I reached for the pillow behind me and threw it at him, narrowly missing his head and accidentally knocking over a small vase on the end table across the room. It fell to the ground and shattered, causing my heart to race even faster as my deep-rooted politeness clicked into gear.
“Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry,” I called to nobody in particular. I scrambled across the floor on my hands and knees to clean up the mess I had made, but the dark-haired man blocked my path with hands that were surprisingly gentle and directed me back to the chair before collecting the broken pieces of china in a small cardboard box. My head fell back onto the cushioned velvet chair, and I pressed the palms of my hands into my closed eyelids. “What am I going to do?”
The red-haired man pushed himself up off the couch and crossed the room with concern etched into the smooth contours of his face. While the blond man was arrogantly handsome and the tattooed guy had an undeniable aura of brooding sexiness, the redhead was beautiful in a way I had rarely seen before. His pale skin was rich and creamy, and his green eyes, framed with thick, dark lashes, seemed to project his every thought and feeling. As he kneeled next to me and placed a large, graceful hand on my leg, empathy oozed from every inch of his body in a surge of hot intensity. “It’s going to be okay, Price. We’ll figure this out, right?” He looked at the other two men for reassurance and they both nodded. He turned and stared into my eyes again. “We just need to make sense of what’s going on here.” He glanced down at his half-naked body and the skimpy towel wrapped around his waist as if suddenly aware that he had very recently been a cat. His brow furrowed. “There has to be a logical explanation, and we can solve this together. I know we can.”
His optimism was endearing, but I knew for a fact that we were totally screwed. Well, I was. They weren’t, necessarily. Unless you count the whole magically turning into cats thing. I closed my eyes for a moment and ran my hand through my hair. Who was I kidding? We were all well and truly, royally screwed. “A logical explanation,” I echoed. “You’re right, I just need to ask the right questions. Does anyone happen to know what those would be?” I opened my eyes and looked around the room hopefully, but was simply met with blank stares. My fingers tapped the velvet upholstery as I sat there impatiently, my mind spinning.
Agatha came floating into the room, her eyes glazed over as she hummed a tune to herself. She came halfway into the space before realizing we were there and snapped out of her daze. “What are you all doing here?” She eyed the red-haired man’s hand, still resting gently on my knee. “Muffin, why are you mauling my assistant.”
With glowing cheeks and flustered excuses the man retreated to the other side of the room. Ignoring the ache in the base of my stomach as I was left alone again, I pulled my legs up so I was sitting cross-legged in the chair. “Agatha, you’re exactly the person we need to talk to.”
The ghost raised her eyebrows but settled her feet on the ground. “I guess I have nowhere else to be.”
I twisted the ragged ends of my hair as I thought carefully. “Why did you leave this place in my name? Why did you leave me everything you owned, even your...” My eyes darted to where the men stood for a moment, examining in the bare skin and the defined muscles through the curtain of my eyelashes. “Pets?”
Agatha stood before me, her diminutive height bringing her head to nearly the height of my own as I sat on the chair. She stepped closer to me as she pondered the answer, and I noticed the heavy wrinkles that lined her face. She was a soft-looking woman, delicate in a way, but I didn’t let that fool me or interfere with my knowledge of how feisty she could be. She finally shrugged at me and turned a critical eye on the cushion lying against the wall.
“Is that all I’m going to get? A shrug?” I asked, hoping she didn’t notice the missing vase before she’d given me some answers. “Come on, Agatha, I think you owe me more than that.”
“I don’t owe you anything, you selfish little cream puff,” Agatha snapped right back at me, her nostrils flaring. “I gave you my house and my thrift shop, what more do you bloody want? Apart from my unwavering good looks, perhaps.”
We both stared at each other for a long moment before I finally broke the silence. “Look, I’m grateful you left these things to me, I really am. But I’m confused. We’ve never met each other, and I only just replied to your ad a week or so ago. Why on earth would you ever leave all your worldly possessions to someone you didn’t know? It seems completely ludicrous, doesn’t it?” Seeing her features twist, I softened my tone. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you. I’m just trying to understand.”
“Maybe,” Agatha started, pausing to draw her eyebrows close together. “Maybe I felt sorry for you? When I saw you living in that little shack behind that buffoon’s fancy-pants mansion, well, I wouldn’t wish that groveling, pathetic life on my worst enemy. Not even on Dorothy Murphy or Bianca D’Arcy.” I opened my mouth to defend myself, but before I could gather some fighting spirit, the old woman’s face crumpled. “But the truth is, Priscilla, I simply don’t know the answer. These past few days, I’ve been trying to think and remember and understand, but I can’t. It’s as if that part of my brain has been blocked. There’s just nothing there.”
Chapter Eleven
“You don’t remember anything about why you left the store and this building to Price, Aggy?” Bright blue eyes narrowed on the old woman floating in the middle of the living room as Fluffy folded his tattooed arms, muscles bulging under his inked skin. “You think it’s some sort of magic blocking your memory? Like whatever is stopping you from remembering what happened to us, that ‘Law of the Dead’ bullshit?”
“Yes, perhaps, the law is blocking me from remembering anything tied magically to my unfinished business in this world,” Agatha mused. Her face scrunched in concentration, her body vibrating. When she finally opened her mouth and her voice came out in a frustrated squeak. “Maybe.”
Without another glance in my direction, the old witch floated across the room and out the far door. “Agatha, wait,” I called after her. She stalled and turned, her expression completely blank as she looked back at me. “Is there anything else you can think of that might help me clear my name? Surely, you must have some idea of who could’ve been behind your death?”
“I told you, I have no memory of my murder. That’s the nature of passing from life to death, it’s always this way.” Agatha frowned and chewed her lower lip before shaking her head slowly from side to side. “And I have no idea why anyone would wish me harm. I was very well-liked in the community. Quite popular, actually. No one had any reason to dislike me; I was quite simply delightful.”
I caught raised brows and an amused glance passing between the three men at her last words, and I suppressed a grin. “I can imagine you were, Agatha. You’re a very likable woman.” I could barely say it with a straight face. “So, you seem to have some sort of memory blockage or absence of any sort of knowledge of the events surrounding your death? Is that right?”
Agatha nodded and returned to the center of the room, her eyes dimming as her shoulders slumped. “But I fear it goes far deeper than that, dearie. I can’t seem to remember much of anything, if I’m being perfectly honest. Perhaps, I left a lot of unfinished business behind.”
I bit my lower lip before replying, a deep sadness filling me. “I’m sorry.” It also made things rather more difficult for me, to be perfectly honest, but I wasn’t going to ruin her moment. Without any memory of her past life or the events leading to her death, I had no way of getting any closer to figuring out who was actually behind it all.
“Seems to me, you’ll have to stick around and do some sleuthing on your own, Miss Pricetag,” the blond man said with a sly grin.