A Glow of Stars & Dusk by Eve L. Mitchell

We satin the living room, Sam and I on the sofa, with Dad watching us while Mum made us tea. Sam sat effortlessly, his hands resting on his thighs, my hand still tangled with his, and every time I tried to wiggle free, he didn’t relinquish his grip.

“You’re not working today?” my dad asked me. This was the third time he had asked me, and I forced the smile.

“Yeah, this morning I was in the office, like I said, then Sam met me for lunch, and now we’re here.”

“Where’d you go for lunch?” Dad asked me casually as he eyeballed Sam.

“The Mustard Place,” Sam answered easily. “Isn’t that what it’s called, pumpkin?”

Pumpkin? I nodded in agreement because I knew I wouldn’t be able to speak. Dad’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally as he watched him, and I felt my palms get sweatier.

“Here we go,” Mum said joyfully as she walked into the living room with a tray overladen with the teapot, teacups and a plate of shortbread.

“Wow, Mum, you brought out Gran’s china.” This was terrible, she was genuinely excited that I brought a guy home.

“Well, if I don’t use them, then they just sit there, taking up space.” She beamed at Sam, who smiled back. His smile was so dazzling and easy I gaped at him. “Biscuit?” Mum offered him.

“They’re cookies,” I muttered. “We call them biscuits here.”

“You’re American?” Dad asked sharply.

“No,” Sam answered as he reached forward and picked up a piece of shortbread. “Thank you, Mrs Archer,” he added with another smile.

My dad’s eyes were so narrow now I was sure they were going to close. “Where are you from, Sam? How do you know Star? When did you meet?”

“Whoa, Dad, let’s ease off on the interrogation, eh?” I forced a laugh. “Sam’s Italian.” What was I even saying? “Do you know he can speak Latin?”

“Can he speak Italian?” my dad asked me shrewdly.

“Ciao, mi chiamo Sam, come stai oggi? Hai una bella casa. Sai parlare italiano?” Sam met my dad’s look steadily.

“Oh my.” My mum beamed at him. “Such a beautiful language, what did you say?”

“You have a beautiful home, Mrs Archer,” Sam said as he smiled at her again.

“Oh, well.” My mum giggled. “Thank you.”

“Okay, anyway,” I cut her off and gave Sam the side eye. “Um, we were just passing by and wanted to say hello.” I took my teacup off Mum with a murmured thanks.

“Sam, do you take milk?” Mum asked sweetly. He declined, and when his massive hand reached out to take the tiny delicate cup off my mum, I feared for the china.

I sat in silence as Sam ate his shortbread, his eyes roaming over the furniture as my mum asked him less aggressive questions than my dad did. My dad sipped his tea and watched him the whole time.

I picked up my teacup and took a sip just as my dad asked, “So why did I hear you tell Star that you were a male escort?”

I sprayed my tea everywhere when Dad spoke, and all three of them looked at me in disbelief. “Sorry,” I murmured as I dabbed my chin with a napkin and then looked at the napkin and then at Mum. “Napkins?”

“You didn’t need to go to any extra measures for me,” Sam said to Mum as he rubbed my back gently. “Are you okay?” His look to me was hard and held a warning, and I wanted to stick my tongue out at him.

“I’m fine.” I nodded.

“It’s a little joke between my pumpkin and me.” Sam turned to my dad with a smile.

“Care to share?” Dad asked me as he drank his own tea.

No. I have no answer.“Um, well, you can see Sam,” I stammered as I waved my hand up and down in front of him. “I mean, he looks like he should be on a Chippendales stage or something, and the fact I met him here, in Inverness, ya know.” I bit my lip to hide the fact my bottom lip was wobbling.

“Uh-huh.” Dad placed his cup down and sat back again. “You’re an accountant?” he asked Sam.

“No.”

Dad’s shoulders pushed back as he straightened in his chair. “Care to elaborate?”

“I’m in logistics,” Sam answered as he took a hold of my hand again.

“Logistics?” Dad asked dryly. His gaze flicked to mine for a moment.

“Yes. I deal with the overall process really, managing resources, how they are acquired, stored, and of course, how they’re transported to their final destination.”

“And what do you handle?” Dad quizzed him.

“People, their business, their assets.”

“Really?” Dad nodded. “When I was in the police force, we called that human trafficking.”

