Page 66 of Found Objects

I had planted all the trees around my home myself, and they were no more likely to fall than I was to catch a cold. “The glass is very thick, and it comes to a point, as you can see, so no. I’ve never had any trouble.”

“This is incredible,” Justin whispered. “It’s like living in the sky.”

There were deep woods all around us, the long drive out to the road out front, and above us, at the moment, dark clouds that I was guessing would soon pelt us with rain.

“You couldn’t possibly have done this yourself.” Abel glanced at me.

“Oh no, this was done by my family over several generations.”

Abel stared at me, and he didn’t appear happy. “May we sit?”

“Sure. Would you all like some tea? Desta makes the best, and she always tries the new brews out on me.”

“That sounds amazing,” Narah said. “Would you like us up here at your island?”

“Sit wherever you want. There are chairs all over, as you can see, and there’s a couch where you can look out at a small grove. Cole liked that area quite a bit when he visited.”

“Is it okay if I walk around, go upstairs?” Fletcher asked me. “I see books up there, and paintings and tapestries.”

The second floor was where most of my treasures were, and people who visited usually wanted to see them.

“Yeah, sure, g’head.”

He started up as Justin walked around, staring at the floor, putting his hand on the glass windows, and taking in how big the area was and the enormous copper pipes that ran up one wall.

“Is this your bedroom?” Justin asked me when he reached a door.

“No, that’s a guest room.”

“And where’s your room?”

“Way over here at the end of this wall by the kitchen.”

“Hey, Merritt?” Fletcher called down to me.

After putting on the kettle, I walked over into the middle of the room, out from under the fossilized wood walkways of the second floor, and looked up at him where he stood, looking down at me and holding on to the railing.

“Is that a bedroom?”

“It is. It belongs to my roommate, who’s not around that often,” I told him.

“It’s locked.” He smiled sheepishly. “I just wanted to see what it was.”

“Don’t worry about it. Even if she were here, if she was in her room and you tried to open the door, she wouldn’t care.”

“You live with a woman?”

Technically, no. I lived with a siren who could be gone for months at a time, but there was no way to explain that to any of them. “Yes. And I hardly see her, which makes her the perfect person to live with.”

“I wish I hardly saw Reggie,” Fletcher muttered before returning to his self-guided tour of my library. “I can’t wait until he’s mated so the lovebirds can live together.”

Darting back to the kitchen, I went to my tea cabinet and opened it up. “Okay, what kind of tea would you all⁠—”

“You say you’re not a witch, Merritt.” Narah sounded odd, and when I turned to look at her, she was pacing on the other side of the island. “And yet you speak to ghosts and dispel them, you sent a wave of power through that room today that put us all on the floor⁠—”

“Not Cole,” I reminded her.

“No, I…can’t think about that right… But Merritt, you somehow got rid of all those bodies last night, so why wouldn’t Abel jump to the logical conclusion that you could bury a corpse on our land while we slept?” She shouted the last part. “You need to start talking, because I’m tired of waiting for answers!”