Page 209 of Lost in the Dark

Leaving Tommy’s office, even if it was out to the graveyard where my sister was being buried, felt like a relief. Beyond being dark and claustrophobic, I didn’t like the way the rangy man looked at me, and the settled-in scents of stale cigarette smoke and booze sweat didn’t help.

Taking a few deep breaths to steady myself, I closed my eyes to center my mind like an old therapist had taught me to. When I opened them again, I felt like someone was watching me, but a quick glance confirmed I was alone in the slanted late afternoon sunlight. Even though Tommy was nowhere in sight, I still picked up the pace on my way to my car.

Home was its own kind of sadness, surrounding me with pieces and mementos of my sister's presence tucked damn near everywhere. She had passed away in hospice care, but I'd kept her here as long as I could. I did my best to make our mutual apartment welcoming and comforting to her, but now it seemed like that much more to dismantle for coping's sake.

The many photos of us - framed, polaroids, haphazard collages - haunted me at the edges of my vision. I gathered them up and tucked them face down in the china hutch, feeling like a traitor to my departed sibling. The simple act drained what little energy I had managed to regain by being back at home, so I slumped down on the bed and closed my eyes.

I didn't realize I'd drifted off. When my eyes snapped open several hours later, it was dark. Disoriented and blinking, my first instinct was panic that I hadn't gotten Brigit's evening medicine dose ready. As I slid out of bed, the quiet registered in my consciousness - the steady beep of my sister’s medical machines missing from the soundscape. Her death fell on me again, heavy as a sodden blanket, and I choked a sob into my pillow. I cried until my sinuses felt like they were full of pepper, and breathing only came in great gasps from my mouth.

I stumbled to the bathroom and scrubbed my face with cold water, pressing too hard just to feelsomethingother than the crushing weight of loss. Hunger nipped at me like an unwanted guest, reminding me that I needed to go through the motions of living, even if all I wanted to do was sleep. I had a week, at most, of grace from my graphic design clients. They were understanding to a point, but deadlines always seemed to matter more than the dead, when it came down to it.

I sullenly ate a cup of instant ramen, sinking down into an oversized chair in the living room. Angled just beside the sliding doors that let in the morning sun, it was large enough that I could curl up in the seat, hugging the soft throw pillow Brigit had loved. Breathing in the faint scent of her perfume and a hint of medical antiseptic on the fabric threatened to bring the tears up again, but abruptly, my chest felt lighter. I didn’t question my mind’s decision to loosen the stranglehold of grief, but hugged the pillow tighter, turning on the TV for some comforting background noise. As drowsiness crept back in at the corners of my eyes, I felt something akin to peace for the first time in days.

Jax

Luckily for me, despite being infuriatingly smart about the way he used the medallion and looked up incantations, Tommy was a fucking idiot. I suppose he never imagined I’d care about his office, as he wore the medallion around his neck at all times - otherwise I’d have long ago relieved him of it. The lock on his office would have been laughably easy to break into if I was human, but as a demon, it was even less of a barrier. After he’d left for the day, I wasted no time getting to my own version of work.

I could manipulate grief in small ways if I had enough of it, and today I had alotmore than usual. My borrowed grey smoke twisted through the gap under the heavy door, nudging the deadbolt handle up, popping the door open as I waited.

Walking in, I flicked on the lights and made a beeline for Tommy’s desk - there was zero chance he’d be back tonight, the lush. Probably propping up the bar in some shitty dive joint - it was Friday, after all. I settled back into his creaky leather chair as another wisp of smoke opened the locked file drawer, revealing a haphazard row of bent, stained manilla folders. In the front of the drawer, a sloppy handful of mish-mashed old jewelry, wristwatches, and even gold teeth winked in the low light. I scowled at the pile, recognizing everything as items he’d made me rob from crypts and caskets over the last month or two. Tommy must not have been able to make it to whatever shitty fence he’d been using to sell his stolen goods.

I snorted with derision, nimble fingers flipping through the files and grabbing the one closest to the front. A quick scan of the papers startled me - the front pages were foremployment. Did I grab the wrong file? Something wasn’t adding up. Turning back a few pages, it was clear at least half of the packet was life insurance payout paperwork, which didn’t make any sense. It was a full surrender of a startlingly high amount, well beyond what should have been signed off for services, and Tommy had used New Horizons’ business information on the page, as well as his own notary public stamp to certify it. That seemed like a massive conflict of interest, and I made a mental note to call Aradia, my sister that worked in life insurance, to ask her about it later. Tommy didn’t have a landline in the office, and didn’t allow me to have a cell phone unless I was on a “job” for him.

CaraPierce. A grainy photocopy of a driver’s license confirmed Cara was indeed the woman I’d unexpectedly embraced a few hours ago. On therelationship to the deceasedline, I discovered it had been her sister Brigit in the casket, far too young to be there, too. That explained the note of longing in Cara’s emotions - wasted potential added a very distinct tinge to grief, particularly with close ties like family.

But why the hell had Cara signed over her sister’s entire life insurance payment toTommy? And why in Oizys’ wings was she signing up toworkat New Horizons? If she was financially secure enough to wave away the payment, she certainly didn’t need to work here. I frowned as I squinted at the third page again.And on a volunteer basis?

The idea that Tommy could be - hell, likelywas- taking advantage of the sweet, soft, woman that smelled like flowers filled me with incandescent rage. I didn’t typically trouble myself deeply with humans, messy creatures that they were, but Cara had uncovered some sort of soft spot in me. Maybe it was because I’d never really been embraced by a human before, maybe it was her vulnerability, or the strength her grief afforded me. No matter what the reason, the response it inspired was the same: I was going to protect her from Tommy’s bullshit however I could.

