38. The Most Ridiculous Séance in the History of Séances
thirty-eight
The Most Ridiculous Séance in the History of Séances
Archer
I’m worried Liam’s getting cold and just not mentioning it. He’s still only got overalls on, nothing underneath. Still half undone. Still painfully sexy. Especially as he’s pushing the sofas back, making space for us to do the séance around the coffee table.
I’ve got a few candles ready, pulled the blackout blinds down, but this all feels like a terrible idea to me.
The thing is, I’m not convinced Tezcatlipoca is telling the truth.
That vision feels too ‘good’ to be true, in a sense.
Too straightforward, too clean. It’s everything Liam would have wanted to see.
An explanation and a vindication. And now Liam’s about ready to go prise that mirror out of Gerald’s hands, consequences be damned.
And if what we saw isn’t real, the truth could be a whole lot darker.
What if his brother really was a bad guy? What if his soul is somewhere else, suffering in eternal damnation? What if I get a fix on him, and Liam hears, or worse yet, sees the suffering his brother’s been damned to endure?
Or what if…
What if he’s not even dead? What if he’s just holed up somewhere, smacked out, having forgotten all about Liam and his mother?
There are so many possibilities, and I’m terrified of breaking Liam’s heart with any of them.
I’m terrified of putting a single chip in that armour he carries everywhere.
Because I can see it’s old and worn. He needs a break.
He needs to be wrapped up, refreshed, held until he can grow a new shell, better than before.
Hopefully, with me there to protect him.
But I throw cushions down either side of the table, regardless, take my place opposite Liam and ask, “Are you sure you want to be here for this? I can do it alone and report back.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” His tone is disconcerting. It’s like I’ve just asked him to Christmas dinner. All excitement and wonder. He has complete faith in this. In me. And I feel like I have to give that back to him—have faith he knows what’s best for him.
So we take our places, and I reassert my grip on his hands.
“Close your eyes.” He does. I close mine, then channel the energy up from deep within me.
Blue. Bright. Like sapphire fire. From the pit of my stomach, up and up, into my chest, burning through my lungs, and out to every extremity. Down my arms, and into my hands and—
“Ouch!” Liam rips his hands away, staring down at them. Then up at me, looking like I’ve just slapped him. “What was that?”
“That’s…” I have absolutely no idea. “You felt that?”
“Yeah, I felt that,” he exclaims, studying his hands, which don’t look damaged, but mine never do either. “What was it?”
“You felt that?” I repeat, sheer disbelief countering common sense.
“Yeah! I did. Is that…?”
“You shouldn’t be able to feel that.”
“Well, I felt that.”
“But…” What the hell is going on between us? “Okay, I don’t know if we can carry on.”
He snatches my hands back up. “Of course we can carry on. What are you talking about?”
“Well, I… I don’t think a normal person would… I don’t know if you should feel that. I don’t think you should.”
He gives me a vague shrug. “Does it get worse than that?”
“No, but—”
“Fine then. I can handle it.” He pulls my hands in closer as if trying to prove his point.
I pull mine back. “Not fine then,” I try to argue.
“It’s fine.” He nods sharply, wrenches my hands in even tighter, then, as if it’s at all the same thing, he throws out, “I was great with the sex magic.”
“But this isn’t— That’s—” I swear my temperature just rose at least two degrees. “C-could you please not call it that?”
“What? Sex magic?” He grins across at me, his thumb stroking over the back of my hand provocatively.
“Could you behave? We’ll end up calling up an incubus or something with that sort of energy in the room.”
“Oh. Are incubuses real?” He waggles both eyebrows at me, flaring a soft spark of jealousy in my chest.
“Not as far as you’re concerned,” I mutter.
I get a laugh for my ire, then Liam sitting up straight, eyes closed again, like a perfect student, even if the smile remains goading on his lips.
I’d much rather sit here and stare at him, but the curse of the necromancer calls.
Letting out a long sigh, I try to centre myself, calm down, and get back into the flow of energy. It takes a few seconds longer this time, but soon the heat builds inside, that same thrill starts seeping through me, the light begins to—
“Kraa! Kraa!” accompanied by several loud taps on the window right next to us.
I, naturally, just about jump out of my skin. Liam’s hands snap away from mine, but he’s still smiling, and even wider now. “Edgar!”
“Go away, Edgar!” I snarl at him.
“Kraa!” he protests.
“We’re very busy, actually,” I call across.
“Kraa!” He drops his big glossy head to the windowsill, then comes back with a flash of silver in his beak, which he tinks against the glass.
“He’s got something!” Liam’s up like a shot while I roll my eyes so violently it hurts. I wish I could impress him by bringing in bits of rubbish off the road.
