Page 8 of Infernal Affairs

I’m left alone with the honeyed air, the ruined dish towel, and a cake that wouldn’t dare collapse while it’s under my care.

For a few minutes, I work in silence, letting my mind wander.

I’m not a witch or a demon.

I am, in all measurable ways, ordinary.

A girl with a love of bread, a tendency to overthink, and a nose for sweetness.

But there’s something about Dr. Enoch Infernalis.

Maybe it’s because we both prefer to listen.

Or because we both know what it’s like to be shaped by expectations, to be told you’re one thing and spend a lifetime becoming something else.

I finish the cake, level the tiers, and set it in the walk-in to chill.

My hands are sticky.

My head is clearer than it’s been in weeks.

On a whim, I grab another box and fill it with the best pastries in the shop, not even bothering to arrange them. I finish it off with a black-and-red bow.

I catch myself humming as I do, a song my mother used to sing when the wind was changing, and new things were on the horizon.

The lighthouse is visible from the doorway—black stone against a dimming sky, its light not yet lit.

I stand there longer than I need to, box in hand, humming.

In baking, you learn not to rush the things that need time.

You learn to trust the warmth, to wait, and to let things become what they’re going to become.

I think about that.

I think about the lighthouse.

Then I pick up the box and head out into the cold.

CHAPTER 3

ENOCH

Monday at the Blackthorn Bay Community Center is a patchwork of ticking clocks, shuffled clipboards, and small, significant silences that fill the counseling office like fog.

I could schedule my sessions seconds apart and still predict the rhythm: someone will be early and linger by the aquarium, someone else will be late and greet me with a story about their car, their kid, or their catastrophic morning.

Today is a hollow kind of busy, and I hate how easily I can tell the difference.

Atlas Hollowhorn shows up precisely on time, his body language suggesting that if he could have arrived any earlier, he’d have waited in the parking lot, breath fogging the Prius windshield.

He’s too broad for the intake chair, which he respects by perching on the very edge, legs together like a debutante afraid of creasing a skirt.

The office wasn’t designed for his proportions. Nobody ever designed anything around a minotaur, not even in a town like ours.

He pretends not to notice.

I’ve known him for a decade, and every year he gets less like himself and more upholstered with someone else’s expectations.