Chapter 11
Eden
“Would you hurry up,” Malachi whispers, his breath brushing against my temple.
“I am hurrying,” I breathe back, my boots squeaking on the linoleum, almost drowning out the sounds of the automatic check-outs and the child crying three aisles down.
I reach for the shelves, grabbing with a desperate, shaky efficiency.
Antiseptic. Gauze. A box of steri-strips—the heavy-duty ones.
Then a tube of Neosporin gets tossed into the basket to cover all my bases.
It’s not exactly what I need, but I can’t call a doctor.
If I actually showed a professional this cut—they wouldn’t be as forgiving as Piper was—they wouldn’t just give me a prescription; they’d send me somewhere I don’t think I’d ever come back from.
I’m not going down like this—in any way, shape, or form.
“Eden,” Malachi whispers. “The infant is still shrieking. Make it stop before I provide it with a reason to be truly miserable.”
“It’s a child. They cry,” I snap back, dragging my leaden feet toward the pain relief aisle.
My arm isn’t just throbbing anymore; it’s a living thing, heavy and hot, pulsing in time with the flickering fluorescent lights.
I need ibuprofen, or a sedative, or maybe just to lay down on the cold linoleum and wait for the end.
“High voltage…” he muses from behind me.
I turn, half-expecting him to be staring at a power outlet, but he’s standing in front of the refrigerated drinks. He’s reaching out, his long, silver fingers hovering over a can of something called Liquid Havoc.
“Real electricity?” he asks, his head tilting at an angle that would snap a human neck. “Or more dull, mortal bullshit?”
“It’s just caffeine, Malachi. It’s sugar and heart palpitations in a can. Put it back.”
“The packaging promises a ‘storm in a bottle,’” he retorts.
“It tastes awful. We aren’t here for snacks, we’re here for—”
“Eden?”
The new voice hits me like a bucket of ice water. My hands go numb, the basket of gauze and antiseptic suddenly feeling like it weighs a hundred pounds.
“Your face is doing something alarming,” Malachi murmurs. “Mortals usually only go that color before they vomit or die. Which is it?”
I can’t answer. I can’t even breathe. I just stand there, gripped by a primal, sickening shock, as the past walks right up to the present and offers it a very confused, albeit polite smile.
“Eden?”
The antiseptic smell of the pharmacy isn’t coming from the bottles on the shelf anymore—it’s coming from the ward. The linoleum floor vanishes out from underneath my feet, replaced by the hard plastic of the gurney, the fluorescent ceiling zipping above me.
There’s a sharp prod to my lower back, followed by a small cough, and I flinch, snapping myself back into the room.
“Hey, Leo,” I manage to choke out. “I… I haven’t seen you for a while.”
Leo rubs the back of his neck, his eyes flitting over every single inch of me.
He looks exactly the same—the same kind eyes, the same fraying corduroy jacket he used to drape over the back of the couch when he came round for wine and board games with me and Matthew—the guy he’d been best friends with since they were ten years old.
I haven’t seen him since the funeral.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been meaning to call you since… well, since everything. I just didn’t know if you were... taking callers.”
“No, no, I’ve definitely been taking callers…” I say, fingers twisting around the basket handle. “I did text you quite a few times actually. After the service.”
His face falls, a brief flicker of guilt crossing his features. “Right. Yeah. I—the messages must have gotten buried. New phone. You know how it is.”
Liar.
Not that I could ever blame him, no matter how much it hurt. He just hadn’t wanted to talk to the girl who reminded him of his dead best friend.
I want to be pleasant and tell him it’s okay. I want to tell him I wouldn’t have called me back either. But my throat feels like it’s been lined with sand, and the weight of Malachi’s presence behind me is making it hard to find the oxygen.
Leo shifts his weight, his eyes darting from my pale, sweaty forehead to the way I’m hunched slightly over my right side.
“Is everything okay, Eden?” He takes a small, hesitant step closer, brow furrowed. “You look… you look a bit worn down. Are you doing alright?”
I open my mouth to lie, to offer some practiced platitude, but the air around me turns cold and frigid, stilling me completely.
