My legs are a little stiff from sitting cross-legged on the cold floor when we descend to the kitchen. The stairs creak under my weight, E following behind me without a sound.
I gather a few items from the fridge: carrots, potatoes, a bit of smoked haddock, and an onion that’s starting to sprout but will do fine. Between what I bought for Devi and what Mabel already had, I have enough food for a couple of weeks. I could probably last a month if I stretched it out.
What a scary thought.
It brings me back to my childhood, to those long winters spent in one small cabin or another. A bag of potatoes or a pint of flour could always be stretched further and further in the name of safety and carefulness, as mother waited for the right day to visit the market. But stretching one day’s worth of food into four wasn’t as gruesome for us as waiting in the warded pantry on market day, never knowing for sure whether she would come back or not.
Goosebumps ripple along my arms as the coarse skin of the store-bought carrots scrapes my palms. The last slant of pale autumn light slips off the neighboring rooftops while I peel, the sun sinking early this time of year. I flick on the overhead light, and a warm, golden glow spills across the island.
“Why did you study medicine?” E asks, hovering closer.
“At first, I chose it because I thought it was precise and predictable, and I wanted to help people. But medicine is no exact science, I’ll tell you that. I’ve never been afraid of blood, so becoming a surgeon made sense. The feeling of cutting out something rotten from someone and bringing them back to health again—there’s nothing quite like it.”
“Do you ever use magic to help your patients?”
I shake my head, peeling the potatoes as we talk. “I try to keep my lives separate. I have used my healing poultice on a few nasty wounds over the years, but not often enough to arousesuspicion. College wasn’t a given, but I wanted to be more than a quirky orphan with the power to burst lightbulbs and grow rare plants.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re also an artist. I saw your bedroom, your sketchbook—you’re talented.”
I laugh, short and low. “Thank you. I used to love to paint.” My gaze darts to the space he occupies. “What about you? Do you remember anything else about your life?”
“Not really. I get inklings of what I used to love…or hate. Sometimes, I’ll say a word I can’t make sense of.”
I arch a brow. “Like what?”
“I can’t think of a good example, but I’ll tell you when it happens.”
I fill the ensuing silence with little details about my job, my flat, the neighbors who argue across the hall every Sunday morning, the cat that isn’t mine but still sneaks into my kitchen window. I stir the chowder slowly, the scent of butter and fish rising in soft clouds.
Outside, the sun slips under the horizon. Mist gathers over the lawn and rolls closer in a nefarious tide, soft and silver, curling through the iron gates and garden hedges. It rises up, up, up, until it obscures the windows, the milky veil opaque enough to blur the world beyond.
The faceless men are back. I feel the insidious weight of their presence at the back of my skull, like a slow needle prodded and pushed under my scalp. Maybe I could have snuck out during the day, but would the mist come for me at nightfall? Is it only pretending to go away after sunrise to lull me into a false sense of safety? I can’t go home, not until these monsters leave. All the effort I’ve poured into my new life can’t make up for the fact that creatures from another plane are prowling outside my door. There’s no law enforcement for that kind of thing. No way out. Imight have turned my back on my heritage, on Faerie, but blood isn’t something you can run away from.
The realization settles in like a stone dropped into a quiet pond. I don’t say the words aloud, but it’s there in the way my shoulders square, in the way my hand tightens around the spoon.
“Those fuckers are back,” E mutters.
I nod, my voice steady when I finally speak. “I’m not taking the chance to go home. Not if it means they might follow me there.” I ladle soup into a bowl, steam rising. “Do you need sustenance at all?”
Logic dictates no, but I’m no expert on ghosts.
“I don’t eat. Sometimes I fade away and disappear for days—or even months—on end.”
My throat itches painfully. “And where do you go, then?”
“I don’t know. I assume it’s the black void that comes next.”
My heart sinks at the quiet acceptance in his voice. “No bright light at the end of a tunnel?”
“No light. Not for me,” he answers with certainty.
It feels like we’re in our own little pocket of the world, sealed off. I finish my meal quickly, self-conscious about eating in front of someone who can’t. When I’m done, I rinse the bowl and wipe the counter until the kitchen gleams with that clean, lived-in order that brings me peace. Then I move to the living room.
The sofa creaks softly under my weight as I settle with my sketchbook on my knees. Lady jumps up beside me and curls into a perfect spiral, her steady purring filling the silence.
The tip of my charcoal moves almost on its own. Lines begin to take shape. A jaw, clean and defined. The faint shadow beneath high cheekbones. The delicate curve of lips caught between serenity and defiance. I smudge and blur, deepening the contrast around the hollow of the neck and the slope of the nose.
The man’s hair falls in loose, layered strands, captured with quick, uneven strokes. The eyes come last, almost too alive for the page, but there’s a stillness in them that unsettles me.