“Okay, so I think the Spanish Inquisition is about done, yeah?” I hastily stood, tugging Sam with me as I shot an exasperated look at my dad. “Sam has this ridiculous desire to see my bedroom. I told him I had no posters of boy bands or anything on my wall, and he doesn’t believe me.” I pulled him to his feet as I headed to the door. “Won’t be a minute. Dad, maybe we could be more friendly when we come down, hmm?”

I heard him mutter not bloody likely, and I sighed as I heard my mum admonish him. I pulled Sam up the stairs, and when we got to my bedroom, I firmly closed the door.

“Logistics?” I asked in disbelief.

“It isn’t a lie. I deliver people or things to where they need to be.” Sam was looking around my pink and cream bedroom, his attention on the double bed.

“And am I one of your resources?” I snapped angrily, “That you transport?”

“Why are you being sensitive?” he asked me as he studied me.

“Forget it.” I sighed as I closed my eyes tiredly. “Did you get what you needed?”

“I told you that your mother wouldn’t know,” Sam said to me smugly as he opened my wardrobe.

“What are you doing?” I crossed the room to him, shoving the wardrobe closed hurriedly.

“I need to check everything.”

“Just ask, don’t be snooping,” I whispered furiously. My eyes widened when he lay down on the bed. “What are you doing now?”

“How long did you sleep here? In this room?”

“Since I was six until I left for uni.”

“It holds onto your presence.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Lot of emotions still cling to these walls, these things.” He picked up and examined my little blue bear I had owned since I was an hour old, and then rose from the bed, dropping Blue Ted behind him. “Interesting.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my hands on my jeans. “Can you stop the Mystic Meg shit?”

Sam flashed a smile at me as he opened my dresser. “I don’t know who she is?”

“Forget it.” I snatched my underwear from his hands. “Seriously?”

“You were not bound here, but you have been here since you were bound.”

“Cryptic much?” I was so out of my depth and confused that I jumped a mile high when the door opened and my dad looked at both of us with a frown.

“You okay, Star?”

“Yes, you startled me,” I answered him honestly.

“Door should be open when you have a boy in the room, you know that,” Dad said gruffly as he turned away.

“I’m almost twenty-five, Dad,” I protested, given the circumstances, probably irrationally.

I looked over at Sam, and he waggled his eyebrows, which caused me to snort, easing some of my tension. I followed my dad out of the room as I wondered idly on what planet he was on if he considered Sam a boy.

“So, Sam.” My mum smiled at him as we went back into the living room. “Have you lived in Inverness long?”

Sam sat down on the sofa, bringing me down with him. “Not long,” he answered as he leaned over and picked up another piece of shortbread.

“What brings you to the north then?”

“Director’s orders,” Sam said vaguely. “Star is such an unusual name for your daughter, I’d be interested in knowing the story behind it.”

Mum laughed as she smiled fondly at my dad. “Well, you may have noticed that Roy’s a bit stern.” She ignored my dad’s harrumph and carried on happily. “My mother, God rest her soul, was always tinkering with herbs and things, and well, they didn’t exactly gel when we got married.”

“Jean, is this detail necessary?” my dad grumped from his chair.

“Hush now, I’m talking to the boy,” Mum chided.

Boy? Did she know he was probably older than they both were combined?

“Now, my mother was a firm believer in the”—Mum flushed a little—“well, the unknown for want of a better word. She was always talking about spirits and not upsetting the elements or the balance.” Mum rubbed the back of her neck as she spoke. She seemed almost apologetic. “Mum was always going to fortune-tellers, and then they would say to her that she didn’t need to be there, she could read her own destiny.”

“Gran was always looking at tea leaves,” I remembered with a fond smile.

“Never saw anything other than mush.” My mum shared a smile with me. “But the spiritual plane, as she called it, was important to her, so Roy being the amazing man he is”—the dead stare my dad was giving her was contrary to her words—“when we had Star, he asked my mum what we should call her.”

“So your grandmother named you?” Sam asked me with a speculative look in his eye.

“Yeah, I guess.” I looked at Dad. “I didn’t know you did that,” I said to him. He gave a noncommittal shrug and shared a grin with my mum. “It must have killed you that she called me Star,” I added with a light laugh.

“You grew on me,” he joked lightly, the first time he had eased since Sam entered the house.

