Six months. Six months had passed since I banished my last black soul, and five months since my life changed completely.

Dealing with Geri had been our first task—an interesting challenge since Mrs. Weston had officially fired Will, I was still on bail, and Detective Turner was busy following the misguided theory that Lloyd Weston had murdered his own daughter for reasons unknown.

But everyone chipped in, even Shannon, who went to a yoga class to keep an eye on Geri while RJ stayed at home with Aisling. He'd got better at babysitting now, and he refused to put on yoga pants.

That left me to visit Geri's house with Will in my first role as his sidekick. RJ had offered to go instead, but Will said a couple would arouse less suspicion than two men. If a neighbour saw us, we could always claim to have misread the address when we went to pick up our newly purchased second-hand bookcase.

But nobody noticed us, or at least, nobody living. While Will picked the lock on the back door and snuck off to explore Geri's cottage, I hung around in the kitchen, keeping an eye out for her return and chatting to fifty-seven-year-old Doris, who'd died from a single punch to the jaw when her drunk husband returned from the pub many years ago. He'd long since perished from cirrhosis of the liver, so she said, leaving her to spy on Geri for all eternity.

"She's a strange one," Doris said. "Lives on mushed-up fruit and vitamin pills, but then she smokes those funny cigarettes every evening while she watches crime dramas on the television. So graphic. Back in my day, we had Dynasty and The Golden Girls."

"Funny cigarettes? You mean hash?"

Back home, so many of the teenagers had smoked it. Hash was the only pleasure they got in our broken city.

"Marijuana, love. She grows it herself. A right little gardener. Sometimes, she watches those DIY shows too, but mostly it's the crime programs. Although that chap on CSI's quite dishy. You know—the one with the brown hair."

"I'm not sure who you mean." I looked around, taking in the back garden, or rather, the patio, seeing as the entire thing was paved with ugly pink-and-yellow stones. A sparkly fairy balanced on an ornamental toadstool, and a small fountain reminded me I really needed to pee. "Where does she grow her marijuana? She doesn't seem to be much of a gardener."

"In the cupboard right behind you. One of those fancy setups with the lights."

"What cupboard?"

"Behind the wall tapestry."

Yup, Doris was right. Behind the ugly orange-and-blue scene of a duck kissing a turtle lurked a full-height door. I covered my hand with my sleeve to avoid fingerprints and pulled it open. Wow. Geri had gone to a real effort. Trays filled with water and some kind of porous stones, bright strip lights, and half a dozen healthy, bushy pot plants filled every bit of space.

Footsteps signalled Will's return. "You'll never guess— Hey, what's this? She likes to smoke roll-ups?"

"Seems that way."

"How on earth did you find that?"

"Doris helped me out."

"Doris?"

"You're treading on her foot."

Will leapt to the side, and Doris laughed. "Your young man's easier on the eye than that TV cop. You should hang on to that one."

"I intend to."

On the way home, Will told me all about Geri's bedroom, complete with its life-size cutout of Derek standing by the window.

"It's freaky as fuck. She's got his face printed on her pillow, and every wall's covered in little Derek-photos. And she's got a bunch of chocolate wrappers pinned in between them with dates written underneath. I'm guessing he ate the contents at some point. There's even a wadded-up tissue and an empty Viagra packet."

"Yuck."

"She's sprung in the head. I didn't find any fentanyl, but I didn't look that hard. Reckon I saw enough."

"But we can't tell the police we broke into her house, can we?"

"No, but thanks to your friend Doris, I do have an idea."

Two days later, Constable Joanne O'Dowd followed a not-so-anonymous tip that a kooky yoga teacher was cultivating cannabis plants with intent to supply. While searching for other hidden cupboards, she may have accidentally stumbled across Geri's shrine to Derek, which might have led to Geri freaking out and confessing her undying love for a man who'd shagged her once while drunk at a party and then getting arrested when she mentioned removing his darling fiancée from the scene. Oops. Better still, Constable O'Dowd got all the accolades while Detective Turner only got pissed off.

That was two weeks after Lloyd Weston's death, and I closed the door on one chapter of my life and turned to the next—titled Loving Lawson. Sharing a bed with Will was where I felt the happiest, and some mornings I never wanted to leave it. But I needed to get a job until Will's business made enough money to support both of us, even if Will didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about the idea.

"There's an office in town looking for a cleaner. Five evenings a week, which would give me the mornings to take care of Aisling and the afternoons to help you."

