What Remains by Bailey Bradford (to read list txt) 📕

and Chris and Miriam across from him on the couch. Laine ignored the steaming cup of tea as he explained to Miriam why he was here. Miriam was silent except for an occasional hum here and there, and the clanking of her bracelets when she took a drink of her tea.

“You think I did this, sent them away?” Miriam asked, giving Laine a hard look. Laine felt about an inch tall under that look. “You do. Why would I do something like that? They weren’t hurting anything. It was obvious they were loved.”

“I’m sorry,” Laine said, “it’s just…the timing of it coincides with your arrival. I don’t have any other ideas, and…it just feels wrong, having Conner and the others gone. It’s like a part of me is missing, and it’s even worse for Sev. He used to be able to interact with Conner and the other missing spirits. I know he has to feel like a vital part of himself is missing along with them.”

Miriam seemed mollified as she leaned forward and braced her elbows on her knees. “I can understand that, and I agree the timing probably isn’t coincidental. Maybe the spirits weren’t happy with us arriving. I won’t lie, there’s more than me here who could cast a spell to vanquish them.”

Laine shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know how to describe it except to say I can feel that they’re gone. Not hiding out somewhere, but gone.” He was close to begging but his pride was nothing compared to the weight of his loss. Not only his, but Sev and everyone else who had a deceased loved one they were used to having in their lives.

“Miriam, please, is there anything you can do to fix this? Conner, Stefan, Mrs. Hawkins, Mrs. Matthers—they’re all part of our lives. We love them just as much now as we did when they were alive—maybe even more, since they did whatever they had to in order to remain here. Losing them again like this…” Laine’s voice hitched as a hot ball of grief burned in his belly. “I can’t tell you how much it hurts. Conner was my lover when he was alive, and I didn’t, I didn’t love him enough to let anyone know about him. Now in death he’s one of the dearest people, to me and Sev both, and neither of us will let him be taken from us without a fight. And we won’t stop fighting.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Miriam told him. “You carry your guilt over his death with you, you know. It wasn’t your fault. Coming out and showing the world he was your lover wouldn’t have saved him. James McAlister still would have taken him from you.”

So Conner had been destined to die simply for being Laine’s lover. How the hell was he not supposed to feel guilty for that?

“Laine, Conner made the choice to be with you,” Chris pointed out. “I doubt you twisted his arm. The blame for his death is and will always be on James McAlister’s soul, not yours, not Conner’s, only McAlister’s. You have to learn to let the guilt go.”

“What the fuck do you know about it?” Laine snapped in a rare fit of temper. These past few days had worn him down to a nub. Laine regretted the outburst even as it left his lips. He sagged into the chair and dropped his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Chris, Miriam. I just…I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, but getting nasty with either of you isn’t it. I’m sorry. There was no excuse for that.”

“It’s all right,” Chris said from beside him. Laine peeked out through his fingers. He hadn’t even heard the big guy move. The chair groaned as Chris sat on the padded armrest and slung an arm over Laine’s shoulders. “You’re right, to a point. I don’t know much about it, except what I see in your aura. Guilt. See that a lot, but the rest of it’s all good, dude. And I kind of know you. You wouldn’t have done anything to endanger anyone, much less someone you loved. So, I know you didn’t—endanger Conner, that is. And I know James McAlister was a psychopathic bastard who killed several gay men besides Conner. Would you blame the lovers of his other victims for their deaths?”

“No,” Laine drew the word out as what Chris said penetrated through the hard shell of guilt he’d carried for years. “No, I wouldn’t, but…”

But why was he fighting letting that guilt go? Laine dropped his hands to his lap and looked up at Chris. Damn guy was huge. Chris looked at him expectantly. “No. It wasn’t their fault any more than it was the victims’.”

A weight Laine had carried around inside since Conner’s death began to lessen.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Chris murmured. “What happened to Zeke wasn’t your fault either, neither was McAlister’s spirit tormenting Rich.”

That was a bit much, Laine thought. If he had only kept Zeke’s sister locked up, she wouldn’t have nearly killed him out on Main Street. He didn’t know what he could have done to protect Rich, short of never calling the man and asking him for information on Sev when he first came to town. But still—

“Eva would have found a way to hurt Zeke,” Chris continued, bulldozing over Laine’s internal arguments. “Her husband was in that car. It’s likely he would have gone after Zeke. And you don’t have the ability to control spirits, you couldn’t have stopped McAlister from going after Rich. Even Miriam didn’t know it was possible for a spirit to latch on to someone and inhabit part of their soul. That’s some scary shit, Laine. How could you have stopped that?”

“You couldn’t have,” Miriam said.

God, he was being tag-teamed by a pair of people determined to make him see past his failures, or what he’d thought of as his failures. Laine couldn’t even be mad about it