Chapter Ten #2
“Fraser, what—” she started to ask, then paused with a frown as she was interrupted.
The volume was too low to pick up words, but from the sharp tones Fraser wasn’t in a good mood.
She heard him out as a confused frown knit her eyebrows together.
“Our accountant? I don’t know. If he’s not answering his phone, it’s probably because he’s on holiday.
He’s not at his house? Fraser, you can’t go by the man’s house to doorstep him on the holidays.
I’m not going to call his wife, either. She’s…
Fraser. Fraser! Fine. Fine. I don’t think I have her number, but Jo might. Yes. Now. Fine!”
Tax man or mafia don, Davy wondered as he listened in. He raked a chunk of fried beetroot in the crust of salt on the side of the plate before he ate it. The food here really wasn’t that bad.
She hung up and pulled an apologetic face at Hill over the table.
“I have to go,” she said as she pushed her chair back. “Our accountant isn’t answering the phone a few days before Christmas, and obviously, the only reason for that is he’s dead in a ditch with his whole family.”
Davy wiped a bit of beetroot off his lip, his thumb smudged purple-red where it smeared.
“Why does he need an accountant?” he asked. “Have you gone over-budget on the party by that much?”
“If I’d gone over-budget, he’d be calling a divorce lawyer,” Trudy said dryly.
She buttoned up her coat and came around to drop a quick eggy kiss on his cheek.
“No, it’s something about taxes? A friend of his gave him a heads-up about an audit or something?
Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s something and nothing.
And our accountant is just day-drinking at his in-laws’. ”
Huh. Davy’s money would have bet the Mafia would have been the first to respond to him chumming the water. He supposed it wasn’t surprising that an organization with that much Catholicism baked in lagged on the holidays.
“I hope so,” Davy said. “With everything that’s been going on at work, I’m not surprised he’s worried, though.”
He really was good at being an asshole.
Trudy caught the inference enough to look worried, but she didn’t ask. At a guess, after ten years of being a military contractor’s wife, she’d learned ignorance helped her sleep at night.
“Anyhow,” she said, changing the subject awkwardly. “I’m still going to see you at the party?”
Davy nodded and…well, why the hell not. It was worth a shot.
“If there is going to be an audit, maybe you should get the wheels on that divorce lawyer moving,” he said, with a smile to make it obvious it was a joke. “How much would it cost to make it into a costume party, do you think?”
Trudy rolled her eyes. “The only one who’d hate that more than Fraser is you,” she pointed out. “You don’t even like wearing a suit.”
Davy shrugged. “Tell you what,” he said. “Make it a masked ball and I’ll wear a costume. If I’m lyin’, I’m—”
Trudy shushed him quickly. “No,” she said and pointed a finger at him. “Not even as a joke. Not during Solstice.”
She left, coat billowing behind her. Davy watched her go and then reached over the table to swap their plates. One of the other diners gave him a disapproving look. He ignored them as he tucked into the leftover muffin.
Social engineering had always been Fraser’s side of things, not his. But he thought the little bit of poison he’d dripped could bear some fruit.
He probably wasn’t going to get his masked ball, but there was a good chance Fraser would end up sleeping alone tonight.
Which could be useful…if Davy used Hill.
Davy sopped up some hollandaise and egg with the muffin and took a bite. He still wasn’t sure it was worth the risk, although he refused to think it further through than that.
“Three dollars,” the cheerful, sweaty man behind the kiosk counter said as he held the Baby Ruth chocolate bar out. A battery-powered Santa jiggled merrily on a bench behind him.
He waited, blissfully unaware of the tentacles trying to shoplift their own treats off the counter. It wasn’t even candy. They poked at a chewed pen and dipped into the change jar to try and stir the pennies.
Davy stared at him. Then he shook his head, gave up on the “in my day” rant that was welling up, and handed over the well-washed five he’d found in a pocket. He got less change back than he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t like it was his money.
He tore the end of the wrapper open with his teeth as he walked away. The first bite was gooey, sticky, satisfying non-caroby goodness, but it turned to dirt and worms on his tongue. It was stupid, but for the first time since he’d crawled into Hill he felt …out of place.
Not his time.
Not his life.
Not his fucking candy.
Davy grimaced to himself and stashed the half-eaten confection in his pocket. It was stupid. He knew he was dead, long dead. Time passed differently, or at least felt differently, in the Beyond. The dead still saw the living world move and change without them.
Hell, Davy was wearing the very attractive body of a man who’d been an egg in someone’s ovary the last time Davy had taken a breath. It was what it was.
But the price of a Baby Ruth threw him for a loop? Davy took a deep breath that didn’t help as he fell into step with the rest of the seasonal shoppers. Make it make sense.
