Shadows Fall
WILDE CITY PRESS
Shadows Fall © 2015 J.K. Hogan
Published in the US and Australia by Wilde City Press 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, situations and incidents are the product of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher.
Published by Wilde City Press
ISBN
:
978-1-925313-24-6
Cover Design: J.K. Hogan
Model:
Joshua Anthony Brand
Model Photographer:
Simon Murray
Background Photographer:
Darkday on Flickr
SHADOWS FALL
An m/m Paranormal Romantic Thriller
J.K. Hogan
Dedication
This one is for the readers. Every time someone tells me they’ve read a book of mine, I’m amazed and humbled. Every time. Thank you all for the support, and I hope you enjoy Titus’s story.
Acknowledgements
Rachel and Kathie, thank you so much for another wonderful round of beta reading. I couldn’t do this without you guys.
Chapter One
My name is Titus Finnbar McGinty and I see dead people. Wait… that phrase is probably, like, copyrighted or some shit, right? Well, it’s the truth. I can see and hear ghosts. I’m called
chovihano
or
awenydd
—death talker, medium, witch. I’m considered a Shaman among my people, the Romany—someone to be respected, but feared and held at arm’s length. I left that life behind years ago, but the souls…the ghosts…they followed.
* * * *
It was April in Charlotte, North Carolina, which meant that on any given day, it could be god-awful, surface-of-the-sun hot, or it’d be back to the winter coats again. It was always particularly erratic after an uncharacteristically cold winter, like we’d just had.
Today, however, was a hoodie day. As I walked east on North College Street toward the coffee shop I owned, Uptown Java, I eyed the saturated gray clouds that threatened to spill at any moment. ‘April showers’ indeed. At least if we got a sprinkle it would wash away the baked-on layer of pollen that covered every stationary surface.
When the wind kicked up a notch, I tugged the hood of my sweatshirt up over my bulky headphones and reached into the kangaroo pouch to turn up my iPod. Now I wasn’t one of those douchey guys with giant tricked out ‘phones and a teeny-weeny MP3 player. I had a very good reason to be rocking my professional-grade Sennheisers. They kept the voices at bay.
I pretended to stare down at my lime green Chucks while I bopped along to Ed Sheeran, but I was really scanning my surroundings. I never knew when the wanderers might try to communicate. They were always around, but sometimes they’d sneak up on me. It wasn’t a long walk from my townhouse to the coffee shop—about eight blocks—and with the music to help drown them out, I didn’t expect to be accosted.
I was wrong. I pulled up short when I looked up to see a woman standing directly in my path. She was about my height with a slight build, and she appeared to be wet. Appeared, because at first, their façades always held the faded, grayish-green color of the shrouded—of the dead. She was beyond the veil, only visible to me because I was
chovihano
.
Her face was droopy and her mouth gaped like a fish. As she reached for me, she took on more form; I had a brief sense of long brown hair—except for the shock of white that made up her bangs and the front part of her hair—and eerie lavender eyes, before I sped up to get away from her. I knew if it weren’t for the music, she’d try to communicate with me, tell me whatever she needed to help her be at peace…or to ruin the peace of whoever put her there. She’d hound me like the others until I was out of her range.
I’d never been able to pinpoint what kept them tethered to a certain area, but they all seemed to have to stay within a certain radius of their epicenter—be that the place that they died, the house of a loved one, the work place of their murderer. I never knew until they told me, but I’d stopped listening long ago. If I listened to them all, their voices and ephemeral bodies relentlessly crowding in on me, I’d go insane.
I sighed with relief when I reached the door of my shop. I pulled it open to reveal my morning barista, Chelsea, flitting about like a headless chicken. I couldn’t tell why she was so harried—there were only two customers in house at that moment.
“Hey Chelse,” I said, hooking my headphones around my neck and approaching with caution. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, God. Titus, thank
God
you’re here. I’m about to lose my shit. Riot didn’t show up for his shift and I’ve had to do everything
by myself
since I opened the damn place!”
I cringed inwardly. Chelsea was a sight to behold when she was in a snit, and I really didn’t want my customers to have the pleasure. She was a buxom brunette who acted like a stereotypical blonde; it was like she was trying to come off as a total bimbo, when she was really quite brilliant. She was studying biology at Queens College, and had hopes to go to medical school at Duke after she graduated. But from the way she looked and acted, everyone would assume she’d earned her degree on her back, so I didn’t know what the deal was with her affectation.
