"Sleeping is for people without a rotating cast of ghosts narrating their existential crises." I slide into the chair opposite him and try not to feel the weight of the cross in my pocket. The one I took from my own apartment without deciding to. The one that feels heavier now that I'm sitting across from him. "I'm fine. Thriving. Practically glowing with the light of the Lord, or maybe that's just caffeine and the fact that I forgot breakfast."
Ezra sits back, eyes searching my face with that soft, steering focus that used to make me feel seen and now makes me feel handled. He doesn't jump into the lecture. He waits while a waitress brings my coffee, fingers tapping a slow rhythm against the tabletop. The silence is a tactic. I know that because they taught it to both of us. Create the quiet, and the guilty will rush to fill it.
I drink the coffee instead. It's burnt and bitter, a far cry from the mug Cain handed me less than an hour ago.
"I'm worried about the men you're staying with," Ezra says finally, his voice dropping into the confidential register people use when they want control to sound like concern. "I've heard stories, Aven. About the shop owner. About the man from the bar. About the exorcist. They're not just unconventional. They're dangerous."
"Everyone is dangerous if you look through enough stained glass." I set the coffee down. "Soren is a witch with impulse-control issues and a filing system that may violate several fire codes. Ira takes his job too seriously. Cain is... Cain."
"The vampire."
There's something careful in the way he says it.
"Yes, Ezra. The vampire. Gold star for noun identification."
"How old is he? Truly?" Ezra leans forward, elbows near the edge of the table but not quite crossing into my space. "What does he ask from you? The silence he gives you, what does he take for it? Has he touched you? Have any of them?"
My mouth goes dry.
He sees it. Of course he sees it.
"Do you understand that supernatural bonds can mimic consent?" Ezra asks, softer now, which is worse. "They can make need feel like choice. They can make relief feel like love. If someone gives you quiet after years of pain, you may not know the difference between wanting him and wanting the pain to stop."
The words land because they're not clean lies.
I think about Cain's mouth at my neck, his blood magic sliding through me like silence with teeth. I think about how badly I wanted the quiet, how easy it was to mistake relief for safety because for once the dead didn't have their hands in my head. I think about Soren's magic brushing against mine, bright and hungry in ways he doesn't always know how to control. I think about Ira's hands bracketing me against a wall while the world narrowed to his voice, his rules, his certainty.
They need me. That much is true. They benefit from me. That's true too.
The vampire planned it, something whispers from the steam curling off my coffee.
My fingers tighten around the cup.
The witch feeds from you.
The chatter in the café tilts sideways, cups clinking too loudly, milk frothing into a hiss, a chair scraping over tile like a blade.
The exorcist will cage you and call it safety.
I look toward the window and catch the shapes in the glass. Too many eyes. Wrong mouths. Spy spirits pressed into the reflection between the hanging plants and the street outside, using Ezra's voice as a bridge because of course they are. Of course the thing that wants me isolated would pick the one person who still knows where all my old wounds are.
"If this is an intervention," I say, my sarcasm coming out thin and brittle, "the pamphlets really need work."
"I'm not trying to shame you."
"That'd be a bold pivot for our shared religious background."
"Aven."
"I know what they are."
"Do you know what you are to them?"
The question hits harder than I want it to. I grip the coffee cup until heat bites my fingertips and refuse to look at the window again. "I'm the one living with them, remember?"
Ezra reaches into his pocket.
Every muscle in my body goes tight before I see what he pulls out. A silver cross rests in his palm, plain and familiar, almost identical to the one already sitting like a secret in my coat. It hums with low, sanctified energy, and the hair on my arms rises.
