“Well, that doesn’t make sense either—I mean, a Peeping Tom surveilling RJ?” Marty laughed as I continued. “RJ isn’t exactly your typical sex offender’s preferred target, is he?”

  Marty nodded. “I’m glad you said it, so I didn’t have to.”

  I exhaled a pent-up breath and couldn’t bring myself to laugh. This whole situation was just… as frustrating as it was perplexing. “If this guy was spying on RJ, then I think he’s just going randomly from house to house. There’s no pattern I can see.”

  “I agree with you, but three sightings doesn’t a pattern make. I say we refer this one to Tally and leave it with her. This dude is out of our line of expertise.”

  “You heard what Wanda said,” I countered, shaking my head.

  Marty smiled at me and gave me an apologetic expression. “Remind me what Wanda said?”

  I shook my head—Marty and remembering things didn’t exactly go together, no doubt owing to his ADHD. “The guy was able to block her tracking spell, remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “That means whoever or whatever he is, he possesses magic. That puts him right smack in the middle of our expertise.”

  “Yours, maybe. My expertise is ghosts.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “If this guy can block Wanda’s tracking spells, he’s outside everyone’s expertise.”

  Marty pulled the hearse into my driveway. Light shone from the windows in a warm yellow and only drew more attention to the peeling paint of the balustrades and veranda. Sheesh, I needed to make an appointment with a general contractor soon. At least the broken windows in the kitchen were now all boarded up.

  I could see Finn and Astrid through the window, where they were seated on the couch, playing video games. As I watched, Libby passed by and her wide poodle skirt cast a perfect 1950s-housewife shadow across the window. I could have been watching a scene from Ozzy and Harriet, only paranormal style. Yep. That was my life—a picture-perfect family full of ghosts, zombies, witches, and vampires.

  “Can I come in for a while?” Marty asked, bringing me back to the present.

  I glanced over to find him studying me with unusual intensity. “Sure,” I answered, finding it strange he would ask. “If you want to.”

  “I just wondered if…” He paused and cleared his throat, and that feeling of anxiety suddenly revisited me full force.

  Chapter Five

  My heart was pounding, and I was finding it hard to breathe. Why? I wasn’t sure. Maybe because I thought Marty might have been on the verge of announcing he had feelings for me and I just didn’t want to face that conversation.

  Not right now. Not here. Not with Roy inside my house.

  He cleared his throat again, and I looked over at him, my body suddenly going into fight-or-flight mode.

  “I mean, I thought you might still be shaken after Finn saw that weird guy in the window and I, uh…” He lost his train of thought again and rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought maybe… you might want me to stick around tonight?”

  “Oh.”

  His eyes went wide with surprise as he apparently realized what he’d just said. “I mean… I’d be happy to sleep on the couch.” Then he did this weird laugh. “Of course.” He laughed again. “I wasn’t suggesting that you and I… that I sleep in your bed or anything.”

  Seeing how completely nervous he was, I reached out and patted his hand. “I think… I think we’re okay, but thank you. Roy is still over, and so are Darla and Libby. And I think Astrid might want to spend the night.”

  “Is Roy spending the night?”

  “No,” I answered quickly. “That wouldn’t… that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “My point is, I already have a full house and that means protection in numbers, you know?”

  He nodded as he looked up at the house, but didn’t appear convinced. “If anything happens—”

  “You’ll be the first person I call.”

  He nodded again, but I could tell there was still more on his mind. “There’s something weird about this whole thing.”

  “Something weirder than a stranger looking in random people’s windows?”

  “It isn’t just that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  His bushy eyebrows met in the middle of his face as he frowned. “From what I could gather, this guy was outside Finn’s window, Astrid’s window, and RJ’s windows at what seems to be the exact same time or just seconds apart?”

  “Oh my God,” I exclaimed as I realized he was right, as far as I could tell by everyone’s stories, anyway. “I didn’t think of that, but you’re right. By the time Wanda texted you to postpone dinner, RJ had already seen the guy at his place.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then how?”

  Marty breathed in deeply. “He must have been teleporting or something.”

  “Where Haven Hollow is concerned, anything is possible,” I answered as I undid my seatbelt and opened the door. “Anyway, I’m going to get going, Marty, but thank you for the ride.”

  “You used to call me McFly,” he said with a small smile.

  “McFly,” I corrected myself. Then I stepped out into the cold night air and felt it enveloping me like the embrace of a ghost.

  “Don’t forget what I said,” he called after me. “If anything happens—and I mean anything—I want you to call me. I’ll be sleeping with the phone next to my bed and the ringer turned all the way up.”

  “Okay. I promise I will.”

  Now freezing, I waved to Marty and hurried inside. He kept the hearse idling until I made it through the front door and flashed the porch light. He flashed his headlights in response and reversed as the hearse backfired, sounding like gunshots against the otherwise still air.

  And then something occurred to me—Marty had never said why he wanted to drive me home. I mean, it wasn’t as though he had to have a reason, of course, but I found it strange, all the same.

  Maybe he was just being a good friend, I told myself.

  By going out of his way to take me home when he knew Wanda was going the same way?

