bet there weren’t many broken dishes in her kitchen.
Will looked at Toto as the little dog jumped, and smiled. Abby shushed the Yorkie and frowned at Will before turning to the table to pick up a cup of tea in one hand, still holding the dog with the other.
Next to Abby was a brawny young man in jeans, work boots, and a heavy flannel shirt. He had dark, untidy hair and intense grey eyes, and I could have opened a bottle cap with the dimple in his chin. It took me a second to recognize him, because he’d been a couple of inches shorter and maybe forty pounds lighter the last time I’d seen him—Daniel Carpenter, the eldest of my apprentice’s younger brothers. He looked as though he were seated on a hot stove rather than a comfortable couch, like he might bounce up at any second, boldly to do something ill conceived. A large part of Will’s attention was, I thought, focused on Daniel.
“Relax,” Murphy told him. “Have some cake.”
Daniel shook his head in a jerky negative. “No, thank you, Ms. Murphy,” he said. “I just don’t see the point in this. I should go find Molly. If I leave right now, I can be back before an hour’s up.”
“If Molly isn’t here, we’ll assume it’s because she has a good reason for it,” Murphy said, her tone calm and utterly implacable. “There’s no sense in running all over town on a night like this.”
“Besides,” Will drawled, “we’d find her faster.”
Daniel scowled from beneath his dark hair for a second, but quickly looked away. It gave me the sense that he’d run afoul of Will before and hadn’t liked the outcome. The younger man kept his mouth shut.
An older man sat in the chair beside the couch, and he took the opportunity to lean over the table and pour hot tea from a china teapot into the cup in front of the young Carpenter. He added a lump of sugar to it, and smiled at Daniel. There was nothing hostile, impatient, or demanding in his eyes, which were the color of a robin’s eggs—only complete certainty that the younger man would accept the tea and settle down.
Daniel eyed the man, then dropped his eyes to the square of white cellulose at his collar and the crucifix hanging beneath it. He took a deep breath, then nodded and stirred his tea. He took the cup in both hands and settled back to wait. After a sip, he appeared to forget he was holding it—but he stayed quiet.
“And you, Ms. Murphy?” asked Father Forthill, holding up the teapot. “It’s a cold night. I’m sure a cup would do you good.”
“Why not?” she said. Forthill filled another cup for Murphy, took it to her, and pulled at his sweater vest, as if trying to coax more warmth from the garment. He turned and walked over to the window where Sir Stuart and I stood, and held out both hands. “Are you sure there isn’t a draft? I could swear I feel it.”
I blinked and eyed Sir Stuart, who shrugged and said, “He’s one of the good ones.”
“Good what?”
“Ministers. Priests. Shamans. Whatever.” His expression seemed to be carefully neutral. “You spend your life caring for the souls of others, you get a real sense of them.” Sir Stuart nodded at Father Forthill. “Ghosts like us aren’t souls, as such, but we aren’t much different. He feels us, even if he isn’t fully aware of it.”
Toto escaped Abby’s lap and came scrambling over the hardwood floor to put his paws up on the walls beneath the windows. He yapped ferociously several times, staring right at me.
“And dogs,” Sir Stuart added. “Maybe one in ten of them seem to have a talent for sensing us. Probably why they’re always barking.”
“What about cats?” I asked. Mister had fled the living room upon the arrival of other people and wasn’t in sight.
“Of course cats,” Sir Stuart said, his voice faintly amused. “As far as I can tell, all cats. But they aren’t terribly impressed with the fact that we’re dead and still present. One rarely gets a reaction from them.”
Father Forthill gently scooped Toto from the floor. The little dog wiggled energetically, tail flailing in the air, and kissed Forthill’s hands soundly before the old priest passed him carefully back to Abby, smiling and nodding to her before refilling his own cup of tea and sitting down again.
“Who are they waiting on?” Sir Stuart asked. “This Molly