Page 2 of Veil of Death and Shadow

It was hard to convince my brain that the intrusive thoughts weren’t real.

Not when, occasionally, they were.

Four years ago, one of our apartmentshadin fact burned down because the guy on the floor above us left a paperback on his stove. And while Mrs. Odette was most likely safe and soundin her favorite oversized nightgown right now, last year, my coworker’sreal-lifedeath played out exactly like the version I’d seen churning on repeat in my dreams the whole month leading up to it. He’d choked on an apple, a strange, symbolic visual that had planted a seed of fear in my veins that rooted and bloomed until it actually happened.

No amount of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or pills could bring him—or the stuff in our old apartment—back.

Superstition? Maybe. Coincidence? Probably. But that lingering “what if” was far more vicious than any binary explanation could ever be. Death enjoyed his games far too much, and my inability to recognize the difference between one of his bouts and just another Tuesday was one of his cruelest tricks.

“Mars,” her voice was lower now, tender and unguarded—the specific tonal licks she reserved only for me.

She was worried.

Fuck, I didn’t want her to be worried. Not today. This was her day as much as mine. Maybe even more. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks.

“With what insurance?” I snorted, ignoring how flat the joke fell, even to my ears.

“We can scrape by. We always do. I can add an extra shift?—”

“No,” I said, the snap of the word harsher than I’d intended. I took a deep breath, curling the edges of my jacket tight around my chest. The zipper broke last week and I hadn’t bothered trying to fix it. “I should be there in twenty minutes,” I added, hoping desperately that she’d drop it. Just for today.

“Mars, this is important.”

“You know how I get this time of year. My symptoms aren’tbackback. It’s just today. It brings stuff up is all.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. My anxiety had never fully left in the first place, it just sometimes got quieter, my mind bestowinga brief reprieve before splicing my day-to-day activities with visceral scenes of my few-and-far-between loved ones dying. And the compulsions—the checking, the counting, the silent chanting loop I recited in my head—always ramped up to full effect this time of year, like the shifting calendar pages sent a direct signal to my body to get to work fighting me. On everything.

My brain was like a fucked-up Santa Claus—one who only ever brought coal.

You’d never catch me waiting up all night, eager for his arrival.

“Do you want to cancel?—”

I shook my head, again, for an audience of no one. “Absolutely not. This is our one day. Anniversary Extraordinaire, remember? We go all out. From dawn until dusk.” Though more often than not it ended up being from dawn until dawn the next day. “No matter what’s going on in our lives, it all goes on pause for today. Those are the rules. We’ve written them into the bylaws and everything. Pretty sure I even signed in blood at one point.”

She exhaled, long and drawn out, and I could practically see her head tilted against our favorite booth, fingers massaging her temple as she weighed the merits of pushing the discussion further or dropping it. Would I fight her or give in? How far could she push before I shut down altogether? Honestly, she read and understood my moods better than I did. “Mars, we could celebrate tomorrow if you’re not into it today. If you want to relax, or talk it out?”

She meant it, but that only thickened my resolve.

Today was the most important day of the year.

The day we escaped.

The day we survived.

The day, as Sora dubbed it, my supposed ‘curse’ was broken.

Today was for Rina and it was for us. We remembered, we forgot, we celebrated. It was the one absolute we lived by. There was no way I was letting my anxiety and baggage break that tradition. Death wasn’t allowed to win. Not today.

“No. Just—” I swallowed, scanning the quiet street, stifling my shame from any strangers who might be able to read it—pluck it from my skin and stare into the bits of myself that I tried like hell not to see, let alone examine. The bits that only Sora seemed able to parse. “Not today. Can we table it? Just until tomorrow. Please?” I felt her warring with herself in the silence. “I promise. Fun today, real talk tomorrow, okay? I won’t even fight you on it. If I do, I’ll do the dishes for a month without a complaint.”

“Liar.” There was no malice in the word, just aggressive affection and an eye roll I could sense from over a mile away. Her sigh crackled against my ear, ending in a soft groan that let me know I’d won before any words followed to confirm.

I pinched my eyes tight, waiting for her to give in.

“Twenty minutes? You’re farther than our apartment. You got lost again.” It wasn’t a question, and there was no accusation in her tone. She grunted, then let out a string of curse words, her voice both louder and more distant, like she was holding the phone a few inches back from her face. “Make it ten,” she said. “There’s a group of feral frat boys here trying to milk their sloppy night out well into the morning. Truly repulsive behavior.” Her voice curled with disgust. Never mind that we’d likely be in the same shoes as them twenty-four hours from now. “They don’t seem to understand, or care,” her voice grew louder now, her words for them as much as they were for me, “that each cringey attempt to get into my pants is just inching them closer and closer to my fist.” I heard a low whistle and Sora groaned. “I can’t promise more than ten minutes before I throat punch oneof them. Their fates are in your hands. Can you handle that responsibility?”

“Deal.” I picked up my pace, knowing that she was only half kidding. Sora was slight and unassuming to the unpracticed observer, a good half-foot shorter than me—absolutely no match for a table of drunk-off-their-ass frat boys—but the girl had a penchant for striking first and asking questions later.

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