“I’m not going to stay with––”
“But you have to,” he insisted.
“Benji––”
“Please, Shaw,” he murmured. “The thought of you at that terrible hotel fills me with complete dread. It’s not safe.”
“Not safe how? Physically or with heightened spectral activity?”
“I know you think you’re terribly funny, but––”
“A little funny,” I teased him.
“Imagine what you will, but if you’d read some Yelp reviews, you’d be thanking me right now for my concern and hospitality.”
“I’ll bring my bag in so I can change, but that’s it.”
“I’ll take it. For the time being,” he conceded. “Now please, come inside.”
I had no idea what I’d been expecting when I followed the path from under the carport and out into the deluge to the front gate of Benji Grace’s home, but a maze of trees wasn’t it. If I hadn’t checked my feet to make sure I was on the flagstone path, I was sure I could have strayed off course and never been heard from again. It was like a vacant lot of various sizes of Douglas firs, Sitka spruce, and bushes pressed so tightly together it was hard to push through. I was quite pleased with myself for wearing my duck boots, having checked the weather before I left and seeing a forecast that called for rain, rain, and more rain. Of course, at the time, I thought it would be the kind of rain I was used to and not that which Noah was dealing with before he closed the doors of the ark. I had packed hiking boots too, and lots of socks, and today, as I sank into water up to my ankles just to make it to the front door, all that good, proactive military training had served me well.
Benji held the door open for me, which, as I reached the top of the six narrow steps and walked past him, I realized was the back door that led straight into the kitchen.
Putting down my bag and raking my fingers through my hair, which got out some of the water, I smiled at him and balanced on my left foot to take the boot off my right while surveying a strange-looking room. I was standing on green outdoor carpeting that ended where the kitchen did, at the doorway into the living room where everyone was.
“Why didn’t we park in front of your house?” I asked Benji, who was pouring tea from a pot into individual cups.
“The carport is in the back,” he explained, and I figured you’d want your rental out of the monsoon, especially when you have to get in and out.”
I nodded and then gestured at the weird flooring material. “What’s with this?”
“Sian thinks that this used to be the garage before they made it into the kitchen. There’s cement under here.”
I nodded. “Why don’t you put in tile instead?”
He shrugged. “Because at the moment I’m only renting, but if I buy it, then yes, I’ll tear out the terrible carpeting and put in some Talavera tile, because I’ve always loved the look of that.”
“Me too, though my kitchen has white tile because my mother says you always want to be able to tell when your kitchen’s not clean.”
“That’s so true,” Sian agreed, coming into the room, and I finally saw how very pregnant she was. “And don’t say anything. I know I’m as big as a woolly mammoth.”
Not quite, but she was big, at least her stomach. The rest of her five-seven frame was small. She reminded me of one of those pythons with the huge bulge after they ate something, but the rest of them was long and sleek. She probably wouldn’t take that as a compliment, though, so I kept it to myself. “You’re beautiful and doing that glowy thing pregnant women do.”
She grunted. “It’s fine, I know I’m a heifer, but goddess, the cravings!”
Moving my shoes off to the side where everyone else’s were, I unzipped my leather jacket, then the hoodie underneath, and hung both next to all the others over a long drip pan, then picked my duffel back up and asked where I could go to change.
Benji gave me directions to the bathroom and asked me what I liked in my tea.
“Unless you have any of the black stuff, I’m not gonna drink it. That green tea nonsense you’re pouring isn’t gonna work.”
“You might like it.”
“I won’t,” I assured him. “My sister Rita tried to get me to drink jasmine tea and matcha and chamomile and peppermint and all that herbal rubbish, and I can’t tell you enough how vile it all is.”
“What about mush––”
“Don’t say mushroom tea to me,” I cautioned him. “Because I’m liking you at the moment, and it would be great if you didn’t change my good opinion with something as stupid as a suggestion of mushroom anything.”
He smiled slowly, nodding.