21. Few Truths and a Thousand Lies
twenty-one
Few Truths and a Thousand Lies
Archer
We’re back in a hospital, but not the same one. After what happened last night, I didn’t want Liam running into his dead brother again, if he really is stuck in Hillingdon. That’s something I need to find out more about, but maybe not from Liam if it’s going to dredge up too much trauma.
I think I’ll go over there alone and have a chat with the ghost, just as soon as the current disaster is sorted.
I hate doing it. I hate being in hospitals in general.
Too many souls who haven’t crossed over, who haven’t figured out yet what’s happened.
Full grieving energy for their lost lives when they do.
And if they see me, and if they realise I’ve noticed them…
it’s a lot. And there’s only so much I can do to help them.
Today, Liam’s not wandering back and forth making frantic calls to Gerald, which I’m glad about.
It gave me time to sneak away and make my own call to him—give him a blast about this and more.
But I’m back now and Liam’s only tapped out a few texts on his phone.
He certainly seems a whole lot less anxious about getting Fabian seen than he was with Raul.
Maybe it’s the ridiculous nature of the injury? Or maybe it’s something else.
He seems… sad? Withdrawn. Could be the shit job in general, I guess. Maybe he hates hospitals too.
When they finally take Fabian through, he sits back down next to me and says, “Listen, I don’t think you’re safe in that house.”
A slightly sick sort of humour twists inside me. If only he understood that I’ve never been safe. Not really. “I’m used to ghosts,” I attempt, as some sort of distraction from him thinking too deeply about why I haven’t run screaming from my haunted property yet.
“I know,” he says. “But your warding…”
A touch of worry trills in the back of my mind as I watch him, his eyes averted, taking too long to get his thoughts out.
“What if it doesn’t work?” he finally says. “What if, because what if… if the thing in your attic isn’t a ghost… how can you know the warding would work?”
Fair point. “I guess I can’t. But it’s never gone in my room, if that’s what you mean.”
“But what if it can?” His eyes are dark when they meet mine, some depth of concern there that’s both confusing and, frankly, a little flattering.
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I am worried about you.” Stark words he drops without the slightest blush. “It could kill you. It could come in when you’re sleeping and…”
It takes a lot for me to not touch his knee, so close to mine.
It’s very sweet that he’s worried, but Liam is very sweet in general, so I suppose I shouldn’t read too much into it.
I can only try to put him at ease. “If it followed us to the hospital yesterday, I don’t see that my changing sleeping location will be of much use if it really wants to get me. ”
The storm over his brow only deepens. “So… you don’t think there’s anywhere? Or anything we can do?”
‘We.’ I like that too much. “I think we just have to take solace knowing that if it could have killed me in my sleep, if it wanted to, then it would have done it already.”
Liam nods, head hanging low in thought, until he eventually glances towards the exit and says, “I don’t think I can be here again. Not today. Not after what happened yesterday.”
Does he mean the creature, the hallucination, or his brother? All of it, most likely. “Shall we go outside?”
He throws a look over his shoulder at the doors that closed behind Fabian’s stretcher. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”
That brings a smile to my face, to see that he is still that concerned about Fabian after what he just did. “There are no safer hands we could leave him in.”
He smiles back lightly. “I guess that’s true.”
“And it’s his own fault.”
“Also true,” he concurs with a frown.
I grab my coat as a sign we should go, and he does the same with his, unthinkingly, easily led. Like his mind is somewhere else. Yet he keeps close, walking quietly down the hall, out the front doors.
I suppose it’s straight to my car, then home. But it feels like there’s something in the air between us—something that needs to be said. If only I knew what.
I guess I’ll apologise again. Ask him to quit again. Not that I want him to. But two dead colleagues in two days? It’s not good odds for Liam. What if something happens to me and I’m not there to help?
“Can I ask you something?” Liam says, cutting straight into my increasingly hopeless thoughts.
“Of course you can.” I try to sound more confident than I feel while I’m miserable about probably having to lie to him again. And again.
“It’s, um…” His shoulders rise as the evening wind whips around us. His coat looks thin, made for the autumn sunshine when he arrived this morning, not these evenings of waiting in ERs until the sun has set. “It’s a few things, actually. Do you have a minute?”
Almost definitely shouldn’t. Not if it’s going to actually be several minutes of me trying to sidestep every question.
