38. Guilt Manifested
GUILT MANIFESTED
LEV
“ W hat do you mean his body isn’t there? What happened to him?”
Silas bolted upright from his burial vault as if he’d woken from a nightmare. “Yes, Levvy. Whatever happened to me?”
“Lev?” Asher asked.
“Sorry. Where were we?”
Silas stretched an arm overhead and yawned, pale hand masking his mouth. “Me, obviously.” He leapt down, landing between them.
“Right. Yes. Well, his body was never found, I’m afraid.”
“Never found?”
“It’s a difficult subject for me. I’d rather not elaborate.”
Asher crossed his arms over his chest, a motion Silas mimicked with eerie accuracy. “I told you the truth about Ben.”
“What did he tell you about Ben?” Silas asked. “Who is Ben again?”
Lev ignored him. “Let’s talk outside.”
Lev latched the lock and sat down on the steps beside Asher. Silas hadn’t followed. He watched from the darkness of the tree line.
“My father and Wendell were best friends for decades. The three of them—Wendell, Father, and Mum—all got on well. I’d met his son, Silas, once at a charity auction, and I hadn’t liked him.”
Lev toyed with Asher’s hair as he talked, fingers alternating between tousling it and spiraling waves into ringlets around his finger.
“There was something… I don’t know. It’s difficult to pinpoint. I simply didn’t care for him. He followed me around the venue, watching me while I ate, sitting too close, acting too familiar. It was strange for a child to behave that way. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
“I didn’t think of him again. Not until Wendell moved in to help while Mum was dying. He didn’t bring Silas, and I spared him no thought, too preoccupied by losing my mother.”
Lev’s hand stilled on Asher’s head, a pregnant pause.
“I loved Wendell. I called him uncle. He uh…” Lev cleared his throat. “Wendell fathered me in a way I’d never experienced before. He never saw me as raw material meant to be carved in his image. I was just a lad to him, a lad who was losing his mum.
“He taught me football—your soccer, that is—and rugby. Took me fishing, taught me how to tend the garden.” Warmth crept into Lev’s words.
“He used to write me stories and have them printed into little chapter books featuring me as the character. I’ve saved all of his writing in the library.
Sometimes I think I hear that tap, tap, tap of him at the typewriter, but it’s just my memory of it. ”
“Why didn’t Wendell bring Silas with him?”
“Silas’s mum had full custody. She was a horrid woman from a wealthy and militantly Catholic family. She never forgave Wendell for divorcing her and forced Silas to attend a top Catholic boarding school against Wendell’s wishes.
“None of this was ever very fair to Silas. I had far more time with Wendell, and back then, I didn’t care. I’d lost my mum to cancer and father to grief. Silas was this hazy silhouette in my mind, an annoying specter of a memory.”
Silas looked murderous, but didn’t draw closer.
“When Wendell came to stay with us, my mum explained to me that Father loved Wendell the way Father loved her. She told me she was grateful Wendell could love me when she no longer could.” Lev blinked back tears.
“Mum had always supported my father and Wendell’s relationship—she wasn’t in love with Wendell, to be clear.
I used to think that maybe some people had a greater capacity for love, and that’s why she was able to share my father.
Or maybe she was willing to sacrifice her happiness for Father’s.
I sacrificed my own for Silas. Perhaps he sacrificed for me as well. ”
“I don’t think love should be a sacrifice.”
“No?”
Asher shook his head.
“Perhaps it wouldn’t be a sacrifice then. Sharing you makes me want to throw up as much as it makes me want to break something, but to keep you, I would make room for whatever you need. Whoever. Your unhappiness would wound me far more severely.
“My mum died mid-spring. Luna and I picked flowers for her viewing. Wendell was with my father. Father was…” He trailed off. Even thinking about how broken Father had been then made his stomach hurt, let alone talking about it.
“Luna tried to steer me toward the wildflowers, but I preferred the bluebells and alliums and hyacinths. They were bigger and stood above the rest, technicolor pigment behind a veil of mist.
“Every spring, those same flowers crawl up from the earth and stick out like tombstones. I tried to dig them up, but there are too many. I don’t want to see my mum’s death reincarnated every spring. I don’t want to remember.
“Memories are fickle. Pain is easy to remember and death forgets so many things.” Lev’s spine sagged, shrinking his height as he sighed. “Blakely, I know I come off as… I don’t know…”
“Twattish?” Silas suggested, appearing on the step on Asher’s right. “Suffocating, controlling, paternal, a bit of an overbearing arsehole?”
“Stifling,” Lev said just to stop Silas’s infernal suggestions. “I’m afraid of losing you. I’ve lost so many people that I love. I almost lost you already. That’s why I don’t want you going off alone.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
Lev shot Silas a look. Silas whistled with far too much nonchalance, taking a peculiar interest in the moss growing on the angel’s knee. Silas was just fucking with him. Everything he did was subtle, if not invisible.
“I had Rebecca,” Asher added.
“You could have fallen, fainted, cracked your head on a rock, tumbled down a well. Rebecca wouldn’t do you much good then, would she?”
“Don’t underestimate her. I think she could rescue me from a well.”
“He has a point, Levvy.”
“For fuck’s sake, I’m not arguing about wells,” Lev snapped.
Asher’s brows lifted. His gaze darted to the gate where Rebecca still waited.
