Page 98 of Veil of Death and Shadow

“What’s it like?” I asked, flicking the ashes over the side of the hammock. We were lying out by the canal, wedged between two trees that provided some protection against the scorching rays of the sun. “For you now, I mean. Can you smell it?” I reached over so that he could take the cigarette if he wanted. “Could you smoke it? In your current state?”

“My current state being dead, you mean?” he asked. For a moment, it looked like he might grab it, like he might try, but then his hands stiffened at his side, one resting against my calf. He was sitting in the hammock with me, both of us facing each other. There wasn’t a lot of room to move, and it was impossible not to touch. Still, it was strange, the unexpected chill of his body against mine, so different from how he’d felt against me last week. “I could smoke it, but it’s not the same in this world as it was when I was among the living.”

“How so?”

“Unless I’m on one of my rare, embodied vacations, everything in this world is watered down to the point of being almost worse than not having it at all.” His nose curled in disgust. “Sort of like if you were to take whiskey and then mix it with so much water that all of the effects you might like from the alcohol—the buzz, the burn, the taste—were gone, and you were just left with a glass of water that tasted a bit rank. At that point, I’d rather just have a glass of water, you know? The drop of whiskey only serves to make it fouler.”

I put the cigarette out against the tree.

Well, one more thing to cross off the bucket list anyway. I tried it, hated it, and wouldn’t be forcing the rest of it on my lungs.

My tongue slid over my teeth as I tried to swallow away the taste. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be going anywhere until I got hold of my toothbrush later.

I set the dead butt on the ground, next to our things, and sent myself a mental reminder to take it with us when we left and dispose of it properly. “Can’t believe smoking is one of the things you miss most. I can’t imagine even tolerating it, let alone loving it. Not that I enjoy whiskey either. So maybe the analogy was always going to be lost on me.”

He shrugged. “It’s an acquired taste.”

My nose wrinkled at the scent that still lingered in the air. I should’ve tried this while we were on the trail, now we’d be stuck with this stale, almost rotten smell, until the wind chose to disperse it.

“Is this how you died? From lung cancer?” I immediately regretted the question as soon as it left my mouth. “Sorry, that was probably a deeply rude question, feel free to ignore it.”

“No.” He flexed his hand, the one that was dressed in a set of silver rings, as if he had a cramp. “That’s not what killed me.”

There was an air of finality to the sentence, and I knew he wouldn’t be providing more information. “What did you like about it?”

“I don’t really know.” He closed his eyes, considering. “That’s one of the cruelties of my kind’s condition. We wake up as ourselves, but also not. My likes and dislikes are divorced from the contexts that created them. The specific memories they’re tied to are gone.”

“I don’t know that I fully understand—how could you still like the thing, but not know why?”

“Yesterday,” he said, “when you were swimming in the lake. You got this kind of far off look at one point, and I could tell you were thinking about something. Something that made you happy—you were smiling.”

Was I? I thought back to yesterday afternoon, trying to remember all of the things we spoke about, but also what I hadn’t said aloud.

“Probably my Amto Amani,” I said. “She’s one of the reasons I love to be near the water. So much of my childhood was spent on the shoreline near our house.”

“Good,” he said, nodding, “so it would be like that. Imagine that you know you love being near the water, that it’s an essential part of you, but you wouldn’t fully understand why. You’d have no recollection of your . . .” he paused, as if trying to remember the name, “Amto Amani?”

I nodded.

“You’d have no memory of her, of the time you spent together near the water, you’d just know that every time you saw the shoreline, that it was important to you in some fundamental way. And there’d be this ever-present ache, drawing you to it, but you’d never truly discover why. You’d get close, every now and then, but it would slip away, the core of it forever elusive. All that’s left is the yearning.”

“That sounds fucking awful.”

He shrugged again, but I got the sense that he was more bothered than he let on. “That’s just the way of my kind.”

“But those memories can come back? Eventually?”

Something shut off in his expression, the breeziness of the afternoon eclipsing for a moment. “In part. They can come back—slowly, and over many years—but only if you want them to. You have to work for it, chase them. And that kind of relentless pursuit brings its own kind of danger. I’ve seen it spell doom for many.”

“Do you? Let them come back I mean?” Going years without understanding yourself sounded miserable. “How long have you been in your line of work, anyway?”

His mouth tightened into a stiff smile, and he tapped the book resting on my stomach. “No more questions about me. Like I said before, we’re not really supposed to interact. We’re here to do one of the things you enjoy.” He leaned back again, his eyes closed. “Read your book now, Agony.”

I studied him for a moment, trying to parse the blank expression on his face, the half-answers he’d given me. Then I sighed, knowing that I wouldn’t get anywhere by pressing for more information. Kieran seemed in a constant battle—desperate for companionship, but cagey about engaging in it all the same.

After the breakfastrush and lunch prep earlier, Sora kicked us out, told me to take the rest of the day off—tomorrow, too.

“It’s not every day you get a hot guardian angel,” she’d said.

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