Archive of Our Own

Work Text

Charles walked out of Crystal’s kitchen holding a small cake, pacing careful steps towards the long dining table where Crystal and Edwin were clustered on one end.“Happy birthday to you,” he started singing, shooting a look at Edwin, who sighed before joining in.“Happy birthday to you,” he continued, drawing out the words with exaggerated vibrato and a fixed, cheerful smile. Edwin’s smooth tenor kept pace with his own.(“Charles, I hate singing.”“But you have such a nice voice! Makes up for mine.”)Charles set down the small cake in front of Crystal; the single guttering candle dripped a spot of wax on the glossy purple frosting.“Happy birthday dear Crystal, happy birthday to you.” “Make a wish!” Charles cheered.She shot him a half-hearted glare. “This is sad, Charles.”His shoulders slumped. “It’s from a very nice bakery up the –”“Not the cake,” she interrupted. “This is beautiful. I mean this.” She gestured broadly to her empty flat. Theoretically, her parents lived here too, although Charles had only seen them once. “Celebrating my 18th birthday with a couple of ghosts. It’s sad.”“Harsh,” Charles complained in a light tone. “We’re your best mates. Who else would you even want here?”Her gaze flicked to an open chair across from her and she rubbed the collar of her white t-shirt between two fingers. It bore a collection of images and text in whimsical brush strokes, almost like finger paint – a yellow heart, a puppy, amour and luck. It wasn’t exactly her style, but she wore that shirt rather a lot; it was growing holes.“You’re right,” she said, tearing her gaze away from the empty chair and smiling at Charles. She squeezed her eyes shut and promptly blew out the candle. “I’m going to eat myself into a sugar coma and then we’re going to finish season 3 of Buffy.”He bumped her shoulder. “Hey, there’s our girl.”He cut her a generous slice, wondering idly what the vanilla sponge and raspberry jam layers tasted like. He kept up a lively chatter to distract from the awkwardness of him and Edwin watching Crystal eat.She declared it delicious, but shuffled the fluffy bits around on her plate as if Charles wouldn’t notice she barely made it halfway through the piece.Crystal and Edwin had their usual argument about watching too much TV; it ended with her calling him some variety of a curmudgeon. For all his protests, Edwin became absorbed in the episode almost instantly.Charles had given up trying to follow the plot somewhere around season 2. As usual, he spent most of the night watching Edwin from the corner of his eye. From where his arm was slung across the back of the couch, his fingertips grazed Edwin’s shoulder. The other boy did not seem to notice.The night closed in and plunged the flat into a gloomy darkness of a cave. Crystal usually flipped on lights throughout, but tonight she seemed uninterested in keeping up the charade that it was just them three in the lonely, palatial residence.She was curled up between them in a tight ball, her head pillowed on Charles’ leg and her feet hooked over Edwin’s knee. He claimed to tolerate brief affection from her these days under the guise of fostering camaraderie. Charles knew he secretly enjoyed it.Charles absently twirled one of her curls around his finger. He couldn’t feel it, but Crystal enjoyed having her hair played with. She began to yawn and stifled it too slowly.“You should be getting to sleep soon,” Charles said.“One more episode.” In a very small voice, she added, “Will you guys stay until my parents get here?”Edwin and Charles exchanged a look. The sleek mantle clock didn’t have any numbers, but even Charles could tell the slender gilded hour hand was edging past 1:00. He didn’t think the Surname-Von Hoverkraft’s were the type to travel in the middle of the night.“Of course,” Edwin said quietly and Charles shifted far enough to gratefully squeeze his shoulder.To Crystal, Charles said, “Why don’t you take a little nap, yeah?”She made a vague assenting noise and her eyes fluttered shut. After an appropriate amount of time, Edwin slid out from under her feet and headed to the towering floor mirror propped in one corner.“I put it in my backpack,” Charles whispered.“I’ve changed my mind,” came Edwin’s curt response. “I want to read Tales of the Intermundium.”He vanished into the mirror before Charles could add that he’d put that book in his bag too.Charles chuckled to himself. Edwin would spend ten minutes hunting through their office for his book and return silently contrite when he realized Charles packed it.He looked down and jolted when he realized Crystal’s eyes were open, glossy and silvered from the flickering TV lights. “I thought you were out. Are you always pretending to be asleep?”She sat up abruptly and clicked off the television. “I have to talk to you about something. About Port Townsend.”It had been 11 months with plenty of conversations about it since then. “Okay…”“You know that I don’t – that you and I aren’t…I’m 18. I’m getting older, Charles.”“I know,” he said. It stung on principle. Crystal’s 18th birthday was a brutal reminder that she had a regular human life ahead of her. Just a few months ago, he and Edwin stood in the back of her posh prep school auditorium and watched her cross the stage to receive her diploma. She’d put enormous effort into catching up, but she wanted school out of the way.With her returned memories was the revelation that she was older than they thought. She’d always been farther away from Charles than he believed. She was marching through time while he was an insect fossilized in amber.“We already had this conversation,” Charles said. “Twice, actually. We’ve had this conversation about how we shouldn’t be together twice. We both agreed the feelings aren’t there. Is this because I was playing with your hair?”“Good,” she said. “That’s good. And no, it’s not because of my hair.” She gave him a funny, probing look, like she was trying to match paint colors. “What’s going on with you and Edwin?”His throat constricted. “Nothing.”“Charles, come on. Edwin will be back any second, so the longer you drag this out the higher the chance he walks in during a bad time.” She firmly crossed her arms. “Spill.”“Fine.” He kept his words confined, neutral. “On our way out of Hell, Edwin told me he’s in love with me. I told him I wasn’t.”She visually waded through his confession. “And you’re…upset about how he feels?”The chest he locked all his broken bits inside sprang open. An ache crawled up and out his throat. He’d kept this secret under lock and key for decades. But Crystal was too perceptive, she’d suss out if he wasn’t telling her the whole story.“All I’ve ever wanted is two things: For Edwin to be safe and happy, and for him to love me back.” He blinked at the ceiling, like she couldn’t tell his eyes were welling. “And I’ve spent the last 30 years hoping the second one never happened. It’s not supposed to happen like this.”She recoiled and wildly shook her head in three directions. “What the fuck, Charles. Okay, I have so many questions, but my main one is: why wouldn’t you tell him you’re in love with him back?”“No. No. Crystal, please. Just drop it.”“Didn’t you learn anything in Port Townsend? You can’t just stuff everything down. It always comes back!”“Not this,” he weakly insisted. He’d spent 33 years bludgeoning his feelings over the head and burying the ragged, bloody mess. Over and over and over, more times than anyone could count. It barely even hurt anymore.She rubbed her temples. “I don’t get it. You love Edwin, Edwin loves you. What is so complicated?”Crystal hadn’t known Charles for that long, she still thought he was a boy. He wasn’t a boy, he was a boy-shaped thing, with rage for a heart and hunger for bones. His insides weren’t beautiful. Edwin’s were. He’d been through literal Hell and it didn’t ruin him, it made him kind. Underneath the scalpel-sharp edges and the prickly skin, he was so goddamn beautiful.Charles didn’t have goodness under there, he had a void. A monster in the shadows waiting to shred apart the hapless fool who ventured too close. He couldn’t bear for Edwin to see that. He just couldn’t. He’d rather stop existing than hurt Edwin that way.All that came out was a hoarse, “Edwin deserves better.”She sprang off the couch and drew herself up to her full height. She was five feet two inches of disbelieving fury and she funneled it all on Charles. “You’re a fucking idiot for thinking whatever it is you’re thinking. Edwin’s never going anywhere. Not to mention you’re literally lying to him about this like, super important thing. That’s shitty.”His anger spun on a dime. “I’m lying? You think I don’t notice you’re drinking five cups of coffee every day? You look like you’ve dropped almost two stone – you’re turning into bones! You promised us you’d ease up on training like a mad woman and instead started plastering on a full face of makeup like I don’t know what covering up dark circles looks like. What are you training so hard for?”“I need to find Niko!” she burst out. Everything in Charles crashed like a wave on a sea wall.“Niko’s gone,” he said hoarsely. “We did everything we could to figure out where she went. That’s pretty much all we’ve been doing for months. You have to let her go.”“No. We’re wrong. I can feel it.”“We’ve been through this a thousand times,” he said lowly. “We’ve exhausted every lead. Even Edwin’s accepted it. You have to let her go.”“You’re wrong,” she whispered. “I can’t explain it, I just know she’s not.”A tear glittered on her lower lashes. He hated it when she cried; even more when it was his fault.Crystal abruptly pressed her hands to her face and her shoulders shook. “I can’t let go of her, Charles. I just can’t. That magic was meant for me. Niko should be here. Not –” She broke off with a choked sob.He immediately drew her close. “God, Crystal. I’m sorry. For everything, all of it. I’m never going to say it should have been you instead. But the whole thing – it’s bloody unfair.”“Yeah,” she sniffed against his chest. “Me too.”“I don’t want to fight,” he sighed. “Don’t rag on me for lying to Edwin and I won’t rag on you for being in denial.”She untangled herself, smearing tears away with her ragged cardigan sleeves. “Fine, but I have to say one last thing and then I promise I’ll let it go.”“Go ahead.”“Being in love alone fucking sucks. And right now, that’s what Edwin thinks is happening. So you have to decide if you’re going to let go of that massive chip on your shoulder or if you’re going to let him suffer for the rest of your joint eternity. Not to mention he deserves your fucking honesty.”Her words hit him like a gut-punch. “That’s low, Crystal.”She set her jaw. “You need to hear it. You’re hurting him.”“If Edwin knew…it would hurt worse, eventually. I’d hurt him worse.”Her fists balled. “You deserved to be loved, Charles! You deserve Edwin’s love. I know it’s terrifying. Do it anyway, even if you don’t think you deserve it. Do it anyway and do it scared.”He smiled wanly at her. He appreciated the sentiment, truly. But Crystal was dead wrong. “Thanks for that.”She looked at him steadily. “You think I don’t get it? I’m scared all the time about fucking this up,” – she gestured vaguely to him and Edwin’s empty spot – “but I just…you and Edwin gave me a chance, to be better. I don’t really think I deserve it,” – she wagged one finger at him to ward off his impending interruption – “but I’m taking it anyway. You should do the same.”She jammed her words in place with a final hard look and then curled right back up on the couch and pretended to be asleep again. Within a few minutes, her breathing evened out as she slept for real.Edwin glimmered back through the mirror empty-handed and Charles held up his book with a smirk. Edwin took it without comment and reclaimed his spot on Crystal’s other side.Charles watched him read, Crystal’s words playing over and over in his head as if she was speaking them aloud again.After Port Townsend, Charles thought they would go back to their well-worn roles, smoothly slotting together like two pieces of a dovetail joint. But Port Townsend made new shapes, shapes Charles didn’t recognize. He felt like a toddler trying to jam a wooden cube through the circle hole. Things were different, but not bad. Edwin didn’t seem like he was suffering.Before long, Edwin set aside his book and held his hand out to Charles, who dug through his bag. He handed over a folder bristling with forms.“So much bloody paperwork,” Edwin grumbled, half to himself. They’d developed a near-nightly routine to finish all the new forms that came along with the Night Nurse’s supervision. His pen made neat swish-swish sounds as he checked off boxes.“In Potters Field Park, where did –”“Southeast corner, around, oh,” – Charles screwed up his face – “Quarter past 2?”Edwin jotted this down. “The one with the hair, he was wearing…”“A fedora,” Charles said with a grimace. “And that tatty leopard fur jacket. And the bird he was with –”“I remember,” Edwin said, making another note. “But my back was turned.”“That amulet, the shiny one? Made a purple glow.”“But the blue one didn’t do anything. Curious.”“You think they used that cloaking spell? That one from what’s-his-face’s book.”Edwin considered this. “Unlikely, it was probably phantamogriphia decorum or phasmatos oculacs.” At Charles’ face, he added, “The ‘un-hider,’ as you called it.”They continued this way through their paperwork.“Finished,” Edwin declared, flipping the folder shut with a satisfied sigh.Charles carefully scooped up the slumbering Crystal and carried her to bed, arranging her fluffy blankets around her the way she liked. When he turned around, he found Edwin in the doorway watching him, half his face touched by the hazy-warm London skyglow that stole through the flat. All Charles could see was a swipe of gold along his cheekbone and the darker slash of an eyebrow, each like a painter’s stroke.Even in the dark, Charles knew that expression. It appeared with increasing frequency since Port Townsend, but he didn’t know what it meant.Edwin didn’t move when Charles reached the doorway, letting their bodies nest in the narrow space. Edwin had once told Charles that doorways were liminal spaces, and never to do a spell under one.Charles wanted to kiss him so badly, to wrap his arms around Edwin’s waist, to pull him flush by the small of his back. Edwin would make one of those tiny, surprised noises that drove Charles mental. Maybe his mouth would be warm.Instead, Charles slid his arms around Edwin’s shoulders, nuzzling into his neck. Edwin’s arms came up slowly, but his fingers curled into Charles’ polo like claws. His body held no real heat - just a trace of it - but it did hold weight and energy, solid and thrumming. Charles could squeeze and squeeze and Edwin would still remain.“You haven’t,” Edwin said, trailing off.“Haven’t what?” Charles could feel it where their ribs met, rumbling into Edwin like they were a singular body.“We haven’t embraced, since…” he trailed off again, his voice getting tight and small like fine print.…Since the Principal gave them reprieve and Edwin had practically flung himself into Charles’ arms. He’d never done that before.Charles tightened his grip. “That can’t be right.”“I assure you, it is.”He didn’t know if Edwin was complaining or merely pointing out a fact. One of those new shapes. Was he tracking and hoarding Charles’ affection, much as Charles did for him?“Sorry for that, then,” Charles whispered.“It is because of what I said?”“No,” he said. “Nothing like that. I always want to hold you.”Edwin stiffened, and then he was untangling himself. “We should return to the office so I can pass these files along to the Night Nurse.” He headed for the living room mirror without a backwards glance.  Crystal was right. Charles was a liar.
