Page 14 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Her chin dimpled as she swallowed, fighting to keep back tears. With a nod, she squeezed my hand back. “Me too, but I’m glad you’re here now.”

She dropped her head against my shoulder, resting there as I let everything she said wash over me.

There had to be some kind of explanation for all of this.

The world didn’t just one day go from the real to the unexplainable, did it?

My stomach sank as another reality grew heavy and unavoidable.

Sora was right.

I’d spent my life believing, in part, that I was either cursed or haunted by Death.

On some level, I’d always known that was impossible, ridiculous, even—no matter how real and concrete it often felt.

But if the impossible was suddenly possible, what did that say about my theoretical curse?

I wrapped an arm around Sora’s waist, tugging her closer to me, convincing myself that she was real, that she was here, that she was alive. At the end of the day, that was all I needed.

Curse or not, she hadn’t been taken from me, and whatever new possibilities this new world opened, I’d fight like hell to make sure she never was.

“Let’s go home,” I said.

She nodded.

I set my hand out on the counter and waited until the crow climbed back up my shoulder.

No idea why I thought he’d understand or respond to the gesture, but he did, quickly nestling himself into the crook of my neck.

The walk back to our apartment was quiet.

We took our usual route, which I was grateful for. I had no desire for detours right now. I wanted whatever semblance of normalcy was left.

The streets were mostly empty, and now that I wasn’t frantically running towards Frank’s, I noticed things that I hadn’t on the way over.

Like the fact that the traffic lights weren’t working, or at least not the way that they usually did. Some were completely off, but others shifted through patterns I’d never seen before. Instead of the usual green, yellow, and red, I watched them blink from pink to purple to blue.

A driverless car roamed right by us, missing Sora by only a few inches.

Another car was parked through what looked like someone’s otherwise pristine living room.

Most of the houses had their blinds pulled closed, like people were doing their best to keep whatever strangeness had been unleashed on the world out, to shelter in normalcy for as long as they could. Occasionally, I’d see a face poking between crooked blinds, but mostly the typically busy street was a ghost town, except for me and Sora.

And the crow.

I had no idea what to do with him, but I caught Sora’s gaze darting to him every minute or so.

Feeling weirdly exposed and vulnerable out here, I tugged my jacket tight around my body. There was a heaviness in the air that made it difficult to fully fill my lungs, and my skin tingled with an electric energy—the awareness of eyes on us that I couldn’t see, like an itch I couldn’t scratch.

When we got to our block, the bird ruffled his feathers and started shifting with unease.

Sora, catching on a second sooner than I did, reached her arm in front of me, stopping me from rounding the corner.

I froze, the three of us peering awkwardly around the bricked corner store. I started most mornings with a bagel and cup of coffee that Erin, the middle-aged owner, kept on the burner for too long. A quick glance inside and all I saw was a dark, empty store. Like Frank, she’d skipped work today, likely hunkering down in her home up north with her husband and two cats.

I looked around the corner and swallowed back a curse. There were three men I’d never seen before—not in and of itself a strange thing, Seattle was a busy, highly-populated place, but there was something odd about them.

Sora’s eyes met mine, wide and questioning, both of us too terrified to speak or move.

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