Chapter Twenty-Four #2
It felt wonderful, but I was angry that I’d gotten sick in the first place.
Inkhouse had sent me on so many consecutive signings over the past two weeks that I hadn’t been certain what city I was in at any given time.
One flight after the other trapped in steel germ tubes with little to no sleep and exposure to hundreds of clasped hands, excited fans, and coughing children had been a surefire path to meet the grim reaper.
Eve had been waiting for me at the airport with flowers and a sign that said Welcome Home from Prison.
She’d worn a jean jacket, tied her hair in a high bun with curls spilling out, and lofted the cardstock over her head as I’d deplaned with the sort of exuberance that should have made me glow.
I’d tried to laugh but was already feeling dizzy.
We’d barely made it to her car before she’d announced that our dinner plans were canceled and that I was to be on immediate bed rest. She said we’d watch sitcoms and she’d make me soup, and I’d been too weak to protest.
“Let’s get you one of those bougie IVs,” she said now. “They come right to your house full of hydration and vitamins.”
“Just leave me to die,” I said.
“Nonsense. We can be part of the problem, or part of the solution. I am for the latter.”
“You should go,” I said, voice hoarse. She’d been at my apartment for the better part of twenty-four hours. “I don’t want to get you sick.”
It was true, and it wasn’t. I didn’t want her to get sick. I also wasn’t sure if I wanted her here.
Eve and I had been together just long enough that she’d casually started to refer to me as her girlfriend. My avoidant attachment style knew that we’d passed the time to end the relationship.
I wasn’t comfortable being this vulnerable around her.
Being there for my pitiful sniffling self-implied a level of intimacy to which I hadn’t consented.
There was an unspoken longevity when a relationship turned to sickness and health, and as we crested our three-month mark, I’d already begun to feel the end.
“Stop that,” Eve said. “I don’t work until the weekend. You’re sick as a dog. Who’s going to take care of you if I leave? Now, open up.” I squinted just enough to see the Tylenol PM in one palm and tea in the other. “The acetaminophen will help with the fever.”
The pills felt like barbed wire as they scraped their way down my throat.
“Now, what’s your password?” Eve asked.
I stiffened, turning to her with wide eyes. She had my computer balanced on her lap, hands poised to type. My lips parted slightly, cracked and dry, as I searched for words.
“Oh, don’t have a fit, Marlow.” She made an unimpressed sound. “I’m not trying to steal your identity. I’m just putting on your show. We can set the computer on your side of the bed so you don’t have to turn over.”
I flexed my fingers for the device and punched in my password.
She took it back from me, eyebrows pressed together in an unspoken question.
To her credit, she didn’t pry. A moment later, she had toggled onto an animated series that would have looked like a fever dream even if I’d been healthy.
She gently rested the computer on my side of the bed before running her fingers in slow, gentle patterns across my back until the drugs began to take effect.
She wrapped her arm around me, holding me close while I shivered.
I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t sleep with her touching me, but the combination of flu and medicine said otherwise.
I felt the love, the affection, the comfort radiating from her as she spooned me, and each new wave of emotion solidified my certainty that I’d waited too long to do what needed to be done.
I should turn now and ask her to leave. I should open my mouth and explain that we couldn’t be together.
But I was so sick. So tired. Her touch felt so nice.
One episode rolled into another, mingling with my thoughts as the sounds became little more than a dull hum.
When I awoke, my fever had broken.
I should have slept in, but the purple hour told me dawn had yet to break.
I looked at her arm, counting the freckles that traced their way from her hand to her elbow.
There weren’t as many as I remembered there being.
I turned my head ever so slightly to see an unbound curl resting on my shoulder like a blanket, but it wasn’t the tight red ringlet I’d expected.
It was a loose, copper curl. I frowned at it, spying silver-white strands in the copper wave.
On my second examination of the arm, a smattering of white freckles dotted the constellation nearest the shoulder.
I shifted my weight to turn toward her, and as I did, she exhaled. Her high, sleepy sound was accompanied by the scents of pine and sea spray.
No, this was a different redhead.
One I was happy to see.
September 19, age 26
The distant memory of Eve shattered along with my illusion of the morning.
I jolted up, scurrying to the corner of the bed as Fauna stretched out beside me.
I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d taken so long to arrive that I now scrambled through my new reality, trying to figure out if this was a dream.
She yawned, scrunching her eyes and balling her fists as she uncurled like a cat. She sat up slowly, stacking the pillows behind her before lounging on them.
“You called,” she said, a small, hopeful smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.
I blinked at her, sleep evaporating as I struggled to orient myself. “Fauna, I—”
“You called me,” she said again. There was an unmistakable desperation to her echo.
It wasn’t just pride keeping me from the reunion I craved.
She’d made a fool of me, when all I’d done was love her.
I didn’t know how to tell her how scared I was that I’d give my heart—my avoidant, cautious, prickly heart—to someone who would betray me not once, but twice.
I pressed the heel of my hand into my temple, squeezed my eyes shut against the confusion, and sucked in a breath. “Listen, I don’t know what you think this is, but you’re not forgiven. I don’t have words for what you did to me. I’m furious. But—”
“But you called me,” she repeated softly.
