Nolan’s gaze bounces between Felix and me from his spot behind the armchair, holding a glass filled halfway with a clear liquid tight between his hands. Vodka not water. “How are you two so calm?”
“I’m not,” I admit, pulling on my fingers to keep them from digging into my skin. “I’m so freaked out that the dial has spun all the way back around into what looks like calm.”
Felix shrugs and gives a Connor style answer. “I’m dead.”
Kaleb, sitting in the other armchair, scrubs at his face, his thick fingers pressing hard against his skull. “How could you…? Why would you…?” His whispered questions trail away as he stares at Felix on the floor.
“I’m not ready to go,” Felix repeats stubbornly, the only answer he’s given to why he keeps closing his door. And it is a ‘keeps closing.’ He shared earlier that this isn’t the first time he’s slammed his entrance to the afterlife closed.
“If your door is here, then your unfinished business is complete,” Kaleb counters flatly, like he’s reciting the fact from a light nephilim training guide.
“You can bring a door to a ghost, but you can’t make him walk through it,” Felix intones, butchering the ‘You can bring a horse to water’ idiom while he crawls over to one of the two towers filled with DVDs and video games that bookend Nolan’s big screen TV. “Why don’t we playUntil Dawn? I hear that it’s like playing an old B movie horror flick.”
“I bet I could make you,” Donovan grumbles, doing another lap behind the couch.
“Over my dead body,” Nolan challenges. Moving so fast he’s no more than a blur, he stands in Donovan’s path, the drink in his hand splashing to the floor.
“Stop it. Both of you,” I plead, getting to my knees and preparing to climb over the couch to stand physically between them.
Connor grabs me by the waist and hauls me back down, pulling me into his lap so I can’t escape again.
Donovan stares hard into Nolan’s eyes, and without looking away, asks, “K, what happens to spirits that don’t go through their door?”
Kaleb sighs sadly. “Without a body or unfinished business to ground them to the mortal plane, a spirit that doesn’t move on…they return to the source of all magic. They cease to exist.”
“What?” I cry, my worried gaze bouncing between Felix and Kaleb. “How do you know? Has this happened before? There’s got to be something we can do.”
“Moving on. That’s what he can do,” Donovan counters, his tone harsh.
“How can you say that?” I yell, struggling to escape Connor’s hold. I don’t know what I’d do if I was free, but I’m so angry and frustrated I’m surprised things aren’t flying across the room.
“You think I want him to go,” he seethes, stupidly leaning toward me. Or maybe not so stupidly, because when I try to punch his shoulder, he easily grabs my wrist—then promptly lets go when Connor releases a warning growl. After taking a deep breath, he calmly continues, “Isn’t it better that he exists somewhere than not at all?”
“That’s not your choice to make,” Felix states, his hands curled into fists against his thighs.
Kaleb closes his eyes and takes a breath before opening them again, settling his gaze on me with his ‘time to explain sad things to the girl who doesn’t understand’expression on.
“You asked how I know. It’s a story that’s taught to all light nephilim children,” he begins, his deep voice falling into the cadence that marks the beginning of a tale repeated through the ages. “It’s said that when the Earth was new, the goddess of all things grieved the loss of her most precious creations. That although they returned to her as they started, what made them who they were was lost.”
“Story time. Yay,” Nolan interrupts flatly, taking a sip from the dwindling liquid in his glass. “Why does this matter?”
“Shush,” I command, waving my hand in his general direction behind the couch. “I might finally get a full story of anything from one of you.”
Donovan snorts, then coughs, like his mirth escaped without his permission.
Connor sits quietly, his gaze resting on Felix, seemingly more interested in how he feels about the story than the story itself. Felix keeps his back to us, his head angled toward the ground.
Kaleb flashes Nolan an annoyed expression, then mutters, “Where was I?”
“The goddess grieving that her creations returned but were no longer themselves,” Felix answers quietly, illustrating he’s listening despite being turned away.
“Right,” Kaleb says, then after a moment, his voice once again taking on the gravitas of a storyteller, continues, “Lore states that the goddess’ grief was so all-consuming, that her pain called out to the god that created the heavens. A place of light and beauty whose creatures never aged and never died, but also never changed. When he saw what the goddess had created, he marveled at the wonder that was the mortal realm. How their finite time inspired the goddess’ creations to invent, to grow, and to appreciate each precious moment.”
“You left out how the angels were vain fucking assholes that believed they were better than everyone else,” Donovan interjects, leaning his hip against the couch. “And that they couldn’t figure out why their god had any interest in flawed creatures that died, therefore having no time to accomplish anything of worth. Not that angels accomplished anything. Infinite time and power, all of it spent dicking each other over.”
“Deodamnatus,” Kaleb breathes, his patience wearing thin. “The angels are irrelevant to this story.Faex, I’ve lost my place again.”
“God liked that mortals’ limited existence on Earth meant they valued what time they had, instead of squandering it like his dickhead creations,” Nolan offers up helpfully, and we all can’t help but snicker.
