Sunspinners Books 1, 2, 3: Sunspinners

By Phoebe Matthews

Elaine Royal has inherited the job of protecting five people who were cursed by a demon three hundred year ago. The demon meant them to suffer and die. However, the curse went wrong and the people became immortals. They also turn invisible in sunlight, which is why they need a protector, a normal human who can take care of the many problems that arise. However, demons have recently arrived in Seattle and want the sunspinners to leave, alive or dead. This is a problem none of the family know how to handle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoebe Matthews
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201208035

Phoebe Matthews

Phoebe Matthews is currently writing three urban fantasy series. Her novels have been published by Avon, Dark Quest, Dell, Holt, LostLoves, Putnam, Silhouette, and Scholastic.

Book preview

Sunspinners Books 1, 2, 3

Phoebe Matthews

LostLoves Books

This boxed set includes the following titles:

Demonspell, or, Curse of the Everlasting Relatives, Book 1

Demonhold, or, Blight of the Deadly Demons, Book 2

Demonprice, or, Doom of the Penultimate Husband, Book 3

Copyright © Phoebe Matthews

Cover Design Copyright ©  LostLoves Books

This series is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All Rights are Reserved. No part of this series may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Demonspell,

Or,

Curse of the Everlasting Relatives

Sunspinners series Book 1

Phoebe Matthews

One minute I was hanging onto Charley's outstretched hand as he hauled me to my feet. The next second I clutched my throat. It felt like drowning except for the lack of water, that awful awareness that although the atmosphere was too thin to feel, it was too solid to breathe. I tried to draw in breath and the effort left me so weak, I fell against Charley and clung to him.

His hands grabbing me under my arms were all that kept me from collapsing to the floor.

Try not to breathe, he whispered. Hang on to me.

Charley's guards coughed loudly and made choking noises. If it was a gas leak, I couldn't smell anything beyond the odor of the demons.

Albert Mortviner gave a shout of rage. Pulling a white handkerchief from a pocket, he covered his nose and raced across the room and past the receptionist area. He pulled open one of the doors that led to the elevator corridor, swung back, glared at the two men behind me, and shouted something else through the handkerchief that I couldn't make out. The door slammed behind him.

The guards rushed after Mortviner. They stumbled and bumped into each other and the door frames, coughing and trying to shield their noses with their hands, their faces screwed into deep lines. They were no more able to breathe than I was.

Again the door slammed as they ran toward the elevators.

I was so numb I couldn't think what was wrong or what to do. Try not to breathe?  How could I do that?  Holding my breath, not letting it out, lasted a few seconds and then I had to exhale and had to gasp for air that wasn't there.

Simone walked calmly now, not bothering to hurry. She stopped for a moment, standing with her back to the doors, staring at Charley. Her face was twisted into something halfway between demon and human.

My brain was twisting into something halfway between alive and dead.

I heard those numbered doors open. Was she still hissing?  Who cared?  I could not breathe.

I pounded on Charley's shoulders, shook my hand, coughed in his face.

He turned us together toward the reception area and dragged me that direction, saying,  Yes, hang on, sweetie, let's get out of here.

I tried to walk.

He pulled me past the divider and the front desk, and I stretched my hands toward the pebble glass. The open door slammed shut. Some sort of stupid lock clicked in place, one of those sounds that you don't think about recognizing until you hear it at the wrong time.

We were locked in, even though it is illegal to lock a door so it cannot be opened from the inside in a commercial building, everyone knows that, and why was I worrying about that now? 

Charley and I hit the door together. It was so heavy it didn't even rattle. Or I was so far past turning blue that nothing registered.

I slid slowly down the wall, my scraped hands leaving a thin trail of blood on the light paint, until once again I found myself trying to keep my face out of the carpet. It took all my effort to keep my eyes open and watch Charley dash around the room.

He ran to each of the four doors and rattled the knobs and howled with frustration.

I gasped, trying to find air to inhale. Nothing.

Charley rushed back into the main room as I lay on the floor watching him. As long as I could see him, I was alive, I figured. He grabbed a desk, dragged it a few inches, then let go of it. Next he grabbed a chair.

Lifting the chair to shoulder height, Charley swung it like a baseball bat at the nearest window. The chair bounced back, catching him on the chin and he sat down hard.

I managed to keep my eyelids half open. Wasn't doing as well with the breathing.