My mouth snapped shut.
Her posture straightened. She used her fingertips to comb through her loose, mussed curls while she waited for me. When I said nothing, she said, “You shouldn’t fall asleep with your candle burning. It isn’t safe.”
I looked to the vanity to see it had been blown out.
“When did you get here?”
Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she tilted her head to the side. She tucked her feet beneath herself and eyed me. “Is that what you want to ask?”
I wondered if my swallow was as audible to her as it was to me.
It was absurd to see her here. I missed her.
I hated her. I wanted her gone. I wanted to go back in time.
I wanted to live a different life, one in which I’d never met gods and monsters, one in which she’d never hurt me.
I wanted everything to be all right again. But it wasn’t.
Most of all, I just wanted to love her and be loved by her.
My palms had grown clammy, nerves tingling down my spine, though I couldn’t name the emotion. I shook my head but couldn’t bring my tongue to work.
“Good, because I want coffee. What’s your sugar situation?
” she asked, rising from the bed and padding down the hall.
A new rage burned through me at her familiarity.
This was the sort of thing shared by friends, by family, by people who loved one another.
She didn’t get to come back into my life, sleep in my bed, hold me, and raid my kitchen as if nothing had ever happened.
“Your whole house smells like angel. Like, babe, it reeks of Silas. What were you two up to?”
My feet hit the heated marble, and I was at the counter in a flash. She looked up from where she’d begun filling the kettle. “Fauna, stop what you’re doing.”
A slender brow arched with slow caution.
“I didn’t call you here to drink my coffee or be my friend.”
The high-pitched whir of running water continued.
Once the kettle was full, she turned off the faucet and replaced it on the hot pad, but she did not begin boiling.
Her hip sank into the counter’s edge, the cascading fabric of her oversized pants gathered and pinched where she rested.
Half of a lunar moth adorned her shirt. The bottom half had presumably been discarded when she’d taken a pair of scissors to it.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen her in a full-length top.
It was the sort of relaxed, hippie attire I’d found confusing and charming and quirky before.
Now it offended me. She should have come dressed for a funeral.
She watched me expectantly.
“I loved you. I trusted you. And you weren’t just lying to me; you were using me.” My heart sank with each word as if remembering each betrayal as a fresh wound.
Her hand rested lightly on the countertop, but her eyes didn’t leave mine. There was no trace of her irreverent, bubbly self as she remained as still as the deer for which she was named.
“No one has heard from Ella or Kirby,” I said, using every ounce of professionalism I could muster. “I think there might have been a meeting with Apep that went sideways. What do you know about him?”
She scoffed. “You mean the god meant to bring about the end of light and life within the mortal universe, plunge the world into darkness, and proceed to take the throne to assert himself over all gods and worlds?”
A beat.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. Why are you asking about him?” she prodded.
It was impossible to look into her eyes without the onslaught of everything we’d endured. I looked away as I finished, “Estrid is going stir-crazy. I need you to stay with Nia so that Estrid can make sure Ella is okay.”
She looked at the kettle, and I thought for a minute she might ignore me and get it going. A long moment passed before I understood she had no intention of looking at me. “And that’s all you want from me? To stay with Nia?”
“Yes,” I said on a breath.
“To be clear: You’re talking about an apocalypse chaos god, something I might know a thing or two about, and all you want is for me to sit tight and watch your friend?”
The more she questioned me, the more certain I became. “Yes.”
Statue-still, she asked, “Why didn’t you ask Azrames?”
My lips twitched, withholding painful truths. “He and Caliban have other issues at hand right now.”
Fauna looked over my shoulder as if examining the apartment for the first time. “And Silas?”
“Is helping Alessia Clovis.”
Both brows lifted. I didn’t miss the way she stifled her hand against the counter, though I wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish, whether she was trying to keep from reacting to the news of a masculine spirit in a famously feminine space or simply jonesing for coffee.
Finally, her features folded, brows pulling up at the center, lower lip puckered.
“Marlow, can we please talk about this?”
I closed my eyes tightly.
“I know you’re mad, but this is serious. This is bigger than hurt feelings.”
“Hurt feelings?” I gasped. She’d manipulated me to end the world. Did she have a different version of reality?
“Those were the wrong words to use. I just mean, if we could talk about it…”
She stopped when my eyes remained closed.
No, we couldn’t. I had nothing to say. Right now, the only use she had to me was in keeping Nia alive.
I held up a finger and left her in the kitchen while I took a few minutes to brush my teeth, pull on pants and a shirt, and grab the broach.
I was wrapping my hair into a ponytail when I returned to see that she’d found the bag of sugar and coffee after all.
Unlike Silas, she had not procured the honey to make my cup.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She frowned. “Both of us?” Then she looked between the French press and the sack of sugar before asking, “Can I at least have a cup first?”
“I’m sure Nia will make you coffee at hers. She’s a better host than I am.”
Her lips remained tucked in a frown as she watched me for any hope of leniency.
She set down the empty mug with a gentle clatter.
“It isn’t hard to beat your hospitality,” Fauna grumbled quietly.
After an eternity, she stretched a hand toward me as I closed my fist around the broach. Together, we stepped into the dark.