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“You don’t need a divorce,” Mrs Crocombe says, ignoring me, and looking at Nina. “What you need is to learn to defend yourself. So what if you’re a target? Become the target they fear to hit. Now git up out of that bed before you grow into it.”
She starts to flap a duster at us in a way that completely undermines the gothic misery of the moment. She also throws open the curtains, filling the room with light and revealing a mess any teenager would be proud to have made. This is a room full of old plates, half-drunk mugs of tea, and more tissues thrown about the place than one can count. We have become slightly feral from misery over the past weeks, feral, depraved, and filthy — and none of it in the good way.
“If the two of you don't leave this very second, I will not be held responsible for what I do,” Mrs Crocombe threatens. It is not a good idea to forget that she is a demon, and even as a demon slayer myself, I know better than to cross a middle-aged woman who has just come across a mess she must clean. Call that sexist if you like, it’s the kind of sexism that has kept me intact through many years of cleaners.
“Do you think she’s right? Do you think I could learn to be powerful?” Nina whispers the question as we linger out in the hall.
“Yes,” I say. “I do. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself.”
“Because you want to keep her a damsel in distress so you can keep saving her!” Mrs Crocombe yells from the bedroom, her voice booming with a depth and gravel originating from Hades itself. “Go outside!”
I grab Nina by the hand and I allow Mrs Crocombe to chase the pair of us from the house.
“I've never been strong,” she says as we enter the gardens. “I've been fast, but…”
“You’ve always been strong,” I correct her. “But your kind of strength has been endurance. You’ve endured terrible things time and time again. You’ve come to expect, and accept them.” I feel as though if I could just say the right words, I could make this all better — or at least, bearable. What are they? They’re floating right on the tip of my tongue.
And then they come to me.
I take her hands and I draw her close, and I look down into her pretty eyes.
"The magic of love isn't that it makes us invulnerable. It makes us more vulnerable. The magic of love is that it makes what we suffer worthwhile."
"Or you could just learn to stab people," Mrs Crocombe suggests at high volume from the bedroom window. She has incredible hearing, that woman.
"Or that," I agree.
"I'd like to learn to do some stabbing, please,” Nina says.
"I can teach you, but if you don't like seeing people hurt, I wouldn’t recommend it. It's messy. It's loud, and it's much smellier than you think it will be."
Her face crumples. "So that's it? I either live in the fear and certainty that everything I love will be taken from me eventually, or I stab smelly things and hope for the best?"
"Yes, but even with the stabbing, entropy wins. We can't stop loss. But we can destroy our happiness by fixating on it so much we miss what’s right in front of us.”
"Like you," she says. "My husband."
Is she finally seeing some light in the darkness? Has the interfering demon done some good for us both?
"Like you," I agree. "My wife.”
“But…”
I grab her face in both hands and kiss her deeply.
“We have slain two great evils together,” I say when I break the kiss.
“Actually, technically, you slew one, and that was an accident, and then that one slew the other, and so…”
“We survived. That’s the point,” I tell her. “We’ve won. Over great generational evil. Over our own shortcomings, oversights, and mistakes. We’ve triumphed over them all.”
“You’ve made a bloody mess!” Mrs Crocombe shouts from the window. “Neither one of you is coming inside again if you ever leave dishes stacked with six different dinners between them!
Nina lets out a little giggle. “I made her mad.”
“We’ve made her mad,” I say, holding her close. “Together.”
“True,” she says. She’s smiling for the first time in weeks. She has needed to grieve, and I have needed to wallow. We have both indulged ourselves in the awfulness of it all. But now it is time to let the sunshine in, and take the dishes out, and to, as Mrs Crocombe would say, get on with it.
“No fucking divorces,” I growl in her ear.
“No fucking divorces,” she agrees. “But maybe…. fucking?”
“Definitely fucking,” I agree, lifting her up with both hands on her luscious rear. “So much morally sanctified sex you’ll float away on a sea of my…”
