All the Rules of Heaven

by Amy Lane

  He had to lean over a lot so as not to disturb the kitten, and he had to wheedle and tease and gently extricate the trapped stationery, but eventually it was in his grasp—two pages, written in a brief, masculine hand:

  Sophie—

  I am sorry to hear of your troubles with your husband. Pa should never have let him grace the front door. I hold no grudges against you for divorcing him—I’d divorce him from his senses with my fist had I had a moment alone with the man, or with his father.

  You are welcome to come stay with me and my wife in Auburn. We have a small cottage out back for you and your maid. If you can help Henrietta with her laundering for extra money, we would be much obliged, but your stay is not contingent upon your service.

  I am just happy to hear from family, Sophie. I miss Ma and Pa every day. It’s rougher out here, and railroad men are often wild and uncouth. I do not mind so much, but Henrietta misses manners and civility. I think a sister would do much to ease that longing.

  I shall leave to fetch you two weeks after sending this. I know not why you chose such an inaccessible place as your refuge—the journey there and back shall not be pleasant. I hope there is room at your hostel to give me a few nights’ rest.

  I look forward to seeing you, Sophie—

  James Beaufort

  Angel read the letter once, then again and again, leaning his chin on one fist while stroking Squishbeans with his other hand.

  “Did you see this?” he asked after a few moments wherein the activity in his whirling mind could probably be heard in the silent house. “They had rescue coming. Do you understand what this means?”

  He smiled down at the kitten happily, then gathered up the pages. Very carefully, he stood up with the kitten in one hand and the letter clutched in the other. He took them both to the desk and set the old paper down on the side of the desk with the “happy” objects.

  “The green bottle, you think?” he asked, and the kitten hung out, happy in his hand and apparently unmoved by how strange it should be that Angel could pick her up.

  Angel smoothed the pages very deliberately and put the green bottle—the object still humming with passion and happiness—on the top.

  It wasn’t much. Tucker still had to strip wallpaper and sand floors. There was still the glass paperweight and all of the terror it held for the both of them.

  But just this once, Angel had been able to provide some safety, a happy moment, for the man who had become the center of Angel’s universe. Angel wasn’t sure how to put his work on the house back in that place, but until it happened, he would work for Tucker.

  Spilled Like Wine

  “YOU LET me do all the talking!” Josh said cheerfully as they got out of the truck.

  “I’m a fan of listening,” Tucker said, which was true, but only a teeny tiny corner of the truth.

  He and Josh had enjoyed the trip to Sac—they’d played music loud and shot the shit all the way down, keeping Andy in the rearview so they didn’t lose him as they dodged through traffic.

  Josh was partial to classic rock, but Tucker could live with that. A lot of Josh’s stories dealt with stupid people who couldn’t fix their way out of a paperclip trying to deal with complicated engines, but Tucker could deal with that too. Honest folks making an honest living were his favorite kind—but perhaps that came from living so long on his inheritance and feeling like a cosmic whore for most of his adult life.

  The apartment itself was one of the converted Victorians down by the legal district. Tucker had slept with a lot of lawyers in the past fifteen years, as well as a not-surprising share of policemen, judges, and nonviolent offenders. For the most part, the criminals had been his favorite—in particular the businesswoman who woke up in the morning and said, “Oh my God! I hurt all those people! I do deserve jail!”

  Yet another story he couldn’t tell.

  Letting Josh talk—encouraging his friend to talk—was one more way to evade what Tucker’s life had become.

  His apartment was a depressing reminder of that.

  They trotted up the narrow stairwell, Andy bringing up the rear, and Tucker let them into the second-floor apartment. “Oh, holy cow,” Andy breathed. “This is awesome!”

  Tucker looked around and smiled bitterly. “Thank you,” he said, leaching the irony from his voice.

  He did keep a nice place.

  Refinished hardwood floors, bright throw rugs, curiosity shelves with an eclectic mix of tchotchkes. Tucker’s apartment had been his haven—but it had also been solitary confinement.

