Ascension (2 page)

Sev sat down beside him and touched his nape, brushing aside Ro’s long hair to do so. “Look, we just worry. We only want you happy, just like your mama and dad do. They love you, but feel like you’re staying here because you feel obligated.”

“I don’t.” He did, but that wasn’t all of it. His mother’s diabetes had ravaged her body over the past decade. The amputations and dialysis were draining what had remained of her will to live, Ro could see it. So could his father Roger and Ro’s siblings.

And so could Sev. Ro saw the sadness Sev tried to hide. It had etched lines around his eyes and mouth, and dimmed the enthusiasm that used to shine so bright in Sev’s eyes.

“Someone has to be here for them,” Ro finally said when he couldn’t stand another moment of silence. “One of their kids should, at least, and I won’t ask that of my sister or brother. They have dreams that don’t involve staying in McKinton, and I really do like my job.”

“But—” Sev began and Ro was done arguing.

“No, Sev. I don’t have the drive, the…the ambition that I’d need to do something else. I’m comfortable here. It’s where I want to be, even if that means living with my parents. They need me, no matter what they say.” Truly, the only thing he’d wanted was to be like Sev, but he wasn’t, not really. Sev could have been his father, they were so alike in looks, both on the short side with slender builds and dark glossy black hair. Well, Ro’s was natural, while he suspected, now, that Sev’s had some help courtesy of L’Oréal. Sev was also more muscular, but they had the same green-grey eyes and honey-coloured skin. Celadon, that was the name of the colour, if he wanted to get technical about it. Sharing those traits with Sev had given Ro so much hope that he’d inherit more things from Sev, but he hadn’t, and that was that.

“Let’s just enjoy our meal and stop harping on him,” Laine rumbled. “Sorry, Ro, since I’m the one that started it.”

Ro rolled his neck once Sev moved his hand. He got a good pop out of it and grinned when that sound made Laine wince. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. I’m over it.” He cast a teasing glance at Sev. “So, how long have you been dying that grey?”

Ro grinned as Sev shook his fork at Laine. “You told!”

Satisfied with the distraction he’d created, Ro sat back and enjoyed the show.

Chapter Two

The thing about being dead was that he really lost track of time. Understandable, Conner supposed, considering time didn’t affect him anymore.

Well, not him personally, as in his spirit form. But it did affect him in other ways, like when he had to watch those he’d left behind in life. To see them age, and grow frail—

Laine would shit bricks if he knew what Conner was thinking. Laine wouldn’t know, though. Conner could communicate with his former lover to an extent, but, for the most part, the art of conversation was lost between the veil of the living and the dead.

Severo, Laine’s partner—and Conner couldn’t have picked a better-suited man for Laine had he tried…which, okay, he might have meddled some—could communicate with spirits somewhat. The bond with Conner was the strongest, and that was owing in part to Conner’s determination to have a relationship with Laine. To do so entailed having one with Sev, and maybe Conner had been a little—or a lot—jealous at first, but Sev had come to mean a lot to Conner over the years. Plus, Sev loved Laine,
really
loved him like Conner wished he had before he’d died.

Still, Conner had loved Laine enough to die for him, although if he’d been given a choice, he’d have lived and kept Laine safe, too. Whether or not they’d have made it together for the rest of their lives, Conner couldn’t say. Sometimes he thought not, because they’d been so closeted, but who was to say how Fate would have played out if Conner hadn’t been murdered by a stalker who’d wanted to possess Laine?

It didn’t help to wonder. Conner had long since stopped doing so because watching Laine and Sev had finally stopped making him hurt with that sharp edge of want, and had started comforting him. It was good to see them happy and loving each other. Hot, too, although Conner tried not to spy on them when they were having sex…now. He had been a bit of a Peeping Tom for a while, but he knew Laine and Sev hadn’t minded. In fact, he thought once they’d got past the idea of him being Laine’s ex, him watching had added a bit of spice now and then.

Now, it was hard for Conner to watch them. He’d started noticing things like the almost solid grey of Laine’s hair and the wrinkles lining Sev’s face, although the man battled them with every cream he could find. They weren’t so deep or numerous, but they were there, along with strands of grey that Sev dyed black every month so they would match the rest of his hair.

