Page 108 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

It’s an attempt to lighten the mood a bit. An out for him. But he doesn’t really respond to it in any real way. I think he might be somewhere very far away. Some other time. And I feel like a dick for not asking him more about his life in the past. I always just chalked it up to him being one of those dudes that’s always mad. Chip on his shoulder and all.

Now I’m wondering why he hates being called “Samuel” so much.

But there’s a lot to do. And I don’t think he’d answer if I asked him now. And it feels like a dick move to suddenly start caring when I’ve never made a point to care before.

So, I make a mental note to stop calling him Samuel when I’m mad at him. And another mental note to try and crack him open over drinks again sometime later. When things aren’t so complicated. And I clap him on the back, hard, once or twice.

“Come on. Let’s go look for the books Wren mentioned.”

“Yeah,” he grunts, a bit awkward as he leads the way.

I don’t know why, but as we find the dusty old journals behind the gun safe and make a call for local paramedics, I feel the shift in my life—in all of our lives. The crossing of a threshold I wasn’t expecting.

Up until now, all the magic and secrets have felt like little treasures. Meeting Lillith was like stepping into a fairytale. Full of fun and whimsy and love. But a woman is dead. No, not just a woman. Lillith’s mother is dead. And as relieved as I am that the paramedics called it cardiac arrest, I doubt that’s what killed her.

For the first time, I realize that Lillith’s probably in very real danger.

I guess I am too, theoretically. But my sense of self-preservation has always been pretty quiet. That knowledge is a whisper in the back of my mind compared to the alarm bells going off for Lillith.

I just want to get back home.

ㅤ

My mother’s journals sit on my nightstand, where they’ve sat for close to a week. I continue to stare at them and not do much else. I haven’t really eaten. Haven’t checked my phone. Haven’t showered or opened the shop.

Wren and Damien told me when they got back about the journals, but I don’t know how to process the fact that something killed my mother. I don’t know if I want to read the journals of the woman who birthed me and left me. I don’t know if I want to risk the chance that they’ll humanize her—that they’ll make her a person and not just a phantom figment of abandonment and loneliness.

I just got through grieving Nan. Going through that again so soon would wreck me. Tear me apart on a cellular level. Unmake me.

I feel hollow.

Weight settles in behind me. Warm arms wrap around me. A soft kiss behind my ear. Warmth where there was once only cold.

“Can we get you out of bed today?” Damien asks. “Please, sweetheart. We don’t have to read the journals. But let’s get out of bed and find something to eat for you.”

I keep thinking that I’ve run out of tears, but more come.

My voice is craggy with disuse. “I’m not hungry.”

“Yeah, you are,” Damien says, kissing behind my ear again. “You can’t tell that you are, because you’re sad. But I promise you that you are. And Wren, and Buttstink and the guys... They’re all worried about you. And I’m worried. I don’t wanna suck my own cock here, but I think I might be the most worried.”

I sniffle and Damien cranes his neck up to see the path of my tears and wipes them away with calloused fingers.

“I don’t want it,” I say. “I don’t want to rewrite my mom.”

“No one expects you to do that, Lillith,” he says.

“If I read it, I’ll have to face it.”

“You’re facing it either way,” he says. “All that changes is how informed you are.”

“I hate this. I hate all of it,” I say through bitter tears.

“I know.” He combs his fingers through my hair, brushing it back behind my ear. And kissing my temple. “And that’s why we’re just going to focus on getting out of bed and getting something to eat. Alright?”

This isn’t the first tactic he’s tried. Day one, he brought Wren and Bastion over to try and help me convalesce. After a couple days, he tried to dom me out of bed. That backfired. I absolutely lost my shit on him. Screaming, crying. I think I even accidentally broke a few glasses in the kitchen with my magic. Yesterday, he cleaned up whatever I’d broken, and, afterward, he just lay with me in bed all day long, holding me in silence until he kissed my forehead and told me he had to go to practice.

I feel like we’re going through the five stages of grief together, only his is over the girlfriend he had before. I’m in ‘anger’, and now he’s ‘bargaining’. I wonder what ‘acceptance’ is going to look like.