“And I can’t really say that like, that I’m in love with you back…”
Spring of 1990: Edwin had let them admire the fresh Dead Boy Detectives Agency lettering on their office door for all of 20 seconds before launching into a proposal about case-acceptance criteria.Edwin had cut himself off mid-sentence, self-consciously smoothing down the lapels of his suit jacket. He did this often, realizing he’d gotten carried away followed by the first tell Charles’ had learned - fidgeting with his clothing.Edwin had asked: “What do you think?”And Charles had thought: I’m in love with you.Edwin’s confession in Hell had performed a perfect resurrection of Charles’ heart and it was 1990 and 1993 and 1997 and 2001 and 2006 and 2010 and 2014 all over again.Edwin smiling to himself as they put their first solved case into the card file. Edwin humming in approval the first time Charles mastered the pocket dimension of his bag and pulled the exact right thing out. Edwin’s green eyes rendered amber and mossy seaglass by the golden sodium-vapor lamps of their office, stretched out on the chaise behind Charles, oblivious to his staring. “Charles, that is brilliant,” and “Do try to be more careful!” and “What do you think of this?” Edwin Edwin Edwin.Charles always feeling like he was on his knees, desperate and adoring and hording every smile, compliment, and gift of affection Edwin gave him. All their years together gave Charles ample time to recognize every form of it. He had learned Edwin gave him rather a lot. It was never enough. It was too much.On the steps from Hell, with his thumbs pressed up against Edwin’s porcelain skin, perfect even bloodied and gritty with sweat and fear, the words curled up in his mouth. Aching, aching, every part of him aching to let them out.
“And we’ve got literally forever to figure out what the rest means.”
Charles couldn’t stop himself from hedging. He couldn’t let go of the thing he’d spent 33 years wanting and dreading. His love had been busy digging exit routes when his back was turned. His love, slinking off when Charles wasn’t looking, heading for Edwin like a magnet. Charles dangled from the fraying potential of it.Edwin didn’t do things by halves and he wasn’t flighty. Whatever feelings he had for Charles weren’t likely to disappear, possibly ever. Crystal was right, being in love alone did fucking suck. Charles knew better than anyone.  Edwin walked his direction, eyes pinned on the yellowed pages of A Complete Dictionary of Astrology in front of him, as he read the passage out loud, pausing every few seconds to interject with his own thoughts.“I need to cross-reference with Edmund Jones’ Essentials,” Edwin said, flipping a page with his thumb. He put one hand out expectantly, still not looking up. Charles wanted to take that slender hand and kiss every joint.“It’s the lavender one with the white taurus emblem on the front,” he added, subtly punctuating his impatience with his hand. “I cannot believe I have to read this much on astrology; Monty never mentioned actinobolia or prenatal epochs or any of this other nonsense.”Edwin finally looked up and gave him an analytical once-over. Charles wondered what he saw.“Are you alright?”“I’m aces,” Charles said automatically. He forced a smile. “Never thought I’d hear you complain about reading.”“Yes, well, this subject matter is, as far as I can tell, mostly invented.” His empty hand dropped and Charles realized he was supposed to be looking for Edwin’s book.A crease appeared between Edwin’s strong eyebrows and he stepped closer. Charles’ chest did what it always did when Edwin got close – that thumping, half-alive mimicry of a racing heart.“Are you certain you’re alright? You’ve been distracted…lately.”They both knew Edwin meant ‘since Crystal’s birthday.’ Or perhaps even, ‘since I confessed my love to you on the steps of Hell.’Do it scared. That’s what Crystal said. He could do it scared.“We never talk about it,” Charles blurted, chest frantic like a moth beating at a window.Edwin’s face said he was deliberating over how to interpret Charles’ statement. “You were there. You saw that creature.”“You know that’s not what I mean.”Edwin’s features pinched. “What is there to talk about? I consider the matter closed. I told you of my feelings, you assured me it didn’t create any,” – he gestured vaguely at Charles – “and that was that.”His stomach clenched. That’s all Edwin had to say – that was that?“But,” Charles stuttered, “but it was – well it was significant, wasn’t it?”Edwin considered this. “I suppose, it did clarify some things for me. Namely that, when you came for me in Hell – well, that’s when I realized you wouldn’t leave.”“Leave? Where was I supposed to be going, mate?”Edwin looked at him like it was a stupid question. “With Death. To your afterlife.”Charles felt like he was on a rollercoaster that went down when he thought it was going up. “We’ve been running from Death for 30 years, Edwin.”“Yes,” Edwin said, his words whipped tight that way he did when he was trying not to let on that he was experiencing an emotion, “but I know deep down, you wish you were among the living, even if you claim you don’t truly ‘hate being dead.’ And you can’t suddenly become alive again, so crossing over would be your next best option.”“Let me get this straight,” Charles said, voice at risk of scraping the floor, “you’re telling me that for our entire friendship you’ve just been waiting for me to change my mind, to leave all this,” – he motioned wildly to the office – “to leave you, and just pop off to my afterlife?”“I assumed you would say goodbye first,” Edwin trotted out acidly.Charles’ whole chest splintered. Edwin wasn’t cruel, or at least Charles never thought he was. He could be salty and blunt, but never cruel. This skirted dangerously close to cruel and he didn’t even seem to realize it.His next words came scratched out and aching. “If you’re telling me that this whole bloody time you’ve just been waiting for me to fuck off and leave you behind, then you don’t know me half as well as you think.”Edwin looked stricken, stripped raw, slapped and gutted. “Charles,” he breathed. His hand drifted uncertainly in Charles’ direction.Charles avoided the mercury glimmer in Edwin’s eyes and brushed roughly past him.  They talked around each other for a week. Charles had never used the passive voice so much, nor had it leveled against him like this. Crystal’s poisonous looks did nothing. He didn’t know how to explain this to her. He’d done it bloody fucking scared and gotten a broken heart for his efforts.After all their time together, their cases and throwing themselves into danger, Charles scrabbling at every method to show his love to Edwin without saying it outright – at the heart of it, Edwin still didn’t think of him as trustworthy. He was just waiting for Charles to leave. Who the fuck falls in love with someone they think might up and abandon them at any moment?He’d been so positive Edwin thought better of him. Somedays it seemed like it was all that kept him from turning into the boy-shaped thing, that shadow monster entirely, and he was so fucking wrong. There was no world in which Charles could be good enough for him, if Edwin even believed him in the first place. He wasn’t sure what that said about Edwin – Charles had always thought of him as confident. Self-assured. But apparently not, if he was stupid enough to fall in love with Charles.He wished ghosts could get sick, if only for the imitation of purging himself of some of this anguish. God knew crying was doing fuck all. Whoever said tears were cathartic was full of shit.After ten days of hearing egg-shells crunching underfoot, Crystal conveniently had all-day plans, which she keenly impressed upon both Charles and Edwin with many significant looks.In the end, Edwin broke first.His wingtip boots appeared in Charles’ fuzzy peripheral, his vision starting to blur from focusing on his task for hours. He was supposed to be excavating a fossilized selkie skull from a lump of limestone. It needed precise concentration, to not accidentally scrape bits of the fossil away with the stone grit. And Charles had none of that lately. His mind was on a string attached to Edwin, jerking along the line every time he spoke or moved.“This is unendurable,” Edwin announced.“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”“Don’t be coy with me.” Edwin yanked both the needle-hooked dental tool and fat dusting brush out of Charles’ hands and tossed them to the floor with uncharacteristic carelessness. A traitorous part of Charles wanted to smile; Edwin could be such a brat.He smothered the smile and attempted for some kind of glare. “I was working on that.”Edwin looked about ten seconds away from stomping his foot like a child. “I hate it when we fight. We’ve never let it go on this long.”“Don’t know what there is to talk about,” Charles continued, gritting down on his urge to rage and yell and praying to a hundred gods and goddesses that he could make it through this conversation without crying. “You thought I was the kind of person to up and leave you. Like I’m just a selfish bastard. I thought,” – his voice caught – “I believed you thought better of me.”Ah. And there were the tears. He kept his head tilted down and roughly blinked them away.“I do believe better of you. You’re not selfish Charles, or a bastard. I told you, you’re the best person I know.”Charles scoffed. “And your bar was the entire population of Hell. Low fucking bar, innit?”“You are being purposefully dense,” Edwin grated.“Selfish, untrustworthy, dense,” Charles ticked off on his fingers. “Anything else?”“Stop putting words in my mouth!” He seemed to notice for the first time how dressed-down he was and began assiduously replacing his rolled cuffs and pinning his collar back.Charles couldn’t watch this – he hated seeing Edwin put his armor back on. It was the signal that meant Edwin’s heart was closed for business.Just as he reached for his bowtie, Charles jumped to his feet and captured Edwin’s wrists in his own hands.Edwin froze, with a guarded look like he was assessing a threat. Is that what Charles was to him too, a threat?“Charles, that was…extreme.” The way Edwin had looked at him – it was one of the worst things Charles had ever seen. He wondered when Edwin learned to fear him. If it was there on the cliff, or if this thread of fear wove its way through all their years together.“I do trust you,” Edwin said. “Completely.”“You thought I was going to leave.”“But you leaving had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me! It wasn’t personal.” He hadn’t tried to pull his hands away yet.“How am I not supposed to take that personally? I love you, I was never going to leave. Why can’t you just believe me?”“Because I know you don’t want to be here!” A tear broke Edwin’s lash line and raced for his jaw.“Edwin.” He let go of his wrists and drew Edwin into his arms. Edwin was trembling. “I want to be wherever you are.”Edwin made a soft, hitched noise. “As do I.”
Do it scared. Do it scared. Doitscared.
Charles’ feelings simmered and cooled, the anger evaporating off. Edwin’s fears weren’t so different from his own: fearing the other would eventually leave. Nothing to do with Edwin and everything to do with Charles.So I’m a liar and a hypocrite, he thought wryly. Brills.Charles pulled back to look at him, taking his hands again. Edwin’s lashes still glittered with half-shed tears, chin tipped down and eyes wide in that cornered, hunted way when he wanted to run. He was putting himself at Charles’ mercy.All Charles had done this whole time was hurt Edwin. The least he could do was come clean.He could do it. Edwin, I’m in love with you. I’ve always been in love with you.He opened his mouth. He closed it. He took a shuddering breath. He opened his mouth again. The words refused to move. They sat down and stubbornly shook their heads.He’d never been a words guy anyway.He ducked in and kissed Edwin. He came in too fast; it was rough, clumsy. A plea. Edwin stiffened, his lips unyielding.Edwin put a hand on Charles' chest and pushed him away. Their lips hovered inches from each other.“What are you doing,” Edwin said, high and thin.I lied to you. I’m in love with you and I can’t say it. I’m a liar and a coward. “There’s not as much to figure out as you think,” Charles said weakly.“I don’t know what that means.”“I said I want to figure things out. In Hell.”Edwin pulled away so fast Charles’ hand smarted as the other boy yanked free. “Forgive me for being harsh, but do you really think I would enjoy the process of watching you decide whether or not you’re in love with me?”Just say it, Charles begged himself. Tell him you’re in love with him. The monster in the corner rumbled. Coward. Liar. How do you say you’re in love with someone when you can’t say you’re in love?“My first kiss was a boy,” he volunteered suddenly, defiant.Edwin stared. “You never told me that.”“It never came up.”Charles had been 13, and soft with naivety. He knew lads weren’t supposed to fancy each other, in that unspoken, abstract way children absorbed taboos. The disgusted curl of his father’s lip when Freddie Mercury’s voice came over the radio. The jeers of playmates when one of them offered friendship that was just a bit too interested.But this boy – Peter – he was different. He had strawberry freckles and brought Charles interesting rocks from the creek. They traded comic books and lingered on playgrounds. One day after a good tousle, they tangled in long grass, too lazy to move. Too unwilling.Charles wanted to kiss him, and so he did. Peter’s lips were soft, his taste fruity and astringent from the sloe berries they’d pilfered from a nearby blackthorn thicket, swallowing in larger and larger quantities in a childish competition to see who could make it through the most of the bitter fruit, until their fingers and mouths were stained a gorgeous red and their bellies ached.One of Peter’s neighbors had seen them. They were dragged before their headmaster; parents had been called. Neither could work up the courage to look each other in the eye. They knew they’d committed some terrible transgression.Charles ended up in the hospital. He never saw Peter again.He didn’t say any of this out loud. He didn’t tell Edwin that what he needed to figure out was how to love the way Edwin deserved. How to love Edwin without terrifying him. How to love Edwin without eating him whole. Without breaking him.  Edwin studied him carefully, reading something off Charles’ face the way he poured over arcane texts in a language he was still mastering. “Alright,” he said slowly.“’Alright,’ what?”“You may figure it out. I was allowed the chance, now it is only fair you are allowed the same.” Unspoken, left off: even if it breaks my heart.And Charles unvoiced reply – that it would be Edwin breaking Charles’ heart, if anything. He would discover he preferred to love Charles like a friend. Then he’d know Charles will never leave him and Edwin wouldn’t be in love alone anymore. It would destroy Charles, but it was better this way. Maybe he won’t change his mind, something in him whispered, the voice soft and quiet as morning fog.Maybe.“But Charles…” The cornered-creature look was back. “Please. Go gently.”Charles took Edwin’s hand again and brought it to his lips, pressing them to his first knuckle. Not quite a kiss – it was a declaration of intent. Simply to be sweet for its own sake. To go gently.Edwin sucked in a breath and Charles lowered his hand, stroking his thumb over the spot as he went.“Always,” Charles murmured.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dry, frigid winds bite Crystal’s cheeks. She rubs her bare arms with stiff fingers, trying to get some warmth into her numbing skin. She trips through snow drifts, ice crunching underfoot. Blues and greens dancing overhead.  Crystal has never seen the Aurora Borealis before, but she doesn’t waste time admiring the view; she has somewhere to be. She stubbornly puts one foot in front of the other.