“And who, exactly, are you to be commenting on her ‘worn’ appearance?” Malachi’s voice is suddenly loud and clear from over my shoulder, cutting through the tinny pop song on the speakers. ”Because perhaps you’d have known her state if you’d have answered those messages.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Malachi, don’t,” I hiss, but he’s already moving, stepping closer, pressing his hand into my lower back.
“Eden, are you comfortable with this male speaking to you?” he rumbles. “Because your taste in companions is consistently tragic. First the Corpse-Boy, and now this… curly-headed thing that’s lying to your face about his communication.”
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Ice surges through my veins, and the apples of Leo’s cheeks turn a feverish pink.
The pity in his eyes is replaced by a cold, defensive fear.
He looks at me, then up at the dark glasses of the monster looming over me, his voice trembling.
“Wait—what did you just say? Who the hell is this guy, Eden?”
“He’s… he’s from a support group,” I scramble for the lie, my hand shaking as I reach for a box of painkillers, trying to bring some desperate sense of normalcy back into the moment even as my arm gives a vicious throb.
”His loss was… recent. Like mine. He’s struggling with some pretty severe anger issues since it happened. He’s not himself today, Leo. Please.”
I see the shift in Leo’s face—the sudden, uncomfortable soften of his features. It’s the ‘Grief Pass.’ He thinks he’s looking at another version of me, just louder and more dangerous.
“Eden, you shouldn’t be around people like this,” he whispers. “It’s not safe for you to be taking on someone else’s… instability.”
“I’m not taking it on,” I hiss, feeling Malachi’s chest vibrate against my shoulder as he suppresses a laugh. “I’m just helping. Now go. Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Leo says, his voice gaining a desperate, shaky kind of bravery. He shifts his weight, trying to stand taller, but next to Malachi, he looks like a child playing dress-up. “Look at her, man. She’s shaking. You’re practically hovering over her, she looks terrified.”
“She is terrified,” Malachi agrees. “But not of me. She’s terrified of the hollow, performative concern of people like you. Tell me, does your conscience feel lighter now that you’ve cornered her in an aisle of painkillers and pretended to care?”
Leo’s face flushes a deep, ugly red and he reaches out as if to grab my shoulder, but freezes when a low snarl echoes from Malachi’s throat.
“Don’t touch her,” Malachi warns, the air practically humming with static. “You had your chance to protect her, didn’t you? When the Corpse-Boy fell?”
“That’s it. You need to back off right now.” Leo fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his phone—the exact same one he had when Matthew died. “I’m calling the cops. We’ll see how tough you are when—”
“You are calling no one,” Malachi purrs.
“Stop it!” I gasp, the thin cardboard packet of paracetamol crumpling into a mess in my hand. “He’s just—he’s a friend! He was Matthew’s friend! He means well!”
“Then he should have been more diligent in his duties,” Malachi says.
Before Leo can even swipe the screen, Malachi’s hand snakes out with impossible speed, plucking the device from Leo’s fingers.
There’s a crystalline crack, and the tiny fracture already on the screen spiderwebs instantly, the glass grinding into a fine white powder under the sheer pressure of Malachi’s grip.
The screen flickers once in a burst of purple and green, before turning completely black against his silver fingers.
“Your technology is as fragile as your loyalty,” he remarks, dropping the dust and shards back into Leo’s hands.
Leo stares at the dead weight in his hand, his mouth working but no sound coming out.
I need this to end. Now. I need to heal this arm and sever this rage-inducing blood-bind before the world finds out I’m harboring a crime against humanity in my apartment.
The sooner I’m better, the sooner he can go back Hell or find another unfortunate soul to haunt.
I want him out of my head and out of my life before he manages to set the rest of my world on fire.
“Leo, I’m so sorry—I’ll—I’ll pay for it, I’ll Venmo you, I’m so sorry!
” I scramble, shoving the crumpled pack of painkillers into the basket.
I don’t look back at the wreckage of Matthew’s best friend.
I just grab the front of the pale blue hoodie and haul Malachi toward the self-checkout with every ounce of strength I have left.