He snaps the window open, letting in a blast of frigid air. Edgar doesn’t waste a second dropping his treasure into Liam’s palm, then nuzzling his head into his bare arm.
To be fair, I would do the same.
“A bottle cap!” Liam exclaims. “I love it so much!”
Who knew birds could preen like that? It sets a new record for shamelessness, but Liam doesn’t seem to notice. He lets Edgar hop onto his arm, then closes the window, bringing him back to the table perfectly uninvited.
“Edgar—” I try.
But, “Kraa!” he shouts at me.
“Edgar—”
“Kraa!”
“Can he stay?” Liam asks sweetly. Then adds, “Please, Mr Gravely?”
My kryptonite.
And he bloody knows it.
“Not a word,” I hiss at the smug bird.
Liam strokes Edgar’s head happily, as if they’d planned the whole thing together. Then he stretches his hands out for mine, while Edgar hops up onto his shoulder, looming over us and the séance like an animated gargoyle.
It’s going to be next to impossible to concentrate now, but did I mention the whole, I’d do just about anything for this guy?
Pressing my eyes shut, trying to ignore the chuckle and “Stop that,” from Liam, while Edgar’s vying desperately for his attention, I do my best to go back to calm.
All right. Energy. Calling up the dead. Serious supernatural shit right here. Energy from deep within. Up through my chest. Build it. Build it. Down my arms and—
Bang, bang, bang, bang! A series of loud knocks on the front door.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
Liam frowns at the door, as if it’s some bible seller, and I swear to god, if it is, they’re about to get a mouthful.
I stagger to my feet, fly across the room, snap the door open, and… “Fabian?”
“Hi…” He shoves his way in, turns on his heel, then thrusts out a bunch of flowers.
“What the fuck?” breathes Liam.
“Kraa!” screams Edgar.
“I don’t know!” I gasp back at them, caught somewhere between the undoubtedly jealous flash in Liam’s eyes and Fabian’s enormous bouquet.
“I brought flowers!” exclaims Fabian.
“I can see that,” I reply, even more perplexed that he thought that was necessary to explain.
“He’s my boyfriend now, actually,” Liam informs him, suddenly next to me, suddenly draping his arm across my shoulder.
Fabian’s eyes lower over his still-naked chest, the oversized overalls gaping dangerously low. “I can see that.”
Liam’s arm pulls a little tighter around my neck. “Glad we got that sorted. So you can take your flowers straight back to wherever they came from.”
Fabian looks down at the bouquet. “Oh. No. That’s for Simon.”
“That’s for Simon?” I ask.
“That’s for Simon?” Liam questions.
“That’s for Simon,” Fabian confirms. “I thought about what he said, and I decided he was right. Maybe we should take things a little more slowly.”
“Things?” Liam asks, eyes narrowing. “What things?”
“Things,” I sigh out. “Liam, you’ve missed a few… things.”
“I’m in love with him,” Fabian declares. “It’s more complicated than you could possibly know.”
“Do you mean Simon as in…” Liam eyes me. Liam eyes Fabian. “Simon the ghost?”
“Yeah, well, he wasn’t always a ghost…” Fabian’s cheeks are pink, which is surprising, because he’s always appeared perfectly shameless to me.
“He once was, and still is, my soulmate. Even if he doesn’t understand that yet.
But I can wait. I’ve waited two hundred years.
What’s a few more days? Weeks? Months, even? ”
“He is a ghost now,” I offer slowly, carefully, as some vague remonstrance for whatever’s going on here.
Fabian scoffs as though that’s immaterial, which it kind of is, which is exactly the issue. “I seriously doubt I’m the only man who’s ever wanted a relationship with a ghost.”
“I think you might be…” I suggest.
But Liam’s perfectly intrigued—too intrigued—taking this all completely seriously, like an actual real relationship could ever exist between a ghost and a human. “I don’t know if you realised, I may have mentioned it, once or twice—Simon kills people.”
“Not anymore, he doesn’t,” Fabian reveals with a heart-heavy sigh. Wandering to the sofa, he throws himself down, still clutching his flowers. “We could have been so beautiful, you know? But he’s decided to force me to live.”
Liam sends me a what-the-fuck-is-with-this-guy look, so I really think I should tell him the truth as quickly as possible before this causes more trouble between us. “I may have revived him once or twice.”
“Revived?” His wondering eyes turn back to Fabian.
“I considered killing myself again today,” Fabian goes on, “in some way you couldn’t bring me back. Maybe by dropping off the barn roof or something, all mushed up, legs and arms everywhere…”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.