Page 36 of Monsters of Midlife

“Well, isn’t that charming?” I retorted. “Exactly the kind of role I wanted to have. The heralder of death.”

“It’s not quite that bad. Well, I don’t think it’s quite so bad,” Sophie mused. “When somebody hears the song of the banshee, it means somebody in their family will die.”

“Yeah, but it could be anyone,” I said. “I mean, you were in the pub. I was in the pub. I don’t have any family left, but should we be worried about it?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I’m going to call my parents just to make sure.”

Sophie moved off to the window to look at the view as she rang her parents to check on them and I suddenly had an ill feeling in my stomach. What if I was the harbinger of death? What if somebody did die last night based on my singing? I went to the computer in the corner, hit the internet, and typed in ‘banshee’ to look up the details. It seemed like Wikipedia didn’t have exactly the most interesting information and I had to dig a little deeper while Sophie’s carried on a conversation with her parents. It took a lot longer than that. We had ordered pizza and were nestled on the sofa looking up different information to pass to each other.

“It doesn’t always mean someone’s going to die,” I said, quoting from an obsolete site run by a group of people known as The True Faith. “Sometimes they say it just means there’s going to be an illness in the family or in the area.”

“Yeah, but you have to understand it’s not your singing that makes people die. They were going to die anyhow. The whole purpose of the banshee is to let people know something bad is about to happen.”

“Great, so that’s why I went on stage at Furlan’s and began to sing?” I asked. “To warn people something bad was going to happen.”

“You might not even have known what was driving you,” Sophie said. “These things are often out of our control and all we’re doing is following our instincts and letting them guide us. I mean you told me in the beginning that you hated karaoke and then all of a sudden, you’re up on stage impacting everybody in the room with your soulful singing. It’s quite bizarre and beautiful.

“Easy to say if it’s not your family member who’s about to die,” I pointed out. “Do we know everybody who was in the bar last night? I mean, maybe we should check in on them.”

“We won’t have to check in on anyone in the bar,” Sophie said. “They’ll all be checking in on themselves. Nobody here is going to listen to a banshee and then just sit around in the bar. Matter of fact, I bet if you went for lunch right now, you’d find the place completely empty and everybody at home to taking care of their family or at least checking on them.”

“Great, one more reason for Furlan to have a thing against me.” I ran my hands through my hair.

“You know the one thing you are not paying attention to is the fact that this probably means you and Ryder have a lot more in common than you originally anticipated,” Sophie commented.

“Ryder and I are through.” My voice was a little harsher than I intended. “He doesn’t care about anybody but himself. He certainly doesn’t care about me and hasn’t cared about me in years.”

“He seems to care quite a bit,” Sophie said. “Based on his grave desire to protect your life and keep you out of danger. He got Ava to fly you across the country just to make sure you didn’t get attacked by a bunch of demons. He’s hiding you out here to protect you and he’s going against what he’s supposed to be doing right now, which is fighting monsters, in order to fight the demons who are tracking you. If that’s not somebody who cares for you, I don’t know what is.”

I swallowed hard, taking a deep breath. Everything she said made sense and sounded logical, but it wasn’t what I wanted to think about right now. I was done with Ryder. We were over. That ship had sailed, and I had been the one to hoist the anchor and call the winds to get away from him. There was no way in hell I was going to entertain the idea of being with Ryder again. It had taken me three years to get him out of my system. There was no way I was going to let him back in.

The truth was, I still wanted him. There wasn’t a single part of me that could deny the truth. The only thing standing in my way was the fact he didn’t want me. I didn’t care what Sophie said about him. She didn’t know him the way I did. I had been his lover, his friend, his confidant, and finally the neglected remnant of his life that he suddenly realized he didn’t want. It didn’t matter if he was off fighting monsters. I mean, okay, fine, he didn’t have a girlfriend, and he was trying to save the world, but he had lied to me the entire time. He hadn’t taken a single moment to tell me the truth and now there was nothing. There could be no truth and honor between the two of us, none whatsoever.

What I did have to figure out a little bit more of was how I was going to navigate being so close around him and not falling for him again, because the truth was, he was irresistible to me. There was a part of him that drew me to him. I didn’t know if it was because I was a banshee and Fae or because he was half monster and demigod, but I knew I still wanted him, regardless of how he felt about me, and that was the most embarrassing and shameful thing of all. It was something I would never ever ever let him see.

“Oh my God,” Sophie’s quiet breathless voice pulled my attention out of my self-reflection of my life with Ryder. She was on the phone.

“What is it?” I whispered to her. “Is it Ryder?”

She shook her head and held up a finger, her eyes glistening with tears. I took a step backward, a chill coming over my entire skin as goosebumps crawled down my back. The feeling of doom and dread filled me. This wasn’t going to be good. And I had a feeling I knew exactly what I was about to find out.

“Okay,” Sophie said. “Thanks for letting me know.” She hung up the phone and looked at me, her face serious. “Aurelius. His wife, a demigod, just died.”

It hit me like a punch in the stomach. I didn’t know these people. I had heard the names, I’d seen Aurelius at Furlan’s last night, but I didn’t know them. And still I felt the pain and anguish of the death as if it were someone from my very own family.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I caused her death.”

“No, you didn’t she’s been dying for a long time now.” Sophie said. “Demigods have a life span of over 500 years, but then they just start to fade away. She’s been fading away for a while.”

“Aurelius, he was at the pub last night, wasn’t he?”

She nodded. “Yeah, yeah he was,” she said quietly.

“He must hate me,” she said.

“No.” Sophie reached forward and stroked my shoulder with her hand. “He knew she was dying. Hearing your song would’ve just given him warning that it was coming soon.”

“He ran out after my song ended.”

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