Epilogue
He could see the driver’s irritated expression mellow into something like pity as he limped down the aisle toward her. She should have seen him six months ago. Death took a lot of PT to get over. His body had only started to feel like his again, instead of a heavy, borrowed glove.
“Are you sure you want off here?” the driver asked. “It’s not the best part of town. Especially at night. Especially…”
She changed her mind about whatever the last “especially” was. Hill could, he supposed, have made her uncomfortable by pushing her to put it into words. He had things to do, though.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
He scrambled off awkwardly, his leg managing to be both stiff and weak, depending on how he put his weight on it. Once he was on the sidewalk, he pulled his stick from under his arm and let it take some of the weight. It helped.
Some.
On balance, though, he couldn’t complain.
There had been a span of time where the doctors had thought he’d never get back his mobility.
A shorter period when amputation for both him and Fraser had been on the table.
Now, six months on, they said that, eventually, he should be able to do anything he could before. Just slower and with more pain.
So he fumbled with his stick, juggled his bag from arm to arm, and limped on his way to make a deal with the devil.
Lowercase d.
He was fairly sure.
Hill stopped in front of 145 Player Street and looked up at the house.
It hadn’t changed since he was here last. Not much, anyhow. There were some more cobwebs in the windows, a few more weeds on the path. The neighbors had taken down all their Christmas decorations, but put up new curtains. They always had to flex.
They’d also offered to buy the property.
Hill had turned them down. He still—or that was the plan—had a use for the basement.
He tucked the stick back under his arm so he could fish his keys out as he struggled up the few steps. The dead didn’t break a sweat. That was one advantage he could list if it came up. Hill fumbled with the key, neglected for a year, until the rust gave and he was able to force it open.
Hill paused in the hall for a second to hang his coat up and deposit his stick in the umbrella basket. It rattled pointedly around until it came to rest against the wall. He ignored it. Just because he could use the stick indoors didn’t mean he was going to.
He went into the kitchen. There was no pot on the stove, no jackrabbit in the fridge. His research had been a lot less extensive—due to the time crunch—but this ritual was a lot simpler.
Mostly, Hill reminded himself, because it was a spell.
The Church frowned on people using the Invocation of the Spirits these days, but it wasn’t forbidden like what Hill was about to do.
This was necromancy. He could technically still be put to death for it, although no one had been for over a century.
The Church was especially unlikely to make an example of a tragic, rich young man who’d only barely survived an attack by an obsessed stalker.
One who had, to boot, allowed the Church to keep Reynolds under the care of exorcists instead of pursuing a legal complaint.
Still, you never knew. Hill paused at the top of the stairs and let that reminder sink in. He could still change his mind.
No.
He took a deep breath, braced his hand against the cold, rough brick, and limped down the steps.
The remnants of the Invocation still lay where he’d left them at Christmas.
At this point they had mostly withered past the gross stage, but he still felt oddly embarrassed at the mess.
He used the side of his foot to shift the scabbed-over pot to the middle and clumsily lowered himself down onto the tarp.
All the spell took were three simple items. In this case, a dried pig’s ear, a cup of coffee that Hill uncapped and poured in, and a blank business card that quickly stained from the coffee.
Hill took a box of matches out of his pocket, struck one, and dropped it in.
The edges of the card caught, smoldering sullenly.
“You said to call you if I changed my mind,” Hill said. “I’ve changed it.”
He pulled a dog whistle from under his sweater and blew it as hard as he could.
All he could hear was a faint droning whine, but dogs up and down the street suddenly started to bark.
That was it, though. Hill clenched his hand around the whistle.
Had he done it wrong? Was it the wrong time of year?
The sites he’d found on the dark web said the Veil was thinner during the equinox, but not as thin as during the Solstice. Maybe…
The coffee bubbled, and a foul pork and paper stew smell seeped out of it. The greasy trickle of smoke thickened until Hill had to fight the urge to recoil. He covered his mouth with his arm and squinted into the smoke. Finally, it started to clear.
