21. Few Truths and a Thousand Lies #3
His hand slips down and takes hold of mine, squeezing tight.
“If he’s a restless spirit, I need to know.
Or if he’s a hallucination… That’s so fucking sick.
That it would show me that. That it could get inside my head like that and make me see him that way.
And that’s what I… I think that’s what I needed to ask you.
” He fixes me with those deeply troubled brown eyes, the firelight glinting orange and earnest in them.
“If you know anything more than what you’ve told me. I… I would really like to know it.”
I’m so close to spilling every single thing I know about spirits, which is a fuck tonne. Because I want to help him. It’s in my soul and my nature to want to help, but especially someone like him, when I can see how much pain he’s in. What this thing is doing to him.
But nothing I have to say is going to bring him peace right now. None of it’s going to give him the answer he wants because I don’t have it. This still makes no sense to me. All it will do is make Liam hate me for getting him into this.
And if I tell Liam I’m a necromancer, it will almost definitely get back to Gerald. And if Gerald doesn’t blackmail me with it, he’ll almost definitely pass it onto some authority and get me in the shit. And that puts more people than just me and Liam in danger.
Every one of these thoughts and considerations is making it take too long to answer. Making it harder by the second to convince him I’m just an innocent bystander in all of this.
He shifts forward, grips my hand tighter, as if he thinks I might try to slip away from him. His words come out carefully, slowly, as if he’s considering every one, like each holds massive importance. “What did Helena mean when she said you called her?”
Fuuuuuuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Nothing.”
He doesn’t let go, only shifts his left eyebrow a touch higher and repeats, “Nothing?”
“Nothing that-that-that I understand. I think she was confused? I think she found herself in my hallway, and she was like, ‘What am I doing in Archer’s hallway?’ And so she thought it must have been my fault.”
He frowns at me. His grip loosens a little.
“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” I practically beg, when what I’m really saying is almost definitely, ‘Please don’t let go of my hand.’
“But why would she think—”
“Did you know she’s a murderer?”
His hand stills, his lips and his eyes and every piece of him beautiful in the firelight with that light blush of shock.
“Husband,” I explain. “Evil husband. Shot him dead.”
“Did she?” he manages.
“Sure did. You can look her up if you like?”
Confusion, but interested and lightly amused confusion, tilts his lips.
“On your phone,” I bluster. “Helena Vane-Tempest, Viscountess Harcourt. Type it in.”
He does, that cute smile peeping out for the first time in too long. Then his mouth drops open, and he exclaims, “That’s her! Holy shit, that’s actually her!” He holds up the phone, waving it at me, displaying an old portrait of Helena. “She’s famous!”
“All viscountesses are famous, I suppose,” I chuckle out, more relieved than anything that I’ve diverted his attention.
“Yeah, I guess,” he mutters. “But woah, look at her life.” He swipes his finger up the screen, eyes scanning quickly. “Kidnapped, stuck in Bedlam. And that’s before she killed him. You could write a whole novel about this.”
“Certainly a portion of one, yes.”
“No, but…” He reads for another quiet moment.
“This says she was… She had to flee London, was condemned in the court of public opinion, and never returned. But that idea of her as a villainess has been overturned posthumously. A few years back. When new information came to light that proved she was the victim of her husband’s cruelty and had acted in self defence. ”
“He had it coming,” I agree softly.
He reads a moment longer, then places his phone down on the table, staring at her portrait until the device switches itself off. “So she’s… a killer?”
I nod. “And yet such a nice ghost.”
He grasps the straw I’ve provided. “And she’s happy? In her afterlife?”
“She’s fine. Here and not in Hell or Purgatory. Meanwhile, Simon…”
Finally he’s dug his fork in like he’s about to eat, but that stops him in his tracks. “Did he kill someone?”
“Oh, yes.” I can’t help laughing at that. “More people than you know.”
