"Focus on my voice," Ira says. It isn't a request. It's a command, delivered with the kind of absolute authority that only comes from a man who's spent his life telling demons to go back to hell. "Aven. Listen to the heart. My heart. Count the beats. One. Two. One. Two."
Cain moves in from the side, his presence a dark, velvet weight that seems to drink the light. He places a hand on the desk, not touching Aven but getting close enough that his blood magic starts to bleed into the air like ink in water. It's a dampener, a thick, heavy curtain thrown over a live wire. The static doesn't vanish, but it stops screaming. It settles into a dull roar, the sharp edges of the spirit-noise blunted by the old weight of Cain's blood magic.
"Breathe," Ira commands, his voice vibrating through Aven's spine, a physical anchor. "With me. In for four. Hold. Out for four. Stay in the skin, Aven. The skin is the boundary. Stay inside it."
I'm still holding Aven's hand. I can't let go. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to pull away, to distance myself from thecold void he's become, but I know if I let go, the anchor breaks. If I let go, I'm just a witch watching his world burn. I watch as the glassy look in Aven's eyes slowly, agonizingly, begins to clear. The amber returns in slow ripples, the pupils dilating and contracting as they try to find a focal point. He blinks, once, twice, and then his focus snaps back to me, the terror in his eyes so bright it's blinding.
For a second, there's a moment of pure, crystalline relief. He's here. He's back. He hasn't been hollowed out. And then his face goes very pale, a sickly greenish tint washing over his features that overrides the fear.
"Oh," he chokes out, his hand flying to his stomach.
Before any of us can react, Aven leans forward and throws up directly onto Ira's boots. The sound is wet and miserable in the sudden silence of the library. The room freezes. I'm still holding his neck, my thumbs resting just under his cheekbones, and I can feel the shame radiating off him in hot, stinging waves. It's a visceral, human moment that shatters the high-stakes magical tension.
Ira doesn't move. He doesn't even flinch. He just keeps his hand on the back of Aven's head, holding him steady while Aven gasps for air, his shoulders shaking with the aftershocks of the purge. Cain is already moving, his expression unreadable as he produces a clean white cloth from somewhere within the folds of his coat. He hands it to me, his eyes dark with a quiet, steadying concern that says it's okay, we're still here.
I wipe Aven's mouth, my hands still trembling so hard I can barely coordinate my fingers. The panic is receding, replaced by a wild, hysterical urge to laugh. It's the adrenaline, I tell myself. It's the sheer absurdity of the situation. We were battling for his soul ten seconds ago, and now we're dealing with the contents of his breakfast. The contrast is too much for my fractured nerves to handle.
"Well," I say, and my voice is a shaky, high-pitched mess that sounds nothing like the Academic Chic persona I started with. "That was... an unconventional ending to the session. I don't remember that being in Vera's notes. I'll have to check the index under Emetic Consequences of Mediumship."
Aven groans, leaning his forehead against the edge of the oak desk, his eyes closed tight. "Fuck off, Soren," he mutters, his voice muffled by the wood. "Just... fuck right off. I hate all of you. I hate magic. I hate my own stomach."
The relief hits me then, a physical blow that makes my knees weak. If he can insult me, he's still here. If he can be a brat, then the ghosts haven't won yet. I let out a sound that's half laugh, half sob, a jagged little noise that echoes in the high ceiling of the library.
“He’s fine,” Ira says, his voice a low rumble. He eases his hand away from the back of Aven’s head, giving him room without fully leaving his side.
I look down at the mess near my boots with a pinched expression that would probably be funnier if my hands weren’t still shaking.
“He’s back,” Ira says. “Get him some water before he tries to apologize.”
Cain is already at the door. He returns a minute later with a glass of cool water and a wet cloth, which he uses to gently wipe the sweat from Aven's forehead. The domesticity of it is jarring, this ancient predator and this tactical mountain of a man, fussing over a twenty-six-year-old bartender who just had a spiritual meltdown. It looks dangerously close to a household, if a household could be assembled out of bad coping mechanisms, old magic, and men who don't know how to leave each other alone.
