Chapter Twenty-Six

I skirted the room, staying close to the bookshelves since I didn't share Avi's non-corporeal non-weight and wanted to leave the scene more or less intact for the deputies when they finally arrived. While the graceful curved desk took up a third of the turret, the other two-thirds were lined with what I'd assumed were simply upholstered benches. Window seats, sure, but when I'd tried to lift them to see if there was anything underneath, they hadn't budged. I tried again. No luck.

"You have to slide them forward before you lift the lid," Avi said. "Oren didn't want us to have to remove the cushions to open the chests, so he did this thing—don't ask me what it's called—to make it work."

"Clever," I said, hooking my fingers under the overhang of the first window seat. Sure enough, I felt a subtle groove under the lip and pulled. It glided forward for two or three inches—the depth of the cushion—then lifted easily before locking in place.

Avi pointed at the hinges. "Oren installed those so the lid wouldn't fall down and bonk you on the head as you rummaged around." He rubbed the back of his head as he said this, and I wondered if he remembered his injury.

Then I actually could hear his breath catch, which was a first. Mine did too, for that matter. Because the window seat was packed . Don't get me wrong—it wasn't a rat's nest. Everything was arranged neatly and carefully padded if necessary, from photographs to knickknacks to Avi's framed diploma from the University of Oregon. But what Avi's gaze was riveted on was a porcelain bowl that almost glowed in the twilight, nestled in a soft-looking red knitted something , although I couldn't tell if it was a scarf or a sweater. The bowl's inner walls were white, with a sinuous crimson dragon chasing its tail just under the rim.

Avi knelt down and touched the fabric. "I was wearing this sweater the first time I met Oren. It was at Reminiscence."

"Reminiscence?"

He didn't look away from the sweater. "The second-hand store in town. The owner has great taste, so she only stocks things that are beautiful or functional, even if they're not quite antiques. Oren was working on the B&B renovation and he was scouting for room decorations. He'd identified this bowl as being perfect for their bridal suite, but I'd wandered by and picked it up before he could bring the owners back to see it." Avi looked up at me, eyes swimming with ghostly tears. "He bought it for me instead, because the dragon matched the sweater."

I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak. "Would you like to have it in your attic?"

"I… Yes. Yes, please."

"You got it. If you see anything else you want, just say the word and I'll take it upstairs." He nodded, but didn't move, and I gave myself a mental facepalm. He can't lift anything. "Do you want me to unpack everything so you can decide?"

He lifted one shoulder. "Maybe later." He glanced up at me. "Could you leave this one for now? You can go ahead and look in the other seats if you want, but I… need a minute."

"Sure. No problem." I moved to the farthest seat, the one that abutted the desk, to give him at least a semblance of privacy. The lid didn't open quite as smoothly as the first one, seeming to catch on something that required me to tug a little harder. As soon as I locked the hinges, I could see why.

Although most of the contents were arranged as neatly as in the first chest, there was a chenille throw jammed into the front right corner. Something was shoved upside down into the throw, and its base—at least two inches thick and as wide as my palm—extended above the lip of the chest, enough to have scored the underside of the lid.

Well, that wouldn't do. I didn't want anything to damage our window seats, even if the damage couldn't be seen.

So I grabbed it, but dang , this thing was heavy , the base's edges sharp against my palm. Whatever stood atop it—or underneath it, I suppose, considering its current orientation—snagged on the chenille as I lifted.

Fuzz floofed around me as I disengaged the throw, because the main body of the thing, glinting with gold between the loose-knit chenille, had more spiky parts than a tumbleweed.

"Ha! Got you," I muttered as I finally freed it. I draped the throw over the open lid because I needed both hands to turn the thing right side up.

And nearly dropped it on my foot. Because I recognized the stack of books rising for over ten inches, graduating from the fully open one at the bottom to the completely closed one at the top, like some exotic, angular flower.

The Lang Literary Award.

Snippets of conversations since I'd arrived in Ghost sparked in my memory like fireflies. Avi was a writer. I'd been told that more than once, but I'd never asked for any details, not even from Avi himself.

But this… Avi wasn't just a writer. He was a writer. A writer who was good enough to win one of the most prestigious awards in all of genre fiction. My hands shook as I edged toward the desk to set it down. And nearly dropped it again when I read the brass plaque on the base.

Lang Literary Award 2004

Presented to Jake Fields

"What the…" I croaked.

I must have sounded sufficiently peculiar to catch Avi's attention because even though he didn't shift his focus from the bowl and sweater, he asked, "You all right?"

"You're Jake Fields?"

"Mmmhmm."

"You're Jake Fields."

"Yes. Or at least I was."

"You're Jake Fields ."

"I said —" He sat back on his heels and looked up at me, but when his gaze flicked to what I was holding, his face screwed up in disgust. "Oh. That."

I brandished it. "Yes. This. You won the freaking Lang , Avi. 2004… that must have been for Behind Time , right? I remember because I thought it was so well-deserved. Why would you shove it upside down in a window seat?"

He scowled. "Because it was mocking me. I was getting absolutely nowhere with the next book. It was nothing but drivel."

"Drivel." I stared down at him. "That's the first word you said to me. Drivel."

"Maybe because it's what I'd been saying to myself for weeks. I'd gotten to about chapter four and then everything turned dead and dull." He sat back and folded his arms around his knees. "I think I was trying to force it, you know? I was missing Oren, and wanted to get the book to my agent before he got back, and instead I couldn't make any headway at all." His brow pleated. "I must have fallen asleep at the desk, because I woke up with that thing staring at me. I was so irritated that I just shoved it into the chest to get it out of my sight."

"When was this?"

"I don't know. A couple of days before the party?"

My scalp prickled and those damn spectral spiders staged another curtain call down my back. I peered closely at the base of the award and saw a discoloration on one corner. I held it away from my body.

"Holy crap." I tiptoed to the desk and set it gingerly in the center of the blotter. "I need to call Jerry. Or the police. Or Jerry and the police."

"What in the world for?"

"Because…" I swallowed and wiped my hands on my jeans at the thought that my fingerprints might have just contaminated the evidence. "Because I think this might be the murder weapon."

"Murder weapon? Whose murder?"

"Well." I met his gaze. "Yours."