Chapter Six
“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened back at the office?” Hill asked from the other side of the bathroom door.
“No,” Davy said.
He peeled the bandage off his hand and grimaced at the dry, sour edges of the wound. When he poked at it, it felt hot and tender. Either it wasn’t a good idea to stab yourself with a knife you’d just dissected a rabbit with, or being dead fucked with your immune system.
Either way, it would be Hill’s problem soon enough. For now—Davy flexed his fingers quickly to make sure everything still worked, and hurt—it would do.
“Why not?” Hill asked.
Davy shrugged for no one to see.
“Because I already know what happened,” he said. “The Company made you an offer.”
“Don’t you want to know what I said?”
“No,” Davy said. He liked Hill—it would definitely be practical to kill Fraser, but the idealism was kind of admirable…and Hill was cute—but not enough to cross the Company. It was best to stay out of Company business…even their dirty business.
He ran hot water over his hand, as hot as he could bear, as if it might help, and quickly redressed it, the fresh tape clumsily smoothed around the crease of his thumb. Then he headed back out into the main room of the apartment.
“I don’t know what I should—” Hill broke off mid-sentence. He held his hand up, fingers spread, between him and Davy. “Why are you naked?”
Davy stretched and reached over his shoulder to scratch his back. “Your clothes are itchy,” he complained. “Either you’ve got fleas or you need to change your detergent.”
“All the other spirits I’ve seen are dressed,” Hill said. “Why can’t you keep your pants on?”
“They’re your pants, and they’re itchy,” Davy said. “We’ve just covered that.”
Hill threw up his hands in exasperation and turned his back. “At least put a pair of briefs on,” he said in a strangled voice. “Please?”
“Fine,” Davy said as he rolled his eyes. “It’s your cock. If it gets a rash, that’s on you.”
He headed into the utility room to grab a pair out of the wash. It was done, folded, and stacked in a basket on top of the dryer.
“Your mom did your laundry,” he noted over his shoulder, before he looked through the pile for something that wouldn’t feel like poison ivy. “She used dryer sheets and everything.”
He found a pair of black briefs. He stepped into them and pulled them up over his thighs until the fabric cupped his ass and balls. The fabric was soft and cool, any heat from the laundry process long since faded.
“She wants me to go to the party,” Hill reminded him from the other room. “But not as me.”
The moment of glee that Davy felt was unexpected but undeniable. He let the band of the briefs snap against his stomach and hurried back to stick his head out the door.
“It’s a costume party?” he said.
Hill turned toward him, looked flustered, and averted his eyes to something over the top of Davy’s head.
“I…no, it’s not,” he said. “I just meant that I’m supposed to look like a credit to them instead of, well, me. Why? Do you like costume parties?”
Davy leaned against the door frame, one bare arm braced on the wood, and his head tilted to rest on his forearm.
“I mean, shit,” he said as he scratched the hinge of his jaw. “I guess?”
When he was alive, nothing short of torture would have dragged that out of him.
He’d not even have admitted it to himself.
Hell, dead, he wouldn’t have been keen to admit it.
In the Beyond, masks and mystery balls were the preserve of the Company.
The whole point of these—the thought made Davy’s tentacles rear up to mantle around him—was to stop him hiding what he was under swagger and a pretty face.
His brief return to the world of flesh and bone and incarnate cocks, however, had apparently unlocked something in him. Only to immediately let him down. So no chance there from his last time drawing breath.
“You know, this isn’t the first time that Fraser’s fucked me over,” he grumbled. “But this is the one that hurts the most.”
Hill lowered his gaze from the ceiling long enough to give Davy an exasperated look. “He killed you.”
Davy shrugged. “I said what I said.”
For a second Hill stared at him. “How do you do that?” he asked. “Just…forgive people, without them being punished or showing any regret for what they did. I can’t. I’ve tried so hard, and I can’t let go of it.”
Davy pushed himself off the door frame. He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged awkwardly. In general, he avoided too much introspection. It didn’t lead anywhere good for a man in his line of work, on either side of the Veil.
A Company man could do pro bono hours working off their sins. The likes of Davy still needed to hustle to make ends meet. Death was more expensive than the Church ever told you.
Whatever something had unlocked in him, though, wanted to give Hill an answer. Davy had a feeling that nothing else the kid was going to get from this was going to be that satisfying. Even if he did pull it off.
