Chapter 31 Grim
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.
She was so gorgeous in that black plaid skirt and white silk blouse with her hair in a ponytail, and here I was in jacked jeans, faded band T-shirt, and half-laced shitkickers.
Still, I couldn’t just take her anywhere. After her McDonald’s dig, I had to redeem myself, especially since she’d referred to that outing as our “last date.”
It hadn’t been a date. We both knew that. As well as we knew this wasn’t a date.
But here we were, seated in a booth at a joint called the Hidden Gem, a 1920s speakeasy-themed restaurant in the heart of the downtown restaurant district near the river.
Johann and Flora had said I should take Helena somewhere “nice.” This place fit the bill. But to say I was woefully underdressed would be an understatement. Then again, I didn’t do ties anyway.
“How did you know about this place?” Helena asked in a hushed tone after our waiter brought our drinks—straight whiskey for me and Chardonnay for her.
“I didn’t,” I said, going ahead and tossing back half the amber liquid, which burned hot and bright in the back of my throat, like I’d swallowed a star. It had been lifetimes since I’d imbibed anything. Still, the sensation was familiar. And oddly, in more ways than one…
Helena’s eyes bugged as she watched me, questions brimming in that gaze. And of course they would. Most of the time we’d been together, I’d been a fucking skeleton. Now here I was shooting high-end bourbon served neat.
Did I have the balls to tell her that was largely because tossing back this searing sweet liquid fire was probably the only thing that rivaled the act of tasting her soul with mine?
Nope. But I could think it.
Thankfully, I’d ordered a double and I had one more swig left to get me through a dinner where I had little interest in the food.
I was going to have to order—and consume—something, though.
Like I’d told Helena, it had been a while. Long enough that I couldn’t remember what I’d tasted last. I never took this form anymore. It took too much out of me. Simultaneously, assuming this long-since-shed guise burdened me with far more than I cared to shoulder.
But sitting with her made the slow creeping-in of my murky memory worth it. At least that’s what I told myself while the shadows of the past remained at bay.
Maybe she was keeping those shadows away, too.
Sources of light did that.
“You just picked this place at random, you mean?” she asked.
I glanced away from the menu that, sparse as it was, still overwhelmed me, and scanned the darkly lit and windowless dining area.
Booths with shining burgundy studded leather seating lined the bare brick walls while matching fringed art deco lampshades hovered above each. Nearby, a bartender garbed in Prohibition-era attire, complete with bow tie and handlebar mustache, mixed cocktails at a varnished bar.
Old-school, Gatsby-style jazz played softly over some unseen sound system.
“It looked classier than a fast-food joint,” I said, “so I thought I’d give it a try.”
“Well, it really is a hidden gem, isn’t it?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. Because, if you asked me, the gem wasn’t the joint.
The waiter came back, and when Helena smiled at him, I had to resist the urge to give him a little flick of the soul, too.
Wouldn’t be doing myself any favors if I went around spiritually tasing people because I’d caught some feelings for a Fated that I couldn’t seem to fucking regulate.
I was in enough shit.
“I’ll have a small margherita pizza,” she said, then glanced my way.
Frowning, I peered down at the menu again because now the waiter was looking at me.
My turn, I guess. It was just that, in the last however many decades—centuries—food had become such a foreign concept to me. I didn’t know what anything on this menu was except for the oysters, and I’d had enough of the ocean as of late.
“Do you need another moment, sir?” asked Mr. Helpful.
Lost, I peered back up at Helena, who once again fluttered her lids at me, emerald eyes searching. Then, seeming to pick up on my ineptitude, she shot them toward the waiter.
“Make that a large pizza,” she said. “We’ll share it.”
“Of course,” said the guy before hurrying off, his steps fast like he couldn’t wait to get away from us. Or, rather, me.
Death had an aura most humans recognized—even if only on a subconscious level.
And I could look, act, drink, and eat like a human all day.
But that didn’t change the fact that there was obviously something off about me.
And the only living, breathing human I’d ever encountered who had not been repelled by that currently sat straight across from me.
“Before, in the car,” she said, her voice soft, “you meant it’s been a long time since you’ve eaten, didn’t you?”
“I sort of hope I remember how,” I mumbled, which made Helena laugh outright again—bright and happy in a way that made her cover her mouth quickly.
I hadn’t meant to be funny, but something warm unfolded within me at the knowledge I’d made her laugh—even if she was laughing at me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I think you’re joking and… you’re not.”
“I don’t joke,” I repeated, which wasn’t so true. But I had an image and a reputation to uphold. Even in front of her. Maybe especially in front of her.
“I hope you like pizza,” she said. “Have… you ever had it?”
“Not that I can remember,” I said.
“Remember,” she echoed while I stole another glance around the room, still on alert for danger even if Cedric happened to be in a drawer—another drawer.
Even without Cedric parading around with his magic, Helena was still a Fated Soul.
Granted, being who and what I was, I ought to feel the tug of her spirit before any catastrophic event, but that didn’t stop me from keeping an eye out.
Especially not while we still had no real answer regarding the origins of the note.
