Chapter Eighteen #2
Davy didn’t know what to do with that, to be honest. His sinuses felt weird and he felt the urge to grab Fraser in a headlock, or something, like when he used to torment him when they were kids.
He thought that maybe he wanted to hug him—his tentacles splitting the difference as they tried to futilely grab the living man in an affectionate tangle--but there was nothing in their relationship that he could use to imagine that.
Fraser hadn’t murdered him.
It mattered more than he’d thought.
…but, did it actually solve Davy’s problem or just give him more? There was still the Christmas Eve deadline to get Fraser to learn some sort of lesson, and being sad enough over your brother’s death to torture a man for thirty years probably wasn’t going to cut it.
“Fraser—” Davy said.
“Hold on,” Fraser interrupted him as he fished his phone out of his pocket. He held his hand up to Davy in a ‘just a minute’ gesture as he answered it. The glow of it lit the side of his face.
“Reynolds,” he said. “Tell me you’ve pulled it off.”
The muscles in his cheeks tightened in reaction to whatever Reynolds said. He muffled the phone briefly against his shoulder as he turned to look at Davy.
“I have to deal with this,” he said. “But whatever happens tonight, it shouldn’t splash back on you and Trudy. I kept you both clean.”
He turned and walked away before Davy could untangle the knot of ‘being Hill’ and ‘confession’ and ‘he’d forgotten about Reynolds hadn’t he?’. Left under the tree, Davy watched his brother walk away and then turned and kicked a lumpy root.
“Fuck,” he spat out. Then grimaced as he stumbled backward. That was a lot more satisfying to do in combat boots instead of sneakers.
Right. Plans changed. That happened all the time. Davy scrubbed his hands through his hair and took a deep breath of night-sweet air. He just needed to find Hill. That would be a start.
“What are you doing?” Trudy demanded of a server. She shooed them back towards the kitchen. “I told you, the champagne is for the toast! Take it back.”
The server rolled his eyes but did as he was told. Before Davy could duck past, Trudy turned and caught sight of him. She started to smile and then turned it into a mock-frown as she looked him up and down.
“What happened to the costume?” she asked as she put a hand on her hip. “After all I had to do to get everyone to fall in line.”
Davy’s tentacles lashed restlessly around him as they pinched and slapped at things that Davy couldn’t see. He left them to it—whoever it was probably deserved it—as he reached back to pull his costume on. The folds fell around him with a rustle, and he held his arms out to display it.
“A ghost,” Trudy said. “I suppose it counts. What do you think of mine?”
She did a spin on the toe of her pink stiletto, arms held out so he could see the pink tweed suit she had on.
“Barbie?” he guessed.
That got him a sigh. “Cher,” Trudy corrected him. “From Legally Blonde. Although at this point, I should just go with the flow and give them Barbie.”
She took his arm, fighting briefly with the folds of the sheet, and guided him toward the buffet.
“Are you having fun?” she asked as she loaded up a plate with crudities and pastry puffs. “I know these events aren’t your thing and you’re only here to please your therapist, but if you give it a chance—”
“I am,” Davy said. It was a bit of a lie, but he thought Hill would appreciate it. “And I appreciate the whole fancy dress thing. I know it wasn’t easy and you didn’t have to do it…”
His voice trailed off.
You didn’t have to do this…
It was the last thing he remembered saying before the updates between body and spirit had fallen into the death-gap. He’d thought it had been a plea, but when he played it back now it was…
Thankful.
Careful, even. The way, maybe, he’d have talked to a woman who’d recently suffered a loss and had still answered the door to him?
A green door. He could still feel the gloss of it under his fingers, had it been the same color as the one in Hill’s picture of his Dad?
“I wanted to do it,” Trudy said. “I’d do anything for you, sweetheart. I’d have done anything for your Dad, too, but he wouldn’t let me in. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. So if you need something, anything, you ask?”
She pushed the plate of finger foods at him. Davy looked at it and then slid it back onto the table.
“Why did he kill himself?” he asked.
Trudy stared at him. Her face went blank. It was a familiar expression, the holding pattern of someone who needed to run through a filofax of reactions and pick the right one. She went with a wrinkled nose and a shrug of pink shoulders.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” she said. “He did a lot of things he wasn’t proud of, I think, at work. Maybe that just got on top of him? It was never anything to do with you, though. We both loved you so much. You were the reason he tried so hard.”
From behind the veil of the ghost’s sheet, Davy felt cold and a bit tired. He had met her. The memory was blurred by the chunks of Albie that had apparently been scooped out of his memory, but he could see her. Younger. Snappier. Somehow even blonder.
“I know about the house in Player Street,” he said. “I know about the body in the basement. I just don’t know which of you killed me and which of you dug my grave.”
A flood of emotions washed over Trudy’s face.
Some of them didn’t sit easily together.
The brief glimpse of relief surprised Davy, although that was quickly unseated by fear.
She grabbed his hands. Her fingers traced over Hill’s knobbly knuckles and the faint spray of freckles as if to confirm it was his.
“My son,” she asked. “Is it…is he gone?”
Her voice, other than a brief catch, was surprisingly composed. It was her fingers that shook. Davy took her hands in his and held them still. He was surprised at how gently he did it. Maybe even without Hill in it, the body remembered something of the man.
“He’s not here. At midnight, when this is over, I’ll go back through the Veil and Hill will get his bones back,” Davy said. With any luck it wouldn’t be a lie. “What happened to me, Trudy?”
