by Elle Lincoln
A blast of wind chills my skin as the snow continues to fall in flurries. The ground is still too warm to turn into anything more than a light dusting. I’ll count that as a blessing.
“Mae!” a voice shouts.
I just want to spy on a psychotic god, why is everyone suddenly so needy? I spin to see Argos running up the street toward me, and the panic on his face flares my adrenaline.
“Argos, what is it? Marrok?” I scan him head to toe, finding his hand covered in blood. “Get inside and wash that off before anyone sees it, or worse, smells it.”
“Mae, it isn’t mine.” He looks at his hands in horror, realizing for the first time there is, in fact, blood there. “I need you.”
“Of course. Did you kill someone?”
“I love that you’re willing to help me bury a body but no, it’s Delores.”
My brow furrows. “The fortune teller?”
He grips my hand with his crimson-coated one, dripping with blood that isn’t his. I shiver in disgust. Instead of running blocks away, I ghost the both of us to the front of her shop where the all-seeing eye watches us.
“Give a guy warning, will ya?” He sways on his feet, swallowing back bile. I step back a few feet in case he hurls.
“It was easier. It sounded important.” I glance up and down the quiet street, but I know better. I know enforcers hide in the shadows. I turn, facing the road and call to my scythe with a murderous smile on my face. Honestly, I may not be a badass like Rhia, but it feels damn good to occasionally act the part.
“Stop trying to scare off the help.” Argos stomps up the stairs and swings open the door, leaving his bloody fingerprints everywhere.
“Honestly, you’re lucky technology died, otherwise you’d be arrested for that alone.” I walk into the dank, cold shop.
“Yes, well…” He turns to reach over me, locking the door. Argos shrugs a shoulder before turning to the room. “I came just like every other Wednesday for my lessons.”
“You’ve been taking lessons with crazy?” From what I remember, Madam Delores wasn’t known for her sweet and gentle ways if our last encounter was anything to go on.
“She’s the best seer.” He gives me a look before ushering me toward the beads hanging from the archway. “Prepare yourself.”
My brows furrow as I glance around the room with new eyes. I always knew this wasn’t going to end well. Otherwise, why would he have blood on his hands? No, something occurred here and yet... I feel nothing. The room sits as it did before, but the scent of cigarette smoke is stale, still clinging to the walls but old. As though... “No smoke.”
Argos hums low in his throat, grabbing a wet wipe from behind the counter to clean off his hands. I face the beaded curtain, hanging in muted browns, reds, and yellows. I run my hands across the beads, waiting for that security spell to knock me on my ass.
Except I stay put. But there, just beyond, something pulses. I press against it with my palm as a shock spikes up my arm. “What is that?”
“It’s best if you just jump through, or ghost through, it’s your call.” But his eyes are wild, the green cloudy and lined with red. I realize then he’s already mourned this woman. I push back my sympathy and turn to the wall of magic keeping everything out.
I cover my nose with my sleeve and with one step, I jump through. I pause for a mere moment as electric knives slice through my entire body. Stabbing and twisting, telling me to turn back. To leave and never return. There is nothing to see here.
I push through, knowing how fucking wrong that feeling is, that voice haunting me. But as soon as I’m through, it’s gone.
That’s when everything hits me—the stale, rotten stench of death. Putrid and consuming, burning my nostrils like rancid acid. I swallow back my gag reflex, closing my eyes against the burning gasses of death, and grind my jaw. I shiver, losing control of my senses. I want to ghost out of there, or just view this scene from the other realm, but Argos, so brave and trusting, steps through with tears already flooding his eyes.
“She’s through there.” He points to the reading room.
I take one careful step then another. Whatever happened here won’t be pretty, and there is nothing in this world that can prepare me for this. I walk into the room, my heart fluttering and my palms sweating.
The yellowed room sits almost as it did before. The table sits undisturbed, her knickknacks placed precariously around her white cloth. Yet beside it, the husk of a woman who once gave me a very eerie warning sits slumped in the chair. Her head is tilted back at an odd angle, and her mouth is open on a silent scream while her intestines spill to the floor in a scene of macabre horror.