Charley jumped up again to grab another chair, one with heavy metal legs on wheels. He hoisted it, braced himself and beat repeatedly on a window. I knew he was trying to let in the outside air.

No luck. The windows didn't break easily. If that could happen, I would already be a messy dead spot on the street below.

Instead, I was going to be a messy dead spot on the sixteenth floor carpet. The world drifted toward black, taking sight with it.

I think he shouted something like, Hold your breath!  I didn't have any to hold.

CHAPTER 1

My trip toward death began the morning the realtor bugged me.

When I swung into my driveway, tires squealed behind me. The rear view mirror framed the realtor’s shiny-clean car.

Hadley!  Damn.

I opened the door of my hatchback and swung my legs out. I have long legs, of no great advantage that I’ve ever noticed, but for some reason guys dumb out looking at them. The rest of me is no show-stopper, fluffy light brown hair, good skin, average features, not much in the curves category, so it is one of those use-what-you-got deals. I have cut-offs when the weather permits.

Richard Hadley stood over me, staring at my legs. I stared up into his face and waited until he raised his eyes to meet mine. He blinked, embarrassed.

Miss Royal, umm, yes, I have another offer.

Brushing past him, I circled the car to open the hatchback. Grab a bag, Hadley.

He turned to look across the front lawn at my large sprawl of a two-story brick house with its small-paned windows and wide front entry porch. Yes, of course. 

I let him make several trips, lugging grocery bags to the front door where I took them from him and set them down on the porch.

Miss Royal, if I could come in?

Not a chance.

He tried for a realtor’s smile, difficult to manage when he was thinking a scowl, and scratched his head. He wasn’t bad looking, Hadley, regular features, regular gym attendance body dressed in casual neat, probably a wife somewhere who thought he was hot, but he was aggressive, a major downer with me.

This house must have at least four bedrooms upstairs and a couple more downstairs, and you live here alone. That’s a lot of maintenance, Miss Royal, and taxes rising. I could put you in something smaller, newer, better condition and have a million left over. You could invest it and never work another day.

I squinted up at him, and matched his insincere smile with one of my own. Everything about Hadley felt wrong to me. Was he simply a used house salesman, trying to push a sale for monetary gain, or was there more than that going on here?  Hadley, I have a garden service, cleaning service, no trouble paying my taxes and I like my job. My house is not for sale.

He looked disbelieving. You could travel around the world.

I don’t even like the one hour drive to Tacoma, I said, but that’s got nothing to do with it. This property has been in my family for more than one hundred years.

The frown won. I know you told me that, but the county records show the building permit for this house was issued in the early 1970s, Miss Royal.

There were five previous houses, I said. All on this lot. All belonged to my family.

Really?  Tear-downs every ten to twenty years?  Why?

No, nobody tore them down.  I thought about asking why he was looking up county records on my home but decided not to extend the conversation. Every ten seconds that I gave him turned into ten seconds more of encouragement, he was that kind of man. Part annoying, part creepy.

What happened?

The last little pig used brick, Hadley. Go home and think about it and don’t bother me again, because believe me, this house is never getting listed. It stays in my family.

I finished picking up grocery bags, turning and dropping them into the front hall, while managing to block Hadley from looking past me into the house.  Stepping inside, I pulled the screen door shut.

He peered at me through the screen and said,  Name me a price. I’ll get it for you. Doesn’t it worry you, being all alone in such a big place, a pretty lady like you?

That remark took him across the line of aggressive and straight toward harassment.

Is that some sort of threat?

He looked genuinely shocked and stepped back. The fear of lawsuits can be a girl’s best friend.

No, of course not. I never—look, I only meant, I have this great offer, I could get the buyer to go higher—

Or you could find your client a property that is listed for sale.

He’s seen this place. He drove by it, loved it, and he is ready to offer.

We’ve had this conversation before, I said and kicked the door shut.

Picking up a bag, I headed for the kitchen, then had an ugly suspicion, went back to the dining room and looked out the window at the driveway. Right, there was Hadley standing on the lawn, scowling at a rear flat tire on his over-polished, overlarge realtor’s car.

Wasn’t it nice that nowadays everyone carried cell phones and so I would not have to let him into the house to phone his towing service?

The back door opened, clicked closed, and soft footsteps crossed the front entry hall. With sunlight streaming in the windows, the hall appeared empty.

The footsteps started up the staircase. I turned and looked up the stairs and waited.