  Out on the street was his next one-night stand—or the ghost of someone who didn’t know he was dead or a vampire or an elf who would look at him with raised eyebrows and oh-so-chic insouciance.

  Tucker’s world was not everyone else’s world. His home, the movies, the music, the puzzle books and history books and romances—these were the most normal things about him, and he wrapped them around his body like a fur-lined cocoon.

  He didn’t have to be an empath to know the place emanated a deep and soul-consuming loneliness.

  He just hoped Andy’s chirpy confidence, his belief in home and the undying love of his family was enough to overcome the chill of Tucker’s thirteen-year depression.

  “I’ll get a box for the knickknacks,” Tucker said. “Andy, you can plug your phone into the stereo for music if you want—”

  “No!” Josh complained good-naturedly. “He likes that alt-rock crap!”

  “Mountain Goats it is.” Tucker winked at Josh. “Besides, you get your music in the car. Andy, you may want to make a list of stuff you want to bring—”

  “Tucker, who’s Damien?” Andy asked, and if Tucker hadn’t had a long conversation with Andy’s mother and his family the day before, it would have taken him completely by surprise.

  “Bring stuffed animals,” Tucker said, begging Andy with his eyes to not pursue the matter. “Bring music. Pictures of your family. Ask your mother to give you plants—they’ll make the place yours. And….” He thought of all the times he’d wanted a kitten but hadn’t known when he’d be home. “A pet. Even if it’s just a goldfish. A pet will make it more yours than—”

  “Who’s Damien?” Andy insisted.

  Tucker looked at Josh and shook his head. “There’s some boxes down in the truck. I’ll go get them.”

  “I’ll get them,” Josh said. “You’re looking tired. Andy, come with me.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Son, let me tell you something that going to school won’t, once we get outside!”

  “It hurts in here!” Andy burst out, and his dad grabbed his upper arm and hauled him out the door.

  Tucker took a deep breath and looked around. It hurt in there.

  Tucker needed to get the most haunted objects out.

  Damien’s baseball mitt and the ball he’d gotten signed by Barry Bonds in their junior year of high school. His collection of baseball hats, hanging behind the couch. A picture of Tucker and his family, and Damien, taken at an amusement park—they’d gone for Tucker’s fifteenth birthday.

  Tucker and Damien with awkward dates at the junior prom, taken by Tucker’s mom. Tucker and Damien graduating from high school, taken by Damien’s dad. From college, taken by some poor parent they’d grabbed by the collar.

  Damien in a standard-issue bronze urn, in a place of honor on top of the bookshelf in the corner.

  By the time Josh and Andy came trundling up the stairs, bickering the whole way, all traces of Tucker’s childhood crush and adult heartbreak had been gathered into a pile so Tucker could put them in a box. He didn’t need to protect himself with gloves or his T-shirt—he’d been living with that pain for so long it had seeped into his skin like a Damien callus.

  “Good,” Tucker said brightly, making eye contact with nobody. “You brought them. Here, I’ll go get tape.”

  He started toward the kitchen, where the standard junk was in the standard junk drawer, and then he turned around. “Uh, go ahead and star
t packing up the clothes in the bedroom,” he said. “I’ll get this crap.”

  “Sure, Tucker.” Josh said it, but as they were walking by him to the bedroom, Andy was the one who reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

  The contact burned, almost as bad as Angel pushing the ghost energy out, but Tucker controlled his gasp. They disappeared into his bedroom. Telling, wasn’t it? That he didn’t feel as though his privacy was being violated by people in his bedroom, but he couldn’t bear to let them touch pictures on the shelves?

  He went into the kitchen for plastic grocery bags—which he usually recycled—and pulled out the mitt and the ball to wrap them up.

  His hands only shook a little with that one.

  He was okay as he wrapped up their baseball trophies from grade school.

  His hands started shaking harder when he started with the pictures.

  By the time he had the last picture wrapped in plastic and was reaching for the sealed urn, he could hardly breathe.

