By Cat Kane
Part Four
Jake woke and stretched, bleary gaze squinting up at the living room ceiling. He couldn’t remember falling asleep on the couch, but at least the pounding migraine had dulled to a tolerable—
Wait…
He sat up, head protesting feebly.
“Jake,” Samuel said, smiling at him from the mismatched easy chair. “I’m so relieved you’re awake.”
If it had been something serious, Jake thought, would Samuel have thought to take him to the ER? Probably not. Jake doubted it was the done thing in Samuel’s day.
In his day? Am I really believing this crap?
Running a hand through his hair, he slumped back against the chair.
“Jake—“
“Look, just tell me whatever you wanted me to hear.”
“But you’re—“
“I’m fine.”
Samuel had the tenacity to fold his arms over his chest, and raise an eyebrow. “Pardon me, Jake, but last time you said that, you keeled over ten seconds later. Permit me to take that statement with a grain of salt.”
Jake caught himself before he pouted. “Yeah well, I mean it this time.” Samuel looked at him skeptically, and Jake frowned. “Honestly. The keeling over wasn’t good for me either, you know.”
It didn’t quite appease Samuel, judging from the continued quirk of one dark brow, but at least he gave up arguing.
“Very well.” Samuel sat back. “Where would you like me to start?”
A million places, Jake thought. There wasn’t a single part of this entire situation that he understood, and only Samuel had the answers.
“Who are you?”
“It would appear that you know much of that already.” Samuel smiled wryly. “I’m Samuel Gilbert. I am—was, a magician.”
Jake tilted his head. “Pulling rabbits out of hats kinda magic?”
Samuel chuckled softly. “Amongst other things, yes. I preferred doves to rabbits, though.”
“But Samuel Gilbert disappeared.” Jake shook his head. “You’re saying you didn’t? You were, what, trapped in that coffin in the Halloween store the whole time?”
He was asking too many questions, snapping them out like gunfire, and Samuel certainly looked the part of the guy in the firing line. When Samuel stood abruptly, Jake couldn’t help but flinch, but Samuel walked past him, stopping at the living room window and pulling back the blinds. Jake knew the view that greeted him, the darkening cityscape, glitter and gloom under a smoggy sky.
“What year is it?”
As far as odd questions went, that had to rank a ten, maybe ten and a half.
“Two thousand eight,” Jake said.
Samuel’s gaze snapped up meet Jake’s. He let go of the blinds, and they clattered back into place, swaying gently.
“I know it was a long time,” Samuel began softly, “but…”
There was a lost bewilderment in dark eyes that couldn’t be faked, Jake thought, even if Samuel was the best actor in the world. Guilt. Guilt and longing, a yearning for something—some time—he’d lost.
Jake saw that look in his own eyes sometimes, when the man in the mirror looked like a stranger and he longed for a way to go back, make different choices.
But then he wouldn’t have been Jake if he had; he wouldn’t have been honest to himself, and in the calm spaces where nothing seemed so terrible, he could admit that living with the fear was a better option than living a half-life, living a discontented lie.
“Sit,” he told Samuel, getting up and heading for the kitchen. Getting two glasses out of the cupboard, he filled one with water, and one with a shot of the only cheap whiskey he had in the apartment. Samuel looked like he needed a drink, and Jake seriously wished he could join in. Either way, he didn’t feel in much mortal danger anymore. “Tell me how come you’re coffin ended up at the Halloween store.”
Samuel, who’d surprisingly enough done as Jake asked, accepted the drink with a nod of thanks.
“Halloween store? The place we met, it’s a shop of some sort?”
“Yeah.” Jake shrugged. “They sell…you know, costumes and decorations and stuff.”
Samuel canted his head, looking thoughtful. “Like theatrical supplies?”
“Ah, yeah, sort of.”
“In that case, I’m not sure how I came to be there.” Samuel paused. “Perhaps first I should tell you about Ben.”
Jake resumed his spot on the couch. There wasn’t much Samuel needed to tell him on that score, not really. A guy didn’t go around calling a total stranger ‘my love’ unless the one he’d mistaken you for meant a great deal to him. “He was your boyfriend?”
“My lover, yes.” Samuel fixed his gaze on his drink, swirling the dark gold liquid around the bottom of the glass as though he saw something at the bottom of his glass that Jake didn’t. “He was a solider in the war. It was what he wanted, he chose to go.” The defense struck Jake as desperate, as if Samuel was used to defending Ben. “He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself had he not tried. But when he came home…”
An ice chill scratched down Jake’s spine. His fingers tightened on the glass.
