greg the florist, part i have no idea

Previously on Greg the Florist...

The woman peering out of the window after them seemed to be clutching a wooden cross, holding it out at them, but as he squinted to see more clearly, she moved away into the shadows. He shook his head. It must have been some sort of optical illusion...

That night, after the third electrician and the second plumber told John they were booked solid until next year, he hung up the phone and said, "Do people in this town seem a bit odd to you?" 

Greg sank lower behind his coffee mug, and his eyes slid sideways to the dark outside the window. "Odd how?" he asked. 

John counted points on his fingers. "Awfully busy for there being roughly one electrician, plumber, or carpenter for every five people here, going by the listings. Utterly uninterested in this place, which is strange not just because it's a pretty amazing house if you overlook the mould and crumbling stone and general air of decay, but also because you do actually own some of the land their houses are on. I looked at the books your great uncle was keeping, which, by the way, are a mess, and the only accountant in town is busy too. And third, when I went to buy some stamps, an old woman tried to give me a cross." 

Greg swallowed his coffee. "Those are all odd things," he said. 

"You're looking really shifty right now." 

"I might've seen cross woman earlier." 

"If you thought she was cross then, you should've seen her when I wouldn't take it." 

Greg snorted. "That was a terrible joke. That wasn't even a joke." 

"Greg, we're living in a ruined castle that no one in town will come near, and someone just tried to give me a crucifix. If there was ever a time for bad jokes, it is now." 

"Maybe we should pick up some garlic next time we do the shopping."

"Ha, ha."

"Silver bullets?" 

"Garlic will go better in pasta sauce. What--" 

Something scraped slowly across the glass of the window. There was a faint shape, a deeper shadow in the darkness outside the warm glow of the kitchen. And then it was gone. 

John swallowed. "What," he said, adjusting his sentence carefully. "the hell was that?" He got up and moved to the window, Greg beside him. 

There was nothing there.