The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings

by Lily Morton

  “Who was coming up the stairs?”

  “Is this my specialist subject?” I ask waspishly.

  The door creaks slightly as if someone is applying pressure from outside. We exchange wide-eyed glances, and then, without saying anything, we press our backs to the door.

  The door handle turns questioningly. It’s a small movement, but it sends chills down my spine.

  “Has this happened to you before?” he asks.

  He locks the door, which probably won’t make much difference to a ghost, but it does make me feel a tiny bit better.

  “No, I mainly see people milling around with various wounds.” I pause to consider. “There’s a lot of weeping and wailing and wringing of hands but not so much attempting of physical harm and intimidation. A bit like Parliament but without the security.”

  “Well, I’m so glad that I’m giving you new experiences.”

  “I’ll make sure that I put it on my TripAdvisor review,” I mutter, smiling as he laughs.

  Silence falls outside and we both listen intently. “Is that it, do you think?” Levi whispers.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so,” I say cautiously. “There’s a really bad atmosphere in the house tonight.”

  “I don’t—” He breaks off as a huge, heavy slam comes from downstairs. “What the fuck?” he mutters. “That’s the front door.” He unlocks the door, and I grab his arm.

  “Where are you going?” I hiss.

  He looks askance. “I’m going downstairs. I don’t need the front door being left open. It’s hardly the message I want to send to burglars. I might as well issue an invitation to please come in and help yourself to my TV.”

  “You can’t go out there,” I whisper, intense fear battering at me. “Anything could happen.”

  “Yes, like my TV going walkabout.”

  “There are worse things that can happen to a person.”

  “Like what?” Levi scoffs.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper furiously. “But I pay attention to my instincts and you should too because they’re more developed than yours. You should also try remembering that the last person who asked questions was found dead at the bottom of your bloody stairs.”

  I want to grab him and shake him because I’m truly frightened tonight. Not of the ghost so much, but oh God, yes, I am shit scared of that. But it’s more that Levi’s pigheadedness might get him hurt and I can’t bear the thought of him hurt like that other man. It’s kept me awake the last few nights. I don’t want to think about why I’m so fucking concerned about him of all men, so I push it to one side.

  Something about my expression must convince him, because he leans back against the door, the fight draining out of him. I quickly flick the lock again in case he changes his mind.

  “So you’re actually saying, Blue, that there are apparently two ghosts here of whom we know next to nothing, and that one of them woke you up to make you come in here out of the way of the other one.”

  “Yes.” He looks incredulous, and I shake his arm. “You know there’s something going on out there. It’s just that you refuse to acknowledge it properly, because if you do, then you have to admit that your previous world view might have a few teeny tiny holes in it.”

  Rational arguments form in his eyes, but he never gets the chance to deliver them. A dragging noise sounds from downstairs along with smaller thuds and bangs.

  “What in the name of fuck is happening now?” he breathes.

  I bite my lip, listening intently as the erratic dragging continues, sending urgency and muted rage through the house. “I don’t know,” I finally admit. “But it feels fucking bad.”

  We lean against the door as the noises continue. I’m scared shitless but relax slightly as I feel his warmth against me. It’s a lot less scary to see and hear things when someone else is close.

  Relaxing allows me to appreciate certain things. Like the heat his tall body gives off along with the scent of washing powder and the faint woodsy scent of his aftershave. Or the way his boxers hang from his narrow hips and how wide his shoulders are and the fact that his nipples are a pearly pink.

  Eventually, I stir as the house falls silent again. I turn my head, searching as if I’m scenting the air. “It’s finished for the time being,” I finally say, breathing out in relief.

  “How do you know it won’t happen again?”

  I shrug. “I can’t describe it properly. The atmosphere’s changed. When a spirit is around, the air feels charged and full of something. Now, it’s calm again.” I pause. “Well, not calm exactly but it doesn’t feel quite so bad.” I reach down to unlock the door and pull it open, only to come up short. “What the fuck?”