I raise my chin, swallowing the pooling saliva in my throat.
“I need to... I need to send her off to the spirit realm.” Argos kneels by her body, his lips moving in silent prayer. Tears spill down his face as he sobs between words.
“Argos...” I lick my dry lips, tears filling my eyes. “Argos. She isn’t there.”
“What do you mean? I need to send her off.”
I close my eyes against my words, knowing what they mean will change everything. “Her spirit is gone, there is nothing here. Her magic? Gone. Argos…” I pause, not quite ready to admit this aloud. “I believe we have a serial killer on our hands.”
Chapter 5
Flynn
I wait patiently as Mae disappears through reality and into the otherworld. Once I feel her parting from this side, I close my eyes and concentrate, waiting until I, too, ghost, my body becoming immaterial until I’m fully saturated in the realm of the dead. There, I fall through the snow and ice until I breech the house far below.
An uncomfortable chill seeps into my ethereal body, the sensation completely psychological. I stay as a ghost, watching for any signs of life, but the pulse in the air is distinct, with fingers on the everlasting tone of death.
There are no survivors here.
I step through into reality as Rocco sweeps in. His form nothing more than smoke and shadow. He pauses to rest beside me, slow to materialize. Yet when he does, it’s with a brow raised with that partial judgment cast upon his face.
“Haven’t told her yet, have you?” He crosses his thick arms, peering at me as though I’m a piece of shit.
Because I am. I stole the most vital essence from her. It’s no coincidence that whoever killed Bodb stole his magical signature, leaving me to stand there with nothing but guilt on my fucking face. “Now is not the time.”
“When will it be the time?” He stares at me in challenge.
“Not now.” I move past him, entering what was once a living room. Plywood boards up the windows, though the feel of intense pressure threatens to implode the glass at the slightest invocation.
“You realize she may hate you forever. You did exactly what your father did.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I try to keep my voice calm, but the anger I feel toward myself threatens to take over if only because Rocco is right. I’m no better than the man who seeded me.
I lift the edge of an old orange afghan, which was probably once brown. Underneath lies the still form of a black cat. No breath fills the lungs since death has come and gone. I heave out a sigh as Rocco walks off down a long, dark hallway.
No light spills in here, since the darkness is nothing but all consuming. My eyes are now blessed with the vision of the dead, another reminder I am nothing but a piece of shit.
“Flynn.” The sorrow in Rocco’s voice saddens me. I already know what’s there. I can feel it, sense it.
Instead of answering him, I head up to the surface, my feet lightly touching the snow as I form. Everything surrounding us is nothing but white. A desert of snow as far as the eye can see. I cast out my senses, seeking any sign of life, but none exists.
Winter in the Realm was unpleasant, but this is something other—a combination of two worlds forging together to become one. Natural or not, it exists and has now become something we are going to hav
e to protect ourselves against.
As Rocco forms beside me again, I question him. “Do you feel any life?”
“No. There is nothing here but the dead.” He rubs a hand down his face. “There used to be a pub around here. Join me.”
Somehow, I feel as though I’m about to get a lecture, but as his body dissolves into smoke, I follow him. I owe the fucker that much. It didn’t take long for him to figure out something was wrong with me.
As I laid Mae on the bed, her body falling into a deep, healing rest, Rocco had stood in the corner, his eyes all-seeing as his senses reached to me from a thread of boyish history. When my eyes couldn’t meet his, he knew. Some secrets I can never keep from him.
Ahead, a street peeks through the snow as half buried shops sit in silence. I follow Flynn into an old pub, the sign dusted with snow. Together, we let our bodies become weighted with reality. Inside, tables sit in ghostly silence, layered with dust and shadows of menus. Light filters in through the glass windows, casting highlights onto the glitter of dust floating in the still air.