How did you do that to his tires? I demanded.

Charley turned in the shadows on the upstairs landing. I could see him now, transparent, looking a bit like a movie projected in daylight on a dull wall, naked, uh huh, good body. When I was a child, he was careful to be proper around me, but he no longer bothered. Sometimes he has to disappear fast, which means stripping fast, and he dresses for it. Forget underwear.

Charley is a good-looking guy with dark red hair, square jaws, a short wide nose, and a cheerful, shiny-toothed grin, and the rest of him is equally attractive. After three centuries of living, he still looks fortyish.

My secret, sweetie. I’m going to try for some sleep now.

He moved deeper into the shadows, walking away from me along the upstairs corridor, not fading but never quite solid, turned left and opened his bedroom door. When I was a child I thought of Charley as a funny uncle. Now he is more like a pesky brother.

A little help with the groceries would have been nice and I might have given a shout but a smoke detector went off upstairs. Although I try never to look up the staircase past the landing, self-control has its limits and there I was still standing in the front hall.

A stream of black smoke swirled out from under the door of the back bedroom on the right, Walter’s room. Charley dashed out of his room and threw open Walter’s door. Paul raced out of the door next to Charley’s and was two steps behind him. Paul’s shadow shape was forever young and handsome and now wearing silk pajama bottoms and carrying a small red fire extinguisher. Gizelle trailed behind Paul, a transparent flickering of dark hair and graceful limbs in a clinging dressing gown. Another door opened above me, out of my line of sight.

Is everything all right? Edith’s calm voice asked.

Charley came out of Walter’s room with a towel wrapped around his hips. He fell asleep with the window open. The breeze blew the curtain into the candle. He’s fine, Edith.

That’s good, dear, Edith said and then her door closed.

A candle in midday?  Nah, I wouldn’t ask. They adored candles and oil lamps and anything else that burned, all luxuries to their seventeenth century minds, but wouldn’t you think they would be over that attitude by now?  I carried the perishables to the kitchen, tossed them in the refrigerator, and left the rest of the load in the hall.

So much for domesticity. The family could take care of the rest whenever they came downstairs in the evening. They had nothing else to do and I had lots to do. I headed for my office, a  room on the back of the house between my bedroom and the living room.

Long ago when I was young and Mother was still around, it was her bedroom. If I’d had a hope of her returning, I would have left it alone. But I am a realist and the best lit room in the house was sitting empty. Its wall of windows faces the back garden.

Charley had changed my screensaver again to an Edward Gorey scene of pale people in funereal black, in a space lit only by candlelight, sitting around a table eyeing a chocolate cake. Just what I didn’t need, a family portrait. I reset the screen to its usual swirls of Husky gold and purple, a memorial to my college years and better times, before I became the damned anchor.

College was a dozen years and two husbands ago and I missed the years but tried not to miss the guys. They were both nice, really, but nice didn’t spend much time in my life.

And why I thought it was worth the effort to continue trying, I couldn’t explain. Some ingrained human optimism, I suppose. That’s why I did a quick change into slacks and clean shirt and headed back out to meet a guy named Sam Norris for a half hour coffee date at Starbucks.

We first met a couple months ago. So far we hadn’t been able to both manage an evening free.

As I was walking into Starbucks my cell phone rang.

It was Sam. I’m so sorry, Elaine, but I got cornered by a client and I can’t get away. I’ll try to call you later.

Or not. I was past the age of taking call you later messages seriously, especially when the man was a hunk with dark curly hair and a sexy voice.

Instead, I took some shoe shopping seriously and returned home a couple hours later.

Charley was waiting for me at the front door. Come in. Keep your voice down. I don’t want to upset Edith.

Five other people live in my house, unknown to the neighbors, although they are the same Royals who have lived on the property since the first of six houses was built one hundred years ago. They accidentally burned down the first five houses.

Only Walter, with his balding head and frameless glasses, and Edith with her wispy white hair pulled into a knot on top of her head, look much older than me. Gizelle is a brunette, fragile, picture pretty and forever in her early twenties, the same as Paul, both of them actually three hundred twenty something. And then there is Charley. The five of them become invisible in bright light. They don’t disappear. They are there. If I reach out my hand I can feel them, warm and solid.

None of them are sure how this happened three hundred years ago, but it did. They were made immortal and frozen in time. Through the generations a string of descendants of relatives kept them hidden and provided for their care and now they are down to me, the last of the line.

