Chapter 5 King
King
“So tell ol’ Bessie what’s on your mind,” the kindly old woman said, patting my leg.
Bessie had been one of the ghosts who’d lived out at Beckoning Pond for a long, long time, choosing to stay when Chance arrived and helped all the spirits ready to move on cross over to the other side.
We’d become good friends.
I sighed. “It’s the same thing as yesterday and the day before.”
She hummed. “Your gift is special, Kingston.”
“It is, but Sky means more to me than the dreamwalking.” And it was true.
I’d been so overwhelmed with gratitude to learn I’d inherited this gift from my grandfather, and I wasn’t sure what it would feel like to sleep and have normal dreams like others since I never had, but if I had to give it all up to keep Sky safe, I would.
“And you’re scared he’s going to get hurt?” she asked softly.
Leaning my elbows on my thighs, I hunched over and stared out at the pond. “Of course, I am. There are so many things we don’t know. Sky thinks this is all fun and games, but there has to be so much more. There has to be. It’s the unknowns that make me queasy.
“Every night when we wake up in the Dream-veil, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For us to encounter something we have no idea how to deal with.
These entities are scary as fuck as it is, and the sword has been dealing with them, but will that really be the solution every time? I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know what’s out there, so I can’t help you with that, but getting blessed with a soulmate…” She hummed. “That’s extraordinary.”
It really was, and it was also one of the reasons I was so positive that Sky and I hadn’t seen anything yet.
“Um, is it okay if I hang with y’all, or am I intruding?” Trixie asked nervously. The young blonde ghost hovered off to the side like she was scared to intrude.
Bessie’s eyes warmed with kindness as she patted the log she was sitting on next to her. “Come here, child. You’re not interrupting at all. We’re all here for each other.”
An old, old man by the name of Norman blinked in with a scowl on his face, then disappeared.
“Ignore him. He takes a while to warm up to newbies. It’s hard for him.
He’s been gone a long, long time, and society has changed so much.
He’ll watch you for a while, then he’ll start coming around, and before you know it, he’ll be acting like you’re his great, great, great granddaughter. ” Bessie cackled.
Trixie smiled tentatively, then sat down. “Thanks.” She crossed her arms around her middle and hugged herself. “I’m never sure what to do with myself.”
“Chance will help you move on,” I reminded her.
She looked toward the mansion, then shook her head as she turned back to me. “Not yet, I don’t think.”
Bessie wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Then you can just sit with me while I knock some sense into Kingston.”
Trixie giggled, and I pouted playfully. But I knew where she was coming from.
She took Sky being my soulmate seriously, and she believed I needed to accept it and embrace it with open arms. I had a feeling that if I didn’t pull my head out of my ass soon, she was going to get pissed at me for wasting the gift she believed I’d been given.
Which made sense from her perspective. Bessie had lost her twin brother when they were only twenty-three years old. She’d never married and stayed living in her family’s small home out on the fringes of Willowhope until she passed on at ninety-five years old.
She said she’d sensed her brother’s presence around her for all those years, but she hadn’t been able to find him on this side of life. Since so many people funneled out to this pond, she vowed to wait for him, even if it took until the end of time.
“I see how it’s going to be. I took the day off work to spend time with my favorite people, and you’re going to tease me.”
Bessie harrumphed. “Baby, if a bunch of spirits are your favorite beings to spend time with, then you’re more clueless and lost than I thought.
You have a perfectly good man who wants you to be his everything and wants to be yours in return.
I don’t know why you’re out here discussing any of this with us anyway, instead of working it through with him. ”
Trixie, who’d only been around for five seconds in the larger scheme of things, nodded her head eagerly.
Well, hell.
Pops materialized in front of me—all except his hand, which was odd—with his back to the pond, and faced Bessie with a wide grin. “I’ve got a surprise for you, Miss Bessie.”
“What’s that, young’on?”
Trixie and I both snickered. I knew Miss Bessie had already been the elderly wise woman when Pops was young, so it made sense, but it was still funny to us.
Pops tugged, and a young Black man appeared like he was stepping out from behind a wall. Miss Bessie gasped, clapping her hands together, and the visitor cried out, “Sissy!”
As they rushed to each other, Trixie gaped at me. “Is that her brother?”
My pops pulled on his pants as he took a seat, and I bit back a grin.
It was so funny how many mannerisms the spirits brought into death with them.
The more in tune they were, and the more able they were to manifest and use the abilities that they had as part of the spirit realm, the more normal actions manifested.
“It is,” he said. “Her twin.”
My heart felt like it jumped into my throat, clogging it.
After all these years—at least fifty at my count—the siblings had been reunited.
I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t say I doubted her unwavering belief that her twin would find her here, but I’d worried.
I’d been so scared that she’d eventually be sad and disappointed and choose to cross over to whatever waited for her beyond without him.
On the other side of their embrace, an old man’s ghost appeared. He’d been as standoffish with me as he was Trixie when Chance’s gift first gave me the ability to see the spirits out here. Over time, I’d found him to be a wise and compassionate man.
It was the amount of time he’d been out here, the number of spirits he’d seen come and go, the number of friends that he’d now lost in death, not just the ones he’d lost in life, that made him act grumpy and cantankerous.
He had it in his head that he wouldn’t get attached to anyone else, but his heart was large, and he couldn’t help but bond with others.
The tears streaming down his face as he watched his old friend’s dream come true was proof of that.
