Chapter 5
The apartment feels too small when I get back from the diner.
Or maybe it’s just that I’m too aware of everything now, the way the floorboards creak under my boots, the musty smell that no amount of cleaning ever quite eliminates, the water stain on the ceiling that looks like a continent.
Not sure which one. All the small details that make up my life, the life I’m about to leave behind for a year.
Or seven, who knows if I’ll ever be able to come back here.
Maybe longer, if time moves differently in the houses like I’ve been told.
I drop my keys on the kitchen counter, shrug out of my jacket. The journal is still in the inner pocket, heavy and warm. I pull it out, set it on the counter next to the drawer where I tucked the seven letters this morning.
Evidence. That’s what this is. Evidence of a life that’s about to change irrevocably.
I should read more of the journal. Should study it, absorb every warning Gramms left for me. But every time I think about opening it again, about seeing her handwriting, about reading her fear,
I can’t.
Not yet.
Instead, I do what I always do when I can’t deal with emotions: I clean.
The apartment doesn’t need it. I’m compulsively tidy as a rule, after too many years of living in small spaces, too many times I’ve had to pack up and run. Luna in tow like we were going on an adventure. Everything has a place. Everything is organized. But I clean anyway.
Wipe down the kitchen counter even though it’s already clean. Sweep the floor. Organize the ritual room, checking my supplies: salt, iron filings, candles, herbs. Make sure everything is stocked, labeled, and ready if I get to come home.
Sin eaters don’t exactly advertise. Most of my potential clients find me through word of mouth, through desperate whisper networks of people who know someone who knows someone who can break an angel contract. Without me here, they’ll have to find someone else.
Or live with their chains.
The thought makes me feel guilty, which is stupid. I didn’t choose this. I’m being forced into servitude to pay a debt I never agreed to. My clients will have to manage without me.
But still. The guilt sits heavy in my chest.
I’m in the bathroom, scrubbing a sink that doesn’t need scrubbing, on my third pass over the porcelain, when I hear the knock at the door.
Soft. Tentative.
Ash.
I dry my hands on a towel that’s already damp from overuse and head for the door. Check the peephole out of habit, yeah, it’s him, looking tired and concerned in the hallway’s sickly fluorescent light, and open up.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
We stand there for a moment, neither of us sure what to say. It’s been forty-eight hours since he left, but it feels longer. Feels like everything’s changed in the space between his leaving and now.
“Can I come in?” he asks finally.
I should say no, should tell him I’m fine, I’m busy, I need to be alone. But I step aside anyway and let him in because some part of me, the part that’s terrified and lonely and wishing I didn’t have to do this alone, wants him here.
Even if I won’t admit it out loud.
He enters, shoves his hands in his jacket pockets, and looks around the apartment like he’s cataloging it. “You’ve been cleaning.”
“How can you tell?”
“It smells like bleach. And you only clean like this when you’re stressed.” He turns to look at me, dark eyes serious. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Raven.”
“I’m fine, Ash.” I hear the edge in my voice, sharp enough to cut. Take a breath. Try again. “I’m handling it.”
“By cleaning your apartment at nine o’clock at night?”
“It needed cleaning.”
“It’s the cleanest place I’ve ever seen. You could eat off the floor.”
“Then I guess I did a good job.” I move past him, back to the kitchen. Put distance between us because proximity makes this harder. Makes the walls I need to keep up harder to maintain. “Did you need something? Or did you just come to critique my coping mechanisms?”
He follows me, of course, then leans against the counter, arms crossed. “I came to check on you. The letters, the houses—that’s a lot to process in a day and a half.”
“I’m processing fine.”
“Are you?”
I spin to face him, and the frustration bubbles up hot and biting.
“What do you want me to say, Ash? That I’m terrified?
That I spent the afternoon with another sin eater who basically told me I’m walking into something that changes people, breaks them, and I might not come back the same person?
That I have a day left before I disappear into a supernatural prison for a year, and I don’t know if I’ll survive it?
” My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it.
Hate the vulnerability, the weakness. “Is that what you want to hear?”
His expression softens. “I want to help.”
“You can’t.”
“Let me try.”
