Chapter 40 Eden
Eden
TWO WEEKS LATER
Iheave the sodden cardboard box onto the counter with a wet thud.
“Breakup?” The elderly woman behind the register looks up from her crossword puzzle, peering over her spectacles at the box, then at my drenched face and hair.
“Uh… something like that,” I say, smiling warmly.
Technically, it was an inter-dimensional mission that ended with the realization that my now-dead-boyfriend was a narcissistic void of a human being who’s rotting in a holding cell in Hell. But that feels like a lot to unpack for a Tuesday afternoon at the Goodwill.
She stands, opening the flaps of the box to reveal the strata of Matthew’s life: the cashmere sweaters he never let me borrow because they were ‘dry clean only,’ the Italian leather loafers, the watches, the silk ties.
Her eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline as she runs a hand over a pristine grey blazer.
“My goodness,” she murmurs, checking the label. “These are a lot of lovely things, dear. Are you sure you want to part with all of this?”
It’s overflowing with the expensive, superficial armor of a man who loved his reflection more than he ever loved me.
“Yep,” I say, the word popping with a surprising amount of relief. “All yours. Please, give them to someone who actually needs them.”
The least he can do is contribute to a good cause for once in his existence.
“Have a lovely day,” she calls out, but the wind snatches her voice away as the door swings shut behind me and I step out into the deluge.
It’s lashing down in thick, aggressive sheets of grey water that drown the sidewalk and turn the gutters into rushing rivers. Most people are sprinting for cover, huddled under flimsy umbrellas that are turning inside out, their shoulders hunched against the assault.
But I wrap my scarf tighter around the fading bite marks on my throat, pull my hood up, jam my earbuds in, and turn the volume up until the bass thumps against my skull, drowning out the roar of the traffic.
A month ago, this was just a city. It was just a collection of concrete, glass, and strangers rushing to jobs they hated. But Malachi ruined that for me. He peeled back the film of normalcy and showed me the wiring underneath.
I scan the crowd as I move through the crush of bodies at the crosswalk.
There’s a businessman in a trench coat ranting into his phone over the street. To anyone else, he’s just a stressed executive. But I catch the way his shadow stretches a little too long, the way his movements are just a fraction too fluid, too predatory for a human spine.
Demon.
Up ahead, a teenager in a hoodie is leaning against a brick wall, unblinking, perfectly still despite the freezing rain.
Demon.
I catch the eye of a woman waiting for the bus, her irises a shade of violet that doesn't exist in nature. And for a split second, I swear I see the shimmer of a shell beneath her foundation. She looks away quickly, pulling her scarf tighter, like she senses the scrutiny.
A ghost of a smile tugs at the corner of my mouth as my hand curls into a fist at my side, nails digging crescents into my palm until the skin stings. Once, I wouldn't have noticed. I would have just seen a pretty girl in a coat. Now, I see the teeth behind the smile.
I know exactly what you are. And I know how to kill you too.
I shoulder my way into the apartment block, shaking the rain from my hair, trudge up the stairs, unlock the door, and step into the silence.
My saturated coat soaks into the carpet as I shuck it off alongside my boots, and sink onto the couch.
My phone buzzes from my pocket, several texts from Piper popping up.
Did you get home safe?
Call me if you need anything.
Proud of you. Love you.
Home safe. Today went well. Going to sleep, love you too.
It’s been exactly three hundred and thirty-six hours since the universe chewed me up and spat me back out onto my living room rug.
Mercifully, when I was sucked out of the Archives, it didn't drop me in a volcano. It dropped me right back on my own shitty couch, gasping for air like a fish on a dock. But I didn't come back to a quiet apartment. I walked straight into a crime scene of panic.
When Piper woke up in her car with a migraine and a missing hour of memory, she didn't just go home. She came upstairs, busted down my door, and found an empty apartment.
And then she went scorched earth.
By the time I reappeared, she had filed a missing person’s report, called my parents in a hysterical sobbing fit, and blasted my face all over social media. There were literal search parties organizing in the park. My Mom and Dad were in panic mode. The police were pulling CCTV from the street.
And the reunion was a full-blown trauma response.
I found Piper curled up on my bed, clutching one of my sweaters, eyes swollen shut from crying.
When I touched her shoulder, she screamed.
Then she tackled me, sobbing so hard she threw up, checking my limbs to make sure I was solid, shaking me, yelling at me, and then hugging me until my ribs creaked.
And after searching her eyes to make sure she wasn’t a Warden in disguise, I had to look her in them and sell the performance of a lifetime.
