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“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Of course. Take your time.” Another pause. “Though I should mention the offer’s good through Friday.”

“Is there competing interest?”

Silence.

“I’ll think about it,” Nate said again, and hung up.

He opened his spreadsheets.

The numbers were simple.

Purchase price, plus renovation costs, plus carrying costs, plus the six months of his life he’d never get back, compared against resale value.

The roof was the biggest line item. He typed in a number, looked at it, deleted it, and typed in a smaller one. That was optimistic. He could do the tear-off himself, hire out the sheathing and shingles. If the weather cooperated. If nothing underneath was rotted.

He adjusted the electrical estimate down by ten percent. That was more delusional than optimistic, but he’d done his own wiring before and while the inspector had found some problems, Nate had learned from them.

He’d have to renovate the kitchen, but if the ceiling above the drop tiles was in the condition he thought it was, he’d save thousands by restoring instead of replacing.

Still, the total at the bottom of the spreadsheet was red.

Nate stared at it and pondered.

What he hadn’t added was how much revenue he was making from his videos, and his viewers would go crazy for this project.

It was a gamble to rely on that.

Nate was not a gambling man.

But he wanted this house. That was the real crux of the matter. He wanted to go into that old mansion and restore it to its former glory. He wanted to be able to look at the end result and say “I did that with my own hands,” and feel real pride in his ability and what he was doing with his life.

And he wanted to take another crack at that ghost.

That was secondary.

Absolutely secondary.

He was not buying a structurally unsound mansion to win an argument with a dead redhead.

But he would win.

He called Sandra.

Chapter

Four

The ghost looked out over the yard and sighed, wishing he could do something to help the garden in its fight against the weeds.

Currently the foxgloves were losing.

The weeds had been creeping in for a while now, but this morning the damage was hard to ignore. They’d pushed through the border of the garden bed and into the patch where the purple foxgloves had been holding on since before the ghost could remember.

The ghost crouched by the garden bed, wrapped both hands around the base of the biggest weed, and pulled.

His hands went through the stem.