28. An Even Worse Discovery
twenty-eight
An Even Worse Discovery
Archer
Irip the stake out of Fabian, coating myself in a spurt of warm blood in the process. I’ll have to remember to change my shirt before Liam sees me because this is not the look of a prospective boyfriend.
“Another chicken?” I whisper at Edgar, possibly a little too harshly. I can tell he’s pissed when he breaks the thing’s neck without even a squawk of protest.
He’s right. Three deaths in three days? Where’s he supposed to keep finding things to be killed, especially at such short notice? And yes, they were due for the chopping block anyway, so…
I grasp the animal, and honestly, I’m thankful it’s a big one. Fabian’s heart is all torn up, in every sense of the words by the looks of it. I can barely see a thing for blood. I have to fix bones again, and fuck, I’m so bloody tired going into three days of this.
But there’s no way in hell I’m letting Liam see him. I need to be fast.
Pressing my eyes shut, I slam a hand down on him, and visualise it—the healing, the knitting, the blood creeping back into his body, crawling back into the arteries, ready to pump fresh through him when his heart finally bursts back to life.
The bones crackle into place with crisp finality, and beneath my hand, the skin bounces plump and whole.
Yet the toll is on me this time… I feel it from the first touch, that life essence draining from me when I already didn’t have enough. When I haven’t had time to restore since the last two deaths.
Overwhelming weakness flows alongside the life energy of the bird.
I want to take that energy. Keep it for myself.
Take enough from this animal to make sure I’m going to wake up from this too.
To get back to the front door where Liam’s waiting for me, because if this bastard wakes up and kills himself again, it’s over.
I can feel it. I don’t have enough fight left to do this one more time.
His heart slams against my palm, and I wrench my hand away, my entire body following, my back landing hard against a wooden beam.
That’s going to bruise, but I don’t have the energy to care.
I don’t care about much of anything but Liam.
Not until Fabian sits up, looks around, then cries out, “Again?”
I force my eyelids open just long enough to say, “Get the fuck off my property. And don’t come back.” My eyes roll back, a wave of darkness coming for me.
“Kraa!” sounds in my ear. My eyelids snap back open with reeling shock and fresh fear of the predicament.
I scan the area, but Liam still isn’t here. Some warning rings in the back of my brain telling me that’s a little odd. I’m not sure I’d wait there on my doorstep that long, but I guess I did make it clear it’s pretty important. Didn’t I?
I roll to my side, leaning against the post to get my balance as I climb to my feet, but two voices dizzy me before I can get my wherewithal.
“If you do it again, Archer’s going to be pissed. And when Archer’s pissed, Archer shuts gateways, and I don’t get to see you anymore.”
Simon’s voice. Simon being weirdly… helpful?
“He can’t keep us apart,” Fabian argues vehemently. “Nothing can keep us apart now.”
“Dear boy, I hate to tell you,” Simon replies, “but it’s not Archer keeping us apart right now.”
Still grasping at the rough wood, I lean a little closer to hear Fabian’s shocked, “What are you saying?”
Simon waves a hand in the air. “It’s all coming off a little… desperate.”
“Desperate?” Fabian snaps, twice as loud, anger fighting through shock.
“I just mean all this past-life stuff, dredging up my history…” Simon casts his gaze to the ground, adding a wrinkle of his lips. “It’s honestly quite… distasteful.”
Fabian only stares back, looking like he’s been stabbed, which he has, really, but figuratively this time.
Simon must be hit hard by that accusatory, hurt look, because he fumbles out, “You know, maybe we can take a little moment to get to know one another before you attempt suicide three times over me. I’m not suggesting I’m not flattered—”
“Flattered?” Fabian shouts. “Flattered? I’m not here to flatter you!”
“Well, then what are you here for?” Simon snipes. “It was a lovely roll in the hay, but truly, do you have nothing worth living for besides me?”
Fabian, face ashen with either blood loss or horror, or both, wobbles his lips for a few pregnant seconds before pressing them hard, then announces, “You know I don’t.
No parents, no job, no life. Nothing! Nothing but you, this memory of you, the presence of you!
Always and every day. And now I finally meet you and… and… You’re just like real men!”
Simon’s head tilts to the side in cruel judgement. “Darling, I hate to tell you this, but I am real men.”
“But… I knew you…” Fabian’s eyes brim over with tears, then he turns on his heel and staggers away from Simon towards the front of the house.
Simon leans towards me and, with an eye roll, bemoans, “Ghost fuckers. It’s a whole thing.”
“It’s a whole thing?” I repeat, voice thick and appalled.
“A whole thing. Don’t ask me to explain it.
” He shakes his head. “It’s a shame too, because I really rather liked him.
I felt an odd…” It’s like a wistfulness hits him for just a second, then he reverts back to distant.
“It doesn’t matter. He’s madder than I thought possible, saying very strange things about me that…
” His words and eyes drift away again, his brow pulling tight, presumably over whatever ‘strange things’ Fabian has been telling him.
The sound of Fabian’s sobs is so loud my heart goes out to him, as annoying as he is. “You could have let him down a bit more softly, you know? Go and apologise.”
“I thought you’d want me to stop him killing himself?” he protests.
“I do! I really do! Only, could you also just do it kindly?”
He lets out a huff, then disappears into thin air, only to reappear a few metres down the yard, smack bang in front of Fabian, who trips backwards on sight of him, falling on his behind.
Simon eases down next to him. “I didn’t say you had to leave.”
“Simon!” I hiss, stumbling after them.
“Well, which is it?” he yells over at me.