  “Is the lock sticking?” he asks.

  I pull it again. “No, it’s unlocked but I just can’t open the door.”

  “Here, let me have a go.” Levi pulls me gently out of the way but the door refuses to budge no matter how hard he pulls it.

  I cough as the air is suddenly filled with the scent of perfume.

  He looks around. “It might be just me, but I think the lady’s trying to keep you in my bedroom, Blue.”

  I snort. “I could do with her when I’m out trying to pull.”

  He laughs wildly. “Oh my God, is this my life now? When did she turn into a bloody pimp?”

  The scent churns and intensifies. “I don’t think Rosalind likes the word pimp,” I observe from my position leaning against the door.

  His abashed expression is fucking adorable. “Sorry, Rosalind,” he whispers. “Can I call her Rosalind?” he asks, looking at me. “Should I call her ‘ma’am’?”

  I shrug, trying not to laugh. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  He blinks. “Erm, she could murder me in my sleep.”

  “Oh that,” I say.

  His laughter turns into a huge yawn. It’s contagious, and I echo it.

  “Stay,” he says sleepily.

  I gape at him. “Are you serious?”

  He nods. “I am.” His eyes go suddenly intent. “I didn’t like you being in that bedroom, anyway. It feels wrong to me. Probably because the poor bugger was killed in his bed. I set one foot in there the first day and knew I wouldn’t be sleeping in there. God knows what it feels like to you.”

  “It was fine up until half an hour ago. Then it was definitely wrong times a hundred thousand million,” I say slowly.

  He shrugs. “Well, then. Look, we’ve got a couple of hours before we’ve got to be up. Let’s go to sleep and talk about this in the morning.” He smiles kindly. “Just sleep. I promise.”

  I consider his earnest face for a long second. “Okay, if you’re sure,” I finally say softly.

  Levi smiles. It’s potent this close to him. His warm brown eyes are flecked with green around the pupil and fringed with thick lashes. When he walks to the bed, I tag along, watching the way the muscles in his torso twist sinuously under the skin. He’s the same golden brown all over, which I can actually say with authority as he’s only wearing a pair of blue and white striped boxers. He’s very fit looking for an artist.

  He slides into the bed and holds up the covers for me and I sigh happily as I flatten myself onto the comfiest mattress I’ve ever felt. Not that there’s been a huge amount of competition. He pulls the covers over me, and I inhale the woodsy scent of him on the cotton.

  “Alright?” he asks. “Do you think we’re okay to sleep now?”

  I snort. “I just want you to know I appreciate how difficult it was for you to say that sentence.”

  He grins but then sobers. “Is it okay? If not, I’ll stay awake so you can sleep. You look knackered, Blue, and at least that way you’d feel safe enough to sleep.”

  I swallow, astonished and not a little touched. “You’d do that for me?”

  He looks startled. “Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  The notion doesn’t seem as absurd as it would have done a few weeks ago. Somehow this man is more my friend th
an some of the people I’ve known for years.

  “We are,” I whisper. “But it’s okay. The house is quiet now.”

  “You said that before.”

  “That wasn’t a normal quiet. This is. This is quiet without being silent. It’s abnormal to be in an environment where it’s totally silent. If that happens, you should get out very quickly.”

  He yawns. “You remind me of a gerbil preparing to run away from the cat.”

  “What a lovely comparison,” I sniff.

  He laughs sleepily. Silence falls for a second and then Levi shifts onto his side, his eyes drowsy but still alert in the moonlight.

  “Do you mind me asking why you’re living in a squat?” he asks.

  I stiffen, but he grabs my hand.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Oh my God, that was so rude. Don’t answer.”

  Ironically, I feel the need to answer with more than my standard fuck off. “No, it’s fine,” I say softly, moving to my side so I can watch him as I talk. It’s extraordinarily intimate in the moonlight. “I’ve been on the streets since I was thirteen.”

  “Thirteen!” he bursts out.

