by Lily Morton
“What happened?” Blue asks.
Something crosses Tom’s face. It looks very much like fear. “I got in easily enough and went upstairs to one of the bedrooms. It was a sunny day, no shadows, nothing to frighten me.” He huffs. “Yet I was so scared, I wet myself.”
“What was it?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know and that’s the truth. I didn’t see or hear anything, but it just felt like something in that house was listening and waiting for me in one of the rooms, and I knew if I stayed any longer I wouldn’t get out and my ghost would join everyone in that house, because make no mistake, the house was alive with the dead.”
A shiver runs down my spine. “What room was it?” I ask.
His brow furrows as he straightens a book stack with gnarled fingers. “Not the front room. That was alright. It was the smaller front bedroom.”
“I saw someone in there,” I say suddenly. “It was a figure watching me.”
“What?” Blue bursts out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I forgot,” I say shamefacedly. “It was my first day here, and I planned to camp in the house. I thought I was seeing things.”
“Hmm,” Tom says. “And did you go back in?”
“No, I went straight round the corner and stayed in a hotel.”
“I think that was a good thing,” he says slowly. “Have you ever seen anything before, lad? Ever seen anything strange? Like a ghost?”
I’d like to say that I think seeing ghosts ranks as a strange occurrence all on its own, but I don’t due to the present company. Instead, I shake my head. “No, nothing.”
“The fact that you did shows how strong the apparition is.” Tom looks at Blue with a worried expression crossing his face. “And you’re staying there,” he says. “That’s not a good place for a psychic to be.”
“I’m not leaving,” Blue says firmly. I open my mouth, and he shakes his head fiercely. “No, Levi. I’m not leaving you alone in there.” He shrugs. “Anyway, nowhere is safe from ghosts. Wherever I am, they’re immediately there.”
“Well, that’s not surprising,” Tom says, sitting back on his stool. “You’re very powerful.”
“I’m very what?” Blue says.
“Powerful. You say you can see and hear them, can feel emotions and can see auras?”
“I never said I saw auras.”
“You can see colours around people?” Blue nods. “Those are what we call auras, lad.” He stares at him. “What colour is mine?”
“Blue with a bit of red,” Blue says immediately.
“Hmm, that sounds appropriate.” I laugh and Tom grins. “What about your boyfriend, Blue?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Blue mutters, a flush dappling his sharp cheekbones. He looks at me. “Gold,” he says. “With silver and bright pink running through it.”
Tom stares at Blue, an almost wistful expression crossing his face. “That’s a rare one,” he finally says.
Blue stares at him, and the old man shakes himself. “You’re a medium, lad, as well as being a psychic. All that means is that you can make contact with the dead. I was always taught that there are three main kinds of mediums. Clairvoyants who can see the dead, clairsentients who can feel energies from spirits, and clairaudients who can hear the dead. Some mediums have one or two of these gifts. Others, like you and I, have all three. There are other gifts that come with the territory, but I won’t know yours until I’ve seen more of you.”
“But I can’t use any of them properly,” Blue bursts out. “I can’t control anything. How can I help people? How can I help Levi if I can’t do fucking anything right?”
“Do you want to help people?” Tom asks, an arrested look on his face.
“Of course,” Blue says. “I’m not saying that I’ve always done good things, but I like not doing bad things quite a lot.” His expression firms. “And helping Levi is not negotiable.” He stares at Tom imploringly. “Can you help me? Tell me what to do?”
“I can’t help you.” Blue slumps, and Tom stirs. “I can’t help you, but I can tell you what I know. It’s what my mam and dad did for me. I can tell you how to control it, but it’s up to you to find your own way. The ghosts are flocking to you because you’re extraordinarily bright. You’re almost glowing with unchecked power. It’s raw, and they sense it and need it. Most of them don’t want to hurt you. They just want you to hear them. When you do that, they’ll go away happy.”