  He’d been living with this—with all of this—open and looking him in the face every day. And it hurt so bad. His throat was raw with the screaming he wasn’t doing. His chest ached with the sobbing locked inside.

  Oh God—had this been his life every day since Damien died?

  How could God or the gods or the Goddess or whoever make exorcising ghosts his calling? Could they not see that he couldn’t even exorcise his own?

  He managed to get the heavy sealed urn in the corner of the biggest box and taped the top closed. I don’t have to unpack this. I can take it back to Daisy Place and find a closet, maybe in one of the disappearing rooms. I can put Damien in the back of one of the closets and leave him, and someday when I’m dead, another promising young man will stumble on it, and Angel will say—

  Oh, Angel!

  How was he going to tell Angel that this shrine to a lost friend had become his life?

  He didn’t even want to think about it.

  And then he remembered his scrapbook.

  Oh hell. The damning scrapbook. He didn’t even wrap up his monument to the times he hadn’t failed but something had. He rooted through the bookshelf, because he didn’t want Josh or Andy to see it either, and threw the damned thing on top of the box. He tried to blank his mind against what Angel would say about that too.

  Grimly determined not to imagine spilling his soul to that perceptive set of green eyes, he schlepped the first box down, then the second. By the time he got back after the second, Josh and Andy had heaps of clothes in garbage bags, ready to go down into the truck too.

  There were dishes at Daisy Place, but Tucker brought his comforter, pillow, fuzzy blankets, and some of his linens, as well as his backup toiletry supplies and one of two dressers.

  “This one is shorter,” he said apologetically. “My computer will fit on it better.”

  Andy shrugged. “Your system,” he said.

  They lugged that down next, and then Tucker stood in the middle of the apartment and looked around.

  He’d been going to take his recliner, but it matched the couch, and Josh told him he and Rae had a club chair and an ottoman that would fit in Tucker’s bedroom.

  “It’s leather,” he said. “Real nice. And this way, we can leave Andy here with a matched set of furniture.”

  Andy darted a furtive glance at Tucker, and Tucker understood. That way, Tucker wouldn’t be sitting in the same throne of self-pity he’d inhabited for the last thirteen years, and Andy would have a chance to clear the grief out of the furniture.

  Well, if the kid wanted to cut his teeth in the weird psychic half-world Tucker inhabited, let him.

  The scars on Tucker’s heart were still bleeding. His psychic scars were now indelibly etched across his skin. If Andy, with his enthusiasm and his desperate need to get laid, could jump into the fight, Tucker was in no condition to stop him.

  Tucker could barely take care of himself.

  “That’s fine,” Tucker said, summoning a grateful smile from he knew not where. “Is that it? Are we done?”

  “Yeah,” Josh said, looking around. “Andy, did you wrap those framed prints in blankets?”

  “Yeah,” Andy said promptly. “They’re snug in the back of the pickup. Tucker, can you think of anything else?”

  Tucker looked around, and it hit him.

  Whether he’d wanted it to or not, his inheritance from Aunt Ruth had officially changed his life.

  “I’ll call you if I think of anything,” he said. “I’ll email the landlord and let him know you’re staying here to keep the place for me.”

  Josh looked at his son uncertainly. “Tucker… I know you didn’t ask anything, but you know, we could pay a little toward—”

  “No,” Tucker said, holding his hand up to forestall any argument. “The rent is paid from my parents’ trust. I’ve hardly touched it, really. Mostly it just sits there and accrues interest, and I use that to pay bills.” He smiled briefly, hoping the expression reassured Andy. “It’ll be worth it to me to know I’ll still have a place in the city in case Daisy Place gets swallowed by a hole in the earth, right?”

  Andy shuddered. “You say that like it’s not a very real possibility. Now let’s go eat. Dad, you promised you’d treat.”

  JOSH TOOK them to Cheesecake Factory and treated them both. Tucker ordered a hamburger and a slice of chocolate-swirl cheesecake and listened to Josh and Andy tease him about his metabolism.

