Page 52 of The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

Two Months Later

It was the day Jamie was moving in with Edgar, and Jamie had sent him to Allie’s for the day so he didn’t have to deal with people tramping in and out of the apartment, for which he was grateful.

Allie had made pancakes for breakfast, and he’d spent a pleasant if overstimulating day hanging out with Nour, Poe, Allie, and three kittens hell-bent on world domination.

Allie had just lain down for a nap with Nour, and Poe was making marinara sauce in the kitchen. Now, Edgar was awaiting the all-clear text from Jamie that meant he could return to his apartment— their apartment.

“So what’re you thinking?” Edgar asked Poe. “Are you going to stick around?”

Edgar and Allie had discussed Poe, and while they both wanted him to stay in New Orleans, neither of them could tell if he would. Poe had been suspiciously nice lately, and Edgar couldn’t help but think that soon the other shoe would drop.

“For a while,” he said noncommittally.

“How long’s a while?”

“Why, you sending out wedding invitations or something and don’t wanna waste a stamp?”

This comment had done something funny to Edgar’s stomach, but this wasn’t the time to interrogate it.

“I was just wondering if I should get used to having you around or if you’re gonna disappear again,” Edgar said.

Poe tasted the sauce, the tomato scent thick with herbs, then put the lid on.

The timer went off, and he swore, silencing it immediately and glancing toward the bedroom where Allie and Nour were napping.

They both stayed silent for a moment, listening.

When no crying (Nour) or embittered swearing (Allie) was forthcoming, they relaxed.

Poe slid a sheet of scones out of the oven. They steamed temptingly on the counter.

“I was thinking about it,” he said. Then, slowly, “Auntie mentioned I could have more hours. Cook at the bar, maybe. They used to have food, but she lost her chef a few years back, and he did all the ordering and everything, so…” Poe trailed off, as if it would violate some personal ethos to express any more than the bare minimum of enthusiasm about anything, ever. “Anyway. Maybe.”

“It seems like you and Nour have been hitting it off,” Edgar said. Casual again, so casual. The imp of the perverse was strong with Poe.

His brother stirred the sauce, the picture of disinterest. “Yeah, I mean. Bones is cool.”

“That’d be so clutch for Allie to have more help,” Edgar said. “Jamie was talking about picking up more shifts at Le Corbeau too. They worship Aunt Alaitheia.”

“Allie doesn’t mind the kittens,” Poe said as his knife flew through an onion, mincing it in seconds. “So maybe I could stay a while.”

Onion hit the hot pan and sizzled, and Edgar’s phone pinged with Jamie’s text.

***

Edgar juggled the front doorknob, his key, and the lasagna pan that Poe had shoved into his arms on his way out the door.

“Hi, honey. I’m home,” Edgar said under his breath and smiled.

He put the lasagna on the square of countertop not covered in boxes and went in search of Jamie. He found them on top of a ladder, cursing the high ceilings they’d only ever praised before. Not wanting to startle them, Edgar moved right behind them before saying, “Hi.”

Jamie startled anyway, measuring tape going flying as they tried not to fall off the ladder. Edgar grabbed them easily from behind, and Jamie startled again.

“Sorry, babe.” Edgar set them gently on the floor, and they pressed their palm to their chest.

“I can’t get like a Hi, honey, I’m home or something? Jesus, if you don’t wanna live together, just say so instead of murdering me.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to startle you from across the room. I wanted to be ready to catch you. And, uh, I did say that. Just. Very quietly.”

Jamie made the face they always made when they thought Edgar had said or done something adorable and they thought they weren’t showing it.

“How’s the family?” Jamie herded him into the kitchen.

“Good. Allie had a brilliant idea. She’s gonna hire a hybrid babysitter and clothes seller at Magpie Vintage so that she can have Nour in the shop. When they’re awake, the babysitter can help out with them, but when they’re asleep, the babysitter can do stuff around the place.”

“That is a good idea,” Jamie agreed. “Now, where’s my lasagna?”

Edgar looked at the counter where the dish lay. “How’d you know Poe made us lasagna?”

“Because I requested it.” Jamie looked at him like he’d asked something strange. “He asked what we wanted for dinner on move-in day.”

“He texted you? He offered?”

“Yeah. He offered so we wouldn’t have to cook, and I said I wanted lasagna.” Jamie was speaking carefully, as if concerned that the simple concept was evading Edgar.

But what had evaded Edgar was something else entirely: Poe had changed.

He wasn’t sure when it had happened or if it had been too incremental to notice until now, but the Poe Lovejoy who had shown up the night Allie went into labor was not someone who would offer to make lasagna from scratch so someone else wouldn’t have to cook.

He wasn’t someone who adopted three kittens or lived with his sister.

And he certainly wasn’t someone who would’ve described a kid as cool and been excited to hang out with their aunt, cooking food in the city he’d once sworn he would never return to.

It was a day full of so many firsts that Edgar was a bit overwhelmed. But he forced himself to put any uncertainty with his family out of his mind and took Jamie’s hands.

He gazed into their eyes and brushed a piece of hair from their forehead. This was his person. This was his home.

This apartment, where once Edgar had retreated from the world alone, was now a home that he and Jamie shared.

“We live together now.” Jamie screwed their face up into an adorable expression.

“We do,” Edgar said. “I kind of can’t believe it.”

They both stared at each other.

“Can I show you something?” Jamie asked, holding out their hand.

In that moment, Jamie could have led him a hundred miles away to the top of a volcano, and Edgar would have followed them.

As it happened, they only led him to the closed bedroom door.

