All the Rules of Heaven

by Amy Lane

  ANGEL WATCHED Buffy from the bottom corner of the bed, her shapely legs, clad in comfortable jeans, stretched idly in front of her.

  Tucker lay on his side and balanced the big ice pack on his nose while trying to sop up the still-trickling blood. Eventually, he fell asleep like that.

  For a moment as he was drifting off, he tried to make himself reach out and close his computer, but the screen saver went on, and he felt a soft, sweet presence at his back.

  “Stay with me,” he mumbled.

  “As long as you need me,” she returned.

  And then she did something to the lights, and he didn’t wake up until morning.

  ANGEL TALKED him into resting the next day. It wasn’t hard to do—his nose still ached, and he’d stayed up until one in the morning just waiting to see if a vengeful ghost was going to break into his room. He slept late and spent most of the day eating junk food while Angel shotgunned season four of Buffy.

  The next day Margie called them, asking if Tucker could use his truck to haul stock from one of her stores to the next.

  Tucker agreed pretty much before he got out of bed, and then she said, “And be sure to bring Angel with you!”

  Oh hell. “Margie, I’m not sure what Angel has in mind today. It might just be me.”

  He hung up and turned in bed to see Angel leaning her head on her hand and looking at him pensively. She was still a stunning redhead, and Tucker felt a bit of sadness that he hadn’t been able to run so much as a knuckle down the swell of her breast or hip in the past two days.

  “I could always change form,” she said regretfully. “I like Margie.” She looked down. “It was… a luxury, to be human for another human.”

  “Yeah, but we’re going to be at her stores,” Tucker said. On impulse he feathered his fingers through her ringlets, pretending that he could feel the strands. “It would be cruel to let her speak to you when nobody else could see you.”

  Angel reached up and grabbed his hand—for real.

  “I am not sure I ever wished I could be seen before,” she mused. She pressed her lips against back of his hand. “But I’m also not sure how ready I am to be….” Her hand slid through his.

  “Seen,” Tucker supplied. He could have said “human,” but that bordered on the things that made Angel disappear. As far as Tucker knew, he was supposed to believe Angel was a ghost of a deceased human. But the more they got to know each other, the more Tucker became convinced that wasn’t true.

  “Yes.” Angel turned onto her stomach, kicking her feet over her bottom again and staring moodily at the headboard. “Seen.”

  Tucker showered and left—but he remembered to pet the cat and wish Angel goodbye. She went to the door to see him off, and he knew she’d be there waiting for him when he returned.

  Margie was in fine form about his nose that day. She bought his story about slipping and falling in the shower to avoid the kitten, but pestered him repeatedly about letting Angel take care of him.

  “That young man would do anything for you. You know that, right?”

  Tucker couldn’t look her in the eyes. “Yeah, Marge. Well, you sure did see through us.”

  Her delighted laugh bolstered something inside him. Margie, at least, believed.

  When he returned from his errand, he had to concede to an afternoon nap. One more day of rest before he and Angel started their quest again. He left the wallpaper alone, although he double-checked to make sure he had a putty knife and the other things Josh had stressed for the wallpaper removal when he was ready. But mostly he stayed downstairs, putting away his clothes and moving a bookshelf—clean, per Angel—from the living room to his bedroom so he could find places for some of the stuff in his boxes.

  When he was done, the room was a little more his—but he thought it could use some color.

  “Drapes, a throw rug, the furniture Josh was going to give me….” Tucker turned a full circle and tried to imagine this room with just a little more effort.

  “It’s cozy,” Angel decided. “And… and alive.”

  Tucker grinned at her as she swung her legs over the bed. “Good. If I could do that here, I can do it in the Chrysanthemum Room. And I can do that for the rest of the house, right?”

  Angel lifted an elegant shoulder, but she looked hopeful. Tucker ate his dinner out on the porch, almost defiantly, although he fingered his pendant often.

