Chapter 1 #2
I laughed. It came out wrong—too high, more air than sound, the specific unhinged noise a person makes right before they either cry or start being extremely practical about something, and with me it was always going to be the second one.
Years of being the one who called the plumber had wired me that way.
Panic didn’t get much runway before my brain started making a list instead.
“Fine,” I said. “Fine. Say I believe you. Say this is real and I’m not having a stroke and you’re not my brother’s worst prank ever. What happens if I say no?”
He shifted his footing. “Then the file remains open, the neglect stands unresolved, and the Board settles the debt through total soul-equity liquidation. Usually a permanent placement in the Administrative Processing Wing. You’d be filing receipts for the next four hundred years.
They never have enough staples down there. It’s very taxing on the cuticles.”
I stared at him. He wasn’t smiling, which made it worse, because I genuinely couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“That was a joke,” he said, apparently reading my face. “Mostly.”
“Which part?”
“The cuticles.”
I blew out a shaky breath and looked down at my hand again. The pixelated eyes on the little screen blinked slowly, one at a time. It didn’t look like the cheerful blob I used to feed during math class anymore. It looked like a grudge that had fermented for twenty-seven years.
“Fine,” I said. “What do I actually have to do?”
A checklist was forming in my mind, the only language my brain fully trusted under pressure.
“We need a workspace,” Vassago said, surveying the hallway like it had personally offended him. “Somewhere flat, well lit,” he said, his eyes moving to the pile of newspapers stacked against the wall, “and with significantly less dander.”
“This house is being sold in three weeks. It’s not a laboratory.”
“The timeline of your real estate transaction is irrelevant to the Board. What’s relevant is that Asset 774-Purple has entered a state of necrotic stagnation. It requires immediate stabilization and a structured re-entry program. I require a table.”
“There’s a breakfast nook,” I said, mostly because standing in this hallway with him any longer might actually kill me. “It’s the only surface that’s not buried under boxes yet.”
He gestured for me to lead the way, which felt insane but my legs went anyway.
I moved the empty mug and plate from breakfast into the sink, and Vassago set his large, leatherbound book down.
When he opened it, I saw it was an old-fashioned accounting ledger.
The shimmering, restless script on the page hurt my eyes.
He didn’t ask permission before he reached out, took the hand still fused around the Tamagotchi, and guided it flat onto the table between us.
His skin was cold, the specific chill of a basement in December, the kind that gets into a room before you notice the thermostat’s off. For one stupid second, the noise in my head went almost quiet.
“The first step in any audit is assessing the damage,” he said, his tone turning clinical yet staying rhythmic. His eyes stayed on the device. “Sparkle-Cloud. Status report.”
The Tamagotchi let out a low, distorted growl. A text box bloomed across the screen. Whatever was written there was not English. The jagged little symbols seemed to bleed off the edges of the LCD like they were trying to escape it.
“She’s hungry,” I said, the memory surfacing before I could stop it. “She used to beep when she was hungry. I should... do I need the little watch batteries, or...”
“She hasn’t wanted electricity since Britney Spears released her debut album, Ms. Hadley.
” His pen was already moving across the page, quick and sure.
“She wants the twenty-seven years of attention she was promised. She wants the emotional labor you diverted into, let’s see...
” He glanced down at the shifting text. “Managing your sister’s divorce, your brother’s failed microbrewery, and your mother’s ongoing refusal to use a smartphone. ”
Heat crawled up my neck. “How do you know about all that?”
“I’m an auditor. I track expenditures.” He looked up, his expression sharpening.
“You spend your life-force on everyone except the one thing that was legally yours to keep. You have a habit of propping people up who never asked your permission to build on top of you. But this...” He tapped the casing beneath my hand.
“This was a choice. A contract you signed in blood on a playground in 1999.”
“I was eleven! We were playing. I didn’t think...”
“The Board doesn’t recognize playing as a legal defense.
Intent is irrelevant. Attachment is the only metric that matters.
” He sat back, and the chair creaked under him like it resented the weight of what he was about to say.
“By neglecting this asset, you created a vacuum in the infernal ecosystem. Sparkle-Cloud is currently a Level One Void-Entity. Left destabilized, she’ll start feeding on the nearest available environment. ”
I looked at the walls, at the water stain over the window my father had promised to fix for eleven years, and for one unhinged second I could actually see the cracks widening, the whole place folding in on itself because I’d left a plastic egg in a drawer in the nineties.
“What do I have to do?” I asked again, my voice softer this time.
“You parent her.” He said it like he was walking me through a Form 1040.
“You provide the enrichment, the discipline, and all the care you skipped. Because the bond has mutated past a standard case, you can’t manage it alone.
The demands would put you in the ground.
I handle the technical oversight. I manage the metrics.
” He paused like the next word tasted bad going down. “You provide the... heart.”
“The heart? I thought you were a demon.”
“I am. Heart is a volatile fuel source with a catastrophic failure rate. My job is to make sure you don’t burn out before the file closes. If you expire mid-audit, the asset goes unanchored, and I’m the one who has to file a catastrophic loss report. I hate those. The ink never fully dries.”
He stood, unfolding to his full height without a single wasted motion, and rounded the table until he was close enough that I noticed, for the first time, he smelled like old paper and something sharper underneath.
“We begin now,” he said. “Pick it up.”
“It’s stuck to me.”
“Pick it up with intention. Stop treating it like a curse and start treating it like a child.”
Gritting my teeth, I closed my fingers around the casing.
Something like cold clarity moved up my arm.
The screen cleared. The jagged, furious eyes softened, becoming more recognizable.
The creature was small, pixelated, and unmistakably exhausted.
It looked the way I felt after a ten-hour workday followed by a two-hour call with my mother about something she’d overheard in the grocery store.
“It’s tired,” I said, before I could stop myself.
“She’s been awake in the dark for twenty-seven years.” His voice had dropped, closer now, cool and level near my ear. “Wouldn’t you be?”
My phone buzzed. I didn’t have to check to know it was Dani, or Evan, or the realtor.
Probably all three taking turns. Someone always wanted something.
Someone always needed a piece of me to prop up their particular corner of the world, and I always handed it over, because handing it over was easier than finding out what would happen if I didn’t.
I glanced at Vassago, then looked down at the small, furious, exhausted toy stuck to my palm.
For the first time in far longer than I wanted to think about, the person standing in front of me was informing me of a debt, not asking me for a favor, dropping legal terminology like he expected me to keep up, but he was also just there. Present.
It shouldn’t have been a relief, but in a strange way, it was.
“What’s the first step?”
“We establish a baseline.” He clicked a pen that hadn’t been in his hand a second ago. “I’ll begin the intake interview. And Ms. Hadley...”
“Yes?”
“Turn off your phone. The Board doesn’t permit interruptions during a live audit.”
I pulled it from my pocket and looked at the lock screen. Three missed calls. Twelve texts. Dani wanting the mixer, Evan wanting to know about the newspapers, my mother wanting to know if I’d heard about the holiday her neighbor’s daughter was taking them on.
I turned it off and set it face-down on the table.
“Good,” Vassago said, and something in his eyes wasn’t quite a smile, but it was in the neighborhood.
I set the device on the table. It let out one small, staticky chirp. The sound of something realizing, for the first time in twenty-seven years, it wasn’t alone in the dark anymore.
Vassago pulled out a stool, adjusted his cuffs like he was settling into a deposition, and looked at me with the patient expectation of a man who had all the time several afterlives could offer.
“Very well,” he said. “Tell me about the first time you ignored the hungry icon. Don’t lie. I have the logs.”