The photocopied license had an address, so I discreetly made my own copy, erased the job log on the printer, and tucked the files back where I’d found them. Tommy had gotten sloppy, sending me out to do his dirty work - he’d been buzzed when I returned from killing the bookie, and didn’t phrase his request well. Similar to mythical genies, anyluctusunder a compelling medallion needed to be controlled with very distinct phrasing, and Tommy had forgotten to restrict me to the graveyard the way he usually did. It wasn’t a mistake I’d taken much advantage of until now, but I damn sure planned to tonight.

I folded the paper carefully and tucked it into my pocket, turning off the lights and using a thread of grief-smoke to lock the drawer and deadbolt behind me. I was burning a lot of my unexpected power boost, but what the hell else was I using it for, really? If I thought I could brute-force my way out of Tommy’s clutches, I would have done so long ago. I closed my eyes, feeling out the well of what remained in my grief stores, fingers curling around the napkins still in my pocket to top it off with the fading bits of emotion.

One of the most powerful aspects of grief was its ability to appear anywhere, at any time. That metaphorical property was more literal for my kind, making us some of the most efficient travelers in this realm when we had the power for it. I closed my eyes and shifted, keeping Cara’s address burning like a signal lantern in my mind. The sensation of displacement washed over me, slowly retreating as the soles of my boots touched down in a carpet of mulch.

I hadn’t even had the time to orient myself with my surroundings before a thick curl of grief coaxed me closer, pulling me to carefully peer through the edge of a window. Cara lay curled on a bed, crying just loudly enough that I could make out the faint sounds through the pane. I’d meant - well, now that I stopped acting on protective instinct, I didn’t really know what I’d meant to do. Show up at a single woman’s door late at night, mute and dressed in cemetery worker coveralls? Explain myself through interpretive dance?Great plan, Jax.

Oizys’ disciples would ensure I didn’t stay in jail for long and cleanse memories of my presence, but there’d be hell to pay for the effort of tidying that up. Eager to avoid explaining myself to my often-unamused deity of sorrow, I kept quiet and still, using a little grief to deepen the shadows around me. The constant silky-grey flow of Cara’s anguish meant my reserves were actually slowly filling, rather than gradually depleting from my simple tricks.

I watched her weep through my hiding place at the window, finding some strange peace in sharing space as she unburdened her heart. It was oddly intimate, this moment, even if she didn’t know I was here - for me, it was enough tobethere. Humans got skittish if you watched them for too long, but forluctus, watching humanity was an instinct too often denied. This was different, though - my gaze had never before lingered on the curve of a hip or the swell of a breast beneath a t-shirt. I’d certainly never fixated on the delicate, desperate clutch of fingers on a pillowcase, or wondered what they’d look like in a different scenario - one with far less tears. I’d always found grief beautiful, but I was slowly realizing that Cara was, too.

That’s why my heart panged with regret when she rose from the bed, her hands cradling her face for a moment, gathering her composure before vanishing from view behind a door. I waited long, anxious moments for her to appear again, daring to move around the side of her exterior apartment wall when she emerged and walked to the kitchen. Her movements were wooden and tired as she prepared a sad cup of instant soup, and I silently chastised her for considering it nourishment. It was sheer luck that she lived in a ground-floor, end-unit apartment; there was nothing but dark woods behind me, and no one to raise the alarm that there was a pervert lurking about.

Was I a pervert?I asked myself honestly if I’d watch or turn away if she disrobed. The answer didn’t sit well, so I decided to ignore the question in favor of staying in place. Sitting beside a pair of sliding glass patio doors, I hugged my knees and positioned myself behind the long curtains. The blue-washed light of late-night infomercials flickered over Cara’s body, curled up in an oversized chair like a sleek, tearstained cat. Just watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest made my own breathing still, contentment creeping into a hollow normally devoid of anything but duty to Oizys.

After taking a deep breath of the pillow she clutched in her arms, her grief swelled, a glut of power that soaked into my skin and left every nerve ending sparkling pleasantly. I pulled deeply, untangling her as best I could from the threads, sloughing off and dissipating grief when my stores were overflowing. It was an unheard-of waste for aluctus, but I cared more about giving Cara’s mind some respite than I did my fated duty right now.

I sighed with relief as the haze of grey surrounding her thinned and flickered out. Yes, it left me magically exhausted from the effort of spinning the threads out and away, but it was worth it. Cara nodded off in the light of the television, her mind hopefully quiet and blank now. I rested my side and knee against the cool glass of the door, unable to take my eyes off of her features, softened in sleep. I didn’t need to sleep, not really, though I could if I wanted to.

Instead, I studied her at my leisure, losing long hours of the night memorizing the tilt of her nose, the faint dark wisps of her eyelashes. I was so engrossed in my perusal that the first rays of dawn came as a surprise, changing the colors of the sky above me. Drawn by a doting sort of admiration as well as her particular flavor of grief, she had filled my senses, drugged me with her presence like the scent of her hair. I reluctantly left my self-assigned post before daybreak revealed my presence, letting my now-healthy stores of grief carry me effortlessly back to my mausoleum.

I already missed having her in my sight.

Cara

Istartled awake, immediately clapping a hand to the back of my neck as it cramped from my awkward sleeping position. Damn, I’d fallen asleep in Brigit’s chair again - I’d be hobbling around all day unless I stretched. I got to my feet, feeling far more rested and relaxed than I should have been, considering I’d eaten nothing but a cup of noodles all day and fallen asleep in a chair.

As a matter of fact, I feltgreat. Hopeful and happy for the first time in many weeks - and a glance at the clock told me I still had an hour before I needed to head to the cemetery. I had anticipated a stomach full of dread before reporting for “duty” to pay off my sister’s burial, but instead I was almost looking forward to it. I liked flowers, and Tommy had told me I’d be working with them - it didn’t sound terrible.

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