I didn’t remember much of the ranch. Or much of anything else until we were on the road. It was like coming out of deep water. First, I could parse a change in light, then sounds went from dull whispers to muffled speech to louder than I thought necessary. By the time Harrison did a pretty nifty slide-turn into the hospital parking lot, I was conscious and considering how mad CeCe would be if I ruined the nice Christian Siriano jacket she had on.
I guess I’d find out because that handbrake turn did nothing good for my nausea. “Oh my god, Julian! Ew!”
My sorry, Cec was lost in the upholstery as I pressed my face against the back of the seat, trying to stop everything from spinning around me.
The police flew past us as we headed into town to the hospital. The desk nurse quirked her brow at us as Harrison, Oscar, and CeCe manhandled me into the lobby, where Ezra was jittering nervously. “Aren’t you supposed to be in room twenty?” the nurse asked Ezra.
“Um. Yes? But I heard the chatter that ‘some English guy got himself beat up at the Carstairs place’ and I knew…” he looked at Oscar, then did a double take back to me. “Holy shit!”
Cec snorted. “Get him back in there then.”
“We’ll even get you an escort,” the nurse said. She hit a button by her computer to page orderlies to the lobby. Ezra was whisked away, Oscar in tow, to get more scans done. The official story seemed to be he had a seizure and hit his head. CeCe, Oscar, and I pretended not to notice when Harrison tried to follow before stopping himself and sitting down hard in one of the waiting room chairs.
I was taken back to an exam pod and then admitted to a room for observation and a thorough cleaning of my leg wounds, then scans for my head injury which was declared a ‘nasty bump but looks like you’ll survive.’ Harrison reported back that Oscar was given a once-over and declared fine, not even a scrape on him despite the 911 call about ‘some English dude getting his ass beat.’
That must’ve been wistful thinking on Carstairs’ part, I thought, probably calling the cops as soon as he’d seen Oscar with Enoch and not knowing what was about to happen.
When CeCe was finally allowed back to see me, she caught me up on everyone’s situation. “Ezra’s back in his room,” she said without preamble. “Harrison whipped out the legalese to smooth things over, but I’m pretty sure it only worked because everyone is too damn tired to give a shit right now. Oscar’s glued to his side. No signs of brain injury, but his electrolytes are off and he’s sleeping like the dead. No pun intended.”
I nodded. “Occupational hazard, accidental puns about death.”
“So.” She settled into the guest chair and offered me a sip of her iced coffee.
“Where’d you get that in this town at this time of night?”
“I know people. And Harrison offered to pop over to Reefter. They’ve got a Buc-ee’s so he picked me up a coffee and got some fresh clothes. Don’t you love my truck stop fashion?” she asked, holding out one arm. For the first time I realized she wasn’t in her dirty clothes but a pair of stiff, unflattering jeans and a red t-shirt with the truck stop’s beaver logo on it. Fucking Buc-ees. It wouldn’t be rural Texas without one every hundred or so miles. “Tres chic, non?”
“I must be tired not to have noticed that when you walked in.”
“It’s the coffee,” she confided. “It mesmerized you.” She held out the massive cup and let me take a long sip, not even making a face about brother cooties when I hand it back, half-drunk. “So,” she began again, “what the fuck was all that?”
For a long, quiet moment, answers tumbled around in my thoughts ranging from snarky to flat out maniacal laughter. Finally, I aimed for blunt honesty. “I’m still figuring it out,” I admitted.
“Better think fast because you’re gonna get questioned in a bit. Harrison tried to put them off, but the local authorities want to put out the fires before they get going. Carstairs apparently told the officers who showed up he’d killed Dewayne Hicks around the time Deborah ran off and now all hell’s broken loose. They had to call in the state troopers because Budding isn’t equipped to handle this. Apparently, they average one murder per year, usually after someone’s been drinking and feels hard done by.” She let out a low whistle before taking a sip of her iced coffee. “I wish y’all had filmed this,” she sighed. “This would’ve been a fucking epic episode.”
“Cecily,” I said, horrified. “Seriously?”
“Sorry. I know. Shitty thing to say. Let’s pretend I didn’t do that, and I’ll just have to live with the fact I turned into my ex-husband for a minute.” She worked the straw in her coffee and finally fixed me with a familiar, loving glare. “You scared me, asshole.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“When I saw you laying there… Julian, you looked dead,” she admitted with a hitch in her voice. “I thought for sure…” The pause stretched into an uncomfortably long silence before CeCe sighed again. “You’re not allowed to die before me. FIFO. First in, first out, remember? I’m the older twin so I get to die first and haunt you, then make your afterlife miserable because you ignored all the messages I left you in the intervening years during which the world mourned the loss of the good twin.”