  The only ghosts who showed had the decency to stay ghosts, for which he was grateful, and he and Angel stared at the lowering shadows while Tucker told terrible jokes that he and Damien had shared in high school.

  Maybe it was the fact that Conklin, at least, seemed to have left him alone. Maybe it was that he and Angel had resolved some of the sexual tension between them, and that whatever they were doing—whatever Angel was—they had the same mission and were doing it together.

  Maybe it was that Tucker felt like he had friends here, in this town, and roots that he’d never been able to set down before.

  And maybe it was that he’d shared all the pain of Damien’s passing and could remember some of the joy the two of them had had as kids, inseparable and happy.

  Whatever it was, when they went to bed that night, his heart was filled with a surprising amount of quiet mountain peace.

  THE NEXT MORNING, though, Tucker couldn’t wait another day—in spite of Angel’s objections. While eating breakfast, he looked up archives and birth and death records, Squishbeans on his lap.

  “I got it,” he cried. “Angel! Come here.”

  “I’m right next to you,” she said, and if she’d been human, he would have expected her to be rolling her eyes over a cup of cream-and-sugar coffee.

  “But look over my shoulder here, at the computer,” he said with patience. “I found them. Or at least I found James Beaufort.”

  “Oh!” She dematerialized from her chair and rematerialized over his shoulder.

  “You could have just stood up.”

  “I was startled,” she said with dignity, checking the knot of curls on top of her head and pushing the strands out of her eyes.

  Tucker eyed her narrowly. “You don’t usually stay in a woman’s form for this long.”

  Those green eyes glinted wickedly. “This one unsettles you. I’m not sure why, but it arouses you more than the others.”

  “No,” Tucker said, swallowing through a dry throat. “That’s not true. It unsettles me, yes, but, uh, arouses? No.”

  Angel’s eyes narrowed. “Which form are you most attracted to?”

  Tucker smiled enigmatically and tried not to contrast the imagined comfort of what could have been Angel’s soft breasts pressed against his back with the remembered comfort of Angel’s hard chest, strong hands, and citrus-lavender smell. “I’ll leave that for you to figure out. But for right now, I’ve got some death dates here. Let me grab the pen and paper.”

  “Why? What are we going to do?”

  Tucker gnawed his lower lip. “Well, I know we have to touch their objects and see their stories and, through the process, tell them to you. But I’m thinking, what if we make it easy? What if we take their objects to them? I’ve got a Sophie, Henrietta, and James Beaufort all buried at the Manzanita Cemetery in Auburn, as well as Bridget Shanahan.”

  “Conklin?”

  Tucker shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen mention of him, but….” He pursed his lips grimly. “I think all his energy is captured here, probably in the damned paperweight. And that seems to be what holds James’s spirit too.”

  They both let out hissing noises through their front teeth, and Squishbeans started and took off.

  “That would be a horrible fate, Tucker.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The madman and the kind man who killed him.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to release James Beaufort.”

  “I’m saying, Angel!”

  “It’s imperative!”

  “I know. But listen—James didn’t die that day. In fact, he an
d his wife weren’t buried until 1945 and 1947. They were….” Aw. Damn. “They were buried with their two sons, who were killed in the war.”

  “Oh.”

  Tucker hated that story. “But at least they had some peace before then,” he said desperately. “I hope so anyway. And Sophie and Bridget—they were interred the same day in 1952. They lived a good long life, and together even. But something is holding them to this place, Angel. Maybe most of their spirits passed on, but not all. And James Beaufort may be mostly with his wife—”

  “But something is keeping that part of him here that we saw out in the garden, and it’s attached to the paperweight,” Angel finished. “Yes, Tucker, I agree. So maybe if we take the objects to them, their stories will be told?”

  Tucker pulled his fingers through his hair. It had dried wet the night before, which meant it was sort of a haphazard mop right now. He’d slept well, so he had a little more energy than he’d been having, but his nose hurt, and his head hurt, and generally, getting the hell out of Daisy Place would do him a world of good at the moment.