Yet I hear myself say, “Of course.”
“Okay.” He searches the pavement, as if the question he needs to ask might be written there. Then another breeze rips into us, and he visibly shudders with it. “I’m not sure where to start.”
I could take him to the car. To the cold car. And sit inside, and drive fast, and shut him down the second we arrive at his door.
But the thing is, I do want to know what he’s going to say. And I have so many things I want to ask him too. About his brother.
Searching around for a bench or a shelter out of the wind, my eyes are drawn to the warm lights and shining signs of an old pub down the street.
It looks cosy. It looks damn cosy. And turns out, I’m actually starving now I think about it.
Which means Liam must be too, strapping man that he is.
“I’ll talk if you come to the pub with me? ”
At least I know that’s put some pink into his cheeks, even if it’s not as much as the fireplace will.
His voice wavers a little when he confirms, “The pub?”
Watch me keep this super casual. “I’m starving. And it’s freezing. Is that okay?”
“Yeah.” Though he doesn’t sound too sure. But then, “Yeah,” he says a little more firmly, adding that shy smile of his. “It’s… very okay.”
Have I mentioned that smile is an absolute killer? If I hadn’t already decided I definitely will not be asking him out, this night could possibly go a very different way.
And I’m not asking him out. I’m not. This is strictly about stodgy food and a quick drink… with this incredibly hot man… which… could be worse…
We’re inside before either of us can think twice about it, our bodies propelling us faster than our thoughts, desperate for fire.
And the place is… Well, it’s adorable. Classic old London pub on a quiet weeknight.
A few people in for after-work drinks, talking loudly at the large tables up the back, which leaves a small, quiet spot by the fireplace free.
I virtually shove Liam into it, asking him to mind it while I order, as much to get him warm as to snaffle the prime table for us.
A few seconds later, I’m back, having to pull off my coat because the flames are so bright, the logs crackling away merrily.
It would be so nice on another day. Could be so perfect for a date. If only this could be a date.
But it can’t, so… “What did you want to talk about?”
Straight to the point, cut through any possible flirtations.
He puts down his beer, focuses his eyes on me, quite intently, and states, “I want to know what that thing showed you in hallucinations.”
My heart skips a beat, my stomach clenching in warning. “Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know what I’m dealing with.”
“I told you everything I know last night.”
“Did you?” The question’s a challenge, and what five seconds ago was a cute pseudo-date that wasn’t a date but felt a bit like a date has just turned into the wrong sort of inquisition entirely. Something that can go one of two ways depending on what I do here.
Tell the truth or lie?
Or skip over the problem entirely…
“It showed me the same place it showed you,” I try, because that is true.
“Did it show you dead people?”
I always see dead people. All the time. I can see the ghost of a barman who hung himself on the stairs right now, swinging back and forth behind Liam.
I’m trying not to make eye contact so it doesn’t realise I can see it, so it doesn’t try to strike up a conversation.
“I saw exactly what you saw last night. Judging by your reaction.”
He searches me, and I almost want to avoid his gaze too. “Did you see all of them?”
“Yes. I think so. There was a group, right? At the end of the hall?” I think I’m playing dumb pretty well. Unless… Unless he couldn’t see the whole group? Maybe only I could see that. Fuck.
“And they were dead?” he pushes with a keen nod.
“Yes. Or-or at least it looked that way. But it’s a hospital. Surely it has… Surely it’s haunted. Has dead people. Has ghosts. Who are dead.”
His eyebrows draw close. Nice eyebrows, they are too. “So you think maybe those people are always there? And it wasn’t part of the hallucination?”
Did I mention, fuck? “Um. I-I don’t know. I’m just, um, throwing it out there. As an idea.”
His eyes stay locked onto mine, like he’s a human polygraph. “You think they all haunt it all the time? Because they died there?”
“M-maybe?”
“So you think they’re real and not part of the hallucination?”
Arrrrrggggghhhhhhh. “I mean… um… I don’t know?”
“Okay, but if they’re all there, at the hospital, because they all died there, and they’re stuck there, why are there so many ghosts at your house?”
Kill me now.
This drink was a bad idea.
Even if I need to gulp down more brown ale just to give myself another second before I speak, I eventually come up with the dashingly clever, “I don’t know.”