Ghost of a Chance (Banshee Creek Book 2) (20 page)

Orange marble, at that. He hadn't known orange marble existed and yet, here it was, looking extremely orange. Oompa Loompa marble. He couldn't wait to show it to Salvador. He'd probably have a heart attack right here on the front steps.

"I told you, it's a colonnade." She rushed to catch up with him. "You're not really thinking of buying this house, are you?"
 

"It meets my list of requirements, doesn't it?"
 

She examined the house grimacing. "It's got square footage and a lot of land." She frowned at the mustard-colored façade. "I guess you could try fixing it up. Maybe grow some ivy over the front."
 

"That's a good idea." He fought to keep from smiling. It would take centuries to grow enough ivy to cover this much hideousness.
 

"A good architect could do something with it," she continued, sounding unconvinced. "But it would take a lot of work."

Yeah, a good architect could tear it down and start over.
 

"C'mon, let's look at the rest of it," he said, motioning toward the house cheerfully.

How much worse could it be? And would he be able to keep a straight face when he showed it to his mother?

Elizabeth, however, didn't share his good mood. She walked toward the house slowly, like a condemned prisoner approaching a particularly garish scaffold.
 

He followed her up the steps and quickly realized his mistake. He'd be staring at her delicious rear as she climbed. He tried to focus on the opulently veined marble, but his eyes were drawn to Elizabeth's hips swaying as she crossed the cavernous foyer. He focused on the stone. Who knew there were so many different types of marble in the world? Or that they could be arranged in so many complicated patterns? The foyer looked like a Parcheesi board.
 

They made it to the living room, where Elizabeth bent over a small wall panel. He looked at the moldings. Anything was better than the sight of Elizabeth bending forward to get a better look at the panel.
 

Finally, she straightened, putting his torture to an end. "This is great wiring," she said, sounding disappointed.
 

He suppressed a chuckle. Had she been trying to blow the house up? That wouldn't surprise him. Elizabeth was known for her unorthodox strategies.
 

He followed her as she walked over to the back of the living room, opened the French doors, and walked out to the terrace.
 

"The view is amazing," she said, clearly not happy about it.

And she was right. The terrace looked at towering mountains, a bright blue sky, and golden-leafed trees. It was breathtaking.
 

Elizabeth sighed. It was a very sad sigh.

"C'mon, admit that you're impressed," Gabe said, smiling.

The terrace itself was pretty impressive. A long, marbled expanse edged by stone balustrades. Twin staircases, one at each end of the terrace, led to a turquoise pool.

She frowned at the incomparable beauty laid out before her. "It's a beautiful view, Gabe. But there's also that." She pointed at a gilded marble nymph holding an alabaster jar. Then she pointed at the nymph's sisters, all holding various agricultural implements.

His smile turned into a grin. "Those can all be taken out."

"Wanna bet? No one's been able to do that."

"What?" He examined the stone nymph. No, wait, it wasn't stone. It was a cheap plaster statute with no artistic value whatsoever. One good thwack with a sledgehammer should break it into pieces. "No one's wanted to get rid of them?"
 

"They all buy the house with plans to cart them to the Dumpster," she replied. "But they all change their minds. I guess they grow fond of the statutes."

"Well, I'm not fond of them," he said firmly. "They're as good as gone."
 

Elizabeth slumped over the balustrade, a glum look on her face. "I don't know how I'm going to explain this to your mom."
 

"Plenty of room for grandchildren," Gabe said. He tried to picture his mother walking through the naked women, carrying a pan of Argentinean
parrillada
. Maybe he should keep the statues after all.

"Absolutely, your kids can play dress-up with marble Barbies." She shook her head. "I don't think your mom will be amused. I'm not the one picking the house, though. And it does have everything you asked for—lots of space and no ghosts."
 

She was right about that. Excited about the house's incense-drenched, bergamot-sprinkled, beeswax-bedecked history, PRoVE had crawled all over the Howrey estate. They'd found nothing and had finally declared the house psychically null. But the team hadn't left empty-handed. Micah and Loreen ended up with twin girls.
 