I smack my face into my palm. A bad idea because I’m still so dizzy, and I pay for it with the world spinning beneath my feet.
“Why don’t you see it?” Fabian asks, somewhat pathetically. Quite pathetically. “Why don’t you see what we are?”
“You don’t even know me.” And before Fabian can argue whatever he’s taken a breath to say, Simon surprises me by going in with, “But if you’d like to… pursue an… acquaintance…”
Fabian reaches out a hand for him, touching nothing but thin air. “How? How can a mortal man and a ghost ever have a real relationship?”
“That’s a different book,” I bark at them, truly over their ridiculous display at this point, and desperate to get back to my actual flesh and blood love interest. “I don’t care what you two do, just don’t kill yourself in my yard again.
Is that clear? And you can go home right now too.
Today. Before Liam sees you. We have enough to deal with, with that entity in the house, and I’d really like you to leave now. ”
“But—” Fabian starts.
“Shhhh,” Simon whispers. “If we’re to be, fate shall find a way.”
“I don’t want to go,” Fabian whines, looking for all the world like a kitten about to be devoured by wolves.
“Home!” I snap. “Or I’ll send Simon straight back to the grave tonight.”
“He’s not serious,” Simon coos, which I don’t thank him for, but all the same, he encourages Fabian on his way.
“Come back tomorrow and see me, alive and well, and… and maybe I’ll show you what I can do with my poltergeist skills.
” There he raises his eyebrows, Fabian’s eyes triple in size, and I think I might lose my breakfast.
“Really?” Fabian breathes in wonderment.
“You have no idea.” This Simon accompanies with a lascivious laugh.
I clap my hands loud enough to wake any random dead who might be in the vicinity, and shout, “Out! Out right now! Not another word today, get out of here and let me think.”
“All right,” Fabian states in a faux-calming manner, as if I’m the one being mad right now. “I was just going.”
“Not fast enough!”
He actually rolls his eyes. I’m regretting resurrecting him more and more by the second.
“Until tomorrow,” whispers Simon.
“Tomorrow,” Fabian breathes, like the promise is a curl of hair he’s going to keep in his locket, as if he’s some Victorian-era widow.
He turns, perfectly well now, and virtually skips towards the front of the house. I nod at Simon, then stride off after him, hoping to get back to Liam before he does.
But when we turn the corner, no Liam.
No Liam, and the front door wide open.
And fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Liam went back inside.
My heart skips a beat. I take the stairs two at a time, then almost walk straight into him. “Liam! I’m so sorry, I—”
Liam levels his gun right at me. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“What’s… What’s wrong?” My first thought is possession. This isn’t like Liam. His eyes are scared, pure terror, but twisted with… sadness. Anger. But so much fear. Of me?
“Don’t even think about it,” he snarls, his tone sharp, cracking like he might cry. “I know what you are.”
Holy shit. He doesn’t. He can’t know. “Liam—”
“Get the fuck back!”
And so I do, almost tripping down the stairs, hands held high, my mind scrambling to understand the complete change in him. I stumble against Fabian, who freezes at the sight of the gun. Then Liam stops dead. His mouth drops open. And, “Fabian?” he gasps out.
“What the fuck, man?” says Fabian, two hands high in the air like mine.
Liam’s eyes drop to the gun, like he forgot he’s holding it, then he lowers it, eyes so intensely focused on Fabian it’s like he’s seen a ghost. Only he has seen a whole bunch of ghosts this week and hardly looked at one so intently as this.
“What the fuck happened to you?” he rasps, staring at the enormous and bloody hole in Fabian’s clothes.
Fabian’s head drops. Then he laughs. “Nothing. Nothing much. I’m going to go now.”
“You’re going to…” A frown darkens Liam’s entire face, a confused, bewildered, but still sad and angry expression.
“Yeah,” Fabian slightly confirms. “Back to London. I think I’m done with this job, to be honest. See you there, all right, mate?”
Liam doesn’t say a thing. Only watches Fabian retreat down the pathway.
But the second I make a move, the gun rises again.
“Liam, what is it?”
“I don’t…” It shakes in his hand. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
He’s seen something. He’s been in some hallucination again. He’s not well.
I want to reach out for him, but the moment I try, his finger tightens on the trigger.
“Liam, did you go back upstairs?”
He’s staring at me, but he’s also not. His eyes have a faraway look, and he’s slow to answer. When he finally does, every manner of horror hits me head on. “I saw your room.”
My office. He went into my office. “I can explain.”
His eyes sharpen on me. “Then it’s real?”
Fuck. I’ve already said way too much. “Just put the gun down and talk to me.”
“So Fabian…” He looks like he’s going to throw up. “That was real too?”
More horror on top of the horror. My voice reveals the truth because my tired and harried brain can stop it. “You saw what happened?”
He blinks, wariness reviving in his eyes. “What did you do to him?”
“Liam, let me explain—”
“What the fuck did you do?” he shouts.
I raise my hands a little higher. “Whatever you’re thinking I did, that’s not it.”
“I can’t.” He shakes his head, tears at the corners of his eyes. “This whole place. I can’t…”
He’s fast, skipping down the stairs, leaving.
“Liam!” I call after him.
He turns once and once only. “If you come anywhere near me, I will shoot you.”
He means it. I can see it in his eyes, all terror, like a fox in a trap.
So I stand here on the doorstep of my haunted house and I let him go. Walk away from me and this whole mess. From this life I have no choice but to lead that’s put us both in danger.
How could I possibly expect him to forgive me for that?