At first Conner had been amused, and had taken great pleasure in teasing Sev, hiding his dye and spreading his face cream on the mirror to look like…well, lots of things. Conner could easily get restless, distracted, and once he’d got the hang of making parts of himself substantial enough to move things in the living world, he’d kind of gone overboard.

He was just astounded because it seemed like yesterday that he’d been thinking about how he used to watch Laine and Sev and admire their firm bodies and their sheer livingness. How many years had he been dead now? Conner looked at the table where Laine had left the newspaper spread out.

Good old Laine, he’ll never upgrade to reading the news online. He used to get print smudges on his cheek and chin when—
Conner stopped the thought more out of habit than anything else. Once it would have made him ache with regret and lost love, but those sensations had long ago ceased occurring, maybe because he had stopped letting himself think on what he’d lost when he’d been murdered.

That whole nasty episode wasn’t something he’d ever forget. He wondered if he’d have felt any better about dying if he’d known spirits existed back then. Conner had known he wouldn’t live to escape his situation before he actually died. It had been so obvious in the glee his killer took in torturing him. Sometimes he could still feel that knife piercing his skin and muscle so, so slowly, trailing agony behind it and racing terror in front of it. Conner had lived for hours under that sadistic bastard’s blade. He had literally got off on torturing Conner to death.

That last probably explained why, though he’d enjoyed watching Laine and Sev and some other people having sex, it hadn’t really occurred to him that he could do any such thing. After all, if, when you died, you were free from physical pain—except in your memory—and able to zip around the world,
and
get to fuck? Where was the downside to dying then? Granted, not everyone who died turned into a lingering spirit, but some did.

What would happen if two lovers, completely devoted to each other, died, and only one was a spirit? Conner shivered, more of a wispy movement for him but the same concept, he thought. He didn’t know where the people went who didn’t hang around post-death. And he didn’t want to find out. Conner liked being where he was. Going somewhere…else scared him.

Maybe that was why he was still on the planet.

Conner’s musings ceased when Sev and his nephew came in through the front door. Conner had had what he called ‘jumpy brain’ lately, his mind not being able to focus on any one thing for long.

For the first several years after his death, Conner had been unable to concentrate for long. He just wanted to have fun, but he’d been able to focus when it’d been important to do so. Death had made him more of a flighty person than he’d been in life. Once he’d realised that, it had started to bug him. He didn’t want to be vapid in form and personality both.

So he’d started trying to have more substance, started paying attention to those around him more. Part of it was that he’d taken an innocent spirit under his wing, so to speak, and the rest was that he couldn’t deny the changes in those living people he cared about.

Just like his worries and observations about Laine and Sev aging, and yes, whether or not those two would get to be together in death, either in spirit form or wherever they’d go after. Conner worried, but he just couldn’t focus on it. To do so made him jittery. He’d even dropped Sev’s ridiculously expensive eye cream a few days ago when he’d just meant to hide it behind the towels. Jesus, Sev could shriek.

He could also laugh and sound just as young as he’d been all those years ago when Conner had been a lost and terrified spirit with a message he’d needed to get to Laine about who had killed him. Hearing that laugh made Conner warm inside, so he floated up to the ceiling, his spiritual form no more substantial than the air that he let hold him up. Less, actually, he guessed. He’d always sucked at physics. All he could say for sure was he was up.

And that it wasn’t just Sev’s laugh that made Conner want to hang around and observe for a while. Though it made him feel like a skeevy pervert, he couldn’t force himself to disappear when Sev’s nephew, Rogelio Martinez, was around. The boy was beautiful, and Conner knew he wasn’t really a boy, having had an eighteenth birthday party some time ago. Years, but how many, he couldn’t remember. Enough that Rogelio’s form, though lithe and on the short side—yeah, even in death, Conner wouldn’t have admitted that to the kid—was obviously that of an adult. It showed in the slight delineation of muscle and the confidence with which Rogelio carried himself.

When Conner was around him lately, all the memories of arousal that he had suppressed tried to come back to the surface. He’d learnt that touching another spirit felt like he remembered it did when touching as living beings. He just hadn’t applied that to a sexual manner of touching. Possibly because his main companion in the spirit world was Stefan, who, despite having died as an adult at nineteen, still seemed like a kid to Conner.

