Chapter Fifty-Nine: Tragedy Ever After
The sun rose that morning like a slowly-unwrapped present. As we strolled through town I expected to see aftershocks of the fae’s meddling, more evidence of the Uncanny invading our post-truth world. But the headlines on the newspaper stand outside Camden Town station were devoted to the latest goings-on in Westminster instead of dragon-sightings and such.
The Accord had been fractured, but not broken. In the sober light of day, the things the public had seen now seemed ludicrous. Laughable, even. Yes, there were eye-witness accounts, but none of that mattered now. The world had moved on. The folks who’d posted YouTube videos and Twitter threads describing their experiences were shrugged off as kooks. Conspiracy theorists. Grifters thirsty for hits and likes. Even the accounts of the legitimate media fell by the wayside as the incredible sights of the last few days became lost in the endless churn of the news cycle. Another unexplained mystery? Ho-hum. A future piece of pub quiz trivia now. An On This Day reminder that showed up on your social media feed and got reshared with a simple, Who remembers the big blue dragon?: four thumbs-up, one smiley face, and a comment from your auntie asking how you’re getting on these days. The fantastic had been made credible for a while, but that credibility, eclipsed by banality, had become too frail to survive.
Stronge went to the hospital to get medical attention for her hand, while the rest of us stopped by Legerdomain to get Frank’s arm reattached. While Jazz Hands did her thing in the shop (accompanied by the kid, who preferred the indoors to the polluted streets), Erin and I sat on the kerb outside and re-played the events of the last few hours.
‘Did you see the state of the place?’ she said, recalling the mess we’d made of the fae lair. ‘Man, we pulled a real Game of Thrones on that wedding.’
I grinned despite not really getting the reference.
‘Surprised to see you smiling,’ said Erin. ‘What about the rest of those vamps? You’re all right now, but how about when the sun goes down?’
‘The Vengari won’t be bothering me any time soon. They’ve survived as long as they have because they avoid trouble instead of chasing it.’
‘And if they do decide to stop by your office one night?’
‘Then I’ll make sure the place is covered in more crucifixes than a Madonna video.’
Erin chuckled as she got to her feet and zipped up her jacket. ‘Right then, that’s me off. Good luck with everything, Fletcher, I’m heading back to the coast.’
I got up and shook her hand. ‘See you around, Erin. Thanks for the help.’
She went to leave then turned back my way. ‘Almost forgot…’ She pulled a piece of folded-up paper from her pocket and I firmed up a hand to receive it.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘My digits.’
‘Right. In case I have work for you?’
‘Nope,’ she said, wearing a libidinous smirk.
‘Oh, I see. Well, thank you very much.’
She made a face. ‘Not for you, you wazzock. For your partner.’
‘You’re telling me you want Frank to have your phone number?’
‘A prime specimen like that? Too right I am.’ Her last words as she headed off were, ‘Tell that stud if he ever finds himself in Brighton, look me up.’
I stared incredulously at the scrap of paper. Seemed I was wrong before when I said the fantastic was back in hiding. Apparently, some wonders had yet to cease.
If Frank and I were going to stand any chance of wrapping this case up clean, we needed to find Tali. Trouble was, she’d long since vacated our office, which meant she could be just about anywhere in London. Then again, ghosts tend not to be possessed of the greatest imaginations. Left to their own devices, they do what the rest of us do: seek out familiar locales. Ghosts especially are drawn to places they know well. Places that give them comfort.
We found Tali at The Beehive. Not inside, propping up the bar, but standing in the alley outside, staring longingly through the greasy window. In the warmth of the pub, across the far side of the saloon, a man and woman were playing a game of darts.
‘Hello, Tali.’
She turned to find me blocking the mouth of the alley.
‘What do you want?’ she said, her voice low and menacing.
I took a step back, hands raised as if she’d turned a gun on me. ‘I just want to talk, that’s all.’
And I did, but though my hands were empty, I could feel the reassuring weight of certain tools I carried about my person: tools to repel, to rebuke, to banish. I didn’t want to use them, but since the last time I saw Tali she was on her way to turning feral, I’d come prepared for the eventuality that this encounter might not end in a handshake.
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you,’ Tali snapped, her jaw clamping tight.
She went to exit the other end of the alley, only to find my partner blocking her way.
‘Move,’ she demanded.
Frank shook his head.
She considered an alternate escape route, but somehow sensed what I already knew: that the walls of the blind alley were as solid to phantoms as they were to the living. Tali was cornered. There was nowhere for her to run and no one coming to save her. She couldn’t escape this place, and there was no magically-enhanced assassin left to hide behind.
‘So this is it?’ she said. ‘You’re going to wipe me out?’
It wasn’t so long ago that I’d met another lost soul and had to do exactly that: Mary, the spiritualist’s assistant, trapped in a wall cavity and left to rot. I tried my best to persuade her to go to the next place quietly, but ended up having to obliterate her. My hope was that I could make up for that failure here. That I could talk Tali down from the ledge before she became a creature rendered from pain and malice. Before she was lost forever.
‘I’m not here to hurt you.’
‘Then why did you come?’
