Page 11 of Marked by the Demigod

“You asked.” He scrubs his face again. “Did someone give you four apples that you ate one a day?”

So now it’s her turn to blink. “Um, what?”

“I’m trying to figure out what this person did to mark you.” His face is 100% serious, no joking. “There are a lot of different ways, and I don’t want to miss something just cause I didn’t think of it.”

“You’re bullshitting me.” She says, flat, her mind racing. The only thing unique of her conference was the sex, and…

“Do you need me to prove that this exists?” He stares at her, at her face blanching, too careful, like he knew the idea in her mind. “Because I can.” He holds out his hand, like to a small child, and Aimes doesn’t know if she’s seen something so sinister before. Just his long hand, the skin too tight and dry over the bones.

She balks. “What do you mean, prove it?” She blurts out, the silence feeling more threatening than her words. The hair on the back of her neck stands up, and it’s not cold in the office, but she ruthlessly suppresses a shiver.

Dave reaches his hand and grasps hers.

In a flash, the lights go out, blanketed by an oily dark smoke, billowing around them. His hand is like ice, immediate, frigid, his skin hard like stone or marble.

He drops her hand, and Aimes immediately recoils away. The thick dark smoke disappears, as if it was never there. The lights blink back on, as if there was never any change, as if that didn’t fucking happen right in front of her.

“Do you see what I mean?” He sits back, as if that didn’t just happen.

Does she see what he means. She shakes her head, her mouth dry as a bone. “What are you?”

“A draugr. German. We guard locations near to where we died. I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not that type of person.” He stares at her, hands steepled together. “So when I ask what you did, do you understand me?”

Her heart feels like it’s about to pound through her shirt, thudding against her skin. “I only hooked up with a stranger, that’s it. Everything else was normal, I swear...you died?”

His face crinkles, as if she’s the weird one. “You slept with someone? That’s what you think…” And his eyebrows raise, quick. “Did he take you to a room with a wooden bed frame?”

She nods. “But you died, though?”

He waves his hand, as if that isn’t a giant fucking big deal in this conversation. “Did he give you sweet dandelion wine?”

“He called it Dolce. But you’re dead?” The urge to sink back in her seat is almost overwhelming.

A look of profound discomfort crosses his face, like he’d rather do anything else than ask the question. “Did he have sex with you in five positions? Ending with him on top?”

She hesitates, her stomach falling.

He must’ve read it on her face. “Oh my god, really?”

They sit there, staring uncomfortably at each other, Aimes’s skin crawling like there are bugs reaching to get out. “But you’re dead?” She blurts out.

“Only technically, it’s a long story.” He leans forward again, and Aimes leans back, not wanting that black smoke or to see his skin as stone again. “I’m not...that was a trick, to show you things, it wasn’t supposed to scare you.” He rubs his brow. “I am very unqualified for this discussion.” And his voice is whiny. He is whiny about this.

What the hell.

She hugs her arms to herself, still in front of the computer, with the code beeping in front of her.

“Okay.” She says, out of a lack of anything else to say, “okay, you guessed it, it was weird sex with a stranger. What does that have to do with why people are staring at me?”

“Do you know who he was? Was he just a stranger?”

She shrugs, and the movement feels hollow, sort of enforced casualness in the surrealism of the moment. “He said his name was Jake.”

He nods, a motion that was as empty as possible, his eyes wide. “Jake.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence, before he sighs explosively. “Man, you got the short end of this deal.” He reaches for his cell phone, and it’s such a modern piece of technology in this moment that it’s a bit of a shock. He scrolls through his phone, then looks up at her, surprisingly eager. “I’m going to call someone more qualified here.” His voice is small, more like a mouse than whatever the hell creature he showed her just a few short minutes ago. He stands, dialing on the phone.

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