The uneasy feeling crawled down his spine and got into his tentacles.
They hackled up around him, restless and insistent as they lashed out at the empty air.
Davy assumed there was something there, in the Beyond, but since he couldn’t see whose space the tentacles had decided to invade, it wasn’t his problem.
It was a refreshing break from any accountability for their behavior… not that he’d ever taken much of that.
Then something grabbed hold of one and yanked hard enough that Davy felt it. Not Hill’s skin and bones, Davy himself. He was crushed against the inside of Hill’s body, suddenly aware of the sharp edges of bone and tangles of nerves.
Another yank and he felt something tear.
The…pain?… It wasn’t the same as the hot, nerve-ending battering of Hill’s physical pain, but it wasn’t anything that Davy had gotten used to in the Between either.
It was deep and wet and felt like someone was trying to pull his cock out through his spinal column.
Davy clenched his jaw against it and hung out as his tentacles mobbed whatever it was. Little jabs of pain pattered over his body—a bruise under his knee, a fingernail dug in that caught in the hinge of his jaw—but nothing like the original agony.
He—well, the bits of him still in the Beyond—finally managed to wrench free of whatever had grabbed him.
Davy staggered at the release, his knees weak as he tried to remember where they went.
A passerby grabbed his arm, her face concerned under a Santa hat, to steady him.
He grimaced out a pro forma “thanks, no, I’m OK” as he got his balance.
The concerned stranger didn’t look convinced, but after a searching look reluctantly moved on with her bags of shopping.
Davy gave his head a brisk shake—didn’t help, never did, fuck knew why he always tried—and straightened up. His veins felt as dry as his mouth, and his heart was doing double-time against his ribs. It felt like the aftermath of a fight, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been after.
“The hell was that?” he muttered.
His tentacles were an agitated tangle around him, except for the injured one. It sagged around his feet, heavy and sluggish, ectoplasmic skin bruised and punctured.
Davy crouched back down and pretended to tie his laces as he examined it. He grazed a hand along the length of it, his fingers sinking through the torn flesh until it touched him.
The dead didn’t heal, not exactly, but they didn’t care to be changed either.
An injury was something gone forever, but it didn’t leave a scar.
You were just…less. Usually, anyhow. The Company had a way, or so he’d heard, but that was proprietary information.
Even most of the dead at the Company didn’t know anything other than that it existed.
That or the ones that Davy had cultivated were better liars than he’d thought.
Davy gave the tentacle a pat and straightened up…
just in time for Hill to barrel into him.
Instinct made him try and catch the man, but he barely had time to register the panic on Hill’s face before they passed through each other.
The chill cut down into Davy’s bones and dug sharp fingers into the muscle of his heart.
The clutch at his chest, his fingers tangled into his T-shirt, made another passerby slow down to look at him with concern.
Apparently, everyone today wanted to be a good Samaritan.
Davy glared it out of them and grabbed for Hill with his uninjured tentacles, wrapping the whip-thin ends around Hill’s chest and arms.
Hill struggled against the tethers for a moment and then visibly relaxed as he realized who had him.
“What’s wrong?” Davy asked as he reeled Hill back in. “Are you OK?”
Hill looked at him, and Davy felt a brief, hard pang of something that made his chest hurt, and then, when he didn’t have the emotional nous to deal with that, made him angry. It was efficient if nothing else.
The lively silver-green shade of Hill’s eyes had faded, down to moss-green in one and completely gone to pewter in the other. His cheeks were marked with unmistakable smuts of greasy soot.
It was what passed for stigmata with a polter.
“What did you do?” Davy amended the question, his voice tight and frustrated. His tentacles picked up on his mood and gave Hill a quick, angry shake.
Hill grabbed them and peeled them off his arms. It didn’t do much, as they squirmed back in to cling to his thighs and around his throat.
“I don’t know,” he said. His voice pitched up an octave towards panic as he dragged the tentacle from around his throat with frustrated, clawed fingers. “I don’t understand any of it. It doesn’t make any sense, and— Leave me alone!”
The words burst out of Hill. He wasn’t looking at Davy, though. His attention was focused, wide-eyed and desperate, over Davy’s shoulder. Whatever he saw…
Around Davy, the temperature dropped enough that the last-minute shoppers shuddered and hunched down into their coats, not placing the “goose walked over their grave” chill.
His breath smoked as it left his lips, and the Veil thinned.
It didn’t lift, and it was still thick enough to hide all but the shadows and shapes on the other side, but it was enough.
Even as a silhouette, there wasn’t much you could mistake a dog-headed dead man for.
The Company had let the Hounds out of their kennels.
“Fuck,” Davy said, with feeling.