by Kaje Harper
“Yes, yeah, oh hells,” Silas whispered, gasping against Darien’s hair.
Darien wrapped his free arm around Silas’s shoulders and kept stroking until he felt that shuddering twitch that meant Silas was getting sensitive. Then he stilled, but kept a gentle, firm grip on Silas, enjoying the slow softening of the cock in his hand. It was oddly sweet and vulnerable, to feel Silas ease down off his sex high in Darien’s hold.
Minutes later, Silas took a long, slow breath. “We should clean up.”
“Should,” Darien agreed without lifting his face from Silas’s shoulder.
Silas’s moved his hands to Darien’s hips, pushing slightly. “We’ll get stuck together.”
“That’d be a shame.” He didn’t move.
Silas chuckled, but pushed more firmly. “We have to be up in four hours, and this floor is hard.”
“You’re right.”
“You have to let go of me first.”
“What, this little thing?” He gave Silas’s dick a soft squeeze.
“Not so little next time it’s in your mouth.” Silas chuckled and kissed his temple. “Come on.”
With a sleepy pout, Darien let go and allowed himself to be raised to his feet and his underwear pulled up. Silas steered him to the bathroom next door. They weren’t sure how loud a shower would be, so they made do with a dampened towel, wiping stomachs and thighs. “Better change those boxers,” he teased Silas. “They’re gonna be able to stand up on their own. Cum is better than glue.”
“I knew that before you knew what your balls were for.” Silas took off his damp underwear and rinsed them in the sink, then glanced at Darien. That little echo of their ages hung between them, like frosted glass.
Darien reached through that barrier, grabbed Silas, and kissed him, filthy and wet. “Yeah, but I’m gonna give you even better evidence.”
Silas chuckled and rubbed a stubbled cheek against his temple. “Dirty man. You might indeed.”
“Come on.” Darien took the soggy towel from him and pitched it into the tub. “Time for bed.”
Silas let Darien lead him out into the hallway in just a fresh towel, then stepped into pajama pants as Darien crawled under the sheets in his underwear. When Silas reached for his pajama top, Darien murmured, “Leave it. I’ll keep you warm.”
Silas chuckled and climbed into bed behind Darien. As Darien wriggled further onto his side, Silas’s arm came around him and his warm, furry chest pressed against Darien’s back. So good to be spooned. The stresses of the day melted into the feeling of lying pleasure-drunk against the strong body of a man he… really liked.
“Mm,” he said, half teasing, half needing to. “I really like you.”
He felt Silas’s lips brush his hair. “Say that when I wake you in four hours.”
Chapter 3
Silas stared at Necromancer Pasternak across a small, stuffy study. He’d been invited in without a fuss, without curiosity or fear or pleasure, as far as he could see. Pasternak had shown him to one armchair and dropped into the other, hands folded on one bony knee, bushy brows level, faded blue eyes staring off into space somewhere over Silas’s left shoulder. The man was impeccably dressed in a black suit and tie, but his socks didn’t match and his feet were shoved into battered slippers.
He’s not doing well. Silas leaned forward, trying to meet Pasternak’s gaze. “I’m sorry to hear about your wife.”
“Yes. Thank you.” The man’s voice was as dry and dead as his expression.
Silas couldn’t resist putting a little probe out, to taste the flavor of Pasternak’s shields, but there was nothing useful to be found. They were smooth as glass and flavorless as ice, no hint of demon taint, no clues. If Pasternak noticed the probe, he didn’t react with so much as an eyelid twitch.
“Are you getting some help?” Silas asked. “Surely you’re not caring for her all by yourself.”
“A night nurse comes in. Thank you.”
“Listen.” Silas had planned to barge in and demand to know what this necromancer was about, letting things in his town go downhill that way. He tried to find more diplomatic phrasing. “You do know that my Guild sent me to look into a haunting at the Greenleigh Mental Health Center?”
“Yes, I know. They asked me, but of course I couldn’t—” He finished the sentence with a vague wave, presumably in the direction of his wife’s bedroom.
