Page 151 of Dead Vengeance

“Okay. I appreciate that. Glad we had this talk.”

“That’s the spirit!” she replies. Then laughs. “Spirit.”

I force a half laugh. “I get it.”

“Not yet, but you soon will…”

This time I can’t summon more than a groan in response to her warped humour. Thankfully, she disappears. Or maybe not so thankfully, as that just leaves me with Simon, glowering at me.

“I’m sorry,” I try, as an end to the discussion. “I’m going to do this.”

But he doesn’t leave. He stays pissed off at me, clearly, but with his voice taking on that rare earnestness he’s started showing recently. “You know, when I lost Ferdinand, it was the single most horrifying moment of my entire existence.”

Guilt churns in my gut. Of course this is making him think of that. Not that it should. It’s not at all the same thing.

“I tried to do something noble,” he continues. “Something I thought was right. It cost me the love of every life. It tore me away from the living for two hundred years. There isn’t one day in all that time I didn’t wish…”

The sadness is overwhelming. A sadness that’s lived on so long after he died. A hurt that never stops, that comes out in blood and violence, sarcasm, that cold and aloof manner he’s perfected. But there it is, right there, plain heartbreak, so close to the surface.

“I’ve been given a second chance. By you, or Tezcatlipoca, or who knows what. But I have suffered for centuries to get here—to find Ferdinand again when I never once thought that was even possible.” He blinks a long, slow blink, then talks to me seriously, quietly, no morsel of regret hidden for the first time. “When you get the chance at love, don’t walk away from it. Don’t turn your back on it, and don’t, for god’s sake, get yourself killed before you’ve even told him how you feel. Especially not right there in front of him. That will do things to Liam that you cannot even fathom. A man does not move on from watching his lover die. Please, Archer.”

There is no way I can explain this without hurting him, without dredging up more of his dark history that he’s somehow conflated with whatever’s going on between me and Liam.

Not until he says, “I know you’ve been very unhappy.”

That stings. That’s a knife between the ribs. “It’s not that.”

“Isn’t it?” His eyes are hard, but not in a cruel way. In a way that says he knows difficult, he knows sad, and any suggestion that he’s wrong about me is tantamount to betrayal.

“It’s not the same thing,” are the best words I can find. “I’m not doing this deliberately. I seem to have been put on this earth to help ghosts. And…” The misery of it swells around me, the loneliness that was every day of my life until Liam. “I’m tired of sadness. I’m tired of death. I’m tired of all the horrible things I see, and not being able to fix them. So I can’t this time. I just cannot stand here, with this power, with this ability, and do nothing. Not when I see this horrible injustice. Not when I can fix this.” I shake my head, trying to get my thoughts in order, to explain any of it, for me or for him. But it’s close to impossible, so I finish with, “Liam will move on. If I can give him this one thing, he’ll be okay.”

Simon studies me, long and hard. “I never, for one moment, thought you of all people could be so stupid.”

“Simon…”

He disappears. Pops out of reality as if he can’t even stand to look at me for one more second.

And that’s fine. He can berate me in the afterlife for as long as he likes, so long as he lets me do this tonight.

So that’s it. Job done. Plan made.

Now, to lie to Liam’s face one last time, take him safely home, and kiss him goodbye.

Maybe for the last time.

forty-two

My Only One

Liam

“You don’t think he’d do anything, do you?”

“Hmm?” asks Archer.

“Marsden.” It’s the third time I’ve had to repeat what I’m saying. Archer’s distracted, and has been all the way home. Maybe this is all too much for him, too fast.

Of course it is. It must be.