“He wasn’t well,” Samuel said simply, after a moment’s silence. “He wasn’t the same. The things he’d seen, done…damaged him, I suppose. Damaged his soul, his heart. All I wanted was for him to be well again.” He looked up, gaze locked on Jake’s as though willing him to believe. “All I wanted was for him to be the man he’d been.”
“How?” Jake asked, unable to summon more than a whisper.
This man couldn’t know. He couldn’t possibly know.
And if there was a way, would Jake take it?
Yeah, his soul whispered, and see what it did to this guy? Would you be willing to sacrifice that much? Sometimes, when the fear of intangible, old ghosts overwhelmed him, Jake thought he just might.
“I had a colleague—“ Samuel began, and Jake’s mind latched onto the article on the net—latched onto anything that didn’t leave him mired in his own thoughts.
“Clarence Francis.”
Samuel looked at him, eyes narrowed, dark and angry with a rage that Jake doubted was aimed his way. “Yes. He wasn’t like the rest of us. Unlike us, his magic was…” Samuel lowered his gaze. “Real. Dark, but real.”
“But there’s no such thing—“
Samuel smiled wryly, and Jake all but shrank back into his seat.
“I beg to differ, Jake. Proof that it was all too real sits here before you now.”
Deciding that answering that remark either way was far beyond his scope for reasoning, Jake asked, “So what happened? Didn’t it work?”
“Oh, it worked.” Samuel’s smile became sadder still. “It worked perfectly. That’s the problem.”
Jake stared at him mutely, but Samuel’s memory slipped back several notches, back to that stormy October evening, far, far too long ago.
He remembered his utter confusion at Clarence packing away his potions and tools, getting to his feet with a brusque nod.
“But—“
“It’s an enchantment, my boy,” Clarence smiled wryly. “It isn’t a divine miracle. Give him a day or two.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“No,” Clarence agreed mildly. “I didn’t, did I?” He closed the nondescript briefcase containing some of the most esoteric items Samuel had ever seen with all the calm of a factory worker clocking out. “Watch him. If nothing comes of it in a day or two, come and see me.”
He followed Clarence to the door in silence, an odd combination of disappointment and relief running through his veins. Yes, nothing had happened, but on the other hand nothing had happened. If the worst repercussion of this was that Ben remained exactly as he was, then Samuel thought they might escape relatively unscathed.
And if he improved…well, Samuel would gladly pay the price for Ben’s happiness.
“Oh, and Samuel?” Clarence paused at the door. “Please don’t miss your performance next Friday. We’ll discuss payment terms then.”
The house seemed eerily silent when Clarence’s car drove away. Samuel dismissed the servants for the evening, and headed back to the drawing room.
Putting either of them to bed seemed a monumental task for which Samuel had neither energy nor motivation. He couldn’t stand the idea of being apart from Ben, even in adjoining rooms, not now. If there was any change, and Samuel missed it, he’d never forgive himself.
Tucking Ben’s blanket more snugly around his still-unresponsive form, Samuel knelt back at his lover’s side, resting his head on Ben’s lap.
“Sleep, my love. Sleep and it will all be better in the morning.”
He hadn’t expected sleep to claim him so quickly, but the strain of the evening—the strain of it all, truth be told—took its toll. And perhaps he dreamed, but would never recall the contents.
Perhaps a happy dream, he thought later. He hoped so, anyway.
He awoke to a hand resting gently on his hair, trembling with every breath. Samuel sat up, reaching for that hand and grasping it tightly.
“Ben?”
Ben—his Ben!—stared down at him, tears tracking down his face.
“What did you do, Samuel?” Ben shook his head. “What did you do?!”
Samuel blinked, struggling to find his voice. “Helped you. Healed you.”
Ben shook his head again, more vehemently, like a horse tossing its mane to ward off flies. “No…”
As Samuel continued to kneel at his side, Ben stood. It was the tall, graceful character Samuel remembered him to be that walked over to the window, none of the past weeks’ listlessness or sluggishness present. The fog closed in overnight, and the drizzle only exacerbated the hideous morning.
“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” Ben turned to him, eyes wild for a brand new reason. “I can feel it, Sam. In my blood, in my soul. It’s…unnatural. It’s wrong.”
“No.” Samuel got to his feet. “It can’t be wrong. It’s brought you back to me, don’t you see? Everything’s back as it should be!”