"Hey, you were the one who showed me the house," he teased. "And don't forget the satyrs."

"Well, those weren't on the list."
 

"They're a bonus."

She laughed. "You're crazy." She gestured toward the offending statuary. "You're buying this because you resent the fact that your family is making you buy a house, and this is your passive-aggressive way to get back at them. But you've gone too far this time." She jabbed a finger at him. "Your mother's going to
kill
you."
 

Gone too far? Elizabeth's was over-dramatizing again. But her diagnosis was spot on. He did resent his family, and the Bacchanalian Bachelor Pad from Hell was extremely passive aggressive. But she was wrong about one thing.

"Actually," he said with a smug smile, "she's going to kill
you
."
 

Her laughter died and the color drained away from her face. "There has to be another house, Gabe," she pleaded. "You can't buy this."

"It's not that bad, and we haven't seen the whole thing." He turned toward the view. "The grounds look pretty amazing."
 

Elizabeth leaned on the balustrade. She looked deflated. Apparently, defeat wasn't something she was used to.
Well, too bad, Napoleon, looks like you've met your multi-columned, satyr-strewn Waterloo.

He matched her pose and glanced down at the grounds. Unfortunately, he could see quite a bit of cleavage from this position. He shifted his stance to ease his discomfort. That quick peek had been a very bad idea.

He focused on the other really nice view, the one of the mountains; the geologic mountains, that was. It really was spectacular. Liam should be able to do something with this.
 

He looked at Elizabeth. She was looking over the terrace balustrade, her brow furrowed in thought. She was probably trying to come up with a way out of her predicament.

Good luck with that.

The wind played with her hair. He tried not to imagine what those fine strands would feel like against his skin. He took a deep breath. The sooner he bought the house, the sooner he'd be able to get rid of Elizabeth.
 

"I'll take it. Draw up an offer five percent under the asking price, all cash, no contingencies. I want to close in ten days, and I'll do it from New York."
 

That should do it. He'd be back in Manhattan soon.

Elizabeth straightened. There was a defiant glint in her steely gaze. "Maybe," she drawled, her voice as sweet as molasses, "you should see the
grotto
before making an offer."
 

A small but undeniably cold and clammy shiver of unease crawled up his spine. Grotto? What grotto?

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

S
HE
LED
Gabe down the steps to the backyard.
 

This was it. This was the deal-killer. No matter how much Gabe said he liked the house, he would never be able to sell his mom on the grotto. The grotto was bad. Sacramental space dedicated to Aradia, Tuscan fertility goddess bad. Schizophrenic, eighteenth-century British nobleman bad.

A succession of owners had tried to camouflage the grotto's essential nature with varying degrees of success. The sigils and carvings around the grotto had been polished off. The offering vessels had been sold on eBay. False boulders had been piled to create a man-made cavern off the side of the terrace.
 

But other, more entertaining, aspects of the Golden Goddess Cult had been maintained. Elizabeth looked closely at the anatomically correct satyr statue that flanked the gate. Mostly pink marble, except for a very conspicuous part of the satyrs' anatomy, which was a darker, purplish stone. She surreptitiously looked back to catch Gabe's reaction to the statues.

He looked amused.
 

She sighed. That wasn't the reaction she'd been hoping for. Gabe looked up and laughed at her frown.

"Those can be taken out too, you know," he said between chuckles. "Maybe I'll give them to Liam. I'm sure he can find a creative use for them."

She pushed the gate and entered the cavern. The listing had said "inspired by the Ilse of Capri's Blue Grotto" and she could see why. A blue glow enveloped the cavern. It came from stained glass windows built into the stone walls and fluorescent lights embedded in the pool. Someone had decided that the blue light didn't provide enough ambiance, so the walls were also painted light blue with sparkly mosaics for decoration. It reminded her a bit of the dailies for
Cyborg Shark and the Sentinel of Doom.
The special effects team had spent a lot of time getting the "alien azure" effect right.

