18. Thickening Plot
eighteen
Thickening Plot
Archer
“That was so rude!” a voice barks out. “Could you please watch where you’re going?”
Liam presses into me, and I almost drag him straight back into the bedroom, to some semblance of safety, when recognition of the voice hits me before the recognition of her features. “Helena?”
Swiping fingers down her red silk dress, as if Liam could have crumpled it, she fixes her beautiful blue eyes on me and pauses. “Archer? There you are!”
“Of course I’m here,” I mutter. “This is my house. The question is, what are you doing in it?”
“Well, I thought you called for me.”
“Called for you? Why would you…” My throat clamps shut, and all the hallway disappears into Liam’s frightened eyes, scanning her, scanning me.
Here’s Helena, and she’s basically dropped my big secret right in front of Liam.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I blurt out.
Helena frowns hard at me. “I assumed there was some problem with the payment—”
“Ahhhhhh!” I half hiss, half shout. “Ah! Helena!” I attempt to cover, poorly.
“This is Liam.” I drop a hand to his back, I guess meant to be comforting as I’m introducing him to a ghost, but also, damn he feels nice.
But also, it’s really bad if he finds out about my job right about now.
“This is Liam…” I repeat, having no real reason for introducing him beyond distraction.
“This is Liam, and… he is…” I turn to him.
Probably don’t want to tell a ghost I have a guy here who is supposed to kill ghosts for a living. “He is…”
Liam’s eyes widen. It’s a split second of understanding and accompanying near panic before he thrusts out a hand towards her. “I’m Liam. Hello. It’s very nice to meet you.”
She looks down at his hand, her diamond and ruby earrings sparkling in the barely existent light. “Well, I won’t shake,” she says. “Because I can’t.” Then she laughs at the little joke. So then Liam laughs, even if it’s uncomfortable. So I laugh, incredibly loudly, like an idiot.
But Helena’s bright, and really fucking advanced for a viscountess of the Victorian era. Her gaze moves swiftly to my arm, still touching Liam, up over my shoulder to the bedroom, then, with a sparkle, meets mine. “Oh. He’s… Oh!”
Blinding panic hits me head on, and I rip my hand away. Liam’s head turns, following the movement, as if I’ve upset him by not touching him. And I would put that hand straight back if I were sure he wanted me to.
Helena breaks a wide smile. “Oh, don’t mind me.” Then, to my eternal mortification, she leers over my shoulder at the bed, and with a lascivious purr in her voice, “Was I interrupting?”
“No!” I gasp out. “Don’t be so ridiculous!”
Liam’s head drops the instant the words are out, and surely he doesn’t believe that’s any sort of rejection?
By instinct, I fling my hand back out, making light contact with his back, before his brow crumples, maybe in confusion, maybe annoyance, before I pull it away again, wishing I were dead, at which point I decide on an odd pat of his shoulder, like he’s a friend and no more, and I’m a complete fucking weirdo.
Jesus Christ.
But Helena isn’t letting up. She sinks her teeth into her smiling lower lip, juts a hip out to the side and teases, “He’s handsome, though, isn’t he?”
A half breath, half completely indecipherable sound, comes out of Liam’s mouth, and I do feel like I should step in here and be the one to stop her talking, but what am I supposed to say?
“Yes, he’s very handsome.” Probably not that, but I’ve said it now anyway. “Very. Um. But not here for… um… the reason… Not for… He’s…”
“Working,” Liam provides, thank god. “I’m here to work.”
“He’s just here to work,” I parrot. Then immediately feel bad, because we know it’s more than that, or I do, and I want him to know I know it’s more than that, or that I’d like it to be. “But not just… Liam isn’t… Liam’s come to… so I can explain about…”
Helena waits in silence while I search for a way to not put my foot in it again. But just then, a weird, low, loud moan reaches us from god knows where. Some long and ghostly moan, but… not like a normal ghost moan.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t somewhat… sexual?
Liam looks to me for an explanation, and I don’t bloody have one.
The corner of Helena’s lips rises, and why is she smiling like that?
“Um. Ghosts?” I continue to try to explain. “It’s… I’m not sure…”
A frenetic tapping sounds downstairs. A beak on glass. Edgar, back at the window for whatever reason. Which adds a new layer of stress, because what does he even want?
“That’s very odd,” says Helena, as if she’s not one of the oddest things in all of the Cotswolds right about now.
“It is. Odd. We should probably…” I should definitely go and investigate, because whatever that is, it isn’t normal.
Or my kind of ‘normal’ at any rate. But some wariness in the back of my mind is screaming, Don’t take Liam, because it’s almost definitely not going to be okay for him, since I don’t even know what it is.