Slightly amused, or maybe more bemused, he jokes, “I don’t know of any.”
I almost choke on the next sip of beer. “No. Quite right. You wouldn’t.
” I cough to clear my throat. “Simon died in a shoot out, is the thing. Killed the man he was duelling with. But swears up and down the history records have it wrong. That the guy cheated, shot him first and unfairly, so he shot him back, then that fellow’s powerful friends smeared Simon’s name to say he was the cheater.
And the one who started the duel. Simon would rather like the history books changed to reflect that fact. ”
He snaps up his phone and looks at me expectantly.
“Simon de la Grange,” I provide.
He taps it in, and when he sees the sketch of the face he knows, he smiles again, full wonder in it. “Are all your ghosts famous?”
If only he knew the half of it. “Certainly not Lacey and Fred.”
Finally, he eats, but he does it slowly, contemplatively, while he looks through Simon’s sparse online biography. “Says here the duel was over a friend?”
“Not a friend.” I meet his eyes briefly. “That’s how history might like to remember him, but Ferdinand was much more than a friend.”
He blinks slowly, understanding already, waiting for me.
“You won’t find the details there. The facts are, Simon and Ferdinand were deeply in love.
They were planning to escape from England, move to France to be together.
Everybody knew—it was an open secret of sorts among their set.
Then this man, Stowell, who had a lot of bad debts to settle, got wind.
He blackmailed the pair, threatened to tell Ferdinand’s father, who was bankrolling their escape to the continent.
Simon couldn’t pay, Stowell started dropping hints around town, so Simon did the only thing he could and attempted to stamp out the rumour by ‘defending Ferdinand’s honour. ’”
“And got shot,” says Liam sadly.
“And got shot,” I confirm. “But it’s worse than even that.
Ferdinand was his second, naturally. He’d begged him not to go, said that they’d make do somehow.
Live in poverty, whatever he’d imagined at the time.
Simon went anyway, and when Ferdinand saw him go down…
he ran to him. He fell apart. He picked up the gun, still hot, and he shot himself in the heart.
And the last thing Simon saw in that life was the man he loved, dead on his own chest.”
“That’s so horrible,” Liam whispers.
I offer a slight nod. “You see why he is the way he is. He has to act like that. He wraps himself in posed carelessness, but he’s on a hair trigger at the slightest provocation.
That death is still so new to him. It’s ancient history to everyone else, an interesting article on a screen.
But to Simon, it’s as if it happened yesterday. ”
“And that’s why he wanders? Because he’s heartbroken? Or… or vengeful?”
“He’s both those things. He has the ultimate unfinished business.” I lower my tone, trying to help him understand what I’m getting at. “But he, like Helena, whichever way you want to paint it, was a killer.”
Liam’s bright, and he catches on immediately. “What you’re saying is, you have two murderers in your house, living perfectly normal ghost lives, despite what they’ve done. And so… what my brother did might not have put him in any sort of Hell or Purgatory? Is that right?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m suggesting,” I agree gently. “I’m not an expert, I don’t know all the ins and outs of ghosts and hauntings. But if… if life just got in the way… I can’t imagine he’s…”
“Suffering for all eternity?”
He slightly stuns me with the response. His fear for his brother laid out on the table so openly like that.
“I wish I could give you an answer, Liam. I think ghosts do sometimes trap themselves here. I think sometimes there is unfinished business, and they don’t want to move on until it’s taken care of.
But, in the case of your brother, well… Well, I also think this new creature, whatever it is that’s living in my attic…
I think it’s making you see him… It must be.
It’s powerful. And I think it’s bad. And I think it’s maybe dredged up a lot for you, that had I known you had this history… ”
He watches me with a clear vulnerability that melts me. “Then what?”
“Then I would never have let you take this job,” I tell him plainly.
“Just as well I didn’t tell you then, isn’t it?” He cracks a smile that could only be called goading. And it puts a fire in my heart to see it there.