“At what price?” Ben stared at him. “Sam, I should never have come back at all, can’t you accept that? Prolonging it by such…such dark measures is just—“
“Yes, you should!” Samuel strode to Ben’s side, hands on his lover’s shoulders, a breath from shaking him. This wasn’t how it should have gone, damn it all! “You’re meant to be here by my side!”
“And so you turn me into a monster?” Ben whispered. “I can feel it. It’s not me. There’s something…” He clawed at Samuel’s hands, shoving him away, moving to stand behind the heavy oak desk, putting himself between Samuel and the door. “It isn’t meant to be, it isn’t meant to be…”
“Ben…”
“I didn’t want this, Sam! I never asked for this!”
When Ben turned and fled, Samuel was still to immobile from terror and delight in equal parts to react quickly enough. Before giving chase, his gaze landed on the other side of the desk, where Ben had stood, and the open drawer.
The pistol Samuel kept there was missing.
No…
He heard the sound of the front door rattling, Ben fighting against the locks and bolts until the old doorway opened. Samuel raced after him, heart hammering, nausea coiling in his stomach.
It wasn’t meant to be that way. Ben should have been glad, happy, they should have been together. He wasn’t supposed to be chasing his lover like a frightened, cornered animal who’d rather chew through its own paw than remain in this trap.
A trap I laid. This was all what I wanted. It was all about me.
Shaking off that terrible thought, he shoved through the door, running down the steps into the garden, following the path of disturbance through the grass and flowerbeds, lips and heart screaming desperately for his lover.
“Ben…Ben!”
No answer. There’d never be an answer.
Never. Just endless dark.
“Samuel?” A hand pressed against his arm.
—a hand resting gently on his hair—
He froze.
—reaching for that hand and grasping it tightly—
“Samuel.” More insistent this time.
Ben. No, not Ben. Jake.
“I didn’t think,” he heard himself say. “I didn’t stop to think that he wouldn’t want it too. I thought…”
When he couldn’t go on, Jake spoke for him instead.
“What happened?”
He couldn’t put it into words, the dread of following Ben’s footprints across the dew-sparkled lawn, tracking through mud and dirt into the woodland beyond the house. There could never be any articulation for the wrenching pain of hearing the single gunshot deep in the trees, shattering the stillness of the morning. Birds squawked, rising up into the lead gray sky, and Samuel remembered falling to his knees, remembered the way his scream never did drown out the ringing and rushing of his blood in his head.
“Samuel…” A hand cupped his cheek, long cool fingers smudging moisture he could barely feel.
“He died.”
A man who meant him harm wouldn’t cry that way over a memory. There wasn’t a whole lot Jake knew about the past day’s events, but of that he was certain. Samuel’s eyes were haunted with an unspeakable pain, and Jake read between the lines of all the things he couldn’t say with those two words.
There was plenty he couldn’t say himself.
I understand.
Were his ghosts the reason Samuel mistook him for Ben in the first place? Could this stranger see the same pain in Jake, the same fears?
He had no answers, and even less comfort to offer, but he couldn’t help closing the distance between them, pressing his lips to Samuel’s.
The last vestige of the crazy idea that this man was a ghost vanished with the first brush of Jake’s mouth against Samuel’s, warm, gentle lips parting in a soft sigh of surprise beneath his. The cheek under his palm was cool, damp, but reassuringly real.
Samuel breathed his name, another whisper of heat against Jake’s lips.
He should have stopped, pulled back, thought about what he’d just done. Samuel didn’t want him, Samuel wanted Ben, wanted whatever ghost of his lover he saw in Jake.
But he didn’t want to stop. Stopping meant having to think, meant having to make the vaguest attempt to wrap his mind around reason and rationale that eluded him.
No stopping. He could live with being Ben for a little while, if it meant Jake could forget and Samuel lost that awful pain in his eyes.
“Jake,” Samuel said again between kisses, as if he’d only just realized that Jake had moved from the couch to sit on the chair’s armrest. It still wasn’t close enough. “What are…?”
“Ssh.” Both hands cradling Samuel’s face, Jake’s kisses became nuzzles, closed-eye mapping of Samuel’s face by touch alone. “This is what you want, right?”
If Samuel protested, Jake didn’t hear it; everything beyond his awareness evaporated the moment Samuel’s arms wrapped around his waist, tugging Jake off the armrest and onto his lap with a fervor that bordered on desperation.
So what if he’s not desperate for me?
It was easy to forget Ben in the heat of Samuel’s kisses. Easy to forget the headache, work, Carrie, the rest of the world. Hands in Jake’s hair, stroking and tangling, Samuel kissed him as though—
As though he’s waited a lifetime for this.
