Chapter Thirteen

I don't think I was out for even a full five minutes. When I wake up, it is to darkness and yelling and Tate's hand resting against my hair. Once my vision focuses, I can see Tate hovering above me, my head in his lap. He's leaning over me slightly as if he intends to protect me. My muggy mind realizes he is the one who is yelling, but I don't catch any of it with my head still swimming and pounding. Plus, once I stir, Tate instantly shifts his attention from the others in the room to me.

"Callie! No, don't try to sit up, you hit your head pretty hard. How do you feel?" He says it all in one big, relieved breath. I lift my head as much as he'll allow me and see Violet Harmon standing across the living room. She's alone now and on her face is an odd mix of anger and sadness. I feel my eyes narrow into slits and anger bubble up in me.

Maybe I should be scared of Tate. That's clearly what she wants. But that's crazy. Tate has saved me from her and others in this house before. He saved me tonight. Whatever he was in life, he isn't that in death. I guess she thought learning that Tate is not alive was also supposed to shock me, and it did, but not in the way she wanted. I guess she wants me to be repulsed, but that would be like dating someone for a while and then they say "By the way..." and you let whatever it is they tell you define them. It isn't right and it isn't fair.

"Tate, I want her to go away." If those 'dreams' I'd had in the past really weren't dreams then I know Tate will be able to do this simply by saying those words. Instead, I hear Tate take a shaky breath and sigh.

"Me, too, Callie. But it's Halloween. Let's just go to your room, I'll take care of this at sun up." He asks if I can walk and I say I can, so he helps me to my feet and wraps his arm around my waist. Tate puts his body between me and Violet. Though she looks furious, she doesn't say a word. She simply stands off to the side of the staircase and glares as we go up.

I haven't forgotten what Violet has told me and shown me not even a half hour before. It just doesn't register in my head that sweet, gentle Tate is a killer. Maybe in life he was, but whatever he is now has changed him. He's good. When all those 'dreams' were happening, he was always the one to save me.

I look over at him and see his sweater is still black, still jagged and torn across his torso, still soaked through with blood. I reach out and put my hand against his chest and it comes away red. Tate looks down, seeming to have just realized this change.

"Dammit." And suddenly he is again wearing the light blue hoodie, perfectly intact. My hand still wears his blood. As soon as he has my bedroom door locked behind us, he takes me into the bathroom and helps me wash my hand off.

"It's been a wild night, eh?" He rubs my bloodstained hand between both of his soap covered ones. The water flowing off our hands runs pink. Tate doesn't laugh. He doesn't really respond in any way. When my hand is clean, he leads me back into my room and sits across from me on my bed.

He barely gets his "I'm sorry," out before dissolving into tears. He's never done this, and I'm unsure if I should reach out and console him or sit back and wait for it to pass. While I'm still trying to decide, he picks his head up and uses the sleeves of his sweatshirt to dry his eyes. When he sniffles, he tries to crack a shaky smile.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I didn't think you would have to find everything out this way. Violet... She's jealous. We were close before, when she and her family lived here. I don't know if she told you, but she committed suicide. Her parents were getting a divorce and I think she was probably depressed besides that. One day she took a whole bottle of pills. I tried to save her but it didn't work. I tried to wake her up and get her to throw them up, but it was too late."

The stories keep spilling out. He tells me how when he was alive he was also depressed. He tells me about his father leaving when he was a young age, about his mother being emotionally withdrawn and verbally abusive after he left, about meeting Nora. He tells me about his mother's boyfriend who killed Beau, smothering him with a pillow. He tells me about trying to use street drugs to self-medicate, how on the day that he died he had snorted several lines of cocaine.

"I don't think I would have done it if it weren't for the drugs. Up to the moment I pulled the gun on the SWAT team I was riding the high of the coke. I didn't know that everyone who dies here stays here. Until I was dead myself the only person I ever saw here was Nora. I didn't even see Beau until I was on the other side."

From there I learn about how his mother and sister Adelaide moved next door. He said Constance has always known that the dead remain in the house, that she found out when Tate and Adelaide and Beau were young, but she never told them, worrying they would be terrified if they knew. Constance knew that Beau and Tate would continue on in the house, so she bought the property next door. When Adelaide died three years ago after being in a hit and run accident, Constance had attempted to pull her body onto the property so she, too, would have an afterlife here. She was not successful.

"I'm glad Adelaide isn't here. You've seen how downright awful a lot of the spirits here can be. She wouldn't be happy here. Beau's only happy here because he doesn't know better. I wasn't happy here until you came along," he says, slipping his hand into mine. I smile at him, happy to see the destroyed look leaving his face and being replaced by relief.

As I listened to the complicated life and afterlife he has lived here, I realized he is still Tate. My Tate. The Tate who has protected me from the others here, who has gone out of his way to keep me safe, who has put in tremendous effort to appear as one of the living so I won't get scared and leave. And as I realize these things which I suppose should scare me and may mark me as mentally ill for my reaction, I know in my heart that Tate is good and this is unconventional but I want it to work.