I told her that seconds after she’d called that night, I’d opened the door to take out a trash bag. I told her Vesper—who’d been acting ‘weird’ and aggressive all day—took her chance and bolted into the hallway.
In my panic, I grabbed my bag but left my keys, and I just ran. I chased the cat through the building, out the back exit, and the heavy security door slammed shut behind me, auto-locking me out.
And as for the week-long gap?
“I just kept walking, Piper,” I’d told her, making sure my voice trembled just enough, letting the exhaustion of Hell look like the exhaustion of a breakdown.
“I chased her for blocks. And then… I don't know.
I just couldn't stop. It felt like if I lost the cat, I was losing the last piece of Matthew. I just… snapped. I think I went into a fugue state.”
I told her I dropped my phone in a gutter during a panic attack—which neatly explains why I never picked up and why it’s currently untraceable, likely still sitting in Serena’s office.
It was a watertight lie because it was pathetic.
It relied entirely on everyone's perception of me as the grieving, fragile girl who was one bad day away from a total psychotic break.
They didn't question the logic of me wandering the city for a week in a daze.
They didn't ask for details. They just looked at me with pitying eyes, put up posters for Vesper, cancelled the police search, and whispered about how "trauma does strange things to the brain. "
I pulled the ‘broken bird’ card, and they bought it. Hook, line, and sinker.
My eyes drift to the mantelpiece, where for a year, the ceramic urn holding half of Matthew’s ashes sat like a judgmental paperweight, anchoring the room in a permanent state of mourning.
But after Hell… after meeting the real Matthew again… I couldn't look at it.
I boxed it up two days after I got back, taped it shut, and shipped it back to his parents without a note. I didn't want him watching me anymore. I didn't want his dust in my air.
Now, the space is guarded by something else.
Two small, cheap, polyester nightmares sit side-by-side where the death-jar used to be. The Tax Collector and The Auditor. One electric blue, one neon pink, both with slightly wonky eyes and stiff, synthetic fur.
They look God awful, but I remember the look on Malachi’s face when he won them, looking so stupidly pleased with himself for bagging two teddies and scaring the worker. They’re the most colorful things in the entire apartment. Ridiculous, tacky, and absolutely priceless.
The silence in the apartment presses against my eardrums. It’s too clean. There’s no low, tectonic rumble of a Hellhound snoring in my general vicinity. There’s no sharp, demanding cat digging her claws into my thigh because her food bowl is only ninety-percent full.
Vesper is fine. She has to be.
She’s probably still with Litha in that chaotic museum of a house, sleeping on a velvet chair and getting fat on premium flank steak. She’s safe. She’s loved. She’s just… not here.
And there’s no Malachi either.
There’s no six-foot-four demon pacing a trench into my rug because he’s bored.
There’s no arrogant drawl calling me ‘baby girl’ from the kitchen.
There’s no massive, solid heat radiating from the other side of the couch, and no one stealing my favorite vests and stretching the hems to their absolute limits.
My mind spirals, tangling itself in knots of ‘what ifs.’ I wonder if Veraxia made good on her threats. Is he locked in some damp, dark cell somewhere, paying the price for everything he did? Or is he looking immaculate, torturing souls and filing the paperwork for it?
I hope he’s bored. God, I hope he’s sitting at a desk right now, complaining about the fluorescent lights. Because the alternative... the alternative is that he’s screaming my name in the dark, and I’m sitting here drinking tea.
Either way, I hope he’s okay.
Please be okay.
Sinking deeper into the cushions, I pull the thick, knitted throw up to my chin.
It used to be just a blanket—something I bought on sale an age ago.
Now, in my head, it’s his blanket. It doesn't smell like him anymore—that intoxicating scent of spice and bonfire faded three days ago—but I bury my nose in the wool anyway, inhaling the ghost of him.
I need noise. I need normal. So, I have a plan.
I’m going to order a pizza with enough grease to stop a heart.
I’m going to binge-watch that terrible dating show where everyone cries over people they met yesterday, and then I’m going to open Shattered Desires and disappear into someone else’s messy love life for a few hours.
I’m not ‘fixed’—God knows I’m still a broken mess of frayed nerves and anxiety—but something has shifted in the foundation.
I walked through the fire, and I didn't burn.
I stood in the dark, and I didn't dissolve. I’m a little braver.
And for now, in the quiet of this rain-soaked afternoon, with a trashy book in my hand and the promise of melted cheese on the way, that has to be enough.