The grotto got it perfectly right.

"Now
this
is interesting." Gabe chuckled.
 

Oh c'mon. He couldn't be amused. He
had
to hate this.

"The brochure says it's one-of-a-kind," she said, although one-of-a-kind didn't quite describe it.
 

"I believe it," he said. He was smiling broadly. "What's this?"

He was inspecting a small terra cotta statue that sat on a niche on the wall. The statue appeared old and eroded. It didn't look like a piece of decor, it seemed to be an archeological find.

"That's the Golden Goddess of Ravenna," she replied. "Lord Howrey brought it from Italy. I don't know why it's still here. It should be in the Smithsonian."

"It's real?"

"Yep. It's an authentic Etruscan relic. Look at the floor." She pointed out the carvings on the floor stones. "That's a Latin invocation surrounded by a bunch of magic symbols."

"The carvings don't bother me," Gabe said, eyes still on the terra cotta statue. "But the goddess looks valuable, in an archeological, not monetary sense. Does it come with the house?"
 

"I doubt it. The owners must have forgotten to ship it to D.C. I'll send the listing agent an e-mail about it."

"How do you forget to donate a valuable relic?" He sounded vaguely horrified. He was probably picturing angry lawyers and government audits.

"I don't know. But it's happened every time the house has been sold. The statue is bolted to the stone, so if it's still here when the title transfers, it'll belong to the buyers."

Gabe frowned at the statue. "That has to be illegal."

Elizabeth perked up immediately. "Illegal" sounded promising. In fact, it sounded like a deal breaker.
 

"I'll need a full disclosure and an indemnification from the seller," he said firmly. "And I'll make sure it gets to Smithsonian."

So much for the deal breaker.

He looked around, searching for more potential liabilities. "The windows are interesting."
 

"Those aren't windows." she clarified. "Those are TV screens."

"Really?" He peered at the glossy surfaces. "How do you know?"

She ignored the question. She wasn't going to admit that this kind of set-up wasn't one-of-a-kind in L.A. "It's very clever," she said instead, bending over one of the rocks. "Look."
 

She fiddled with the controls embedded in the stony surface. The blue lights dimmed, the grotto darkened, and a "loading" sign showed on the screens.

"I see." Gabe touched her arm lightly. "But that's enough. Let's stop touching things."
 

"Don't worry," she said, trying to figure out the control panel. "The place is perfectly safe."
 

He looked skeptical. "I think this is going to have to be completely torn out. It's a bit too..." His voice trailed off.

"Specific." She frowned at the panel. Was this thing in delay mode? Why wasn't it playing?

"What?"

"It's short for 'owner specific'." The equipment didn't seem to be working. It must be broken.

"What does that mean?" Gabe asked.

"It's real estate agent speak for 'what the hell were they thinking?'" She straightened and smoothed her skirt. "The grotto is hard to dig out, Gabe. You may have to tear out the terrace."

"Maybe it could be turned into a water feature?
 
Let's take a look." He glanced at a dark wall. "Is this a light switch?"
 

He flipped a lever, but nothing happened. The grotto remained in shadows, but a dull metallic moan traveled through the walls.
 

Elizabeth glanced cautiously at the rocks. She
really
hoped this place was safe.

A drop fell on her head, then another. She looked up, trying to identify the source. The drops fell faster and faster. There it was, a network of metal pipes attached to the rock ceiling, with sprinklers.
 

Oh, this was great. Just great.
 

The water was very cold and her nipples tightened. Was her dress see-through now?
 

Probably. She noticed Gabe staring right at her chest.
 

Make that
certainly
.

He turned away quickly and reached for the switch.

Oh well, it wasn't as if he'd never seen nipples before. She crossed her arms over her breasts, but she still felt a small twinge of satisfaction. She could make Gabe uncomfortable.
 

Thankfully, discomfort didn't keep him from turning the sprinklers off. Elizabeth sighed in relief. She was still freezing, but at least she wasn't getting any wetter.