“But why not? You said you had a night nurse in. Surely you can spare an hour now and then to settle things and restore your own energies?” What necromancer would turn down an easy boost of power, right on their doorstep?
“You don’t understand.” Pasternak glanced the way he’d gestured. “My time with her could be measured in days. Or hours. Would you waste that on ghosts?”
“I suppose not.” Although Silas thought Darien would chase him off on pain of some dire threat to do something besides hang around his bedside, if it came to that. Though he could also imagine not going… “I’m sorry.”
From the corner by the door, Grim said, “Is your familiar around? I’d like to pay my respects since we’re hunting in your territory.”
“I’m not so fortunate as to have a familiar.” Pasternak bowed his head. “I’m far from being a major talent.”
“Must be just mice I heard, then. I’ll go see.” Grim ducked out the open door before either man could comment.
Silas shrugged apologetically. “Cats. They go where they please.”
“I suppose so.” Pasternak finally met his gaze, and something burned in the back of the man’s eyes. Maybe grief, or anger at the unfairness of the world. “Is there anything else you need? You can chase down whatever ghosts you wish with my blessing.” He put his hands on the arms of his chair as if to stand.
Silas didn’t. “Why are there so many ghosts locally? It’s all out of proportion.”
Pasternak settled back in his chair and shrugged. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed. I used to get out more, travel all around, but now I don’t, of course.”
“Have you lived here long?” Necromancer ages were deceiving, but Pasternak looked more Worthington’s age than Silas’s own.
“Near on sixty years now.”
“Has it always been prone to ghosts? You’d think word of such a thing would become known in our community.”
Pasternak’s smile barely twisted his lips. “It was never more than I could handle.” The smile fell away. “Till now.”
“Many of them seem recent.”
“We had a bad fall for the influenza.”
“Illness seldom turns a death into a ghost.”
Pasternak lifted one shoulder but didn’t offer any other explanation. “If that’s all, I’d like to get back to my wife.”
“Is there anything about these ghosts that makes them different? Any special way they need to be handled?”
“No.” The necromancer pushed to his feet. “I’m sure a man of your talents can deal with them. Yes, I’ve heard of you. Whispers of the best man to call if there’s a demon loose. This will all seem pretty tame stuff to you.”
Reluctantly, Silas stood too. There’s something he’s not telling me. I’d bet my last dollar on it. But he’d run out of logical questions, and it was hard to force someone to reveal information when you had no idea what you were looking for. “Shall I pay my respects to your wife?”
“Sadly, she’s not up to receiving visitors. I will pass along your regards.”
“Please do.”
Grim appeared down the hallway as Pasternak was ushering Silas out. “One mouse,” the cat said over his shoulder. “It was tasty.” He trotted out into the bright, cold morning.
Silas inclined his head to Pasternak, rather than offering his hand. He was certain the other man’s shields were as tightly raised as his own. “I’ll probably be in town at least a few more days. Do send for me if there’s something I can do.”
“You’re very kind. But there’s nothing anyone can do.” Pasternak stepped back and shut the door.
/>
“Well,” Grim muttered as they headed down the walk. “That’s an odd household.”
“Odd how?” Silas murmured under his breath.
“No housekeeping done to speak of. Dust piling up in the corners like it’s been months since anyone even swept the floor.”
“Our house is like that,” Silas pointed out.
“And we’re odd.” Grim chuckled. “But no. You inherited the place like that, and haven’t tackled it yet. They’ve lived in that house sixty years. So why is it suddenly being neglected?”
“Might be that the missus was doing the cleaning and he hasn’t hired anyone to do it now she’s ill.”
“True. But in most of the rooms, the dust’s not been disturbed at all, not even footprints. Her room, kitchen, bathroom, study, are the only places Pasternak’s been in months. There’s a trundle bed in her room, and I’d bet he’s sleeping there.”
“Like his life has stopped, while he waits for her to die. Poor bastard.” Silas turned toward the boarding house, suddenly eager to see Darien, alive and bubbling over with whatever he might’ve found at the local library.
“Probably won’t be much longer,” Grim said. “Her room smells of death, and she didn’t stir the whole time I was looking in on her.”