“Okay, I hope you don’t mind,” Jamie said. “But you said you were sick of it. And obviously if you don’t like it, we’ll change it.”

Jamie seemed to be having an internal argument about whether to include any more caveats, then fell silent and opened the door.

Four years ago, Edgar had run home and slammed the door behind him, desperate to be safe from the ghost of a little girl who had followed him from the bus stop.

Its eyes had been black voids, its mouth a hole of jagged teeth, and its hair leucistic snakes.

(Later, when he’d calmed down, he’d realized that it’d had no eyes, its jagged mouth was that of someone caught between baby and permanent teeth, and its white-blond hair had been in braids.)

That night, door shut and double-locked firmly behind him, he had ordered paint, rush delivery.

He’d stayed awake until the package came the next morning, dragging it inside with one hand while the other shielded his eyes from the sun, a rat heaving its treasure back into the sewers.

Then he’d stayed up until every inch of his bedroom was painted, ceiling to windowsills to floors, with haint blue in a piteous, desperate, wretched bid for safety.

Now, he stood in the doorway of that same bedroom, but it had been transformed.

Gone were the gray rug, a hand-me-down from Allie, the heavy dresser that had been in the apartment when he moved in, and the storage trunk—a yard sale find that had never stopped smelling like crayons.

In their places, Jamie had set a light modern dresser on each side of the closet and laid down a gorgeous rug that Edgar thought he recognized from Germaine and Carl’s house.

It was warm shades from deep wine and terra-cotta to the lightest petal pinks.

Hints of midnight blue played beneath it all, grounding the color.

The linens were the colors of champagne and mushrooms.

His mother’s painting had been rehung above the bed, and now Edgar could see Jamie’s inspiration for the palette for the room.

There wasn’t a speck of haint blue in sight. The walls were now a delicate peach color that was warm in the lamplight. When the morning sun filled the room, Edgar knew, it would positively glow.

Edgar walked in slowly, wanting to look more closely at everything.

The white blinds had been replaced with gauzy curtains the color of saffron.

Where the serviceable (but distinctly nipple-shaped) ceiling light used to be hung a fixture with a light and a sleek ceiling fan that would make sleeping much easier on the hottest nights.

And on a small shelf next to the mirror stood several framed photographs of Jamie and Edgar, Poe and Allie and Nour, and the kittens.

“What do you think?” Jamie’s arms came around his waist from behind, and he leaned into them.

“It’s absolutely amazing. I don’t know how the hell you did this in one day, but it’s…it’s like being inside a sunset.”

Jamie, in Edgar’s T-shirt, hair tousled and eyes soft, asking him his favorite color as they held hands over cereal.

“I can’t believe you remembered,” murmured Edgar, overcome.

“Course I did. I remember everything about you.” Jamie’s arms tightened around him; their breath was warm on the back of his neck. “These colors are warm and intense and comfortable. Just like you.”

For a moment, Edgar thought they were teasing. He turned around in Jamie’s arms to look at them. “Is that really how you see me?”

“Among other things, yeah.” They winked at him.

“Oh yeah?” Edgar’s cheeks heated. Jamie’s compliments always made his stomach turn to goo.

“Yup. I haven’t even mentioned your awesome family, your superior ability to see ghosts, or your exquisite taste in boyfriends,” Jamie teased.

Edgar grinned. His heart felt like it would overflow his chest. “I do have all those things, don’t I?”

Jamie reached a hand out to Edgar, and he took it. “We should see how it looks from the bed, right?”

Edgar agreed, and they climbed into bed, curling around each other.

“What do you think, gorgeous?” Jamie asked. The compliment warmed him from the inside.

“It’s perfect, Jamie, really. And these sheets feel like heaven.”

“Germaine and Carl gave them to us, and I’m sure they’re fancy as fuck. They’d been sitting in their linen closet since the Nixon administration, according to Carl.”

Edgar smiled.

“Rug’s from them too. And the dressers. Your old one was untenable.”

“I don’t know why you’d be so quick to dismiss something just because three of its drawers collapsed when you tried to open them.”

Jamie snorted. “Three of four .”

Edgar grinned. A wave of exhaustion closed over him, and he sank into the fluffy, luscious embrace of rich people’s cast-off linens.

“Mmm, so comfy,” Jamie said against his shoulder.

Edgar pressed a kiss to their hair. He was on the edge of falling asleep, and everything he’d ever wanted was in his arms. “Love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart,” Jamie said.

“Jamie?” Edgar murmured. “I want to get a cat.”

It was time.

Jamie chuckled softly. “I think that could be arranged. I know a guy.” They kissed him softly.

“Yay,” Edgar said against their lips and let sleep creep in.

Edgar wouldn’t have any bad dreams that night.

He wouldn’t wake afraid or alone or lonely.

He would not see a ghost or feel a ghost or hear a ghost. That wasn’t to say that in the future he would not have bad dreams. That wasn’t to say that he would never again wake afraid or alone or lonely.

And that was not to say he wouldn’t see or feel or hear ghosts again.

But at least for tonight, he would sleep well, part of him always touching Jamie, in their champagne mushroom sheets, in their sunset of a room, in their gem of a city, surrounded on all sides by life and death and the living and the dead—and frankly, a lot of people in between.

He would sleep until the first tentative rays of sunlight fell through saffron linen and lit the walls and the ceiling and Jamie’s hair and eyelashes a brilliant, hopeful gold.

He’d watch, Jamie’s head cradled against his shoulder, their arm in a tight embrace across his stomach, their breath a sweet whisper in his ear, as the sun rose higher and brighter, spangling rainbows over the bedclothes from chandelier crystals hanging in the window, and made the room glow, happy, safe, connected.