  Hey, Marty can be a strange guy, sometimes.

  Deciding to leave the subject alone for the time being, I walked into the living room to check in with everyone and found Roy sitting in the recliner beside the couch, Finn and Astrid playing video games and Darla and Libby still in full-blown mad-scientist mode in the kitchen.

  Nothing had happened in my absence. And that was just as well.

  Finn looked up and smiled when I walked into the room.

  “Hey, Mom. How was dinner?”

  “It was great. Thanks for asking.” I sat down on the couch next to Astrid and looked over at Roy who gave me a big smile. “How was babysitting?”

  “Hey, we’re hardly babies,” Finn said. Astrid nodded as I laughed.

  “It was good,” Roy answered.

  “Yeah, ‘cause you just slept the whole time,” Astrid said.

  “Slept the whole time?” I repeated, looking at Roy in faux offense. “And to think I hired you for your protective brawn.”

  He chuckled. “I might have dozed off for a second or two, but it wasn’t like I could actually sleep with all the ruckus everyone was making.”

  “Ruckus?” Finn repeated as he smirked at Roy.

  “Yeah, how old are you anyway?” Astrid added.

  Roy frowned at them both. “I’m eighty, thank you very much.”

  “Eighty?” Astrid repeated and her eyes went wide.

  “Sasquatches age much more slowly than humans do,” I said—one of the myriad reasons why it hadn’t worked out between Roy and me. When I was eighty, I’d look it.

  “I don’t care about aging and never have.” Roy looked right at me then and there was something hollow in his expression.

  ***

  It turned out that Wanda was too nervous about the Peeping Tom to allow Astrid to stay over with Finn and me. That was just as well because getting Finn up and ready for school was a feat all on its own.

  After the morning mayhem of getting Finn fed and out the door, I drove him to school. While on our way through town, he chattered about some role-playing game that RJ had told him about.

  My thoughts, meanwhile, centered on other subjects and quite a few other subjects… namely, the magical window peeper, Roy’s and my conversation just before he’d left and the fact that there had been something in Marty’s eyes when he’d asked to drive me home—something I couldn’t quite put a finger on.

  “You can’t use your strength points for endurance tests,” Finn said. “Mom, I told you that a million times.”

  “Oh, right,” I replied, completely unfocused on whatever he was talking about. “It’s so hard to keep all the rules straight.”

  As to the conversation between Roy and me after Wanda picked up Libby, Darla and Astrid, it hadn’t been an easy one. Roy, again, let it be known how he wanted to work on ‘us’ and I’d again, told him it wasn’t going to happen. This time, I’d had to be a bit more firm regarding the subject and ‘firm’ wasn’t something that came easily to me.

  I passed my store and spotted a bunch of cars parked on Main Street ahead of us—except they weren’t parked at the curbs like they should have been. They were parked right in the middle of the street, blocking the thoroughfare.

  “I wonder what this is about.” I braked behind the old truck in front of me and tried to crane my neck to see beyond the truck and the five or so cars in front of it.

  “Can you see what’s going on?” Finn asked.

  “Looks like a traffic jam.”

  “A traffic jam—in Haven Hollow?” Finn guffawed. “There’s not enough traffic to jam.”

  I waited a few minutes, but nothing happened. We didn’t even budge an inch.

  “Why aren’t we moving?” Finn asked. “We better hurry, Mom, or I’ll be late for my first class.”

  I checked in my rearview mirror. More cars were steadily packing in behind me and the drivers stretched to see beyond my Jeep. After another few minutes, I switched off the motor because it was clear we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  “We’re totally going to be late,” Finn said with a frown.

  “Well, we have a good excuse.” I watched as a few people opened their doors and stepped out to see what in the world was going on.

  I turned to face Finn while I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Stay here. I’m going to see if I can find out what the hold up is.”

  “Okay, but… don’t go far.”

  I gave him a reassuring smile. “I won’t.”

  Once I hopped down onto the sidewalk, an icy breeze picked up and I wrapped my arms across my chest to ward against the cold, even though I was wearing a down parka. Wondering if the California girl within me would ever get used to this Oregon weather, I hurried up Main Street as more and more drivers turned their engines off and stepped out of their cars. In front of me, what appeared to be twenty or so cars blocked the street. This was definitely not Haven Hollow’s version of rush hour. Really, we had no version of rush hour.

  I followed the blockage all the way to the end of the cul-de-sac. Just beyond the meadow of grass and a few pine trees dotted here and there was Haven High’s track field. And in front of the field stood a bunch of kids with their anxious-looking parents, along with four uniformed police officers standing guard. I could see Taliyah in the far distance talking to one of the parents.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the nearest mother as I approached.

  “Some creep was caught lurking around the high school this morning,” she answered as she held her daughter, who appeared to be sixteen or so, in a vice like grip. I didn’t blame her.

  “Oh, no,” I said as my heart dropped. “What… what happened?”

  “From what I understand, the janitor was going about his business this morning, unlocking the classroom doors and turning on all the lights when he spotted some weirdo looking through the classroom windows. When he approached the guy, he said the guy acted almost like a wild animal and snarled at him.”

