Pumpkin Spice & Poltergeist (Maple Hollow #1)

“You ‘just thought’?” Iris groaned. “You ‘just thought’ you’d bring her earthside for a little walk down memory lane?”

“Something like that,” I said, feeling pathetic. “And now she won’t leave.”

Iris started flipping through the withered pages in front of her. “Typical! I told you to let it go. Let sleeping dogs lie. But no! You had to be a clever little witch, and now you’ve got a poltergeist on your hands. Delightful!”

“She’s not a poltergeist?—”

“Not yet!”

“I just wanted to say goodbye!” I shouted back.

“Of course you did, you?—”

A glass vial shattered on the floor, interrupting Iris’s reply. I glared at Lou, who just winked at me in response.

“You’re worse than the cat,” I spat, waving to Ichabod, who was lying in a sunbeam.

“It really is Lou, isn’t it?” Iris asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Holy shit.”

“I can’t get rid of her.”

“Sure, you can,” Lou said with a taunting smile. “You just have to move on and find someone else.”

I grabbed Iris’s hand and threaded my fingers through hers. “Here, look, Lou. I’ve found someone else. Now will you please go back from whence you came?” Iris retracted her hand from my clammy grip and shook it out like a cat who’d just touched wet grass. “Not helping,” I muttered from the corner of my mouth.

“Iris is practically your sister,” Lou said. “You two would never. Guess you’ve gotta find someone else to fall in love with.”

“Wait.” I held up a finger in protest. “You said I need to move on, not fall in love.”

“You have to fall in love?” Iris looked between me and the direction of my gaze, despite the fact that she couldn’t see Lou.

“That’s what moving on means.” Lou shrugged. “You’ve got to fix what you couldn’t do with us: admit your feelings instead of running away.”

“You can’t just stay here!” I shouted, waving around the shop.

Iris flipped the pages of the old spell book. “There’s got to be some way to undo this.”

“There is,” Lou singsonged. She bent down and picked up Ichabod, the sweet cat purring in her arms.

“Holy hell,” Iris said, staring at Ichabod.

“Lou, put him down before a customer walks in and sees a levitating black cat,” I gritted out. “There’s magical and then there’s magical, and this is the latter. You’ll scare away the tourists.”

Lou gave Ichabod a kiss on his midnight-black head and placed him on the floor again. He attempted to weave through her legs but went straight through them.

“How do you switch the touching thing on and off?” I asked, and Lou gave me a look. I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, another afterlife secret you’re not allowed to tell me?”

“Yep.”

“Ugh,” Iris chimed in at the same time. “I never liked her.”

Lou blew Iris a kiss that Iris clearly couldn’t see. “I knew.”

“Just play with the cat.”

Iris arched an eyebrow at me. “Lou wants to help you find someone else?”

I nodded.