She chewed her lower lip, worrying off the coat of Pepto-Bismol pink color.
“Do you need to know?” she asked. “For this to…end well?”
Davy studied her face. She’d had work done, from the woman he remembered, but it was subtle. In the circles she moved with Fraser, there was a fine line between not trying and trying too hard. He had the feeling that she’d been clinging to that line by her fingertips for a long time.
“No,” he said. “Hill might, but that’s up to you.”
She looked down at their linked hands and, very deliberately, pulled hers away from him. She straightened the collar on her jacket.
“So, I don’t have to say anything?” she said.
“You don’t,” Davy said. “I’m just curious if Albie killed himself from guilt or shame.”
That made her flinch. The surprise on her face was sharply obvious as she looked at him. She tilted her chin and smiled thinly.
“And to think, I never thought you were smart enough to be cruel, Mark,” she said.
The ‘Mark’ still didn’t feel right.
“No, just lazy,” Davy said. At least, that had been what every teacher who’d tried to motivate him as a kid had said. “Did you—”
He broke off as, over Trudy’s shoulder, he saw Reynolds in a Prince Charming outfit shoving a middle-aged man in shabby overalls through the crowd.
Davy didn’t recognize him. The pieces only fell into place as the man looked around, and he saw the freckles swimming on drink-ruddy skin and the dregs of ginger at his temple.
Fraser had always hated to leave a job unfinished.
“…killed you,” Trudy’s confession pulled his attention back to her.
For a second he weighed the satisfaction of knowing against the embarrassment of having to ask her to repeat that.
He supposed he already knew more than he had to start with, so…
Luckily, she touched her stomach as she went on.
“I wanted Albie to get us away from you, but he wouldn’t listen.
He just kept talking about loyalty and how he’d known the risks the same as you when he’d signed up.
But that wasn’t true. You were violent people; he wasn’t.
We weren’t. We shouldn’t have been part of that world. ”
“So you killed me?” Davy asked. He kept one eye on Reynolds as the man headed toward the back of the house.
“I didn’t really think it through,” Trudy admitted, with a half-hearted laugh she choked on.
“Sorry…I…I was sorry. It was just that you came to my house for something, and I was so angry. Then you were dead. I don’t really remember the bit in the middle.
Just hating you, then you were dead. It was like it just happened, on its own.
Except for the blood all over me. When Albie came home, he said we couldn’t let Fraser know what had happened.
That we had to get rid of the body…you.”
“So he dug the grave.”
She nodded. “He cried the whole time,” she said. “He never even liked you that much, but it broke him doing that. That night, I knew we’d not survive what I’d done, but I didn’t realize he wouldn’t. Now you know, what are you going to do?”
Davy sighed, blowing the sheet away from his face. He leaned over the dropped a kiss on Trudy’s forehead.
“I’m going to go and stop my brother from making the worst mistake of his life. Or, at least, what would be the last one,” he said. “Then I’ll go back to being dead and leave you to pick up the pieces.”
She laughed shakily at that. “Son-of-a-bitch,” she said as she sniffed back tears and wiped her nose on her hand. “You fight dirty.”
Davy shrugged his acknowledgement of that. He turned to leave her there as he pushed through the crowd of vampires, cats, and serial killers after Reynolds. Before he got far, Trudy grabbed hold of his sleeve from behind and fell in next to him.
“What are you--?”
“I don’t love Fraser,” she said. “He’d not have appreciated that, but we have a good life. I don’t want to lose it. And I don’t want to lose Hill the way I lost his Dad. He can’t think that anything that happens here tonight was his fault. I’m not sitting this one out. You can’t make me.”
Davy begged to differ. He could have made her, but…
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s make it a family affair, sis.”
She looked disturbed by that. Davy snorted to himself as he paused to scan the crowd for Reynold’s. It was a good thing Trudy didn’t know what he’d been doing to her kid recently. She’d really hate him calling her ‘mom’.
There. He caught sight of Reynolds on the stairs, struggling briefly with Greg, who’d realized it was now or never. The huge swags of cloth and bauble garlands that decorated the bannister helped disguise the brief tussle that ended with Greg pale and sweaty as he was shoved up the last few steps.
Davy nudged his new sidekick and pointed in that direction. As they reached the bottom of the stairs a sudden crack of sound cut through the chatter of the party. People glanced around and headed for the doors, peering up at the sky for the smear of colored lights from fireworks.
Of course that’s what they thought it was. When you hear hooves, think horses not zebras. At a party, think fireworks not gunshots.
Unless you had the context to know the gunshot was more likely.
Trudy had been around Fraser long enough to recognise the noise too. She bolted up the stairs, all long legs and heels, before Davy could stop her. As he followed her the the Beyond smeared suddenly into view. Glitchy and staticky as it faded in and out.
He saw a Hound.
The cowed and muzzled dead as they shied back and muttered.
Hill. Davy looked around quickly. Hill had to be close for Davy to peek through the Veil again, but…
It was gone again.
Davy’s tentacles slapped out at whatever he’d just lost sight of. He could feel the agitation feedback down them as tension in his arms and across his spine.
“What?” Trudy asked as she looked back him. She was tense, caught between him and her anxiety about what had happened upstairs. “What is it?”
Davy clenched his jaw and breathed out through his nose.
“Nothing we can do anything about,” he muttered. “Come on, let’s deal with what we can.”
Hill had raised the dead all on his own; Davy just had to hope that he could survive them as well.