“Just FYI, if I wasn’t feeling like hammered dog shit right now, I’d noogie you.”
“You haven’t noogied in me ten years,” she laughed wetly.
“Don’t talk about dying first and I won’t have to start up again.” I laid my hand atop hers where it rest on my hospital bed and noticed, for the first time, her fingers were bare. “Your rings?”
“Ah. Well. Jacob had given them to me, not just my wedding set. Couldn’t stand the idea of keeping them so I sold them and donated the money to the Annie Fund.” She fidgeted, not quite meeting my eyes. “Hey, look, a shiny subject change! What do you think happened to Deborah, to make her do this? Do you think maybe she could’ve been helped? Was she being held prisoner or something?”
I shook my head. “I know what Carstairs believed, but…”
“Yeah, that’d be impossible,” CeCe murmured. “Ghosts, sure, but revenants?” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s ridiculous.”.”
I snorted. “Well, there’s something called Cotard’s Delusion that could possibly explain some of it. People with it believe they’re actually dead even while they’re alive and can end up starving to death or dying by accident because they believe it’s already happened, and they can’t be harmed.”
“Fucking hell!”
“It’s not really common and there are therapists who can work with patients afflicted but…” I spread my hands. “It’s impossible to know now. Deborah Carstairs is dead, and it’s a sad thing. Whatever reason they decide is behind her disappearance and all of this, it won’t bring her back. It won’t make things easier for Enoch or Yancy.”
We were both quiet for a long time then. I was feeling faintly buzzed from the pain killer they’d given me earlier, and a little woozy from the antibiotics, but I didn’t want to close my eyes just yet. “I hate hospitals,” I said to break the soporific quiet but mostly because it was just one of those things you’re supposed to say in a hospital. This coffee is awful. I hate hospitals. How’ve you been?
“Well, if we’re lucky, we’re out of here day after tomorrow. You up for the drive to Denver still?”
I knew she wasn’t offering to cancel the filming or let me out of it—the contracts wouldn’t allow for it. But I was glad she’d asked. And if I’d said no, she would have helped figure out something, some sort of buffer, to make it easier on me.
At least, I think. I hope. “I’m up for it if Oscar is.”
She sighed again. “Y’all need to get your heads out of your asses, by the bye. You’re both so gaga about one another but too proud to meet in the middle.”
“It was his abominable pride and my abominable prejudice,” I misquoted. She rolled her eyes and held out her coffee to me. This time, she didn’t ask for it back.
The painkillers were better than I thought, I decided as a sudden wave of intense sleepiness washed over me. CeCe had left me after about an hour, declaring she was too young to sleep in a plastic chair and ruin her back. When I pointed out we were the same age and it wasn’t as young as all that, she threatened to turn the television to infomercials and crank the volume to eleven before leaving with the remote. We very maturely flipped one another off (she started it!) and she kissed my forehead, made me promise not to die, and said she’d be back in the morning, dropping my phone on my chest as she left. I tried to text Oscar a few times, but he didn’t reply. It stung a bit, but I reminded myself he was literally just a few doors down with his best friend and quasi-brother, not ignoring me for funsies. Still clutching my phone, I drifted off into a hazy half-sleep where I could hear the soft beep of my monitors and even the murmur of voices outside my room, but it was all folded into the thick, flannel-warm sensation of a good doze.
“Julian Fitzgibbon Weems,” a familiar, long-gone voice chided. “I can’t believe you.”
“Grandma Dennings,” I said, opening my eyes to see her much-loved face at the end of my bed.
Well, the rest of her too. It was just her face I noticed first.
Hospital grade drugs are better than I give them credit for.
“I told you, that Grandma Dennings crap is all your mother putting on airs. I like it better when you call me Nana.”
I chuckled. It had appalled Mom that we called her mother nana and, in her words, clambered all over her like monkeys on ketamine and for God’s sake that’s cashmere, Julian! Stop chewing on her pashmina! “Hi, Nana,” I said dutifully. “Long time no see.”
“For you, maybe. I’ve been keeping an eye on you and your sister. Julian, you need to let her know I was right about Jacob. Tell her I was right, and she should’ve listened when I gave the message to that nice British boy you’re seeing. By the bye, you should thank me for setting you up with him. If it weren’t for me, he’d never have been on your radar!” She hopped up on the foot of the bed, her tiny legs kicking idly as she regarded me with a tiny smirk. “You don’t look like you believe me.”