In the distance, a faint glow illuminates the silhouette of an igloo.
Crystal woke shivering and drenched in cold sweat and rolled over to crank up the dial on her electric blanket. It was her new system since her parents returned unannounced one day to a sweltering condo and demanded to know why she had the AC off and the windows open during July in a record heatwave. Crystal had muttered something about offsetting their carbon footprint. Her mother had given her a once over like someone looked at a pile of crusty dishes left in a sink – her bare nails, her tangled curls, her rumpled white tee with its cheeky graphics and multitude of holes in the hem and collar – and merely sniffed.The shirt was a gift from Niko. It didn’t have any holes when she received it, but then she’d worn and washed it and worn and washed it for months. Niko’s smell was long gone – the sweet and gentle floral mix of perfume and skin – and Niko was receding from it too. If Crystal concentrated just right, she could still read memories off it, from before they met.Flashes of Niko brushing her glossy dark hair in the mirror, stacking yet another letter from her mother on her desk, giggling at a panel of a new manga, curled in bed and shaking as she drowned in loneliness. As the days passed, the memories grew holes like her shirt.She shuffled to the kitchen and fumbled through the process of pulling a quad shot from her dad’s espresso machine, a leftover from his craft coffee phase two years ago. He’d dropped more money on his short-lived hobby than most people made in a year. The La Marzocco made their outrageously large kitchen look almost normal by dint of simply taking up so much goddamn space.She avoided her reflection in the shiny chrome-plate – the permanent smudges under her eyes, the sallow pallor of her skin, lips chapped from chewing them – and tidied while she waited for her espresso to cool.Her stomach rumbled and she realized she’d forgotten to eat dinner the night before. She surveyed the refrigerator and found a row of protein shakes front and center, along with a post-it note with only a shaky-handed, cartoon self-portrait of Charles frowning. He’d been sneaking into her condo in the middle of the night to stock her fridge with different meal replacements. With half a smile, she grabbed one of the shakes and her espresso and padded back to her bedroom.From under her bed, she withdrew a shoe box filled with miscellanea: half a pair of red satin stilettos her mother hadn’t worn for ten years, an engraved fountain pen pilfered from her dad’s office, a ticket to a ballet from 2007, a half-used checkbook from the early 2000s, an empty bottle of her mother’s perfume. Detritus snatched from across her lifetime. They were arranged in the box in reverse chronological order, with the oldest items predating Crystal’s own memories of her early childhood. She reached for the fountain pen, steadying herself, blocking out the street sounds and splintering headache that followed her around at any given moment. Her hands closed around the silver cap and she plunged herself into their memories.Flickers of meetings with strangers – nearly identical men in nearly identical suits around a long conference table, her parents having a restrained disagreement while her father clenched the pen in his hand, paperwork moving across her father’s oak desk in their old home in LA…She emerged from the memories numb and tossed the pen away. Useless. Another item in the box that didn’t hold a memory of herself. Of the five items in the box she’d completed a reading on, not a single one included Crystal. This box was shaping up to be like the other two under her bed. This was her last box. Her parents spent such little time in this condo that she’d run out of things to read.She had hoped that somewhere in this lineup, this visual timeline of her parents’ life, that she’d find the answer to the questions constantly hovering over her shoulder like an unwanted guest: why didn’t her parents care about her? Had they ever? And if they did, why did they stop?She thought if she trained hard enough, she could find the answer in the object memories. Instead, she’d found nothing at all.She sniffed and swiped away a stray tear, scoffing at herself. The last time her parents were here for multiple days, she haunted the spot outside their bedroom each night. Her dad was a heavy sleeper and her mom took enough benzos to put a regular person in a coma. She could have easily read them then, picking through years of memories until she found the ones she wanted. But she was too afraid to look. Each time, she’d gone back to bed and tossed through restless dreams of snow and lights instead.Her watch read quarter past eight and she sighed. She didn’t want another lecture from Edwin about being late to morning client meetings. And she still had to stop by her regular bakery to practice her casting power. It was a shock when she learned she could pick at the threads of someone’s memories and emotions without going full-on white-eyes. She’d reflexively kept it a secret from the boys. Something about this particular ability felt dirty and sneaky. But she was collecting new powers like pieces of armor, and this one was undeniably alluring and useful. So she tucked it away.After a steaming shower, the bags under her eyes disappeared behind artful layers of concealer and foundation, the ashy skin restored to dewy and glowing with tubes of shimmering gel and a spray. After fielding far too many concerned inquiries from Charles and half-veiled remarks about her ragged appearance from Edwin, she’d promised to ease up on training and take better care of herself. Instead, she picked her makeup habit back up. Apparently, she wasn’t fooling Charles.She hadn’t been lying when she told him in Port Townsend that he was a cute distraction, she simply didn’t elaborate on what he was distracting her from. She suspected he had been using her in much the same way; there was habitual anger about it, from her old self. A knee-jerk how dare he. Her new self just didn’t give a shit.She’d read soulmate auras before. At the time, she didn’t know that’s what they were – she still wasn’t positive whether it was something destined or just high compatibility. But after the third time she’d seen the halo of pink and red around a couple only to watch them fall madly in love, she knew what the colors meant.When she saw Niko for the first time – her mind leapt headfirst to conclusions. She thought it was a soulmate aura, for her. For them. But it had just been some fucking parasites.Stupid didn’t really cover how Crystal felt after that. Niko’s joy and kindness was a fucking force of nature, spilling out of her tiny frame and flooding anyone in a file-mile radius. And Crystal was not like that. Not even without her toxic personality. Crystal was abrasive and harsh, impatient. Not even a demon stealing her memories could remove her short fuse.  Of course it wasn’t a fucking soulmate aura.There were moments, here and there where she thought…she didn’t know what she thought. Even if there was no soulmate aura, that there was something there. Crystal felt like she was walking around with cartoon heart-eyes half the time. When Niko saved the boys from their afterlife with nothing but her brain and a crash-course interrogation of the Night Nurse, Crystal knew she’d follow Niko anywhere, do anything to keep her safe.  And then she got her memories back, and learned she was a ruinous thing. A poison. Not even Niko’s elemental kindness could fix Crystal, and Crystal would never let her try anyway. The best thing would be for Crystal to stay the fuck away from her.In the end she’d gotten Niko killed anyway.And that was the fuck in the fuck you from fate as it put up its middle finger in Crystal’s face. Crystal wasn’t a martyr, or suicidal – she didn’t want to be dead. But Esther’s killing magic was meant for her and it got Niko instead, because of course she jumped in front of it. She should have known, the night on the beach when Niko stepped between her and the Night Nurse. Crystal hated it when her own life had foreshadowing.She didn’t know what the word was for when your new friend who you thought might be your soulmate actually just had a paranormal parasite and then sacrificed her life for you and died gruesomely. There wasn’t one.Sometimes Crystal didn’t dream of the cold and the Borealis and the igloo, sometimes it was just the hot-slippery bath of Niko’s blood on her hands.She dabbed a light sheen of lip stain on for the final attempt at revival and gave herself a cursory once-over before flipping off the bathroom light. She avoided looking at her eyes. No amount of makeup could put the life back in them.  Crystal stood off to Charles’ left, watching the boys interview their client. She was an anxious 20-somethings ghost with satiny red hair that fell to mid-back. Her name was Elle or Ellen or maybe Elenor. There was a dark gash on the back of her skull that perennially leaked brain matter. She must be a young ghost if she didn’t know how to conceal her death wounds yet.“And you’re positive your fiancé was killed by your own murderer?” Edwin said to the woman.Charles shot a long-suffering look Crystal’s way and she realized belatedly that she was supposed to respond, to make her own bemused face over Edwin’s terrible bedside manner. Charles’ amusement melted into concern and she looked away.“I’m positive,” Elle/Ellen/Elenor said. Crystal settled on Elle to make it simpler. “It’s the last thing I remember. After I died…the police found my locket, in a pool of his blood a mile from the crime scene.”As carefully Elle tried to say it, her voice still wavered. Even Edwin looked reluctantly affected. “It was a family heirloom of his – he gave it to me on our first anniversary.” She drew the locket out of her pocket – a small, heart-shaped gold thing with floral etchings on a thin chain – and set it on Edwin’s desk.“Crystal?” Charles said, motioning to the locket. Elle clasped her hands as Crystal automatically approached. Steeling herself for whatever scene of blood and violence she was about to plummet into, she touched the necklace.
Veins, pulsing with poison until blood congealed. Crawling towards an unsuspecting heart, reaching for –
She pulled away, blinking. “Gross.”Edwin’s fingers were steepled. “What did you see?”“Uh, it wasn’t clear,” she said, still trying to blink the vision away. “Let me try again.”
A teeming city, citizens falling ill one by one as the virus spread, then by the dozens, then hundreds, their decaying bodies piling in the streets, the stench so thick it coated her nose –
She shuddered away from the locket. Her vision tingled, like when she forgot to eat breakfast and then stood up too fast. She realized Charles had her arm, was guiding her down into the extra chair meant for clients.“One sec,” she said, reaching for the locket again.