“Ahhh. This is more like it.” Rocco slides across the countertop, hopping behind the bar, and leaves a dusty ass print. I pull out a bar stood, the old wood creaking as I prop my weary bones on it.
“Look. I just…” Fuck, I scrub my face, thick with a beard. Guilt is a lot like depression. You stop living, functioning, and caring. You’ve already done the worst, so what else could go wrong? Everything, that’s what.
“Here.” Rocco sets a bottle of whiskey in front of us with two tumblers. The amber liquid splashes out as he pours, his eyes locked on me and not the bottle. “You fucked up, man.”
“I know.” I throw the liquid back, slamming the glass on the counter. “She’s just so goddamn heroic.”
“Your quiet librarian was meant for bigger things, Flynn. You can’t control her destiny.” He eyes the liquid as though that’s where he’s getting this bullshit falling from his lips.
“She was always meant to be amazing.” I laugh at myself, the sound harsh and devoid of true emotion. “Fucking Bodb. He erased her memory, remember?”
“Another secret you keep from her,” the asshole points out.
“Look, I love her, I don’t want to see her hurt.” My thoughts swing back to my mother. “She has no idea how harsh this life can be.”
“Have you seen her?” Rocco questions.
“Mom? No.” It didn’t take Rocco long to realize my eyes would go wide as saucers as I stared at the dead. Especially that loquacious grandmother of Mae’s. That woman never shuts up. Somehow, I kept from looking her directly in the eyes. That took more control than I’ve ever possessed.
Rocco grunts. “You’re going to have to tell her.”
“We have forever,” I counter, trying to deflect. My eye catches on a dusty picture high on a shelf—an older couple, a few kids, and what looks to be grandkids. One with big green eyes stands out.
“You can’t even lie. How have you kept these things from her?” Rocco pours more whiskey.
“No, but I can evade like the best of the best.”
“Ye two fuckers drinking me good whiskey.” A cock of a shotgun echoes through the small bar.
My entire body freezes, my head slowly turning to Rocco, whose eyes are as wide as my own. Okay, so not a ghost. It’s damn hard to tell. Which also means that is a real shotgun and it will hurt like hell if he uses it. I lower the glass to the counter before turning on the bar stool.
My eyes gaze down the dark hallway, where shadows rest. I can just barely make out the outline of a body. “I’ll pay.” I wince, realizing that’s probably utterly pointless.
The old man laughs, his voice hard and smoky. Footsteps tap the floor. One tap, then a long slide. Tap, slide. “Money’s worthless, boy.” His form appears in the muted light. Curiosity eats away at me, wondering about this old man who just so happens to be alive.
“Food then?” I question.
His body, now fully visible, is an interesting mix of fit and broken. His age rests somewhere around forty. Silver hair speckles his face with dark brown bleeding its way up to a shaggy haircut of the same shades. He rests his shotgun on the counter before dragging a stool behind the bar. The eerie sound of the metal scraping across the hardwood sends a chill up my spine.
“Food, sure.” He pours himself a drink as Rocco turns to his smoky djinn form and flees the bar, probably in search of food. “Djinn, what are you then?”
I smile. “Does it matter?”
“I’m mortal. Just an old mortal man.” He sniffs his glass before sipping from it and humming to himself. “That’s good whiskey. Now, tell me, why break into my bar?” His hands rest languidly along the wooden top, but his shoulders are tense. I doubt this is a man you should fuck with and somehow, I respect that.
I take a long swallow of my drink before glancing out the door. “My girl is the Goddess of Death. She came across the town.”
“Ah. Well, that makes sense.” For an old man, he’s well adapted to this new world. He didn’t even flinch at my words. “Survivors?”
“No.” How do you go up against the weather? There is no being on this planet that can overcome the destructive power of nature.
“There’s a few of us from the row here.” My eyes dart to his, the sadness there shadowing his deep blue eyes. “Doing our best to stay alive.”
“I assume this is the winter we have to look forward to now.” I almost crush my glass, knowing the death toll will only rise.