"Why don't you leave it for a few weeks? Take a rest?"

"Because we can't afford to."

"We'll be okay. Trust me."

I did, even when he led me to the bottom of the garden a fortnight later. What was he planning? A quickie amongst the shrubs?

Not quite.

"Why is there a fence panel missing?" I asked. "Did it blow down?"

He didn't answer, just took my hand and pulled me through the gap.

"Will, we shouldn't be in here."

"It's okay."

"No, it isn't. What if the owner finds out?"

"She already has."

"What do you mean? You know her?"

"Intimately."

Intimately? "Are you having a bloody affair?"

Will burst out laughing while I fought back tears. Why were we here?

"It's your house, beautiful. I bought it for you because I never want you to run again."

"Huh? You're not making any sense."

What did he mean, he'd bought the house for me? Last week, we didn't even have enough money for a takeaway pizza.

"When my parents came over the other day, it was because they'd seen the report about the fire in the paper and thanks to that, they finally decided to give me access to my trust fund. Which means I've got the money to spoil you now, and the first thing I did was buy this place. I figured you'd want to stay near Shannon, and since she seems to have this weird love-hate thing going on with RJ, I reckon she'll be sticking around here for a while."

"Are you crazy? You can't buy me a house."

"Actually, it was easier than I thought. My lawyer's already done the paperwork."

"Tell me you're joking."

"I'm deadly serious. Besides, RJ needs the space. Aisling can have our old room so him and Shannon can get up to some serious filth without an audience."

I began shaking, and Will kept me steady while I tried to process everything he'd said. He'd bought a flipping house?

"Do you want to look inside?" he asked.

"Uh, I guess?"

"This is the part where I keep my fingers crossed that there aren't any ghosts. We researched it, and we couldn't find that anyone died here, but..."

Even if there were ghosts, I'd deal with it. Because Will had bought us a freaking house. And— Wait. My heart stopped mid-beat. "What did you just say?"

"We couldn't find that anyone died here. Apparently, this used to be a forest until the developers flattened it. I know records aren't perfect, but—"

"The 'we' part. Who's we?"

"Uh, me and RJ?"

"You told RJ about the ghosts?"

Silence.

"Will?"

"Just that you can see them. None of the other stuff. He's my best mate, Nia. I couldn't keep him in the dark forever."

"And what did he say?"

"Well, he was kind of sceptical at first, but then Shannon told him it was true. She also told him she'd cut his tongue out while he sleeps if he breathes a word to anyone, so he'll definitely keep his mouth shut." Will laid a hand on my arm, tentative. "Don't be mad, beautiful. RJ knows how to keep a secret. When I was fifteen, I accidentally set the school on fire, and he'll take that to the grave."

"You what?"

"Cross my heart, I only meant to set off the smoke alarm. There was a maths test, and I hadn't revised."

This was what it meant to have friends, wasn't it? That you shared your secrets and they trusted you with theirs. And I'd never find better friends than Will, Shannon, and RJ. I slipped an arm around Will's waist and pressed a kiss to his cheek to show him I wasn't mad.

"Let's look inside."

The style of the place was totally different to RJ's. White, modern, a single storey wrapping around three sides of a central courtyard. A lump stuck in my throat as I was reminded of my family home back in Syria. Will led me into the kitchen, a large, airy space with a marble-topped island in the centre and a dining table at one end. A door at the far end took us to the living room, decorated in pale green with floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out onto the courtyard and took up the whole of one wall. And the best part? No spirits lurking in the shadows.

"Nia, say something? Perhaps I should have told you, but I wanted it to be a surprise."

Well, it certainly was that. And it made this day all the more special.

"I love it. I love you. I can't believe this is happening."

Will grinned and waggled his eyebrows. "Want to check out the bedroom?"

"You're such a man."

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"No, not at all."

***

We'd been in the courtyard house for five months now. The back fence was gone completely, and Shannon brought Aisling over in the mornings while she went to work. Which was only three days a week now. She still insisted on keeping her job at the bread factory even though RJ said she didn't have to, but he'd talked her into dropping her hours so she could spend more time with her daughter.

And how were they getting on?

Well, Shannon had started bringing Aisling to our house rather than me picking her up after I accidentally walked in on her and RJ doing the deed in the hallway one morning when I got there a few minutes early. I still reached for the bleach to rinse out my eyes just thinking about it. So, there was that. And Aisling had called RJ "Dada" for the first time last week and he didn't even freak out. He and Shannon bickered constantly, but better to see her like that than the mouse she'd been with Slick Dick, and far from driving them apart, it seemed to bring her and RJ closer together. Fiery. That was the best word for their relationship. It matched Shannon's hair.