“He’s going to fall apart when she passes.”
“He’s demon bait now,” Grim pointed out. “They offer your dearest desires, and how much stronger can a desire be than Pasternak’s wish to save his wife?”
“He has to know that if a Healer can’t save her, a demon can’t.”
“If he’s thinking about it logically. You want to bet on that?”
Silas didn’t. “There was no taint of hellfire about him that I could detect.”
“Nor the house either. But it makes me uneasy.”
Having a precognitive familiar meant listening hard when they said things like that. Still, “He’s not been feeding and he’s probably too low-powered to do a successful summoning.”
“Let’s hope so, for all our sakes. Oh, look.” Grim’s ears pricked. “There’s Darien.”
Sure enough, Darien was hurrying toward them down the frosty sidewalk, waving a sheaf of papers in one hand. Just the sight of him, scarf flying, cheeks rosy with cold, made Silas feel better. He caught Darien’s arm as they met, keeping his man from tipping into the gutter. “Hey, what’s all the excitement?”
“I found Louise Ketchum.”
“Well, you can tell me about it as we walk.” He fought the urge to tuck Darien’s hand into the crook of his arm. That’d be a great way to be ridden out of town on a rail. Might’ve been okay forty years ago, but not now. He bumped his shoulder lightly instead. “A cup of something warm wouldn’t go amiss. We passed a cafe on the way here.”
“Sure.” Darien stuffed the papers in his pocket and hustled a bit to keep up with Silas’s longer legs.
Silas slowed to match him. “Tell me about Louise.”
“She turns out to have been one of the nurses at the mental hospital. Just five months ago, she was found dead in a linen closet. She’d taken an overdose of barbiturates. The tourniquet was still hanging off her arm and the syringe was in her hand. Dr. Cole stated that they’d been having a problem with theft of the medication and suspected it was one of the staff. It was ruled death by misadventure, with the assumption she was an addict who’d miscalculated.”
“No way she did that to herself,” Silas pointed out. “She was angry. Furious. She talked about ‘him.’”
“I looked to see if there was any further investigation, but as far as I can tell, the story was accepted, she was buried, and everyone was satisfied.”
“Except her revenant.”
“If she wasn’t an addict,” Darien said, “or even if she was, but she didn’t kill herself, it could be pretty infuriating to be called a suicide.”
“I’d bet it was murder.”
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing.” At Darien’s sharp glance, he sighed. “What can we do? Her ’geist is gone, leaving us with no culprit but ‘he’ and that’s not something I can tell the police.”
“Come on, Silas. We have to try.”
“We can send them an anonymous letter with all the facts we have. It might stir them to reopen their investigation. But it’s not my job to catch human killers.”
“Don’t you want her to have justice? Aren’t you even curious?”
“Surely. But I’m also curious why there are so many ghosts around here. What was the ‘thing’ she was afraid of? That’s a problem that is in my purview.”
“I thought it was Grim that has a purr-view.” That was definitely a smirk on Darien’s face.
Grim snaked out a quick paw to jab a claw into Darien’s calf. “Bad pun. I hate cat puns.”
“Hey!” a shrill voice called from behind a nearby hedge. “Stop that!” A little white dog with a black and tan face forced its way through the bushes and scampered toward them. “Don’t you hurt him. He’s good. A good, good man. Don’t you put a claw in him!”
Silas blinked down at the dog. “Where’s your sorcerer, Sir Dog?”
“I’m not a sir, I’m Pip.” The dog bounced, tail wagging wildly, then whirled to face Darien. “You smell so good. Like pastries and breakfast and sunshine. Wow, bright like sunshine. Hi, I’m Pip. I’m a dog. This is fun!”
Darien laughed, staring down at the dog delightedly.
Silas looked around quickly. The dog’s shrill voice would carry a lot farther than Grim’s careful tones. He expected to see the familiar’s partner nearby, but the little street was quiet. The houses behind the hedges were small and neat and ordinary. The sorcerer might live in any of them. He knelt to speak more softly. “Keep your voice down, friend. Shall we come pay respects to your master? Where do you live?”
