Soren
Vera's library has always been a room that expects something of you.
It's not just the smell of old vellum and dried lavender, or the way the sunlight hits the dust motes like they're performing a staged recital.
It's the books. They sit on the mahogany shelves with their spines straight, radiating a collective, judgmental silence that says, Well?
Are you going to be a disappointment today, or should we just settle in?
I've spent most of my life trying to out-disappoint them, but today is different.
Today, I'm the one behind the heavy oak desk, and Aven is the one looking like he's waiting for the furniture to jump up and accuse him of heresy.
It's a lot of pressure for a morning, especially when the coffee pot is still sulking in the kitchen because I may or may not have threatened it with an eternity of decaf if it didn't stop screeching.
My nerves are a fraying rope, each strand snapping one by one, leaving me hovering over a manic precipice.
I need this to work. If I can teach him, then I'm a teacher.
If I'm a teacher, then I've mastered what Vera left behind.
And if I've mastered it, then maybe, just maybe, I can stop feeling like her ghost is tapping her foot in the hallway, waiting for me to trip over my own shadow.
"You're doing that thing again," I say, tapping my fingers against the desk in a rapid-fire staccato.
I've gone for a look I like to call Academic Chic, which mostly involves charcoal merino, sharp sleeves, and a level of bossiness I'm using to hide the fact that my hands are shaking.
"The thing where you look like you're preparing for your own execution.
We're reading energy signatures, Aven, not deciding which of your internal organs we're going to sell first. Though, given the market for celestial bits, we could probably get a decent price for your gallbladder. "
Aven shifts in the velvet-lined chair, his dark curls a mess that makes him look like a very stressed, very pretty bird.
He's wearing one of my oversized black knits, the sleeves swallowed by his hands, and he looks small in it.
Far too small. He's thin in a way that suggests his soul is eating his body to stay anchored.
The kind of tired he wears doesn't go away with sleep; it's a spiritual erosion, the kind that comes from having a dozen dead roommates screaming in your head twenty-four-seven without paying rent.
"I'm a haunted filing cabinet with poor sorting skills, Soren," he mutters, his voice dry and scraping like sandpaper on bone.
"You're asking me to organize the alphabet while the alphabet is trying to eat my face.
Forgive me if I'm not exactly brimming with academic enthusiasm.
I'm pretty sure the 'M' section just tried to bite my subconscious. "
I laugh, and it comes out a little too fast, a little too jagged.
I'm good at bossy. I'm great at manic. I'm significantly less comfortable with the weight of being the only person left who can teach him this.
Teaching Aven means admitting I've learned enough to be the authority, which is a terrifying realization because it means Vera is officially, irrevocably gone.
She isn't coming back to fix my mistakes or take the chalk out of my hand. I'm the end of the line.
"Well, the filing cabinet needs a better indexing system," I say, leaning forward until the wood of the desk bites into my ribs.
"And stop insulting your magic. Magic has taste, you know.
It's like a cat. If you keep calling it garbage, it's going to eventually decide you're not worth the effort and leave you for the neighbor who has better snacks.
You don't want to be the guy whose magic dumped him for a suburbanite with a bowl of premium kibble. "
Aven looks at me with those amber eyes, and for a second, the sarcasm drops. The defense falls away, leaving something raw and terrifyingly honest underneath. "What if it already has?" he asks quietly. "What if it's not my magic anymore? What if it's just them, using me as a megaphone?"
I feel a prickle of something cold in my chest. My own magic is a hungry thing lately, a shelf-life timer ticking down in my marrow, a hollow ache that reminds me I'm being consumed by the very thing I'm trying to master.
I can't let him see that. "Then we'll just have to be more interesting than the neighbor," I say, reaching across the desk.
"Hand. Now. Don't make me use the stern professor voice; it involves a lot of unnecessary vowels. "
He hesitates, his eyes flickering toward the door where Ira stands, then slides his hand into mine.
His skin is cold. It's always cold lately, like the spirits are leaching the heat right out of him to fuel their own echoes.