“Not so different from people, then,” I muse and Tom smiles crookedly at me.
“They are people. Just dead ones.”
“But how can I stop them?” Blue says.
“There are many ways. You need to do a few simple things and take some precautions, but it’s easily learnt.” He stares at him, his eyes piercing over his long, crooked nose. “There’s only one way really to be in control of yourself.”
“How?”
“To be happy and content. It gives us confidence and surety.”
Blue looks discomposed, as if being happy has never even occurred to him. I swallow hard, my heart hurting.
The old man yawns. “It’s late,” he says abruptly. “I’m old, and I need my dinner.”
“Oh.” Blue looks nervous. “Could I come back at some point and see you?”
“You can come back tomorrow,” he says tersely, easing into his coat. “Nine o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.”
“Late for what?”
“Your first day of work.”
“Work?” Blue echoes.
“I hope you haven’t got a hearing problem. Most of the customers are old and deaf. We don’t need a staff member being the same.”
“Staff member?”
Tom nods. “You can start work tomorrow. I’ll teach you what I know while you work around here.”
“Doing what?”
“You can shelve these books, for a start,” he says, gesturing at the teetering stacks. “It’s a fact that you know what’s on the shelves.” He looks at Blue. “You can work the till, put book orders in, make tea. I’ll pay you fifteen quid an hour.”
That’s way over the minimum wage. I shoot a look at Tom. He winks but Blue misses it.
“You’d really let me do that?” Blue asks.
“Of course,” Tom says, his eyes gleaming under bushy eyebrows. “Did you think I was talking to the tall lad here? He can’t make bloody tea to save his life.”
Blue’s face lights up, but then it falls. “But I haven’t got an NI number. I haven’t—”
“I can help you with all that,” I say quickly. “We can get on the phone when we get back. Once we have your birth certificate, you’ll have everything else in a few weeks, if Tom doesn’t mind waiting.”
I look anxiously at the old man and he shrugs. “I’m old. Waiting for the government is preferable to waiting for death.” He pauses. “Or at the least, it’s remarkably similar.”
“Oh lovely,” I say, faintly unsure what else to say. Blue and Tom look at each other and immediately break into laughter, and for some reason they look suddenly alike. I shake my head. Two of them to deal with. That’s trouble.
Blue
The next morning, I stand outside the shop, biting my lip and worrying my lip ring.
I can’t quite work out why I’m so nervous. I was ecstatic to wake up and think that I’d got an honest job to go to, and the thought of working with books put an even shinier shine on my morning. But between the house and the shop, I seem to have discovered my nerves.
What if I’m no good at the job and Tom fires me? What if I can’t find out enough to keep Levi safe?
The thought of Levi brings an instant smile to my face. Yuck. I’m ridiculous. But he was just so pretty this morning curled up in a nest of covers, his skin warm and smelling of early morning, his hair a mess of brown waves, and his full pink mouth pouted in dreams.
Normally, I roll out of bed. Okay, normally I roll off the mattress ready for the day, but it had been hard to crawl out of Levi’s b
ed. It was just so warm and comfortable. The duvet thick and crinkly around me, the pillows full.
I’d woken to sunshine playing on my face, not the cold drip of water and that horrible musty smell that got everywhere at my old place. I’d lain there for a while, reluctant to leave, especially as the bed had Levi on the other side. Well, not really the other side. After two nights sharing a bed, I can positively say that Levi Black is a bit of a cuddler. Not just a bit—he’s like a wonderful octopus who wraps his limbs around me when he’s asleep.
The first time he’d done it, I’d frozen, convinced he was putting the moves on me despite his promise. When I’d heard a soft snore, I relaxed a little. And last night as he’d cuddled up again, I’d nestled into his arms and listened to the Minster bells sound the hour, and I’d realised he was a man who kept his word.