Her own body laying on black sand, twitching and seizing, her fingertips singed sooty, skin cracked and split like a blistered fruit. The light went out of her eyes –
“Whoa,” Charles said from somewhere. “Careful there.” She was slumped against him, her forehead stinging from where it had hit the sharp edge of the desk. She raised one shaking finger to her temple and drew it away wet from a trickle of blood.“My apologies,” Edwin said to their client. “But our psychic seems to have taken ill. Could you come back tomorrow morning?”Their discussion dropped to blurry, white noise murmur. Charles carried her to the chaise lounge. He was saying something to her.“I have to talk to Iris,” she told him. And then her eyes clouded over as she sank into her mind.  Her feet whispered on black sand and she took a second to orient herself. Her forehead no longer throbbed; the dizziness gone. The regular hum of her tree greeted her first – a low, sweet drone, like a giant bumblebee.“Good,” Iris said from her left. “We were wondering when you’d come see us.”“I just tried to read something, but it was um, weird. Just saw like, creepy stuff. I think I saw myself die,” she said in mild horror. “What the fuck.”Iris took her by the shoulders and walked her to the base of her tree. Was it her memory or was its pink glow muted?She followed Iris’s pointing finger until she saw it – a dead branch, right at the top. It was a sickly black, cracked and peeling like her fingertips in her vision. She circled the tree to get a closer look, tracing the vein of decay down the pink branch, and into the white trunk. It was just a thread of darkness, but it was there.“I don’t get it,” she said.“I told you,” said Iris. “That demon is bad for the tree.”  When she returned, Elle was gone, and she found a little butterfly bandage on her forehead. Charles was perched on the corner of Edwin’s desk, Edwin in his usual spot behind it. They were both watching her with concern.Charles said, “Are you okay?”“My tree is dying,” she said without preamble. “We have to get David out of there.”“Wait, hang on,” Charles said. “You just fainted and hit your head, then disappeared into your mind for like an hour. Let’s go back to answering the question: are you okay?”“An hour?” Usually, time in her mind tracked pretty close with time outside of it. “What the fuck.”“Have you been having trouble with your powers lately?” Edwin said, already flipping to a new page in his notebook, trying and failing to hide his eagerness over a new mystery.“Nothing’s felt off…I’ve been having weird dreams is all.”“Weird dreams?” Edwin echoed, his voice sharpening like a sniper rifle focusing its crosshairs.The possibility that all her work finding Niko only turning up jack-shit, the absence of herself in her parents’ memories – that it could be from her sick tree and David’s influence buoyed her. She almost opened her mouth to say this, but she remembered her conversation with Charles not that long ago and reconsidered.“I’ve seen a lot of fucked up stuff,” Crystal said. “Sometimes I just have bad dreams.”“Yes, but you said weird dreams, not bad dreams.”“Leave off, Edwin,” Charles said gently. “Lets focus on the demon in her head first.”“Fine,” Edwin muttered, clicking his pen shut. “But do not think I will forget to return to the subject of your dreams.”“Never would,” Crystal mumbled. “How am I supposed to dig up a demon in my head? I barely even understand how I buried him in the first place. I’ve never like, taken something out of my head before.”“Why don’t you practice on us?” Charles suggested. “Pop one of us in, pop us back out. I can even try to run away or whatever. Do a little David roleplay.” He waggled his eyebrows.She snorted. “You’d make a shitty David.”“Okay fine, I’ll skip that part. But you should still practice, yeah?”“That could help,” she said, warming to the idea. “Don’t like the idea of him running around in my brain once I get him out of the sand.”“Right,” Charles said. “How are we going to get rid of him? He’s like, not got a body anymore. Can you exorcise a demon without a body?”She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know.”“One thing at a time,” Edwin interjected. “I agree with Charles, I think practice could be helpful. Crystal, I will begin research on banishing a demon without a corporeal form.”“Apparently time is all wonky in there,” Crystal said. “We might be gone a while.”Edwin said, “So I will finally have some uninterrupted silence to do this research?” He lifted an eyebrow at her. “What a hardship.”She flipped him off and Charles snickered.“No time like the present,” Charles said, flicking a questioning look to Edwin, who was busy rummaging through one of his drawers.“Now?”He shrugged. “Why not?”“I guess…” She didn’t really know how to prepare for this anyway. Getting a full night’s rest and a real meal was out. Her body didn’t tolerate either of those things these days. She could have at least finished that protein shake.“Wait,” Edwin said, coming around the desk with a pair of tangled necklace chains. He extricated them and handed one to Charles, a small key charm dangling from it. The other chain held a lock. Crystal would bet 50 bucks they weren’t decorative. They were so cute it was disgusting.“Binding talismans,” he said, gesturing for Charles to put it on.“What do they bind?” Charles said absently, fiddling with the clasp.Edwin hesitated for a beat before saying carefully: “Us.” Charles looked up at him. “Remember the case of the –”“Yeah, yeah,” Charles said. “Why didn’t you –”Edwin’s fingers turned the lock charm of his necklace edge over edge, but didn’t say anything. Charles glanced away, his cheeks pinking from whatever Edwin “said.”“Are they strong enough for –”“I don’t know,” Edwin sighed.“Better than nothing.”“Just in case,” Edwin agreed.“I hate it when you guys do that,” Crystal complained out of habit. In truth, she was just relieved they weren’t fighting anymore. When the tension finally broke the week before and Crystal had demanded he spill, Charles had merely blushed and said they were “figuring it out.”She was glad for them. She was. But it was just so fucking lonely to watch your two best friends fall in love with each other. And it made the vibes in the office weird as hell. Half the time they were cuddling in corners and whispering sweet nothings to each other and the other half of the time they were awkward as strangers, like they forgot they’d been attached at the hip for three decades. It was like watching two aliens on a first date. A looong, extended date.Charles was looking at Edwin like he needed to say something else.“Um…I just uh, I need to pee quick,” she lied, beelining for the door.She waited in the hallway for an appropriate amount of time and then eased the door silently open.Edwin was back at his desk, Charles behind him as he fastened Edwin’s necklace. All aloofness between them had vanished. Charles tucked the chain neatly under Edwin’s collar and then rested a hand on the curve of his neck as Edwin craned his head back to look up at him. Very slowly, Charles bent down and brushed a kiss to the other boy’s cheek. Edwin placed his head over Charles’ as they rested their foreheads together.Crystal smiled to herself. She wasn’t entirely clear on what they were figuring out exactly – anyone with eyes and two brain cells to rub together could see they were crazy about each other.When they’d met, it’d taken her about 30 seconds to clock the following: Edwin – gay. Charles – some combination of letters that were probably too much to keep track of so he just used Queer. EdwinAndCharles – together. Charles was the 80s punk Frog to Edwin’s Toad.Then Charles half-way hit on her, and she added “assigned Flirt at Birth,” in that blithe, transparently flirty way long-married couples could be.Her own parents and their friends did it all the time – pretending to laugh and enjoy each other’s bland humor and blisteringly boring stories about restoring classic Italian cars or vacationing on their private islands or whatever the fuck middle-aged rich people did with their free time. She called it Swingers Lite. It was harmless, no intent behind it. Of fucking course Charles and Edwin were way more dramatic and confusing.But whatever they were figuring out now – they were moving at a glacial pace.“Be careful,” Edwin murmured.“Better have all the answers for us by the time I get back,” Charles teased.“Okay, ready to go,” Crystal loudly announced. Charles sprang back. She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be sneaky about kissing your boyfriend goodbye.”“Not my boyfriend,” Charles mumbled.“Yet,” she added.Edwin’s briefly closed his eyes, expression pained. “You be careful as well, Crystal.”She settled cross-legged in the middle of the room, patting the spot across from her. “Not really necessary, it’s my mind,” she said. “But thanks.”Charles’ mirrored her position and she took his hands in her own, finally accustomed to the way they were never the right weight or temperature. “Ready?”Charles nodded. She closed her eyes, reached out for the ball of red energy he kept at his core and pulled.  “It’s very…blue in here,” Charles said, looking skeptically around the void. He kicked some glass. His red energy core was softer here than in the real world. Not like David’s, who always felt like pure anxiety, like a deadline for a paper you hadn’t started. He felt like dread. Charles was brightly fizzy and pleasant, like a mimosa. She wondered what Edwin felt like.“Not what I expect – oh my god.”She followed his wide-eyed gaze up to the eyestalks. “Ahh yeah.”“Why are there giant eyeballs? This is creepy. I thought it was supposed to be some like, sacred and beautiful psychic space.”“Don’t tell me the brave and heroic Charles is getting rattled by a couple of eyeballs.”“No,” he retorted, needlessly straightening his jacket. His hand twitched toward his shoulder like he was reaching for the backpack he left in their office.“Good, because we have to go into the eyes.”“Wait - what?”She shoved him hard, then followed him through the splashing plasma.“Okay,” Charles said when he got to his feet. “This is more like it.” He marveled at the tree. “That’s gorgeous.”“That’s me,” Crystal said. “Kind of.”“I didn’t know we were having a guest,” Iris said.Charles wiped his hands on his pants and then extended one to Iris. “Nice to meet you ma’am,” he said, adding a shallow bow over their clasped hands. “I’ve heard so many good things about you.”Crystal’s eyebrows shot up as he straightened. “Bowing?” she mouthed at him. He waved her off behind his back.“What a polite boy,” Iris said, clearly charmed. “But what is he doing here?”“You said I need to get David out. Charles thought I should practice, since you know, I have no idea what I’m doing.”“That’s me,” Charles said, putting his hand up like a schoolboy at attendance. “Her ghostly guinea pig.”She made a noise. “You’re making me sound like a mad scientist.”“So we’re here,” Charles said. “Now we just…go back?”“I guess.” Crystal folded to her knees and swept a loving hand through her sand, the fine particles clinging to her skin. She had to concentrate to find the anchor-weight dread of David’s presence. It was strongest over the spot they’d buried him, the sand lumped like the spot of a freshly dug grave.“I could try to put you in the sand,” she said. “David was fighting me the whole way. You’d probably be easy to…Charles?” She looked around to find him at the opposite edge of her island, peering into the dark.“What’s out there?” he said.She looked to Iris, who shrugged. “We can’t go beyond the edge.”“Probably nothing then,” Crystal said. Charles inched closer, toeing the line between sand and darkness. Something in her gut curled, a faint warning chime that merely said Don’t. “Charles, I think you should get away from there.”Charles put one hand into the void and it disappeared up to his forearm, gauzy at the elbow like a black fog. “It’s cold,” he remarked. He chuckled, rotating his arm this way and that. “That’s mental. Crystal, are you seeing this? My hand’s just like, gone.”“Stop messing around,” she said, the warning chime cranking up a notch. “You’re making me nervous.”“Sorry,” he said with an apologetic smile. He twitched suddenly, rebounding a fraction. He didn’t move away. His casual, sheepish smile dissolved as his sights focused on his elbow.“Can you just get the fuck away from there?”“Can’t,” he gritted out. “Something’s got me.” He braced his heels against the ground and pulled at his trapped arm with the other.Crystal was halfway to her feet when Charles gasped and jerked, his arm disappearing to the shoulder like someone had grabbed his hand from the other side and yanked.She slipped in the sand as she sprinted to his side and grabbed him. The other side pulled. Her fingers slipped on the fabric of his coat. “Charles!”Whatever Charles bellowed over his shoulder at her was swallowed into silence. The darkness ate him.  Crystal lurched out of her mind and scrambled to her feet.Edwin slammed to a stop mid-pace and sharply pivoted to face her. His normally crisp white shirt was rumpled, half a dozen buttons were out with his bowtie limp around his neck. The light in the office was all wrong. It was dark out.“You’ve been gone for nearly 12 hours,” he snapped, his voice a welt of panic. “Where is Charles?”“Something took him.”“What do you mean, ‘something took him?’”“I don’t know, he’s just gone!”“Well get him back!”“I don’t even know where he went! He’s not there anymore – I can’t feel him.”Edwin’s hand flew to the lock charm around his neck. “I can.”“Well I don’t have a magical necklace to tell me where he went!”“Take me in there,” he resolved. “I can go after him.”“Absolutely the fuck not. I don’t know where he went! It could be dangerous.”Edwin’s face twisted. “All the more reason for me to go after him.”“No,” she said adamantly. “Charles just got sucked in like something grabbed him, you’re not next.”“Take me in there,” he repeated with a voice like iron.She fretted with her rings. “I have to talk to my ancestors, maybe they know something.”“I can help you navigate the conversation, I know more about magic than you.”“Barely,” she barked, biting back something snide. He didn’t know about the welter of her new powers.He tilted his head with a hard look. “You know it’s true.” His tight features cracked and despair spilled out. “Crystal, please. It’s Charles. I can’t stay out here for another 12 hours wondering what’s happening. I shall go mad.”She was reminded suddenly of Charles in the Cat King’s warehouse when he’d spirited Edwin away, with the same half-wild look of a cornered animal. Charles had spent the first hour scouring every square inch of the place, the next hour creatively rearranging curse words, and the third in a comatose ball. She couldn’t leave Edwin here. Who knew what he’d do. She growled through her teeth. “Fine!” She grabbed his hand before she could change her mind. “But do not do anything stupid, don’t touch anything, and don’t go anywhere. We’re there to talk to my ancestors.”  “Of course,” he said, a bit too smoothly.She gave him a warning look. “I’m serious. Be Edwin about this. Be as Edwin as you get.”“A nonsensical request.”“I mean it.” She grabbed the sharp, blue ball of energy at his core and pulled.She didn’t linger in the dark antechamber, immediately pushing Edwin through one of the eyes. He hit the sand with a grunt. Her ancestors were already gathered around them – everyone, even the women she’d never seen leave their dinner table before.Edwin scrambled to his feet, not even bothering to brush off the sand. He barely gave the tree a glance, eyeing the edge of her island in a way she didn’t like. “Is that where Charles disappeared?”“Don’t go over there,” she barked at him before turning to Iris. “Do you have any idea where Charles went?”“I told you, we don’t know what’s beyond the edge.”Her chest felt like a scream. “So you have no idea what’s out there. None of you have ever tried to find out?”“Perhaps one of us did, a long time ago,” Iris said slowly. “Perhaps many of us. Memory in here, it doesn’t work the same way as for the living.”Crystal looked at each woman in turn. “Does anyone remember anything?”They were shaking their heads, and then Iris’ gaze transferred over Crystal’s shoulder. “Your friend should stay away from the edge.”She looked back in time to see Edwin’s face set with determination. “Get the fuck away from there!”He spared her one half-apologetic grimace before lunging forward like a sprinter at the starting line. “I’ll contact you when I find a mirror,” he yelled. He flung himself into the darkness and was gone.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