“Now you’ve gone and scared the poor lad.” Silas appeared behind Asher, and said into his ear, “You suspect there’s something’s wrong with Lev, don’t you?”
Lev massaged his temples. “I apologize. I’m not angry with you, darling.”
“ Darling?” Silas feigned a gag.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” Asher leaned his head against Lev’s shoulder.
Lev kissed his head. “Do you mind giving me a few minutes in there? ”
Asher squeezed Lev’s shoulder. “Of course.”
Lev thanked him and stood.
Silas was already there waiting for him, sitting on top of his empty crypt with one leg crossed over the other. Lev closed the door and leaned against it.
“Did you do this?” Lev asked.
Silas huffed a sigh that floated stray strands of black hair that would never gray in his temples the way Wendell’s had. “Please. If I had the power to lure anyone anywhere, it wouldn’t be here. Perhaps your darling lad was keen to leave, saw a chance, and took it.”
“Fuck you,” Lev grumbled under his breath.
“Would if I could, babe. I’d hate-fuck you into the dirt, especially after you said such awful things about me.”
“I’m sorry you heard that, but you’re not real. You’re misfiring neurons, my guilt manifested.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“It has to be though, Si.”
“You promised you’d never forget me.”
“I could never forget you.”
Tears welled in pale blue eyes too big for Silas’s face. He’d never grow into them. “Don’t you miss me?”
“I feel as if I’ve missed you all my life.”
Silas cupped Lev’s cheek weightlessly. “Then stop missing me. I’m right here…”
If the Silas before him wasn’t real, why did disappointing him hurt so much? The decades-old impulse to wrap Silas’s fragile frame into a gentle hug still lingered like phantom limb pain, but Lev couldn’t do that.
Silas kicked a pile of stowaway leaves ineffectually. “You only want Asher because he’s pliable and soft and responsive to your touch.”
“You’re jealous. I hadn’t realized…” After all, Silas had encouraged Lev to invite him repeatedly.
“You’ve never hosted men at Lichenmoor. It’s one thing to know you’ve slept with other people, and quite another to watch you fall in love.”
Silas gathered his height with a tilt of his chin and subtle shake of his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. Life goes on and the dead stay dead. If I was alive, you’d pick me, wouldn’t you?”
“I would pick him, Si. I’m sorry.”
The paper skin on Silas’s forehead wrinkled. “No.”
“You chose me, and I chose to love you, but now that I have a choice, I choose Asher. I will always love you, but I can’t love you the way you want me to.”
“Don’t you dare repeat the same line you used before you killed me.” Silas stroked his chin. “If you won’t choose me, perhaps I should choose me for you.”
“You don’t get to choose!”
Asher knocked on the door at his back. “Lev?”
Fuck. Lev covered his mouth with his hand. How loudly had he shouted and how much had the wind masked for him?
Silas winced and sucked air through his teeth. “Good luck trying to explain why you were yelling in an empty room.” Then he laughed and disappeared.
Fucking Silas.
Asher knocked again, sharper this time, then pushed against the door. “Let me in.”
Lev stepped away from the door, and Asher burst into the room.
“ Argh. You could have warned me. Why does this door even open inward?”
“Superstition probably. Come on.” Lev took Asher’s hand and dragged him out of there before Silas returned.
“It doesn’t even make sense. The latch is on the outside of the door,” Asher continued while Lev slid the dragon back into the slot. “If someone forgets to lock the door on a windy day, the ghosts can walk right out. ”
Lev smiled despite the morbid topic, and Silas. “That’s what the dragon’s for.”
Asher rolled his eyes.
“I don’t think they put much thought into it, darling.” Lev gripped Asher’s hips and brought him close enough to kiss. “Thank you for rescuing me from my memories.”
“Are you okay? I heard you talking.”
Lev scrolled backward through his conversation with Silas. How much of what he said could be understood? Silas had outsmarted him again.
“I don’t know what to say,” Lev said, which wasn’t true. Lev had a hell of a lot to say that he couldn’t, most of it begging.
Please don’t be scared. Please don’t say you’re calling a doctor to examine my head. Please don’t look at me like I’m your fallen hero again.
“I shouldn’t have pressured you into telling me about your family. I want to understand you, but not if it makes you wade through painful memories.”
“You did nothing wrong. I’d feel better if you told me what you heard. The last thing I want is for you to misunderstand the mad musings of an old man.”
“You’re not that old. Or mad.”
The next beat of silence tugged like a loose thread, punching holes in Lev’s decorum.
Finally, Asher said, “All I heard was you telling your thoughts to be quiet. I have anxiety. I tell myself that all the time. Just not out loud.”
How frustratingly vague. “Did you hear the thoughts I wanted to silence?”
“No, but if I had, I would have understood they weren’t for me to hear.”
“You’re a very good lad. I’ll reward you when we get back.” Lev walked him back to their horses. “Tell me again why you believe Rebecca led you here. ”
“She spooked and bolted.”
“She doesn’t spook.” Any horse could conceivably spook, but she didn’t.
Asher kissed Rebecca’s cheek. “She would never.” Asher hopped up onto the saddle.
“And she led you all the way here full speed, then stopped?” Lev passed him the reins, but held onto her bridle, lest she take off before he could follow
“Pretty much. She didn’t seem scared. She just bolted.”
“I don’t like that.”
It sounded like Silas.