Inhaling the scent of lavender from his sheets, watching the moonlight lay stripes across the floor and the play of shadows on his sharp-boned face, I’d felt something stir inside me. I’d wanted to keep him looking happy and innocent something fucking awful.
And it’s also awful, because I know that I can’t stay at Levi’s house for long. I have to move on. It’s the way I’ve always done it. No ties and ready to move at the drop of a hat.
Levi has stability and a settled air about him that’s as much a part of him as his wavy hair and slightly crooked nose. I’ll move on once he’s safe, and in a few years I’ll look back and think of him as some sort of distant dream of warmth and contentment.
Maybe I’ll see him around in a pub in York. He’ll be with the man he’s supposed to be with, and we’ll smile, and I’ll buy him a pint to say thank you for helping me that one lovely autumn. He’ll be kind as normal but still wrapped up in his man, and eventually I’ll have to leave because the sight of him with his perfect bloke will hurt me somewhere I didn’t think was vulnerable anymore. A place with a door I closed off years ago that’s obviously somehow come ajar.
I’d tortured myself in Levi’s bed with all of those thoughts, but the pathetic thing is that I still snuggled close. As usual, I heard my mum’s voice of warning about not trusting people because that way lies disaster, and I still cuddled close and pretended for a few sweet hours that Levi was my bloke and his house was ours. That we’d get up in the morning and argue over toast and household jobs the way people did on the TV shows I’d watched at one of my mum’s boyfriends’ houses.
I’d been as fascinated by those shows as if they were about aliens and watched them raptly, taking note of the messy houses full of possessions that just sat there on tables and in cupboards. Photo frames with happy pictures, toys and books and games and objects that obviously meant something.
To me, holding on to possessions was strange. Why keep hold of stuff when I knew it would just get left behind when my mother got the urge to run again?
My mum always told me that the only things we needed were each other, and for a long time I’d believed her. Until I lost her. Not through the suicide—in reality I’d lost her long before to drugs and alcohol and anything else she could find to blot out the things she could see.
A crotchety voice interrupts my thoughts. “You coming in or doing some strange sort of dance on the pavement?”
I smile at the sight of Tom in the door, his grumpy face welcome because he’ll distract me from my thoughts.
He shakes his head. “Get in here, lad. The books aren’t going to shelve themselves.”
I grin at him and run up the steps, following him into the first room where the cash till is. I stop at the foot of a mountain of books strewn over the counter and in piles all over the floor.
“What the hell is that?” I breathe, forgetting the lecture I’d given myself on being polite to my new boss.
“That, lad, is your work for the morning. I figured that you’ve got young legs, and they’re probably less tired than mine considering the amount of time you spent resting them while sitting in my shop.”
I think most other people would be horrified by Tom, but strangely enough I like him. He’s funny and he’s brusque and I like that attitude.
“You know,” I say, taking off my combat jacket and unwinding the scarf that Levi had forced on me yesterday, “in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda didn’t make Luke shelve books.” I chuck the scarf and jacket on a chair.
“Had Yoda got a bad back?”
“He had a stick,” I muse. “But he still managed to walk around.”
“He didn’t have a bloody book shop and ridiculous customers who persist in taking books off the shelves and then changing their minds. Bloody nuisances.”
“I think Yoda probably had a better customer service ethos than you,” I tease.
He grunts. “If he’d run a bookshop, he wouldn’t have had that. He’d have had dreams of hitting people with his walking stick and using the force to throw them out on the pavement.”
I roll up the sleeves on my jumper and pick up a stack of books. “I think it might be a good idea to train me on the till, old man, before you murder someone.” I suddenly remember who I am and flush. “Only joking,” I say quickly. “I’ll just shelve the books.”
He stares at me from under his bushy eyebrows that seem to be taking over his face. “What are you fluttering about now?”
“I don’t flutter,” I say, revolted.
He raises the eyebrows so they merge into the grizzled mass of his hair. “Oh, I think you do.” He pauses and looks at me wickedly. “Like a little butterfly.”