“The offer was for when you were the Invoker,” Seb said. He squatted opposite Hill on the tarp, as naked as Davy had been. Bits of coffee and leather caught in his snaggle teeth as he chewed on the pig’s ear. “You invoked and went home. Our business was done.”
His body was marked like a brindle dog, in stripes, with black and pink toenails on his feet.
Hill kept his eyes up.
“If that was true, you wouldn’t be here,” he said.
Seb finished the ear, burped, and picked up the pot. He took a sip of rancid meat and burned coffee.
“Maybe we could make a new deal,” Seb said.
“Maybe,” Hill said. “What are you offering?”
Seb grinned, his mouth spread ear to ear and his tongue dangled out. “Like I told you, death’s not so bad,” he said. “If you know the right people, and the right people know your worth. I can always use a polter in my kennels.”
Hill smiled back at him. “Oh, see, I’m not the only one making the deal,” he said.
“My stepdad recently had a transformative Solstice experience and wants to get himself ready for the afterlife. He’s not really interested in starting from scratch when he gets there, and he’s got a lot more influence on this side than I ever would. ”
They stared at each other for a second. Seb picked a bit of meat out of his teeth.
“Usually they just do good works,” he said.
“He bought a deli,” Hill said. “Now he’s working for himself.”
“I might be able to work with that,” Seb said slowly. “In fact, that could actually work out well indeed. But what’s in it for you? Most people who escape death, don’t come courting it again.”
Hill took a shallow breath. Months on…sometimes it still felt strange.
“I want to live,” he said. “And I want Davy.”
The ache in his voice was so raw, so obvious, that Hill could feel Fraser’s disappointment in him from halfway across Dudley.
Seb looked surprised, and maybe interested.
A pale tentacle, scored with old, pink welts of scar tissue, reached out to grab a bottle of whiskey.
It lifted it and poured a glug of memory into a smeared shot glass held in scarred hands.
Dark blonde hair curled damply against the back of his neck and a black t-shirt pulled tight over broad shoulders.
“I don’t like doing this any more than you like me doing it,” Davy said conversationally as he took a drink of the whiskey.
The dead man he held upside down, dangled from one ankle, made a sound that didn’t sound entirely like agreement.
It didn’t seem to bother Davy. “So why do you keep making me do it, Carlisle? Pay your debts, and I won’t have to—”
Hill smoothed his hair back from his face with one hand. He felt the—or didn’t feel—the dead scar tissue on his palm.
“Davy,” he said.
Carlisle, whoever he was, hit the ground with a thud as Davy let go of him.
The glass of whiskey followed suit as Davy bolted up out of his seat.
He turned around and stared at Hill. The flash of dismay that crossed his handsome face made Hill’s stomach twist with anxiety.
Before he could panic himself into something stupid, Davy crossed the distance between them with three long, quick strides.
Tentacles whipped around Hill’s waist, shoulders, and thighs as Davy pulled him into a deep, frantic kiss. It was a good thing neither of them needed to breathe, they wouldn’t have been able to.
“How are you—” Davy finally pulled back enough to ask. He cupped Hill’s face in his hand, grazing his thumb over the curve of his lower lip. “Hill, what did you do?”
Hill leaned forward and rested his forehead against Davy’s. He tangled the fingers of both hands in unruly, cropped blonde hair that was just as dense and soft as he’d imagined.
“Not that,” he said. Promised. “I wouldn’t do that to you, or mom. I made a . I don’t know what it will cost me, in the end, but it’s worth it.”
Davy started to stay something. Then he stopped. Tentacles tightened around Hill to pull him closer, warm and forward and familiar. He closed his black eyes and breathed in as if he could inhale Hill.
“I missed you,” he said.
It shouldn’t have been enough. Hill had seen enough declarations of love and devotion on TV to know what he should expect, what he should want from this. Except Davy was Davy and Hill was Hill.
Somehow, it was more than enough.
It was everything.
From behind Davy’s back someone cleared their throat. “I can leave,” Carlisle offered from where he still dangled. “Come back later?”