“I’ve had the guys running facial recognition,” Atlas said from across the table, sliding his roasted vegetables around on his plate. He had deep purple marks under his eyes, and his cheeks had sunken in on his face. Quite the pair we made. “We think we got a hit out in Albuquerque.”
I swallowed against my dry throat and shifted my lifeless gaze to his. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It makes sense. He’d find a populated spot to blend in. He’d work somewhere dealing in cash, so he didn’t leave a paper trail. Fuck, I bet he even changed his name to something normal like John Smith.”
“Atlas.” I sighed, running a hand over my face. “It’s been a month. Just let it go.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, squaring his jaw to prepare for a fight. The angry rush of fire reverberated down my sternum, expanding from him into me, replacing the aching chasm with something tempestuous and volatile.
“Who the fuck are you?” he spat.
I tried not to flinch. “What?”
“Who is this fucking shell sitting in front of me?” He threw his fork down and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “The witch from the liminal would have chased his ass across the world and dragged him back by the scruff of his neck.”
That hurt more than anything else he could have said because it was true. The person I was before the banishment spell would have sprinted to the edges of hell to find someone she cared about, someone she loved.
“Is that who you’re hanging around to find?” I raised a brow. “The witch from the liminal? She’s gone.”
“Right.” He scoffed and rolled his eyes, escalating my ire.
“I’m serious,” I snarled. “If you’re still here for her, you’re wasting your time. I don’t know where she is, but just like Wes, she’s not coming back.”
“You know, I thought after everything we’ve been through, everything that’s happened, you and I would finally be on the same page.” He shoved back his chair and pushed to his feet.
“Same page about what, huh? How fucked up it is that we did this to ourselves? How screwed up we are inside? We kicked a demonic bees’ nest and now we’re dying from the sting.” My voice rose as I matched his stance, pushing to my feet, letting the rage of Wes’s abandonment add fuel to the inferno inside. “When will you get it through your thick fucking skull? He’s not coming back. He doesn’t want us.”
The “He doesn’t want you” went unsaid, but Atlas startled like I’d said it anyway. Perhaps he heard it in my thoughts. Perhaps he already suspected it, just as I did.
“You’re giving up, and it’s repulsive,” he growled, slamming his hands on the table.
I leaned forward, baring my teeth as I let my wrath consume me. “If that’s how you feel, then get out.”
His features tightened and his muscles tensed, our anger bouncing back and forth between us.
“Go on,” I snapped. “Go!”
Atlas straightened, grabbed his stuff, and walked away. The sound of the slamming door behind him reverberated through the house, and his retreating presence picked at the scab in my chest.
Wes was gone. Now, Atlas was gone. And I was alone.
I thought he might come back once he cooled off, but he didn’t. I went to bed by myself that night, purposely trying to ignore the hole inside my body where they once resided. We hadn’t sealed the soul bond, and this fractured thing between us only cracked further with each second that we weren’t together. If I closed my eyes, I could see the fissures spreading like a broken window, each delicate slice spreading further as I breathed.
I thought about reaching out to him telepathically. Who really knew where I ended and they began? Our thoughts and feelings had become unified so quickly, I didn’t have time to learn how to control it.
In the end, I went on with my life. I did the assignments Lilith gave me. I met with Gullveig and Hella and tried to recount the steps I’d taken as best as I could. But they didn’t have any solutions, either.
“The other warriors will go after them,” Hella said, putting a hand on my shoulder in a reassuring pat. But that only made it hurt worse, the foreign touch so blindingly not them.
“They won’t let Atlas and Wesson abandon you like this,” Gullveig added. “Though, when they return, I might light them on fire myself.”
I tried to smile, but it didn’t feel real.
Nothing felt real.
I walked through life with the vague sense that I’d left the realest part of me in the liminal, and I would never get it back. I survived the days like a ghost, haunting the estate, hardly able to look my abuelita in the eyes without the perpetual shame of being a husk swallowing me whole.
“You’re not eating,” Bridge said from across the breakfast island. We sat in Tita’s kitchen for family dinner. My cousin had already finished her empanadas and housed an entire plate of rice. I pushed my food around with my fork, hardly able to stomach the smell, let alone the taste.
