#romulusagnes

The mortuary no longer feels so quiet as the candles flicker andsomething begins to bubble up from the table's center, an overflowing mass that seems both gelatinous and composed of clouds at the same time. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot Savva smile a little - this is supposed to happen, obviously - and you straighten your shoulders. You will not be bothered by a little something ghostly.

Faces ripple beneath the mass's surface as it expands slowly outwards, spreading out on the table, and you remember what Savva said about the spirits that have been quietly haunting you. (You don't really want to think of it as haunting.) Greyish lips push their way outwards, burbling unintelligible sentences, dark holes blinking in the place of eyes as the faces define themselves, the frothing pile of ghoulish matter pulling itself into tangible shapes. One of the faces slides round to face you, and instantly, your eyes narrow in recognition.

"The hell are you doing here," you jerk a hand forward - without letting go of the other, you remember not to break the circle - to point accusingly at it, its pale lips pouting out of the shifting otherworldly mass.

"You said that you had...," Savva raises an eyebrow, composure unchanged beside you.

You shake your head once, "yes, but not her. Not even remotely her." The mortuary smells like a courtroom and you scrunch your nose up as the ghostly face weeps soft tears onto the table, each drop hissing in contact with the wood. She chokes softly, words not making it out of her mouth, and you feel guilt crawl up your spin, cold and heavy under your skin. "It wasn't my fault," you answer without hearing the query outloud, hand back on the table's surface. It wasn't supposed to happen. Savva looks between you and the manifestation of your haunting, but says nothing. It's enough to make you feel worse.

Your eye turns to the offering of bread on the table, currently being swarmed by ghostly fingers. "I didn't do it," you re-iterate, more for the benefit of Savva than yourself.

"You must have had some role," he supplies quietly, otherwise they wouldn't be here. True, you have to agree. You tilt your head enough to give him a look in the hopes he wil pick up it's not a thing you want to talk about, but his expression is only quietly encouraging. A parent telling a child that the sooner they get going with something, the sooner it will be ove. Goddamn, if it doesn't make the weight on your shoulders heavier, even as you hunch them up in dismay.

The face crawls a little closer, trying to listen in. If you have to start somewhere, you suppose it's with money.

Your hand, without letting go of Savva's, gestures towards the ghoul, "this is...Penelope. I don't remember her surname, I'm sorry." It's been long enough, perhaps you can be forgiven for that. Crumbs fall off the bread and several ghostly mouths screech silently in irritation at not being able to consume it properly. Clearly they miss real food. "I dated her," kind of, "for a bit a long time ago. It was just a set up, though. I'm pretty sure you can guess what for." Either he really cannot or he's just making you reel out every detail, but Savva only inclines his head in reply, ready to listen more.

And you tell him, albeit very slowly and with none of the poise of a thirty-something with his life (largely) together. You tell him she was an heiress to a successful clothing company, and the people you worked for were after her money. You tell him it was supposed to be a straight up job of getting close enough to get access to the accounts, empty them, then get out. You tell him that somewhere along the line, that last bit went horribly wrong.

"My employers," you glance away from them both, "decided she was too much of a liability and had her...dispatched--"

"Killed."

"Murdered," you correct yourself, "once account access was confirmed. Blunt object trauma to the head. Didn't stand a chance, did you?," cold fingertips settle on your shoulders but you don't bother glancing down, you already know you won't see anything. The face crushes up in front of you, tearstained cheeks whitening in the midst of the ghostly mass. She seems more solid - almost solid enough for you to think that your fingers wouldn't pass through if you leaned out to touch. The guilt has settled between your shoulderblades, pulling you over a decade back in time as you remember how her face looked alive (how she still wore almost unnoticable braces, how angrily furrowed her eyebrows got when you said you had to leave early).

"I'm sorry," you tell the spirit without hesitation. "I know it won't fix anything, but I'm sorry."