  He didn’t have the heart to tell them that it was part and parcel of the whole psychic gig—and that it probably meant his lifespan would be cut a little short because of it. His superhigh metabolism was just more proof that nothing came without a price.

  HE’D RECOVERED some of his equanimity by the time they got back to Daisy Place. Andy stayed in the city, much as his mom had predicted. Josh was keeping the truck for the day so he could haul Andy’s stuff into the city in the morning, provided he spent the night okay.

  Tucker hoped with all his heart that most of the sadness would disappear with Tucker and his measly possessions. He wouldn’t wish his problems on anybody, much less Andover Greenaway.

  About halfway up the hill, Tucker dozed off, arms folded, head resting against the window. Josh pulled up the driveway and ordered him into the house.

  “In bed, Tucker—there’s nothing here that will need two people. You look like one of the ghosts that’s supposed to live here.”

  Tucker barely remembered to step aside as the grand tide of ghosts ebbed and surged, but after the churning movement in the psychic sphere had eased, they made it inside. He even managed to turn on the lights, both inside and outside, so Josh could come in through the kitchen. Angel was waiting for him at the table, Squishbeans lying in the middle of a place mat in front of him, asleep on her back, paws outstretched to the world.

  “Oh, Tucker!” Angel said happily. “You’re home! I’ve made the most excellent—never mind. You’re exhausted. My discovery can wait. Let’s get you to bed.”

  Tucker was too tired to even scowl. “Angel, look at you, all human and everything. I like it.”

  Angel’s face fell, his excitement fading away. “Oh, Tucker. I hope you’re not counting on me to be human. I am doing my best, but I’m not sure—”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Tucker mumbled, stumbling to his room. He didn’t even need to turn the light on. He found the bed on instinct and kicked off his shoes. Then he fell face-first onto the pillow, too weak to be embarrassed that it was barely eight o’clock at night.

  “I just don’t want you to rely on me for something I can’t—”

  “I said don’t worry,” Tucker told him, meaning it. “You’re a better human being than I ever was, even if you were never human.”

  And that’s the last thing he remembered saying for a while.

  He believed that with all his soul. It’s what allowed him to feel safe while Angel was watching him sleep.

  HE WOKE up sometime in the night to take off his clothes and use the bathroom. Ang
el’s voice from the bed didn’t startle him at all.

  “Tucker, you’re not sleeping well.”

  “Just uncomfortable,” he mumbled. The mattress hadn’t gotten any better since that first night, it was true, but there were so many other things to worry about now.

  “You’re crying.”

  Wonderful. “If you’re going to be a man, you need to not mention the crying,” he replied, voice clogged. “It’s not polite.”

  “So can I mention the crying now?”

  Tucker half laughed—in the light from the bathroom, he could see that Angel was now a slim brunet with long straight hair, dusky skin, and smoky green eyes.

  “Very sexy,” he muttered. “But you don’t have to change for me.”

  “But can I talk about the crying now?” she demanded plaintively.

  “No,” he said. He turned out the light and crawled back into bed. It was probably his imagination, but he could swear he smelled musky perfume.

  “I like musk and lime on men,” he muttered. “Lavender on women.”

  The smell went floral, and Tucker chuckled.

  “I’ll try not to cry and bother you,” he said softly.

  “Just tell me why,” Angel insisted, her voice tender.

  “My life hasn’t… hasn’t amounted to much, Angel.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.”

  Tucker’s eyes were closed—he could almost imagine the kiss on the cheek.

  “What makes you think I’m worth something?” He needed to know. Sad, perhaps, but true. Angel’s opinion had come to mean a lot to him.

  “Because of how you talk about using your gift,” she said. “Nobody who believed you had to use it and do good things with it as passionately as you do could have lived a worthless life.”

  “Awesome,” he muttered bitterly.

  “You are also nice to be around,” Angel said, sounding as though this had just occurred to her. “You are… considerate. You like people. You work hard to make sure they’re comfortable around you. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the bad people who come through here—the bad memories linger when the good ones have gone on with their makers. That’s not a small thing—being considerate. I think it makes you worthy.”