin gets out of control from the handlers and ends up crashing into that damn willow tree on the Stoker property.

“That’s the plan,” Bram said.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Freddie said, trying to assure me. “You know we wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean Carrie Ann won’t step in and take matters into her own hands.” A shiver ran down my spine just mentioning her name.

“She would never let anything happen to you,” Vince said. “Not after you’ve been keeping her secret all these years.”

That secret had to do with what we saw and swore never to talk about again, not even with each other.

“More like we’ve all been keeping her secret,” I told them, plopping down on the old wooden chair next to a power saw set up on the large square table where Freddie did a lot of his carpentry. “I need time to think about it.”

Freddie was our local craftsman who loved to work with wood and could build Noah’s Ark singlehandedly if he was asked to. The man was a genius with wood.

Still, even though I knew I’d be safe, I needed time to think this new development over.

The thing was, October in Cricket, California had always been my favorite month. Not only because of the crisp fall weather and the colorful trees, but the folks in Cricket dedicated the entire month to Halloween, which I loved.

And yes, the fine folks of Cricket had been actively turning this town around in the last few years, but back in the 1980s, this place had absolutely no flood control, which caused a lot of damage. Over the years, various mayors and organizations had put bandages on the problem, but only recently, after a major flood that nearly washed the entire town away, did our amazing mayor permanently fix the problem… for which the good people of Cricket, me included, would be forever grateful.

Our love affair with Halloween had started during one particularly rainy season back in 1984, when the local cemetery flooded up on the hilltop, and Carrie Ann Stoker’s coffin came crashing down onto Frog Street on Halloween night. The townsfolk decided that not only did they have to move our cemetery to Sweet Whiskey, the next town over, but the good folks also had to do something to honor poor Carrie Ann Stoker, a distant relative of Vince’s.

It seemed that when the coffin hit the pavement, the top flew off, and her fragile remains scattered all along Frog Street while her coffin zipped over bumps, in and out of deep potholes, and along rough pavement in the street, moving so fast that at first, no one knew what the hell it was.

For some unknown reason, the coffin had been equipped with six tiny wooden wheels. The wheels caused the coffin to race down the street, which caused everyone who saw it to panic. That panic gave the coffin full access to the wide-open street, which just happened to be on a slope. By the time the coffin stopped almost a full mile away from where it had first landed, everyone in town had run in the opposite direction.

Ironically, Carrie Ann’s coffin was headed straight for Stoker House, which just happened to be where Carrie Ann Stoker lived until her parents poisoned her when she turned twenty-one for being a witch.

Her poisoning happened in 1932, according to the local archives of newspapers.

But I digress.

What had my stomach in knots now was the ancient willow tree on the Stoker property. That tree finally stopped the coffin and caused it to explode along with whatever remained of Carrie Ann’s bones into a million tiny pieces.

Which explained the yearly coffin races down Frog Street on Halloween night and how almost every year one of the coffins ran right into that old tree and broke apart, no matter how hard the racers tried to keep it from happening. It was a random thing. No one knew which coffin would end up exploding into the tree, and I certainly didn’t want it to be ours.

We’d been participating in the race since we were kids. A race that had cemented our friendship from the very first time we entered as a team. I was ten, along with Freddie, Vince had just turned eleven, and Bram was twelve.

We had never lost a coffin… yet.

Would this be our first time? The whole idea of me getting inside that thing scared the shit out of me.

Sure, I trusted them, but not against the forces of a spirit so strong, she could do stuff that defied explanation.

I should know. I saw her do it.

I let out one of those potent, long sighs.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Vince said. “But it will give us such a great advantage.”

“I’m still thinking,” I told him. They knew not to bug me when I was thinking something over. It had been the way I’d dealt with anything they threw at me since we were kids. Yes, I could always keep up with them, but there were things they’d want me to do that I had to mentally prepare myself for first. And there were just too crazy for me, and I wouldn’t do them. Like when they all jumped into the rushing water down one of the back streets after it had rained all night. I didn’t want to do it, and while I was thinking about it, Bram got knocked out by a table that whizzed by him, and Freddie and Vince barely saved him. If it wasn’t for my dad jumping in the water, we may have lost him that day.

So, they never bothered me whenever I had to mull over their latest scheme, and this one was some crazy shit!

I was the very first girl who had ever raced a coffin, but then I was a classic tomboy growing up who rarely played with dolls, unless they were soldiers, and liked a Harley better than a bicycle. My dad rode one, and I couldn’t wait to ride it all by myself. My first car was a Harley, a purple one, bigger and more badass than I could ever be. I still had it, along with two more, one cranberry red and my silver streak.

Yeah, baby.

“We’re going to win this year. You can bet money on it,” Freddie said, as he ran his hand over the sleek wood of the newly made coffin. He’d been making our racing coffins ever since he first learned how to build a box out of wood. I had to admit, this year’s coffin was by far his best. “And you’re going to be sitting inside.”

“Maybe,” I told him. “I’m thinking it over.”

“I still say it’s too heavy,” Bram countered, as he stood next to the coffin, checking it out. It was even lined with pink satin on the inside, with a small pink satin pillow, which was my contribution to the endeavor. I had a thing for pink, despite my outward badass appearance. “And it’s going to be even heavier once we stick Luna inside.”

“Are you saying I’m fat?” I argued.

I knew he wasn’t but still. I barely weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds, and I was five feet, five inches tall.

He tossed me a look, and I knew that wasn’t what he meant. “Get over yourself. You know you’re not fat. You’re perfect, cupcake.”

“I think Carrie Ann would approve of this coffin,” Vince said, using his best scary, deep voice.

Vince was related to Carrie Ann through her father’s brother Bart Stoker, who was Vince’s great-grandfather. Vince had inherited Stoker House when his grandfather died. Vince was fourteen. Vince Sr. wanted nothing to do with the place and refused to let Vince Jr. take it over or go near it until he felt it was no longer a threat to him… whatever that meant. His grandfather had kept it boarded up for almost four decades. Then when Vince Sr. took a job in Singapore a couple of years ago and moved there with his mom, Vince decided it was time to face his fears. He had it renovated, and Stoker House was set to open as a B&B by the end of the year. Freddie did most of the reno, hiring both Galen Murphy and Anton Diaz to help with the renovation, but everyone who had worked on the place ended up creeped out more times than they wanted to admit.

Yes, the place was haunted, but that was also the charm of it… at least for all the ghosthunters who booked a room there for the grand opening in December.

Of course, everything depended on whether Carrie Ann’s ghost decided to play nice or not. So far, none of the ghostbusters that Vince had hired to banish her from the place, had failed.

Not that he wanted her completely gone. He just wanted her to not terrorize anyone. In truth, he wanted Carrie Ann to play nice, and so far, she only knew how to play bad… really bad.

For us, she was a source of true fear, but as we were growing up, we never let fear get in our way to victory. We learned how to overcome our fears… until it came to Carrie Ann.

Then all bets were off. She was our one source of total surrender.

“Fine. I’ll do it, on one condition,” I told them, feeling brave and badass.

“Whatever you want,” Freddie said.

“This is your call, babe,” Vince agreed.

“Just tell us what we can do,” Bram explained.

Oh yeah… I had them by the nuts, and they liked it… liked it a little too much.