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 leaned 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 her husband and children 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.
Conner listened to Laine ramble on until another deputy, Rich, came into Laine’s office. Conner wasn’t up to messing with Rich. That guy had had it bad enough, almost dying at the hand of the same psycho who’d killed Conner.
It was weird, how he had more of a family in death than he’d had while alive, Conner mused as he searched for Stefan. Usually he found the younger spirit hanging around Stefan’s brother Lee, and his partner Darren. Conner could add all of them to his friends list, too. When he’d been alive, he’d been outgoing and popular, but he hadn’t had many close friends. Well, one, really, and that’d been Laine. He’d been so deep in the closet, he hadn’t been able to risk letting anyone besides his lover too close.
Granted, he couldn’t communicate with most of the people he popped in on, but they almost all knew about him. When he let them know he was there—if he let them know, generally by tumbling things in the air that shouldn’t be tumbling in the air—they greeted him with a warmth he didn’t think any of his friends from his living time had. Except for Laine, when they had been alone.
Today was just going to be one of those days, he supposed. The past kept bubbling up in his mind, and a sense of melancholy and loneliness pervaded his normally happy persona no matter how much he tried not to let it.
Stefan was laughing, his eyes lit up with joy as he zipped along beside Lee. Conner didn’t want to intrude, not when he was feeling every bit the moody mess Laine had called him out on being. He settled his feet on the ground, pretending for just one moment that he was alive again, that he didn’t have to concentrate to feel the hardness of the earth beneath his feet. He glanced up at the brilliant blue sky, squinted at the sun’s glare that, even though he was a spirit, still made his eyes burn and water. He would never figure out stuff like that. He only knew it happened, that his spiritual body could still feel and his heart could ache with loneliness.
Conner looked down at the ground. He saw his boots, his favorite pair he’d worn so often when he’d been alive. Faded denim jeans hugged his legs, and a tight blue T-shirt covered his upper body. Why was he even wearing clothes? He was dead, and they weren’t real. Stefan was clothed, too, and all the other spirits he’d seen were as well. Had he manufactured the clothes when he’d been in that place between death and dying?
This is getting too deep for me. Conner had been moderately intelligent at best. There was no way he was going to figure out all this afterlife shit. It was a sign of how bored he was that he was even trying. Conner