“Aye, we plan to travel after the season. Find a nice mountain to settle on. Everything here will be dead and buried by snow.”
“Can I ask you a question?” His head tilts to the side as he studies me, before nodding once. “Have we been the only travelers out here?”
“Not many who can move like that. Yer not from around here, that’s for damn sure.” His eyes squint at me. Assessing, judging. “I didn’t see anyone.”
I nod to him. “Thanks it was a long shot.”
“That don’t mean there wasn’t anyone here.” He points at me with his whiskey glass. “Footprints through town just this morning, dusted over by a new snowfall, but all our people are accounted for. I know because I went door to door after the first fall.”
Someone was here. “Did you know of any gods in the area?”
“Aye, one, old man had a weird name.” He flutters his hands about. “Bob, great drinking buddy. Saw him last night, stopped in for a drink and a chat.”
“Bodb.”
“Yeah, that’s his name.” The old man rubs his chin, his thoughts ghosting across his eyes. “Had a nephew he spoke of often.” He eyes me with deep speculation, I can almost see it as he connects the dots of our intermingled lives.
“He was my uncle, yes.”
“Was?” He catches my meaning quickly.
“He was seen dead not long ago.” Yet his body remains missing, but I keep that part to myself. No need to terrify him, though I think it would take a lot more to terrify this one.
“What can kill a god?”
“A few things.” Guilt apparently is doing one hell of a job.
“You’ll find who did this.” He pours us both another glass, and as if he knows Rocco is about to pop back in, he fills his just as he solidifies in his stool. Rocco places breads and meats on the bar top.
Who knows where the hell that came from?
“Did he say anything strange?”
“At the time, I didn’t think much of it.” He whistles once and a young boy no older than ten walks out, taking the food quietly, not once meeting our eyes before he walks back. “Said that even a god can make a mistake. I mean, he was surprised by that, which is odd because from what I’ve seen, all of those assholes make quite a few mistakes.”
I snort into my glass. “You’re right. But to say it is important.” Which mistake is he referring to though? “Thank you.” Now, I have to figure out how the hell I’m going to get back.
“Name’s Cian.
Stop in anytime. Make sure we’re still alive.”
That’s a bit dark and yet, truthful. “We can bring you back if you want.”
“It’s our home, we will make it through this winter, but prepare yourself. Bodb warned me, I wish I had warned the rest of the town.” Regret etches lines into his aged face. “But, son…”
I sip my drink, my eyes flicking up to his. “Yeah?”
“Whatever you did, tell her now.” His wisdom from a long-lived life sinks into my bones as a woman enters the bar, her crazy red hair spilling down her back. Her face is plump and smiling as her eyes light up at seeing Cian. He wraps his arms around her as she folds her body into his.
That life, that love. That’s what I want. I want to walk through fires side by side with Mae.
“I will,” I promise him, and myself. I stand, slinging back the last of my amber liquid before turning to shake his weathered hand.
“Of all things I’ve endured, I’ve done so with my wife. Without her, I’d have failed. If you want a long, happy life, you’ll learn to speak with her and compromise. As a god, I’m sure it will be doubly as tricky.” He smiles to himself, probably imagining two gods trying to kill each other over who ate the last bit of honey.
Which I’d never dare to do, Mae is rather obsessed with honey.
“And you.” Cian points to Rocco. “You’re quiet, but I know you’ve assessed every word we’ve spoken. I’ve met a djinn in the past. He was nothing like you, more like a used car salesman. You can’t deny your nature, but you can learn to work with it.”
Rocco’s tongue ties as words fail him. He gives one nod before hopping off his stool. We leave the pub in silence, the tinkling of the bells chiming our departure. As we walk outside and down the street, I realize just how odd that was.
I turn back, glancing at the old bar, wondering if that entire encounter was just a dream, but my brain clouds as I struggle to remember the man.
“Rocco.” I scrub a hand down my face.
“I know.” He stands beside me, his long black coat billowing in the wind as our thoughts scatter in confusion. “He did say he was mortal, correct?”
