When the Dead Speak by Bailey Bradford (books to read to increase intelligence txt) 📗

the necklace that always seemed to calm him. Before long, their plates and salad bowls were empty. Sev leaned back in his chair and rubbed his stomach, trying to get his brain into gear. “Tasted better than it smelled.”

Laine’s embarrassed grin was fleeting, his urgency to find out what had happened with Conner palpable. He started to speak, but Sev cut him off with a hand gesture.

“First thing you should know, Conner didn’t do it on purpose.”

Laine looked at Sev like he was crazy, which made Sev bite his lip against the laughter bubbling up inside him.

“How do you—or how does a ghost—accidentally nearly freeze someone?”

“Inexperience, lack of control…” Sev met and held Laine’s gaze, all traces of humor gone. “An urgency to get a message across. Look, Laine, today is the first time I’ve ever seen a ghost. Sure, I’ve heard them since I was a kid, and damn near ended up locked away in a psych ward for life because of it, but seeing one coalesce? That’s a new one for me, and I doubt it would have happened had Conner not felt desperate.”

Laine sat back, arms crossed over his chest. “You gonna explain that, about nearly ending up in a psych ward?”

Sev glanced away, his lips tightening to a thin line. “I thought this was about Conner?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute.” Laine sat forward, elbows on the table. “That’s twice today that you’ve mention that you were almost shut up in a mental hospital. I think maybe you want to talk about that.”

Did he? Was that why he’d brought up something he never talked about? Well, he’d already blurted it out twice, so what the hell? Sev stared at a spot over Laine’s shoulder. “Would you believe your kid if he or she told you ghosts were speaking to them? Or would you drag the kid to a psychiatrist, then another and another? Listen to them when they told you your kid was showing signs of juvenile onset schizophrenia and needed to be medicated and regulated and—”

“Sev.”

Sev closed his eyes, squeezing his lids tight against images popping up in his head. “They put me there, you know, after the medications didn’t help. You’d think I would have learned, would have shut up instead of trying to convince them. Even when I would tell them things that could be proven, things I shouldn’t have known, they wouldn’t listen. Or maybe they did, and they were afraid of what I was, what I could do, so they stuck me away—”

Strong arms lifted him, pulling him into Laine’s embrace, but Sev couldn’t stop. “If my grandmother hadn’t found out, I might still be locked away, my brain scrambled from whatever treatments the psychiatrists felt were necessary.”

Laine’s arms tightened around him. “But your grandma, she got you out of there quick, right?”

Sev shuddered, the memories threatening to overwhelm him. The state hospital was underfunded and understaffed, the number of patients grossly out of proportion to the workers on hand. Some of the things he’d seen there, experienced, would haunt him always. “Five weeks. Not so quick, but at least she got me out.”

“Damn.” The word was whispered, Laine’s breath tickling Sev’s ear. “I’m sorry, Sev, sorry it happened and that you were there for so long. I can’t imagine a kid… How old were you, can you tell me?”

Sev’s stomach roiled, but he reached around Laine, clinging with something bordering on desperation as he held on to the one man who made him feel safe. “I was twelve. Not the youngest kid there, either. It was like a nightmare, something that couldn’t possibly happen in real life, but it did. When my grandmother found out, she threatened to disown my parents unless they got me released, then she took care of me.”

Laine didn’t speak, just began rocking gently, his hands smoothing over Sev’s back until Sev stopped shivering, the tension seeping out of him slowly. He thought he should be embarrassed, but he couldn’t manage it, not when he felt so soothed and protected, his head resting on Laine’s chest, the steady thumpthumpthump of the man’s heartbeat lulling Sev into a peaceful sense of belonging. A niggling worry kept him from giving himself over completely to the experience, though. There was a message he needed to pass along, an explanation Laine needed to hear for his own peace of mind. Sev forced his eyes open and tipped his head up to find Laine’s steady silver gaze on him.

“We really need to talk about Conner.”

Laine studied the man in his arms, trying to discern if Sev was evading any more questions about his past. God knew Laine felt torn open from learning about it. Hooking his ankle around the leg of a chair to maneuver it closer, he sat, pulling Sev down onto his lap.

“Okay, let’s do that.” Then Laine was going to take Sev to bed and fuck away all those shadows lingering in his celadon eyes. “So, what’s the message, Sev? What was so God damned important that he nearly killed you? You don’t think, that all things considered, his timing was a little suspicious?” Because it sure seemed so to Laine.

Sev smiled, just a faint echo of his usual breath-stealing smile. “Let me ask you this, was Conner a liar when he was alive? Was he a cruel, vengeful person? Or was he a truly decent person who maybe, sometimes, acted rashly, didn’t consider the consequences of his actions, but never intended harm? Because what he was in life, he still is even in death. The things that make us, us, the core center of our personality—death doesn’t change that, it can’t. It doesn’t work that way.”

Laine didn’t even have to think about it. “Conner was… He was excitable, that’s how I always thought of him. Energetic and eager, just bursting with life. Not a cruel bone in the man’s body, either. He could be impetuous, but only because he was so enthusiastic…” He was surprised