OneEdwin stood at the front of a classroom, looking out over a crowd of boys: slouched or staring, some with vacant expressions, bored and distant, some smirking at him.The room held five rows of single-student, detached desks, three seats to a row. Multi-paned windows to his right let in gloomy grey morning light. Their long, many-rectangled shadows tugged at his memory.His body felt wrong – too heavy. Too present.“Mr. Payne?” said an unfamiliar voice to his left. A middle-aged man with bristling, closely cropped salt and pepper hair, spectacles, and a maroon suitcoat sat behind a wide oak desk.  Edwin looked down at himself and startled to see he wasn’t wearing his usual bespoke bowtie and suit. He had on a pair of charcoal grey trousers, cut straight and wide, with pleats that dropped all the way to a hem ending just above his shoe, and a matching suit jacket over a navy jumper. A striped gray and navy tie and white collared shirt peeked out of the jumper. The roomy cut made him feel like a small child dressing up in one of his father’s broad-shouldered suits. Instead of his boots, oxblood loafers peeked out from his trouser hem.He glanced around the room: all of the students were dressed identically. Uniforms then; he was in a school.“Mr. Payne,” the teacher said again, more of a stern command than a worried inquiry. “Would you like to finish your statement?”Edwin mutely shook his head. A few students tittered. One, a churlish boy with an overgrown pencil mustache, leered at Edwin with a calculating, cruel glint in his eyes.The teacher motioned to an empty desk in the middle of the room.Edwin slid into the desk – it wasn’t far from the leering boy with the mustache. “Prissy git,” he muttered, just loud enough for Edwin to hear.The teacher began distributing paper booklets from a stack. “Just do your best,” he said with a polite smile when he reached Edwin.A brown leather backpack sat propped against the legs of his desk – he assumed it was his. He dug through it for a writing utensil and found several composition notebooks, pens and pencils, a sheet of paper folded in half, a wallet with some bank notes and change, and a small gold key with #30 stamped on it, looped on a ring. His beloved notebook was nowhere to be found. In all his years of detective work, he’d never left the office without it.Edwin scanned the booklet the teacher gave him. Calculus? He thought with dismay. The numbers swam in his vision. What was at first a four became a nine, and then a letter. The ‘Name’ line at the top called to him and he scrawled ‘Edwin Payne’ absently while he thought. Then he set his pencil on his desk and tried to orient himself.Whatever was beyond the island of black sand in Crystal’s mind – it had sent him into some bizarre hallucination or mindscape. He needed to find a mirror. But where was Charles? And where was he?The bell rang and the boys rushed from their seats. Edwin gathered his bag and glided silently towards the teacher’s desk on the tails of the others. He handed his nearly blank test to the teacher, who frowned.“Not an auspicious start to your career at St. Hilarion’s, Mr. Payne. See the headmaster after classes.”St. Hilarion’s, Edwin thought with a shock that knifed through his belly. Why the bloody hell was he back in this place? The style of dress confirmed it wasn’t 1916. And he would have recognized the teacher if it were. His stomach immediately busied itself with tying knots.Edwin tried to breathe against his rising dread as he followed the flow of students aimlessly down the hall. He barely made it a few feet when some unseen assailant shoved him into the wall. He rubbed his smarting shoulder and looked around with a glare.It was the boy from his classroom, the one with the mean eyes and sneer. “Fairy,” he spat at Edwin, followed by the boy behind him laughing, a taller fellow with a sharp chin like someone had put hands on either side of his face and squeezed them together.“Hey, come off it,” said someone from behind Edwin.That voice.“Being the new kid’s already rough without you lot piling on.”Edwin turned to see a familiar mop of curly hair atop a familiar set of slender shoulders, a gray and black tattersall greatcoat with a notched collar over his uniform. He didn’t look sick, exactly. But he looked not quite right. Like a washed-out photograph. There were tired smudges under his eyes.“Charles,” he breathed to himself. And then louder: “Charles!” He hurried closer. “Thank goodness you’re here.”Curiosity flickered in Charles’s dark eyes before they shuttered again, replaced with a carefully neutral look and a polite, blank smile; not hostile or unfriendly. “Sorry mate, I don’t actually think we’ve been introduced.”Edwin took a sharp breath in and then found he had nothing to say. There was a bright void where his thoughts should be.An unfriendly arm threw itself around his shoulder – the cruel eyed boy. His arm sat heavy as a collar. “This is Edwin.” He said Edwin’s name like it was an insult. “Couldn’t even get through an introduction in Mr. Greene’s class. He’s shy,” he drawled. Edwin understood that ‘shy’ was a synonym for a dozen worse adjectives.Charles grabbed the boy’s arm and yanked him off. “Piss off, Bobby.”Bobby rolled his eyes, but he obeyed, leering at Edwin one last time before he sauntered away, the squish-faced boy in tow.“Sorry about him,” Charles said. “He’s not so bad, if you ignore his personality.”“Do you really not know who I am?”Charles gave him a look stained with pity, the kind of look you give the unkept man at the tube stop who’s talking to himself. “We definitely haven’t met. Aren't you new here?”“Apparently,” Edwin murmured to himself.Charles gave him a brief up and down, gaze snagging on Edwin’s smooth pompadour before settling on his face. His eyes softened ever so slightly. “Steer clear of that lot,” he said, thrusting his chin towards Bobby, who had joined up with a whole gang of boys meandering down the hall.“Your friends?” Edwin said in confusion.“Yeah,” Charles answered, a shadow passing over his features. Up close, the washed-out feeling was more pronounced. Tension had made a permanent home on his face, perpetually tugging at the corners of his eyes and mouth. “I guess I’ll see you around. Cheers, mate.”It stung to watch him walk away. This was not how it was supposed to happen. He was supposed to find Charles, find a mirror, and get back to their home. Charles turned the corner without looking back.The hallway was nearly empty and he was at a loss. He loathed being the new student – they were always easy targets for the worst kind of bullies. And something about this place put his teeth on edge. He was going to be late to his next class. His parents would be so upset if he gained a detention on his first day, or even a write-up.A boy appeared next to him, a short, mousy thing with fine, dishwater blonde hair, a childish upturned nose, and a harried expression.“There you are,” he scolded. “You were supposed to wait for me outside your last class.”“Right,” Edwin said.“Where’s your schedule?”“Ah…” Edwin opened his bookbag again and dug around. He unfolded the piece of paper to find a class schedule with St. Hilarion’s masthead at the top, along with “1989 Spring Semester.”Spring of 1989 – there was something…Edwin wracked his brain. 1989 stood out in his memories like a beacon.The mousy boy impatiently took the schedule from his hands. Apparently, his appearance was not indicative of his personality.“We both have Latin next,” the boy said. “Come on.” He gave Edwin no chance to respond and herded him down the hallway opposite the direction the curly-haired boy and his friends had gone.The boy pointed at an empty desk near the front of the room. “You sit there.” He settled into the desk to Edwin’s left.Roll call revealed the boy’s name was Phillip Taylor. The teacher, an upper-crust man in his mid-30s named Mr. Davies, thankfully didn’t ask Edwin to stand and introduce himself.Davies continued roll call, checking off the present students and marking X’s for those absent. “Charles Rowland,” he called out, not even bothering to look up or wait before he flicked an X on his sheet.Edwin looked around, wondering which of the three empty desks Charles ordinarily sat in. Why hadn’t he come to class? Shouldn’t he be in class with Edwin? But he’d never been in class with Edwin before.Davies handed him a book; Edwin kept reading the title over and over and immediately forgetting it. The hour passed in another blur.Phillip refused to leave his side. He walked Edwin to each class, hailed him down on the way out, strong-armed him into studying in the library, and then accompanied him directly to dinner. Edwin gathered Phillip was some kind of school-assigned guide until he acclimated to the campus.It took two conversations for Edwin to decide Phillip was the most irritating person in the world. He spent several of his classes developing biting retorts that would send the unpleasant boy scurrying away in tears, but driving off the only student he was on friendly(ish) terms with at an unfamiliar place seemed unwise.Along with his Latin class, his teachers in social studies and chemistry called for Charles Rowland and received no answer. No one seemed surprised or concerned. Apparently, Charles was in the habit of cutting class.After dinner, Phillip escorted Edwin to his dorm.“Students have their own dorms?” Edwin asked, perplexed.Phillip gave him an odd look. “Yeah…What did you think?”“I don’t know,” Edwin said, lost. He knew there was a good reason he thought that, but the thought kept slipping away.“This isn’t 1916 or some bother. They got rid of communal sleeping rooms ages ago. Didn't you see your dorm when you moved in?”Edwin shook his head, trying to clear away the fog. “I must be tired,” he reasoned.The other boy was still looking at him funny, like Edwin was the annoying warden. “Meet me outside the dining hall at seven o’clock sharp for breakfast tomorrow,” he instructed. “No more running off without me.”Phillip firmly shut the door behind him. He was certain that if Phillip could bolt Edwin into his dorm, he would do so.Cramped was too kind a word for the room. A set of bunk beds was jammed against the wall to his right, with two small, matching desks pushed up against the opposite wall. The smallest pedestal sink he’d ever seen was wedged next to a narrow wardrobe. A single square window let in sad light. The effect was overall depressing.Only one bunk was made up, and Edwin found only one bag in the closet. It contained only toiletries, two more uniforms, additional clothes that he would never choose for himself, and a set of striped pyjamas. No books or photographs.As he shrugged out of his uniform and hung it up, his fingers brushed something around his neck. He peered into the narrow sliver of mirror on the inside of the closet door and found a golden lock charm dangling on a thin chain. He examined it uncertainly; he had never been prone to wearing ornamental jewelry. The lock was no bigger than his thumbnail, but the keyhole didn’t look decorative. The charm was heavy enough to suggest it was a real lock. He reached for the clasp to remove it and then hesitated.It was the only belonging that felt…personal. Everything else in his bag could easily be swapped for someone else’s things and he’d be none the wiser. With the bright sting of a fresh splinter, a new image pricked his mind: the boy from the hallway, his eyes alight, smile wide and toothy. The smile that always made Edwin’s stomach flutter.But he’d never seen Charles smile. He’d only just met him. He left the necklace in place.He flipped open his new social studies textbook, but after muddling through the same confusing paragraph for the sixth time, slammed the cover shut with an exasperated huff. It wasn’t like him to struggle with reading.Edwin switched into his pyjamas and then examined himself again, his fingers drifting unerringly toward the lock necklace. The pyjamas hung loosely off his willowy frame. It looked wrong. His mind nagged – he knew there was something he was supposed to do before bed, but it didn’t come to him. Maybe he’d remember in the morning. He closed the closet door.Confused, cheerless, and head aching, Edwin prepared for bed. He found himself wishing to talk to the boy he met in the hallway again. Maybe he would attend classes the next day. Maybe Edwin would see his real smile and not one he’d conjured up.  In the morning, Phillip was waiting for him at the top of the staircase to the dining hall. Edwin scanned the crowd for a particular curly head and came up with nothing. Bobby and his nasty friend weren’t there either.The day was blurry. More classes Edwin wasn’t prepared for, and a long parade of being towed from place to place by a perpetually unhappy Phillip. When Edwin suggested Phillip leave him to his own devices if he detested being his keeper so much, Phillip merely gave him a disgusted look and ordered him to the library again, where they sat in tense, drawn out silence. Edwin was supposed to be studying, but he couldn’t keep his assignments straight. Edwin realized with a start that the seat to his right was empty; at some point Phillip must have left.At his second dinner in St. Hilarion’s, he entered the dining hall to find everyone grim and ashen. Boys huddled in protective clusters, whispering amongst themselves.Phillip appeared at his empty table with a tray, and Edwin leaned toward the other boy as he noted again how grey and silent everyone was. “What’s going on?” he said. “What’s happened?”“You didn’t hear?”“How could I have heard?” he snapped. “You’re the only classmate I know here.”                                                                                                 “It’s Charles Rowland,” Phillip said. “He’s dead.”  TwoEdwin stood at the front of a classroom, looking out over a crowd of boys.To the right of the single-student desks, multi-paned windows threw gloomy grey morning light across the classroom. Something about the shadows…“Mr. Payne?” said a voice to his left. A middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and spectacles sat behind a desk. The teacher from yesterday. Yesterday?He looked down at himself and startled when he realized he was wearing the same uniform as his classmates.“Mr. Payne,” the teacher said again. “Would you like to finish your statement?”“My apologies,” Edwin said, mind racing. “I lost my train of thought. Could you repeat the question?”The teacher peered at him over his cheaters. “You were just about to tell us what you enjoy doing in your free time.”“Reading,” Edwin said distantly, still trying to orient himself. Hadn’t he just done all this? Was he in a different class? The teacher looked vaguely familiar. His name sat on the tip of Edwin’s tongue. “I enjoy Carrados the Blind Detective.”He must be remembering the day incorrectly. He must have slept poorly. Why don’t I remember waking up this morning?The teacher scrutinized him harder. “That’s a bit before your time.”“Crusty old fart,” mock-whispered a cruel looking boy with a ragged pencil mustache; several classmates snickered.Carrados. The attic. Charles. Edwin was here to find Charles. He had to get to a mirror and tell Crystal what was going on. But Charles had died the night before. The night before?Edwin nodded tightly at the teacher and sat back at his desk in a daze. His chest was caving in on itself.The teacher – Edwin was now fairly certain his name was Mr. Greene – handed out tests.Calculus, Edwin thought numbly. The symbols swam. The bell rang. He turned in a blank test. Mr. Greene ordered him to visit the headmaster. He had to find someone who had more information about Charles’ supposed death. He couldn’t be –Someone shoved him and he went flying into a wall; the cruel one from class. Bobby?“Codger prick,” Bobby sneered. His shoulder ached.“Hey, come off it. Being the new kid’s already rough without you lot piling on.”Edwin turned to the voice. Charles was looking at him curiously, his brown eyes still lacking their usual warmth. Edwin didn’t even realize how particularly Charles looked at him until he wasn’t doing it. He was hale and whole. But Phillip told Edwin he had died.“Charles,” he said, dazedly. He felt like the time he fell down a flight of steps when he was ten.Charles gave him a tight, more curious look. “That’s what they call me.”“You don’t recognize me?”Charles hesitated.Phillip appeared at Edwin’s elbow. “There you are,” he scolded, ignoring Charles entirely. Edwin wanted to kick the boy in the shins.Charles lingered at Edwin’s elbow, just for a second, before bidding him an even “Cheers, mate,” and heading after his friends. He disappeared around the corner.Edwin numbly pulled out his schedule while Phillip blustered at him about not waiting after class and handed it over. 1989 Spring Semester.Spring of 1989. Someone had died that year, at St. Hilarion’s. He shook his head. What an odd thought. He was new – there was no way he could know that.“We both have Latin next,” said Phillip. “Chop-chop.”Charles skipped Latin. He skipped social studies. He skipped chemistry. No one cared.Phillip herded him from class to class, then to the library, then his dorm, then to dinner.His dorm was cramped, depressing, and missing a roommate. He went to bed for lack of decisions. He would kill for a book right now, anything to keep his mind occupied and away from thoughts of the boy he’d met in the hallway, the one who’d told off Bobby. Rich curly hair, perfect olive skin. Edwin sighed. It figured he’d develop a crush on the first cute boy who was nice to him.The next day went by in such a blur that Edwin couldn’t recall a single class if he tried. He found himself toying with his lock necklace. He couldn’t remember where he got it, but worrying the smooth edges and rough catch the keyhole against his fingers was fast becoming a new nervous habit.He scanned the tables for Charles’ curly mop – he wanted to thank him for coming to Edwin’s rescue the day before – but he wasn’t in the hall. Everyone was grim and quiet, with none of the boisterous din he remembered from cramming several hundred teenage boys into the same massive room. It was muted like a funeral home.“What’s going on?” he said to Phillip at their table. “What’s happened?” He felt like he knew the answer.       “It’s Charles Rowland,” Phillip said. “He’s dead.”  ThreeEdwin stood at the front of a classroom.Charles was dead.“Mr. Payne,” Greene said. “Would you like to finish your statement?”Charles wasn't with him. Charles was dead.“My apologies,” Edwin said, throat tight and hot. “I lost my train of thought. In my spare time I enjoy reading.”“Nerd,” Bobby coughed. Edwin thought that was his least original insult yet.Mr. Greene handed Edwin a test, told him to do his best.Charles was dead and his ghost unaccounted for.Edwin filled out the first page, if only to avoid a conversation with Mr. Greene when he turned it in. As soon as he finished one question and moved onto the next, he couldn’t remember the one prior.Edwin was supposed to find Charles after something sucked him deep into Crystal’s mind. He needed to find a mirror. He needed to find Charles. But Charles was dead. Perhaps this wasn’t Crystal’s mind – what if they were in the past?Panic seized him – if Charles was dead, then it was possible he crossed over. Edwin hadn’t been in the attic last night. Why hadn’t he gone to the attic? He could barely remember the night before.The bell rang and Mr. Greene nodded politely when Edwin dropped off his test and hurried away.Bobby shoved him in the hall.“Hey, come off it. Being the new kid’s already rough without you lot piling on.”He wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t dead.