She leaned over the counter and rested her elbows on the glass, thereby squishing her breasts out until they were on prominent display. No matter how many times I told her I was gay, she still insisted on hitting on me or showing off ‘the goods’ whenever she thought it would get her somewhere.
Honestly, Chelsea would hit on anyone she found attractive, rich, or powerful enough to meet her needs—whatever those were—regardless of whether they were single, married, or gay, apparently. But despite that and despite her complaining, she was a good employee; always on time and never missed a day, so I kept her on.
“Relax, Chelsea. There’s only a couple of people in here, and it looks like you’ve already served them.”
She blew out a breath that strategically caused her ample chest to rise and fall. “I
know
that, Titus, I’m not stupid. But the morning rush hour will massacre me without any help.”
Unfortunately, she was right. Goddamn Riot. If he wasn’t my roommate, and a coffee savant, I’d fire his ass in a heartbeat. Ryan Maynor, a.k.a. Riot, definitely marched to the beat of a different drum—a stoned, drunk, and naked drum. He drew graphic novels under the alias ‘Tricky Riot’ but everyone knew it was him. Eventually Ryan had morphed into Riot, and it stuck.
I met him during my two-year stint at the community college while I was getting my associate degree in business. He was an art student, of course. God knows why, but we hit it off and decided to room together. Riot’s parents were obscenely rich—though you couldn’t tell from looking at him—and they’d bought him one of the gorgeous old row houses on the west side of the city proper, in the Fourth Ward. I paid him rent at first, until I’d saved up enough to buy in.
“I’ll call him, see if I can get a hold of him,” I told Chelsea.
She rolled her eyes at me, knowing as well as I did that Riot wouldn’t pick up. “Fucking creative types,” she spat. Then she turned those big doe eyes to me, as if she didn’t know I was immune to them. “I’m gonna need help, Titus.”
So much for getting my accounts receivables and inventory done. I didn’t work behind the counter much anymore—I
was
the owner, after all—but it was obvious that I was going to be slinging drinks today. “Christ, fine. Let me wash up and call Riot. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I went back into the break room, removed my hoodie, and put on an apron over my Avett Brothers T-shirt. I fished out my iPod along with the Apple headphones I used as back up and shoved them in my jeans pocket—just in case. The spirits didn’t come into my shop. I’d paid an obscene amount of money to a local Wiccan priestess to have the building cleansed and warded, and it seemed to have done the trick. It had definitely been worth it, because there was no way I’d be able to work here every day if I had to wade through the dead to get anything done.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I speed-dialed Riot and—surprise, fucking surprise—it went to voicemail. “Riot, where the hell are you, man? You can’t keep doing this. If I keep letting you get away with this shit, everyone else is going to quit unless I fire you. You’re tying my hands. Just get here.”
Irritated, I punched the end button and moved to wash my hands in scalding water from the sink. As I made my way back out to the command center—that’s what we called the area behind the counter where all the magic happened—a customer came through the door, jingling the bells on the knob.
I gave him a polite smile and a cursory glance before turning my attention back to the commercial coffee brewer. But then I did a double take, because that man was certainly hotter than any of the Charlotte yuppies who’d ever graced
my
establishment. He was dressed to blend in—I recognized the technique from my brief stint as a street kid—with boring jeans, a plain green polo, and a nondescript brown bomber jacket. But not even that jacket could hide the breadth of him. He was only maybe half a foot taller than me, but the width of his well-defined chest and arms was… impressive. He had equally inconspicuous dirty blond hair, worn short-ish, and mild hazel eyes. Though the guy had a jaw on him that could cut glass, that wasn’t what was so arresting about him. He had this… aura about him; it was commanding, yet… gentle.
“What can I get ya?” I managed to croak when he stepped up to the counter.
“I’ll have a
Venti
Caffè Americano.”
I snorted and gave him my best shit-eating grin. “We only speak English around here, pal. How about I get you a large?”
“Sounds good.” He smiled back at me, the expression wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Two-fifty,” I said after ringing him up. “You staying here?”
“For a little while, yeah.”
“Go ahead and have a seat, then. I’ll bring it out to you.”
He ambled over to the lounge area, picking up a free
Creative Loafing
magazine from the stack by the door, and chose a table by the window.
I fired up the espresso machine and started some water boiling. I looked at Chelsea, flicked my eyes to the customer, and mouthed
oh my God
, fanning myself dramatically. Chelsea waggled her eyebrows in return.
