18. Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MAVEN/ASH
There is something unhinged about trying to kill yourself one day and dragging your ass to the metro the next morning like the whole thing was a mild inconvenience.
But here I am, card against the reader, before I slip through the turnstile into the tide of coats and steaming to-go cups. Because rent is real, even if I sometimes am not.
I don’t make it past the lobby before noticing what’s wrong.
Nobody sees me.
Now, I want to be clear—people not acknowledging me is my whole life. That’s every day ending in y. The polite-smile-for-three-weeks-then-slowly-back-away routine is one I could perform in my sleep.
But this is different…within ninety seconds of stepping off the elevator, Marc from accounts payable, who has said good morning to me every single day since I started, walks right past me toward the coffee station with his eyes sliding across my face like I’m invisible.
No pause or little frown of do I know her? Nothing. His eyes just look through me.
I cannot decide whether to be offended or not. “Okay,” I whisper. “Weird.”
Of course, it gets weirder.
By the time I reach my cubicle, I’ve passed six people, and exactly zero of them registered another human being was in the hallway.
One woman actually stepped sideways to avoid me without so much as looking down, the way one might from a wet floor sign the brain acknowledged in secret.
Her shoulder didn’t even brush mine. It’s like she just knew to move.
My pulse skips. I’ve seen that happen before—during a blizzard when endless people parted around a spot on the pavement where a tall man waited for me. None of them saw him, either, yet each of them somehow refused to touch the space he occupied.
Wonderful. Did Ash becoming physical make me invisible? No, that wouldn’t make sense.
I sink into my chair, power on my computer, and stare at the login screen while my stomach churns.
I make it two hours of pretending to answer emails. Nobody stops by or messages. My manager holds a stand-up meeting eight feet from my desk and does not once glance at the person standing at the side.
I could scream.
If I ripped my shirt off and danced on the copier, I genuinely believe not one of these people would blink.
I won’t test that theory, but I think about it.
Around noon, I’m chewing on a rock of a granola bar, debating whether it counts as lunch, when the air behind me thickens.
That’s the only way I can describe it now—like the room sucks in a breath and holds it.
The hairs on my arms lift and this warm, waiting pressure slithers up the back of my neck.
I don’t even startle at his appearance anymore, which could be considered alarming.
Another thing I won’t mention to Dr. Voss.
“You have to stop doing that,” I say without turning. “Announcing yourself like a normal creep would be nice.”
“Where is the fun in that?” His voice pours into the cubicle, low and unhurried. Heat crawls through my spine and settles low. I spin my chair.
He’s here—physical, still. He’s folded himself into the corner of my sad excuse of an office as if he belongs there, which he absolutely does not; a millennium-old god crammed against a filing cabinet with a motivational cat poster the previous employee left behind is not a sentence that should ever be said.
“You look ridiculous,” I tell him.
“You look tired, my flower.”
“Wow. Buy a girl dinner before letting her know how terrible she looks.”
Wait—am I flirting? I don’t flirt.
His head tilts, that little movement I’ve come to read as amusement instead of curiosity, and I hate how much I like it. I glance past him at the hallway, where people continue ghosting by without a flicker of interest, and a sour knife twists under my ribs.
“Is this you?” My voice down, even though clearly I could belt it.
“The—” I wave a hand at the office, at all of them.
“Nobody can see me today. It’s like I’m—” I stop.
Like you. I don’t say it. I want to ask if he’s doing it on purpose, dimming me out of the world so I have nothing left but him, forcing me to lean on him and need him the way he wants.
It would be such a him thing to do after getting a physical form.
My lips snap shut to prevent me from continuing.
He stills, studying me through that white drape, and I get the sense he heard the question I didn’t ask anyway.
“Maven.” Just my name. The way it leaps from his tongue makes me feel important. Like I mean something.
I open my mouth to volley back something, but I notice the people before any words leave me.
People. In the hallway. Though instead of passing by my cubicle, they’re stopping outside.
Two of them at first—a guy from marketing and someone I don’t think works in our office.
They chat all while drifting closer to my designated space.
Then a third joins. A fourth. They cluster near the opening of my little gray box, laughing about something.
None of them look at me, but all of them edge in toward the corner—no, they’re gravitating toward him.
Ash hasn’t noticed. His attention sticks to me, whole and heavy. Nothing else exists to him, and I snap my fingers in front of the fabric, pointing behind him. “Uh, company.”
* * *
ASH
It takes a shameful moment to pull my focus from her.
I could watch her forever and never grow bored of it—the pitch of her brow and the way she snaps her fingers at me is perfect. She’s always had teeth. Even now, in this life, she has those teeth, and I love her for it more than she will ever understand.
But she is right—company approaches.
I turn to find several mortals have gathered.
Their groups press into a loose knot at the mouth of her workspace, and not one of them acknowledges it or her. I’m confused until their words drift through the space.
“—haven’t touched me in months…I don’t even know if he still—”
“—keep thinking about the house we almost bought, back before baby June passed, and I can’t stop—”
“—she’s been gone three years, man, and I still set out two cups every morning. Isn’t that pathetic? I just—”
Longing.
All of it is their longing.
My mind whirls as every muscle stiffens. The mortals have no idea who I am, but something deep inside their desperation knows I am here. Their longing begs to be eased and followed the scent of relief straight to me.
Ice floods my veins, though it has nothing to do with the chill of this world.
They can feel me.
“Wait here,” I tell Maven, not allowing her time to respond before standing.
I fold myself from her realm into the twilight of mine.
The ease of it should comfort these anxious thoughts—proof I can still cross freely—but I do not linger long enough to relax.