“It’s not that I’m not pissed,” he said, “but someone was always gonna kill me. I was that kind of asshole, and so was everyone I knew. It wasn’t like I was gonna marry some hot twink with a trust fund.”
“I don’t have a trust fund,” Hill said primly.
Davy winked at him. “Made you think about it, though.”
He went back into the laundry room to finish getting dressed.
A pair of sweatpants and an old T-shirt seemed like the least hair-shirty of the selection available.
He swore that rich people were different.
He’d worn the same fatigues two weeks straight and had enough sand in his ass crack to fill a play pen, and he’d not wanted to strip his own skin off this much.
He pulled the sweats on and wandered back out with the T-shirt dangled from one hand.
“Him marrying your mom after killing your dad is probably what sticks in your craw,” he said. “Insult to injury.”
Hill gave a tired snort and sat down on the edge of the coffee table. Sort of. It was close enough.
“It’s kind of a package deal for bugging me,” he said. “Killing my dad. Marrying my mom. Raising me like he’d not been the one to screw me up.”
Davy pulled the T-shirt on. It was washed, but the worn cotton still smelled vaguely of Hill in a subtle, sweaty way.
“How long did they wait after your dad died?” he asked.
There was a pause as Hill gave him a suspicious look. “My mom had nothing to do with it,” he said. “My dad’s death. Fraser’s business dealings. None of it.”
Davy sat down on the edge of the couch and reached out to grab the duffel bag and drag it over to him.
“I didn’t say she did.”
“You were about to.”
Davy paused with his hands on the loose metal buckles of the bag. He was definitely better with the baser emotion, but he was pretty sure the confidence that Hill said that made him feel something.
Pity, maybe.
“You don’t know me, Hill,” he said. “Don’t fucking assume you do. It won’t end well.”
Hill gave a dry little snort. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t trust the undead mercenary who corpse-jacked my body and doesn’t have any skin in the game?” he said. “Thanks. That would never have occurred to me.”
It wasn’t like Davy wasn’t aware of the irony that Hill agreeing with him hurt his feelings. Irony just didn’t make it hurt any less. His tentacles tucked in close around him, the ends curled around his ankles and tucked behind his knees. The posture felt sullen.
Davy ignored them as he pulled the bag straps loose and flipped the top of the duffel open. The inside smelled like old fabric and gun oil.
“I wasn’t accusing your mom of anything,” he said. That part was a lie; he had definitely been about to imply something, but the next part was something he genuinely wanted to know. “Just whether Fraser put his severance plan here together before—”
He tipped the bag upside down and gave it a shake to empty the contents onto the table.
The taped-up envelopes landed with a thud, the gun with a crack that made Hill flinch.
Davy slapped his hand down to stop it sliding onto the floor.
Habit curled his hand around the butt, the plastic and metal a familiar shape.
“—or after he said his vows.”
A hundred thousand sounded like a lot of money. It was actually a surprisingly portable amount of money.
Davy riffled the edge of the last strap of notes before he dropped it on top of the pile. The nice new scent of money had faded from the bills a while ago, but the feel of it against his thumb was still as good as he remembered.
“So, all these years,” Hill said, “Fraser’s just been ready to go, just leave us behind, the minute anything happened?”
Davy glanced up from the tightly stuffed A5 manila envelope he was about to open.
“So?” he said. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t,” Hill said. “I love him, but I don’t like him, and I can’t forgive him.”
Yeah. Sometimes Davy was glad he’d never invested in enough therapy to “feel” more shit. Hell, make that most of the time. It looked complicated, and nobody seemed to enjoy it.
“But I thought he…I don’t know,” Hill said as he shook his head. “I thought we mattered to him. Or at least that my mom did. People always say that the two of them are ‘couple goals,’ that they’re perfect for each other.”
Davy peeled the flap of the envelope up. It came away easily, the glue brittle from its time in the wall.
“Fraser’s good at being perfect,” he said with a shrug. “And this isn’t personal. It’s worst-case scenario insurance.”
Hill reached out and flicked a ghostly finger at the pile of cash. It moved, just a little. “So in the worst-case scenario, he runs and we’re left behind?”
“I…yeah, I guess,” Davy said.
He poked at the cash with a tentacle, and it just passed through the paper, dipping through the table beneath. It felt the way that nails on a chalkboard sounded and made Davy squirm, but it didn’t shift so much as a note.