“Charles,” Edwin breathed.Charles gave him a little smile, curious and charmed. “That’s what they call me.”Edwin couldn’t respond. He drank in the sight of Charles’ velvet brown eyes and elfin chin - he wasn’t dead.Charles shuffled awkwardly. “I guess I’ll see you around. Cheers, mate.” He left.Edwin feared he would begin hyperventilating. He fled before Phillip could accost him and found a bench underneath a tree outside.He looked through his bookbag again, just in case, but it was identical to the day before. Days before?He disregarded all of it and set out to explore the school grounds or leave altogether. If he had been sent to the past, whatever had sent him there was resetting, bringing him back to the same moment over and over. Occam’s Razor said they were still in Crystal’s mind. But how could she know all these details of St. Hilarion’s?The significance of this day – the day of Charles’ death –  was not lost on him. It put him in mind of the Devlin Murders. Some variety of the stone tape theory? But he’d never read of a situation that involved time travel or such an elaborate construction.Maybe he was supposed to save Charles. But if it was the past, and he did save Charles, that meant no future together. No detective agency. He would essentially be removing his best friend from his life. And everyone knew never to interfere with the past, lest you cause a time paradox. So he was supposed to let Charles die over and over? None of this made any blasted sense.After a fruitless several hours of wandering, he recalled only a smear of classrooms, grounds, and featureless faces. Phillip caught up to him half-way through the afternoon and bullied him to their last class. He hadn’t found Charles. Why was he looking for Charles in the first place? They’d only just met and barely spoken.Edwin jolted like waking from a nightmare. They got lost in Crystal’s mind and he had to find Charles and contact Crystal. He flipped over his left hand and scrawled on the inside of his wrist: Find Charles. Edwin bolted to the washrooms before he forgot his first task, ignoring the irritated look from his teacher. The few mirrors were dingy, speckled with age. They likely dated back to his own tenure here. He waited until no one was watching, unsettled by how uncomfortable seeing himself in the wrong clothes – seeing himself at all – was. He set his hand against the mirror.Nothing happened.He tried again, harder, but felt only the resolute chill of unyielding glass under his palm. A boy came into the restroom and Edwin snatched his hand away, hurrying out. He nearly ran over Phillip, who seemed to find him like a homing pigeon, Edwin’s book bag dangling from one hand.“You missed nearly all of class – are you ill?”Edwin twisted his head to read the hall clock, and then did a doubletake when he realized it had no hands. “You’re being dramatic,” he chided absently, as he squinted at the clock. “I wasn’t gone that long.”Phillip gave him a blank, unimpressed look. “Maybe you should go rest after we study.”As if that would fix Edwin’s inability to tell time. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do not want to go to the library today.” As soon as the words were out, he realized his mistake.“I didn’t say we were going to the library.”“Where else would we study?” Edwin said, throwing his hands up.“What else do you have to do?”They went to the library. They went to dinner. Edwin listened to Phillip wax poetic about the merits of Margaret Thatcher. Edwin wasn’t particularly familiar with her politics, but everything out of Phillip’s mouth sounded like complete tosh, so that told him enough.“You know that rest you mentioned? Capital idea,” he said, seizing his book bag. “I’ll go do that now. And yes, I know where the dorms are, I do not need a chaperone.”When he put his key in the lock of room #30, his sleeves rode up, startling him with an ‘es’ that was most certainly his handwriting. Edwin shoved the sleeve further to reveal the entire message. ‘Find Charles.’ The boy from the hallway? Why would he write –His stomach dropped. Crystal’s mind – the repeating days. Charles.He knew the one place Charles should be.  On the numerous flights of stairs to the attic, sets of prints overlaid themselves, heading up and then back down again. They were all the same size, perhaps even from the same one or two pairs of shoes, with an occasional, distinctive smudge on the left big toe, as if the wearer sometimes scraped their foot against the floor. Edwin knew Charles had an accident as a young child that left him with minor foot drop – he’d told Edwin he’d fallen out of a tree and broken his ankle when he was seven. Edwin learned later that a fracture could only cause that kind of damage if it had been left unattended for a good while – the swelling cut off the blood supply and crushed nerves. It took Charles five years as a ghost to unlearn the drop. This Charles still had it.He picked up his pace, taking the last set of stairs two at a time. The attic was much as he remembered it – dusty, dark, and cold. His loafers creaked on the floorboards as he crept through the room.Next to a set of shelves, huddled on a ratty mattress pad under a scratchy wool blanket, was Charles. His eyes were shut, the bruises beneath them stark against his sallow skin even in the meager moonlight.Edwin couldn’t breathe. He knelt down and lowered his ear towards Charles’ chest before realizing that he could feel for a heartbeat. He dipped his hands beneath the blanket, moving two fingers around as he searched for Charles’ carotid pulse. His skin was cool.There was nothing.  FourEdwin spent Mr. Greene’s class scribbling in one of his composition notebooks. He couldn’t avoid the inevitable mind fog that seemed to occur at random, but he could give himself a guide to reorient himself every time it happened. He charted each of the three previous days, detailing every single event he could recall, down to the minutiae of what everyone wore, and marked how they diverged. The notes on his wrist grew.He knew very little: he was a student at St. Hilarion’s again, but it was 1989. Charles was here. Charles would die. Edwin had “arrived” on the day of Charles’ death. Wherever they were, whatever brought them here, it was bringing him back to the same moment over and over again. But it was not a full 24 hours – so what was the trigger?He was now fully convinced he wasn’t in the past. For one, he was alive, and he had been dead in 1989. Neither was he convinced they were inside Crystal’s mind any longer. The existence of a pipeline that moved him from her mind to 1989, turning him human again along the way, was entirely improbable. No, they were somewhere else.Some aspects reminded him of a dream – the strange passage of time, the holes in his memories, his unpredictable half-lucidity. But ghosts couldn’t dream, and even if they could, he’d never heard of a dream like this. He crossed that possibility off his list almost as soon as he wrote it down.Another thought struck him: how many times had he already done this, and didn’t remember? How many times had he realized what was going on and started a page of notes, only for it to be erased the next time?He’d been torn apart a dozen times over in Hell before he accepted that he was regenerating. That he was trapped in an endless loop.He couldn’t stop feeling the still nothingness of Charles’ silent throat under his fingers.In the hallway, Edwin dodged Bobby just in time, and watched with satisfaction as the nasty boy lost his balance and crashed into the wall himself.“You’re quick,” said Charles behind him. “Do you play football? We could use another defender.”The blank politeness was gone; Charles looked at him in a way that was almost a distant cousin to his usual expression. A tiny smile hovered at the edges of Charles’ eyes and Edwin mentally counted to three, waiting for his tight throat to ease up. God, how he missed Charles’ smile.“I do not,” Edwin said. He’d diverged – Bobby had always thrown him into a wall and Charles always told Bobby off. In a flash of inspiration, he fumbled to pull his schedule out of his bag and pretended to read it. “Do you know where classroom 45A is? I have Latin next.”Charles looked down the hallway towards his tight cluster of his friends, who were calling for him. Edwin knew he planned to skip his next class. He tried his best to look pitiable and clueless.Charles’ gaze softened when he looked back at Edwin. “Sod it, they can wait. Come on, I’ll walk you. That’s my next class too.”“I’m Edwin Payne,” he quietly introduced himself, staying close to Charles’ elbow and out of the way of other students. “This is my first day.”“I know, you stick out like a sore thumb,” Charles said affably, then he winced. “Sorry, that wasn’t very nice of me, was it?”“How can you tell?”“It’s…” Charles trailed off, appraising him. “It’s just – I don’t know.”“I look like I don’t belong here,” Edwin suggested.An odd glint came into Charles’ eyes. “Maybe. You actually look kind of f– ” He shook his head rapidly, as if to clear away unwanted thoughts. “Friendly…You look like a friendly bloke.” He pointedly looked away and waved to the classroom in front of them. “Here we are. There’s an empty desk by me.”He was going to say familiar, Edwin was sure of it. The heat death of the universe would occur before someone said Edwin looked friendly.Phillip glared daggers when he came in and saw Edwin and Charles sitting together. Edwin barely glanced at him.Davies gave Edwin his book, and this time, the name stuck in his mind: Metamorphoses.He sucked in a breath – it couldn’t be coincidence that the first time Charles accompanied him to class, they were translating Ovid.Instead of being pleased Charles was finally in his desk, Mr. Davies gave him a suspicious look. He waved down the chitter-chatter after roll call, leaning against his desk at the front of the room like a cat waiting to pounce.“Please turn to page 259. You should have translated up through line 85 last night, bringing us to the end of Orpheus and Eurydice’s tale.”His desk creaked and Edwin realized he was gripping the far edge hard enough to strain the hinges. A memory, he thought. This must all be a memory.Charles’ head was tucked down, like he was trying to escape notice, as he doodled in his notebook. He flicked occasional glances Edwin’s way, who struggled not to spend the entire time with his eyes glued on the other boy.Davies scanned the silent room like he wasn’t really seeing it. Then his beady gaze honed in on Charles. “I’d like to hear from you, Mr. Rowland.”Charles froze like a deer in headlights and slowly paged forward through his notebook. Edwin subtly craned his neck; the margins were crammed with sketches - figures of a man, all long limbs and dark hair. The faces were wholly indistinct. But they almost looked like –Charles cleared his throat. “They went the upward path through the still silence, steep and dark, shadows with thick fog…”  Only decades of hearing Charles’ voice betrayed the slightest quaver in it. Edwin craned his neck further to see Charles’ translation: half a page of crossed-out words and question marks and a few inked expletives. The translation clearly trailed off before the end of line 85. He quite literally hadn’t finished Orpheus and Eurydice. Edwin wanted to laugh. He wanted to weep.Edwin began furiously writing.“Afraid she was gone and excited to see her, ” – Charles’ gaze kept flickering over to Edwin’s notes, likely drawn by the frenetic motion of his pen – “The lover turned his eyes…”Edwin discreetly slid the notebook closer to Charles and tapped the end of his pen against it. He shot Charles a fleeting, sideways look that meant something along the lines of “Here, I’ve finished the passage since I can tell this teacher is a nob who delights in picking on you, but Charles, you really should have done your homework. I love you I love you I love you.”Charles’ eyes crinkled at him and it was like a mouthful of honey. “In an instant she dropped back, and he, unhappy man, stretching out his arms to hold her and be held, clutched at nothing but receding air. Dying a second time, now, there was no complaint to her husband…” Charles stared, frozen, at Edwin’s notes. The silence stretched.He looked up at Edwin with wide, dark eyes, searching his face with an unfathomable expression that Edwin couldn’t place. “What, then,” Charles said, his words chased and hoarse, “Could she complain of, except that she had been loved?”Edwin held his eyes. Please remember, he begged. Please.Davies loudly cleared his throat and Charles snapped upright, his head fixed forward. Edwin could see his eyelashes fluttering like he was trying to blink something away.“Mr. Rowland, I expect you to actually finish the translation next time. Mr. Payne, keep your notes to yourself, unless you both would prefer to spend time in detention.”When the bell rang, Charles turned to him. “Thanks, mate,” he said gratefully. His gaze kept skating across Edwin, like he was looking at two things at once. “Latin kind of goes over my head, I get it all jumbled up. And Mr. Davies always calls on me, it’s like he thinks it’s funny.”“Your translation wasn’t half bad. And Metamorphoses is actually a favorite of mine,” Edwin said. “I’m fluent in Latin. I could help you study, if you like.”Charles’ vacant expression snapped back to him with all the focus of a spotlight flipping on and he beamed. “Would you really? That’s aces.” When they reached the doorway, Charles mindlessly swayed forward, his head inclined toward the side of Edwin’s face, and then snatched himself back, sheepishly scrubbing at the back of his head. He started trotting backwards down the hall. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, hey? Cheers, mate.”After Edwin agreed to let Charles untangle his feelings, Charles had taken to kissing Edwin goodbye every time they parted, no matter how trivial the separation. Just on the cheek – they hadn’t tried to kiss again since the unmitigated disaster of a first time in their office. Edwin didn’t mind. He liked the strength of Charles’ hand on the juncture of his neck and shoulder, the way he leaned into it, let his body entering Edwin’s space like a solar eclipse. He liked the weighty slowness of his lips on Edwin’s cheek or brow. He always lingered.“How did you already make friends with Charles Rowland?” said Phillip beside him. “He’s one of the most popular boys in school.”“We met in the hallway after my last class.”