I looked through the window of the pub. The couple were still playing darts, just as Tali and the kid had done the night they met.
‘I came to help.’
Her eyes welled up. ‘I can’t just give up. We were meant to be together. We still can be.’
‘Not any more. I’m sorry.’
‘But he promised...’
‘Promises get broken and love ain’t forever, despite what the songs all say.’
‘You’re wrong. Love doesn’t have a sell-by date.’
This girl really had it bad (as if that wasn’t obvious given all the aggro she’d put us through).
‘Listen, I’ve been where you are. I loved someone once. A girl. Because of her, I died too. I was so angry, and I held on to that anger for a long, long time.’
‘So what did you do with it?’
‘I let it go. Let her go.’
‘I can’t do that. He’s all I have left. Without him there’s something missing.’
‘That’s not true. Just because you can’t be together, doesn’t mean you’re not whole. You’re you, Tali, with or without him. The question is, what do you want to do now?’
A tear spilled down her cheek. Frank passed her a handkerchief. She took it warily.
‘What can I do?’ she asked.
‘You can move on. And if you do that, maybe you can leave this place and go somewhere better.’
‘Why can’t I just stay here?’
‘Because you’ll become a monster.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘No, I got something else. Something worse, maybe. I got to be myself, but stuck here in limbo. I can feel the pull of the next world, but the door’s closed to me.’
Sometimes it feels like living in a refugee camp, neither here nor there. It’s distressing. I don’t belong here, but since I’m not yet the paragon of morality God expects of me, I have to carry on working.
‘The door’s open to you, Tali. You just have to use it.’
She dabbed her cheeks with Frank’s hankie. ‘What’s on the other side?’
‘Same thing as for everyone. Judgment.’
A bitter laugh fell from her lips. ‘I think I know which way the scales are going to tip on that one.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure. You didn’t actually kill anyone apart from yourself, so it’s not a foregone. I say roll the dice and see where they land.’
She toyed nervously with her engagement ring. ‘I’m scared, Jake.’
‘I get it. The Big Man’s not known to look kindly on suicide, but I think He’s changed since they wrote book on him. He hasn’t sent me to Hell, and I’ve got a rap sheet thicker than Kim Kardashian’s arse.’
Yeah, even a dead man knows who the Kardashians are. What a world.
I went on. ‘What I’m saying is, I think He could be made to understand a crime of passion. He made us in His image, right, so He must have some understanding of what you’ve been through.’
I thought I had her, I really did. At first, a calm seemed to descend upon her as though she’d made peace with her fate. As though she was ready to make the right choice. Then her eyes took on that fevered look again.
‘No, I can’t go. I’ve done too much wrong. There’s no place for me up there. No place. Nothing, nothing, nothing...’
Her words started as a whisper then the whisper became a shout and the shout became a scream. Her voice was twisting, mutating into something else: a deranged banshee howl. Tali was about to tip off the ledge, just like Mary did before I was forced to cast her spirit into shadow. I wasn’t going to save her.
Just as well I brought some help, then.
The Arcadian materialised next to me.
‘Hello, Tali.’
Instantly, the fever in Tali’s eyes was extinguished and her voice returned to normal.
‘You came back.’
Moving at speed, she went to him, wrapping her arms around his torso hard enough to squeeze the marrow from his bones.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, meeting her embrace. He touched a shaky fingertip to the bullet hole in her forehead. ‘I am so, so sorry.’
They cried. Frank cried. I’d have cried too if I wasn’t able to zip up my emotional sphincter.
‘We don’t need to be apart,’ Tali sobbed, her eyes swollen and red. ‘We can be together.’
‘I wish we could, but it’s too late for that now. You have to go to the next world.’
‘Not without you.’
‘I’ll be there. I just need you to give me some more time, that’s all.’
‘I don’t want to wait.’
‘I know. But you have to.’
With tears brimming in his eyes he reached for his engagement ring, slipped it from his finger, and closed a fist around it. ‘Go and be happy, Tali. I’ll be there when you are.’
This was it. The moment of truth. Tali was either going to let the kid go or start chucking crockery about. She raised a hand. She was going to slap him, and with that final act of violence she’d be gone. Tali would be beyond redemption, and it would be up to me to destroy the howling husk she left behind.
But the hand stayed up, held flat like a pledge. She blinked, sending twin falls tracking down her cheeks, and when she opened her eyes again the ring on her engagement finger was gone. The promise was undone. She was letting the kid go.
The gateway to the Great Beyond appeared that moment, right on cue. It looked about how you’d imagine it would look: a golden portal full of celestial light accompanied by the faint sound of choral music. Ever since my deathday I’ve dreamt about walking through one of those things and making good with Him Upstairs, but this gate wasn’t for me, it was for Tali.
‘Don’t drag it out,’ I said.
She turned to Frank to seek his wisdom.
He nodded back at her with a big soppy grin on his mush. ‘Ggggggo.’
Tali wiped a wet smudge from the kid’s blue cheek. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ she said, giving him the kind of kiss they zoom in on in the movies.
And then she was off through the golden gateway, swallowed by the light.
Chapter Sixty: On the Right Track
One more goodbye to go.
