“You left your address on my machine, but not your phone number.”

I had? “Really? I guess I was … distracted.”

“Yes, ma’am, you sounded kind of …” he shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed, “… desperate.”

I bristled at the word, but before I could defend myself a big drop of water splatted on my nose. I opened the door wider and said, “That’s because I am.”

I gave Handyman Bill the tour of my house of horrors, from the many leaks and dissolving plaster to the moldy basement and broken hot water heater. He took notes on his clipboard and made guttural, monosyllabic grunts at each travesty. Not a big talker, Handyman Bill, but when we reached the basement he uttered the sweetest words I’d heard in days.

“I can’t start on the roof until the rain stops, but I think I can pump out this water and get the boiler going if you’d like some hot water.”

I nearly hugged him, but I restrained myself and managed not to sound too desperate when I told him, “Yes, that would be an excellent place to start.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHILE BILL PUMPED out water from the basement, I made coffee. The kitchen was a mess of mud and pots and pans half-full of rainwater, but the minute Bill told me that there was hot water, and that he was leaving in a few minutes to go to the hardware store, I abandoned the mess and hightailed it upstairs. I took a long hot bath with plenty of scented bath salts to get the cat pee smell out of my hair. The hot water was less effective in rinsing away the memory of the dream of Liam and I making love in Faerie. I’d freed him from the Borderlands – shouldn’t those dreams be over? Would they ever be over?

I would have stayed in the bath longer, but I was disturbed by someone knocking on the door. Was it Handyman Bill back from the hardware store? Should I give him a key? But then I didn’t even know him. Maybe I should have asked for references, I thought as I toweled off and dressed. But would that seem weird after he’d been nice enough to get my hot water working so quickly? I walked downstairs pondering the etiquette of handyman employment, something I’d never had to worry about when Brock was around, and opened the door to an empty porch. Maybe my visitor had given up. But then I heard voices coming from the edge of the porch. I looked over the railing and saw Liz and Diana crouched in the honeysuckle bushes at the foot of the porch steps. Liz looked up guiltily, a ceramic gnome in her hand.

“Ah, there you are! We got worried when you didn’t answer the door and went looking for your key. Only it doesn’t seem to be under your gnome.”

The ceramic gnome had come with the house. Practically all the houses in Fairwick had one of the twee figurines in their front gardens. I’d thought about removing the little apple-cheeked man in blue pants, green suspenders and red cap, but each time I had he’d seem to glare at me and I’d thought better of it. I had moved my key a few months ago, though, because it seemed like too obvious a hiding place.