“You should stay away from him,” Phillip said darkly. “His friends - they’re all nobs. If they invite you to hang out, don’t go. You’ll just end up in a lake. Charles isn’t so bad though,” Phillip mused. “He’s not like the others. Still better to avoid them altogether.”Edwin made a vaguely assenting noise.There had to be some purpose to all of this, but whatever it was, he simply couldn’t bear the thought of Charles dying over and over without anyone trying to save him.Charles was still missing from social studies and chemistry. He needed to establish a timeline – he didn’t know where Charles went before the attic and he was worried searching would sink him into a fog. The further he got from Charles, the harder it was to remember where he was and what he was doing there.Edwin barely picked at his dinner and then disappeared before the other boy could protest. Edwin hurried to the attic as quickly as he could without drawing attention. The lantern he first brought Charles was exactly where he remembered finding it. He hid himself in an alcove and waited.He heard the flurry of movement – floorboards creaking under Charles’ feet, the wet smack of his discarded clothes hitting the ground.Edwin lit the lantern and crept from his hiding place.“Who’s there?” Charles demanded warily when the halo of light floated into view.“It’s me,” Edwin said, drawing closer. Charles was down to his vest, shivering under a blanket.Charles visibly relaxed and then chuckled weakly. “Were you craving the smell of mothballs too?”“I saw you go up to the attic,” Edwin lied. “I wanted to see if you were alright.”“Just got into it with my mates, is all,” Charles said with forced nonchalance. “Need a little break from them.”How was he supposed to make Charles understand he was going to die from these injuries? Edwin crouched down next to him. “Are you hurt?”Charles shrugged, and then winced. “Nothing I can’t handle.”The blanket slipped off his shoulder, revealing a thick, red welt surrounded by mottled bruises snaking out from underneath his shirt. It wasn’t fresh. Charles noticed him staring and yanked the blanket back up.“Maybe you should go to hospital,” Edwin hedged.“No!” Charles said immediately. “My dad – no. No hospital. I’ll be fine. Just need to warm up, is all.”“At least let me help you,” Edwin murmured. He set the lantern as close to Charles as he dared without risking the blanket bursting into flames and then sank to the thin mattress, pressing himself against Charles’ side from elbow to knee.Charles surreptitiously scooted closer. “You’re warm.”Edwin lifted one arm. Charles gave him a kind of blank, alarmed look. “Body heat,” Edwin said. He raised a challenging eyebrow.“Yeah, right,” Charles said, his discomfort outweighing whatever misgivings he had about snuggling up next to another boy.He ended curled up against Edwin’s side, legs angled so far over Edwin’s own that he was nearly in Edwin’s lap. He sighed into Charles’ shoulder. It felt like a hundred years since he’d been able to hold Charles like this. His body greedily drank up the weight. The grassy smell of lake water and cold night air clung to Charles.His shivers began to taper off. It could be he was warming up, or it could be the complete opposite. It was a bad sign – when a cold person stopped shivering.“Charles?” he prompted, slightly jostling the other boy. He murmured indistinctly and his lashes fluttered.Edwin took his wrist, ghosting over his pulse point until he found the faint beat, thrumming like a startled bird. As soon as Charles fell asleep, he would run for help.“Will you tell me a story?” Charles mumbled. “Sorry – no, that’s a weird thing to ask.”Edwin let his other hand rest on Charles’ damp curls, drawing them closer together. Charles melted into Edwin’s chest. “Once upon a time, there were two best friends who just so happened to be ghosts…”In the middle of a word, Charles’ pulse vanished.  FiveEdwin left his class with renewed determination to save Charles, even if it meant throttling Phillip or locking him in a closet to escape him. The determination sat resolute as a concrete wall. Having the boy you love die in your arms did that to a person.After his first class, he headed the opposite way he normally did and tipped his head down, pretending to stare at the floor while he watched oncoming students in his periphery.He waited for a familiar pair of loafers and crashed right into Charles. Strong hands caught him by the shoulders, keeping him from falling backward.“I’m terribly sorry,” Edwin gasped, “I didn’t see you there.”“No harm done, mate,” said Charles, smiling at him like Edwin hadn’t just stepped on his perfectly shined shoes. “Hey, do I know you?” Yes. Better than anyone. But he had no explanation to actually share that didn't sound completely insane. Edwin shook his head.Charles tilted his head. “Are you sure? I swear I’ve seen you around.”“This is my first day.”Charles seemed like he was about to protest, but instead he shrugged and then stuck his hand out. “Charles.”Edwin shook it. “Edwin Payne. Might I ask for your assistance?”The corners of Charles’ eyes crinkled up. “You’re awful posh. But yeah.”Edwin pulled out his schedule. “Do you know where classroom 45A is? I have –”“Latin,” Charles finished for him. “That’s my next class. Come on, I’ll walk you.”Edwin kept stealing sideways glances as they walked – he’d never been so comforted by the sight of Charles breathing. “What are you translating?” he asked, before Charles could catch him staring like a fool.“Metamorphoses,” Charles answered cheerfully. “I’m kind of rubbish at it. Hey, that’s one of your favorites, innit?”They both froze.“I don’t know why I just said that,” Charles stuttered. “Brain kind of just stepped out on me I guess.”“Happens to all of us,” Edwin said politely. He slid into the desk Charles pointed out for him before and motioned to the one next to him. “Join me?”“Sure,” Charles mumbled. He immediately withdrew his notebook and flipped to a particular page that was positively crammed with his sketched figures. One reached for a book on a high shelf, his lines as graceful as a ballerina. Another was simply a face turned half in profile, as if the viewer had called his name. The eyebrows were undeniably recognizable. Charles shot Edwin furtive glances before slamming the whole thing shut.The awkwardness of Charles’ comment about Metamorphoses seemed to cling to Charles like condensation on a glass. He was quiet in class, stumbling through his answer to Mr. Davies and failing to notice Edwin’s note.“I’ll see you around,” he murmured to Edwin when the bell rang, before hurrying out.“You should steer clear of him,” Phillip said darkly.“He seems nice enough,” Edwin said distantly. What did it mean that Charles recognized him and remembered his comment about Ovid?“Charles isn’t so bad, but all his friends are pricks. If they invite you to hang out, don’t. You’ll just end up in a lake.”A lake. Charles was soaked in the attic. Just under a mile from school grounds was a small lake fed by a narrow creek that ran along a nature preserve, its depth and treacherous current belied by its placid surface. Charles must have been in the lake before hiding out in the attic. If he’d come that whole way, no wonder he got hypothermia.“Come on,” Phillip said. “Time for our next class.”Edwin suffered through another excruciating library session; today Phillip was complaining about the ills of unions. Edwin gritted his teeth to prevent a snappy lecture about how unions were the only reason employees had eight-hour days instead of working until they dropped dead at an assembly line.“I have a terrible headache,” he interrupted at one point, in lieu of breaking out his more devastating and sparing insults. They’d likely go over Phillip’s head regardless.“I’m going to rest, don’t expect me at dinner.” He simply didn’t give Phillip a chance to protest. He said a hasty goodbye over his shoulder and took off.He dropped his bookbag at his dorm and set out for the lake. He hadn’t been on school grounds in over 30 years, and his memory was spotty – it could take him ages to find water. He picked a direction and began walking until he found the path. He veered off when he heard the sound of running water, tromping through brambles and undergrowth that snagged on his jacket and scratched at his face. When he finally reached the creek, it was long past sunset and the temperature had dropped several degrees. Edwin’s breath puffed in the air.Shouts and jeers rang out in the otherwise quiet forest – even echoing off the naked trees, Edwin could tell they were coming from downstream. Pounding footsteps crunched on gravel and he veered off his trajectory again. He cursed himself for forgetting the lantern, forced to depend on the moon-bathed depths of the forest. Something in the bushes thrashed, growing louder. He crashed right into someone and they both went sprawling. The other person cried out in pain.Edwin crawled over to see Charles shivering and dazed on the ground. There was a fresh gash at the back of his head. It streamed with blood, stained black by the night.“Edwin?” Charles groaned. “What are you doing out here?”“We need to get you inside,” Edwin said. “You’re going to freeze to death in these wet clothes.”Charles didn’t argue and Edwin helped him to his feet. His jacket was sodden and icy. Edwin pulled at the lapel. “Take this off.” He was already shrugging out of his own, the early spring air leeching heat off his body. “You can wear mine.”“I’ll be fine,” Charles chattered.“Charles,” Edwin said sharply. “Put the bloody jacket on.”Charles regarded him for a second, shivers racking his body. He wordlessly let Edwin bundle him into his tan morning jacket.Edwin looped his arm under Charles’ shoulders and looked around himself, but none of the path’s lamplight was visible. “I haven’t been here in so long,” he lamented. “I don’t remember which way is the school.”He cursed his own ineptitude. He should have gotten a map, he should have been paying better attention to the meandering route he took through the reserve. He should have been more careful and not crashed into Charles. The fall may have given him a concussion.“Usually I don’t get lost back here,” Charles said, lightly slurring his words. “My head hurts.” His eyes sagged shut.Edwin gently slapped his cheek. “Stay awake. We have to get out of here.”“Just need a little rest, mate,” Charles said, his body going slack. He sagged and Edwin eased his fall to the ground.“No,” Edwin insisted. “Get back up, we have to get out of the woods.”“Give me a tick.”Charles slumped against Edwin’s legs, eyes slipping shut.“Charles!” Edwin cried, crouching down. He locked both arms around Charles’ chest and tried to drag him, but they barely made it more than a few meters before Edwin had to rest, his back screaming in protest and unused muscles shaking with fatigue.He couldn’t watch this again. He grabbed Charles’ face in both hands. “Stay awake. You have to get up.”A glint from Charles’ neck distracted him. He snatched the key charm from where it pooled in the hollow of his neck. “Your necklace.”Charles suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze sharpened, focused. “You’re always here when I die,” he mumbled. His eyes slipped shut.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

There was a trench in her sand from pacing. Crystal spun on her heel for the 50th time. “What if I went after them?”Iris looked at her like she was very stupid and Crystal wilted.“Okay, maybe not,” she muttered.“You are not like them,” Iris said. “You have a physical body. You are alive. There is no telling what would happen to you if you leapt off the edge or if you could ever return. You don’t even know where they went.”“I know!” Crystal snapped. “I know.” Some indeterminate attempts at meditation, frantic staring into the void, and pacing hadn’t gotten her anywhere. When she tried to cast her mind out beyond the island it simply – didn’t. It was like trying to walk through a mirror. She just rebounded off.She rubbed her temples. “Okay, let’s back up again. Where do my powers come from?”Iris sighed. They’d had this conversation twice already. Crystal kept asking the same questions over and over, as if one of these times Iris would use a slightly different word and crack open a vault of secrets. “None of us are certain…they go back a long way.”“I know that! Farther back than that, before me. Where does any of this,” – she gestured to her tree, to the women, to all around them – “start? God? Is God real? Hell is real and so are demons, ghosts, blah blah blah, so there’s gotta be other stuff out there.”“There are greater powers,” said Iris, “in this universe. They are Endless.”“So like, they’re eternal?”“No,” she said. “The Endless. That’s what they’re called – seven of them, they control many forces, like Death.”Something nagged at her memory. Edwin had told her and Charles about the being he met in Hell, a woman who plucked him out and put him back at will. She’d used the word endless, called herself Despair. When the Night Nurse had seen him write that part up in his report, the tiny, sour purse of her lips was the only indicator that perhaps he was sharing knowledge she didn’t want on record. Crystal had snatched the report up before the Nurse could squirrel it away in the Lost & Found offices, read the whole thing. Niko would have been proud of her, she thought.“Despair…Death.” Crystal said. “Who else? Who are the other ones?”Iris shrugged. “We only know the name of one, he might be the only one with a name – a being who goes by Kai’ckul, in this incarnation.”“Is that where my powers come from? This Kai’ckul guy?” She stumbled over the unfamiliar name.“Perhaps,” said Iris.Abruptly and without warning, Crystal screamed. An angry, torn out thing. And then she let out a long sigh.“Do you feel better?” Iris said, bemused.“Not really. At least I have something to go off of.” Research was in her future, but she didn’t know where to start. Edwin was the mastermind behind all that. She wished desperately Niko was there – her instincts were in the same vein as Edwin. She would know what to do.She didn’t want to dig through dozens of crusty books for crumbs. She wanted to curl up on the sand and close her eyes for 100 years.The office glowed with dim orange light when she returned. She staggered, her vision reeling to a pinprick until she slumped onto the chaise, fumbling for her phone to check the time. She’d lost almost an entire day. “Fuck. Okay pretend Edwin and Charles are here. What would they say?”Charles would tell her to eat dinner. Edwin would be scribbling in his notebook.“His notebook!” She sat up so quickly her head went fuzzy again. She wove drunkenly towards his desk – she really needed to eat something – and snatched the slim book off the surface, right where he’d left it.After 30 minutes of paging through, she was convinced it was like Charles’ backpack – it seemed to hold an infinite number of notes. There wasn’t even an index.Somewhere in the middle, she ran across what looked like a ledger, with a list of names and locations. Some of the entries matched old cases Charles told her about. One name was accompanied by almost three times as many notes as the others. She held the notebook to her face and squinted at the cramped writing.
