Chapter 6
Even the Living
Keep Their Ghosts
Elara
The newsroom hums with a kind of restless quiet, the kind that sits between curiosity and fatigue.
Outside, the fjord is frozen in place, light bleeding pale through the windows. The sun won’t rise for another few hours, maybe longer. It’s hard to tell what time really means here when the world spends most of its day asleep.
I stare at the photograph on my desk.
The man’s face is blue-tinged, stiff from the cold, a thin burn curving around his throat like a collar. Vapor’s latest work.
The words in my draft swim on the screen: chemical interference suspected, no suspects named.
Sigrun leans over my shoulder, her cardigan brushing my arm. “You’ve written that line three times.”
“I’m trying to make it sound less sterile.”
“Death usually is sterile,” she says, sipping what might be her third coffee. “You can only clean it so much before it loses meaning.”
She’s right. The newsroom smells of old ink and burnt espresso. The air is heavy with half-formed stories and tired ambition. Phones ring, keyboards chatter, but it all feels far away; like a world I only half belong to.
I scroll through the police file again, the screen reflecting in my glasses. “They’re saying the compound was inhaled,” I murmur. “Something synthetic. But look here; no trace of residue, no powder, nothing. Just a single entry wound behind the ear.”
She exhales softly. “You sound almost admiring.”
“I’m not,” I say, though I don’t sound convinced. “It’s just… he’s consistent. There’s precision in his madness. A kind of art.”
Sigrun hums in disapproval but doesn’t argue. She’s learned I don’t mean it the way it sounds. Or maybe I do.
We cross-reference the file with the old cases; the same pattern every time. Men with money, power, blood on their hands. No signs of forced entry. No DNA. No prints. Only that strange ring-shaped burn that blooms after death, marking each victim like a brand.
“Chemical,” I say. “But controlled. It’s not random poison, it’s tailored.”
Sigrun flips through her notebook, eyes narrowing. “Like he’s studying something.”
“Exactly.”
She nods slowly, the kind of nod that means we’ve crossed into dangerous territory again. “We’ll need more from Halldórsson. He hates me, but he hates loose ends more.”
“Already ahead of you,” I say, pulling a printed copy of the latest police report from my bag. “He left it on his desk during the briefing. I borrowed it.”
“Borrowed,” Sigrun repeats dryly. “That’s a generous word for theft.”
“He’ll get it back.”
“Assuming you don’t get arrested first.”
I smile faintly. “Then it’d finally make a good headline.”
Sigrun chuckles under her breath and shakes her head. “You’re impossible.”
The fluorescent light above us flickers once, twice. I glance up. It’s always been too bright in here, like it’s trying to make up for the darkness outside.
Jonas walks past, laughing at something Brynja says. His scarf is too red, his voice too loud. They belong in the kind of world where people go home at five, where warmth waits in other bodies.
I don’t.
My world begins when theirs ends.
By late afternoon, the newsroom starts to thin out.
Coats rustle, chairs scrape, goodbyes drift through the air like falling snow.
Sigrun closes her notebook, eyes flicking toward me. “You’re staying, aren’t you?”
I nod. “I need to cross-check something with the Reykjavík archives.”
She hesitates, studying me. “Elara… you do remember what today is, don’t you?”
I do. I’ve remembered since I woke up. The date’s been whispering in the back of my skull all morning.
Fourteen years.
“I remember,” I say quietly.
Her expression softens. “Go home early. For once. Light a candle. Do something that isn’t work.”
“Work helps.”
“No,” she says gently, “it distracts. That’s different.”
I look away before she can see too much.
When she finally leaves, her perfume lingers; a faint mix of cedar and ink. The silence that follows feels like it’s watching me.
The computer hums, the clock ticks, and outside the windows, the sky presses low over the town, heavy and gray.
I open a hidden folder on my computer. The one labeled “Personal Research’’. It holds my father’s file. Photos, scans, notes, a few stolen documents that could cost me my job if anyone noticed.
Henrik Vance.
Army researcher, found dead near Hafnarfjoreur, fourteen years ago today.
Official cause: drowning.
Unofficial cause: a network of lies.
The coroner’s report always bothered me. The inconsistencies, the quiet deletions, the final line that reads; trace chemical presence in submersion site, sample inconclusive.
It used to mean nothing. Now it means everything.
Because last week, in the report I took from Halldórsson’s desk, again yes, there was an almost identical note.
“Trace presence of unknown compound found in dock water. Sample inconclusive.’’
The same phrasing. The same evasion. Fourteen years apart.
Coincidence doesn’t survive patterns.
My pulse climbs. My fingers shake as I jot it down.
I imagine my father standing in his lab, his steady hands holding a flask to the light, the smell of iodine and saltwater hanging in the air.
He used to let me watch him work. I can still hear the low hum of the equipment, the sound of the sea outside, the way he’d whisper equations under his breath like prayers.
I close my laptop. The office feels too small, too bright.
I need air.
By the time I step outside, the streetlights have bloomed against the dusk.