  I shush him, but I don’t know why. The only other occupants of this house don’t exactly need to get their beauty sleep. “My mum died when I was that age.” I sigh. “That’s where I get it from.”

  “What?”

  “The gift.” I raise my fingers in a quote sign. “Only it’s not,” I say fervently. “It drove my mother mad. Literally.” I bite my lip, thinking of her blonde hair and the bright blue eyes that always seemed to be looking a million miles away from me. “She couldn’t control it. She saw them everywhere and it sent her bonkers. She couldn’t cope with it, and while I know enough not to acknowledge ghosts when I’m in public, she didn’t think that way. She’d shout and scream at them and have mumbled conversations. It’s no wonder she couldn’t keep a job.”

  I pause, and then admit, “I think there was something else wrong with her as well. She had really extreme mood swings. One minute she was ecstatic, swinging-on-the-ceiling happy, and the next day she’d be so low she couldn’t get out of bed. Possibly if they could have medicated her properly, she’d have been able to deal with being psychic better.”

  “How long had she been like that?”

  “She was always like that,” I say, hearing the incredulity in my voice.

  “Did she try to get help?”

  “She tried. Unfortunately, telling doctors that she could see people who weren’t there got her sectioned a couple of times and me slung into foster care. After that she wouldn’t trust doctors or anyone in authority. We slipped further and further down and out of the reach of the system. She’d meet blokes and move us in straightaway. We’d be there a few days or maybe a couple of weeks, and then they’d have had enough and on we’d go again.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “That must have been so difficult.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” I admit, feeling my eyes burn at the simple truth in his voice and the sympathy. I’ve never told anyone this apart from Will. I don’t know why it’s all spooling out of me now. “Particularly as I could see them too. I spent a horrible few years thinking I was going to go mad like her.” I still think that, but I’m not going to tell him.

  “So what happened?”

  I swallow hard. “We were staying in a squat in London. She slashed her wrists. I found her in the morning.” I think of the blood pooling rustily in the folds of her sleeping bag, the empty eyes and gaping mouth, and I shudder. I inhale as he slides closer and pulls me tight, hugging me to him.

  “That’s fucking awful,” he mutters. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It is as it is,” I say, trying for coolness and probably hitting inappropriate flippancy. “I ran away that day.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d already been in care and it wasn’t the pleasantest of experiences. I took the cash she had, my blanket and some photos, and I hitched to York.”

  “Why York?”

  I shrug, feeling the hair in his armpit tickle the skin on my shoulder. “I couldn’t go back to Ireland because I hadn’t got the money. York seemed as far away from London and anyone I’d know as I could get.”

  “But you were thirteen,” he bursts out. “How did you even cope?”

  “You know how I coped,” I whisper and he stiffens. I go to withdraw myself from his arms, feeling shame lash me, but his grip tightens.

  “I’m so sorry you had to do that,” he says. “But I’m not sorry at the same time because you’re here and whole. The past is what we do to get to where we are.”

  “How philosophical,” I say tartly. “You should write that on a tea towel. You’d sell a shedload.”

  “Only if it was hundred percent cotton. I cannot have man-made fibres near my skin,” he says pompously, making me laugh. “So, how did you go from that to ghost walks and squats?”

  I snuggle in closer, feeling the warmth of his body seep into mine. I’m always so fucking cold, and he’s so toasty it’s like sleeping next to a fire. “One of my johns, Spud, had a shop. He was a repeat customer and he wasn’t a total wanker like some of them.” I pause. “Well, not at first, anyway. He always wanted me to come when he fucked me and he’d buy me breakfast afterwards, which to me made him Mr Fucking Darcy. I trusted him and told him about being psychic. He introduced me to Fay and said he’d pay me to work in his shop.” I shake my head. “I was ecstatic,” I say slowly, feeling sleep pulling at me. “I have no qualifications at all, and I’m thick.”

  “Not judging from the titles of those books I carried back here. They weighed more than your other stuff.”

