30. Necromantic Tension #2
I’m on the sofa next to him in a heartbeat, my leg pressed against his, both of us facing towards the coffee table to make this feel at all normal, at all casual. “I didn’t know you were dealing with that.”
“How do you think I ended up in ExorSquad?” he half jokes. “England’s finest.”
“I think you are,” I tell him. “I think you’re doing better than just about anyone else could in this situation.”
“I don’t mind the work.” A slight smile softens his face. “And I don’t mind the client.” He presses his knee harder against mine, and, desperate for his touch, I lean my arm into his. Then, like magic, his head tilts, gradually, until it comes to rest on my shoulder.
The relief that sweeps over me is so strong it’s almost exhausting.
Is this it? Does he really understand? Have I told this man who I am and… he’s vaguely okay with this?
“I could never hold down a job either,” I rush out, desperate for more of this connection that’s firming up between us, that feels like it’s holding us together. “More places are haunted than you’d think. With quiet ghosts. The normals never notice them.”
“‘The normals,’” he laughs.
“I’m very happy for them. Imagine being terrified of a glass falling off a table. Or footsteps overhead.”
“That would terrify me,” he admits, breath so lovely on my cheek.
“That’s fair. But sometimes it’s much worse when you have to see what’s making the footsteps.”
He glances up, and I almost push his head back down because it was so nice there on my shoulder. “Demons,” I explain. “Goblins, sprites, all sorts of things.”
He sits straight now, some mixture of interest and horror on his beautiful face. “Really? They’re all real?”
“Yes. But they’re more rare. Put your head back.”
“What?”
I shuffle my shoulder a little. “It was nice there. Put it back, please.”
“Oh.” He smiles then, the widest, most gorgeous smile I’ve seen since he arrived. He settles his head back on my shoulder and takes my hand as he does.
God, I’m so happy like this. Why can’t we just stay like this forever?
“You were saying?” he prompts, while the only thought in my head is how good his hand feels in mine.
“Um… hmmm…”
“Working?”
“Yeah.” I try to rip my thoughts away from the sensation of his thumb stroking over mine.
“Yeah, it wasn’t great. I… Back when I was waiting tables, I hadn’t figured it all out yet.
How to tell the difference between dead people and living people.
They’re not all glowy and translucent like Simon.
And I still do get confused on occasion.
But back then, sometimes I’d try to serve a ghost, and…
” I laugh at the awful memories that I have no choice but to try to see the humour in. “That did not go well.”
He laughs too, then looks up again, so I raise my shoulder a second time, getting another cute laugh and his cheek back where it belongs.
“The ghosts would follow me absolutely everywhere once they realised I knew they were there. Talk and talk at me. Sometimes grow angry if I wasn’t responding.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to look normal in front of the staff.
Then the ghosts would get frustrated. They’d start knocking plates out of my hands, pushing things off tables, trying to get my attention.
Or just because they were pissed off at me.
And you can imagine my employers. Why the hell is this new guy talking to the wall?
He’s always dropping things, acting weird in front of the customers.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t keep a job.
And university? Forget about it. Even the new ones are haunted as.
But the old ones? It’s like The Walking Dead in there. ”
“I never thought about that once,” he says. “Necromancers are always…” He catches himself, like he’s just made some enormous social blunder.
“They’re always what?” I encourage him.
“Well…” His eyes flick up to mine briefly. “I might have looked them up. Last night. Trying to understand.”
How incredibly sweet. No wonder he’s so calm about this. So thoughtful about it. He spent last night thinking things over. Thinking about me, and maybe us. Then he came back.
He says, “I don’t know, Necromancers always live in big houses.
Big, spooky houses. Like yours. And they’re always…
like… learned men. With big beards.” I interrupt with a laugh, and he laughs too.
“And they always have rooms full of fancy things. Books and potions and skulls and…” This time he looks down before he reveals, “I saw that yesterday. Upstairs. Your ‘office.’”
“I know. I realised after you’d left.”
“I didn’t mean to. It was… sort of… I just accidentally went in there. I know that sounds weird. I wasn’t snooping. It was like… a wrong turn.”
“It’s okay. Honestly. I wish I’d just shown you, and then…
” There’s no point going over what might have been.
Who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to give me this chance had he found out earlier.
“It all has a purpose,” I try to reassure him.
“It’s not just there to look creepy. Though I’ll admit, it does look quite creepy. ”
“What purpose does a giant pentagram have?” he asks quietly.
So many truths I need to reveal. So, so many, that go beyond the fact I’m a born necromancer.
And I’m going to push through every one of them.
I pick his hand up and bring it to my chest, then try to ease into the next mic drop.
“I can’t have a regular job. As you know.
But I still live in a regular world. And I still have to do all the things a regular person does, like pay a mortgage, buy groceries.
Normal, regular stuff. So I have to work.
So what I do for work is a little… esoteric. ”
“Antiques dealing?” he asks, eyebrows raised in a way that says, ‘Please tell me you actually deal antiques,’ but also in a way that makes me want to kiss him.
“Yeah, I am an antiques dealer.”
“Oh, good.” He lets out an audible sigh of relief. “So those things upstairs in your room are…” He trails off, waiting for me to fill in the blank.
“Not antiques… They’re… necromancer stuff. But they’re how I find the antiques.”
“Then you…” He narrows his eyes at me, not quite grasping it yet. And how could he?
“Liam, I’d love to show you my office and explain everything to you. Would you… come upstairs with me?”