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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FISH HEADS, FISH HEADS…

T he pub was lit and warm and full of noise when they returned. The door was flung open, “Percy!” called Maisie, a brain-cleaving scream broke from the skull, and every lightbulb in the place smashed.

Only this time, the screaming didn’t stop.

Great, sorrowful, heartrending screams that didn’t relent until Molly was stuck back in the fridge.

“Thank god for that,” muttered Joe.

“Sorry?” Percy’s sharp eyes shot across to the placid face. “You’ve changed your tune.”

“And she’s changed hers too,” he threw back. To the searching visage, he added, “It’s been a long day.”

“Too long,” Percy agreed with that curl of his lip he rarely used on Joe. He made his way across to the bar and made an apology for being unable to stay for a drink. He cited Joe’s falling into the lake as the reason, being a perfectly believable lie, what with the both of them still wet and unkempt and covered in mud. Maisie was all warmth and compassionate understanding, and she readily took their orders for dinner. Which, for Joe, was meat. And more meat. And any meat, apparently, because he ordered the steak ‘rare and bloody as it comes’, the mutton pie, which made Percy wince, and to top it off, krappin an’ stap. Fish heads.

Maisie’s eyes lit, and she decided then and there that Joe was a keeper. Percy, meanwhile, waited and smiled, and wondered who or what exactly was standing next to him.

He led the way calmly up the stairs, held the door to the room open, and shrugged his coat over his shoulders as Joe did the same. Joe slid his boots off, just as Percy did, then Percy gripped Joe’s trusty bottle of holy water and dumped the entire thing over his head in one enormous splash.

Joe slid a hand down his face and flicked the cold water to the floor. “I’m not possessed.”

“Bullshit,” Percy growled. “Joe wouldn’t eat fish heads.”

“Percy, we’re in Twatt.” Joe wrapped his hand around Percy’s little finger, just as he had so often done before. “It’s a thing people eat. And I’m starving.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Percy, wandering across the room to take a seat on the bed. He slid the top drawer of the bedside table open, saying casually, “It’s always good to try new things, and we did— Catch!” He hurled Gideon’s Bible straight at Joe’s chest.

With his usual fast reflexes, Joe caught the huge book in his powerful hand and held it high for Percy to see. “I swear to God—I swear on my soul—I am not possessed. I’m just hungry. Please stop throwing things at me.”

Percy kept his gaze on the fingers wrapped around the holy book and waited. And Joe held it just as long as he needed to, still dripping with holy water, to prove it wouldn’t burn or maim him in any way to do so. Eventually, his shiver from the cold snapped Percy back to his senses. “Sorry. You have the first shower.”

Joe gave a weary smile and a nod, and made his way to the ensuite. There, in the doorway, he turned back. “Do you want to come?”

He was so beautiful. So beautiful, and his smile was so sweet, and his tone hotly provocative… But Percy… didn’t want to… And he didn’t know why. So all he said was, “I should let Maisie in when she comes up.”

“I guess.” Joe laughed with that nice blush of his. “It might be a little awkward.”

Percy laughed too, in a shallow way, and Joe disappeared into the bathroom, the pipes of the heated water soon screeching almost as loudly as the skull had.

Percy busied himself laying out fresh clothes, tending the fire Maisie had set, lighting a candle, picking a bottle of wine from the carton he’d brought. All the while, the same sparring thoughts shuffled back and forth.

Joe was fine. Nothing like when he was briefly possessed in the house. He was Joe now, in every word and mannerism. Percy could see it.

But the fish heads. And his comment about the skull. Not Joe. Not Joe, who wanted to pay five thousand pounds for Molly the night before. Who planned to steal her because he felt so sorry for her. Not Joe, who turned a sickly green when Percy told him about the cooking process of krappin.

But he was fine. Beautiful and funny and sexy and very much Joe.

But also not quite Joe.

“Your turn?” Joe in the doorway. Joe in a towel. Joe in a towel with his rippling abs and the steam rising off of him.

And Percy side-stepping him with a light peck on his cheek, and shutting himself behind a locked door for reasons he couldn’t explain.

Tired.

They were tired.

Exhausted. Stressed. It had been a horrible day, and Percy had yet to ditch Joe and go back to burn the Hall down. So he would shower. He would eat. He would rest. He would burn the Hall early the following morning, and he would run back home with Joe. Away from everything, and all better, and together, like they should be.

Forcing himself to believe everything was perfectly okay, or soon would be, Percy dressed and returned to the room to find Joe, gorgeous and smiling, lit by the fire and one slim candle, utterly resplendent, with two glasses of wine poured, waiting for him.

Percy took his place opposite, and Joe raised his glass. “Thank you for putting up with me. If you’ll keep being my fiancé, I promise I’ll never do anything that stupid ever again.”

A genuine smile broke across Percy’s face, and he felt ridiculous. That glow that had been in his heart since the first night he’d spent with Joe grew and grew, and the tink of glasses and the taste of wine somehow set everything right.

Joe cut into the steak, both rare and tough somehow. “You’re right. I did something dangerous because I panicked, and I’ll never do anything like that again. I promise.”

“Forget about it. I’m just glad it wasn’t anything more serious than a ghost.” Percy meditated on some too skinny and greasy chips. “Did you get any insight? About where the body was, or what the thing wanted?”