Which promised to make our holiday interesting. We were due to leave for the airport in an hour, and according to RJ, she was still packing.

"Will you get a move on?" he shouted up the stairs.

"You'll be the first one to complain if we forget something."

I stifled a giggle and shifted Aisling on my hip. We were going to Portugal, not the Arctic. RJ had wanted golf, Shannon had wanted the sea, I'd wanted sun, and when I'd asked Will, he'd just looked me up and down and said he could get what he wanted anywhere. True. Anyhow, we'd compromised on the Algarve. RJ had booked the flights, and even that caused ructions.

"These are first class," Shannon had said.

"And?"

"I keep telling you, I don't want you to spend so much money on us."

But RJ was learning how to handle Shannon. "Okay, sweetheart. I'll swap yours for economy. But the rest of us are sitting upfront with the fancy food and the big seats." He'd relieved me of Aisling and lifted her onto his lap. "You like the fancy food, don't you, princess?"

"Disney?"

Guess where we'd be going next year?

***

Finally. After two hours in a plane—my first flight ever—an argument between Shannon and RJ when she found out he'd rented a Porsche Cayenne rather than a small family hatchback, and an hour's drive to our beachfront villa, I finally began to relax. Will helped, insisting on rubbing sunblock over every inch of me even though I had the type of skin that rarely burned.

"Well, we finally made it," Will said. "I began to fear we wouldn't when RJ bought Shannon that handbag at the airport."

"I think it helped that she really liked the colour."

"Two weeks to do nothing. At least we got that last case wrapped up before we left."

With money no longer an issue, we both worked for the satisfaction instead. And being able to tell two grieving parents that the neighbour who murdered their ten-year-old daughter had been arrested was worth the heartache of having to talk to that confused and scared little girl. Since Geri got charged, we'd worked three more cases and solved every one, Joanne O'Dowd had been promoted to detective, and Chris Turner was pissed off with all three of us. That made me smile too.

"What's that look for?" Will asked.

"I just can't believe the way everything turned out. From a disaster to, well, this." I waved a hand at the pool we were lounging beside, set in tropical gardens with the smell of sea air drifting over us. Not quite the island we'd once talked about escaping to, but in many ways, this was so much better.

"Me neither. And to think that when we first met, I had you down as a suspect." Will shook his head. "Lloyd fucking Weston and the yoga bitch. Who'd have thought?"

"I still feel bad about Helene. You know, stuck at Daylesford Hall on her own."

Neither of us had been near the place since that final night. I got the feeling Anthony Weston would finish what his father started if I so much as set foot over the threshold. According to Aiden, most of Weston Corp's customers had jumped ship following Lloyd Weston's death and the bribery allegations, and the company had collapsed. Aiden had gone to work for a smaller firm near Manchester, but he still heard whispers from his ex-colleagues.

"What do you want to do? Stop by for coffee and a chat? I doubt Helene will have anything pleasant to say."

"I know, but she's been through a lot. I just wish there was a way to free her that didn't involve hunting and killing. To free all of them. Sometimes, I wonder if the others might know more than me."

"The other Electi?"

I nodded, running two fingers over the gold necklace I still wore every day. My mother had told me it was important—life or death important—but she'd never elaborated on what it truly meant. I wasn't sure if she'd even known.

"Have you ever tried to find them?"

"I wouldn't know where to start. As I said before, they'll keep their powers well hidden."

"We could both take a look if you want? Maybe there's a clue out there."

"Maybe."

Will had sowed the seed. I would look for my sisters, but for now, I just wanted to enjoy my first ever holiday. If I constantly focused on the dead, I'd forget to live myself. My nightmares about Lloyd Weston had faded, consigned to the depths of my mind along with memories of Syria, and for a few days at least, I vowed to block out my past and enjoy the present.

"Fancy a swim?" I asked.

Will's answer was to pick me up and jump into the pool. I came to the surface coughing and spluttering as he laughed.

"Need the kiss of life, beautiful?"

"From you? Always."

***

Author's Note:

Thanks so much for reading Cursed! I hope you enjoyed the story :)

Although this is the end of the book, it isn't the end of Will and Rania's story. They'll be back in Spooked, the second book in the Electi series. Keep reading for a sneak preview...