Chapter 2 #2
Is he joking? Those are really his first words to me after seeing me in the flesh for the first time since the nineteenth century. Something like anger bubbles in the pit of my stomach. I’m not sure what I was expecting from him, but it was sure as hell more romantic than ‘Can I help you?’
I step up to him, my hands clenching into fists at my side. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I declare, as boldly as I can manage. It makes his face change. His brows pinch with confusion for a moment before his face relaxes into that same smile, just on the wrong side of confident.
‘Good job I’m not a ghost, then,’ he says. There’s humour in his voice, and it riles me even more. I really don’t think this is funny. I’m certainly not laughing, anyway.
‘Don’t lie to me, Josiah Quinn,’ I snap, my chin tipped up in a challenge. ‘I watched you die.’
He’s shocked by that, I can tell. I hear it in his sharp intake of breath, in the subtle widening of his eyes. I can even see the speeding rhythm of his pulse in his carotid artery.
But wait.
Ghosts don’t have a pulse.
‘How, um…’ he starts, a note of vulnerability in his voice now, the humour from earlier totally gone. ‘How did you know my dad?’
This time it’s my turn to be shocked.
‘Your dad?’ I parrot. I don’t even mean to; my mouth just takes the wheel and repeats the last thing it heard. I feel like I’m losing the plot.
‘Josiah Quinn,’ he says, his voice sounding tighter still. ‘Was my dad. Looked just like me.’ One hand gestures vaguely to himself like I don’t have every inch of him memorised. He doesn’t add unfortunately to the end of his sentence, but I feel its implication there.
But now I’m even more confused. Ghosts don’t have children either.
This makes no sense. Surely his dad couldn’t have been Josiah.
My Josiah. Like I said, I watched him die.
I washed the mine dust off his corpse and pushed his shattered limbs into his best clothes, and then I watched through my tears as men lowered him into the ground and covered his coffin with earth.
He was dead.
But this man in front of me, who looks every bit the same as my timeworn memories of my one great love, seems to be very much alive.
‘What year was he born?’ I ask, not that I’m expecting him to say 1847, but I suppose it would be prudent to check.
‘1969.’
And with that, the last spark of hope dies in my chest. This isn’t the long-dead love of my life, even in spirit form. At best, he’s a distant relative who bears an uncanny resemblance to him.
My Josiah is as dead as he always was.
‘So, you are?’ I ask, swallowing down my disappointment.
‘Joe Quinn,’ he says, holding out his hand for me to shake.
‘I prefer just Quinn though.’ He shifts his position, as though standing still for this long is paining him.
‘I was actually supposed to be a Josiah too, but my dad was so drunk when he went to register me that he could only get half of it out. It’s an old family name, my grandad said.
The firstborn son has been Josiah in our family for generations.
It was to honour a brother somewhere along the line who died—’
‘In a mining accident,’ I finish for him, and his face twists in surprise.
‘Yeah,’ he says carefully. ‘How did you know?’
‘He was my fiancé.’
‘What?’ His mouth falls open in shock. ‘That must have been a hundred years ago.’
‘A hundred and fifty-one, actually.’
I freeze. Where the hell did that come from? I’m so careful not to tell people my secret, and here I am, offering it up after a ninety-second conversation with this stranger. What’s wrong with me?
Quinn considers me a moment before his smile returns. ‘Right,’ he says casually, like I just told him something totally ordinary. ‘You’re one of them.’
I hesitate a moment before I nod, but it doesn’t faze him at all. He’s the only living human who knows this about me, and he’s reacting as if people confess their immortality to him on a regular basis.
‘You’re not shocked?’ I ask in a low voice. ‘Not scared of me?’
His shrug is so casual – the slightest lift of one shoulder. ‘Are you planning to hurt me?’
I frown. ‘No.’
‘Then no.’ His grin tips up on one side. ‘I work at a vampire-themed bar. In Dracula country. What can I say? You’re not my first undead.’
‘You work here?’
‘Yup,’ he says, popping the p sound. ‘Live here too. It’s actually my night off.’ He nods to the armful of toilet rolls he’s been cradling through our entire exchange, his smile turning a little sheepish. ‘You just caught me in the middle of stealing supplies for the flat.’
A shocked laugh honks out of me, and the sound of it makes him grin so widely that a dimple pops high up on his cheek. A strange mix of emotions begins to swirl in my chest.
Josiah didn’t have a dimple.
‘He’s not me,’ I hear Josiah whisper.
I hiss, ‘I know that,’ and it makes Quinn look at me strangely.
‘What?’ he asks, a crease forming between his brows.
I don’t explain, of course. I’ve just jump-scared him, accused him of being a ghost and then told him I’m immortal in the same conversation. Admitting that I’m being haunted by the dead fiancé I mistook him for might be a bridge too far.
‘Nothing,’ I say instead, and then I smile at him. ‘Sorry I called you a liar.’
‘S’ok,’ he says, one single, lazy word. ‘Sorry I’m not your dead fiancé.’
But those eyes stay on mine a little longer. Just a beat too long, in fact.
And with that, something I thought was gone forever flickers to life in my chest.