30. Necromantic Tension
thirty
Necromantic Tension
Archer
The sky is grey, the weather’s cold and gloomy, and there’s nothing warm and delicious baking in my oven today. The only smells that reach me are smoke from other people’s chimneys and the black coffee that serves as my breakfast.
Am I punishing myself? Possibly.
Definitely.
Why didn’t I just tell him?
Maybe because when Liam turned up on my doorstep, he was fresh to all of this, and I think he would have thought I was mad.
Maybe because if he knew, it would have scared him.
Maybe because I’ve spent my entire life hiding who I really am because I’ve seen how badly it goes when I tell people.
But I had to tell him. Not just in some vain attempt to hold on to him. He deserves to know. To be able to make sense of what he’s seen here. To be able to decide for himself whether I’m worth the time of day to let me explain.
I check my phone for the billionth time to see if he’s replied, but only my own useless message glares back at me. ‘I miss you already.’
Too weird and too strong, even if I hadn’t scared him half to death yesterday, running off and leaving him like that, coming back with Fabian’s blood all over my hands, right after Liam discovered my office.
Christ, how did he even end up in there? No wonder he’s terrified of me. Even I’d probably think twice about dating me if I saw a room like that.
I’m snapped out of the miserable reverie by a tapping at my window. It’s not as if I could mistake that sound for anyone else, so I throw it open automatically. “Morning, Edgar,” I grumble.
“Kraa!” he shouts.
“What?” I ask.
“Kraa!” he shouts.
“Liam?”
“Kraa!”
“On his way?”
“Kraa!”
“Now?”
“Kraa!”
My heart’s beating so violently it’s like it wants to rip itself out of my chest and run down the laneway to him. “Oh my god. It’s so early. Shit. Do I look all right?”
He gurgles at me.
“Thanks a lot,” I reply sarcastically, checking my pyjamas for coffee drips. “You’re so great for my confidence.”
I get a mocking croak in response.
Little shit.
I’m about to bolt upstairs to get changed when his knock hits the door. I recognise it. Genuinely, how do I recognise that knock already? Pavlov’s necromancer over here, all but salivating for another taste of those lips.
I don’t care if he sees me in my pyjamas. I’m not making him wait another second.
I rip the door open, and he steps back, like he wasn’t expecting his welcome to be quite so fiercely enthusiastic. Which is fair.
“Thank you.” The first stupid words out of my mouth.
He smiles, but it’s awkward. Like he doesn’t know what to say.
Clearly I don’t either because I ramble on with, “Th-thank you. For coming back. To my house. And…” And what? I move back all the same and hold out a hand to invite him in.
It’s so different to when he arrived yesterday. I was so close to kissing him from the moment I saw him. I felt like he might want me to do that. But today, I genuinely don’t know if he would.
He scans the kitchen first, looking… a little disappointed?
“No cooking today?”
God, if only I’d known. I’d have cooked him a feast he’d never forget. “Um. I wish I had. I would have… Did you eat?”
“Yeah.” My heart sinks, ridiculously, like it’s a declaration of him no longer wanting me, or like I could have baked him a magical cake that would have made him fall for me if only he’d been hungry enough to eat it. “Just a train sandwich,” he adds.
My ridiculous heart leaps back up. “Let me know if you get hungry. I can make you anything. Tea? For now?”
That tight and awkward smile again. “Okay. That’d be nice.”
“Okay.” So I run off to the kitchen while he stands there. Stands there while I try to figure out where to start.
‘What did you think of my necromancy room?’
‘Do you have strong opinions about pentagrams as decoration?’
‘Is the necromancer thing or the liar thing more of a deal breaker here?’
Liam wanders about, looking at knick-knacks here and there with a keener eye than before. Not sitting, not settling, until I bring his tea over, then he stands there in the middle of the enormous room holding it.
I’m about to ask about the train ride, just for something to say, when he catches me with, “How long have you known?”
We’re into it. Just like that. “About the necromancy thing?”
His hands tighten on his mug. “Yep. That.”
“My whole life.” It’s too much to say standing here like this, so I wander over to the coffee table and settle down on a sofa, hoping he’ll follow. He does, easily enough, taking his place opposite me.
“I see dead people,” I tell him plainly.
“And not just the ones who want to be seen—the ones who appear in front of you deliberately, who want to haunt you, or ask for favours. I see all of them. The lost ones, the forgotten ones. The ones who don’t want you to see them and who can be quite angry when you do. Quite scary.”
