Raven Chapter 18 Stolen Shirts and Shipping Manifests 216
Raven
After my bath last night, I drifted through the apartment like the ghost I used to be, but with way better perks.
The place was a tomb. Anik, Emerson, and Ki-ki were off on a crystal-fetching mission for Silas—without me, which was fine, absolutely fine, I didn't need to be there watching their backs, I was definitely not crawling out of my skin about it—and Dre was still playing saint at the clinic. The only sign of life was Forrest, sequestered in his office with the door cracked—a silent, ever watchful sentry pretending he wasn’t monitoring my every move.
Well, I suppose he took a break at some point since I eventually slept.
Before sleep claimed me, I managed two great victories: I delivered all their clean, dry clothes, and I conducted a thorough, unsupervised reconnaissance mission. My pile of treasures has grown accordingly. It may have been a lonely evening, but it was also a productive one.
I'm up too early for someone who spent half the night spiraling. But here I am, wearing my spoils from last night's looting. Forrest’s crisp dress shirt is thrown over a lace bralette, unbuttoned to my sternum and knotted at my waist. Below that, I’m swimming in Emerson’s tactical pants, the pockets still heavy with the evidence of my stealing—I mean snooping.
Yes, definitely meant snooping. They’re cuffed at the ankles and so comically large in the waist that I had to liberate a gorgeous, velvet-woven cord from Dre’s curtains.
It’s a belt now. I consider it an upgrade.
My fingers are adorned with the small, stacked gold rings from our shopping trip. I never even picked them out; Kieran saw me looking, snatched them up, and paid before I could utter a word. Now, I wear them like the gift they are.
Mixed in is a single chunky silver ring I'd pried from a nest of odds and ends in Emerson's room last night.
I have no idea what it's supposed to be.
A gear, maybe. Or something that held something else together.
All I know is it looked pretty nestled in with all the other forgotten things.
Not to mention it's a piece of him, and I wanted to carry it around.
So I did. Now it sits on my finger instead, and I like the weight of it. Heavy. Solid.
But the best thing I found isn't something I took.
It's the full sensory reality that is Anik's chair.
I knew the chair existed. I didn't know it smelled like him. Didn't know the leather was soft in some places and cracked in others, worn down by years of holding him. It's like the leather itself seems to have absorbed him, held onto him.
It's as if the leather loves him as much as I do and clings to his scent while he's gone.
It makes perfect sense. A large part of me wants to ditch this dress shirt and wrap myself in Anik’s hoodie instead—to use it as a shield and let the sleeves swallow my hands whole. I even pulled it out of my pillowcase last night, needing to snuggle with it to fall asleep.
I won’t ditch the dress shirt just yet, though. There’s power in building an aesthetic from stolen components and sheer stubbornness. Or at least, that’s the story I’m selling myself to block out the overwhelming silence.
It’s not the comfortable kind. It’s the empty, echoing kind that means I’m the only soul in this sprawling, secure penthouse while the guys are out there, probably risking their lives.
If I were still a ghost, I’d be with them.
Then again, ghosts don’t get chocolate chip pancakes and bacon left out for them on the kitchen island.
There was also a cup of coffee. Something I’ve decided is just bitter bean water and a societal scam I want no part of.
I catch another whiff of something that seemed to follow me around last night, mocking me. Faint. Fizzy. I don't know the smell, but I know what it is. I've watched enough snappers dissolve into nothingness—watched them take their passengers with them—to recognize the aftermath.
Portal magic.
The smell brings back the weird, possessive ache blooming behind my ribs.
They didn't even say goodbye.
Forrest's silent watch suddenly feels less like protection and more like a cage. Don't get me wrong, I want that man to cage me up and do horrible, wonderful things to me. But this? This feels like he's a warden and I'm the inmate who's gotten a little too good at memorizing the routine.
Well, two can play at that game.
I pad barefoot into the kitchen, the guitar pick I swiped from Kieran's room sliding between my fingers like a plastic worry stone.
The cold marble is a shock against my soles, but I ignore it, making a beeline for the kettle—a beautiful, antique brass monstrosity that belongs in a museum or a steampunk novel.
Right now, I'd take companionship in any form, even if it's just the ghost of Emerson's presence in a mug.
