and serenity surrounded him. He really did love the Keys. There was something magical that happened once you left the mainland behind.
The air was so soft and nice, the lounge so comfortable, that he began to drift off.
Then Shelly screamed. It was a scream of pure and absolute terror.
His eyes flew open as he bolted up and saw...a strange man standing over Shelly. The stranger was gripping his throat with his right hand and making choking noises. Stuart was too startled, too terrified to be sure, but it looked as though something was oozing through the man’s fingers. Blood?
In his left hand the stranger held a knife. A huge bowie knife.
He heard another scream and realized that, just like Shelly, he, too, was screaming in pure, gut-wrenching, primeval terror.
He thought he saw the knife move, glittering silver and red in the moonlight as the stranger raised it and then sent it slashing down toward Shelly.
1
Hannah O’Brien walked into the large kitchen, ready to throw something. The past hour had been pure bedlam—guests hysterical and screaming, she herself completely baffled.
Of course she had offered to refund everyone’s money and suggest a beautiful chain hotel for them to check into.
She opened her mouth, not to scream, but to call out for immediate attention. Because she couldn’t think of anything else that might have happened except that one of her permanent residents had played a not-very-funny trick on her unsuspecting guests.
Melody Chandler was already there, leaning against the refrigerator in her beautiful Victorian glory, staring at her.
“What the hell was that?” Hannah demanded. “Did you bring a friend in? A dying man with his throat slit, carrying a knife and trying to kill my guests?”
“No!” Melody protested.
“That was unbelievable. I’ve never had guests up and leave at 4:00 a.m. before. Never. And I’ve never had to refund anyone’s money before, either.” Angrily, Hannah crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the ghost with whom she had shared this house for as long as she could remember. The original owner had been Hannah’s great-great-great grandfather on her father’s side, but she had actually inherited the house, already a B and B at that point, from her uncle. She had been his favorite niece, and she had loved him and the house. Sadly, he had died in his late forties from a sudden heart attack, and she had inherited the Siren all too soon. He had known how much she loved the place. She’d spent much of her time there with him, since her parents—who had lived a few blocks away on Simonton Street—had both worked.
She knew the house backward and forward—along with its ghosts.
She fought to control her temper. “Melody, a little spooking the guests is fun, but this time you and Hagen went too far. I’m fighting to keep this place, but I can’t do that if I don’t make a profit. You two just scared all our weekend guests away. And Shelly, the poor girl who saw you, was beyond terrified. And from what she described, I don’t blame her.”
“You did not listen to me, Hannah,” Melody protested, staring at her with wide eyes, pleading to be believed. “We did not do it. Hagen would never do anything like that. You know how squeamish he can be. And look at me. Do I look like a bleeding man with a knife? And who do I know? The same spirits you do! I do not know of a single spirit walking around Key West with a bleeding neck and a knife in his hand.”
Melody and Hagen didn’t refer to themselves as ghosts and didn’t like to be referred to that way. Of course, tourists and most locals called the city’s haunts ghosts, but Hannah was usually careful and polite, following their wishes and calling them spirits within their hearing.
And with her temper cooling, now that the brouhaha in the house had died down, she had to admit that she really couldn’t picture her resident ghosts turning themselves into the terrifying apparition described by her now-gone hysterical guests. But if her two known household entities hadn’t been playing tricks...
“Then who...?” she asked.
Someone drifted in through the closed back door and then materialized into an excellent imitation of flesh and blood.
Hannah was accustomed to such comings and goings. Hagen Dundee entered the kitchen and took up a protective stance at Melody’s side, slipping a ghostly arm around her. “I heard, Hannah, and Melody is telling you the truth, I swear it. As if anyone could ever mistake her for a man! And I promise you that it was not me, either. We were not even here. We were at the Hemingway House, playing with the cats.”
“Torturing the poor little six-toed creatures, probably,” Hannah said, still angry. She’d lost business tonight, business she couldn’t afford to lose. And she was fighting to believe it had been someone’s idea of a prank; it was too frightening to think that it might be something else. Something real.
“I love cats. I would never torture cats. You know that I love all animals,” Melody said regally.
Hannah swallowed, then pursued the hope that perhaps the couple had schemed with one of their island spirit friends to scare tourists.
“Honestly,” she said, “we’ve talked about this before. It’s charming and wonderful and helps business when you guys fool around and moan and groan in the middle of the night. Or, Melody, when you make an appearance at dusk, pacing the roof. Or, Hagen, when someone opens a door in the middle of the night and you’re standing in the hallway, looking tall and strong and desperate to find your beloved. But what happened tonight...it was mean. One of those people could have had a heart attack.”
Hagen looked at Melody and then walked over to Hannah and set his hands on his hips. His sandy hair was worn in a queue, and his bleached cotton shirt seemed to billow around his broad shoulders. She could have sworn she even saw specks of mud on his black leather boots. “Hannah,” he said earnestly, “we did not do it.” Then he turned his back on her and addressed Melody. “Dear, I believe we need fresh air—and different company. Shall we go for a bit of a walk?”
She stepped forward and took his arm. Then, heads held high, they headed toward the back door.
“Wait!” Hannah said. “Please. Help me. If you guys didn’t do it...who could it have been?”
“This island has spirits—and spirits,” Hagen told her. “Most of your ghost tourists stay on at the Hard Rock when you are done talking, and maybe they imbibed too heavily of spirits of an alcoholic nature. What I do know is that we did not do it—and you have deeply insulted us by suggesting we would do something so horrible. I really cannot stand here discussing this any further, Hannah. I am sorry. Melody, shall we take our stroll now? Perhaps down to the beach?” he asked, then bowed in a courtly manner and moved as if he were really opening the door for Melody. She sailed out, and he looked at Hannah again then strode off in Melody’s wake.
Hannah watched them go, surprised—and more than a little shaken.
She’d grown up in this house with the two of them for company. Nothing like tonight’s events had ever occurred before. She couldn’t believe they would do anything so vile, but if not them... She didn’t even want to think that a murderous ghost might be stalking the streets of the city she called home.
She
