Page 42 of Illuminated

His silver eyes sparkled. “Promise?”

“Promise,” I said and sealed it with a kiss.

* * *

I picked a table by a window this time. The café was pretty empty and very cozy with a fireplace and lots of seashells on shelves, with blue and white cushions on all the chairs.

I liked the view from there. I almost expected to see the server who had left me her number again, but either this was her day off or she had another shift later in the day. Another girl brought me my latte and a bear claw.

I pulled out my laptop and synched it to the camera in my bag to download the photos from last night. While that was happening, I called my dad.

“Hi, Dad,” I said and stirred my latte until the layers had vanished.

“Ethan, still at the beach?”

“Yup, still working. Taking an editing day today. How’s everything with you and Ben?”

“We’re good, son. Say, were you planning on stopping by when you’re done with the job, or is Christmas the earliest we can pencil you in for?”

My eyebrows shot up. Dad didn’t usually plan Christmas in October, all of which led me to believe that something was afoot. I was hoping Ben had finally popped the question, or that Dad had.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to get back to you once this is finished. Hold on, let me show you this cute little café I’m at.”

Dad oohed and aahed at the maritime design, commented on how good my bear claw and latte looked. “And you look happy,” he said. “Must be the sea breeze doing you good after all this time spent inside.”

We ended the call then, and I smiled, happy that my happiness showed.

Before I got to editing, it was emails, nothing that was extremely important, a few reviews my manager had collected for me, some friends checking in, that sort of thing.

The photos were far more interesting. Before I had been to the church, I had taken daytime pictures of an abandoned greenhouse, and today, I started with those.

Light slanted against the leaves that had claimed back metal and glass, and the rusty frame looked almost like polished brass. Roots had taken back paved walkways, and a bucket and shovel were almost swallowed by ivy.

The church, though. There was something haunting in those photographs, and I saw that even more now than I had when I’d started on them before. The gravestones divulged what the elements had left of the names engraved there, and the chipped walls stared up to the night sky even as earthly shadows reached in from all sides. Windows reflected broken light, and the door; it was a lure.

These were really good, not just an abandoned place, but also an in-between place, death and alive, me before and after Auris. I couldn’t wait to share them and give others some of the magic I felt so clearly in them.

I left a few photos of the church I wasn’t sure what to do with and opened the first series of the house in the dark forest next. Those almost took my breath away. The house itself was beautiful, if beautiful was even the word for such a place. If a forest could be made to grow a home for humans, it would be that house. It seemed not like a real place, but something a fairy tale needed to exist. It suited Auris well, and looking back, I felt privileged he’d shared it with me.

And then, there was Auris in the last picture of the house series, looking like a shimmering faerie creature with his dark eyes and dark hair and serenely beautiful face. I stared. It was amazing. My heart beat faster when I looked into his dark eyes staring back at me.

“That’s a really nice photograph,” said someone from behind my shoulder. I turned around and closed my laptop.

The man looked odd. Not odd perhaps, but out of place, and he made me tense immediately. He smelled of something that I didn’t like, old, burnt coffee and stale nicotine.

“Thanks,” I said, and put my laptop back in my bag.

The man sat down next to me, snatched my untouched bear claw off its plate and bit into it. “Ethan Fields, I presume? Living in Pine Rock but staying in Cromere for some photo work. Except you checked out of your hotel two days ago, isn’t that right? Where have you been staying since, Mister Fields?”

“Look, I don’t know what you want from me, but I don’t owe you any explanation,” I said and shoved my phone in my bag, zipped it shut.

“Please,” he smiled. “Stay.” He made sure I saw the gun. It was in its holster under his jacket. He grabbed my wrist, made sure I didn’t move. “You have been seduced by the demon, haven’t you? A failing of the flesh. You wouldn’t be the first.”

My heart was racing, but I froze, stared at him wide-eyed.

“Mister Fields, you will tell me everything. And then, if you really want to, maybe you can repent.”

“Fuck you,” I told him, and the smile he returned showed yellowed teeth and a glint in his eyes that told me he didn’t want me to repent. But he would force me to try with all the cruel skill he knew.

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