Into the Gloaming

by Mercy Celeste

  He heard his own feet crunch in the snow. Followed by the crunch of four other feet. The awe of the moment passed as the cold penetrated the light jacket, and he slipped on the ice, but a strong hand was there to keep him from falling.

  The row of apartment windows was all dark. The windows were all closed and if anyone had come home last night, they were sound asleep now. He let Heath walk him the last few feet to the covered walkway. Jemma’s heels clicking on the concrete the only sound. Until the door at the far end of the building opened and the long, lanky body topped with tousled red hair stumbled outside. One of the girls leaned out to hook an arm around his neck. He kissed her. Then the other one.

  Sharp, needle-like shards of pain shot through Austin’s chest. Rory stuffed his hands in the pockets of the jeans he’d been wearing just a few hours ago. There was lipstick on his neck, and… teeth marks. He looked… well fucked.

  Austin shook off the hand holding his elbow and letting himself into his apartment. Alone, he locked the door behind him.

  He grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge and left the cork on the counter. There was no way in hell he was going to face this coming day sober. He took a long slug and stripped the borrowed clothing from his body, leaving a trail to his bedroom. Fuck the concussion.

  Fuck Rory Callaghan.

  And all the fucking ghost horses he rode in on.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  On the Ninth day of Christmas, my true love…

  Was nowhere to be found.

  The snow had stopped the following morning when Austin dragged himself out of his misery cave. The sun was out in force. He blinked, wondering for what seemed like an interminable moment what that brilliant light in the sky was. He wasn’t hungover. Maybe just a little. He’d stopped drinking sometime around nine yesterday morning and passed out. His phone rang so many times he almost threw it against a wall before he remembered he could mute the damn thing.

  So, he muted the thing. And slept through three or four attempts to break his door down before he answered the phone and told them to all go fuck themselves.

  He had to go to work on Wednesday. There was no choice in that. Or he could find his boss and tender his resignation and be packed and out of the state in a couple of hours. Well, three. Okay, four. It was a long drive to another state from where they were out here in the middle of nowhere Georgia.

  The ground was still covered in white as he made his way carefully through the courtyard, picking out cobblestones that were in the sun and no longer covered in ice to hopscotch across.

  Opening the back door, the sound of Uptown Funk blasting from somewhere in the back, he swiped his good hand over his face. He should have shaved. He just didn’t feel like it. And it wasn’t like he had to be clean-shaven to keep the job. Maybe he would grow a beard. Maybe he’d grow his hair out. Maybe he’d go live in the mountains and shout at people to get off his land or he’d blow ‘em to smithereens.

  He felt like blowing something to smithereens.

  The coffee pot was still mostly full when he got to his office.

  “There’s a box of pastry from Cup O’ Joe in the workroom.” He heard Jemma shout from somewhere in the house. He muttered something in reply, his stomach growling louder than his grumblings. He hadn’t eaten much since New Year’s Eve.

  A doughnut would be good.

  He filled his mug and dragged his oversized wool coat off and hung it on the rack by his office door. He pulled up the sleeve of the old sweatshirt he’d butchered to fit over his cast and started his computer. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He had paperwork to do. He had a work schedule to make for the grand opening in two days. He had to figure out what he was going to do when the three interns went back to school in a couple of weeks.

  He didn’t think about Rory.

  Or he tried not to think about Rory. He knew Rory slept with women. He knew Rory would sleep with more than one person at a time. He knew Rory would sleep with men and women at the same time. Rory’s sex life had never been an issue. Rory’s sex life wasn’t an issue now.

  Why in the hell was he pissed about Rory having a three-way with two of his interns? It wasn’t like Austin was going to sleep with either of them.

  It wasn’t like Austin hadn’t just woken up in bed with someone else.

  But they’d slept. Not SLEPT… together.

