Page 133 of Dead Vengeance

“Kraa!” screams Edgar.

“I don’t know!” I gasp back at them, caught somewhere between the undoubtedly jealous flash in Liam’s eyes and Fabian’s enormous bouquet.

“I brought flowers!” exclaims Fabian.

“I can see that,” I reply, even more perplexed that he thought that was necessary to explain.

“He’s my boyfriend now, actually,” Liam informs him, suddenly next to me, suddenly draping his arm across my shoulder.

Fabian’s eyes lower over his still-naked chest, the oversized overalls gaping dangerously low. “I can see that.”

Liam’s arm pulls a little tighter around my neck. “Glad we got that sorted. So you can take your flowers straight back to wherever they came from.”

Fabian looks down at the bouquet. “Oh. No. That’s for Simon.”

“That’s for Simon?” I ask.

“That’s for Simon?” Liam questions.

“That’s for Simon,” Fabian confirms. “I thought about what he said, and I decided he was right. Maybe we should take things a little more slowly.”

“Things?” Liam asks, eyes narrowing. “What things?”

“Things,” I sigh out. “Liam, you’ve missed a few… things.”

“I’m in love with him,” Fabian declares. “It’s more complicated than you could possibly know.”

“Do you mean Simon as in…” Liam eyes me. Liam eyes Fabian. “Simon the ghost?”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t always a ghost…” Fabian’s cheeks are pink, which is surprising, because he’s always appeared perfectly shameless to me. “He once was, and still is, my soulmate. Even if he doesn’t understand that yet. But I can wait. I’ve waited two hundred years. What’s a few more days? Weeks? Months, even?”

“He is a ghost now,” I offer slowly, carefully, as some vague remonstrance for whatever’s going on here.

Fabian scoffs as though that’s immaterial, which it kind of is, which is exactly the issue. “I seriously doubt I’m the only man who’s ever wanted a relationship with a ghost.”

“I think you might be…” I suggest.

But Liam’s perfectly intrigued—too intrigued—taking this all completely seriously, like an actual real relationship could ever exist between a ghost and a human. “I don’t know if you realised, I may have mentioned it, once or twice—Simon kills people.”

“Not anymore, he doesn’t,” Fabian reveals with a heart-heavy sigh. Wandering to the sofa, he throws himself down, still clutching his flowers. “We could have been so beautiful, you know? But he’s decided to force me to live.”

Liam sends me a what-the-fuck-is-with-this-guy look, so I really think I should tell him the truth as quickly as possible before this causes more trouble between us. “I may have revived him once or twice.”

“Revived?” His wondering eyes turn back to Fabian.

“I considered killing myself again today,” Fabian goes on, “in some way you couldn’t bring me back. Maybe by dropping off the barn roof or something, all mushed up, legs and arms everywhere…”

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.

“But then… you know, I want to be sure that’s what Simon wants. I don’t want to haunt his eternity unless he’s… committed to me doing that. Which is why I’m here. To ask him on a… a ghost date.” The soft smile would be sweet in literally any other conversation about a burgeoning romance. “I figure I have plenty of time before I get old, to leave a pretty corpse, become a handsome ghost. What will a few dates matter when what we have is beyond life, beyond death, beyond time, and beyond love that normal mortals could ever possibly know?”

Liam’s head tips close to my shoulder, and he whispers, “Is he actually insane?”

“Weirdly, no,” I whisper back. “He has a very strange, very intense thing with Simon.”

“Simon the ghost?” Liam confirms.

“Where is Simon?” Fabian cuts back in.