Page 163

Nate didn’t respond with words. Instead, he filled the kettle and set it on the stove. Then he took the tin and pried the lid off. The scent of it reached across the kitchen, green and bitter, unmistakable.

Leo stared, hope waking in his chest and clawing at him as Nate took a mug from the drying rack. He measured a pinch from the tin and dropped it in the mug.

“You really want to do this?” Leo’s voice came out smaller than he liked.

Nate leaned against the counter and looked at Leo, straight on, the way he wasn’t allowed to on camera. “Yes. I do.”

“You’ll regret it tomorrow. The light will hurt you.”

Nate shrugged. “Probably.”

This medium… Leo didn’t know what to say, and yet, words kept falling out of his mouth. “Don’t act like it doesn’t matter. You’re about to poison yourself for no reason!”

“Not for no reason.”

The kettle began its low climb toward boiling. Nate glanced at it. Leo kept his gaze on Nate. There was something else he wanted to ask, something he shouldn’t ask, something he definitely shouldn’t⁠—

“Why would you choose me over Thomas?”

Nate seemed surprised by that question. “I’ve never met Thomas.”

“You know what I mean. Thomas is alive. Thomas has hands. You could sit in a restaurant with Thomas and everyone would see you, you could hold him and it wouldn’t cost you anything, Nate. Not even a mild headache. There’s a whole world of people out there who don’t need that tin, and you’re standing in a kitchen at three in the morning making poison tea for the sake of a dead man.”

Nate scoffed. “Trust me, living men cause me plenty of headaches too.”

The kettle clicked off.

Nate poured the water over the leaves. He watched them turn in the mug, a pensive expression on his face. “I bought a house I couldn’t afford to win an argument with you. I read a county burial index until two in the morning. I painted your eyes not for the sake of research but because they fascinate me. My whole life I’ve been warned about doing exactly this, but…” Nate turned to him. “The people warning me could never understand because they don’t see what I see. You’re not just any ghost, and I’ve been thinking about getting another kiss from you all week. I don’t care what it costs me. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you.”

“That’s—” Leo started, and didn’t know how to end that sentence. Nobody had ever said such a thing to him. Maybe someone had. Maybe the boy had, in the dark, in a whisper — but that was gone with everything else, and this wasn’t a whisper.

Nate raised his mug and drank. He grimaced at the taste.

“That bad?” Leo asked, faintly.

“Worse.”

“Maybe you should have added honey.”

“Maybe next time.”

Next time? There was going to be a next time?

Leo’s head spun as Nate crossed the kitchen toward him.

Close up, the medium raised his hand slowly enough to be refused.

Leo didn’t refuse.

The hand settled against his face, warm and rough and real. Leo closed his eyes. He’d been afraid of this, in a way. Afraid that he’d polished the memory of Nate’s touch into something the truth couldn’t match. Not so. This was better than it had been in his memory, because nothing was wrong this time.

Nate wasn’t acting to prevent a crisis.

They were just in the kitchen together on a Saturday night.

“You said you’d been thinking about it all week,” Leo said, without opening his eyes.

“I did say that.”