  Somehow, that didn’t ring true. He didn’t remember actual sex. He didn’t remember taking off his clothes. Or opening the windows. Or climbing into bed. Or kissing or biting or… well, his asshole would bear witness that they hadn’t gone that far, but… he felt like he’d reached some type of happy ending. He felt like he’d reached several happy endings. There were no condoms. And no mess that he could find. But… he had the markings of a very active experience, all over his body.

  Apparently, Heath liked to bite. Austin felt his face flame at the memory of teeth on parts of his anatomy… but he couldn’t find an actual memory of it. He remembered a freckled hand. He remembered two pale-skinned, freckled hands, all over Heath’s body. He spread the fingers of his good hand and studied his nails. No freckles. He needed a manicure. But his nails weren’t dirty, nor were they bitten to the quick.

  He shivered. The room was surprisingly cold.

  His computer showed a bright yellow screen with a swirling warning that updates were being uploaded and not to turn off the computer.

  “Well, fuck,” he growled and shoved the keyboard tray back into its slot and pushed his chair away from his desk.

  “Language.” Jemma hustled into the room, her long, lush hair pulled into a tight ponytail on top of her head. She wore a pair of cat’s-eye glasses, pink cat’s-eye glasses, a pair of faded boyfriend jeans and an oversized pink tunic sweater with a turquoise shirt beneath, the collar popped and the shirttails showing below the sweater. She looked like an escapee from a John Hughes film. Her jaw was set, and her eyes sparkled with quiet judgmental anger when she plopped a cranberry muffin on the desk in front of him. “Eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.” He was, but he wouldn’t tell her that. She wasn’t his boss, mother, or wife. Thank god for all the above.

  “You’re a cranky ass bitch and I’m not going to spend the day having you take that out on me, or anyone else.” Jemma slid into the chair across from him. She looked tired. “Don’t make me force-feed you.”

  “I’d pay to see you try,” he said to be difficult as he stifled the smile that threatened to play on his lips. Maybe he was bluffing. Maybe he wanted to see what she would do.

  “You’d like it too much, wouldn’t you?” She crossed one leg over her knee. A pair of turquoise ballerina slippers on her delicate feet completed her transformation from sex kitten to eighties teen librarian. She lifted one well-defined eyebrow above her sexy librarian glasses and smirked at him. He smirked back. “I think I might have misjudged you, Oz.”

  “That’s Doctor Oz to you, Miss Ringwald.”

  “I’ll be Doctor Ringwald in a few months, so bite my ass, Oz.” She was extra sassy this morning.

  Too sassy for this damn early. Austin slumped over his desk and fiddled with the wrapper on the muffin. He wasn’t interested in eating. “I’m thinking there might be a job opening when you’re ready.”

  “Who says I’m interested in coming to work here? Who says that I haven’t gotten any serious job offers somewhere that isn’t this little backwater museum?” Her tone was defensive, her eyebrows arched above her glasses for all of three minutes, not that Austin timed her stare. “Oh. Honey, you don’t mean as a docent, do you?” Austin didn’t answer. He stared at the muffin as if it would jump off the plate and into his stomach with no effort on his part. “But why? Because you slept with the boss or because Rory got pegged by the lesbians next door?”

  Austin had no answer to that. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat.

  “Okay, so both.” Jemma reached for his muffin and peeled the wrapper off and pushed the plate cl
oser to him. “Eat something. There’s no one here but you and me right now, and I swear that anything you say stays between us.”

  That opened his eyes? It was past nine. The entire house should be alive with people doing their damn jobs. “Where is the boss man?”

  She let her gaze drop to her lap. Her shoulders slumped. “He left. Yesterday afternoon. I’m sorry.”

  Austin heard her unspoken accusation. He’d left because Austin had gotten his knickers in a twist about Rory after he’d just slept with the man. He hadn’t even stopped to think how Heath might feel when he’d stormed off like that. He also hadn’t checked to see who he’d cussed out on the phone when he’d finally had enough. Austin ignored the muffin and the coffee. He felt sick.

  “And the others?”

