She turned around, looking up.
Nothing.
“I’ll be honest with you, Brad. Right now, I’m not feeling anything.”
He looked a little disappointed. “But you’ll still come back with equipment?”
She gave him a reassuring smile. “Of course. Don’t worry. I’m not giving up on you. I haven’t even seen the rest of the house yet.”
He led her through the downstairs. The different rooms lay in various states of construction and completion. Upstairs, he opened one bedroom door and turned on the light. “This is my room. We finished our two bedrooms and a bathroom. I’m taking my time with the rest. I want it to look right.”
She followed him inside. Neat and tidy, he’d painted the walls a different shade of light blue than coated the outside of the house. The trim work, including crown molding, had been painted white. A deep, walk-in closet occupied one corner.
“Surprisingly enough, the large closets were already here. I don’t know if the original builder put them in or they were added later by someone else. I didn’t have to do anything to them except paint and install closet organizers to make them more functional.”
“It’s very nice.”
He looked crestfallen. “Still nothing, huh?”
She placed a hand on his arm to reassure him and felt that feeling again, as if her clit had been lit up like a supernova. His eyes widened as she stared up at him. She needed to feel his cock inside her right then, an overwhelming craving the likes of which she’d never felt before.
She dropped her purse and grabbed his other arm, dragging him over to his bed where she fell back on it, pulling him with her.
She wrapped her legs around his hips. “Please!”
His lips crushed down on hers and—
Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” rang out on her iPhone, startling her. She pulled her hand away from his arm and stood there beside the bed, staring at him, her purse still in her hand.
He stared at her with wide eyes.
She fumbled the phone from her back pocket. It was the shop. “Hello?”
“Just checking in to make sure everything’s okay, boss.” Sachi.
She turned away from Brad and used her conversation as an excuse to step out into the hallway. “Everything’s fine. I took him home. We’re here now, doing a walk-through. I wanted to do a preliminary check before I come out with equipment.”
“And…everything’s copacetic?”
Other than we were having great imaginary almost-sex before you called. “Everything’s fine. Thanks.”
“Okay. Um, hey, listen. If you don’t get back here before we close—”
“Yes, I promise I’ll call you as soon as I leave.”
She laughed. “Thanks, boss. You read my mind.”
“Duh.” She ended the call and turned around to stare at Brad through the bedroom door.
He remained rooted in place. “‘Black Magic Woman’? Really?”
“It’s the tone I use for the shop number. Everyone gets custom tones if they call me a lot.”
“What do the general rabble get?”
“You’re avoiding the topic.”
He tugged at his jeans, which sported a pronounced bulge in the front. “Yeah. Ya think?” He scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Either those need to last longer, or I’m going to have to stop coming into contact with you.” He smiled.
She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Tell me about it.” She walked into the room again. He flinched when she held up a hand to touch him. “It’s okay. We’re both experiencing it.” She reached out and gently grasped his bicep.
Zilch.
She didn’t know if he looked disappointed or relieved. Fair enough, because she felt both. “Let’s finish with the rest of this floor before you take me up to the attic,” she said.
“Okay.”
He led her around. “So what is your ring tone for everyone else?”
She pulled her iPhone out of her pocket and flipped through to Settings. The chorus of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” including the aahooooh, sounded loud in the otherwise quiet house.
He laughed. “I love that song. Warren Zevon’s great. I have all his stuff. Another artist who died too young.”
“At least it wasn’t by his own stupid actions. ‘Enjoy every sandwich,’” she said before she realized what she’d said. Grief threatened to sweep over her again as she thought about Julie’s life cut all too short.
He slowly nodded. “It’s a lesson I learned all too well. Not many people get second chances, much less third ones, the way I did.”
They stopped at the bottom of another set of stairs. He looked down at her and slowly reached out to touch her arm.
Nothing.
He sighed. “I still don’t hear Julie. I haven’t heard her since right before we left your shop. I don’t think she’s the one doing it.”
“No, I don’t think she’s doing it, either. If she was doing it, she wouldn’t be mean enough to interruptus our coitus.” She laughed. “She was always trying to fix me up on dates. Lead the way.”
She followed him upstairs. He opened a door and hit a switch at the top of the stairs that illuminated the entire attic. Along two of the walls, canvasses in various stages of completion leaned against the low eaves. At either end of the space, to the east and west, large new-looking windows would obviously let in a lot of daylight. He had several work tables and easels strewn throughout the studio in no apparent order. A couch sat pushed against one wall. Next to that, a desk held a laptop as well as a TV.
“This is my lair. Welcome to my sanctuary.” He smiled. “Muwahaha.”
She laughed. “Evil genius at work?”
“Something like that.”
She saw the couch was pushed up against a short door. “What’s back there?”
“Weird little crawlspace. I don’t know why the previous owners built it like that. Haven’t decided what to do with it yet, but it’s too tiny for storage, really. Goes up under the eaves. And there’s some plumbing stubs in there for another full bathroom in that corner when we get around to it. Make life a little easier for me. That’s probably being built in the next major round of renovations.” His smile faded. “I need to show you something.”
He led her over to one stack of canvasses. Most of the artwork she could see looked beautiful. His style ranged from abstract to impressionist, to realist, in a variety of techniques, mediums, subjects, and colors.
They were all beautiful.
Until he withdrew one and turned it around to show her. This one looked bleak, with an ominous feeling to it. Several darkened, derelict buildings along a street that looked like it’d seen better times.
She shivered.
“This is one I haven’t painted over yet. There were several others that were…dark. Darker.” He swept an arm around the space. “You can see what my normal feel for a piece is. I’m all over the place. But they all have a good feel. Right?”
She looked. He was right.
“That’s what Ellis tells me,” he continued. “He’s the one that pegged it. My good stuff, it all…just feels right. It makes you feel good looking at it, even if the subject or technique doesn’t particularly flip your switch. But this…this doesn’t.”
“Do you feel anything now being up here?”
He slid the piece back into its space, sandwiched between several others. “No, not right now. Usually it takes me a while.”
She slowly walked around the space, all her senses finely tuned.
Nothing.
If she had to make a committed guess right then, she’d bet the equipment would back her up and find nothing supernatural.
“You know, maybe there’s something in the house giving off high EMF frequencies. That can cause some of what you’re experiencing. Maybe you’re really sensitive to it.”