Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

Ro was nervous. Maybe it was silly to be nervous, considering his current state, but he was. He and Conner were waiting in Laine’s office. Laine and Sev were at Ro’s funeral, and Conner had offered to go with him to observe it, but Ro didn’t feel right doing that. It seemed like a vain, ego-feeding sort of thing to do, as if seeing people mourn for him would ensure that he felt loved. Ro wasn’t cool with that.

In the two days since his death, Ro had learned how to pop in and out of places. Thinking of where he wanted to go, he only had to concentrate then he was there. It reminded him of his fantasies of being able to teleport when he was a kid. He just hadn’t known he’d be able to do it, ever, but only if he was a spirit.

Well, it is what it is. He’d had his life, now he was lucky enough to get to have his afterlife with Conner. He just wished he hadn’t hurt his loved ones by being such an idiot and swerving.

“No what-ifs,” Conner told him, as if the man knew what he was thinking. Possibly he did. Ro was pretty sure there was more to Conner than even Conner knew, but he wouldn’t pry.

“Trying. You can’t tell me you didn’t do it, too.”

“For years,” Conner agreed. “And it sucked. I’d rather you didn’t have to go through it.”

“I think we all have to. Second-guessing our mistakes when they cost us so much is human nature,” he pointed out.

Conner nodded. “Sure, but you gained something too. Lucky you I’m as thick-skinned as I am thick-skulled and don’t get my feelings hurt easily. I’d hate to think you were calling me a mistake.”

Ro tossed a wadded-up ball of paper at Conner. “Ass. Stop trying to make me paranoid. You know what I meant.”

“Yup, I did.” Conner cocked his head, and his eyes glazed over. That look usually meant Sev was talking to Conner. “Sev said they’ll be here in ten, and not to mess with the papers on Laine’s desk.”

Ro sighed, wondering if his uncle said shit like that just to get Conner to do the opposite, because that was surely what would happen.

Conner didn’t disappoint him, raising every paper into the air, including the previously stuck-together sticky little yellow squares. Conner’s grin was positively evil, and he looked freakin’ adorable as he spun the papers around. The stapler floated up next, and in short order Laine’s office walls had been redecorated. Conner was just setting the stapler back down when the office door opened. It wasn’t Laine or Sev who came in, though.

Deputy Rich Montoya’s eyes bugged and he turned white, bringing the scar that ran from his eyebrow to chin into stark relief. “Fuck,” he mumbled, stumbling back out of the door.

“Shit!” Ro said at the same time as Conner.

Montoya’s eyes didn’t bug any further, they just rolled right back and he hit the floor with a thud.

“Shit! Shit, we killed him!” Ro yelled, panic flaring bright and fast. “Oh my God!”

“He’s not dead,” Conner said, appearing beside Rich. “I think he just passed out. If you remember, Rich had very bad experiences with spirits.”

Yeah, Ro remembered. He’d been haunted, possessed even, by the spirit of the guy who’d killed Conner and had almost killed Rich. It’d taken death to get rid of the fucker, with Rich having to be revived through CPR to be free of the evil that had almost destroyed him.

“So he knows about us. Why’d he pass out?” Ro asked.

“Probably because he heard you,” Sev said. Ro looked up to find his uncles rushing over to them. “Were you talking when he—” Sev glanced around, looking at the open office door. “He walked in the office?”

“I think all I said was ‘Shit’. He startled me.” Which was a lousy thing, considering Ro was the spirit.

Laine grunted and, after he and Sev had brought Rich back around, Ro was careful not to make the slightest sound. Rich had a wild look to him, like a horse frightened by thunder. Ro floated his ass back into Laine’s office and started taking down the papers Conner had stapled up all over the place.

“You‘re not gonna let me have any fun.”

Ro looked over his shoulder at Conner but didn’t answer. As far as he knew, Rich was still within hearing distance. Conner started taking papers down too, grumbling as he did so. Footsteps warned Ro of someone joining them just before Laine cursed.

“Damn it to hell, Conner…”

Conner snickered and rolled up a stack of papers.

Laine narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you dare—?”

