In fact, as Harper and her fiancé Stone stood in front of Natalie waiting for the announcement she’d promised when she’d summoned them to Liam’s lab, there were any number of unpleasant things she would far rather do than admit her secret.

She’d happily run naked down the village’s Main Street instead of making this confession—even though she made sure all the light bulbs were low wattage in her apartment so Liam never got a really clear view of her sun-and-exercise deprived body.

She’d rather be locked in the spooky abandoned nursing home down the road—even though she knew it would be teeming with spirits.

But telling Harper and Stone that she’d been communing with the dead and lying about it to everyone except for Liam for over a year? That was the dead last thing on her list of unpleasant things to do—no pun intended.

Yet she’d succumbed to the pressure of others. Had let her supposed friend Gabe convince her to text Harper.

Why she’d let him have a say in what she did she didn’t know. He was a ghost. It wasn’t like he was unbiased in the matter. Or could understand her plight as a living breathing human being.

It didn’t matter that he’d been murdered. Cut off in the prime of his life. She could still hold him accountable for pressuring her into doing something she didn’t want to do. Something she knew in her heart was a bad idea. Bad for her and bad for the spirit community of Mudville.

Peer pressure was real—even if it was a spirit doing the pressuring.

But as the local ghosts’ human representative, wasn’t it up to her to protect them from the many and sordid ramifications of exposure?

Yes. Yes, it was!

Natalie had a flash of what could happen to Mudville should the word get out.

She imagined hordes of spectators crowding the streets hoping for a ghostly encounter. Trespassing on private property. Wrecking the local farmers’ fields with their RVs and all-terrain vehicles.

And the press! They’d be relentless once they learned.

She’d have no peace. She wouldn’t be able to run her store. They’d block the entrances with their crews and news vans. Customers wouldn’t be able to get in to shop.

With horror she remembered the disastrous live interview she’d done with Lucy Sunshine for WBNG News right after she’d been electrocuted and lived to tell about it. It had proved she was not a natural on camera.

Nope. That was an experience she never wanted to repeat. Not in this lifetime and—now that she knew about the existence of the spirit world—not in the afterlife either.

Harper was a good friend. But she was also a writer. She lived her life in a public way Natalie couldn’t comprehend. Harper put everything about her own life, this town, and the people in it online for the world at large to see.

Yes, Harper’s social media obsession had helped the shop enormously—saved it really—back in the early days when Natalie had been struggling to make a go of the new business.

Natalie was undyingly grateful for all of Harper’s help and hard work, as well as her friendship.

Once Upon a Vine Books and Wine might not exist today without Harper. But Natalie couldn’t trust her to keep a secret this big. Which left her with a decision. What was she going to tell Harper now instead of the truth?

She was going to have to wing it. Come up with some sort of confession on the fly. Something that wouldn’t make it seem odd that she’d texted them to come to Liam’s lab right away.

As her friend stood expectantly waiting, Natalie began, “Harper, I have something to tell you.”

While she paused to notice that she didn’t have enough air in her lungs—she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe—Natalie heard Gabe gasp.

Invisible to Liam, Harper and Stone, Gabe turned to his equally invisible girlfriend next to him. "Millie, this is it. Nat’s actually going to admit to another living she can see us.”

She wanted to shush him. Snipe at Gabe to be quiet. Tell him that she had to think.

But she couldn’t do any of those things without revealing her secret. And wasn’t the point right now—her main goal—to hide that she could hear Gabe?

Blocking out the distraction—the constant ghost chatter that had been the soundtrack of her life for over a year—Natalie finally focused her mind. And thankfully, her mind delivered the perfect solution.

Fingers crossed that it would work, she sucked in a big breath and let out on a whoosh of air, “Madame Letisha is a fraud.”