I rolled my eyes—or I dreamed I did, anyway. “I’ve missed you, Nana. No one is as snarky as you.”
“Well, you do give it a good run,” she sniffed. “I noticed you’re ignoring what I said about being the one responsible for you finding a new man.”
“I’m ignoring it because it’s not relevant.”
“Take that back, Julian Xerxes Weems! That is the rudest thing you’ve ever said to me!”
“Xerxes? I thought I was Fitzgibbon this time.” Nana loved giving us new and sometimes weird middle names. Another thing that had driven Mom nuts. “I haven’t had a dream about you in ages,” I said when she sniffed again, tipping her nose up haughtily and giving me what I knew from the collection of her romance novels I read one long summer laid up with a broken leg was the cut-direct, the Regency version of the cold shoulder where the young lady would turn her back on an offending fellow and make it clear he’d been a cad. Or, in my case, a bratty grandson.
It was way more compelling in the Regency period, however. When Nana did it to me, in life or in dreams, it just made me want to snicker. Her plump little self looked exactly like a slightly miffed Hobbit, her bright, white hair twisted up into an old-fashioned droopy bun situation, her pince-nez glasses glittering on the bridge of her nose as she kicked her feet back and forth, drumming them so hard against the bedframe, the vibrations tickled my legs.
“You wouldn’t have to miss me if you’d just return my calls, so to speak.” She slid from the bed to pad closer to me, her finger jabbing my chest and leaving shocks of cold in its wake. “Your young man has an entire stack of messages for you, if you’d just accept them.”
“Nana,” I sighed. “I miss you, but you know I don’t believe any of this mess.” She scowled at me harder and I shook my head. “I’m arguing with myself in a dream. My brain manifested my dead grandma and now I’m arguing with my brain through the image of Nana.”
Nana was quiet for a long moment. I half expected that to be the point where the dream took a turn for the weird and Nana turned into Pac Man or something. Instead, she moved to the head of the bed and brushed my hair from my face with the tips of her fingers before leaning in close and kissing my cheek. “I see you all the time,” she whispered, “but I miss you terribly. It’s not the same. I don’t know why I keep staying. Your Pops is waiting for me, I’m sure of it.”
I frowned. “Grandpa Steve? Did he even believe in the afterlife? I can’t remember.”
“No, your biological Pops. My first husband, Timothy.” She sighed. “I wish he’d lived long enough for you to know him. He’d have loved you to bits, Julian. To bits. You’re just like him.” She patted my leg. “He was a stubborn asshole, too.”
My loud burst of laughter shattered the sadness that had been bubbling up in the dream, and Nana smiled.
“You have his laugh,” she sighed. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“You must have. Otherwise, how would I know for you to tell me now?”
She made a funny face at that, part scowl and part mocking.
“He died so long before you were born. Your mother was about… Let’s see, eleven. She was eleven. And I wasn’t prepared at all to say goodbye. He’d been so sick, though. He put on a brave face for the kids, but…” She shook her head. “Well. I knew. And I think he was ready, in the end.”
“Oscar says no one is ever really ready,” I murmured. “At the very end, people are never truly ready to go. He thinks that’s why there’re ghosts, even happy ones.” I chuckled. “I guess that’s as good a reason as any. If they were real, not wanting to let go of their lives makes as much sense as any other reason.”
She hummed thoughtfully under her breath. “Timmy was skeptical, too. Not just of ghosts, but pretty much everything. Spirits, religion, those buy one get one half off sales…”
“Those are a sham. They mark up the regular price to make it seem like a good deal when they put the sale on.”
She laughed again. “Yep, he’d have loved the stuffing out of you. Hell, he probably does, wherever he is now. When I married Steve…” she trailed off. “Well. I do love him, too. But not like I loved Timmy. Not like that at all.”
“Grandpa Steve is a good man. I love him, too.”
She nodded again. “Love isn’t pie. You can share it as many times as you want and still have some left over.” She took my hand, and I could feel it in mine, down to the cold metal of her rings. “Just because you gave Rey your love doesn’t mean you don’t have any left for Oscar, Julian.”
“Wow. This dream took a turn.”
“Stop being so defensive,” she chided. “If I can’t harangue my grandson while he’s laid up in backend of nowhere, Texas, after getting bitten by a zombie, when can I do it?”
