I leaned into the kitchen. Damn! The old boy was being victimized by a hugging redhead.

Life ain't fair. Not even a little. Me she pokes and pinches.

A crackling sense of amused anticipation grew around me. Somehow the ladies had both wakened my partner and put him in a good mood. That filled me with foreboding. Eclipses and planetary conjunctions are less common than the Dead Man awakening in a good mood when the house is infested with females.

I took a deep breath.

Here we went again.

I led the ladies into the Dead Man's room, which takes up most of the left-side ground floor of my house, excepting the pantries off the kitchen.

The cuties made themselves right at home. Without asking they dragged chairs out of my office, which is an ambitious closet across the hall from the Dead Man's room. Tinnie perched on the guest's chair. Nicks claimed the comfortable one that belongs behind my desk. I would cherish the warmth forever. Meantime, Alyx decorated the chair I usually use when I'm in with the Dead Man. The Goddamn Parrot still perched on Nicks' hand, nibbling bits of something she offered him. He cooed like a goddamned turtledove.

You might reserve that admiration for Miss Tate. If you were a gentleman. That was my partner, shoving unwanted advice directly into my head.

"But I'm not. She's told me so lots of times." I glared. Alyx and Nicks smiled as though enjoying a private joke. Maybe Old Bones had shared his remarks with the three heartstoppers, not just me.

Perhaps I blushed, slightly. Tinnie sure grinned.

The Dead Man resides in a huge wooden chair at the heart of the biggest room in the house. Usually the room isn't lighted. In his present state he doesn't need light. But the ladies did and had brought lamps in from other rooms.