Spank or Treat by Tymber Dalton

he didn’t think it’d be too bad in the morning. Maybe a little swollen, but getting the frozen peas on it as soon as he had probably helped. He didn’t think his eyes would end up blackened, either.
    He’d just switched off the last display when he heard Leah let out a bloodcurdling shriek, followed by laughter. Racing inside, he found her in the living room, nearly doubled over, practically incapacitated.
    “What the fuck? What happened? Are you okay?”
    Unable to speak, she simply pointed at the sliding glass doors leading out onto the lanai. In them, the reflection from the ghost hanging from the ceiling near the front door. The effect with the darkened room behind them made it look like the ghost was hovering over the pool.
    She finally straightened and lightly smacked his arm, even as she still laughed. “I…thought… I saw… someone…on… the deck… dammit…”
    He knew he had to wait for her to get it out of her system, to quit laughing long enough to talk, but it was damn good to hear her laugh.
    Even if she would be a little irritated at him over it.
    Finally, she gasped for breath. “I was in the kitchen and something caught my eye. I swear I thought I saw that guy still out there. The one we couldn’t figure out who he was? I walked around the counter to go call for you and then saw the reflection of that damn thing”—she pointed—“hanging there and would have wet my panties if you’d allowed me to wear any tonight.”
    He grinned. “Then lucky you you’re commando tonight, huh?” His smile faded as he looked past her onto the lanai. For just a split second, he could have sworn he saw the guy standing there, too.
    A guy who looked like…
    Shivers raced through him. He walked past her and out onto the lanai, but no one was there. No one could be there. He could see all four corners of the lanai from where he stood, and the light from the pool illuminated it almost like daytime.
    Walking around the pool, he checked both doors. Yep, locked. Switching off the pool light, he verified all the sliders were locked, locking the one to the living room behind him as he went in.
    “Is everything okay?” she asked.
    “Yeah. Just like you said, a reflection.” He went and pulled the hanging ghost down and laid it on the sofa. “There. Now it won’t scare the piddle out of you.” He tried to smile, but his gut told him that wasn’t right.
    He made his usual nightly prowl around the house following a party like that one. The garage, the front door, the windows, everything.
    Leah had gone back into the kitchen to finish up a few things there when he stepped into the living room again and spotted it.
    On the shelf where Kaden’s urn sat lay a small, white envelope tucked up against it.
    A flash of a reflection caught his eye in the living room sliders, but when he looked, it was only his own image appearing in the glass.
    He quickly checked the rest of the house without telling Leah what he was doing—or why. No one in there but the two of them, and all the windows were locked in the other rooms as well. The closets were empty of uninvited guests, and none hid under beds, either.
    That left—
    “Seth?” Leah’s trembling voice called out to him.
    Dammit.
    He returned to the living room and found Leah holding the envelope.
    “Sorry, babe. I saw it a minute ago but wanted to check the rest of the house first.”
    She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. Happy tears or ones of grief, he couldn’t tell. “There’s something in it,” she whispered.
    “Knowing Kade, I’m sure there is. Do you want me to open it?”
    She looked at the front of it. In Kaden’s handwriting both their names had been printed.
    She finally passed it to Seth with a trembling hand.
    It felt like there was more than one of Kaden’s infamous index cards inside. When he opened it, he found four small, black cat-shaped tags, with Leah’s name and both Seth’s and Kaden’s initials engraved on the backs.
    The index