Page 14 of Love, Laugh, Lich

I’m in the meeting room arranging extra chairs when Soven enters the door.

There’s something almost weird about seeing him in the cloak again, the way the cloak’s hood has no expression, the way he floats ominously a few feet away from me, a benign spectre of death. I guess I’ve become too used to seeing his true body, and being pressed up against it.

“Where are this last month’s growth charts?” he asks. It’s his voice, but the disembodied way it comes from him is jarring.

“Here they are,” I say, pulling out one of the folders from under a stack. I present the folder to Soven, and he takes it, opening it to scan the contents while I stand beside him.

I realize I’m waiting like some kind of trained pet, waiting for him to pulse the toy again, or touch my cheek, or some kind of acknowledgement.

This shouldn’t feel as… alienating as it does. We’re doing our jobs. I’m doing all the personal assistant things I’ve always done.

“Can we compare these numbers with those of this month last year?” he asks, and I nod quickly.

“I can fetch those from the records room,” I nod, my gaze falling to the floor. I feel like it stands out how ridiculous I’m being, waiting for a caress that will never come.

The distant, cold feeling stays with me as I leave, and go into the records room. Throughout this week I’ve passed by this room a number of times and it started to snag my interest, when a horrible thought entered my head. The kind of curious thought that will lead nowhere but pain, but once the question has been asked, it haunts your mind.

I find the records of business with outside agencies, and stop in front of the filing cabinet. I know it’s wrong. It’s practically stalking. It isn’t my business to know how many agencies we contracted out to for sex rituals, if any.

I don’t even know what the answer is going to tell me, if I look. So what if he has brought other humans into his ritual space for sex magic? Who am I to slutshame my Dark Lord?

But at the same time, the cold worry that clings to my spine hints that perhaps if there are a decent amount of records of people who have taken part in these rituals, it will imply that I’m just another body filling a space, producing the sensations he needs as ingredients. I’m just another item on the inventory spreadsheet.

I pull the drawer open a few inches, but as I start to look over the folders organized within, I slam it shut again. I don’t think I want to know. I’m not ready to ask that question.

Maybe I’m getting too lost in my own head. I need to get back to the meeting.

I cross the room to another file cabinet, and pull open the drawer for last years’ numbers. I pull the file out quickly, and as I’m shutting the drawer, a glint in the light catches my eye on one of the shelves.

It’s one of the storage shelves filled with backup ingredients for Soven’s rituals. Most of it is inert, shelf-stable stuff: powders and dried herbs, minerals and whatnot. It’s next to the paper supplies shelves that people take too many paperclips from. Usually when I need to take inventory, I run through this shelf first.

There’s a soft purple vial though, that seems to shimmer in the light. It sticks out of place, and I’m sure I’ve never seen it here before. I touch it as delicately as I can, turning it around to view the label.

‘Lily, Shiver’, it reads, with the date I let Soven caress my skin on the vial. Staring at the label, my eyes start to tear up.

He never even used the shiver he got from me. He just… put it in the storage room.

I don’t know how I got it into my head that we were more than boss and employee, Evil Overlord and subjugated servant. He never asked for my heart, I don’t know why I thought I should throw it in with offering up my body.

I will not cry at work. I won’t. Even as my chest tightens, I wave a hand at my eyes, willing the tears back so they won’t disturb my makeup. I breathe in and out too fast, swallowing until I’ve pushed the crying feeling back down my throat.

I exit the records room quickly, hoping the walk will help clear the thickness in my throat and the way my nose feels like it’s already starting to drip.

The meeting’s already started. I must have taken too long in the records room. I’m walking quickly through the rows of empty cubicles when I see Randall in my path, waving me down.

“Lily! I thought you’d be at the office-wide meeting,” he says. He doesn’t say anything about mascara streaks on my face, so I assume I managed to hold in my tears well enough not to make a mess of myself.

I give a weak shrug. “Oh. Yeah, well. I needed to run and grab a file for it. What about you?”

“I just stepped out for a moment.”

I nod and begin to move past him, when he clears his throat and says quickly, “Would you, erm, well, uh, ever think about getting coffee?”

I blink a couple times, my head still in such a fog of emotions from the record room, that his question seems absurdly mundane. It’s like asking if I can restock the paperclips.

“What?”

“I mean, that is,” he coughs, tugging at his collar. “With me?”

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