“Grim, what do you remember?” The question drew my attention back to her. “I mean… if you don’t mind my asking.”
“About?”
“Um,” she said, “about… before. Meaning… before you were Grim. When we were in the Netherworld Forest, you mentioned that… there was a before.”
“The answer is nothing,” I said truthfully. “I remember nothing.” Well… that was mostly truthful. “Very little is what I remember. And that’s how I prefer it.”
Helena tilted her head at me, curious. She opened her mouth and then closed it, then opened it again, as if selecting, dismissing, and reselecting her words. “Do… you remember what happened when Cedric attacked us in the restaurant?”
“I snapped his neck,” I said.
Now it was Helena’s turn to shoot a glance around us, probably hoping no one had overheard me.
“Um,” she amended, “I mean… right before that.”
I frowned at my rocks-less rocks glass, tempted to shoot the rest of the whiskey but hesitant since that would also mean I wouldn’t have any left.
I could always order more, and the liquor wasn’t going to do anything to me since my blood burned through the stuff before it could hit the brain I did currently possess—along with a pulse that, for whatever reason, started to race.
“Cedric fucked with me,” I answered, “and I fucked with him back.”
“You…” She trailed off, studying her wineglass while she rotated it by the stem with both hands.
“You said someone’s name. At least… your doubles did.
I asked Cedric who it was, but he said he didn’t know.
He said the doubles were ‘mirror chimeras,’ and that they could only reflect what their target presented them with. ”
A name? They’d said a name…
Maybe I did remember that. Vaguely.
The best thing about assuming my other form was that the empty skull left no room for the memories that belonged to the life I’d led in this body.
“Please don’t say the name,” I whispered. “I don’t remember… but I know I don’t want to, either.”
Helena’s eyes fell. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I jumped to say. “For anything.”
“I didn’t mean to overstep—”
“You didn’t,” I said. “And you haven’t.”
“I… haven’t?” Those eyes, timid, lifted to find mine again. “At all?”
Now she had me looking down, staring into my whiskey yet again as the sensation of that kiss returned to haunt my entire being. “No.”
Silence overtook the table—uncomfortable but simultaneously loaded with heat and pressure, the consuming kind of burn that comes right before the wood in a bonfire breaks and embers go spilling.
“Grim,” she said, severing the silence that otherwise might have devoured us both. “Don’t you think it’s odd that, well, nothing’s happened yet? In… the last few days, I mean. Because if I’m a Fated Soul and already overdue for the White Basin… shouldn’t that hurry things along?”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“Oh?” she probed.
“I don’t know,” I amended, grabbing the whiskey glass, my hand tight on the tumbler. “This has never happened before, so in this instance, it can’t be said I know what I’m talking about. So, maybe it is odd. I guess I just don’t like it, and I want to pretend the delay is perpetual.”
“Don’t like what?” she pressed.
I threw back the rest of the whiskey before setting the glass down too hard. “I don’t want to do it.”
Those lids fluttered again. Confusion flittered across her features while she tried to interpret my blunt but still-obtuse response.
“You should get to stay,” I clarified. “Here, I mean. You’re doing stuff. Good stuff. You smile and shit—that’s getting rarer than you think. I guess that’s why I saved you on that balcony. You didn’t even know what I looked like, and you were hitting on me. Who does that?”
“My offer would have stood even if I had known what you looked like,” she said tentatively, and why did I believe her? Maybe because she’d kissed my teeth, embraced my bones, run straight into my fleshless arms instead of away…
“I should talk to White,” I said, eyes shooting askance because sometimes it hurt to look at her knowing she was going to die.
The pain got worse with the knowledge I’d be there to see it.
How was I supposed to just let it happen?
I hadn’t that night on the balcony when I’d known her for less than ten minutes.
Now I knew what it felt like to hold her.
And I knew myself, too. Plan or no plan, I wasn’t going to stand by any other time.
And didn’t that make me just as doomed as her?
“You can’t talk to White,” she cautioned as the waiter returned, bringing the pizza, which did smell good, though I still couldn’t be bothered to be hungry. For food. “Flora and Johann are looking out for you. They want to protect you, and you have to let them. That’s the deal.”
“Are you trying to tell me what to do?” I asked her.
“Relax,” she said with a wink as she used the serving spatula to slide a slice of pizza onto one of the small plates before setting it in front of me, “you like it.”
That wasn’t all I liked.
Fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have come back.
I’d gone centuries untouched. And entirely unbothered by it.
Somehow, she’d now rendered me a touch-starved fool.
“Do you want Parmesan?” she asked as she wiggled a little jar full of powdery white cheese at me.
Want?
What I wanted was to save her life—for real and for good, not just temporarily.
I wanted to protect that light that had been bright and powerful enough to blast me through again and again.
I wanted to leave her be and let her grow like the wild rose she was.
I wanted to return to her decades from now, after she’d already gotten everything she’d ever wanted out of life and was ready for a new fate.
I wanted other things, too. Things I shouldn’t want.
Days with her.
Nights with her…
I wanted this pizza with her to not be our last as well as our first.
But the odds of getting any of that were nowhere near being in my favor.
So, for the moment, I just said, “Sure.”