“Weird flex but okay.”
“Seriously? A smart ass just like Timmy, goddamnit.” She smacked my arm lightly, and I laughed. “You gotta get your head out of your ass, baby boy. Sooner rather than later. I know it’s terrifying after you’ve been hurt, whether it’s by someone being a raging bag of dicks or because they… they left you before you were ready.” Her fingers squeezed mine hard enough to hurt a little.
“Raging bag of dicks? Seriously, Nana?”
She giggled. “I wasn’t always a sweet, old lady, you know.”
“Why start now? Ow! That hurt!” I rubbed the spot where she smacked me, dimly remembering it was near the IV port they’d put in earlier. There we go, my brain reasoned. Just a dream, interpreting painful sensations.
She frowned at me as that thought crossed my mind. “Well. I can’t tell you what to do or think, obviously. But I can tell you this—I love you, baby, and I can’t stand by and watch you throw away something wonderful because you’re afraid of things you don’t understand.”
“Nana, seriously? My dead grandmother is telling me I need to believe in ghosts now?” I laughed. “I hope they let me take the rest of this IV home in a doggy bag.”
She huffed, her grasp on my fingers fading even as she grew less distinct. “No, I’m telling you to stop roadblocking yourself. Stop letting fear of getting hurt, fear of the unknown, keep you from being happy.” She leaned in close, almost gone, and whispered, “In this case, Oscar is the unknown.”
I opened my eyes to a nurse checking my vitals. “Oh…”
“Must’ve been a nice dream,” she smiled. “You were laughing in your sleep.”
I nodded. “Very nice. Dreamed of my grandmother.”
She patted my hand. “Well. You know what they say. When we dream of a loved one who’s passed, that’s them visiting. Even if it’s bull, it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?”
I nodded politely, closing my eyes as she bustled from the room to her next patient. I didn’t believe for a minute that’s what it meant, but I did have to commend my subconscious for picking a form I’d actually listen to a little.
When I woke up again, Oscar was beside the bed, dozing in the chair. “Hey,” I murmured. “Hey, you okay?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “You?”
“Better than you are, I think.”
“Let’s call it even,” he said, reaching out for my fingers. “Ezra’s awake. Feels like shit, says he doesn’t remember a thing, but he’s lying. He’s never been able to lie to me. They want to send him on to Austin for some tests, but CeCe had Harrison pull some strings, and they arranged for the tests to be done in Denver tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I sat up. “We can’t drive there by tomorrow!”
“No, we’re not getting there till Thursday. Harrison and Ezra, however, will be there tomorrow courtesy of the miracle of air travel.” A tiny smirk curled his lips and I wanted to pull him down and kiss him. After a moment’s hesitation, I did. Carefully, because everything hurt, though it was more from exhaustion than any actual injury. Oscar smiled into the kiss and, after a long and breathless moment, he pulled back, though he kept his fingers tangled with mine. “Ezra’s going to have a panic attack over that. His crush on Harrison Temple isn’t as secret as he thinks it is.”
“And you think that’s funny?” I teased, knowing full well he didn’t mean it literally.
“Mmm. I think it might be nice to see him being the one head over heels for a change.”
“Oh?” My stomach gave a funny flutter, and I squeezed his fingers a bit tighter.
“Oh, did you think I meant me? That I’m the one head over heels? Oh, I meant—”
I gave in and pulled him into another laughing kiss. It had a bite of anxiety to it, of desperation as we nipped and nibbled, tongues darting just right to tease lips before finally pulling apart. “We need to talk,” I breathed. “I mean, that sounded wrong. But I want to talk about us. About how we’re going to go forward.”
Oscar nibbled his lower lip for a moment, and I wanted to pull him down again, tug him into another kiss, but instead I just brushed my lips over his knuckles. “Okay,” he said finally. “We can definitely do that.”
“Knock knock.” Yancy stuck his head in the door, looking like he’d been through hell and back. He probably had, all things considered, and was kind of a miracle for standing upright after the two days he’d just had. “I wanted to check in with y’all before we headed out.” He smiled tightly, slipping into the room as if expecting to get shooed out at any second. “Are you doing okay?”
