Chapter 4
Eden
Ilet out a low, miserable groan and press the heel of my palm to my forehead, as if sheer pressure might coax my brain back into alignment.
Last night was… I don’t even know what it was.
It wasn’t the worst night of my life—I have an impressive backlog to compare it to—but it was definitely the strangest. So strange it already feels slippery in my mind, dissolving at the edges the harder I try to remember it. Which is surely a good sign, right?
Hopefully it just means that it really was exhaustion and grief finally hitting their breaking point. The pinnacle of everything I’ve been shoving down for so long, erupting out into one night of irrational, borderline feral behavior that led to a deeply horrific night terror.
A heavy weight settles onto my abdomen, followed by a familiar purr.
I crack my eyes open, squinting against the aggressive morning light spilling through the window as Vesper stares at me, her yellow eyes blinking slowly.
She stretches, claws kneading into my me before she settles back down into a warm loaf on my chest.
“Good morning to you, too,” I croak, a wave of profound relief washing over me as I reach up to bury a hand in her fur.
She’s fine. She’s perfect. Nothing happened to her. More proof it was all just some big nervous breakdown.
I take a long, shaky breath, ready to get up and start the first day of my recovery from this temporary insanity, when a soft clink drifts out from the kitchen.
My head whips toward the sound, a pang of panic fluttering beneath my ribs.
I hold my breath, hoping to God it was just a plate slipping in the sink.
But then it happens again, this time alongside the distinct click from the toaster, and my insides turn to pudding.
No.
No, no, no.
I lift Vesper off me and stand, yesterday’s clothes twisted sideways, strands of sleep-damp hair sticking to my face.
I creep toward the kitchen doorway, and as I round the corner, the air vanishes from my lungs.
He’s there. The silver-skinned, horned, pointed-eared nightmare from last night is standing in my kitchen, looking disturbingly comfortable. He turns to face me slowly, his pupils narrowing into needle-thin slits against the golden glow of his irises.
“Good morning, little summoner,” he says, raising a charcoal-black, smoking piece of toast in greeting. “And good morning, House-Beast.”
I look down to where Vesper’s weaving a figure-eight between my ankles, her tail flicking happily. Even my cat’s been recruited as a traitor to my sanity.
“I fed the House-Beast for you, by the way,” he adds. “It enjoys me now. Spent most of the night attached to my hip. Sweet—if not annoying.”
“You’re still here,” I whisper in disbelief.
He takes a bite of the burnt toast and winces slightly. “Where else would I be?”
God, I’m gonna puke.
“I did try to wash out that dreadful tea,” he says around a mouthful, gesturing vaguely toward the dining chair where his shirt and tie hang, dripping steadily onto the floor. “But your washing machine had… opinions. So I let it cool off, borrowed this instead. What do you think?”
My brow furrows. “W—what?”
“This!” He gestures down his body with the half-eaten toast. “What. Do. You. Think?”
My gaze follows.
Oh, fuck me.
He’s wearing my vest. More specifically, my white, spaghetti strap vest, with a big pink butterfly printed across the front of it.
The hem, which usually sits around my hips, is stretched indecently halfway up his ribcage, exposing a very, very visible line of abdominal definition that no hallucination should include.
“I found this little number in your laundry pile,” he says nonchalantly, looking down at the pink, glittery wings before dragging his eyes over me as if he’s comparing the way the fabric stretches over his chest to the way it would hang off mine.
“Not my usual style, but I make the damned thing look sinful. Don’t you think? ”
He pauses, his golden eyes tracking my stunned silence with a smug sort of satisfaction.
“It’s a bit tight under the arms, but the color is doing wonders for my complexion.” The spaghetti straps groan against his shoulders as he shoves the rest of the toast into his mouth and does a slow, graceful twirl right in front of the microwave.
Just ignore him, Eden. He’s just a manifestation of your delusion.
“Nothing? No feedback?” He stops mid-rotation and folds his arms across his chest, flexing his biceps lightly. “Come on, I look fucking hot. Give me something.”
My jaw unhinges, any semblance of sound or reaction getting stuck in my throat. I’m staring at the way the wings of the butterfly are shimmering against his silver pectorals, and my brain simply... dissolves.
“Back up,” he commands out of nowhere, moving into my personal space, a wall of silver that forces me to retreat. I stumble back one step, then two, until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the dining chair.