Charley sat beside me in the dark front hall at the bottom of the staircase, a favorite spot of both of us. With the drapes drawn in the adjacent dining room, the hall was now dark enough that I could see him clearly. Call me old-fashioned but when I talk to someone, I really like to see him, especially if it is Charley. I don’t try to put any labels on Charley. He isn’t that consistent. Fact runs into fiction in his stories. A clear view of his face helps me separate ideas.

He looped one arm across the back of my shoulders and stretched out his legs. He wore jeans, nothing else. He liked to stay acclimated to cold. Seattle had its advantages, short winter days and dark skies, but also the disadvantage of cold and rain and sometimes fog spreading out from the Sound to rival London.

Naked is the only way Charley can go outside in daylight because clothing does not turn invisible, never mind the ghosts in Harry Potter movies. But then, Charley isn’t a ghost. He is a sunspinner and very much alive.

Tell me what happened, I said.

He ran the fingers of his other hand up and down his thigh as though the friction of denim could defuse his anger. The others were asleep but I was in the kitchen and saw them. There were three men and a woman, no one I recognized. They came wandering around the house, peering in the windows. I saw the shadow and looked up and there was this man with his face pressed against the window over the sink.

When was this?

About ten minutes after you left to meet that Sam guy. How was your date?

I shrugged. Sam standing me up was trivial compared to Charley’s problem. Do you think the man saw you through the window? 

Occasionally I discovered that family records were being checked by unauthorized sources. With my computer skills, identifying hackers was easy and turning them over to our well-paid lawyers was easier.

But trespassers in the back garden?  And in daylight, how strange. Charley’s description of the trespassers certainly did not sound like thieves checking out houses in the neighborhood to find one that was empty.

No, it was light in the kitchen, sun coming in. I heard one of them try to turn the door handle, so I went to the stairs and shouted for Paul. Then I grabbed the siren out of the pantry.

We have a half dozen portable sirens stashed around the place, easy to flip on, misery to stand near because they sound exactly like police car sirens. Charley found them somewhere, and when I say found I mean that I don’t think any money exchanged hands at the time of Charley’s purchase. The company probably got an envelope filled with large bills in the mail. I stopped questioning years ago.

Paul went out on the upstairs porch, Charley continued, and could see them all. They carried briefcases and were dressed like insurance salesmen. Looking down, he had a good view of what one of them had in his briefcase. Camera, recorder, some other small electronic gadgets, and a handgun.

A gun!  Why a gun?

Not for us, obviously, can’t shoot what can’t be seen. It must have been in case you were around, maybe to scare you?  Or maybe not for us at all. Maybe he is simply the kind of idiot who always goes armed.

What did you do?

Waited until they were all standing outside with their hands on doorknobs, then flipped the switch.

For a seventeenth century male, Charley is as up-to-date as it gets. From television he learned all the idioms and from hanging out in the right well-heated, well-lit businesses, unseen, he learned how to wire anything. He fixed the doorknobs several years ago, so that at the flip of a switch they give off electric shocks.

Next, I turned on a siren. Timed those folks, sweetie. It took forty seconds for the lot of them to get around the house and into their car.  His arm tightened in a hug, pulling me close to his warm body. The toothy grin flashed.

Got to use your toys, huh? I said.

CHAPTER 2

Told you they’d come in handy.

Strangers trespassing and snooping. Strangers showing up ten minutes after I left. But what do they want, these people poking around our house?

I don’t know. People get ideas, think they see something with possibilities. Used to be I worried about ending up peering through bars in a circus sideshow. Now I worry about peering through bars in a lab, Charley said.

Every time anyone approached me or my house, I worried, and it wasn’t doing anything good for my personality. Antisocial, skeptical, badass cranky, that’s me.

For the past month I’d been pestered by the realtor. Was there a connection? There has to be some end to this.

Charley said softly, Sweetie, even vampires have an out, right? They can fall on their stakes. But if we can end, I haven’t figured out how.

Vampires?  That’s fiction.

Anything we haven’t seen is fiction. Until I turned into a sunspinner I would have said that I was fiction.  He couldn’t be cheerful all the time, but it was unusual for Charley to let his grin slip. That upset me more than the trespassers.