  “I like reading. But it doesn’t mean much in a world where I don’t exist. No NI number, no qualifications, nothing. I’m nobody. With the money Spud was paying me, I was able to get a room in a house that a friend of his owned. I loved that place,” I say nostalgically. “It was small, but it was all mine. I bought my own bed linen and I used to lie in bed in the morning watching the oak tree tap its branches against the window.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrug. “The usual. It didn’t last. I told you. I said I didn’t want to do the psychic stuff for him anymore. He wanted me to say stuff, lead people to buy stuff, or get them to give me personal details. When I realised he and a mate of his were then burgling these people, I walked out. I couldn’t afford my room anymore, so I was chucked out and back to the next squat I went.” His arm tightens, but he doesn’t say anything, which I’m glad of. I don’t need false platitudes. I never have. “An old hook-up was working the ghost tours.”

  He snorts. “Small Box Boy.”

  I laugh. “That’s him. Wanker,” I say with feeling. “Anyway, I signed on to work for the same company and then realised I’d make more money if I went on my own, so I did. Then one day I happened to look through a window and lo and behold, I saw my prince, naked apart from a dish cloth.”

  “Tea towel,” he corrects me.

  “And he swept me off my feet and made me set up home with him. My head is fairly twirling,” I say in a funny voice, and he laughs.

  Silence falls, and I’m just dropping off to sleep when his hand squeezes mine.

  “Thank you for telling me that,” he whispers. “I don’t think it was easy.”

  “Nothing worthwhile ever is,” I say softly. He mulls that over and I nudge him. “You can tell me more of your story next. I only know about the wanker boyfriend.”

  “It’s a date,” he says sleepily and I nestle in closer to him, feeling his arm tighten.

  In some strange way, he’s already my friend. I don’t have enough of them, and Levi is different from those who came before. He’s special in some way. But he’s not my prince. He’s not my boyfriend or even a hook-up. I need to remember that because, knowing life as I do, this will end before it ever begins.

  It doesn’t stop me curling into him and pretending for a little minute that he’s my bloke and this is o
ur house, and we’re just a couple lying curled together warm and safe. Then tomorrow we’ll get up and go to work and argue about who did the laundry and whose turn it is to cook dinner, and then we’ll go to bed again. Together.

  It’s a surprisingly sweet thought, and it stays with me until I slide into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 8

  Levi

  I come awake slowly the next morning, the covers piled around me warm and softly scented with peaches. I open one eye cautiously. Why does my bed linen smell of peaches and why is my pillowcase stained blue? Then memory dawns and I groan.

  “Fuck me,” I grunt, throwing myself on my back and rubbing my eyes.

  A warm chuckle sounds from the door, and I open my eyes to see Blue standing there watching me. Dressed in his big black jumper and skinny jeans, he looks the same but somehow different.

  I narrow my eyes. Same hair. Same clothes. Same attitude. Or not. He grins at me and that’s when I see it. He’s lost a tiny bit of his cocky demeanour. He looks scrubbed clean and softer somehow. Like he washed a layer of that suspicious attitude off in the shower.

  I feel a wave of warmth wash through me and swallow it down. “How do you feel this morning?”

  “Fine,” he says happily, forcing a mug into my hand. “This is for you.”

  “Oh God, I need this,” I say fervently and take a sip. “That’s lovely. What did you do to it?” I ask and can’t help the surprise in my voice.

  “Oh, that’ll be the Rohypnol.”

  “What?” I gape at him.

  Blue breaks into laughter. “I added cinnamon. Nothing else.” He shrugs, looking gratified as he watches me drink. “I used to do casual work in a coffee shop. Got paid under the counter.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  He shrugs. “It was alright until the fact that I was paid under the counter left the owner with the impression that I’d thrown my arsehole into the deal as well.”

  I gape at him, feeling anger rush through me. “What the fuck?” I sit up straight. “Give me the wanker’s name.”