"And so being young and dipped in folly/I fell in love with melancholy." The quote finally brings a smile to his lips, the dimples in his cheeks blossoming.

"Edgar Allan Poe. My girl is clever," he leans in and kisses me until the pressure of his mouth is almost too much and I'm certain my lips will be left bruised once he pulls away.

Tate is peering through the window in Callie's bedroom when Violet materializes beside him. The sun is just breaking the horizon. After last night's debacle, he decided it would be best to remain in Callie's room for the night and stand guard.

"Fuck off," he says before she can even look at him.

"You're twisted. You've ruined enough lives already. I'm not going to let you ruin this one, too." Tate's so quick, and since she hasn't interacted with him much in the last three years, Violet seems to have forgotten that. She's surprised when suddenly Tate's hands are wrapped tightly around her arms and his face is inches from hers. His perfectly dark eyes look like they're aflame.

But when he speaks, his voice is low and even. "I was going to tell her. Sure as hell not like this, but I was going to. And you know what, Violet? I wasn't going to force her or anything. I wasn't going to kill her. You killed your own goddamned self, Violet, so quit walking around this house like it was me who did it, or I will. I'll kill you every fucking day. Don't forget I was here first. I grew up in this house, and this house likes me."

He pushes her away from him with a hard, solid shove that sends her to the floor. Tate wonders, not for the first time, where her parents are. They've turned snobby in death, refusing to interact with anyone except each other, their children, and Moira. They pretend the rest of them don't exist and it sickens Tate.

"Just go away, Violet," he says before she can even stand up again.

When I wake up it is to bright sunlight, a glass of water and painkillers beside my bed, and a note from Tate.

I've gone back to my mother's house for a while. Nora is back now, you will be safe. If anything should happen just call for her and she'll be there. I figured you might have a headache after hitting your head so hard last night. I'll see you when I can. I love you.

-Tate

The house is so quiet that I know that nobody is awake yet. Nobody living at least. Tate left me in the clothes I had been wearing last night, only removing my shoes once I had fallen asleep. I shower and change into a long-sleeved dress and leggings before heading to my father's office where he keeps all of his paranormal books. I curl up in one of Dad's wing chairs with a book about how ghosts present themselves to the living, determined to learn all I can about my surroundings. I will admit, the only reason I even feel safe here is because of Nora. She's always been so kind.

Out in the hallway I hear the familiar popping sound that has occurred pretty regularly since we moved in. Mom always says it's the pipes, that they are old. Dad and Rhett have always thought otherwise. The noise sounds like someone is taking a handful of those cheap fireworks that you throw on the ground and go pop!, sharp and short.

As I read, the books does say some familiar things. You can often hear/feel a ghost rather than see them. Ghosts may try to interact with you through moving objects. Not once did it mention anything about ghosts being able to be corporeal, doing things like cooking and eating. Doing things that Moira and Tate do. It would take me a while find something more fitting to the situation, but I didn't want to ask my father. I didn't want to alert him and Rhett that things were real here. I didn't want them ever to find out about Tate.

"Oh, honey," says a smooth, gentle voice behind me. I look back and there is Nora, absolutely resplendent in a silky gown and a gauzy, jeweled kimono coat. She has small crystal hair pins shaped like dragonflies dotting her blonde curls. Nora reaches over my shoulder and closes the book.

"These things aren't going to tell you anything you need to know about this house. I worry how in the dark Tate keeps you. Come with me. This is my house, after all. I am responsible for it, and so I will tell you how it came to be so powerful."

Nora takes me down to the humid basement. If all those things were not dreams, like Violet said, then I knew exactly what would be down there.

"It all started with Thaddeus," Nora says, motioning towards the shadows. "Tate cares for him, so I wouldn't worry too much about him." I can hear something shifting around, but it stays out of the light.

"Don't let that sweet little brother of yours down here, though." When Nora sighs, it is heavy and sad.

"This house was born in blood and darkness, darling. To this day I do not know what my husband did to make Thaddeus immortal. He doesn't age anymore. He can't be killed. However my child was reborn, it's cursed all who have died here."

Nora puts her hands on my shoulders and makes sure her blue eyes meet mine.

"You must never interact with Thaddeus, nor most of the spirits who live here. Myself and my husband, we are safe. You know how good our Tate is. Moira is okay, she's truly too mild and complacent to be of much, if any, harm. Beau is a sweet young thing, and so is Elizabeth. The others, though, darling. Do not make a habit of their company. Promise me above all else you will stay away from the Harmons."

I guess Thaddeus must have knocked something over, because there is a crash towards the back of the huge basement. I can feel Nora's gold painted nails dig into my shoulders ever so slightly.

"Okay," I say. "I promise, Nora."