I wrapped my arms around his bare shoulders and pulled myself into a hug. Charley!  I didn’t mean that I want an end to you!  I meant that I wish I knew where to start looking for a cure for invisibility.

I’ve been looking for a way to stay visible for three hundred years. I think we’d have to find out how to break the curse.

There must be a way.

What if it’s like that Dorian Gray guy?

What?

The guy who had a spell that made his portrait age instead of himself, remember? When the spell broke, he turned into an old man and died. Great movie. Back in the forties, I think.

Oh, that Dorian Gray. It’s actually a classic novel, I said.

Right. But what if that’s what would happen? If we broke the invisibility curse, would we all turn three hundred years old? Lord, we’d make ghastly corpses. Still, we’d be free and so would you.

The whole discussion depressed me. It sounded like a death wish and I wanted Charley cured, not dead. I moved out of his arms and we both leaned back with our elbows on the carpeted stair tread behind us.

I know we’ve been through this a thousand times, but try once more to think of how this started. There has to be a clue.

Wish I could remember. It was somewhere on the east coast, yes, I think it was on this continent. We were trying to kill it.

In my mind I always pictured Salem. I’d heard the story before, but I made my relatives keep retelling it in the hope that one of them would remember a new detail. They were all sure that it hadn’t been a witch, nothing human, not Salem, but where else?

Tell me again what it looked like.  I kept asking because with each tiny bit of information, I did another internet search. My searches usually led to science fiction or horror film sites, never to medical research, but someday I’d get lucky, right?  Or were they really the only five survivors of some unrecorded historic episode?

Mad, crazy, furious, a dark shape tied to a pole, Charley said. That’s all I remember except that it was loud.

Build a fire around me and I’d be loud.

Yes, sure, me, too. I think it expected to die. It had thought out that curse, had it all memorized, you know?  Ready for whoever offed it. Stupid us. That’s the other part I can’t remember, why we wanted to kill the thing. Maybe we knew it was some kind of devil.

Were there devils?  No use looking up the word devil on my computer because that led to sites I preferred not to visit. Where did this one come from?  The question drove my mother right out of her home, her life, maybe her mind, but I hoped not. It was seven years now since she said, Your turn, and walked out.

Or maybe it was a witch or a sorcerer or I don’t know what, but definitely not human. How many kinds of beings are there in this world?  I can’t remember if I felt guilt or pity or anything. All I remember is that thing shouting at us with its last breath. Something about, ‘I curse you to be sunspinners until you die.’  We didn’t have a clue what it meant. Not until the next day.

Such a pretty word for such a wretched curse. Charley didn’t fade out, he didn’t turn to mist, he didn’t actually change in any way. Twenty-four hours a day he was himself, solid. But light filtered into him, somehow trapped around every cell, so that when he was in bright light he became part of the light and could not be seen. And when he was in candlelight, he looked like anyone else. In fading light his opaqueness varied.

Sounds like the perfect setup, a way to rob the bank?  Yes, well, his clothes don’t go invisible and neither does anything he carries. He can walk and talk and move. If he brushes against anyone, they can feel his warm and solid flesh.

His body reflects dim light. At night he looks normal. Well, normal for a man who was long ago zapped by a curse. He is a bit shorter than the average male today, probably considered tall three hundred years ago.

The memory was the same for all of them, Paul and Gizelle, Edith, Walter. None recalled specifics. 

Trouble headed my way, I knew it, and looked him in the eyes. In the fading light all I could see was the shine, the reflection, the shadow under thick lashes. If I turned a flashlight on his face he would fade.

I’ve never been able to figure out what color your eyes are, I said.

Sorry, sweetie, I don’t remember.

There are mirrors everywhere in the house. They know their shapes. In shadow they can check out their reflections, but in full daylight all they can see is anybody except themselves and each other.

The five of them live upstairs, often sleeping away the day and wandering through the night. They don’t remember if there were more of them at the beginning. And they have no idea how we are related. Charley thinks he is connected to Walter’s family by marriage to a niece and Edith believes my family is descended from a cousin of Walter’s, which means Charley and I aren’t actually related at all, at least, not by blood, not genetically.

Had Charley and his wife had children?  They all believe they have no direct descendants. Over three centuries the family name has been changed several times to avoid predators.  When they reached Seattle they all chose the name Royal to simplify financial records.

Why not be special?  Who knows, maybe we’re blue bloods, they liked to tell me when I was small. My own suspicion is that they copied the name off of a baking powder tin.