His eyes grow sad and earnest as he listens, which multiplies my guilt but also…
deepens this thing I have for him with every second that goes by.
He doesn’t say anything, so I talk on. “It started when I was a child. Or maybe I always had it, since the moment I was born, and my parents just didn’t notice it sooner. ”
“Do they have it too?” he asks.
“No. No, it’s just me.”
He nods, encouraging me as he catalogues that information whichever way he will.
“It was hard for them. When I was growing up. Because I was very scared. And very strange. But they came to accept it once they saw it was real. Once they understood. But sadly… I don’t see much of them now.
They’re up in Scotland, and I’m down here, and…
it’s hard to travel. To get away. Given the situation.
And it’s ghost central around here, as you know, so I can’t have them to stay. And I miss them. I miss them a lot.”
“Are there a lot more ghosts than you’ve told me ahout?”
“They’re everywhere,” I explain. “All the time. There’s an old woman standing at the window right now, looking in. She’s missing half her face, and she’s just watching us.”
The colour drains from Liam’s complexion and his head turns slightly.
“Don’t look.”
He swallows, focusing back on me. “Which window?”
“I don’t want to say and draw attention to the fact I can see her. I’m hoping she’ll go on her way.”
His hand shakes a little as he quietly lifts the tea to his lips, eyes steadfast on the coffee table now.
“I spend a lot of time trying to pretend I can’t see them. Because if they notice I can, it’s a world of trouble, more often than not. Of all different kinds.”
“Do they follow you?” He speaks low and careful, like she, or another ghost, might be able to hear.
“They do. Not that they always can. It’s one reason I drive a lot. Easier to outrun them. I can help some of them. And I try to, but…”
I let out a long breath, wondering how much I should tell him. But he’s here, and he’s receptive, so I may as well give this my best shot.
“There’s a very harried idea that you can just have a little chat and help someone move on.
It’s on all the ghost shows, right? And sometimes you can.
But often, it’s far more complicated than that.
If they could just move on, most would. Some choose not to.
Some don’t even have the capacity to understand what’s happened to them.
And others…” Some spark of the trauma I’m forever pushing down snakes its way up my throat.
I swallow against it. “It gets to be a lot. There’s only one of me. And there are so, so, so many of them.”
He places his cup down on the table and shuffles forward to the edge of his seat. “Do you know any others? Like you?”
“No.” My chest gets tight saying it. Always. Every time I think too hard about it.
“That’s a lot,” he says simply. And I nod. What other words can you use to describe that? A lot. It’s a lot, but it’s not as though I have a choice.
He speaks tentatively, softly. “I know it’s not the same thing, but with my mum…” He glances up shyly. “I live with my mum. Still. Because… It’s not because I don’t want to move out. I can’t. Because she can’t be alone. Because I don’t know what she’ll do.”
My heart clenches at the confession. No wonder he didn’t want to take me inside the other night. He’s been keeping a secret too, but maybe an even darker one. “Because of your brother?”
“Yeah. She’s never recovered. And she goes through these phases where I can’t leave the house.
Not for long. She needs me for everything.
She won’t eat. She’ll let herself waste away.
She can’t wash. She’ll barely take herself to the bathroom.
And I don’t trust that I can leave her for long because… ”
His mouth hardens. He doesn’t need to say it. I know exactly what he means. He must know I know, because he changes tack slightly. “I wanted to go to uni. I wanted to have a career. But I had to make a choice. Stay with her, or maybe… maybe lose her. And she’s all the family I have left, you know?”
He’s speaking casually, but the emotion is thick behind it.
I can feel the way he’s trying to let it all roll off of him, as though it isn’t crushing him.
“I’m just saying that because… it’s not that I know you well, or that I know what you’re going through.
I feel like I can’t understand a billionth of the pressure you must be under.
But… being a carer, of a sort, which I guess you are…
it gets hard.” He presses his fingers together until they turn white.
“If you’re the one helping someone. Or lots of someones, in your case. And there’s no one else to help you.”
How beautifully, easily, he’s just put the whole thing into words.
“Liam…” The word slips out, and he smiles, but blinks away the tears in his eyes. I think he must be a perfect mirror to me, because his image has gone hazy with the moisture in mine. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”
He laughs. “I don’t mind at all.”