When they arrived, everyone was standing outside the house, staring at Eric, who stood in the middle of the yard, wrapped up in whatever he was playing. When Alex and Angela came into view, they stopped watching the entranced undertaker, and gaped at the pair walking up the road. Vivian moved first.
"Angela...? What in the world...?"
"Mommy!" The girl-child flung herself from Alex's arms and into her mother's short hair fluttering in the breeze. "This nice man brought me home! He blasted the nasty blond lady that looked like Maven!"
Silver looked over his wife's shoulder at Alex with a stern look that spoke volumes - mostly along the tune of "You have a lot of explaining to do, young man."
Alex nodded and pointed with his chin at Angela, indicating he'd explain - as soon as she was out of ear shot.
Vivian took Angela inside to feed her lunch, and Silver stayed, staring at Alex.
Eric was a little more direct. He carefully, reverently, put his violin away in its box, and settled that on his shoulder. Then he grabbed Alex by the vest and shook, hard.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? WHAT HAPPENED TO ANGELA!?!"
Alex's teeth rattled in his skull, because, for all his frail-looking build, Eric was not a weak young man. After all, he had to have enough muscle to lift those tombstones and heavy debris left behind each night after the hunters went to Highgate.
"Long story. But the summary is, I got trapped in a spell-loop and though I told her how to fix it, she gave up... everything... to save me. And now, she doesn't even know who I am, or why she did what she did, and, and I ruined her. Lord and lady... I never meant for this to happen..." Eric, stunned, let the sobbing youth go, and Alex fell to his knees in heavy, shaking bouts of tears.
Eric went to his knees and, much more gently took Alex's shoulder. "Shhh. Shhh," he said soothingly, anger momentarily disappeared in the face of the overwhelming grief Alex was displaying. Alex continued to cry. This was not he wanted to return to life.
"Mommy?" Angela asked, from where she was sitting at the kitchen table. "Why is he crying?"
Vivian looked at her daughter. On many levels, she just wanted to tell her what had happened, but somehow, that also seemed like a bad idea. "Because everyone makes mistakes."
"Even you?"
"Yes."
* * *
Alex was helped to his feet, and Calanthe arrived, looking at Alex, who he'd met before, on more than one occasion, had been skin ridden by him. "Alex... you're whole. And I felt... something wrong. What happened...?"
"Do you promise not to hurt me?"
"What?"
"Fine. I seem to remember one more regular," Alex muttered bitterly. "I don't feel like explaining it three times, I'll get you all when Righly gets here."
"This was all the fault of my jealousy," Alex said softly, calmly, after explaining what had happened, eyes red and sore. "Excluding you sir," he said, nodding to Silver, who was leaned against the wall. "I just didn't want to have to share her with you. I wanted her to be able to love me, and just me."
"You don't understand do you?" Righly asked, smiling. "She didn't love us."
"She didn't?" Cal asked, confused.
Eric cuffed him. "Shhh."
"Not the way she loved Alex," Righly, the most mature among them explained. "We were here, he was there. She had to touch something."
"She said that once," Alex said softly, staring into the fire. "I didn't understand. I still don't."
Righly sighed, and pushed his hair out of his eyes, smiling. He looked at Silver. "Would you mind?" He gestured with a pack of cigarettes.
"What the hell," the dark skinned werewolf muttered, dismissing it as silly.
The mage called a lick of flame out of the fire to light his smoke.
"Alex, you know I'm a life mage, and I called her a death mage, right?"
He nodded.
"Well you'd think that was pretty different right?"
"Of course."
"No." He shook his head, trailing smoke. "A lot of changes have been made to magic, since you last practiced it regularly. For one thing we discovered that death and life are pretty well connected. Closer than anyone dreamed a hundred years ago. When you get down to it," he drew a sigil in the air with the glowing ember on his cigarette, "we are working with the same thing. I work with it the first time around, and she works with it restored. And fuck all if I don't love to make love. Frolic, have fun, fornicate, all that stuff. It'd be great if I had someone I loved to do it with but..." he wound down and blinked, trailing off. "I haven't had that for a long time," he sighed softly. Eric, Alex, Cal and Silver all stared at him, Silver with a quizzical expression that said he'd just realized something.
"Sometimes," Righly said after a long silence and half of his smoke. "If you can't have what you really want, then you'll make up for it by having more of things you like, but aren't really what you're looking for."
Alex sighed sadly, and threatened to start into tears again.
"Oh goddess... I really fucked up things royal, didn't I?"
"In a word."
"She didn't love us?" Cal said again. "I feel used..."
Eric blinked, fear half-hidden in his eyes. He had a terrible feeling a certain dark angel was going to come find him again... and he'd be damned if all the fiddle-playing in the world would save him from it this time.