“There’s nothing to try!” I’m not yelling, but I’m close.
“This isn’t something you can fix with a conversation or a pep talk or”--I gesture vaguely between us–“whatever this is. I have to do this. I don’t have a choice.
And you being here, looking at me like that, like you actually care, it makes it harder. ”
“I do care.”
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharp. “Please don’t. I need you to be what you’ve always been —a friend, an emergency contact, someone who helps me through the worst of the purges and doesn’t ask for more than I can give. I can’t; I don’t have room for anything else right now.”
He goes quiet, glancing away like he can’t quite look at me. “What if I want to be more than that?”
“Then you’re going to be disappointed.” I force myself to hold his gaze, to say this clearly so there’s no misunderstanding.
“I’m leaving. I’ll be gone for a year minimum.
And when I come back, if I come back, I will not be the same person.
So whatever you think you want from me, whatever you’re hoping for, let it go. Please.”
The hurt flashes across his face before he schools it into something more neutral. He nods once, pushes off the counter. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You’re right. You’ve got enough to deal with.
” He heads for the door, and I follow, feeling like an asshole, but knowing it’s necessary.
Knowing that letting him get closer now would only make leaving harder.
“For what it’s worth? I think you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You’ll survive this.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I almost mean it.
He pauses at the door, looks back. “If you need anything before you go, and I mean anything, you call me. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He nods, then leaves. The door clicks shut behind him, and I’m alone again.
I lean my forehead against the door, close my eyes, and let myself feel it for just a moment, the loneliness, the fear, the weight of everything I’m about to face.
Let it wash over me and through me and then, deliberately, I lock it down.
Push it into the box where I keep all the things I can’t afford to feel.
I don’t have time.
I’ve got a day to tie up loose ends, to prepare, to become someone who can walk into the House of Gold and survive.
I can fall apart after.
I push off the door, head back to the kitchen. Pour myself a glass of water from the tap, drink it standing at the sink while I stare out the window at the alley below. Someone’s cat is prowling through the garbage. The streetlight flickers and buzzes.
Normal. Everything out there is so beautifully, devastatingly normal.
I’m draining the last of the water when I hear it.
Another knock at the door.
Three sharp raps this time. Confident. Impatient.
I set the glass down harder than necessary. “Ash, I swear to God, if you came back to—”
I yank open the door.
It’s not Ash.
The man standing in my hallway is tall, maybe six-one, six-two, and dressed like he walked out of a magazine spread for expensive menswear.
Charcoal suit, perfectly tailored, crisp white shirt with the top button undone, no tie.
Dark hair swept back from a face that’s handsome in that too-perfect way that immediately makes you suspicious.
Sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, amber eyes that catch the hallway’s fluorescent light and seem to glow faintly.
He looks like money. Old money. Money that comes with expectations and strings attached.
And he’s smiling at me like I’m exactly what he expected to find.
“You’re not Ash,” I say flatly.
“Evidently not.” His voice is smooth, cultured, with the faintest accent I can’t quite place. British maybe, but older than that. Like someone who learned English before it split into modern dialects. “Though I’m curious who Ash is and why you thought he’d be knocking on your door at this hour.”
I start to close the door. “Wrong apartment.”
His hand shoots out fast, faster than human, and catches the door before I can slam it. He doesn’t push. Doesn’t force his way in. Just holds it there with a casual strength which tells me forcing it closed would be useless.
“I don’t think it is,” he says pleasantly. “You are Raven Vesper, aren’t you? Sin eater.” He says sin eater with a bite to the word.
My blood freezes along with every instinct I have. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Auric.” He says it like I should know the name. When I don’t react, his smile widens slightly. “I serve the House of Gold. Lord Croesus sent me to ensure you’ll be reporting as required.”
The words hit like a bucket of ice water. I force myself to stay calm, to keep my expression neutral even though my heart is trying to climb out of my throat. “I got the letter. I’ll be there at the required time.”
“Tomorrow.” He glances at his watch —expensive, gold, of course. “Twelve hours and thirty-two minutes, to be precise.”
“Great. So you can leave, and I’ll see you in twelve hours and thirty-two minutes.”
“I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.”