Where The Heart Is: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations story

sweat. Dean breathed deep, trying not to be too obvious.
They rounded the bar and slipped through the back door into the night. Hunching his shoulders against the cold, Dean gazed around the grounds. A wide, neatly trimmed lawn stretched from the barn to the vineyard. The bare vines rasped together in the light wind. Overhead, the waxing moon shed a soft silver glow over the scene. Dean found it unbearably romantic.
Moving closer to Sommer, Dean gave him his friendliest smile. “So tell me about your ghosts.”
Sommer shot him a shy sidelong grin which made him want to rip the man’s clothes off and throw him down on the manicured grass. “What would you like to know?”
“What exactly you’ve experienced, where and when, and for how long.” Dean accidentally-on-purpose brushed Sommer’s arm with his, savoring the resulting hitch in Sommer’s breath. “Anything you can think of, really. Every detail can help determine what sort of haunting it is, and what if anything can be done about it.”
Sommer nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That makes sense.”
“So tell me all about it.”
Sommer glanced at him again, a mixture of curiosity and fear in his eyes, but didn’t say anything. Dean waited, content just to walk together through the moonlit night. A light, chilly breeze rustled through the bare branches of the trees clustered behind the house, bringing with it the sounds of music and laughter from the barn, and the lingering smell of sun-warmed grass. Finally, as they approached the wide, shallow steps leading to the front porch of the Inn, Sommer stopped and turned to Dean with a determined expression.
“I see a mist forming,” he said, his voice low and quiet. “It rises from the floor in the kitchen, hovers there for a minute, then floats out the back door. It doesn’t make a sound, or interact with me in any way. But I…” He drew a deep breath, his gaze skittering away to rest on the huge wooden swing swaying from the branch of a large oak in front of the house. “I can feel it watching me. Like it expects me to do something, but I don’t know what.”
Intrigued, Dean leaned against the steps’ railing and regarded Sommer with keen interest. “Has anyone else seen this?”
Sommer nodded without looking at Dean. “Yeah. The cook, Lisa, saw it once, when I was in the kitchen with her.”
“Is she the only one?”
“So far, yes.”
“So far?”
“I’ve only had the Inn for four years, since my parents…” Sommer stared at the ground. “Well, they went missing. No clues to where they’d gone, or what might’ve happened to them. They just vanished.” Raising his head again, Sommer met Dean’s gaze with a surprisingly strong defiance in his own. “I’m an only child, there was no one else to look after this place, so I quit my job in Oregon and moved to Chapel Hill to take over the business. I’ve been seeing the mist ever since I first moved in, and no one’s seen it except when they’ve been with me.”
Moved by something he didn’t quite understand, Dean reached out and laid a hand on Sommer’s shoulder. “How often do you see this mist?” he asked, keeping his tone calm.
“A couple of times a week, usually.”
Dean pursed his lips, thinking hard. “Did you live here, in this house, before you lived in Oregon?”
Sommer shook his head. “No. In fact, my parents were— are— from Portland. They moved here when I was fifteen. I didn’t want to leave home, so they let me stay with my Aunt Katherine. I’d never been here until Mom and Dad turned up missing.”
“Hm.” Pushing away from the railing, Dean slid his hand down Sommer’s arm, making sure to brush their fingers together before drawing away. “Hey, can we go inside? It’s getting cold out here, and I’d love to see the kitchen, if that’s okay.”
Sommer’s face brightened into one of those sweet, crooked smiles which made Dean’s stomach flutter like he’d swallowed a flock of small birds. “That would be great. I have a few guests coming in tomorrow, but the place is empty tonight. We’ll have it to ourselves. I can show you everything.”
The implications in Sommer’s words were not lost on Dean. He took Sommer’s arm and smiled up at him, letting his lust shine on his face. “I like that idea.”
Sommer’s eyelids fluttered downward, hiding his eyes. His blush was clearly visible in the bright moonlight. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again and shook his