  “Could it hurt?” he asked, a little desperately.

  “I can come, right?”

  Tucker shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “I don’t see why not. But I warn you—on the way back, I was going to stop by Rae’s house.” He fingered the pentacle at his neck, with the mysterious garnet at the heart of it. He would need to look at it in the mirror, but right now, at his throat, it felt changed somehow. “I think there’s something about this charm that got me beat the hell up but kept me from being possessed.”

  “I don’t mind visiting the Greenaways.”

  Tucker stared.

  Angel was back to being the broad-chested young blue-collar man who had been steadily growing in Tucker’s memory as someone important.

  “Why?” he asked, frustrated. “Just why?”

  “Well, the Greenaways are used to me being male, and to you talking about me as male. So I thought this form would be most appropriate.”

  “Sure.”

  “No, really, Tucker.” Angel gave him that guileless smile. “Why else would I have changed?”

  “To dick with me,” Tucker said flatly. “But you know what I have noticed?”

  Angel shifted his weight from foot to foot. “What?”

  “I’ll let you know when I feel like it. Now let me go find my gloves. I want to gather the girls’ things. Do we still have the boxes from the grocery delivery?”

  “Do you think that will be enough?” Their banter—and sexual tension—was forgotten in an instant. “Those objects are pretty powerfully charged, Tucker. They may bleed through.”

  Tucker would have pinched the bridge of his nose, but it was still pretty sore. “They may,” he admitted. “But I don’t have anything made of lead. We can bungee cord the boxes to the truck bed, like the stuff I hauled up from Sacramento. Will that work?”

  Angel scowled at the boxes holding the remainder of Damien’s memories like they were to blame for all their troubles. “Sure,” he said sullenly. “Maybe the tragedies can meet and console each other, and you can let Damien go.”

  “Sure,” Tucker said. But not like he meant it.

  THEY LEFT the snuff box and the paperweight on top of the desk. Angel confirmed Tucker’s suspicion—the paperweight was getting darker inside, a brownish stain spreading like old blood.

  “Yeah,” Tucker muttered. “I almost want to lay the girls and James to rest so this fucker can’t get to them. If we can bring them outside of Daisy Place and give them peace….”

  Angel nodded and filled in the rest. “We can concentrate on what to do here. I understand.”

  It was the age-old concept of getting the children to safety before putting out the fire, and it felt good to know they were in this together. Something about their investigation, about Tucker’s handling of the paperweight, seemed to have brought the evil that was Thomas Conklin closer to the surface. What had once been one shadow of many lingering in the garden had resolved itself into a restless sprit strong enough to kick the crap out of Tucker and malevolent enough to make Tucker remember the ghosts in the graveyard who had wanted so badly to take Tucker’s body.

  Fortunately, the brush and the bottle felt happy, somehow, in the palm of his hand before he set them in the small box. So did the diamond hairpin and the cameo broach they’d established had been gifts from Sophie to Bridget.

  Tucker picked up the soiled sheaf of papers that was James Beaufort’s letter with gentleness. Obviously if a part of him was here in Daisy Place, those pages were what was keeping him. Them and the paperweight. But Tucker didn’t want that thing anywhere near the little family, dead and buried and still haunting this room.

  Tucker put the items into the box and bit his lip. “He was happy to hear from them?” he asked for the umpteenth time.

  Angel apparently had no problem following where his mind was going with this. “He was welcoming them with open arms, Tucker. I don’t know what Conklin was doing here, but Beaufort had come to take them home.”

  “That’s comforting,” he decided. “That’s… they were all in the same cemetery. None of them died alone, I don’t think.” He brightened. “And at least we know Bridget wasn’t killed by Conklin.” He thought about James Beaufort, pleading for him to take away the stain of killing a man. “Maybe he just needs to know it was worth it.”

  Tucker finished packing the objects and turned to leave. He looked around the room before he crossed the threshold. “Tomorrow,” he said decisively. “Tomorrow we strip the wallpaper. The next day we finish the floors. Then we repaint. This room, at least, will be clean.”