“Yay me,” I teased him.

“And I’m guessing Elizabeth was the name you picked for your daughter,” Sam asked him casually.

“Beth is a nice name,” my dad replied, the stiffness coming back to his voice.

“And you, Mrs Archer?” Sam turned to my mum again after watching my dad for a moment longer. “Do you not believe in the spiritual plane?”

“I think there’s something,” Mum said with a nod. “My mother took me all over Scotland when I was younger, always telling me stories about pagan rituals and beliefs.”

“Pagan?” Sam asked sharply.

Mum never noticed and carried on, oblivious. “Oh yes, she was a firm believer in Druids and believed they were still active, especially in the north of Scotland and the islands. She moved us to Slate when I was just wee, seven or eight, I think.” My mum smiled fondly in remembrance. “She was convinced the Highlands were still wild and held onto the rawness of Scotland.”

“Druids,” Sam mused. “That makes more sense.”

“It does?” my dad asked.

“Druids are very powerful, well, so legend says.” He glanced at me. “Did she ever meet a Druid?”

“No.” My mum rolled her eyes. Then she seemed to think about it. “Well...”

“Well?” Sam leaned forward slightly, and I squeezed his hand in warning, he was showing too much interest in a bizarre story. I needed to stop him before Dad cut him off.

“Well, there was the old man, Hamish MacDonald.”

“Wow.” I forced a jovial laugh. “You can’t get a more Scottish name than Hamish MacDonald.”

Sam frowned at me even as my mum looked at me quizzically. “Mrs Archer, please continue.”

“Hamish was old,” my mum told him, enjoying the attention, I realised, but also because my mum could tell a great story. “He lived in an old cottage about five miles from Slate. He had no electric, no gas, the cottage still had a tin roof. Can you imagine?”

“Rustic.” Sam smiled, but I saw the look in his eyes: Mum could have described Sam’s dream home, by the looks of it.

“Rustic is definitely the term!” Mum laughed. “I was in the cottage once, and I had to go outside to get warm!” She shook her head in fond remembrance. “We were there for hours, he was brewing nettles, ugh the smell. I can still smell it now.”

“Why?” I asked. I was completely caught in the story.

“Nettles can be medicinal,” Sam murmured. “Did your mother buy many lotions from him?”

“You know what, she did,” Mum told him. “None of them worked. In fact, once, I had a rash from one of his lotions that I had to be put on antibiotics. We didn’t go back after that, but I was older then, so that made sense.” She gave a slight huff as she thought about it. “I completely forgot about that,” she spoke more to herself than us.

“You reacted badly to it?” Sam glanced at me. “What age were you?”

“Oh, I can’t remember.” She looked at Dad and then at me in thought. “You know, it wasn’t long after I met Roy.”

“And there it is.” Sam’s eyes gleamed in triumph.

“What do you mean?” Mum asked him curiously.

“I’m also a believer in the unknown,” Sam confided with a sly smile to Mum. “In fact, when I met Star, I was hooked the moment she told me her name.” He threw a smile my way as he continued to feed bullshit to my mum. “I think Hamish was a Druid, and whatever the lotion was that he made for you, reacted badly.”

“Or you shouldn’t be putting boiled weeds on your body,” my dad reprimanded gruffly.

“You were pregnant at the time?” Sam asked boldly, completely unperturbed by Dad’s comment.

“Sam!” I protested loudly. “That is not cool.”

Sam ignored me as he leaned forward and caught Mum’s hand in his. She was completely enthralled. “You were pregnant, and the lotion reacted to Star, not to you, didn’t it? You didn’t get antibiotics.” He was completely focused on my mum, and I think I was the only one to notice that he struggled over the phrase antibiotics.

I stared at him wordlessly and looked at my dad, who was also watching the exchange, but he didn’t look shocked, he looked furious. “Sam.” I nudged him.

“Jean, were you pregnant?”

My mum nodded slightly, and Sam stood swiftly. “I have what I need,” he told me as he headed to the living room door.

“Sam!” I called after him helplessly. He looked at me and then at my parents. With a sigh, he flicked his hand and muttered his strange language, and then he walked out.

“Star?” My mum looked startled to see me. “Why are you standing?” She looked at the tray and my dad. “Have you been here long?”

Goddamn demon.