  “The tea room is open for lunch later. Donna and Britney resigned and went back to Emory. The grand opening has been delayed, so they felt no reason to stay. Mr. Cortlandt agreed and followed them out.”

  “Wait, what? What do you mean the grand opening is delayed? When was this decided? And why? Because we slept together?” Austin lifted the plate and searched his desk for anything that might shed some light on… whether or not he had a job.

  “I think it had more to do with the discussion we had the other night. We spent yesterday walking through the house. He said the two of you came inside because you saw someone on the third floor. He wanted to make sure… well, he didn’t say ghost. But I’m reading between the lines here. There were no signs of intruders. Everything is accounted for. Even the silver in the dining room is still where it should be. But… he’s not sure a museum will work. He’s going to speak with his board and maybe decide to consider a B&B with a museum, instead of a separate hotel. I don’t know. He wasn’t talking to me as much as to himself. He never mentioned you.” She informed him, almost haltingly. As if she feared how he would take the news.

  “But… Austin, I think you hurt him. I mean, if you’re not in love with Rory, you have a funny way of showing it. And that’s all I will say on the subject. Not my business. I’m here for another week, mostly because I don’t have an urge to get back to Atlanta. And because ghosts fascinate the fuck out of me. We need to get a psychic to come in. I swear there’s some weird shit going on in this house. Now eat the damn muffin and haul your ass into the workroom, I need your help with a crate.”

  Austin played with the muffin, crumbling it on his plate, as she waltzed out of his office. His stomach growling in protest, but he wasn’t ready to eat. He looked around the office, wondering what was… off.

  The music changed to something he didn’t recognize, still fast, still loud, still very upbeat.

  He dumped the muffin in the trash. He didn’t like cranberry. He grabbed his coffee and went out to the workroom where Jemma was bopping to the music, her ponytail bouncing.

  “That’s on loud enough to wake the dead,” he shouted over the din. And before he finished speaking, the song ended… abruptly. Jemma stopped moving, her eyes flashed with anger, as she glared at him. Then over to the speaker system in the back of the room. Nothing came on to replace the last song. Dead silence rang in the house. “I didn’t touch it,” he whispered because he didn’t dare speak louder. Or move.

  “I know you didn’t. It has a glitch?” She shouted back, her voice pitched three octaves higher. “Or the battery died. That is probably it. I didn’t check to see if the speaker was charged. Why the hell would anyone… would you stay in a haunted house? I mean overnight?”

  Austin forced himself to relax. He tried to tell himself there was no such thing as ghosts. That there was a perfectly rational explanation for the music stopping. There was an explanation for everything. The woman in the attic was a drunken hallucination. He’d imagined sex in the upstairs bedroom. More than once. The horses… uh… asbestos in the walls?

  “I’ve been here alone for months and…” He wanted to say he’d never had cause to think there was anything or anyone but him in the house. He couldn’t. Even before he saw the ghost version of Heath just around Halloween, he’d felt… not alone. “Whatever it is, it’s getting stronger. With each new person, it seems… more…” He didn’t want to say the word.

  “Sinister.” She finished for him. The music came back on, picking up exactly where the song had been as if nothing ever happened. Jemma raced for her phone on the worktable and turned off the music from the source. She pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. A soft sob, all he heard. “Yeah. It’s… freaky as shit being here alone. Even in broad daylight. It freaked me out how quiet it is. And I heard things moving around upstairs.”

  “Things?” Austin set his mug on the table in front of her and went to inspect the Bluetooth speakers. He turned off the power and checked to see if it was plugged in anywhere. It wasn’t. “Like what? Mice? Bats?... Footsteps?”

  “Like furniture moving across the floor. Like a rocking chair creaking. Like… I don’t know, Oz, like people are living up there. And I swear to god I heard a baby crying. Not today, but… yesterday, after everyone left. It was getting dark while I locked up and I heard one… screaming... Like it was in distress.” She stood up and went to the wall of windows, wrapping her arms around her chest as if she was trying to comfort herself. “Rory came in and it stopped crying. He didn’t hear it, so I thought I was going crazy.”

