Page 84 of Dead Vengeance

“Not much.” She wanders over to Edgar, strokes his neck. She’s doing well learning to manifest touch in this realm. “Only that the bridge is open to all and sundry. Anyone, or anything, travelling along those ley lines can get on. I did turn a few back, told them it was very dull here with you—that they’ll simply be stuck here watching a man bake.”

“Thank you so much,” I sigh out. Facts, though.

“But the bridge hasn’t wavered once since I discovered it,” she continues. “You know the kind of energy it takes to keep something like that open. You can only do it for a few hours at a time, maximum, last I checked.”

My heart squeezes at the plain sense she’s talking, but I concentrate on setting the bread on a nice board for breakfast as if she’s not crushing all my hopes with a few straight words. “We’ll handle it.”

“No, you won’t,” Simon throws back. “Did you hear what she said? You’re no match for that thing.”

I slam the pan down on the stove, whirling to face him. “Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you,” Simon replies, “to finish my job so we can all get the hell out of here before it kills the lot of us.” This he accompanies with a pointed glance at the staircase.

Edgar flaps over to the bench and taps his beak on the plate covering the bacon.

“Off!” I swish at him. Then to Simon, “You can leave anytime you like.”

“No, I cannot.” He flicks the ghost ash of his ghost cigarette onto the floor. “My name’s mud in the ghost world. You know that. Where am I supposed to go?”

“Kraa!” Edgar shouts.

“One more piece and that’s it.” I chuck another sliver of bacon onto the windowsill to get him away from the meat, then address Simon again. “Can it really be so bad? Compared to this?”

“No one invites me to parties anymore,” he whines, and he does look genuinely dejected, especially when he adds, “It’s been a long and lonely two hundred years.”

“Aw, Helena could take you along to a few things, I’m sure. Isn’t that right, Hele…”

Where she was is now empty space, gone in a puff of social awkwardness.

Simon raises a sharp eyebrow at me. “See?”

I let out another sigh, then set about collecting condiments from the pantry. “If they still don’t believe you, then why would they believe me? Why do you imagine I can change anything that goes that far back in time?”

“Because history goes to the victors!” he announces dramatically. “You fix my name in the current era and watch! They’ll adore bringing the black sheep back into the flock. But then, Archer, then…”

It’s so deliberately said that it’s clear he’s desperate for my reaction. So I throw him a quick, “Then what, Simon?”

“That’s when I’ll get my revenge.” He sucks at the cigarette bitterly. “That’s when I say who gets their name on the guest list. And Lord Fairfax will rue the fucking day.”

“Lord, save me from the afterlife,” I mumble.

“What’s that?” he snaps.

“It’s a very meaningful way to spend your afterlife,” I tell him a little more loudly, then reroute the conversation with, “Either way, I think we’ll both be happier once Liam arrives and once we shoot that thing upstairs.”

“Shoot it?” He repeats, all gall. “You think you can just waltz in and shoot it?”

“Liam has a very special gun, or so I’m told. And he’s quite capable. Unlike the rest of the people they’ve been sending this week.”

He laughs smugly. “I assure you, Fabian was quite capable.”

“And that’s another thing.” I point the egg flip at him with heavy meaning. “No more fucking the ghostbu—”

“Spirit. Extraction. Specialists.”

Thank you for the reminder.

“Those. None of those. You don’t appear before them. You don’t kill them. And you most especially do not fuck them in the barn.”