Maybe he had. Dazed by kisses, lips tingling with playful nips and sweet licks, his body drowned out the common sense that suggested exercising caution was a wise move.
Caution be damned. He could lose himself in this. Samuel could chase away the fear.
He heard Samuel murmur something against his lips as Jake slid a hand between their bodies, fingers catching on the soft, clearly expensive fabric of Samuel’s shirt. He hadn’t paid much attention before, but it didn’t much look like something Samuel could pick off the rack today. The high collar looked as though it should have hosted a cravat or some elaborate kind of tie.
It was just as easy to open as any regular shirt, though, much to Jake’s relief.
Samuel hissed a breath when Jake’s hands found skin, and Jake swore he felt an odd electrical charge licking his fingers with every caress.
Hunger, he thought. Just hunger, just a desire for something he’d never get with Carrie. She did the best she knew how, he couldn’t fault her on that, but he’d never feel this way with her. Never feel protected. Never feel as though, for a second, nothing could ever scare him again.
Samuel’s embrace was fierce, protective, and in that moment Jake felt a deep, vicious envy for whoever Ben had been before his demise. Anyone who left a longing this profound, and just threw away any attempt his lover made to help him didn’t deserve better.
He let his hand skim down Samuel’s chest, savoring warm skin that, along with the arousal just nudging the inside of his thigh, told him he was most definitely dealing with a flesh and blood creature.
”Wait.” Samuel pressed one hand, flat-palmed, against Jake’s chest, not quite pushing away. Just getting his attention. “Perhaps you should be resting.”
“I don’t want rest.” Jake settled himself more snugly on Samuel’s lap. If he’d been thinking at all, he’d have realized it felt much too comfortable—much too familiar—in this man’s arms. Maybe he’d been waiting for this for a lifetime too.
I wish I was the one you were looking for.
“Jake,” Samuel said. His name again, not Ben’s. Damn it.
“You don’t have to call me that, you know.” Catching the hands that restrained him, albeit gently and carefully, Jake pinned Samuel’s wrists to the armrests.
“But—“
Grinding his hips down, knees sinking into the gaps in the cushion between Samuel’s thighs and the sides of the chair, Jake dug his fingers harder around Samuel’s wrists. Holding on. Keeping this man near, whatever the consequences.
Please, just make me forget. Just make me remember…
Maybe it was ghosts and magic. Jake didn’t think he’d mind much if it was.
“You can call me Ben.” He nipped the skin beneath Samuel’s earlobe, tasting a crispness like a winter breeze and the tang of some fancy cologne. Nothing a ninety-year-old ghost should taste like. “I won’t mind.”
Samuel stiffened beneath him, but not in the way Jake would have liked. As he shifted on Samuel’s lap again, he could feel the hardness burgeoning against him, feel the heat of Samuel’s body, hear the quickened pace of his breathing.
Yet he’d stopped.
He let go of Samuel’s hands, only for them to wrap around him, pulling him close.
“I’m sorry,” Samuel murmured against the crook of his neck. “Whatever you may believe, this isn’t the reason I sought you out.”
Jake shrugged, suitably mortified at the dawning awareness he’d just flung himself into the lap of a total stranger. And yet… “Doesn’t matter. I can’t give you what you wanted anyway, so…”
“What do you mean?” Samuel leaned back a little, staring up at Jake. “I wanted nothing more than to meet you.”
Disentangling himself, Jake stood, rearranging his clothes. He wanted a shower. He wanted to sleep for a year. He wanted to be far, far away from this man.
“You wanted Ben,” he said, arms wrapping around himself as though to ward off a chill. He walked over to the window, putting distance, and some furniture for good measure, between himself and Samuel. “And I’m not.”
“But—“
“I thought it wouldn’t matter. But it does, doesn’t it?”
It’s not me you want.
“Very well,” Samuel said, voice stiff with forced calm and politeness. “If that’s what you want. I apologize once more for troubling you. If nothing else, please believe your happiness is all that matters to me.”
“My happiness?” Jake managed a weak laugh. “Don’t you mean Ben’s happiness?”
No answer. Jake felt a chill swirling around the room, as if he’d opened a window and let in the cold evening air. It felt a little like being out on a cold, murky morning. For a second he believed that anything he touched in his own apartment might feel cold and damp with dew.
Something cracked, like a gunshot, and the air left Jake’s lungs on a single breath of pure panic.
No. Oh, God no, not now…please, please…
When he turned around, Samuel had vanished.
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