Euston Station looked a lot like it did last time we were there, except this time instead of jumping the Arcadian, we were paying for his train ticket. Having spent so long trying to capture him, now we were going to set him free. Free to live out his days in the countryside, away from the stifling pollution of the modern world. Free to live.
We were sitting on a platform bench, me on one side of the Arcadian, Frank on the other. The kid was wearing makeup to disguise his true complexion, and chewing on a Twix. We bought that, too.
‘How you feeling?’ I asked him. ‘You good?’
He didn’t look good. Matter of fact, he looked downright miserable. We’d been sitting on that bench for an hour already, watched four perfectly good trains pull in, and the kid hadn’t taken one of them.
‘Even if I can make a go of it out there, how do I know the Vengari won’t come after me?’
‘What would be the point? The pact’s in the bin, plus we gave them a pretty definitive talking to back there. They’ll learn from that. The Vengari are survivors, not avengers.’
The kid nodded solemnly.
‘But this isn’t about vampires, is it?’ I said, sensing something deeper at play.
He went to speak but nothing came out, the words unwilling to take flight. Finally, he forced out the question. ‘What if we did all this for nothing? What if my mother was right and I don’t belong in this realm?’
‘Don’t be like that. There’s a place for you here.’
Frank patted his knee. ‘Yooou beee fiiine.’
The kid wasn’t so sure. ‘How do you know that? Really?’
I cast a look down the track to the daylight beyond. ‘You feel that pull, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
‘Then go to it. You have a way out. Be grateful for that.’
The kid’s feet rocked back and forth under the bench. ‘All right. I’m on the next train.’
Frank reached inside his jacket and produced a crown of brambles lined with rich blue velvet.
‘What’s this?’ the kid asked.
‘Croooown,’ said Frank.
‘I know, but why are you giving it to me?’
‘It’s a going away gift,’ I explained. ‘We picked it up in the throne room, and we figure since you’re the last Arcadian royal left in the UK, you should have it.’
‘Thank you, but I don’t need it. That life is behind me now.’
‘Suit yourself then,’ I said.
Later on I came to appreciate the kid’s integrity even more, particularly since his reluctance to take the crown allowed me to flog it to Giles L’Merrier for a tidy sum. With the great wizard’s money I was able to restock the company coffers, fix up the office, and pay off Shift’s outstanding fee. Why the fae crown was worth so much to L’Merrier I had no idea, especially since he already had the one the Romans popped on JC’s bonce before they nailed him to the cross (the real one, not the one in the Louvre). I don’t know, maybe the man just liked crowns.
Anyway.
The platform’s electronic departure board showed a new train arriving in one minute. I watched the stops cycle by; all six screens of them.
‘You know where you’re getting off?’ I asked the kid.
‘Yes. Why, do you want to know?’
‘Better I don’t,’ I replied, holding up a halting hand. ‘That way I’ve got plausible deniability if some vamp with a rusty set of pliers plucks up the courage to come by the gaff.’
The train arrived and slid up to the platform with a metallic squeal. Without further fanfare, the kid got to his feet and headed for the nearest carriage. Before he stepped aboard, he gave us a final wave.
‘Goodbye, Fletchers. I only hope the living prove to be as kind as you.’
He boarded the train and the doors hissed shut behind him.
What he’d done had cost him everything: his title, his wealth, hi
s family, his love. Tali had made her sacrifice, too; she’d let go of the hate that had almost consumed her, almost turned her soul black and rancid. And now it was time for me to let go of something: guilt.
I’d saved so many souls, steered so many lost causes to the light, and yet there wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t think of the ones I took before them. The ones I let my ignorance destroy. The ones I was still being punished for, even in death. But just because God hadn’t forgiven me, didn’t mean I couldn’t forgive myself. There was no changing the past, so why keep punishing myself for it? Carrying this guilt was a choice; a choice I could undo. The idea of giving it up seemed hard—nigh on impossible, even—but really it was simple. I could keep clutching the nettle or I could let it go. So I chose to let it go. To let the past be the past. To let the things I did in life die.
A part of me expected something to happen then. A revelation like that—the audaciousness of it—tempted a response, a sign from the heavens. How dare I absolve myself of my sins? How dare I consider my account settled when the Great Arbiter Himself hadn’t closed the books on me? It’s a wonder I wasn’t struck down by a bolt of lightning, scrubbed from the Earth. But my revelation went unpunished.
I turned to my partner. ‘From now on I say we’re our own bosses. We help the needy because we want to, not because we have to. What do you reckon?’
Frank nodded. I’m not sure he understood what he was agreeing to, but I appreciated the support all the same.
‘Who cares what He thinks, eh? If the only thing fuelling our good intentions is the promise of a divine reward, what does that make us?’
The nodding continued. Frank got it. So what if we were never redeemed? So what if the only thing we were doing down here was shuffling dirt around our grave?
‘We can’t spend the rest of our days looking for a sign that we’re on the right path. You know what I say, Frank? I say we don’t need a sign.’
He nodded and so did I, the both of us in full agreement.
And then the message on the electronic departure board changed to a row of halos—an unmistakable message from Him Upstairs that our stock had just gone up.
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 35