Old Ghosts

Chapter 2

He'd come here to be alone. The bartender did his job well, knew to keep the glass full and keep moving. The other patrons barely looked his way, distracted by the television above the bar, by the game of pool in the corner. If they did notice him, they would see only a man, shoulders hunched and head down. Another lost soul looking to forget. He scowled into his glass. They had no idea.

But it was working. The ghosts had gone quiet. The skinny kid had followed him here, had sat quietly on the stool beside him, but a few drinks had been all it took to make him fade away. The others had come then - ambassadors and arms dealers, soldiers and assassins, men and women and children, too. He'd toasted them all, drained his glass and watched them disappear. Whatever had been done to him must have improved his constitution. The bartender had started to look concerned, but one glare and the heavy thump of his arm on the bar had fixed all that. After all, he was already dead.

Dead and drunk. It had been a long time. The memories weren't just fractured now but blurred, slipping dizzyingly away whenever he tried to focus. But he remembered this. There'd been bars during the war, bars that made this hole look like a palace. They'd known how to do it back then, had raised their glasses while the walls came crumbling down, salvaged bottles from the wreckage and tried to forget the fact that tomorrow might be the end. He laughed at that. An end would have been something.

Down the bar, an old man was watching him. He'd been there all night, buried in his own drink, lost to his own misery. Did he think he saw a kindred spirit? For his sake, he hoped that wasn't true. Still, when the man raised his glass, he raised his in return. To old ghosts.

The bartender passed again, glancing up as the image on the television changed. The game was being interrupted for a news bulletin, replaying footage from a hearing held that afternoon. The whole world was on the verge of collapse, a world that he'd helped create, a world that he'd helped destroy. More guilt, more ghosts. But he hadn't expected to see them on television, hadn't expected other people to see them, too.

Most of the bar had stopped to watch the woman on the screen. She was being questioned about the attack, facing the stern-faced panel with a defiant calm that made his head swim. He'd heard that voice before. She'd whispered to him back at the museum, whispered to him in his dreams. Even now, she seemed to reach out to him, looking straight into the camera.

"James."

She sat on the stool beside him, a hazy apparition, shifting and fading, but with the same red hair, the same challenge in her eyes. He searched his memory, fighting the vertigo, taking another drink to calm the bile rising in his throat.

"<You're drunk.>" She spoke in Russian. He still wasn't certain how many languages might be rattling around in his head, but at least if he was going to talk to himself no one would overhear.

"<That was the idea.>"

She crossed her legs, resting an elbow on the bar. He saw it then, the hole in her belly, the blood seeping through her shirt. There was another bullet wound in her shoulder, fresh and red and angry. He could feel the gun again in his hands, the cold certainty that came from knowing that he wouldn't miss.

"<...I killed you.>"

She smiled. "<You tried. More than once.>"

He glanced up at the screen. She was older now and speaking flawless English, but a ghost was still a ghost. He drained half his glass, willing her to go away. But when he closed his eyes, he saw her again. Not from a distance, not aiming down the barrel at a target. She was close, warm, whispering in his ear, burying her face against his neck. A ghost that he had known. A ghost with a name.