But then I also probably shouldn’t leave Liam alone here with Helena either, nice as she is.
“Mr Gravely said sometimes spirits come to his house,” Liam provides, quite sweetly really. Nice he’s making small talk with the ghost. Nice he’s still calling me Mr Gravely, though I really should correct that at some point.
He speaks on before I can mull that point over too deeply. “And I was wanting to meet some… someone who might have crossed over. Who could maybe tell me about it. A little. So I understand.”
She looks back and forth between us, some note of seriousness finally passing into her eyes as they settle on mine. “Is that why you called me?”
I shake my head, slow as I can, hoping Liam doesn’t see it, trying to communicate with her, maybe stop with the whole ‘you called me’ bit. “I didn’t call you.”
“But then why…” She turns, looks behind her, at whatever she can see that I can’t, that marks her crossover point between our worlds. When she turns back, all the levity has fled from her features. “Archer, I think we need to talk.”
“I think we do,” I reply softly.
How to say to Liam, ‘Please excuse us for a moment. I promise you’ll be safe in my deadly haunted house.’
That tapping again on the window downstairs.
Liam waiting for me to tell him what’s going on. To do something.
Then another moan, deep and weirdly lustful, and I really am having trouble deciding which course of action to take right now.
“Archer?” Helena prods, meaning thick in her voice.
Then, tap, tap, tap! But this time, closer. Upstairs. My bedroom window!
Relief floods me as the pieces slide into place like a safety net, or a doorway with a big flashing exit sign over the top. “Liam, please could you pop in there and let Edgar in?”
“Uh…” There’s a brief flash of something in his eyes. Not just the expected concern such a suggestion would cause in a normal person. Is it disappointment? Hurt? Whatever it is, he blinks it away fast, forcing a smile. “Sure.” Then he steps straight into my bedroom.
“Just stay in the salt circle,” I call after him.
He spins back. “What?”
But I’m fast closing the door behind him and holding the handle tight just in case he tries to get out. But he doesn’t. Doesn’t say anything, and with a great deal of relief, I hear the window opening a moment later.
“What is going on?” Helena asks, irritation barely concealed beneath her curiosity.
“You tell me!” I whisper-shout back at her. “How the hell did you get here?”
“I crossed over the bridge!”
“You crossed over what bridge?”
“The bridge. The only bridge I know of. The very same one you put there when you invited me last time.”
“Shhh!” I hiss at her. “Look, you can’t tell Liam, okay? About what I do, about our deal, about any of it. That’s a secret.”
“Why? He just said he wants to know about ghosts. I should think he’d find that very interesting.”
“Yes, he would. But then he’d know I’m a necromancer, and that’s about the last thing I want Liam to find out about me.”
“But why? It’s a very interesting career choice. And if he has an interest in death and spirits…”
“Helena, it’s just… very complicated.”
“But why?” She’s whispering now, leaning in close, like we’re having tea and mine is the most delicious of all. She loves a scandal. Loves a romance. And I’ve got both in spades.
I can tell she’s not going to let up, so I shuffle across the hall into the bedroom opposite, lowering my voice while she hovers on the other side of the warding.
“Liam is just a sweet guy who’s going through a bit of a rough time.
He… It seems like he might have lost his brother a little while back.
From what I can gather, it’s something he’s still mourning.
And I don’t want to upset him with a bunch of depressing ghost talk about spirits crossing over, and people who never rest, and all the trauma and vengeance that keep people wanting to come back.
I just want to give him a basic, positive overview of ghosts and spirits to keep him…
safe. Informed. Should he meet more in the future. ”
Her eyelids close into two thin and judgemental slits. “You’re just filling him in on basic spirit information?”
I nod. “That’s right.”
She squints harder at me. “But you don’t want him to know anything about real spirit information?”
With a shrug, “I mean. Yeah. That’s pretty much it. I want him to be… happy.”
“Doesn’t seem very fair.”
“How is that not fair?”
“Because if he’s mourning, shouldn’t he know he can come and see his brother any time? Shouldn’t he know that you can call his brother up right now if he’d like to talk?”
“No, it’s…” I scan the door opposite, ready for the handle to turn, or for the shadow of Liam listening to peek underneath.
I see neither, so I give in to the urge to both satisfy her curiosity and lift a bit of the weight of what’s been hanging around my shoulders since last night.
“I don’t think Liam knows his brother is dead. ”
“What?” she positively yells.
“Shhhh!”
“Oh right. Sorry.” Comically low, “What?”