Conner swatted him on the backside and let the papers fall to the ground when Laine spun around.

Ro had spent his teen and early adult years being intimidated by Laine. It wasn’t until he’d really matured that he hadn’t been afraid of Laine snapping his head off. But even so, he couldn’t have teased Laine the way Conner did.

Conner floated back and pointed. Laine’s tin star pinged when it hit the ground.

“Enough!” Laine roared.

Ro opened his mouth to snap back, not caring for Laine yelling at Conner one bit.

“Don’t.” Conner grimaced and gestured, elevating the star until it wavered chest level with Laine. “I shouldn’t have messed around today. I never do know when to quit. Or when to not even begin.”

Conner sounded so disgusted with himself Ro couldn’t help but hug him. “You were only teasing,” he said, forgetting his attempt to keep silent with Rich nearby.

“Now isn’t the time for joking,” Laine snapped.

Ro glared at the man but kept silent. His balls were only so big, although what could Laine do to him now?

“He’s right.” Conner sighed and patted Ro’s back. “I was just being an ass.”

It almost hurt for him not to speak. Ro had to bite his tongue, but he didn’t think Conner was an ass. Playful, happy, and deeper than anyone else suspected, that was Conner. Otherwise, he’d not have been worrying about Laine and Sev like he had.

“Rich is fine, and he won’t go home,” Sev said as he walked into the office. He closed the door. “He doesn’t, however, want to hear a spirit speaking after his previous encounters with them, so he is manning the front desk for a while.”

“I didn’t mean to scare him. I thought he was you or Laine,” Ro explained. “I was startled when it wasn’t.”

Sev looked around the office, and Ro saw it then, the age that had crept up on Sev over the years. He guessed it’d been so subtle that he hadn’t realized how the years had affected Sev. On Laine, it was even less noticeable because he tended to be stern-looking, with weathered features by the time Ro had met him. But Laine’s hair had once been dark, and was now almost entirely a steel-gray color, and the lines he had were etched deeper into his skin. It saddened Ro and he shared Conner’s fears for his uncles.

He realized he’d been wool-gathering while everyone else had been talking. He tuned back in, listening as Sev explained how Ro seemed to have the reverse psychic abilities of his.

“That’s messed up,” Ro mumbled. “Yours you could at least use while you were alive.”

Sev canted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Well, but I have to wonder. How different is it being a spirit, really? Y’all get your feelings hurt, experience the same emotions and shit that we do. You feel lust—and please, don’t even try to tell me you and Conner aren’t going at it like bunnies. Conner broadcasts accidentally sometimes, and do you have any idea what it’s like to be talking to a funeral director and have someone slam their orgasm into your head?”

“Oops,” Conner whispered.

Sev glared daggers at him. “Oops, my ass. I walked out of there with a freakin’ erection, and that was beyond disturbing.”

“I’d be offended but I get what he means, even if I didn’t hear exactly what he said just now,” Laine said as he hooked an arm around Sev’s hips. “Sev felt what Conner felt, and that wasn’t something he could control.”

“I didn’t know.” Conner didn’t look overly sorry, though. “I wouldn’t have invaded your privacy like that, and I wasn’t trying to brag or anything. Ro just blew my mind.”

“Don’t say it,” Sev warned.

Conner grinned. “And the rest of me, yeah, I won’t name the part but—”

“Conner!”

“Fine, fine, Sev, chill.” Conner dropped the subject easily and was all seriousness again. “The thing about what you can do, Ro, is that it’s probably more important than what Sev can do. If other spirits find out, they’ll be buzzing you to pass on messages and what have you. You won’t have a moment’s peace.”

Ro noticed Sev gaping at Conner before he turned to explain to Laine what Conner had said. Ro frowned at them in return. Didn’t they realize that Conner was pretty damned smart? Had they forgotten how he’d helped them catch killers and solve cases? Probably, he thought. Who liked to remember the bad things that happened? It was easier to focus on things like pranks and jokes.

Sev finally spoke, his voice not hiding his surprise. “Conner’s right. I’ve had spirits hunt me down to reach the living for them, but it’s really hard for most of them to clarify what they want me to do or say. With Ro, they wouldn’t have a problem, not if he can be heard as clearly as we hear him.”