Oscar nodded. “We’re just waiting to get released. Ezra’s doing alright, this one’s healing up, I’m exhausted,” he said carefully. “Are you okay? I mean—”
Yancy laughed mirthlessly. “I’m not even close to okay. Enoch’s pretty bad himself. We’re, um. We’re going back to the ranch for now, but we’re going to see about moving into town for a bit. We’re gonna lose the farm, I think, cause it’s gonna be expensive when they go to court. Turns out Gerald’s related to the guy who used to own it, Mason Albright. The guy we called the ghoul?” He nodded to himself. “He’s known for a long while but was gonna wait and make an offer to Pops to buy the place from us after he’d saved up some more. Well. And I don’t understand what happened to Mom, how…”
“Yancy,” Oscar sighed. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you must feel, having her back for just a moment only for her to be gone again.”
Yancy shook his head. “I think… God, this sounds terrible. I think she wasn’t really here, anyway. It was her body, but she wasn’t there inside, you know? Her eyes…” He shook his head. “Enoch’s not doing well. I’m gonna be getting him some help. Maybe this place in Austin Doctor Durning mentioned. They help out kids who have, ah, emotional issues? Is that the word I want?”
“Close enough,” I said kindly. “I truly am sorry,” I added. “I wish this hadn’t happened to your family.”
“I’m not proud of what my ancestor did, but I could’ve gotten over that, you know? But my Pops… He. He… God, I can’t even say it! And Mom…” The tears started to fall then, his jaw tight as he fought them and lost. “I’ve mourned her for a long while now, and knowing she was just right there this whole time? Maybe we could’ve helped her. The doc said you mentioned something she might’ve had? Something delusional?”
“Er, Cotard’s Delusion. Did they diagnose her with that?”
Yancy shook his head. “It went too fast. She… she was there and then was just gone. But I can’t help thinking maybe if we’d known she had that delusion thing, maybe…” He sniffed hard, turning his face away so we couldn’t see him cry. “Maybe we could’ve done something. Maybe if I’d listened to Enoch when he kept swearing she wasn’t dead. I just thought he was in denial, you know? No one wants to believe the person they love more than anything is gone.” He darted a glance between the two of us, then looked away again, studying the nurse call button intently. “No matter who it is.”
“All you can do now is go forward,” Oscar murmured. “Remember her and love her, but go forward. Make sure Enoch gets the help he needs and knows he’s loved. And it might not be a bad idea for you to talk to someone too.”
Yancy grimaced. “Yeah. Doctor Durning mentioned that, too.” He dusted his hands against his thighs and forced a tight smile. “I hear y’all are off to Denver then?”
“Tomorrow, if all goes well.” I hesitated before adding in kind of a rush, “Feel free to drop us a line, let us know how y’all are doing.”
He nodded once, curtly, and muttered something like goodbye, letting himself out of the room and leaving us in the quiet. Oscar, after a few minutes, scooted closer and laid his head on my shoulder. “Do you think she had that then?” he asked quietly.
“It’s a possibility,” I murmured. “Not the only one. But it’s possible. There’s all sorts of weird wiring in the brain and that’s not my field of study so I can only guess, but it’s certainly an acceptable possibility.”
He hummed. “And Ezra? What happened with him?”
I shook my head. “A previously undiagnosed seizure disorder, maybe?”
“And what he said to Carstairs? To us? What about that?” He hesitated, then added, “What about what happened to you? I—” Oscar shook his head. “Julian, what I saw happen to you, what you went through…”
His voice was soft, but there was challenge in the words. I pulled him as close as possible, not wanting to break this fragile shell around us, so I said, “I’m not ready to pull that apart yet.”
“Julian,” he said softly, “you can’t ignore it. You can’t write it off as a weird headache or some sort of new, mild version of ergotism never before seen in Texas or—”
I huffed something close to a laugh. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.”
“It really does.” His fingers tangled in my hair just above my right ear and he worried a lock between his thumb and forefinger in a childlike gesture. “Julian, look, I know you’re afraid and that’s definitely to be expected, but you can’t tamp this down and pretend it didn’t happen.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was afraid. And I could tell a half-truth and admit my fear, tell him I was afraid it was something wrong in my brain, or maybe I’d been poisoned or… Okay, I had thought it could possibly be ergotism for like a second or two. But I couldn’t make myself say the whole truth: I was afraid of what happened because all of those reasons, all of the things I could excuse it as… Those reasons wouldn’t fit. There were too many loose threads, too many jagged edges.
Too many gaps that let uncomfortable light in around my safe pieces.
“I promise,” I said finally, “that when I’m ready, I’ll talk to you about what happened. Okay?”
He was quiet for a long time, so long I thought he’d dozed off. Finally, he said, “Okay.”