Page 67 of Grave Humor

Taking the advice of an archangel seemed wise to me, so I took Eoghan home, set up the laptop at the kitchen table, and browsed real estate sites for houses while he sat with me, marveling at the modern designs. I learned three key things about him during our browsing.

He loved modern homes, he loved anything that could be turned into a barn for horses, and he fell in love with the idea of living on a ranch. The ranch made sense to me; he could ride and check on his herds and reach back to his roots despite being separated from them by thousands of years.

I preferred the larger farmhouses, the kind that could grow up to become a plantation manor with a little work and a few extensions.

Gordon joined us after nightfall, and we huddled around the laptop trying to make sense of the real estate world and how someone might have the perfect house built where an imperfect one stood. Gordon pointed at a massive log cabin that fringed on being a mansion. “You should get something like that.”

I clicked on the house’s picture on the real estate site, winced at its multi-million price tag, and did my best to ignore that element of the home. The exterior took the log cabin motif to extremes. The interior began rustic and transitioned to modern in places like the kitchen, the master bathroom, and the small movie theater and bowling alley in its basement. I whistled. “That’s insane.”

Eoghan pointed at the picture of the movie theater. “What is this room for?”

“Watching movies. You know that television we bought?”

“I do. The annoyance came over and showed us what it was, and he turned on a movie so we could be amused while waiting for news, as we would otherwise create trouble inappropriately. Once the movie was over, he suggested we should visit the cemetery.”

The devil would be the death of me at the rate he was going. “What movie?”

“The Land Before Time.”

Wow. The devil was truly ruthless. “Did you enjoy it?” Neither man would look me in the eyes, which made me giggle. “You totally enjoyed it.” I bet they cried, too.

I did, always.

As I could be a nice person when I wanted to be, I didn’t press them about it, clicking to the picture of the bathroom, which had an oceanic theme. “This is nice.” I clicked to the next bathroom, which had a clean, elegant, and modern theme and a jet tub I could spend the rest of my life in. “This is nicer. I want a bathroom like this.”

“What’s so special about it?” Eoghan asked. “It looks nice enough, I suppose. I like the ocean theme better, though.”

“The tub includes massagers in this one.” Checking the notes, I gave a breakdown of the insane luxuries, including a heated floor, a ceiling shower, and everything a woman needed to pamper herself. “All it’s missing is a place to put my books when I’m not reading one.”

“Books and water do not mix,” the antique announced.

“They do when you’re using a waterproof electronic reader. I just haven’t been able to afford one. As soon as I feel I can, I will buy one to add to my glorious book collection. And my book collection will be better than the town’s library.”

That wouldn’t be hard; the town’s library was located within a mobile home and contained fewer than five hundred books. When I’d been in middle school, I’d read the entire collection, and when I’d asked if there would be more coming in and been told no, I’d realized why everyone left Sunset.

Damn it, I already wanted to go back to the bookstore and buy more books for my fledgling library.

“Ah. Yes, that reminds me. We retrieved your new bookcases, and they are in the basement for now. We weren’t sure where you wanted to put them,” Eoghan said.

“My new house needs a library. A big one. It must be the best room in the house.”

“I will not argue with you over this. I have enjoyed books since their invention, although initially, a disturbing number of them were exclusively religious texts, which annoyed me. Works of art, but not subject matter I wanted to spend all eternity reading. I was quite pleased when texts shifted from religious and non-fiction to fiction. Fiction is delightful.”

Well, keeping Eoghan amused wouldn’t stress me much. I’d take him to the bookstore, and once we exhausted the local store, I’d run him to one of the cities to the larger ones—or introduce him to online shopping.

His bank accounts might run dry if I showed him the wonders of online shopping.

“Do you think buying the property is a good idea?” I asked, clicking to check out more pictures of the ridiculous mansion and the wonders within it.

“Of course. Your expression told me so,” Eoghan replied.

“My expression? How so?”

He chuckled, leaning back in his chair. “When you drove to it, and it came into view, you were tense and wary. Upon realizing your parents were not present, you relaxed and smiled. When you realized how much it had fallen into ruin in such a short period of time, your expression once again became tense. Its state made you unhappy. The property makes you feel, and that is important. Some of the emotions are not good, but some are. That is important. There is also room for horses.”

Right. Eoghan liked horses. “I have no idea what’s needed to keep horses.”

“A stable,” he replied. He gestured at the laptop. “Let’s search for one of those.”