“What do you mean?” Ro asked.

Sev twirled a finger around, pointing at them. “We’ve all had some kind of brush with death, and—or—spirits. Rich, too. Maybe that has something to do with why we can hear you. I don’t know, though. It’s just a theory, and I kind of don’t believe it even if I did share it.”

Conner’s gleeful expression returned. “That’d be easy enough to check out. All you have to do is pop out and say ‘boo’ to the first stranger you see. I wish I could do that. Man, I’d have a ball!”

“So it’s a good thing you can’t do it,” Sev told him. “Ro, why don’t we go to the city park, and you can try it? I’ll be close by, so that if whoever you choose to speak to hears you and freaks, we’ll just say it was me.”

Laine settled his Stetson lower on his brow and took Sev’s hand in his. “Why not just go for a stroll and have Ro say ‘hi’ to people, and if they respond, Sev, you just nod like it was you who said it. Might spare someone a heart attack.”

“You take all the fun out of everything,” Conner muttered. “Not that I want anyone to keel over, but a yelp or two would be funny.”

“Conner’s bitching, ain’t he?” Laine asked.

Conner slapped a hand over his heart. “He knows me too well.”

“He’s hamming it up,” Sev told Laine. “Okay, let’s do this, if you’re game, Ro?”

“Why not?” Ro couldn’t help but notice that Rich seemed to look right at him as they passed him by. It was unnerving, and he was sorry for freaking the guy out.

Outside, the sun was bright and hot—well, he’d bet it was hot. He didn’t feel it any more than he felt the wind blowing through him. He did, however, feel Conner’s hand in his as they moved along.

As soon as they reached the small park with the walking trail, Ro looked for people he didn’t know. It was hard because McKinton was a small town, and he’d lived there for years. Most of the people had eaten at Virginia’s Café at one time or another. That didn’t mean he’d served them, but he had certainly waited on a lot of them. Still, he saw a few people he didn’t think he’d ever talked to, and when he spoke to the first one, the old man answered right back. Sev’s eyes went wide but he talked to the man for a few minutes before moving along.

The next two people answered Ro as well, which seemed to prove Sev’s first theory that Ro could communicate with the living. He wasn’t sure it was useful, but it was nice not to have lost his uncles as completely as he could have. In fact, as far as he could tell, the main difference was that hugging them was beyond his ability at that point. Conner assured him that he would learn to make himself dense for longer periods of time, but Ro wasn’t so sure. Plus, by the time he learned it, it might be too late. Or unnecessary, depending on what happened to them when they died.

Ro turned his morbid thoughts off. He wasn’t going to waste the time he had with them worrying about things he couldn’t control.

Back in Laine’s office later, Sev seemed worried. “I just don’t know what it means that you can do what you can do,” he told Ro.

“Why does it have to mean anything? Maybe it’s just something I can do. Maybe there’s no point or reason or rhyme to it.”

Conner shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I think everything has a reason, and if someone like me thinks that, then it’s gotta be true.”

“Someone like you?” Ro cocked an eyebrow at Conner, waiting for an explanation. If the man was dogging himself, Ro would set him straight right quick.

“Yeah, someone who doesn’t have many deep thoughts. Don’t have room for them when I’m always making messes of offices and such. Plus, blond hair,” Conner said, confirming Ro’s suspicion that he was insulting himself, even in jest.

“I’m sure there are several blonds who’d take offense to that.” Ro let it go for now. He’d make sure Conner knew he was intelligent as anyone else there later when they were alone. “So what would be the point of this ability of mine?”

No one answered. Yeah, that was what Ro had thought. He supposed only time would tell if there was a purpose for him now or not. Then he looked at Conner, at his smile and dimples, and he knew that, regardless of his psychic ability, he had a purpose. Loving Conner. He’d been doing it for years, although he’d not wanted to admit it, because it had seemed pathetic to be hung up on a spirit, but it was the truth. Eventually he would share that information with Conner, but for now he was content to visit with his uncles and recline in Conner’s arms.