Page 109 of Veil of Death and Shadow

“I know.”

“Well, we can either go join the party and share your dog wine,” I shot him a look, “or we can ditch them entirely and hoard the whole thing for ourselves while we sit on the balcony and people watch like a pair of curmudgeonly gargoyles.”

“The latter sounds like my ideal house party, actually.”

“Mine, too.”

I glanced at the bottle. Twist off. Perfect.

I didn’t think we actually owned a bottle opener, now that I thought about it.

I grabbed a few blankets from the hallway closet and nodded for him to follow me through my room to the balcony—and then instantly regretted that I hadn’t bothered cleaning in here. My room was usually off limits at these things—Sora always made sure I had a place to escape to in case I needed one—so it hadn’t even registered.

He took in the room, his eyes tracing every inch of it, as if he was trying to catalogue everything, filing away each tiny detail.

My cheeks heated under his appraisal, and I fought the urge to justify my haphazardly selected posters and precariously arranged stacks of books. There was a particularly spicy novel opened on my nightstand and I desperately hoped that he didn’t catch the title.

I slid the balcony door open and waited for him to pass through, the frigid air like a balm to any lingering vestiges of embarrassment.

The chill went from welcome to downright wintery in a matter of seconds though, and I curled myself up in one of the blankets before handing the second to Levi and claiming one corner of the wicker couch.

We’d gotten the couch used for our favorite price—free—in some neighborhood group, but it had definitely seen better days.

I held my breath when Levi sat down, hoping like hell it didn’t collapse under our collective weight. The wicker creaked and groaned, but after a few seconds, it silenced its protest beneath us.

“I like your place.” Levi twisted the cap off the colorful dog wine and offered the first sip to me, while he settled his blanket over his legs.

Shit. I’d forgotten to grab glasses.

When I glanced at him, I expected to see the lie in his eyes, but all I saw was earnest approval. He hadn’t directly mentioned it, but sometimes you could just look at someone and know thatthey were used to wealth. Or at least moderate comfort. Levi had that vibe.

And while I adored the home that Sora and I created here—it truly was shaping up to be everything we’d dreamt of—it was far from glamorous. Most of our things were mismatched, used to the point that they were on their last legs—well-loved as Sora liked to frame it. Neither of us came with much, so the place was also pretty barren. Becca’s previous roommates had taken their things, and they’d clearly been the ones in charge of most of the shared furnishings. But every week, it seemed like Sora would find something special to add—like she was collecting little puzzle pieces throughout the city in a scavenger hunt only she could complete.

“It feels like a good home,” he added, threading his fingers through the small holes in the crocheted blanket. Sora picked it up for three bucks at a thrift store last week. She couldn’t bear the thought of some, likely dead, old woman’s hard work sitting on a shelf and collecting dust, not getting the love it deserved. And neither of us would ever be getting hand-made items from a doting grandmother, so by her logic, we were the perfect adopters.

“Yeah, I guess it is.” It was definitely on its way to becoming one, anyway. I felt more at ease here, more stable than I had in as long as I could remember. Like for once, I could come up for air and let my lungs take their fill of it.

For the first time in a long time, Sora and I could exist as loudly as we wanted. No one was going to find us and toss us back into a system that had already failed us too many times. We had jobs, we were figuring out what we wanted out of life, and we were no longer dressing up as Oleg’s dead mother while he lived out his quirky fantasies.

Still, as good as things were, I couldn’t ever quite shake the hollow ache in my chest. Sometimes I felt it so sharply, it waslike it existed entirely separate from me, the way it clawed and screamed at night, and I had no way to ease its pain.

“What’s your home like?” I asked, pushing the fleeting thought down.

Levi took a long sip of the wine, his stare locked on the small dish Sora set out on our balcony. It was for the crows. She was determined to befriend one of the city’s many murders—so far to no success.

“Honestly, I don’t know that I really have one anymore,” he said, whispering the words into the night, as if speaking them out loud manifested them into truth. “Or if I ever really did.”

There was such a quiet sadness in his tone that it was almost hard to look at him—like if I did, I might find it etched into his skin, a bleeding, festering wound.

“Home doesn’t have to be a place,” I said, echoing a conversation that came back to me as if in a dream, one we’d had many months ago, sitting along the canal.

“No,” he glanced down at his lap, his mouth hooking into a soft grin, “it doesn’t.”

“What have you been up to?” I asked, suddenly impossibly curious about what his life looked like when he wasn’t here, in these strange, isolated moments with me.

“A lot.” He shrugged. “Work has been—I don’t know—just a lot, honestly. I feel like we’ve been trying to build a dam with nothing but a few twigs—less, even. With nothing but some strands of hair.”

I couldn’t imagine private security fitting into the metaphor, but I supposed it could be a life-or-death kind of field in some situations.

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