My legs give way, and I drop into the seat.
Half a second later, something soft hits my chest. My numb hands fumble to catch it, and I look down.
Bread.
A singular slice of plain, floppy bread.
“Eat. Absorb some carbs,” he instructs, already turning away. “I’m not in the mood to catch you again.”
The limp offering slides right out of my hand, landing on the floor with a pathetic little flop.
“Now,” he mutters, ransacking the cupboards, “where are those pesky tea bags? You drink tea, right? I mean—” he glances over his shoulder, “that is what you baptized me with yesterday, yes? So I’m assuming you actually drink it too?”
My head gives the smallest, detached nod.
“Look at that. Communication!” he croons, digging some more before he triumphantly fishes out the box. “Our first morning as an inter-realm couple and I’m already looking after you. Did I or did I not tell you I was excellent company?”
A moment later he slides a mug toward me, tea sloshing dangerously close to the rim, the teabag floating like a corpse.
“You can’t just—” my voice cracks. “You need to get out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head.” He taps the counter once. “Meeting adjourned. Now, is the next item on the agenda something fun? Or are we staying in the denial spiral a little longer? I just want to know whether I should make another round of toast for the matinee.”
I stare at him, chest tight, willing him to flicker, distort, vanish—anything.
He just watches me watching him. Then he sighs and reaches out with one long silver finger, nudging the edge of the sugar jar sitting on the counter.
One tiny nudge sends it tumbling to the floor in a violent crash—ceramic exploding across the tile, sugar hissing across the floor in a tiny avalanche.
I lunge forward, fumbling blindly to snatch Vesper up before she can pad through the shards. She turns into a wild blur of fur and muscle, her hind legs kicking off my ribs as she scrambles up my shoulder, claws digging into my skin through my shirt as she lets out a sharp, offended yowl.
“What—why would you--what is wrong with you?!”
“There.” He toes a piece of porcelain with his bare, silver foot, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Another piece of proof that I’m fully in the flesh. Hallucinations don’t generally leave a trail of destruction for you to sweep up, do they?”
“Are you fucking serious?” I snap with a mixture of rage and terror, clutching a trembling Vesper to my neck. “I have a cat! She could have been right there! You can’t just—you can’t just break things!”
He doesn’t look apologetic. If anything, he looks bored.
“But I’m not real, am I? I’m just a ‘neurological glitch’ in your very juicy frontal lobe.
” He takes a step toward me, the porcelain crunching under his feet with a sound that makes my skin crawl.
“And if I’m not real, then the mess isn’t real.
The glass isn’t sharp. The floor is perfectly safe.
” He gestures toward the shards, a cruel smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“So why the theatrics? Put the House-Beast down. If I’m a figment of your imagination, she’ll walk right through it, won’t she? ”
I squeeze Vesper tighter, knuckles blanching. He’s mocking me with my own denial, forcing me to choose between my sanity and my cat’s safety.
“Put. Her. Down,” he repeats. “Let’s test your theory. If I’m a figment of your imagination, she’ll walk right through it, won’t she?”
I don’t. I can’t.
I shake my head frantically. “It’s just… it’s a sensory projection. My brain is filling in the gaps with something bad because I wanted… I wanted him so badly that I—”
“If I wasn’t real, I wouldn’t have carried you up the stairs when you passed out,” he says, cutting through my denial with the precision of a scalpel. “You wouldn’t actually hear me. You wouldn’t sense the air moving when I breathe. You wouldn’t smell me. And most importantly—”
He reaches out and pries my wrist from the cat with firm, undeniable, and devastatingly solid grip.
He lifts my limp hand and presses it flat against the center of his chest, right over the pink butterfly.
A sensation between fever and frostbite courses through my veins, burning and numbing at the same time, alongside the steady, thunderous thump of a heartbeat that’s far too strong to be anything but real.
“—you wouldn’t feel that.”
The silence that follows is deafening, and that’s when the sickening realization finally completes its transit through my gut.
The ritual worked.
But it didn’t bring back the man who used to leave coffee on my nightstand. It brought me this. A creature of silver and fire and brimstone who is currently wearing my clothes and eating my bread.
I’m not just a grieving girl who’s hallucinating. I’m an idiot who accidentally opened a door to Hell instead of one to bring Matthew back.
He releases my hand, letting it fall into my lap.