Chapter 29 Losing My Last Ally
Losing My Last Ally
The relentless beep of Miguel’s heart monitor has become the metronome of my guilt, each tick a hammer against the dread within me.
I sit in the plastic chair next to him, and with every rise and fall of his chest, I feel the weight of my own breaths grow heavier.
I shouldn’t be here. What if another monster attacks?
Still, after another week of wondering, worrying, and working, I couldn’t help myself.
It’s been nearly as long since I last saw Shadow out of his mind with monstrous hunger while he took me brutally out in the open.
I wonder if he’s off devouring more monster hearts and losing his mind? Or is he with the Nexus?
The jealousy writhes, a living thing in my chest, under the bandages of my still-healing skin. He’s out there, protecting the Nexus.
And what am I? A waypoint.
Is this Nexus a female or male?
If I ever met them, I’d ask if Shadow fucked them like he fucks me?
Would they turn themselves inside out just to feel him come?
Would they bleed for him?
I’d bleed myself dry for him.
And maybe, if I bled enough, he’d stop seeing the line between us at all. Recognize I am just like him.
I don’t want to share. I want Shadow all to myself, and the thought that I would have to makes me bitter and hard.
With those thoughts consuming me, I had to get out of the apartment before I went crazy… or crazier.
Fifteen minutes. That’s all I’d give myself to be near Miguel. To see my friend is still alive. Though I’m sure he wouldn’t feel very friendly toward me if he were awake.
A shuffle at the door tears my gaze away from Miguel's ashen face. It's not the efficient patter of nurses. It’s Helena, and the cousins—Miguel’s family—clustered behind her like a storm cloud of collective grief and accusation.
"Evie," Helena begins, her voice brittle, "we need to talk."
The stark hospital feels colder as Helena leads me out to a corridor. Her usually pristine braid is disheveled and unraveling, much like the tentative bond we've shared.
The cousins, a once neutral backdrop to my solitary life, now form a wall of judgment beside her. Their presence is a palpable pressure against my already fragile composure.
"Go back inside," she barks at Marie and Alice. "Be with your cousin."
With crossed arms and stink-eyes directed at me, they do as they’re told.
When we’re alone, Helena's eyes, normally sharp and commanding, hold a bone-deep weariness. The lines on her forehead, etched by a life of hard work and no-nonsense decisions, seem to have deepened overnight. She looks older, the strain of Miguel’s condition pulling at the corners of her mouth.
"Evie, you need to explain everything now, and it better make sense." There’s a tremor in her voice that doesn’t quite mask the blame. She’s been holding the questions in for weeks, giving me space, but apparently the dam is broken along with her patience.
"What aren’t you telling us? What aren’t the police saying?" The walls echo with the hushed tones of Helena’s distress turned anger.
I feel my own defenses rise. I know the truth sounds crazy even to my own ears, but lying won’t help either. Besides, what lie would even manage to account for what happened?
"I've told the police everything," I say, my voice steady despite the turmoil inside. "There were monsters, Helena."
Her dark eyes harden, the severe lines of her face pulling into an expression of incredulity. "Monsters," she repeats, the word dripping with scorn. "That's still what you expect me to believe?"
I can only nod, knowing how it sounds, how it tears at the tenuous threads connecting me to the closest thing I’ve had to an ally.
"It's the truth, Helena. It's all I have."
She studies me, her gaze searching for the lie she's convinced must be there.
"This is not a game, Evie. This is Miguel's life. You are entangled in my business, our livelihood. You come to me with a story of monsters when my nephew’s life is on the line?
" She points in the direction of his room. "The longer he’s in the coma, the less likely he’ll wake up. "
I have no response, no way to make her believe me. But I can take the weight of the guilt she’s pushing down on my shoulders. It forces my knees to buckle and my stomach to sour, but it’s mine to bear.
She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Whatever happened that night was clearly traumatizing. But I’ve grown tired of the lies."
"The other witnesses gave the same statements," I point out.
"I don’t care what the other people said," she snaps, her eyes blazing with open accusation.
"First, you tell me you broke up with him, and then you spin this ridiculous story.
The only explanation I can figure is that drugs were involved, and he got hurt.
For that many people to say so many ridiculous things, well…
" She huffs like an angry bull. "I thought he would be a good influence on you, but clearly I was wrong. "
I wince at that. That one hit me right where I already bleed daily.
I’m the monster, the one who should be in that bed.