The air is cold enough to sting. Snow drifts in thin, restless veils across the asphalt. My breath fogs before me, ghosting into nothing.
The walk home takes fifteen minutes. I count my steps without meaning to; an old habit from childhood, from nights when the silence scared me more than the dark.
The wind resists me when I reach the door, pushing back like a living thing. The handle is cold metal, the kind that bites. It always sticks before it gives, the frame swollen from years of sea air and winter. When it finally opens, warmth spills out, soft and steady, like a held breath released.
My house isn’t large; two rooms and a loft, built from concrete and corrugated metal painted a dull, sea-worn blue. It stands alone at the edge of town, where the road begins to blur into the fjord. The roof is steep and silver, rain and snow sliding from it in thin, restless ribbons.
Inside, the walls are pale wood, the kind that drinks in the light when it’s brave enough to visit. The windows are wide but deep-set, triple-glazed against the wind, their glass always fogged with my breath or the ghost of the sea.
The living space bleeds into everything else; desk near the window, shelves of notebooks beside it, a wood stove that ticks softly in the corner.
A stack of firewood leans like an old friend against the wall.
On colder nights I light the stove, but tonight the geothermal heat hums through the floor, steady and unseen.
Plants crowd every flat surface. Their green softens the metal and concrete, makes the room feel alive in ways I can’t always manage.
The kitchen is small, its counters lined with mismatched jars and a half-eaten loaf of banana bread left under parchment. It’s sweet and starting to dry at the edges, but the smell reminds me I exist.
Upstairs, the loft is barely wide enough for a bed and a bookshelf.
My father’s old camera sits on the windowsill beside a cracked seashell he once gave me, proof that beauty can survive.
Some pictures of me and my mama, some with the three of us together.
I enjoy having my own space, however I occasionally visit my childhood home.
From outside, my home must look like a fleck of color against the endless white. Inside, it feels like the only warm place left in the world.
The small space feels warmer than it should, lit by the soft amber of the lamp on my desk.
Approaching my desk, I uncap the small metal watering can and move from pot to pot, pouring carefully. The smell of damp earth rises, rich and comforting. My fingers brush over leaves, checking for dryness, for life.
Plants don’t lie. They withhold, they wilt, but they never lie.
When I finish, I sink into the chair at my desk. The wood creaks softly. My notebook waits—black cover, corners frayed. Inside, sketches and notes fill the pages; pressed flowers, names, numbers, fragments of police language tangled with my father’s handwriting. A mess, like my mind sometimes.
On the first page is his photo; creased, sun-faded. He’s smiling faintly, eyes squinting against the Icelandic glare. Behind him, the water gleams steel gray.
I trace his face with a fingertip. Fourteen years, and I still can’t decide if remembering hurts more than forgetting.
I flip to the last page, where my newer notes live. I’ve been building a map lately, his death at the center, strings of data and names radiating outward: his colleagues, research partners, private sponsors. And at the far edge, a name circled twice in red ink: Einar Vetursson.
The man whose chemical patents vanished the same year my father did.
I press my thumb against the ink until it smudges. The only connection I’ve been able to find.
I lean back, staring at the ceiling. The air feels close. The radiator ticks softly, the sound almost like a heartbeat.
I remember the last night I saw my father alive.
I was ten, half-asleep on the couch. He was packing a satchel with notebooks and vials.
He kissed my forehead, smelling of salt and coffee.
“Be good, fox,” he said. “Curiosity will take you far, but it will hurt you too.” Nobody understands me the way my father understood me.
Then he left.
He didn’t come back.
I open the folder I took from Halldórsson. The smell of paper and old smoke rises as I flip through. The water analysis confirms what I already suspected: there was something in the sea. A compound with no known formula, corrosive but controlled.
I think about what Sigrun said; that truth and obsession often share a bed. She’s right. I’ve been crawling back into the same one for years.
I close the folder and reach for my sketchbook. The pages smell faintly of graphite and dried petals. My drawings stare back; monkshood, belladonna, foxglove, poisons dressed in beauty. Each labeled in my neat script, as if order could protect me from their meaning.
I draw when I can’t breathe. It’s the only thing that slows my pulse. Tonight my hand moves on its own. The shape that forms isn’t a flower but a mask. A gas mask, black lenses for eyes. I shade it darker and darker until the paper bruises.
When I finish, I sit back. My chest feels tight.
Outside, the wind rises, rattling the windows. The snow sounds like whispers against the glass.
The same thought returns, as it always does: If someone framed him, they’re probably still out there.
The clock ticks past midnight. I light a candle on the desk, the kind my mother used to keep for storms. The flame flickers, reflected in the photograph of my father. For a moment, the shimmer makes him look alive.
The candle crackles softly. The room smells of wax and soil. I feel the weight of eyes that aren’t there, the prickle at the base of my skull, the familiar ache of being known by something unseen.
Maybe it’s only my imagination. Maybe it’s him.
Not my father, but the faceless hitman the world calls a monster.