  “Snarled at him?” I asked in shock.

  She nodded. “Then apparently the intruder took off down one of the hallways and they haven’t been able to find him since. The janitor called the police, of course.”

  “And what did the police say?”

  “Well, they came right over, as you can see.” She took a breath and started rubbing her daughter’s hair absentmindedly. It was sort of a strange picture because her daughter was as tall as she was. “Apparently, they’ve had ten reports since last night about the same guy looking through people’s windows.”

  “No!”

  She nodded heartily. “Oh, yes. The police are now searching the whole school, and if they don’t find the guy there, they’ll expand their search to the rest of town.”

  “Well, I hope they find him.”

  “You and me both.”

  “So do I get to go home today?” her daughter asked.

  “I think so,” the mother answered as she faced me again. “The police said all the schools are closed today.”

  At that point, I’d heard enough. And at the thought of Finn sitting by himself in the Jeep—well, I couldn’t return fast enough. My one consolation was that, if this peeping tom was making random pit stops at houses around town, he wasn’t targeting anyone in particular.

  When I reached the Jeep, Finn was already standing outside, but holding onto the car door like it was a security blanket.

  “Mom, what took you so long?”

  “Sorry, noodle, but I was trying to find out what was going on.”

  He climbed back into the Jeep and closed his door as I did the same. Then I turned to look at him and reaching over, patted his leg consolingly. “I’m sorry it took me longer than I thought it would.”

  He nodded and gave me an understanding smile that said I was forgiven. “So… what’s going on?”

  I breathed in deeply and then exhaled. “That guy you caught looking through your window definitely wasn’t a ghost.”

  “Mom, we already knew that.”

  I nodded. “Well, now we know it even more.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the janitor at Haven High caught him peeping through the high school windows and now the police are searching for him.” I decided to keep the part about him snarling like a feral animal to myself, figuring there was no need to further scare Finn. “That’s why everything is blocked off.”

  Finn shook his head and looked like he was about to panic. “So… what are we supposed to do? Is school canceled?”

  Before I could answer, the cars in front of us started moving. I turned the key in the ignition and drove forward as one of the officers waved us around. It seemed they were diverting traffic back up Main Street and away from the back field of Haven High.

  “I think school’s closed for the day,” I answered.

  “Yes!” Finn said and made a funny victorious gesture with his arm. “My XBOX is calling.”

  Finn had received the XBOX for his twelfth birthday, and the two were basically inseparable. While he might have been excited about staying home from school, I wasn’t as excited. Wanda and I were supposed to check in with Henner at the Tayir Mansion today.

  “Call Henner,” I said to the Jeep and the Bluetooth immediately connected me.

  “Are you calling Henner to babysit me?”

  “No, I’m calling Henner to let him know I’ll be a plus one today.”

  ***

  When I pulled up to the Tayir House, I found Wanda waiting for me in her Escalade. As soon as she spotted me, she stepped out and shivered in the cold air, despite the fact that she was wearing a long and furry black coat.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  I told her about the stranger sneaking around the high school and then realized something. “Wait a second… shouldn’t you already know this since Astrid goes to Haven High?”

  “Well, Astrid did mention something about a voicemail she received about school being closed this morning, but I didn’t ask why.”

  Or didn’t listen why, was more like it.

  Throwing her shoulders back, she narrowed her eyes as her mouth hardened into a thin line. “As soon as we finish here, Poppy, we’re going to track that bastard down. This has gone on long enough.”

  I nodded as Finn opened his door and then walked around the Jeep.

  “What’s he doing here?” Wanda asked.

  “Rude!” Finn said, frowning at her as he threw his hands on his hips.

  “Sorry,” she said briskly as she faced me and her eyebrows reached for the sky. “I don’t think today is a good day for kids to visit.”

  “I’m not a kid, Wanda,” Finn argued. “I’m almost a teenager.”

  “Your birthday was in May and now it’s November, so you’re closer to a kid than a teenager,” she argued back. Sometimes she definitely didn’t act her age of one-hundred-forty.

  “No, I’m technically right in the middle.”

  “Which means you’re closer to a kid.”

  I held my hand up before Finn could argue. “Well, regardless of whether today is a good kid day,” I started, then looked at Finn. “Or pre-teen day, as the case may be,” I looked back at Wanda. “I’ve got Finn today because Haven Middle School is closed.”

  “Well, I left Astrid home with Darla and Libby, rather than bringing her here.”

  I frowned but, all the while, I was already regretting my decision to bring Finn. He and scary places didn’t exactly get along.

  “Maybe I should run Finn over to your house really quickly.”

  “No,” Finn insisted. “I want to be here with you, Mom.”

  Wanda frowned at me, and I just shook my head, shrugging. “Well, let’s get this over with.”

  I looked up at the mansion and shivered. This place gave me the creeps because it embodied everything we knew about Betanya’s storied and unfortunate history. This house had played witness to the insanity of Roscoe, her vampire sire, and probably Betanya’s eventual death. Of course, no one had ever found her body, so maybe she hadn’t died in the house. Either way, I didn’t understand how Henner could live here. I wouldn’t have been able to.