38. The Most Ridiculous Séance in the History of Séances #2
“But then… you know, I want to be sure that’s what Simon wants.
I don’t want to haunt his eternity unless he’s…
committed to me doing that. Which is why I’m here.
To ask him on a… a ghost date.” The soft smile would be sweet in literally any other conversation about a burgeoning romance.
“I figure I have plenty of time before I get old, to leave a pretty corpse, become a handsome ghost. What will a few dates matter when what we have is beyond life, beyond death, beyond time, and beyond love that normal mortals could ever possibly know?”
Liam’s head tips close to my shoulder, and he whispers, “Is he actually insane?”
“Weirdly, no,” I whisper back. “He has a very strange, very intense thing with Simon.”
“Simon the ghost?” Liam confirms.
“Where is Simon?” Fabian cuts back in.
“I haven’t seen him all day,” I say. “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”
“It’s all right.” Fabian leans forward, placing his flowers down on the table. “I’ll wait here. With you. I don’t want to come off as needy.”
It might be considered inappropriate to laugh right about now, so I choke it down as best I can and wait for Liam, who’s got his hands on his hips and a frown on his face. “We’re actually kind of busy,” he explains to Fabian. “Just in the middle of something.”
“Kraa!” Edgar agrees, nodding at Liam.
Liam nods back, and somehow I adore him all the more for it.
Fabian finally notices the darkened room, the candles, then surprises me again by looking appropriately mortified. “Sorry. Was this… Were you having a date? Right now? During work hours?”
“No one’s having a date!” I try to cover for Liam, having forgotten entirely that he is actually technically on the clock.
“We were having a séance,” Liam informs him. “For work reasons.”
“Oh, I love séances!” says Fabian. “Who are we calling up?”
“We?” Liam rasps out. “We are not calling anyone up.”
“Well, you must be calling someone up,” Fabian counters. “Though I’m not sure why you’d need to. Seems to me you’ve got plenty of ghosts around here.”
“We don’t need to,” I attempt.
But Fabian carries on with, “Is it about old mate upstairs? Simon reckons he’s going to kill you both.”
“Oh, does he now?” I reply, full gall.
“Yeah. He thinks you should move away. That Liam and I should go back to work. Get on some safer job. But I told him, if you won’t let me die, I’m not leaving here until we fix this, so he and I can be together, even if I’m stuck in this flesh suit.
So…” He gives the small setup another once-over.
“Can I help? More people, more energy, isn’t that right? ”
“Kraa!” says Edgar.
“Mmm,” says Liam. “Edgar’s got a point.”
What the hell is even happening in my house? “You’re listening to Edgar now?”
“He’s a very smart bird,” says Liam.
“Kraa!” agrees Edgar, adding a pleased gurgle at the end.
“What?” asks Fabian. “What does he say?”
“He says you clearly love séances, and that if we don’t let you join, we’ll be here all day. So I guess you can stay.” With that, Liam grabs my arm and pulls me back towards the coffee table.
Fabian gently moves his flowers to the floor, which is a relief, because the paper wrapping lying so close to the candles was making my eye twitch.
And, another small mercy, Liam then settles onto my side of the table, his arm pressed against mine, and oh, how I wish we were still upstairs in the office. Alone. Together. All the ghosts and the ghost botherers outside, away from us, just for a while.
But Liam’s keen to get back to this, for the obvious reason, so I do my best to push down all the stress and frustration and be some kind of professional. “Fabian, we’re calling up Liam’s brother.”
His blue eyes widen, and he looks at Liam anew, more serious and caring than I’ve ever seen him to date. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know. Sorry.”
Liam lets it go with a flippant-sounding, “It’s been a while since it happened.”
“I would have been more respectful,” Fabian says. “I’m so used to these things having happened a long time ago, you know? Like a hundred or more years.”
“Are you?” asks Liam, a touch of humour in his tone.
“Yeah.” Fabian nods, completely serious, as if that’s a full answer.
Liam’s face keeps the same perplexed frown, but his voice softens. “It’s okay. He’s been missing for five years now. So I’m all right. And we’re just going to… try to get to the bottom of that.”
Fabian gives him another quick nod, while I pass my hand around Liam’s shoulder. I love the way he leans into me. I love the way his head tilts towards me. I love the way the kiss I drop on his cheek feels so natural. Already.
Fate. What a beautiful thing it could be. If it were real.
This séance might just prove it one way or the other.
“All right. Let’s give it another go.” I take Liam’s and Fabian’s hands, then pull back a little to avoid getting hit in the face by Edgar’s wings as he flaps his way back to what’s apparently his favourite spot these days, Liam’s bare shoulder.
