Page 9 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

She tore off her coat and dumped it on the floor, kicking off her shoes.

Her fingers fumbled with the dress zipper, the heavy fabric clinging to her skin. That smell had soaked into the fibers, making the memory and panic rise so swiftly she ripped the dress, tearing at the fabric to let it fall into a discarded pile on the floor.

With the shower blasting, the steam rose instantly. Yet that stench still lingered on her skin as another wave of nausea washed over her…

Was that the Grim Reaper? Or an angel of death?

“I don’t want to know.” Her voice echoed off the tiles in the shower cubicle as the panic rose again.

Until his face filled her mind. Not the monster. But the man with those eerily light teal-blue eyes that shone like sea-glass, and how his gaze held hers as if he were reading beneath the shield that the scars of her life had put in place.

Zarek.

Just the sound of his name invading her thoughts was enough to make her breathing slow down and the trembling terror recede like an outgoing tide.

With soap and cloth, she scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin burned, and still she scrubbed, desperate to lift that stench and for the chill to work its way out of her bones. By the time she turned the water off, her skin was flushed red and hypersensitive.

Wrapped in a towel, Angela stepped out of the shower—and gagged.

The stench was still there.

Not from her skin, but from the pile of clothes squatting on the tiled floor.

She backed away as if the fabric might reach her. Rushing towards her bedroom with her heart thudding loudly in her ears. There, she caught her reflection in the hallway mirror.

Purple shadows bloomed along her throat in the shape of fingers. She could blame it as a blemish from the strange marks on the glass where her aunt’s wards were drawn to lock the mirror, so she’d said. But none of that stuff was real.

Sadly, the marks on her throat were.

She threw her towel over the mirror, as if to block it out of her mind.

Inside her bedroom, she slid on sweatpants and a loose tank top. Near her bed, she tugged hard on the top drawer of the dresser. It always stuck, that she had to jimmy it a few times before it opened. Inside, she rummaged past folded scarves and old notebooks until her fingers closed around a squat glass jar.

The label was faded, but her mother’s handwriting was still legible. She’d refilled the contents herself a few times over the years with comfrey, arnica, calendula, and lavender.

Angela unscrewed the lid and inhaled the smell of fun nights and sunny days, of the fleeting time spent with a woman who fixed what she could with her hands and herbs.

Scooping up a little salve onto her fingertips, she gently worked it into the bruises on her neck, wincing at the tenderness. The coolness sank in, easing the tightness in her chest while soothing the pain in her throat.

She imagined what her mother would say: There now. You’re still standing. Now go get ‘em, my girl.

The salve felt like a small shield, that bandage you’d wear to cover a scraped knee as a kid. It was also the same comforting words that helped her through the first day at a new school where she knew no one. The words that carried her through lecture halls full of Ivy Leaguers and misogynists who had assumed she didn’t belong, even through job interviews where she’d been underestimated, talked over, and dismissed.

She’d learned early how to breathe through it to stand tall, roll her shoulders back, and keep moving forward, making it the perfect medicine.

Angela capped the jar, slid it back into the drawer, and rolled her shoulders, letting the last of the panicky-tremor work its way out of her body. Then she went to kill the stench in her bathroom.

At the cleaning cupboard under the kitchen sink, Angela pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, grabbed a heavy garbage bag, and returned to the bathroom. She swept the dress, coat, underwear, shoes—everything—into the bag, careful not to touch a thing, then tied it off tight.

She then liberally poured an entire bottle of bleach over the tiles, replacing that rotting stench with a chemical scent, which she rinsed away with the shower nozzle. She lit some scented candles and opened the window to let the steam and bleach fumes escape, keeping herself busy cleaning because stopping meant remembering.

At the back door, she tossed the garbage bag out onto the lawn.

But then as the back door slowly closed behind her, she spotted the simple shakers by the stove.

Salt.

She couldn’t stop staring at the salt shaker, as if her mind was trying to tell her something.