In the Beyond, his penthouse apartment—concierge service included in the package—was a derelict, run-down room with cobwebs and mold fighting it out for ownership of the walls. Dead plants haunted cracked pots, and shadows moved constantly in the corners of his eyes. He’d thought they were other ghosts at first, but now he thought they were him. He recognized his posture sometimes, the way he tried to crack his knuckles like his dad had.
So no.
He folded his arms tightly instead, fingers pinched around his elbows, and tried to pull his thoughts back on track. It was easier to do without the static of adrenaline from his body to tangle him up.
Death ain’t so bad, the memory of Seb’s opening salvo nudged at Hill for his attention.
Hill didn’t know about that.
It was easier to keep himself on track, but harder tolet go. Even though he accepted it wasn’t fair to expect Davy to care about what happened to Albie, he couldn’t let go of the angerabout it. It was like a barbed hook, and he couldn’t thrash himself off, no matter how hard he tried.
Something broke, crockery shattering on a hard surface.
Davy had thrown the cup, and that just made him angrier. He wastrying, and it was—
A tentacle draped over his shoulder and down his chest. The tip curled around his hipbone and then tightened. He could feel the muscles under the pale shadow-mottled skin, long and smooth and tight as they flexed around him. The pressure didn’t squeeze the nonexistent breath out of him like he wanted, but it wasthere. It gave him something to work with as he pulled his feelings back under his skin where they belonged.
It still felt…tenuous. Like he had them wrapped up in an overstressed rubber band that would snap the minute he let go of it.
“Feels like blue balls, doesn’t it?”
The question caught Hill off guard. He stared at Davy as he mentally confirmed that he was pretty sure he’d not misheard.
He still asked, “What?” just in case he had got the wrong end of the stick.
Davy leaned back against the counter, arms braced behind him. “Blue balls,” he repeated.
“I didn’t…I wasn’t… What?”
Davy stared at him for a second, then dragged up a smirk and a shrug. “I told you yesterday. It takes a while to get used to being dead,” he said. “You’re used to feeling a certain way in a certain order. It doesn’t work that way for a spirit. There’s no spent adrenaline hangover when you get mad. You’re just angry until you work out how not to be. Or someone distracts you by saying something out of pocket.”
Something like “blue balls,” Hill supposed. Although that said, the comparison wasn’t wrong. His fit of temper did feel vaguely…unfinished…for just having trailed off. It wasn’t that hemissed that exhausted, sick post-anger feeling, but there should be something.
“I just…” Hill started. He stopped and bit his lip before he admitted, “I don’t expect you to feel bad about my dad. I’d understand if you hated him, to be honest. The fact that you don’t remember him is what’s hard. He was CFO at CIRATTA. He was a husband. He was a philanthropist, sometimes. He played golf with the same people every week. He wasmy dad. He mattered…and then he died, and everyone just couldn’twaitto forget him. There aren’t even any photos of him. Mom kept them for a while, even after she married Fraser, and then they just slowly started to get taken down or moved, or we moved, and now there’s just a few I have.”
It was more than Hill had meant to say. When he’d started, it had been an awkward apology for being awkward. That was a familiar task. He knew how it went. After all, he had to do it often enough. Once he started to talk, though, the words got away from him.
He blamed being temporarily dead. It was hard to bite back what you were about to say when your teeth were insubstantial.
Davy looked…trapped. His face was hard to read, but his eyes looked uneasy.
“I…um…yeah,” he got out, his voice scratchy. “I can see how, um, that would…”
He trailed off. A tentacle patted Hill’s head with the clumsy,heavyphysical version of the empty comfort of “there, there.”
Hill reached up and pushed it away. “Thanks,” he said.
Davy hitched one corner of his mouth up and shrugged. “You don’t want me to kill Fraser,” he pointed out. “That and ‘there, there’ is pretty much all I have, unless you want me to fuck you.”
Oh. Yes.
No?
Fuck.
Hill swallowed hard. He licked his lips and remembered the cool grave-dirt and salt-sweetness of Davy’s mouth on his. That slow, eddying feeling that his brain wasmuchquicker to ID as lust rippled through him, dry and slow like sand.
Or ashes.