  Austin took a donut from the pastry box and forced himself to take a bite. He watched her while he chewed. His coffee was going cold in the chilly room. He drank a long gulp anyway and waited for her to turn to face him.

  She leaned against the window, the winter backdrop behind her… her long hair flowing, her dress gracefully draped the curves barely contained by her corset. She said something, her voice… soft, feminine, accented, sweet. She called him a name that wasn’t his and Austin blinked rapidly, the donut threatening to come up as the room moved around him.

  “Austin? Are you okay?”

  Jemma leaned over him when he opened his eyes, her eighties era librarian look back in place. She followed him to the men’s room and handed him a wet paper towel when he finished vomiting.

  He rinsed his mouth and tried not to watch while she used the urinal. As if watching a girl piss standing up was the strangest thing he’d seen… in the last ten minutes.

  “So, spill it,” she said when they were both washed up and back to their normal selves. Unlike over at the pub, the men’s room in the non-historic part of the house felt normal.

  He leaned against the wall, the same as he had the other day in the pub, and crossed his arms over his chest, much the same as Jemma had done before she turned into someone else.

  “Look, Austin, I know you saw something. You’ve done it before and had a bad case of dizziness after. Your face went white as a sheet. Like you watched my head explode or something, so stop lying or hiding or whatever it is and tell me what you just saw in the workroom.”

  Three days ago, Austin had no idea what Jemma had hidden in her pants. Three days ago, he wouldn’t have said the next words out of his mouth. “You. You were a woman. Well, a girl. But…” He stopped talking when her eyes narrowed.

  “I am a woman, you dick,” she hissed at him.

  “I know that, Jemma. I am trying to be sensitive, and answer your question, and you just took a piss, standing up, and I’ve never been inside a pair of panties before, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have little dicks in them. So, do you want me to answer you or be politically correct right now? I can’t be both. I can support your gender and your sexuality and… you don’t have breasts. But you did. Ample ones. And a tiny waist and round hips, and delicate features… and you couldn’t have been much older than… a teenager. I saw a teenage girl in a satin dress with décolletage and corset and cleavage and your face and your hair and you were upset and crying and… I smelled pipe tobacco. Then everything became…” he went back to the toilet to throw up again.

  “And I am so sick of feeling like I’m being swung around in an out-of-con
trol carnival ride.” He couldn’t look at her when he cleaned up the second time. He was ashamed of the way he’d spoken to her.

  “I smelled pipe tobacco, too,” she mumbled. Hurt still in her voice. “And… I took hormones pretty much all my life until a couple years ago. I was going to transition. I still may one day. Right now… It’s not little.”

  “It is very cold in here,” Austin said. She laughed. Her pretty eyes sparkling as if he’d said the funniest thing.

  “It is. But… you’re not my type. I like my men a little more—”

  “Like Rory?” He hadn’t meant to bring up his friend. He tried not to think about Rory and Jemma, especially now that he knew Jemma could be everything Rory wanted in a lover.

  “After he’s been the filler in a Donna-Britney sandwich? No. Thank. You. I have standards. Besides… he likes a big dick, honey, one that knows how to scratch that itch neither one of those bitches with their strap on dildos ever will.”

  Austin went back to leaning and tried not to imagine Rory on his knees for another man, much less a woman… or women. He never asked how Rory liked his men. They’d dated the same guys more than once. He’d just never thought Rory wanted the same thing from them Austin did. “I’m not in love with him. I just…” He raked his hand through his hair and tried not to meet her gaze. “Love him. And maybe I want him. And maybe I’m jealous. And maybe I have no idea why I’m jealous. I could have had him. So many times. And… what do you mean strap on dildos?”

  “Honey, those two tramps double-peened your boy until he couldn’t stand up straight.”

  “They told you that?” Did women discuss their sexual conquests the way men do? “Holy, shit.”