  “What room will you do next?” Angel asked as he closed the door.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to look into some of the other rooms, you think? I just sort of hared off and found the first ghost I met. Maybe the next room should be closer to the stairs. Or I could really go for broke and do the living room so we can maybe install a TV and you can watch Buffy on a bigger screen.”

  Angel turned a shining smile his way. “Oh, Tucker. That would be marvelous. I would really love that. Could we?”

  Tucker shrugged. “Do you think the ghosts will wander in and out while we’re in there?”

  “Probably.” Angel’s shoulders slumped as he started down the stairs, and Tucker considered.

  “Well, it would be a good way to size up the next project. I’ll think about it.”

  Angel’s spine straightened, and Tucker followed him with a half smile on his face. This having a partner thing was nice. He could deal with having someone—anyone—to talk to about the uncertainties of what he was doing. He knew for damned sure he could have used some help trying to figure out what he was supposed to do when his gift was tugging him in the other direction.

  The oppressive heat of July had faded into the more mellow heat of August, and Tucker rolled the windows down for part of the journey. Angel’s hair didn’t flutter back with the breeze, but Tucker caught him, eyes closed, turning his face to the sunshine on more than one occasion. When they passed the road that led to the fairy hill, he shuddered and frowned.

  “What’s up?” Tucker asked.

  “There’s… there are complex things here,” Angel muttered. “I’d never thought of this, uh, pagan place as a bastion of good, but good is exactly what I felt coming from it.” He made a complicated movement then, a sort of rippling of his back and ass, like a bird settling feathers. “I need to realign my view of the world, that’s all.”

  Tucker laughed. “That’s all? That sounds dire.”

  “I just….” He frowned again. “I don’t know where that prejudice came from,” he said after a moment. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense at all. But I thought all of the things about a fairy hill must be evil—promiscuous sex, rampant desire, terrible indulgence, and blood. But that’s not what energy the fairy hill is giving off, and it feels like I was wrong.”

  “Wow, Angel. That’s quite a change
.”

  “Change is not weakness.” Angel made that back-ruffling motion again. “It’s when we refuse to change in the face of upheaval that we fail.”

  Tucker thought about it as he drove through the foothills under the August blue sky. “Okay.” And the more he thought about it, the more it filled him with joy. “All right!” His iPod was playing something that was simultaneously melancholy and thunderous, and he turned that up, immersed in the sudden freedom of a basic truth.

  Change was not weakness.

  Tucker’s life had changed—most assuredly—since he’d gotten the summons to Daisy Place, but answering the change didn’t mean he was weak. He may not have been being used for his magic wang anymore, but that didn’t mean this thing he was doing—giving peace to the long-since departed—wasn’t just as important. Maybe, on some level, it was even more important.

  Angel wore a half smile as the music pounded, and Tucker grinned. Small moments, Damien had taught him. Small perfect nuggets of time and place. A good hamburger. A sugar cookie. A favorite song.

  A moment shared with someone who seemed to understand.

  Can’t Find My Way Home

  THE FOOTHILLS of the Sierra Nevada languished in the summer. Hot and weighted by dust and sun, even the sky had heft and mass, as blue and as clear as it may have appeared.

  If the Manzanita Cemetery in Lincoln had been crushed under the footsteps of time long ago, the sun and the dust had rendered it almost flat to the eye. The marble headstones—usually representing the family patriarch—were all well spaced, and some even cleaned, but most of them bore carved words so faded they may as well have been runes in a language ages ago forgotten. The grass was watered once a week, and a few spare blades of crabgrass clung to a defiant green, but most of it was withered, sere, and too dead to even be called brown.

  It was beige. Beige grass.

  Angel had never seen anything quite so deceased, and he lived in a haunted mansion with a haunted garden. Even the multidimensional cemetery with the ghosts that wanted to jump Tucker’s body looked more alive than this place.