I close my fingers around his, grounding myself in the physical reality of him: the pulse at his wrist, the slight tremor in his thumb, the way his skin feels like fine porcelain that's been left out in the rain.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cain moving in the shadows by the far bookshelf.
He's staying close, a silent anchor of blood and ancient patience, but he isn't touching.
He's giving Aven the choice of silence without letting him use it as a crutch.
It's a delicate balance, one we're all terrified of upsetting.
Ira is at the door, silhouetted by the light from the hallway.
He's been there since we finished breakfast, still enough to make the doorway look guarded by more than one lock.
He says he's watching the hallway for intrusions, but I know better.
He's watching the rise and fall of Aven's chest. He's counting the seconds between Aven's blinks.
Every time Aven winces, Ira's hand twitches toward his holster, as if he could shoot the dead for being too loud.
"Okay," I say, softening my voice just a fraction, trying to channel a calm I absolutely don't possess.
"The goal isn't to shut them out. Cain can do that for you, but you need to be able to do it yourself.
You're a medium, Aven. Right now, every road is open and everything dead in the city thinks it has the right of way.
I want you to find one thread. Just one.
Don't listen to the choir. Find the soloist."
Aven closes his eyes. I can feel him trying.
I can feel the shift in the air, the way the library starts to hum with that low-frequency vibration that means the veil is thinning.
It's like being in a room where a dozen radios are playing different stations at once: static, screaming, weeping, and the occasional terrifyingly mundane grocery list from nineteen-forty-two.
Usually, Aven just lets the noise wash over him until he drowns in it, his personality sinking beneath the waves of other people's memories.
I need him to reach in and grab the dial.
"Find the one that's stuck," I whisper, my voice barely audible over the growing hum. "The one that smells like wet earth and old copper. The one in the corner by the encyclopedias who won't stop talking about her lost locket. Just her. Tune the others to a whisper."
Aven's grip on my hand tightens. His knuckles are white, the skin pulled taut over the bone.
I watch his face, searching for the moment he connects, but something goes wrong.
The hum doesn't sharpen; it explodes. It's not a soloist. It's a riot.
It's a stadium of voices suddenly realizing there's a microphone left on.
I feel it through our joined hands, a sudden, violent surge of need-want-hunger-loss that isn't mine and isn't his.
It's a tidal wave of unspent life crashing into one fragile body.
"Aven?" I ask, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs like a trapped bird. "Aven, narrow it down. Just one. Focus on me. Focus on the heat of my hand. Stay with me."
He doesn't answer. His eyes fly open, but he isn't seeing me.
They've gone blank, not just rolled back, but empty, like the lights have been cut in a house I'm still standing in.
The amber is replaced by a dull, glassy film that reflects nothing.
His hand stays in mine, but the weight of it changes.
He feels like a body overfilled with things that were never meant to fit inside it.
His body is here, sitting in the velvet chair, but the Aven part of him is being pulled through a sieve.
"Aven!" I yell, and the panic is a physical thing now, a sharp blade twisting in my gut.
This is the hollowing fear, the same fear that wakes me up at night wondering if I'll wake up one day as nothing but a suit of clothes.
I grab his face with my free hand, my palm cupping his jaw, my fingers digging into his skin.
"Aven, look at me! Don't you dare do this.
Don't disappear. I've got enough abandonment issues without you joining the collection! "
The room is full of them now. I don’t see them with Aven’s brutal clarity, every face and wound and dead little want, but the room shows me enough.
The temperature drops twenty degrees in a heartbeat.
The air tastes like static, ozone, and old grief.
Vera’s books vibrate on the shelves, a low, rhythmic rattling sound that matches the chattering of my own teeth.
He's disappearing into the noise, becoming just another echo in a room full of ghosts.
I can feel him slipping, the thread of his consciousness fraying until there's almost nothing left to hold onto.
"Ira!" I scream, and I hate the way my voice breaks. I hate that I'm the teacher and I'm failing the very first lesson. I hate that my own fear is feeding the chaos.