I forgot to give Maven her flower last night, which is the only reason I’m here before testing my theory.
I snatch two flowers from the pages of my books, one for today and one for last night.
Then I return.
I place myself on the far side of the office this time, near the windows where gray light shines weakly through the glass.
Maven’s head rises in her little box, spinning in a slow circle as she surveys the space and her mouth tightens.
The array of mortals that swarmed her—that swarmed me, hovering where I sat—dissolves.
They wander in separate directions, rubbing their necks as they contemplate why they suddenly feel so lost.
I wait. One breath. Two.
And they come. Not to her, to me. A different set this time, drawn across the office floor toward the windows, murmuring their small hungers as they orbit the space I occupy without a single glance in my direction.
“Merde,” I mutter, and I mean it in every language I have ever known.
It is confirmed. They do not flock to her.
These are the consequences of appearing in this world as flesh.
My physical presence upsets the balance, the mortals sensing me and what I can do for them.
I have not even fed and they still appear.
My appearance alone is enough to tug at the seams of their sanity and desire.
And I cannot shift back to the way I was. I’ve tried, several times now, to slip into this world unseen and untouchable as I always could; my body remains stubbornly whole. Solid and real.
What would happen if I remain too long…
How am I meant to watch over her, to keep her safe until it is time to bring her home, if my very care warps the world around us?
I do not have such answers. I have two flowers, dread building in my chest, and a woman walking toward me now with quick steps and brows raised, a question already loaded behind her eyes.
In the shrinking space between us, I decide that I will not tell her.
My flower has carried enough in this life. She doesn’t deserve one more thing to name as her fault—more proof that she breaks whatever she touches. Because she believes that already, and it is a lie I refuse to feed.
“You vanished,” she says, arms crossing as she halts and ignores the others. They ignore her, as well.
“I went to fetch something for you.” A flower in each hand, I present them to her. “And to be certain of a thing.”
“Certain of what?”
“That you remain the only one who can see me.” A truth wrapped in a lie. My favorite kind. “It seemed prudent to check, given how this world keeps rearranging itself around us.”
She bites her lip before carefully grabbing both flowers. Each caress of the dark petals is careful and reverent. Something in me settles at the sight.
“And?”
“You are the only one.” That part, at least, I do not need to invent.
She accepts it with a small nod as she mutters something under her breath. The words must be for her alone, but I hear them all the same.
“Doesn’t matter. I like it better when it’s just us anyway.”
Us.
During her first life, when her soul was full to bursting and she laughed like the world was perfect, she used to say it constantly: just us, just the two of us, the rest can wait. She loved me then. Those words have not crossed her lips in eight hundred years. Not once.
Just us.
I am still reeling from it, admiring every syllable, when she grabs my hand and hauls me across the office with startling force for someone so small.
* * *
MAVEN
What the hell am I doing? My body operates on its own, the way it does most things I’ll regret later, and I grab his hand—so warm and nice.
His fingers curl around mine as if they were waiting, and I tug him to the little supply closet at the far end of the office that nobody uses because the light flickers in a creepy way and it smells like old toner.
I shove the door open and drag him in before clicking it closed.
It’s cramped in here. Shelves of printer paper and a mop bucket and the two of us, chest to chest almost, because there’s nowhere else to be, and now that we’re here I have exactly no plan, which is so on brand for me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, the sentence breathier than I want. “At my work. You realize this is crazy, right? Following someone to their job is like—I don’t know, like restraining-order behavior.”
“You brought me into a closet.” His head tilts. “Who is following whom.”
My jaw drops. “That’s—” I lose the train of thought when he moves.
He doesn’t grab me. He just leans in, slow, giving me every second to shove him off, and I don’t. God help me, I don’t want to. I haven’t felt this many emotions my entire life, and I’m not sure I hate it.
His head lowers to the side of my neck before he inhales, his jaw grazing mine, and a full-body wave of goosebumps rolls down my arms so hard it stings.
“You smell like snow,” he murmurs against my skin. “And that awful candy you keep at your desk. And under it—” his nose drags along the line of my throat and my breath stutters, “—under it, you smell like mine.”
“That’s a deranged thing to say.” My voice has no weight behind it at all. A shelf slams into my back as my hands jump to fist the front of his coat. I didn’t tell them to do that.
He finds a spot just below my ear, a soft press of his mouth that isn’t even really a kiss, causing my knees and eyelids to flutter at the same time.
An embarrassing sound escapes me when he does it again.
His hands haven’t moved from where they hover at my waist, not touching, and somehow that restraint is worse than if he just took what we both clearly want.
And, fuck, do I want. That’s a horrifying realization…I want him to hike me up on this shelf and ruin me between the reams of copy paper. What does all that patience feel like unleashed? Every inch of me is vibrating in a foreign frequency, screaming yes, please.
Then he pulls back.
Just an inch. Enough to breathe each other’s air.
“Not here,” he says, rough. “Not like this.”
I blink at the white drape where his eyes hide, dazed and stinging from the rejection until I catch the strain in his voice. His body tenses more with each second. I realize this is costing him more than it’s costing me.
“I forgot your flower last night,” he breathes. “That was not—I meant only to give you space. I am sorry, Maven. I have never once failed to leave you one, and I will not fail again.”
Two small petals scrape my chest as I squeeze them close, and I don’t even wish to acknowledge the sudden burn in my eyes.
“Why do you keep giving me flowers,” I whisper. “You never answer that.”
He watches me and says nothing. And I know he won’t—this is one more thing I’ll have to wait for.