As it begins its soft, whistling build-up, I reach for the little wooden box on the shelf. Inside are his curated tea blends, each sachet filled by hand with leaves he grew himself. The whole thing smells like him—like old paper and tea.
I run my fingers over the little handwritten tags. Elegant Decay. Recursive Logic. Forgotten Lore. Gods, this man is a cliché. A beautiful, brilliant, walking cliché. My kind of cliché.
My eyes land on one: "Socratic Dawn." It’s the only one that sounds like it won’t actively encourage brooding in a dark corner, so I pluck the sachet from its slot.
The moment the hot water hits it, the scent that blooms from the mug isn’t just a smell.
It’s the feeling of a sharp, clean thought cutting through morning fog.
It’s bright and zesty, like the lemon that was floating in the water pitcher this morning, mixed with the scent of crushed green things.
But underneath is a different kind of sharp—a spicy heat that prickles in your sinuses and makes your brain sit up straight, like a splash of cold water to the face.
It doesn’t feel cozy. It feels… alert. It smells like the quiet, electric moment right before you do something reckless and brilliant.
It’s pretentious as hell. And I absolutely love it.
I take a hesitant sip, and the flavor is a bright, clarifying shock. So this is the fuel. No wonder the man is a walking, talking fortress of logic and intelligence. He brews his focus in a mug. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he mainlined it.
I cradle the mug in my hands as I make my way to the very end of the hall and slip into Em’s room. On the far side of the room sits a wall filled with solid wood bookshelves, packed with leather-bound volumes that probably haven’t been touched in years seeing as his real library is hidden behind it
I’ve watched him do this a hundred times as a ghost. The way he’d press his palm flat against a specific spot, wait for that faint silver pulse to travel up his arm, and then the whole thing would swing inward like it weighed nothing.
I don’t have his magic. I don’t have his runes. But I do have a mug of pretentious tea, a little piece of him around my finger, and a stolen guitar pick.
Also, I'm lonely. And no one else is here that I can have any sort of conversation with.
Forrest is technically here, but he's been in his office since before I woke up.
If I went in there, he'd probably just glare at me and complain about me ruining his vibes.
Or his filing system. Or the structural integrity of his carefully curated silence.
All of that makes MORDRED's ever-present hum the closest thing I can get to positive interaction right now.
Plus I really would like to know if he's sentient or not.
Not ruling anything out until I've had some one-on-one time with him.
Or her. I probably shouldn't gender a possibly sentient computer.
I push the image of Em and MORDRED being absolute bros out of my head and instead do the thing I came here to do. Pressing my palm to where I’ve seen him press his, I wait.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens. I’m about to pull back, embarrassed at myself for even trying, when—
Warmth. Not the heat of friction or body temperature, but something deeper.
Something that feels like being recognized.
A soft silver light traces the outline of my hand, spiraling outward in patterns I don’t understand but my bones seem to really like.
It travels up my arm, and for one electric second, I feel him—not Em exactly, but his magic.
The bookshelf clicks and swings open.
I snatch my hand back, staring at it like it’s grown a second head. "I’ve been here for forty years and now the universe decides to cooperate?"
I shrug it off. Wins are wins. Plus, I'm ninety percent sure there's a god somewhere having a laugh at my expense, and I refuse to give them the satisfaction.
The room beyond is dark, but MORDRED's glow spills out, basically welcoming me in. Which is weird, because I'm pretty sure Emerson's super-secret paranoid-person lab shouldn't be welcoming anyone.
I should probably tell someone about this. I should probably be concerned that it just opened for me like I belong here.
Instead, I step inside.
I'll panic about the implications later. Right now, I have a machine to befriend.
Said machine sprawls across the far wall, a beautiful mash-up of eras. Old vacuum tubes with sparkly nonsense floating around inside them. Crystals shoved into the circuitry like they ran out of normal computer parts. Wires everywhere, some of them glowing silver like the thing has a heartbeat.
Emerson's magic. I can feel it here, even without him. It lingers in the crystals, in the pulse of the tubes, in the way the whole thing breathes.
I stop in front of it, cradling my mug as I squish my feet into the lush persian rug I’ve been eyeing for half a decade.
"Are you listening?" I murmur into the quiet.