“Sure. Where else would they be?”
“Indeed,” Frank retorted. “She can hardly expect us to vanish, given the events of the evening. It’s not as if we bother the humans who can’t detect us.”
“So what are they saying?” Darcy glanced around the room, as if she might catch a glimpse of something.
“That the safe is fine,” Jordan lied.
Keeping a wary eye on Jase and Darcy, Frank went over to inspect the bookcase more closely. “No sign of damage,” he reported.
“This may be about the papers Walters thinks Jordan stole,” Jase said. “The obvious next step was to break in here and see if you were lying about having taken them.”
“Maybe.” Darcy looked skeptical. “But the most likely scenario is that someone was after the money in the safe, heard you moving about upstairs, Jordan, and decided to hightail it before I arrived.”
“ ‘Hightail it?’ ” Hattie repeated. “What does that mean?”
Frank snorted. “If you and your friends would confine your vocabulary to what can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, we wouldn’t continually be in need of elucidation.”
Jordan sighed. “I’ll explain later.”
“I don’t need you to explain a thing to me,” Darcy told Jordan, exasperated.
“That’s not—”
“The money is the strongest motive for whatever happened here,” Darcy continued. “And it’s not like people don’t know you and I are friends, or that I live a few blocks from here. Any planned theft would be risky, in terms of my response time if you called me. If I were the burglar, I’d be nervous as hell that you’d wake up while I was here. Therefore, why take the risk for a few old papers?”
“What money?” Jase asked in a cranky tone.
Jordan rubbed the bridge of her nose. She needed 180 proof alcohol. In large quantities.
Darcy walked past her into the hall to examine the front door. She straightened, nodding. “Just as I suspected—the door’s been jimmied. You’ll need to get someone out to repair it.” She cocked her head at Jordan. “Why is your hair all wet?”
“Er …” Jordan said.
“Tell them we woke you up!” Charlotte urged. “We saved you!”
“Did you see who it was?” Jordan asked Charlotte.
“It was too dark,” Hattie pointed out.
“Do you mean to tell me you can’t see in the dark?” Jordan asked.
“Of course not. Why would you think we could?”
“Oh, maybe because you’re ghosts?” Jordan replied sarcastically, and Darcy snickered behind her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jase crack a smile for the first time since he’d arrived.
“As ghosts, we aren’t all-powerful,” Frank retorted. “Mostly, we have the same powers of deduction and senses that a human has, plus a few extras.”
“Oh, well, that explains it.”
“At least you’re sarcastic with everyone,” Darcy said. “I’d hate to think you reserve it just for us.”
Jordan ignored that. “So what did you see?” she asked the ghosts.
“He had some small kind of light he was holding, like a directed candle, but the flame didn’t flicker,” Frank said.
“A flashlight,” Jordan explained. “Probably a small penlight.” At Frank’s perplexed look, she added, “Too complicated.”
He shrugged, accepting her answer. “I caught a glimpse of a mask, as well. Not just over the eyes and nose—bigger, as if he’d pulled it over his head.”
“Like a ski mask,” Jordan concluded.
“I have no idea what that is,” Frank replied.
“His clothing was dark, and he wore a hood over his head,” Charlotte contributed.
“Sounds like the same person who attacked me at Holt’s house,” Jordan deduced as she propped a fallen portrait against a bookcase, then set a toppled plant upright. Again.
“Wait, don’t tell me: dark hoodie and jeans, right?” Darcy asked.
“Close enough,” Jordan replied, inspecting the plant more closely. The poor thing—it had almost no soil left in the pot.
“You were also attacked at Holt’s house?” Jase asked grimly.
“I’ll explain—”
“—later,” Jase finished for her. “Got it.” He shook his head and started picking up books, replacing them on their shelves.
“Aren’t you going to dust for prints or something?” she asked Darcy.
“I’ll send someone around to dust the door and the desk in the morning,” Darcy replied. “But it’s not like you want fingerprint powder all over those rare books. And it would take forever to try to locate a fingerprint on them.”
“So that’s it?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah.” Darcy yawned. “I’m going back to bed. Your intruder is gone, whoever he was. I doubt he’ll be back tonight, but you seem to have a good warning system in place. If anything happens, call me.”
Jordan followed her outside. “Well, thanks for coming over.”
“That’s the job.” She nodded her head toward the house. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk again in the morning. If I were you, I’d make it a top priority to see if that cash is still around, and if it is, get it into a safe-deposit box at the bank. We can let the story float around town that you’ve found it and removed it from the house. That should discourage any more nighttime visitors.”
“If that’s what he was after,” Jordan said.
“It’s a safe bet. Those papers Clive Walters claims were stolen are worth only a fraction of the forty thousand Hattie says is in that wall safe.”
“Yeah, but Charlotte and Frank described the intruder as looking like the person I saw at Holt’s this afternoon.”
“Yesterday afternoon,” Darcy corrected mildly. “It’s way past midnight.” She stretched, then stood for a moment, checking out the neighborhood. “Seems quiet enough. I’m out of here.”
Jordan watched her drive away, then came back inside. Jase, who had followed them out and listened quietly to their exchange, stayed where he was. “I’ll bunk down here tonight. Just in case.”
“Bunk down on what?” she asked, grabbing the first excuse that came to mind. She wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with a sleepover. “My furniture is piled in the second-floor parlor. There’s only the wing-back chair in the library, or the desk chair, and you can’t sleep sitting up all night. Besides, the ghosts will alert me if anyone tries to break in again.”
“Yes, you can count on us to remain vigilant,” Hattie assured her.
“Hattie!” Charlotte hissed. “If he stays here, they might end up making passionate love! We should leave, so that he feels compelled to protect her!”
“Whoa,” Jordan protested. “I don’t need ghosts playing ma—” She glanced at Jase, who had his arms folded across his chest and one eyebrow raised, listening with amusement to her side of the conversation. Swallowing the word “matchmaker,” she sent Charlotte a scorching glance.
“I’ll be fine,” she told Jase.
He studied her for a moment in silence, then gripped her shoulders with warm hands and leaned in to place a light kiss on her forehead. She felt tingles all the way down to her toes. In the background, Frank snorted.
“I’ll get out of your hair, then,” Jase told her. “Pleasant dreams.” Jogging down the front steps, he disappeared into the night.
“Huh.” Jordan stared after him. “He didn’t even put up a fight.”
“You know nothing about attracting men.” Charlotte hovered in the entry. “If you had acted as if you were indisposed with a fit of the vapors, he would have remained by your side throughout the night.”
“Indeed,” Hattie agreed, “he seemed to be looking for any excuse to do so.”