Page 85 of Dead Vengeance

“He was all over me, Archer,” he sighs. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Kraa!” says Edgar.

“That’s right,” I agree heartily. “I didn’t need to see it either.”

Simon sneers are Edgar. “Two hundred years and you’d think people would be a little less prudish.”

“It’s really mostly the death thing,” I explain, perhaps a little sarcastically. “You know, the murdering him so you could have your way with him? Living people are funny about that.”

“Not all of them,” he quips.

“Well, I am. So no more taking advantage of hapless young men who are thinking with the wrong organ.”

“Oh?” he replies archly. “And does the same go for you?”

“What?” I’m trying to act surprised at the implication, but let’s be real. Liam is pure fire, and I can barely think straight when he’s around. It’s not as though Simon, Edgar, Helena, or literally any other spirit in the place could have missed the doe eyes I’ve been making at him.

Edgar lets out an annoying gurgling sound, which is absolutely him mocking me.

Simon scoffs loudly. “You’re out here ruining my date, and do not even try to convince me it’s for any reason but to impress your boyfriend with your ability to keep his colleagues alive.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

“Then what is he still doing here? Because the way I see it, you could have let him kill that thing on day one instead of wasting time on your cakes and your bread and all of this, all while you’re telling me it’s not ethical to fuck the help.”

“That’s totally different,” I bluster. “I’m not fucking ‘the help.’ That’s not even… Liam’s alive! He’s alive, and I’m not killing him just to sleep with him.”

“Aren’t you?” Simon asks starkly.

That brings a very dark silence over the room. A deep and grim one.

“I’m not,” I try to protest, but my voice comes out unconvincingly quiet.

Because maybe I am.

Simon saying that has awoken all the same fears that Liam replaced with kisses last night.

Maybe I shouldn’t be taking him upstairs to try to kill this thing, no matter how badly he wants to.

Maybe I shouldn’t be having him back here at all.

I shouldn’t. And I know it.

He just seemed so sure last night that he could take it out. And I wanted to believe him. Believe he had even a tenth of the supernatural knowledge I have. But I know he has next to nothing. And I’ve just invited him into the lion’s den.

“I’ll be there with him,” I tell Simon and Edgar, reassuring myself at the same time. “If anything happens to him, I’ll be there to take care of him.”

“No.” Simon shakes his head at me, then glances towards the stairs again. “That thing can open its own gateway to the underworld. So you know it can take him through it just as easily.”

It’s a thought I hadn’t fully fleshed out until this moment. And it’s a terrifying one. “If it tries, I’ll get him back.”

“You don’t know where it will take him though, do you?” Simon pursues. “Because the things it’s letting through… some of them are dark. Some of them are coming from places you just don’t go, Archer.”

“Are you trying to help, or what?” I snap at him.

Just then a knock hits the door. Liam. Here, now, in the middle of all of this.

Edgar flies over and perches on my shoulder, leaning his head into my cheek, so I raise a hand up to stroke him, even if I’m on edge at Simon, at everything right now.