Chapter 14
Kindness is for Losers
The Tesco Local on Cheltenham Road is mercifully quiet at this hour, which suits me perfectly because I am doing my absolute best not to think about last night and the catastrophic choices I’ve been making with my life, and quiet helps with that.
I grab a basket and move through the aisles with purpose.
Bread. Milk. Pasta, because apparently I’m making a lot of pasta lately for reasons I’m absolutely not thinking about.
Chamomile tea, because I haven’t been sleeping properly and I need some help.
I throw in some nice biscuits without really examining why, and then stand in the middle of the cereal aisle staring at nothing for a moment while my brain does something complicated and uncomfortable.
I am not thinking about it.
I grab some granola. Move on.
Actually, I’m also not thinking about the fact that when I left the flat, Dis was already watching television.
Not just watching it. Studying it. Leaning forward on the bare floorboards with an expression of intense focus, like daytime TV was a military intelligence briefing he needed to memorise.
I’m not entirely sure he’s capable of stopping at this point.
It’s fine. It’s keeping him occupied. It’s not a problem.
The Easter display has colonised an entire end of an aisle, all pastel colours and chocolate eggs and cheerful spring nonsense. I normally find Easter displays irritating. Too relentlessly perky. The kind of aggressive happiness that makes me want to wear more black on principle.
But something catches my eye on the bottom shelf.
Bunny ears. The fluffy pink kind, on a little headband, clearly meant for children’s Easter costumes. They’re absurd. They’re embarrassing. They’re exactly the right shade of pink to clash magnificently with everything.
I pick them up. Read the label. Put them back.
Pick them up again.
Oh, for the love of... Fine. Fine, I’m buying them.
Bunny will absolutely love them and I have precisely zero defence against that particular brand of enthusiasm.
It’s a gift. A stupid, impulsive, very cheap gift that costs less than two pounds and means absolutely nothing.
It definitely doesn’t mean I’m a nice person.
I drop them in my basket before I can change my mind, and move quickly away from the Easter display before I do something even more embarrassing.
The walk home takes me down a residential street I don’t usually cut through, mostly because it adds an extra five minutes and I’m not generally in the mood for scenic routes.
But today I’m in no hurry to get back to my flat and whatever awaits me there, so I drift down the unfamiliar street with my bags and my complicated feelings and my bunny ears.
That’s when I see the futon.
Someone has put it out on the pavement. It’s leaning against a garden wall with a handwritten sign that says FREE, in large, friendly letters. It’s not in bad condition, actually. A bit worn, but structurally sound. The kind of futon that’s had a decent life and still has plenty of use left in it.
I stand on the pavement and stare at it for a long moment.
I am absolutely not thinking about how Dis has been sitting on bare floorboards for days now. How he’s been trapped in that circle with nothing to sit on, nothing to lean against, nothing except cold wood and chalk runes.
That has nothing to do with why I’m looking at this futon.
I’m practical. Resourceful. I see a free futon, I think about whether I have a use for it. That’s just sensible. That’s just good decision making.
The fact that I have a shadow king in my living room who currently has nowhere to sit is entirely coincidental.
He doesn’t need to sit. Or lie down. Or sleep. I don’t think. I mean, Hex does those things, but he’s probably pretending.
I check the time on my phone, and then shove it back into my pocket.
The coffee shop is a five-minute walk. Bunny is presumably down there right now, healthy and cheerful, and while not built like someone who could carry a futon up a narrow staircase without much difficulty, I’m pretty sure his enthusiasm can make up for it.
Hells, he could probably charm the futon into carrying itself.
I pull out my phone. Then put it back. Then pull it out again.
I am not doing this because I feel guilty. I am not doing this because last night made things complicated in ways I haven’t processed yet. I am not doing this because some soft, stupid part of me looked at Dis sitting on the floor and felt bad about it.
I’m doing it because it’s free.
But I’m not going to call Bunny and ask for help. I’m going to see if the coffee shop is busy.
The coffee shop is quiet when I get there. I could hear it was quiet from the street, which tracks. Mid-morning on a weekday isn’t exactly a rush period.
Bunny has a law textbook open on the counter, a pen chewed to within an inch of its life clamped between his teeth. He looks up when I shoulder the door open, and his face does that thing where it goes from focused to delighted in about half a second.
“Felix!” He abandons the textbook immediately. “How are you? You look tired. Have you been sleeping? You should really be sleeping.”
“I’m fine. I have something for you.” I pull the bunny ears from the bag and hold them out.
Bunny’s entire face transforms. He looks like I’ve just handed him something precious, which is insane because they’re novelty Easter costume ears from Tesco that cost less than a pint of milk.
He snatches them from my hand and puts them on with zero hesitation, adjusting them in the window’s reflection with the seriousness of someone positioning a crown.
“How do I look?” he asks.
“Ridiculous,” I say. “Perfect. Now, I need your help with something.”
Bunny beams at me so brightly that I have to look away before I do something embarrassing, like smile back.