“She just wanted out,” said Joe. He looked at the fish heads, but hesitated. Undecided whether to take one, perhaps. Percy watched him carefully. Joe gave that shy smile Percy loved, and moved for the pie instead.

With hearty relief, Percy also took some pie, thick, claggy, and over seasoned. “I meant what I said about leaving tomorrow. I don’t want you anywhere near that place.”

Joe’s hand fell on Percy’s with a little squeeze, like he always gave. “I know I scared you.”

Percy pressed shaky lips into a hard line until he could speak steadily. “Never again.” Then the heartbreak that was right on the verge of escaping, the pent-up grief and anxiety from the lake, all of it about to spill over, transformed into sheer horror.

Joe took his fork and sank it deep into the gill of a fish head. He lifted the broiled pink thing, dripping and steaming, and rested it on his plate.

Percy watched on, aghast, and whispered, “This has gone far enough. Don’t.”

“What has?”

As though he didn’t know.

Maybe he really didn’t know.

He didn’t know, because, almost in slow motion, Percy watched the sickening event unfold.

Joe lifted the fish head, the whole thing, the round and protruding mouth of the meal dropping open as it moved towards Joe’s, the wobbling eyes staring dully at nothing as they approached the beautiful lips. The whole thing, eyes and mouth and the gelatinous insides, shoved in and filling Joe’s incomparable lips to the brim with an accompanying, nauseating crunch.

Percy’s chair slammed to the floor as he leapt up. He snatched the exorbitantly priced, flaked sea salt from the table, smashed the glass bottle down hard, broke the top clean off, and showered Joe in a snowy baptism of fresh salt. His face, his hands, all through his hair, all over the krappin, which was already ruined anyway by dint of existing.

But he didn’t burn.

Joe, finally pushed over the edge by the unrelenting series of assaults, was up and shouting, while Percy stared only at Joe’s skin, searching for a wisp of smoke, a whiff of sulphur—anything at all. But still nothing, except a very angry fiancé who, after yelling at him with a great many curses, disappeared, slamming the bathroom door behind him.

Salt did nothing. Nor holy water. Nor the Bible. That was undeniable. There was nothing left to try. Joe was in the clear. He had to be.

Percy grasped the krappin, flung the window open, and hurled the full dish outside to a bleating of frightened sheep below. He swept the salt from the table and onto the floor, righted his fallen chair, sat back down, and smiled sweetly at Joe upon his eventual return. “You’re never to kiss me again.”

“Percy—”

“I threw the fish out the window.”

Joe eyed him in total silence, until Percy smiled a little wider, to which Joe smiled a little, to which Percy laughed, and so Joe laughed too.

It was, for Percy, finally, relief. Proof that Joe was Joe, because he understood the absurdity of the mess with the humour Percy had come to expect and love from him.

Joe sat, and they ate badly cooked steak and mutton pie and drank the wine and let the talk meander over everything but the Hall and the awful events of the day. It suited Percy perfectly, because he wasn’t about to tell Joe he was going to sneak out and burn the house without him, but then he’d also promised he wouldn’t lie anymore. It’s so much easier to sneak around if people just don’t specifically ask you about things. And so it went well. He was surprised the topic of Molly’s theft never came up, but Joe was likely not in the mood for ghost stories any more than he was.

The wine and the warmth and the food heavied their eyelids before long, and so they crawled into the gigantic bed. They lay facing one another, and Joe placed a gentle kiss on Percy’s lips. Then another. Then another. Then his hand slid down, and Percy caught it. He brought it to his lips. “I’m exhausted.” Joe’s lovely eyes dulled, so he added, “Truly.”

“But that’s what we always do.”

“Not always.”

“Always.” Joe rolled onto his back with a sigh.

Percy wrapped his arms around him and kissed his cheek, settling his head by his shoulder. “Tomorrow.”

Joe looked across at him, eyes and voice cold. “Don’t you trust me?”

“What kind of a question is that? Of course I trust you.”

“Don’t you love me?”

“Joe… Of course I love you. I can be tired one night and not have it mean anything.”

Joe rolled over completely, turning his back on Percy.

Percy raised himself onto one supporting arm. “Seriously?”

“You still think I’m possessed, don’t you?”

“No. Joe, no.” Percy placed a hand on his arm and pulled him back, feeling a sick guilt at the sight of his dejected face.

“I thought you’d know me better, you know?” There was a tear at the edge of Joe’s eye that he swept away with the bottom of his palm. “Like you’d be able to tell the difference between me, your fiancé, and the ghost of some Scottish manor.”

“I do. I can.” Percy touched a hand to Joe’s cheek and leaned in close. “I promise you, I’m just tired. I know you, and I love you, and I’ll make it up in spades first thing in the morning.”

Joe’s eyes and lips softened, so Percy dropped a kiss there, and slid an arm under Joe’s neck for him to snuggle in like he always did. And he did. And Percy held him warm and safe, the weight and the movement and the smell of him the same as ever…

But he was right.

Percy still felt, in the pit of his gut, something was off.

He had no reason to think it. Joe had passed every test he could think of, and Percy felt awful that he couldn’t switch it off, whatever alarm was buzzing away inside.

He was tired.

He was sure he would wake with it gone and back to normal in the morning.

That reassurance in mind, he switched out the lamp, and closed his eyes, and very shortly, he was sound asleep.