The five of them depended on the descendants of Walter’s cousin to protect them. Down the generations they followed their protectors through all kinds of climates and disasters. Across plains and mountains, certainly, but across oceans?  Who knows. A century ago they settled in Seattle and decided they would be safe here.

Why had we suddenly gained trespassers with guns?

The phone rang.  I jumped up from the stair and rushed past Charley and into the office, tripped, banged my toe into the leg of a chair, howled, found the phone in the dark, punched it on and screamed, What? What?

Elaine Royal?

Yes? I tried to take my voice down a notch.

Steve. From the office. Is this a bad time?

My brain back pedaled.

A guy I knew vaguely from the office had followed me through the check out line at the grocery today, said, Hi, Elaine, and offered to help, like he thought I would say no thank you?  Ha.

You must have a large family, he’d added, lifting bags from the cart to my hatchback.

Way too many relatives, I’d agreed.

You live with relatives?  He’d frowned.

They drop in constantly.

For some odd reason his face had cleared. Did I try to figure out why?  Of course not. I wasn’t even sure what his name was. So I’d thanked him for the help and drove off and promptly put him out of my mind.

Steve. Right. He was the programmer who sat across the table from me at the monthly design meeting that Devon insisted we needed. Can’t be a manager without meetings, I guess.

No, sorry, just stubbed my toe. What can I do for you, Steve?

I was wondering, I mean, there’s this great new Thai restaurant opening in the U district, I wondered if you would like to try it tomorrow night? 

I scowled at my toe and at my lousy memory. For the moment I couldn’t remember anything about him at all except that he sat silently through meetings and was capable of lifting a grocery bag into a car.

I also remembered that I don’t like spicy food.

That’s so kind of you, I said, but I really can’t.

There was this pause during which I hoped he wasn’t feeling rejected because I hated the whole boy-girl-rejection thing, knew it happened, didn’t mean to make it happen, never knew what else to say.

He said, My fault. You did tell me you have relatives visiting. Stupid of me. Maybe another time?

Thanks, anyway, I said and hung up the phone.

It rang again. I grabbed it up and worked at making my voice pleasant. If it was Steve again, I needed to discourage him without alienating a fellow worker.

Elaine?  Sam here. I’m really sorry about today. Had a case come up that couldn’t wait. I’d planned to ask you to dinner tonight but I’m too late for that. How is tomorrow night looking for you?

That’s when I remembered that Sam worked as a private investigator. Not the hunt-down-criminals type. He did freelance for insurance companies. Still, his background might be useful.

Have you had supper yet? I asked.

Uh, no.

Perfect. Do you know the 74th Street Grill on Greenwood?

Uh, yes.

Want to meet me there in, say, an hour?

Well, sure, okay.

Did he sound slightly stunned? Did I sound overeager? Maybe I needed to explain. I’ve had an odd problem today and I’d like to run it by you.

Nothing serious, I hope?

It couldn’t hurt to get his opinion. Maybe not. Maybe so. Let me explain over supper. And hey, I’m not looking for free advice. I know you don’t take private clients, but if I buy supper can I get ten minutes listening time?

He had a nice laugh. You’re taking me out? Honey, you can have all the time you want.

As all I had to do was switch into a clean shirt, because shoe shopping had left me a bit wrinkled, and then slip on my new shoes and do a quick comb, I got to the restaurant first. Nice place on a long street of shops surrounded by single family homes, the sort of residential neighborhood that felt safe at all hours.

A dark bar ran the length of the inside wall, backed with a mirror and rows of bottles and fronted by a few customers chatting with the bartender. The  windows stretched across the front and around one corner. I settled in a chair at a table facing the door, so I could see Sam when he arrived, and went ahead and ordered a glass of wine.

He was worth the wait, that man, giving me a delighted smile as he came through the door, as though I was the very person he’d been looking forward to seeing all day.

Elaine, this is great. I’ve had nothing but clients arguing this afternoon. Thanks for saving me from a frozen supper in front of the TV, because that’s what I would have done tonight.

We checked the menu, discovered that we both loved corned beef, and after the waiter went off with our orders, Sam said, So what’s the problem that needs ten minutes?

Now I feel guilty. You’ve worked all day. We can talk about something else.

He reached over and put his large warm hand over mine. Now is fine. Spill.