I explain about the futon, and he’s already pulling on his jacket and whipping out the ‘Be back in 5 minutes’ sign, before I’ve finished the sentence, boundless and enthusiastic, like I’ve just invited him on a great adventure rather than to go and carry secondhand furniture down a residential street.
We collect it together. Bunny takes the dustier end without being asked, chatting cheerfully the whole way back about his constitutional law module and a case study he finds particularly compelling, his bunny ears bouncing with every step.
Within twenty minutes we’ve navigated the futon through the narrow door, up the even narrower stairs, and into my flat without breaking anything important.
Dis is inches from the television screen, so close his nose is practically touching it, watching what appears to be a particularly dramatic episode of Loose Women with the focused intensity of a general planning a siege.
He pulls back, composing himself with regal dignity, but I’ve absolutely clocked it. We are going to need to have a conversation about his obsessive TV watching. Soon.
“Where do you want it?” Bunny asks, only slightly out of breath.
“In the middle.”
I roll the carpet back down over the floorboards.
Then Bunny manoeuvres the futon into position.
The chalk runes disappear from view, swallowed under thin carpet and worn fabric.
They’re still there. Still working. The magic doesn’t care that you can’t see it anymore, it just hums quietly under the surface, invisible and patient.
We fold the futon into its sofa position and step back to assess.
“Nice,” Bunny says approvingly, adjusting his bunny ears.
Dis is watching his circle be transformed, standing out of the way, hands clasped behind his back. Those blue eyes tracking the whole process with an expression that’s difficult to read.
I clear my throat. “It’s just something someone was throwing out,” I say, to nobody in particular. “Seemed wasteful not to take it. You’ve been sitting on the floor for days.”
Dis looks at the futon. Then at me.
“You have my gratitude,” he says, with a careful dip of his head that might be a bow.
Not thanks, or cheers, or any of the casual acknowledgements a normal person might offer. Grateful. Formal and deliberate, like he’s making an official declaration. Like gratitude is something weighty that deserves to be delivered properly.
Bunny, who has been watching this exchange with his head tilted slightly and his bunny ears flopped to one side, beams at Dis with the full force of his considerable sunshine. “You’re welcome!” he says cheerfully, apparently deciding to accept the gratitude on both our behalves.
Dis blinks at him. At the bunny ears. Back at Bunny’s enormous smile.
“You have my gratitude also, cheerful human,” Dis says, with great dignity, to a man wearing pink fluffy bunny ears.
“Anytime!” Bunny says. He’s completely sincere. It’s terrifying.
I stare at the scene in front of me. My ancient, proud, furious shadow king, formally thanking my relentlessly cheerful assistant, who is wearing Easter costume ears in the middle of the working day, in my living room, next to a secondhand futon I collected from the pavement because I felt bad about someone sitting on bare floorboards.
This is my life now.
“Okay,” I say. “Back to work, Bunny.”
Bunny gives me a thumbs up, gives Dis a little wave, and bounces out of the living room. I hear him clatter cheerfully down the stairs and the distant sound of the coffee shop door.
I stand in the middle of my living room.
I bought someone bunny ears. I collected a futon off the street so that my prisoner would have somewhere comfortable to sit.
Even though that prisoner is more than probably perfectly capable of floating very comfortably.
I bought nice biscuits that are definitely going to be shared with said prisoner at some point, if I’m being honest with myself, which I’m trying not to be.
I gave people things today. I was nice.
This is deeply alarming.
I have a reputation. A carefully cultivated, years-in-the-making reputation as someone who does not do soft and sweet and thoughtful.
Someone who is sharp and sarcastic and keeps people at arm’s length for very good reasons.
Someone who makes the goth aesthetic work and who has never once in his life bought novelty Easter accessories for another human being.
My goth credentials are going to be absolutely revoked.
“I’m going to my room,” I announce to nobody in particular.
Dis, who has settled himself onto the futon with his usual unsettling grace, doesn’t look up. He’s already reaching for the remote.
“Mm,” he says.
I have a vague, uncomfortable feeling that the television thing is going to become a whole conversation very soon.
He’s been watching it for the better part of three days now.
That can’t be healthy. That can’t be normal, even for a shadow king experiencing human entertainment for the first time. There are surely limits.
I retreat to my bedroom and close the door firmly behind me.
I sit on the edge of my bed and take several deep breaths.
I have a reputation to uphold. I have an image to maintain.
I am Felix, small, terrifying goth witch, revenge-seeker, summoner of shadow kings, a person who definitely does not go around collecting secondhand furniture and buying people fluffy ears because something in their smile makes it impossible to do otherwise.
I absolutely need to pull myself together before I do something else catastrophically wholesome.
I stare at the wall.
On the other side of it, an ancient shadow king is sitting on a second-hand futon watching daytime television, and somehow that is the most unsettling thing that has happened to me all week.
Which is really saying something, given the week I’ve had.