“Please, everyone, close your eyes and concentrate. Let’s make this space welcoming for spirits.
” I check they’ve all done it, even Edgar, then I do the same.
I can do this. This is important to Liam. It might be important to England as we know it. The world, even. Who knows what a god like this can do.
So I dig deep. The energy reserve within me, I drag it up and up.
Chest, lungs, breathing the blue energy.
Shoulders, arms, radiating out from me. Liam only holds my hand tighter when I feel it run through my fingers into his.
It builds, and it builds, and I can see it in my mind’s eye, swirling between us in the middle of the circle, around and around, like a whirlpool, the top widening, deepening, making a pathway.
“Is there anyone there?” I call, feeling the squeeze of Liam’s fingers. “Are there any spirits in the room with us?”
“I’m heeeeeere…” comes a disembodied voice. “Archer, it’s meeeeee….” A voice I know all too well.
“Simon!” shouts Fabian, and I have to grasp his fingers tight to stop him from jumping up and breaking the circle.
“For fuck’s sake!” I hiss out. “Go away, Simon!”
“Kraa!” shouts Edgar.
And Liam… his shoulders drop. He’s been waiting this whole time, taking one disappointment after another on the chin.
So this time, I’m not going to let anything stop it. “Simon, get out of my energy tunnel immediately.”
When he speaks again, he’s definitely in the room, no doubt lounging on the sofa by Fabian. “There’s no one there,” he informs us in that languid, bored tone of his. “No one you’re looking for, anyway. You should close it.”
“I’ll close you if you don’t shut up,” I mutter. Then, “Jem,” I try again. “Jem Locke. Can you find me, Jem?”
Liam’s fingers reaffirm their hold on mine, and I do my best to concentrate, to pour as much energy as I can into the portal. Searching through the dark, sifting through and through, giving time for spirits to find us.
With each second that passes, I can feel them closing in. Circling around us, more and more of them. Trying to push their way through the gateway I’ve created for someone else.
“There’s no one recent there,” Simon says a little more forcefully. “You won’t find him.”
Liam’s hand squeezes mine like he’s asking me, please don’t close it.
I squeeze it back. “Jem, are you there?”
More arrive. More and more again. And this is exactly what I was afraid of.
There are so many. More than there ever were before Tezcatlipoca came.
Before Gerald stole that damn mirror. Too many arms reaching out from the void, too many faces obscured by the darkness.
Too many things trying to get my attention, or trying to get into me.
“Archer, let them go,” Simon says sharply. He’s the only one who understands how badly this could go. The others have no idea what’s here, just on the other side of their understanding, and what could happen if they get into me.
I press my eyes tighter, pushing back against the encroaching mass. “Jem, are you there? Can you hear me? Give me a sign, and I’ll let you through.”
“He won’t be there,” Simon replies through gritted teeth. “You’re being stupid, and you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Stop it, Simon!” I snap at him, but it’s as much out of fear as it is frustration. Their ghostly fingers claw at my shoulders now. Wisps of them trying to enter at my ears and my mouth. I shake my head, trying to get them off, trying not to break the circle.
“Archer?” Liam’s voice, low and worried.
“I’m fine,” I whisper to him, searching, sifting through all these souls.
“He’s not,” says Simon. “This is a recipe for disaster. The longer he keeps that thing open, the worse he’ll get.”
I try to block him out. Block it all out. Search for the face I know as Jem’s. I’ve seen him. I’ve felt him. But these people… They’re not even people, half of them. There are other things here. Darker things. Things that rip at the entryway, at the light I’m holding between us.
He’s not here. Jem’s not. I search and I search, but there’s no one, nothing that resembles the man I saw dead on the floor earlier today.
I call his name, again and again. A volley of howls and cries comes through to meet us. Liam shrinks closer to me, and Fabian’s hand almost slips loose.
Then, suddenly, clear as day, “Liam? Liam, it’s me.”
Liam jumps, his movement so sharp he almost breaks the circle. “That’s him! That’s him, Archer. I know his voice. Jem?”
“Liam, I’m here! It’s me!”
But it’s not.
I know it’s not.
This thing is old. I can feel it—the age and the power and the wrongness of the presence. This thing isn’t a ghost. “Liam—”
“I’ve missed you so much,” the thing calls through the veil, its voice so melancholy it could break any heart. Especially Liam’s.
“It’s not him,” I whisper, barely able to make a sound, all my energy concentrated on holding the gateway in place—stopping these entities breaking through.