He didn’t actually hold my hand, just warmed it, and those brown eyes warmed much deeper places inside me. I could feel the heat rising in my face. Shouldn’t have started on the wine before food. I felt like a dumb teenager, which was the type of teenager I had once been, and so I probably talked too fast.

My, uh, next door neighbor saw several people wandering around my yard and peering in the windows while I was out.

What kind of people?

Dressed in business suits. Carrying briefcases. The thing is, a realtor has been phoning me lately trying to get me to sell my house. My house isn’t listed, so I don’t know why he’d do that. He says he has clients who drove by and decided they wanted it. Have you ever heard of anything like that?

After a pause, he said, Not really. It could be someone trying to case your house. Elaine, do you have burglar alarms?  If not, you might want to think about that.

Uh, yes, of course, I think I have an alarm system.

If you do, it should have a control to turn it on and off. Do you do that?

A control to turn Charley on and off sounded useful. I took a switch away from that idea.

I thought maybe you would know if this is a current problem, well-dressed strangers with briefcases seen trespassing. And now that I’ve said it, it sounds stupid to me.

Anything’s possible. They must have been there for a reason. I’ll ask around, see if anything like that has been reported. If not, it could be linked to the realtor or it could be a mistake, real estate or insurance appraisers checking the wrong house.

I almost asked if appraisers carried guns, and then realized that would open up all sorts of questions I didn’t want to answer, plus he’d probably want me to report the incident to the police.

He shook his head and muttered something about installing motion activated outdoor lights for me, a guy I barely knew and already he was in protective mode. I assured him that I had locks and bolts. There was no way I could tell him that my house came with live-in burglar alarms, five of them.

Briefcases doesn’t sound like burglars, he admitted. More like that realtor getting estimates for loan information. Four of them?  Hmmm. Must have several bids and wants to play them against each other.

Why would he have multiple bids when my house is not listed, not for sale, never will be?

Realtors never believe that. He probably has several clients looking in your neighborhood. When one was attracted by your place, he let the others know. You could ask around, see if he’s bothering any of your neighbors.

Stalking the neighborhood?  That was an odd image, realtors slithering around corners and ducking behind hedges.

That’s the only thing I can think of right off hand.

I didn’t tell him that they actually tried the knobs because I couldn’t explain how I knew, but I felt certain that appraisers wouldn’t chance setting off a burglar alarm. And if they were legit, wouldn’t they first ring the doorbell?

I said, That’s probably it. Well, thanks, that’s a load off my mind, and then the food came and I used that break to change the conversation to less personal topics.

Although I really did intend to pay the bill, Sam refused to even split it, insisting it was his idea. He also insisted that we have coffee after dinner which made me wonder if he thought the one glass of wine was too much for me. Had I talked too much and too fast as I rushed past subjects I wanted to avoid and steered us in safer directions? I was rapidly becoming a complete turn-off.

It was late by the time we left the restaurant. He walked me to my car, surprised me by giving me a quick kiss and a satisfied smile, one of those Cheshire cat smiles.

I think from now on I’ll put you in charge of picking restaurants for me, he said as he closed my car door.

So apparently he intended to ask me out again. Or else it was a memorized compliment that fell into the meaningless I’ll call you category.   

I considered mentioning Sam’s suggestion about installing a security system to Charley and then decided against it. I trusted Charley to chase intruders. I did not trust him to play fair with my men friends. He was like an overprotective big brother. My mother once said that Charley thought I was too good for any of the boys I dated back in my school days. Considering some of the boys I dated, I couldn’t argue. Now that I was way past school days, it was time for Charley to back off. 

But the next morning I was sleepy and not thinking clearly and I carelessly mentioned to Charley that Sam had suggested burglar alarms, adding, There was no way to tell him I don’t need them because the house is never empty.

Funny how this Sam guy turns up in your life and the next thing that happens is we get snoopers circling our house, Charley said.

He was leaning against the kitchen counter, coffee mug in hand. All I could actually see in the sunny room was a pair of jeans, legs crossed, and a coffee mug floating in the air.

No connection between Sam and the snooping suits, I told him firmly.

Leather houseshoes shuffled into the kitchen, topped by a wool bathrobe over a pair of pajama legs.

Good morning, Walter, I said and got down another mug and filled it with coffee and put it on the table in front of the chair that had just scooted out.

Good morning, dear. The cup floated slowly upward, followed by a loud slurp.