I make tea because that's what Vera always did after magic went wrong. Mine tastes like boiled leaves and panic, whichAven informs me is less a beverage and more plant-flavored punishment. I tell him his palate is spiritually underdeveloped and set the mug closer anyway.
Ira spends the next ten minutes cleaning the floor. He doesn't complain. He doesn't even make a face. He just does it with the same methodical precision he uses to ward the shop or dismantle a threat. I watch him, feeling a strange, tight ache in my chest. He protects what he loves by caging it, and right now, his cage includes a bucket, a mop, and a quiet patience I never knew he possessed.
Aven eventually sits up, clutching the water glass like it's the only thing keeping him on the planet. He won't look at any of us. His face is flushed a deep, embarrassed red, and he's staring fixedly at a knot in the wood of the desk, tracing the grain with his eyes as if it were a map out of this room.
"I'm sorry," he says, his voice barely a whisper, thick with the residue of the spirits and the sickness. "I didn't... I couldn't stop it. They all came at once. It was like a dam breaking and I was just a pebble."
"You don't apologize for a flood, Aven," Cain says, his voice like silk over gravel. He's sitting on the edge of the desk now, close enough that his knee is brushing Aven's arm, offering a silent comfort. "You just learn to build a better dam. And we'll help you build it. Stone by stone, if we have to."
Aven finally looks up, glancing at me with a look that's so raw it makes me want to look away. "I failed. First lesson, and I nearly checked out. I'm a liability."
I stand up, walking around the desk before he can fold any further into himself. I touch his hair first, giving him a second to pull away. He doesn't, so I pull his head against my hip, my hand tangling in those messy curls. He smells like the shop, incense and dust and a hint of the mint tea I made earlier, but there's a metallic tang underneath that reminds me how closewe came to losing him. "You didn't fail," I say, my bossy tone returning because it's the only armor I have left to protect him from his own self-loathing. "The teacher just underestimated the curriculum. I gave you a graduate-level exercise on your first day. We're going to try again tomorrow. Only we're going to do it at a pace that doesn't involve me having to replace the carpet."
Aven lets out a long, shaky breath, leaning into me just for a second, letting his weight rest against me before he pulls back, trying to reclaim some of that defensive sarcasm that keeps him sane. "If you use the word journey or spiritual awakening, Soren, I'm moving back to the bar. I mean it. I'll sleep on a pile of cocktail napkins and tell the spirits to talk to the hand."
I laugh, and this time it feels real, reaching all the way to my tired heart. "Deal. No journeys. No awakenings. Just very boring, very repetitive indexing. It's going to be the most exciting filing you've ever done. You'll be dreaming of Dewey Decimals."
He shakes his head, a small, tired smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You're a lunatic. You know that, right?"
"I'm an Essren witch with an excellent wardrobe and a library that currently thinks I'm a hack," I correct him, smoothing his hair one last time. "Now go upstairs. Ira's going to make you eat something bland, probably toast that tastes like cardboard, and Cain is going to stare at you until you fall asleep out of sheer self-consciousness. I have a library to apologize to."
I watch them leave. Ira goes first, his hand resting briefly, heavily, on Aven's shoulder as they pass the threshold. Cain follows, a protective shadow that seems to swallow the light around him, his eyes never leaving Aven's back. Aven looks back at me once, a quick, uncertain glance, before he disappears into the hallway, his steps still a little heavy, a little unsure.
Once the door clicks shut, the silence in the library changes instantly. It's not the judgmental silence of the books anymore.It's something heavier. Something hollow. The air feels thinner, as if the spirits took a piece of the room with them when they were forced back.
I turn back to the mahogany desk, my eyes landing on the spot where Aven went blank. The energy there is still jagged, a lingering static that makes the hair on my arms stand up. I reach out, my fingers trembling as I touch the wood. It's cold. Bone-deep cold. A reminder of the void he almost slipped into.
