Nodding, he focused on the hissing pan before him. “Meaning she can lure in a fresh crowd.”
“People who want answers as to how it was done or if it was done at all.”
“Some of those will be return visits from ghost hunters or would-be exorcists, but it opens the door to religious elements and other opportunities her previous business model was unable to capitalize on.”
The haunting was a well-documented case that had drawn national attention, meaning any number of the TV shows, ghost hunting crews, fanatics or casual enthusiasts might come back to compare their original findings against their current ones. The publicity might not save her business in the long run, but it would buoy her for a good while if she milked it properly, and she was squeezing the teats of public interest with both hands.
“Are your dreams always that intense?” He selected pale sausage links from the fryer and placed them onto a paper towel-lined plate. The package near the sink claimed they were made from chicken and apples. I had my doubts. “Is it all right to ask?”
“I might as well be honest with you.” I stole one of them, burning my fingertips, and started nibbling before it cooled. Hmm. My doubts appeared to be unfounded. The sausage was delicious. “You’re going to hear me on occasion if tonight is any indication. You have my permission to use noise-dampening sigils if you want.”
“It happens every night?”
Every. Single. One. “Pretty much.”
“There are sigils to help you sleep—”
“No.” I choked on the bite I’d sucked down my windpipe. “I don’t want to risk being stuck in the dream.”
“The dream.” He moved on to stirring a double boiler filled with creamy grits, and I wondered if he realized avoiding eye contact made talking to him easier. “As in it’s the only one you’re having? A recurring nightmare?”
“Yes.” I helped myself to a glass of orange juice from the fridge. “And before you ask—I don’t remember what happens. I wake up terrified with a vague sense of déjà vu, but that’s it.”
“Do you mind?” He palmed a bag of sliced artisan bread on the counter and passed it to me. “The toaster smoked the first time, but I cleaned out the dust. Maybe open the window just in case?”
The toaster had been cocooned inside a knitted cozy. Dust shouldn’t have been an issue. But if he was paying me a kindness by offering a breath of fresh air to clear my head, I wasn’t about to complain.
The window required a hard jiggle before it raised, but that first gasp of night air paid off my sweat equity in full. As my lungs expanded, the tightness in my chest from talking about the dream lessened. But it refused to budge all the way now that I was paying it attention, so I shifted my focus elsewhere.
The same breeze tangling my hair rustled the lush ivy climbing wild over the eastern wall. I ought to thin it. I needed to trim back the roses too. The peonies wilted on their stems, their heads in need of cutting. So much had gone undone during my absence, and I’d done nothing to rectify the situation. As much as it pained me to admit, the garden was looking shabby.
Maud would have a conniption fit if she was here to see this.
A pinching sensation in my chest warned me away from those thoughts. They hurt too much to examine this early, so I asked Linus for a distraction. “Who taught you how to cook?”
“Books. Food Network. YouTube.” He checked a saucepan full of simmering water and bobbing eggs. “Our old cook, Louie, used to let me help him prepare breakfast on the weekends. I figured it was a skill I should learn for when I moved out on my own.”
“You have a driver. You didn’t want a cook too?” He could certainly afford both.
With reluctance, I abandoned my view and the nascent dream of hiring a gardener to whip the property back into shape while I started on the toast.
One of my duties as Dame Woolworth would be rebuilding my household from the ground up, but that could wait until I decided what staff I wanted on the grounds with me and how often. Until I figured that out, I was fine being on my own.
“I don’t have a driver. I borrowed Mother’s.” He passed me a glass butter dish and a dull knife. “I don’t need a cook. I can fend for myself or order takeout. Atlanta has everything I could want.”
The knife clattered from my hand onto the counter. “You live in Atlanta?”
He must have heard the shock in my voice that his mother let him that far out from under her thumb.
“Yes.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I teach at Strophalos University, among other things.”
Knock me over with a feather.
Linus was actually qualified for this job? I’d assumed his mother had palmed her most loyal pawn off on me to act as her spy while training me in advanced resuscitation theory. She couldn’t very well auction my services to the highest bidder then sit back and hope for the best. Not when clients would expect a one hundred percent success rate as a return on their investment. But this? He was a bona fide teacher from a prestigious university who could offer me the education Maud had denied me. That didn’t make his apron strings any shorter, but it did make him crashing in my carriage house that much more appealing.
“What about your classes?” Selfishly, I had only considered how the Grande Dame’s proclamation affected me. I had dismissed Linus as a throwaway heir, one of his mother’s yes-men, and that had been shallow of me. At least this was all to my benefit. He had nothing to gain by helping me except his mother’s favor. As her only son, he must be drowning in that. “How long will you stay?”
“I’m on sabbatical.” He plated the sausage, grits, and soft-boiled eggs. After I added a few pieces of buttered toast to his burden, he carried it all to the table. “I can stay for a year before I have to file more paperwork. I won’t know if that will be necessary until after we start your training.”
“What about your home?” I rinsed out my glass then poured milk for each of us since that had been his breakfast beverage of choice for as long as I could remember. “What about your friends?”
“The loft will still be there when I return.” He carried two pressed napkins to the table and placed them at our settings. We both stood there, looking at one another. “Thanks to modern technology, my colleagues are never more than a call, text, video chat, or DM away.”
I startled when he crossed to me, but all he did was pull out a chair and wait for me to sit. I did, and then I returned the favor. The table was small, meant for two even though it had four places, and I stretched out my leg to push his seat back with my toes.
“Thank you.” He let me take a few bites before starting on his own meal, but he didn’t have much of an appetite. “There are seconds if you’d like more.”
A flush I blamed on the steam rising from my plate pinked my cheeks. “Are my table manners that bad?”
One too many frozen dinners had left me ravenous for a home-cooked meal, and this one was excellent.
“No.” He bit the edge off his toast, chewed methodically, and had trouble swallowing even that one small bite. “I just don’t want the food to go to waste.”
The first helping vanished before I registered its taste, and I heaped a second plate high with leftovers. He watched me eat, his fascination making me slow the fork-to-mouth action. I demolished the sausage before the awkward scrape of my silverware drove me to conversation.
“The night I helped unbreak your nose—” after Woolly had slammed her front door in his face to bar his entrance, “—you told me we would address my magic, but I skipped class the next day.” And the six days that followed. “Can we do a makeup lesson?”
“Of course.” He sipped his milk, but the level remained unchanged. “What would you like to know?”
The desperate edge in my voice shamed me. “Will I ever get it back?”