Hi, Walter, Charley said. Elaine, about this Sam guy. He asked you to meet him at Starbucks, didn’t show, and while you were gone, strangers came poking around.

That’s ridiculous, Charley!

He thinks you live alone. Maybe he lured you away intentionally, Charley muttered and then did some very loud coffee gulping. Did you tell him about the guns in the briefcases?

What briefcases?  What guns? Walter asked.

The whole family had discussed the guns several times when Walter was present. Walter was not losing memory, he was losing interest and seldom listened. I didn’t answer Walter because he was already shaking open his newspaper.

Charley, I didn’t tell Sam about the guns. He’s an investigator. He would insist that I make a report to the police and they’d come out to search. He is already saying that I need burglar lights, you know, those big motion-activated spotlights that come on when anyone walks by.

That could be fun, Charley said.

In my imagination I could see Charley at night walking toward the house, solid and real in the dark, and a car driving by. Charley nears the house. Spotlight time. Charley’s head disappears. The car slams into a tree. I said, You could literally be a flasher, Charley.

You are a sassy girl. 

Charley was right, not about me being sassy, but about our need to escalate our defenses. When Sam Norris phoned me later in the morning, I picked his brain.

I’ve been thinking about what you said. Could you put together a list for me of burglar alarm systems, which are best, what they do?

What do you have?

Okay, this was going to be one of those let-me-be-the-judge conversations that men always go for. They assume that all women are incapable of judging anything mechanical or electronic, don’t like to say that, especially to a woman who earns her living working with computer programs, and so they go this weird conversational route. I can weird-route too because I don’t have a male ego. If told that, Sam might claim that what I have is female coyness, but never mind.

I never remember names. My cousin Charley says our system is outdated and wondered what is current in this area.

Sure, Sam said, satisfied that I was putting my security problem in firm masculine hands, silly man. I’ll e-mail you a list of what’s available and which I think are the most reliable. Your cousin can Google them for details. How long will he be around?

Back and forth, he’s doing some work in Portland, said I who never do the three hour drive to Portland. It was the right distance to sound good, as though he could be here for installation and so forth, but unavailable if Sam stopped by during the day.

So he lives in Seattle. Is he computer savvy like you? Sam asked.

Silly question. I thanked him and hung up.

When did I become your cousin? Charley asked.

I swung around in my desk chair and saw his clothes leaning against the doorframe.

It got me information you can Google.

Charley loves to Google. He is also fairly good at installation, and if he knows what to install, he is good at coming home with it. Right now I should explain that Charley does not shoplift. Instead, he leaves cash in store tills when he can. Not all stores have tills and some have alarm systems that make that impossible, but he tries.

It is not easy for me to hire a workman who might notice oddities in our wiring, not to mention strange sounds around the house in the daytime. If we added a system, it had to be one that Charley could install and that also did not involve an ongoing relationship with an outside company, a feature of many alarm systems. What Charley really wanted was information about bulletproof window glass, electric fencing, possibly a cannon in the attic.

Maybe we should get our own guns, Charley suggested. I won’t have to get a permit and most gun sellers are happy with cash left on the counter, no records for taxes.

If we have an emergency, I don’t want a fireman stumbling over a box of guns in the attic.

Picky, picky, Charley said and dropped that idea temporarily.

After I thought about it, I brought it up again later.

I had only known him for my lifetime. What about the previous hundreds of years?  What was his history with guns?  Did he do a little target practice every generation or so, maybe wiping out whole towns?  No wonder worry drove so many of my ancestors insane.

Have you ever handled a gun? I asked.

Lots of times, he said, then added, can’t remember when.  His memory, or lack of, could be way too convenient.

Were you ever in a war?

We were having this discussion at around noon in the kitchen, with light streaming in, which meant I could not see his expression, all I could see was a pair of jeans, the seat of the pants propped against the refrigerator door, with one leg bent forward at the hip and back at the knee so that it crossed the other leg, and floating somewhere above the jeans was a cup of coffee. I appreciated that he wore something so that I had some clue as to where he was.

Walter was still at the table and had probably been there all morning, because what was visible was the same bathrobe and pajama pants I’d seen earlier. With no demands on his time, Walter liked to read every word on every page of the newspaper.

I had changed into a good pair of tan slacks and a navy sweater, thinking I would swing by the office for a few minutes and do a little head patting. I’d recently