“Take that back,” I say.
He shrugs. “No, I don’t think I will. Butterfly Blue. You’ll be waving your hands in front of your face soon like you’re trying not to cry and blinking your eyes and scowling.”
“That was oddly specific,” I say slowly. “I think that’s something you’ve encountered in the past.” I narrow my eyes. “Probably with a customer.”
He shrugs, looking innocent. “Can’t imagine what you mean.”
I shake my head. “So, when I’ve shelved the books, are you going to train me in the ways of a psychic?”
“That’s a book title in your head, isn’t it?”
I grin. “I can’t help it. I’m imagining myself on the cover already. The plucky hero with the wonderful hair, his gaze trained on some noble quest in the distance.”
“Why would a noble quest be in the distance? It’s not a bus.”
“Ssh,” I say sternly. “You’re blunting my buzz.”
“Perish the thought,” he says faintly.
“Staring into the distance,” I continue loudly. “With one hand placed on his hip and his eyes raised to scan the skyline while he contemplates the meaning of the universe.”
“And what is the meaning of the universe, Butterfly Blue?”
“I’m sure that sounds like a serial killer’s nickname.” I shake myself as my stomach rumbles. “The meaning of the universe is a bacon buttie.”
He blinks. “I think I might be just the trainer you need, Blue.” He digs in his pocket. “First things first, pop down to the bakery and get a couple of bacon cobs—I like mine well done with brown sauce—and maybe get some of those ring doughnuts and a hot chocolate each too.”
I stare at him. “Are you actually hungry or are you just trying to feed me?” I’m amused to see a blush on his wrinkled cheeks. “Oh my God, you are,” I say wonderingly. “I’m pretty sure you’ll be wanting to adopt me next and we’ll live together for the rest of our days.” I pause and look around. “Until a stack of books collapses on us and we’re smothered to death.”
He waves a ten-pound note in my face. “Less talking and more going for food. In fact, just less talking altogether.”
“It’s how I express myself,” I say sadly.
“Well, learn to do it silently,” he offers, ignoring my plaintive sigh.
For a second we stare at each other, and then, as if synchronised, we both smile and I know I’m going to enjoy working with this grumpy old man. It’s a little bit lik
e getting to meet my future self.
Over our breakfast of bacon cobs, which is broken up occasionally by Tom being appallingly rude to customers who have dared to stray into his shop, we talk about the house. I tell him more fully about what’s happening, and he seems interested in the woman I saw.
“I never saw her,” he muses. “I smelt the perfume, but it was something else that scared me.”
“I know,” I say, biting into my cob and enjoying the salty bacon and melted butter. “I’m just not sure whether that something else is her too.”
“Another manifestation of the bad side of one spirit?”
“Why not? She managed to keep her murderous side very well hidden. You ever seen that?” I ask through a mouthful of food.
“I’d say close your mouth,” he says disgustedly. “But I don’t think its genetically possible.” I swallow and grin at him, and he shakes his head and returns to the conversation. “I’ve seen many things, lad. Too many to discount anything.”
I put my cob down. “And you’ll really train me?”
“I can’t train you,” he says. “I can only tell you what I was told and what worked for me. Everyone is different.”
“Could you always see ghosts?”
He nods. “Right from a child I’d see people who shouldn’t be there.”
“Were you bullied?”
He looks shocked. “No.” He considers the question. “I didn’t tell people though. My parents and grandparents had the sight and they told me to keep my gift a secret right from the start, the way they taught me how to tie my shoelaces and clean my teeth.”
I wonder what that must have been like. Everything I’ve learnt, I’ve had to teach myself. And that includes tying my shoes and cleaning my teeth. Something must show in my face because Tom’s expression becomes complicated. I interpret a large part of it to be anger. Then it clears and he nods at the chair behind me.
“What do you see?”
I turn. “An old lady with a lacy cap snoozing in the chair.”