“I don’t know.” Pip whirled in a circle. “I’m new. It’s so exciting.” He turned and sat up on his hind legs, staring up into Darien’s smiling face. “I think I live with you. You’re Mr. Sunshine. I like sunshine.”
“Wait a minute.” Grim stalked up to the pup and stared into his face. “You’re saying you don’t have a partner?”
“I do. I do, I do, I do. Him!” The dog managed a leap high enough to lick Darien’s chin. “You taste good too.”
“Me?” Darien’s smile became a grin. “You’re mine?”
“Oh no.” Grim’s ears and whiskers went back. “That’s not how it works. You don’t just pop out of the bushes and pick someone.”
Darien knelt and held out a hand to Pip, fingers trembling slightly. “Is he saying he’s my familiar?”
“Absolutely not,” Grim growled. “A sorcerer seeking a familiar casts a special circle and offers up a taste of his power. If there’s a matched familiar for him, the taste of that power calls to them.”
“Taste calls,” Pip said. “Yes, yes. And the good smells and the sunshine. It wasn’t my turn, but I wanted to watch, and he smelled so good, and now here I am. I’m a dog!”
“You’re an idiot!” Grim whapped the pup, without claws but hard enough to spin him a foot to the side and topple him over. “Have you even finished training? Do you have a talent?”
“Training is boring.” Pip scrambled up, not seeming bothered. “And I have a talent. I’m a Fetch.” He turned his head, his ridiculously big ears pricked. A dead branch lifted from the ground under the hedge, shot across the open space, and landed on the sidewalk at Darien’s knee. “Fetch!”
“May all the gods help us,” Grim muttered. “A rookie ’porter.”
Silas smothered a laugh, because wasn’t this just what life with Darien seemed to be like? “I suggest we take this conversation somewhere more private. Our room, by preference.”
“I’ll come.” Pip bounced another lick at Darien’s chin. “Will there be good things?”
Darien’s smile and bright eyes made this insane moment more palatable. “Of course there will. Are you really—?” He broke off as
a woman came out of the house two doors down, a shopping bag over her arm. “You know what? Just come along, Pip. Let’s go.”
Grim crossed the grass, his ruffled fur and swishing tail signaling his displeasure as he disappeared behind the hedge. Silas led the way home. Darien walked at his elbow, but his attention was on the small dog prancing at his side. The woman smiled at them as she passed, “Cute puppy.”
Silas saw Pip’s mouth open and stepped in with, “Thank you. He’s new.”
She moved on, and Silas hissed, “Don’t talk around normals. You should know that.”
Pip’s ridiculous big ears drooped. Darien squatted and picked the dog up, cuddling him to his chest. He gave Silas a narrow glare. “It’s all right, Pip. Not everyone knows stuff just by instinct.”
He should’ve had training. That discussion would have to wait for the privacy of the boarding house. Silas picked up his strides, but slowed again at Darien’s huff of breath as he was forced to break into a jog alongside. “Sorry. Well, just keep quiet till we get home, all right?” Another novice— that’s all we need. But when he glanced over, he couldn’t help liking the warmth in Darien’s face looking down at the little dog. Maybe a familiar, even a rookie, will be a good thing for him.
***
Darien went ahead of Silas through the bedroom door and almost tripped over Grim as the cat darted between his feet. He staggered but managed not to drop or fall on his familiar. My familiar!
Silas followed them in, pushed the door shut and flipped the latch. “So?”
Darien crouched and put Pip on the floor, then reconsidered. Looking down on the little dog was no way to start this conversation. He patted the bed. “Hey, Pip, can you jump up here?”
“Can I?” Pip bounced high enough to deliver another of those should-be-annoying chin licks that Darien found himself smiling over, then landed on the bed on the rebound. The dog’s tail whipped back and forth, almost a blur. “I like this!”
Grim jumped with ponderous power to the top of the bookcase, looking down on all of them.
Darien pulled off his coat, draped it over the chair, and hitched his ass on the windowsill. Which left Silas standing stiffly by the door, eyebrows drawn down like a hanging judge.