"You need to stay away," she says finally, her voice quiet and firm. "From the hospital, from my family. I can’t have this… madness around my family or my clients."
I'm surprised how her words rock me.
I’ve expected them for the last couple weeks, but it cuts deep inside me, a severing of ties that I'd come to rely on more than I realized.
There is a glimmer of regret in her eyes as she fires me. It’s not because she regrets letting me go. I’m a cancer to her life.
It’s because her business will hurt for it. I pull so many hours, she’s more than doubled business since I came on. I doubt even she knows how they’ll cover all I do.
The finality in her posture, the way she holds herself, speaks louder than her words.
I want to argue, to make her see reason, but the resignation in her eyes tells me it's over. I'm the loose thread she's decided to cut before more of her life unravels.
As Helena turns to walk away, casting me a final, wary glance, I'm left with the echo of her words and the closing of a door I hadn’t realized I'd been leaning on. The loss is a tangible thing, a hollowing out of the almost-mentor, the almost-friend I'd found in her.
I watch her leave, her braid catching the light. She represents everything normal that I'm being cut off from. The hospital around me is cold and empty, reflecting the emptiness expanding inside of me—a void where Shadow's absence feels bigger than ever.
In the end, all I have left is a truth no one will believe and the pieces of my life falling apart faster and faster.
The journey to my apartment happens in a blur. Before I know it, I open the door to the apartment, and I’m met by a blast of heat.
The thermostat is fucked up… again.
I tear off my coat and fling it onto the couch. Needing something to do with my hands, I grab the stack of mail I brought in and rip the envelopes open.
The energy bill is in the mix. When I see the number on it, I stagger back, the breath punched out of me.
The amount stares up at me like the barrel of a gun. It’s a figure so high, it has to be a typo.
The number equates to three months' worth of my rent. A strangled cry escapes me as the paper crumples in my hands. My world, my life, is closing in around me and the pinch hurts.
The inside of my fridge is almost as empty as my bank account, which I can no longer pretend isn't overdrawn.
I've been stretching every dollar, skipping meals, living off ramen and hope—but it seems even hope is a currency I can no longer afford.
The energy bill is the last straw. I stare at the numbers, willing them to change, to drop a zero, anything that would make this less of a disaster.
With no income on the horizon, panic starts to claw its way up my throat.
My logical brain tries to reassure me we will get the landlord to pay the bill. It’s his fault after all.
His phone number glares up at me from the ratty sticky note on the fridge. I dial, the phone pressed to my ear, a part of me already resigned to the futility of this call. But I have to try.
"Mr. Drescher," I start, trying to keep my voice level, "the thermostat is broken, again, and now I've got this insane energy bill that I—"
He cuts me off with a grunt. "Complain, complain, complain. You young folks are so fucking entitled." His oily voice slides through the speaker like something rotten.
I press on. "I can't pay this bill, and it's your responsibility to—"
But he's laughing now—a cruel, wheezing sound that smells like cigarette smoke even through the phone. "My responsibility? Look here, Miss Evie, you've been nothing but trouble since you moved in. I've had three noise complaints about you this month alone."
"They're not my fault—" Okay, a couple of them were my fault from what Shadow was doing to me, but I was attacked in my own home.
"Save it," he interrupts again. "You don't like it, you move out. Good luck finding a place this cheap anywhere close to this part of town."
I hang up, the click of the call ending louder than it has any right to be. He’s an absolute miserly dick, and he wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire.
The walls of the apartment close in, the heat a suffocating blanket of my own failure to escape this cycle of poverty and misery.
I walk to my bedroom and do the only thing I can. Crawl under the bed and pull myself into a ball. It’s slightly colder under here.
Eviction notices are just a matter of time, and where would I go then? The street? A shelter? The options spin in my head, each more sickening and hopeless than the last.
I have no job. No allies. Nowhere to go for help.
"Shadow," I whisper to myself because Shadow isn’t here. Even if he was, he can’t help me. He doesn’t deal with money, employers, or broken thermostats. He can’t fix the trust I’ve broken, Miguel’s cracked head, or get me my job back.
But if he could just take me with him, take me to the world of monsters through whatever doorway or portal there is, I would be free of all this. I could start over again. Start a life as a true monster.
The Nexus. I have to find the Nexus. Shadow said the Nexus is a person as well as the key between worlds. If I find them, I can use them to get through the doorway.
The next time Shadow comes, I will force the information out of him. He may try to keep me at a distance, but he can’t stay away. He can’t deny me this.