Aven #2
"Sorry," I say, trying to find my sarcasm again. It's a heavy shield to lift when you're shaking. "Being haunted by someone else's grandmother feels like a significant boundary violation. I should probably bill you for the emotional labor. Does she always comment on the inventory?"
The joke falls flat, the tremor in my voice giving me away.
Soren looks up at me, and for a second, the manic brat is gone.
There's a restraint in his gaze, a deliberate choice not to push or consume the energy I'm radiating, even though I can see the questions burning in him.
He knows I've been used by the Church. He knows I'm tired of things reaching through me without asking.
He stands up, his hand lingering near mine for a second longer than necessary before he pulls back, his fingers curling into his palm.
"Just... don't touch the mirrors," Soren says, his voice returning to its usual cutting cadence, though it's missing the bite. "They're even more opinionated than Vera was. They'll tell you exactly what's wrong with your outfit before they show you your soul."
I walk toward the back of the shop, needing the distance.
There's a mirror near the library entrance, an ornate thing with a frame that looks like silver vines and tarnished gold.
As I pass it, the glass ripples like the surface of a pond.
I catch a glimpse of my own reflection, but my posture is adjusted, my shoulders back, my chin higher, my eyes lacking the dark circles of exhaustion.
The mirror doesn't show me who I am; it shows me who I'm supposed to be, a version of Aven that isn't afraid of the dark. It's a silent, silver critique.
"Stop judging me," I mutter to the glass. "I'm a work in progress. Talk to me when you've been spiritually rearranged by a coven before lunch."
The afternoon keeps finding new ways to test my commitment to usefulness.
I handle a man looking for a cure for "poltergeist-related insomnia"—I suggested less caffeine and more iron in the doorway—and a girl who wants to know if we sell anything that can make her ex-boyfriend's hair fall out.
Soren tries to kick both of them out, his patience wearing thin as the shadows grow longer, but I manage to steer them toward the less-dangerous inventory.
I even sell a pouch of "clarity salts" to a college student who looked like he hadn't slept since the mid-term began.
Cain hasn't moved from the couch, but he's stopped reading.
He's watching me, his brown eyes dark and unreadable.
Every time I look over, he's there, an ancient, elegant predator who's opted into a domestic life he doesn't quite understand.
He tracks my movements with a focus that should be unnerving, but it feels like a safety net, a barrier between me and the shifting energies of the shop.
I pass him on my way to the register, and I let my hand brush against the back of the couch, my fingers grazing the soft wool of his sweater.
He doesn't say anything, but he leans into the touch, a small, sensory acknowledgement that anchors me to the floor.
The contact is grounding, a cool contrast to the buzzing spirits in the corners.
Ira is at the front door, flipping the sign to Closed with a finality that suggests he's been waiting for this moment since nine AM.
He begins a circuit of the shop, checking the locks and the wards with a methodical, tactical grace.
He stops behind me while I'm counting out the drawer, his presence a warm, solid weight at my back.
I can feel the heat radiating from him, the scent of cedar and iron.
"Good day?" he asks, his voice low. It's the most he's said all afternoon, a rare offering of conversation.
"I survived the fern," I say, sliding a handful of quarters into the tray. "And I didn't accidentally manifest any more dead relatives. I'm calling it a win. Though the mirror thinks I need better posture."
I look down at the coins, my fingers moving to count the change for the final customer of the day, a teenager who'd bought a piece of hematite for her math final.
That's when I see him. In the far corner of the shop, standing near the shelf of ritual oils, is a figure that shouldn't be there.
He's sharper than the ghosts I usually see, more solid, less like smoke and more like a person standing in the wrong light.
His clothes are sharper than usual, too crisp for a man made of dead light, and his face is stripped of the usual spectral haze. Ellis.
My breath hitches, and a handful of nickels clatters onto the floor, bouncing off the mahogany with a series of sharp pings.
I haven't seen him since I left the bar.
I thought the shop's wards would keep the dead at bay, but Ellis is standing there as if he's always belonged in this room.
He looks restless, his translucent hands twitching at his sides, his eyes fixed on me with an urgency that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
He looks more like a warning than a memory.
"Ellis?" I whisper, the name slipping out before I can stop it. The air in the shop instantly drops ten degrees.
Soren's head whips around, his hands tightening on the ledger.
Cain is on his feet in a second, not because he sees what I see, but because he sees my face.
The graduate student facade is gone; he's all teeth and centuries of reflex.
Ira moves instantly, stepping between me and the corner, his eyes scanning the empty air that I'm staring at.
He can't see Ellis, he's blind to the dead unless they manifest, but he feels the cold spot.
He knows the air has changed, thick and heavy with the scent of ozone and old blood.
Ellis shakes his head once, a sharp, cutting movement.
He looks at Cain with a look of profound, agonizing regret, then back at me, and he presses a finger to his lips.
Not yet. The message is clear, a warning delivered in the silence of the dead.
He doesn't want me to speak. He doesn’t want Cain to know he’s here, though I don’t understand why the warning feels sharper when my eyes flick toward the doorway Cain just left.
I look at the teenager, who's staring at me as if I've just had a stroke. She's holding her hematite and looking at the empty corner with wide, terrified eyes, sensing the sudden shift in the room's atmosphere.
"Sorry," I say, my voice cracking as I scramble to pick up the nickels, my fingers fumbling against the floor. "I was... I was talking to the register. It has performance anxiety. It gets stage fright during the end-of-day count. Technology, right? Always temperamental."
It's a terrible lie. It's the kind of lie that Ezra would see through in a heartbeat, and I can tell by the way Soren's narrowing his eyes that he doesn't believe a word of it.
The girl takes her change, her hand shaking as she grabs it, and practically runs out of the shop, the bell jangling a frantic, echoing goodbye.
I stand up, my hands shaking as I grip the edge of the counter.
The silence in the shop is absolute now, heavy and expectant.
Ellis is still there, a flickering shadow in the corner, watching us with those hollow, envious eyes.
He hasn't left. He's followed me home, a piece of the bar that refused to stay where I left it.
He looks sharper than before, more present, as if my presence in this shop is feeding him.
"Aven," Cain says, his voice a low, dangerous hum that vibrates in the floorboards.
He's standing right next to the spot where Ellis is hovering, his hand passing through the space where Ellis's shoulder would be.
He doesn't feel it, not the way I do, but he sees the way I'm looking.
He sees the way my eyes are locked on the empty air.
"It's nothing," I lie, though I know it's useless. The cold spot is still there, pulsing. "Just... tired. First-day jitters. I thought I saw a shadow move. The mirrors, you know?"
Soren crosses the room and stops in front of me, his green eyes searching mine.
He doesn’t push, but the question is written in every line of his face.
He knows the dead don’t just go away. I look back toward the corner, but Ellis has already pulled himself thin, folding out of the room’s notice the way some spirits do when they want only one person listening.
Cain has seen him before. Soren has felt him before.
Right now, neither of them can catch more than the cold spot he leaves behind.
The domestic rhythm we’ve been building suddenly feels thin enough to tear.