Bessie pulled back, holding her brother’s biceps as she transformed. Her wrinkly features became smooth as glass, and the hands gnarled with age strengthened as they straightened and gripped him tighter.
I saw the old ghost’s eyes widen, and his cheeks went rosy.
He caught me watching him and blinked back out of sight.
I glanced around to see if anyone else caught that, and Pops winked at me.
Yeah, I wasn’t the only one who noticed his reaction.
I couldn’t wait until the next time we were alone to tease him about being a dirty old man.
Bessie hugged her brother again, then turned to us and made introductions.
Beau smiled politely, but he really only had eyes for his sister.
It was beautiful. The two of them talked over each other, wanting to know where the other had been, wondering why they’d been separated, and when we tried to excuse ourselves to give them some time together, they insisted we stay and began sharing stories of their past with us.
After about twenty minutes, I heard Sky’s voice and turned around to see him and Chance skipping across the grounds toward us from the manor. Sky waved, and I raised a hand in greeting.
All of my concerns about our future and the unfairness to him, being bound to me without freewill, evaporated at the way his eyes lit up as I stood to greet him. He launched himself onto my chest, and I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight.
He squeezed me around the middle, and just like he did in the Dream-veil, he burrowed in closer. “I’ve missed you,” he mumbled into my chest.
“Weren’t you here this morning?” I asked. I’d seen him sitting next to Chance in the window of the manor while Jetty and I worked out. “Plus, we were together in the veil last night.”
As he leaned back, he frowned. “I keep telling you, it’s not the same. Yeah, we’re together and we talk and snuggle and get to see Patchy, but I don’t know…” He shrugged. “It’s different than spooning while we fall asleep and sharing our morning routine.”
Staring down into his face, I finally acknowledged what the look in his eyes really was. Disappointment.
Not in being stuck with me, but in how I’d been shutting him out. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, but was I doing that by not sharing my thoughts and fears with him? Sky was a full-grown man with his own business. Sure, he was fun and bubbly and spontaneous, but he wasn’t a child.
Maybe Bessie was right. Maybe I needed to stop treating him like one. Give him the chance to help me make sense out of what was happening in my head instead of deciding how to handle my fears that concerned him without him.
Now, how to get him to ask me to spend the night after I’d continually blown him off? I started with, “Have you had a nice day?”
He frowned. “I was, then I kinda wasn’t because I think I’m in trouble with Elyse and Gran, but then it was cool because…” He gestured toward Bessie and Beau. “We found Beau in Witch’s Brew when Chance somehow made all the spirits who were there visible like they are here.”
Startled, I glanced in Chance’s direction. “How’d he do that?”
I didn’t realize he could hear us, so I was surprised when Chance looked over his shoulder and said, “I’m not sure.
Mom and Gran insinuated that Sky and I weren’t developing our abilities to the fullest, and some goddess used Carli as her spokesperson, and Pops wasn’t visible to Sky or Carli or Cassi, and it was like a match sparked inside of me, and I knew that I could do something about it. ”
“Well, that’s cool.”
“Cool?” Sky beamed. “It was freakin’ epic. I’d have had him do that everywhere we go if I knew that he could make spirits appear like that. Like”—he clutched my bicep with both hands—“can you imagine how many dead people there must be at the boardwalk?”
Chance moved closer and lowered his voice. “There are so many. You guys remember the first time I went with Jetty? We both left there a little freaked out.”
I remembered well. Jetty had actually held it together pretty well in front of his boyfriend, who was just realizing his abilities, but he had a full meltdown when it was just the two of us.
Much like me, he wanted to keep his new man safe.
The drive to protect had reared in a way I’d never seen it from him, and how did you bubble wrap someone who saw things you couldn’t see yourself?
I had more compassion for him now than ever. At least Sky and I were in this together. Each new problem he faced, I’d be right by his side, taking it on, too. Bessie was right. I’d definitely been looking at this all wrong. I needed to do better by Sky. He deserved better. We deserved better.
As if I’d conjured him, Jetty strode across the yard, and Chance ran to meet him.
They’d have plenty to talk about, I was sure.
As they embraced, Sky’s face lit up watching them—damn, he was such a good guy—but the longer they clung to each other, his face fell.
When he cut me a quick glance out of the corner of his eye, I knew that was my fault.
I wasn’t supporting him the way our friends supported each other.
In my quest to make sure our new relationship wasn’t one-sided, that this wasn’t just about him tethering me to the natural world, I’d dropped the ball massively. Time to pull up my big boy pants.
“As much as I’d like to stick around and celebrate Bessie and Beau’s reunion, I’d kind of like to spend some time alone with you more.”
“Yeah?” Sky asked, sounding and looking so damn hopeful.
Gah! How was he so free and open? So forgiving?
If I was him, I’d make me work for time together after the way I’d been dodging him.
But not Sky. In just the months I’d known him, I knew he always went after what he wanted fearlessly.
It was my own negative perceptions and fear that kept me from realizing that he viewed me as important—worthy.
Well, no more. I’d find a way to be more transparent, more trusting—and less of a martyr. Maybe. Hopefully. “Yes.”
“So Gran is in the house with Elyse. We could give her a ride home, and then—” I shook my head emphatically enough that he stopped, then batted his eyelashes at me and smoothed one hand down my chest. “Or we could run to town, pick up something for dinner, and go back to my house.”
“I pick that option.”
He hopped onto his toes, pecked my lips, and waggled his eyebrows. In a silly voice, he said, “Yessss, I’ll have you right where I want you.”
Truthfully, I’d be right where I wanted to be, too.