"Err... maybe she didn't love us, or maybe she loved us all, but she cared enough about us to want us around so often, even if we were mostly vessels for Alex to borrow half the time," Righly said between puffs on his clove.
"I thought..." Eric whispered.
"Look, I don't know any of this," Righly snapped, as Silver quietly exited the room. Eric and the mage started arguing and Cal tried to calm them down.
"It's not real," muttered Alex rocking back and forth, hands clutched in his still blood-specked shirt. Why hadn't he noticed that before? It hadn't changed, none of it. He was alive, but there was still blood splattered across his sleeves, red-brown flecks. "It can't be real, I won't let it be real."
"Alex?" Righly said, quirking an eyebrow, turning from the argument.
"It can't be real, she wouldn't do that."
Out of the corner of his eye, Alex swore he could see the mage smile. "It isn't real - " he screamed, and opened his leaf green eyes. Righly was still there, but Haven had vanished.
"Damn," swore Righly. "That was close."
"What?" Alex said, sitting up, and watching a falling leaf drift through his leg. Righly was perched upon his gravestone.
"You were going to do it weren't you?"
"I did it...?"
"Nope, just a dream." The mage scraped up a handful of fire and lit a cigarette. "Damn, you have a dearth of good ideas. Hell, why didn't you ask any of us for help. Cal for instance."
"You were there," Alex said, still a bit confused. "You heard what he said."
"It was a dream. Your dream to be precise. The dead never dream easy. You saw your deepest fears."
"So what were you doing in there?"
"When you went to sleep, you started pulling in energy for your project. From everything around you." He gestured at the trees around Alex's grave, which were brown and dropping leaves, despite the fact it was summer. "I felt it, and hustled my buns over here. I didn't know what was doing it, but I figured it was bad. Then I found your notes, and got a edge of the dream." He sighed, and shrugged. "I don't know if she would, honestly, and that's what worries me."
Alex sighed, it came out of his mouth like a shuddering death rattle. He took a few moments of alternately sobbing, and not looking at anything at all. Then, when he'd marginally collected himself, he looked up.
"Thank you..." he whispered, and then, "for helping me."
Righly sighed.
"She loves you very much, and damned if I wanted to see anything happen to hurt either of you. I stepped into your dreams with a spell, and did my best to not let them get worse than they did. Uhm... want me to take you to her now? I think... you both need each other just now."
"Do you really think she loved me?" Alex asked.
"Alex, nothing I said in the dream was anything less than true."
"Yes," the ghost replied. "I want to share space with her."
For an instant Alex felt sunlight through leaves and saw a portal.
"Righly," he asked, looking over his shoulder. "How old are you?"
"How old is an oak tree? I'm younger than you." The mage smiled and wiggled his fingers. "Gowan. Get. I've got plants to tend back on the mountain."
Alex chuckled, and stepped through, his body meeting the spirit-heavy and fragrant air of New Orleans.
"Angela...?"
He was in her flat, and the window was open, ruffling white curtains artistically through him. Angela lay sprawled on her bed, one leg kicked out from beneath the white sheets, a large book open over her stomach. She was asleep, looking somewhat troubled as if by a bad dream.
Alex softly smiled, and drifted over to her bedside, and not yet daring to wake here, but wanting to touch her, he materialized, and reached out a hand to run his fingers lightly through her hair.
"Angela?"
She awoke, blinking. "What...? Who...? Alex!" She put her hand over his, and smiled, moving the book aside to sit up. "I'm so glad you're here. But how did you get here?"
"I had a very scary dream, and when I got up, Righly was there. He said I was pulling energy out of live things, and it drew him to come. He... was worried and sent me here. It's a long story, and most of it I only half recall from a dream."
"If it was a dream," Angela said, curling her fingers around his cheek, and tracing the cool skin there. "I hope it was better than mine. I dreamed you didn't know how much I missed you."
"I dunno. Mine might have been worse. Ghosts don't dream of pleasant things."
"I'm sorry," she said, softly. "I wish I could give you good dreams."
"Don't be silly," he said, looking form and curling around her like a cool cloud. "Every dream I've had that's been worth having, you gave me."
"Flatterer." Angela laughed, and ran her fingers through him, trailing tendrils of power he soaked up like a plant drank in the light around it.
"I've missed you," he said.
"And I, you," she breathed, relaxing back down into her pillow. "Don't leave me. I'll find some way," she yawned. "To repair the damage I've done."
"I can wait forever. Time's on my side. Not yours unfortunately," he said, leaning forwards and making his head just solid enough to kiss her.
She smiled sleepily, eyes fluttering shut again. "I'll make it work."
