Page 18 of The Prestley Ghost
He explained. Alex listened. John explained more, especially the theoretical bits. Alex nodded along, sunbeams flickering through him like light through stained glass, but was surprisingly quiet, even diffident.
John said, plainly observing this reticence, “Of course we’re assuming that’s what you’d want. We could try to send you on—apologies if that’s tactless—if you’d prefer.”
“No, I…would like this. I like the sound of it. Being able to touch the world, again…” Alex ran a hand through his hair, made a vague gesture. “I love the world. I don’t want you both to put yourselves in danger for me.”
“It’s sort of the family business,” John said. “Though I’m not the one most at risk, and yes, that bothers me.”
“Don’t,” Charles said. “It’s fine.”
“I’m on your brother’s side,” Alex said, to him. “I do want—I want to say yes. But I don’t want to see you hurt, when it’s something that doesn’t have to be done…don’t do this for me.” He did the small gesture again, restless. His old-fashioned shoes moved through blades of grass beside his own grave, shifting. “I can just…be more invisible. Not cause a problem. You can keep your promise. Say you’ve dealt with the ghost.”
“No,” Charles said this time. His Alex should not be sad, resigned, lonely. Not ever. Not when he could do something about it. “It’s for you. And for me. I want to try this. Can I speak to you, for a moment?”
Alex nodded. John tactfully moved a step away; Charles held out his own hand, waited until chilly ghostly fingers pressed against his own, and held on. He had not bothered with gloves; he was dressed in plain trousers and simple blue and brown, versus Alex’s fifty-year-old glittering finery. He was a medium and the child of folklorists, celebrated and notorious but unwealthy and untitled; Alex had been the heir to a viscount’s name.
But he was here now. And Alex had said as much: that Charles had found him, seen him, talked to him, not been afraid.
He asked, softly, “Is it that it’s difficult, thinking about coming back? To a world that’s…not what it was?” Those friends, long gone. That family. The knowledge of pain and death and loneliness, once already.
“No. Or only a little.” Alex’s fingers—that cold grip—tightened. “I do love the world. I always did. And this new century—you’ve got indoor plumbing, for one. And better roads, and new teacups, and more books, and fashion—though I have to say I miss the colors; you’d look lovely in fuchsia or cerulean and bronze striped silk—but I want to see what it all becomes. I want to say yes, Charles.”
“Then let us do this.”
“I don’t know,” Alex whispered. “I don’t know. I’m scared.” His eyes were less sure, more shaken, than Charles had ever seen them: not laughing, teasing, flirting, in control. Searching, instead. Seeing a future, when he’d been used to existing as the past.
“I know it’ll be different,” Charles told him. “And I don’t know that it’ll work. I do want to try.”
“If it hurts you—”
“I’m good at what I do. And…” He lifted Alex’s diaphanous hand, kissed it. Heart in the words. “I want to try to do something that’s about life. Restoration. Not just moving on—not that that’s not a form of cleansing; it is. But I think it’s not what you need, and if we can do this, if I can do this—it’s healing. So I want to.”
“I’m also afraid,” Alex said, a bit more unsteadily, “that—after you’ve just said that, the way you want to help people, you and your brother—but you, Charles, you’re so good, you try so hard and you take on such care, for everyone, and I want the whole world and I want you, I want to be with you—I think I love you but I wasn’t very good at love the first time around, I was selfish and frivolous and—and what if we do this and I’m not good enough for someone like you—”
“Alex.”
“You said it would involve an anchor, a tie to you, and what if you decide you can’t bear being tethered to me—”
“Alex,” Charles interrupted. “You said you love me.”
Alex blinked, unhappily. Charles wasn’t sure that ghosts could cry, but the glimmer of emotion streaked those tawny gold depths. “I think I do—I know how I feel, I know you’re the best person I’ve ever met and you make me want to deserve you and to—try to save the world with you, and to tell you you’re incredible when you need to hear it—but I also know I’ve only just met you and for half that time you were thinking of ways to banish me…”
“And you made me smile,” Charles said. “When I’d forgotten how. I know it’s quick. But it isn’t, really. You were here waiting for me. And I saw you, and you saw me. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Ghosts, and mediums.”
“Finding out what we need.” Alex’s eyes were happier, in the way of a dawning sunrise; he laughed briefly, and a whisperof cool scent—snow, wind, marble, old-fashioned bergamot and orange-blossom—fluttered past Charles’s cheek. “The place we’re meant to end up.”
“A ghost and a medium,” Charles said. “And some sort of joke about fluidic substance, or whatever that theory is. I’m not a theoretician. I just do…what feels right.”
“This feels right.” Alex kissed him, then: up on the ghost equivalent of tiptoes, a wafting upward, making them the same height. A press of lips to lips, ice and sweetness. Charles could almost touch him: hands at Alex’s waist, over those embroidered fashions; a hint of presence to the touch, like catching snowflakes or a drop of melting sugar. A whisper of awareness, along tingling skin. “And by all means let’s discuss fluidic substance. You said you like depraved and decadent poets, after all. And if this works, it sounds as if I’ll be much more…physical.”
“Promise?”
John called over, leaning on the gate in a stripe of sunlight, “I’ve got theories about corporeality and manifestation, but that doesn’t mean I’d like to see them involving my brother’s sex life!”
“I would!” Alex called back, swinging that way. “Just so you’re aware!”
“And this was my idea,” John said, half to himself; but he was smiling, too.
“Alex,” Charles said, not so much a question as simply wanting to hear it again.