Part of that was because Stefan had been… Conner searched for the politically correct term. Things had changed a lot since he’d died, and he liked trying to keep current.
Intellectually challenged?
Conner shrugged. Stefan didn’t seem so different now, as if death had freed him of the physical limitations of his body and mind. He’d always be a kid to Conner, though.

“And so will Rogelio,” Conner murmured, needing to hear himself say it. Sev cocked his head and frowned and Conner slapped a hand to his own forehead. He knew Sev could hear him on some level. Sometimes he heard him clearly. Other times, like today, hopefully, not so much.

Sev held a hand up to shush Rogelio, who glanced nervously around the room and whispered, “Is
he
here?”

That wasn’t a thrill he felt at hearing Rogelio enquire about him. The kid wasn’t interested in him. For God’s sake, he was
dead!
That was probably it. Morbid fascination on Rogelio’s part. Conner wasn’t around the kid constantly, because even dead, he had a life. So to speak. He’d deliberately kept himself from teasing Rogelio, because—well, he wasn’t sure why. Probably because it was Sev and Laine who were Conner’s friends, and Rogelio had been an awkward teenage boy when he’d moved to McKinton. God, Conner wasn’t sure of anything right then as Rogelio turned his head towards him.

Rogelio’s eyes widened when he looked to where Conner was floating. Conner twitched, feeling that gaze like a heated breeze over his skin. It was too weird, too…intense for him. Conner zipped himself right out of the house, popping in instead on Laine in his office.

Laine, still handsome, still sheriff, but damn, he was sure looking his age. Conner tried to figure out how old that was exactly but gave up when he spotted Laine twirling his tin star badge on the desk top. That was Conner’s job!

It didn’t take much more than a thought to have the star shooting out of Laine’s hand and doing slow, steady circles in front of Laine’s scowling face.

“Conner, I’m trying to think here.” Laine smiled when he said it, though, and leant back in his chair as he watched the star. “That’s a neat trick. I’ve never gotten tired of it after all these years. You should do that at my retirement party. Scare the shit out of the incoming sheriff.”

Great, I’ve established myself as a cheesy entertainment source in my afterlife.
Conner swatted the star into the trash can, put out at being seen as nothing more than a party trick.

“Aw, stop pouting. You weren’t this moody before,” Laine drawled. He leaned over the arm of his chair and plucked the star out of the trash bin. “You know you mean more to me than a lot of living people.”

Before.
Conner hated that word. ‘Before’ meant when he had been a living, breathing man. When he had been bound by gravity and morals and his own physical restraints. ‘Before’ meant what he’d lost, and he couldn’t dwell on that. It caused a confusing mix of emotions that he didn’t want to trudge through. He did stop pouting. There wasn’t any point to it. Laine was Laine, and he’d never been deliberately mean or particularly gifted with words.

“I think Matt’ll make a good sheriff, don’t you?”

Conner sat on the edge of Laine’s desk. He reached over and tapped Laine’s hand, a bare touch that Laine probably only felt as a tingling sensation. It was enough, though. Laine smiled crookedly and pinned the star back onto his shirt. “Sev’s been wanting to go places, you know. Well, I’m sure you do know, much as you and him do your chatting thing. He’s nervous about leaving his sister and them behind, but I think they’ll be all right.”

‘Them’ being not only Alma but Roger and Rogelio as well. Conner supposed he could pop in on them more often. There wasn’t much he could do besides that. It wasn’t like any of Sev’s family had his talent for communicating with the dead.

Conner remembered the way Rogelio had just been looking at him—well, maybe not at him, but still—just a few minutes ago. That had to be pure luck. Rogelio hadn’t ever seemed to be sensitive to his presence before then, not unless Sev or Laine mentioned Conner being there. Or unless Conner decided to goose his friends or some other such prank in front of Sev’s family.

At least Sev’s sister Alma had finally quit crossing herself every time anyone mentioned Conner’s name. Jesus, he wasn’t evil incarnate, just a dead guy who got bored too often. Conner shivered thinking of Alma and her body mutilated by necessity as the disease ravaged her. It wouldn’t be long before she joined him, and he couldn’t decide whether it’d be a good thing or not for Sev to be there when that happened.