“Primarily an exorcist. Collector of magical items, has an unusual amount of knowledge about miscellaneous occult and supernatural subjects. From a multi-generational family with old ties to occult and magic. Well-connected, but exceptionally difficult to work with. Expensive. Use as last resort.”
“Johanna Constantine,” she read out loud.  Crystal dropped into a bodega for a stale sandwich, some juice for quick sugar, and the ATM. She hoped the £400 she grabbed would be enough to hire Constantine but not so much she got a call from her parents asking why she was withdrawing tons of cash.She gulped back the last of her Snapple and rang Constantine’s buzzer three times and waited. And waited. After 30 minutes of stewing on the stoop, another resident showed up and she slipped in behind him.Constantine’s flat was on the top floor at the end of a dimly lit hallway. The building might have been beautiful, once upon a time. Crystal pounded on the door until it flew open.“What do you want?” Constantine was a slim, petite woman, maybe in her mid-30s, with silky dark hair and big brown eyes. Pretty, even glaring at Crystal."My name is Crystal Palace, I’ve heard you’re…an expert? On supernatural things?”Johanna gave her a suspicious look. “I don’t consult.” She slammed the door in Crystal’s face.Crystal banged on the door, yelling with her face nearly pressed to the peeling paint. “I’m a psychic that can read your mind. So either I get the information out of you in a way that sucks, or we have a friendly chat and you get £100 out of it.”The door flew open again. “Has anyone told you that you’re annoying?” Constantine said flatly.“I’ve been called way worse things by tons of people. £100 to answer some questions.”Constantine snorted. “£100? Please. £300 for threatening me.”“Sure, fine!” Crystal dug into her pocket for the wad of cash. She slapped it into Constantine’s waiting palm.“I’d like to see you try to read my mind. What are you, 15?”“You have no idea what I can do. I have a demon buried in my mind, I called the goddess Lilith for revenge on a super powerful witch, and I just recently disappeared two ghosts. Don’t fucking try me.”“Yes, sure you’re super powerful, I don’t fucking care. Get in here.” She waved roughly to the interior of her apartment and Crystal shouldered her way inside.It was, to put it nicely, a fucking disaster. “Did you get robbed or something?”“I’m going to charge an extra £100 for every rude thing you say to me.”Crystal only had enough cash left for one rude comment, so she snapped her mouth shut.Johanna waved to the single piece of cleared off furniture, a leather loveseat with a knit blanket scrunched in one corner. “Sit down.” She leaned against the opposite wall. “What do you want to know?”“Everything you know about the Endless.”Constantine immediately and vehemently shook her head. “Don’t tangle with them. You’ll regret it and it’ll cost you more than three hundred bloody pounds.”“It’s too late for that. My powers might like, be drawing from this guy named Kai’ckul.”The other woman ran a weary hand over her face. “Morpheus? You’ve got to be fucking joking me. You’re messing around with the Dream King?”How many names did this fucking guy have? “So you know him.”“Unfortunately,” Johanna snapped. “He’s a stuck-up prick with an ego the size of the sun. You might as well give up now.”“Let me worry about this Kai’ckul-Morpheus guy. Just tell me what you know.”Crystal could feel Johanna’s resistance closing in like a barricade. She was already preparing to send Crystal on her way. She gathered up a wisp of her power and needled it in. She brushed deft hands over the surface of Johanna’s mind, sliding one finger beneath a tight thread, and tugged like the first step of unraveling a knot.“Fine,” Constantine growled. “It’s your fucking funeral, and don’t come crying back here for help when you find the horrors and then they won’t leave you alone. So all the Endless are like, personifications of primordial forces or whatever. Death, Destiny, Despair, Delirium, this other guy no one will talk about, Desire, and Dream.”“Their parents were really into D’s,” Crystal muttered.Constantine barked out a humorless laugh. “You don’t even want to know what’s up with their parents. It’ll break your brain.”She made a mental note to leave that research for Edwin when he returned. “What’s the deal with Morpheus – Dream – whatever his name is?”“His name kind of says it all. He’s like, the collective unconscious – did you know flowers dream? And you don’t want to piss him off.”“It might be too late for that,” Crystal admitted slowly. “I kind of – okay, so I have these ghost friends.”Johanna lifted a brow. “The ones you disappeared?”Crystal suddenly felt very small. “It was an accident. They were in my um – mind island,” – God, she needed to think of a name that didn’t sound like Steven Moffat came up with it – “and they sort of fell off. The island. Well. One of them got yanked off and the other went after him.”“Not your biographer,” Johanna said, twirling her finger in a winding motion, “don’t care about your life story. Pick it up.”“They disappeared. Where do you think they went?”Johanna looked at the ceiling like she was praying for patience. “They could be anywhere. There’s a million dimensions and planes of existence.”“Okay but I have these women in my mind – my ancestors – and they said –”“Great, she’s insane,” Johanna muttered to herself.“My ancestors,” Crystal repeated, louder, pointedly ignoring the interruption, “they mentioned Kai’ckul by name. It’s the only connection I’ve got.”Crystal tugged at the thread again, and then the one next to it, testing the tension. Johanna’s mind was loosening up like a new pair of shoes after a long night out.“Assuming your powers are related to Morpheus and your ghost victims went somewhere related to him – huge if’s, by the way – then they might be in the Dreaming.” She gestured vaguely. “It’s like his kingdom or whatever. I don’t know how it works, to be honest. Pretty much everything I learned I got out of his boyfriend when he gets too drunk and starts rambling. Sometimes he doesn’t make a lot of sense.”“The personification of dreams has a fucking boyfriend?”Constantine snorted. “Tell me about it. He’s just like, a guy too. An immortal guy, but still just some bloke. No powers or anything. He’s not so bad though. Don’t know why he fell in love with Dream, he could do loads better.”“Do you think he might help me out?”Constantine hummed uncertainly. “You could try. Here…” She rummaged through her desk until she found a pen and a crumpled envelope. “He owns this pub called the New Inn,” she said, smoothing the envelope and jotting something down. “Tell him I sent you, it might make him more helpful.” She handed the envelope to Crystal; the name Hob Gadling was accompanied by an address scrawled on it in chicken-scratch.“Figure out how to rescue your friends and do it quick. If Dream finds them – phhht.” She made a poofing gesture. “Hopefully, he’d just hand them over to Death, but whatever he does, you’ll never see them again.”“What? Why wouldn’t he just send them back?”Constantine shrugged again. “Maybe he hates ghosts. Maybe he’s got a strict no-spirits policy. Who knows. He’s a territorial asshole. Think of him as a really powerful, really crabby cat. And your friends are mice.” Johanna headed for the door and opened it – the message clear.“Oh, and whatever happens, do not use any of your powers on Hob. Dream will be able to tell and he’ll go mental. He’s petty, he sent his ex-girlfriend to Hell after they had a fight.”Crystal blanched. “Jesus.”“Yeah,” she said. She pasted on a blithe smile. “Good luck!”  She had to make a list. Edwin and Charles always made lists. She cleared off the white sintered stone table in their breakfast nook and grabbed a pink whiteboard marker.
Wait for the boys to come back
Find Morpheus
She scribbled out both lines and started a new section.
Option 1: Trust the boys to figure out how to come back. Pro: Easy. Con: Might never happen, will go insane waiting.

She scribbled out that section as well. She rubbed at the crossed out sections with her fist to erase them and realized she’d been writing directly onto the table.She checked her watch, did some math. Redid the math, counting on her fingers. She’d been awake for almost 35 hours.
To do list:

SLEEP
Wikipedia Morpheus.
Read all books in office re Endless
Go to pub (Hob) – no powers!!
Replace kitchen table
She didn’t have time to get new furniture.
Replace kitchen table Buy tablecloth
She mindlessly smeared through one of the discarded sections, buffing it out into cloud-poofs with her thumb, and thought of Niko.Pink and Niko – they always went together, she mused, picking up the marker again and idly drawing a heart. Pink and the igloo dreams – lately, her mind had been linking those things up as well, although she didn’t know why. Whiteboard marker squeaked against the glossy stone. And the igloo dreams made her think of sleeping, until her mind was all: pink – Niko – dreams – sleeping – igloo – cold – pink – dreams – Niko.There was a snapping sound, like a lightbulb pop. She stopped drawing hearts.She wasn’t drawing hearts. She’d drawn one heart.Over and over, across her discarded lists, in the margins, scrawled backward and forward, the words layered over themselves:
REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBERREMEMBERREMEMBERREME

REMEMBER BMERREMEMBERREMEMBERREMEMERREBMEMERREMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER
She dropped the marker and clattered back from the table, dread crawling up her throat. She frantically scrubbed at the words – scrubbing and smearing until her hands were covered in hot pink marker dye and the tabletop was just a hot pink cloud. Like a soulmate aura.She fled the kitchen.She just needed to sleep. People saw and did all kinds of crazy shit when they didn’t get enough.  There were no snow and lights waiting for her that night. Instead she saw:Edwin standing in front of a classroom, wearing an old-school university uniform. Charles crouched on the bank of a dark lake, his head almost between his knees, sipping a beer and surrounded by a gang of boys she didn’t recognize. Edwin hurrying down a school hallway. Charles sketching in a notebook. Edwin and Charles laughing in a library. Charles –Wetdarkcold running and lungs aching and pain exploding across his skull screaming at the strange boys to stay back Edwin gasping for air hand around his windpipe boot on his back his cheek ground into cold dirt Charles underwater Edwin cradling Charles’ limp body Charles screaming Charles screaming Charles screaming –They went off behind her eyes like camera flashes. She jolted awake, rolled over, and vomited pulpy sandwich and watery pink Snapple straight onto the floor.She smeared the vomit off her clammy skin with the back of one hand and collapsed in a sweaty heap against her pillow.Wherever the fuck they went, it sucked. How could a place called something as magical as The Dreaming be so fucking awful? Dread and anxiety stewed in her stomach like the world’s worst soup. She counted off while she inhaled – 1 2 3 4 – hold 1 2 3 4 – exhale 1 2 3 4 5 6. And again. And again.She would find them. She would get them out.  The Night Nurse found Crystal in their office mid-afternoon, hunched over a pile of books, empty cups of takeout coffee and granola bar wrappers littering the floor.“Ms. Palace? It’s 3 pm on a Monday; time for our weekly meeting. Where are Charles and Edwin?”“Oh thank god you’re here,” Crystal said, launching into a rapid-fire summary of the last however-the-fuck-many hours. “So can you help me get them out? Of this Dreaming place?”The Night Nurse ran her teeth over her lips. “Crystal, when was the last time you bathed or slept? Or wore real clothes?”Crystal plucked at her sweatpants and hoodie and then gingerly ran a hand over her frayed curls and grimaced at the waxy roots. “I must look like I’m losing it.”“You rather do, I’m afraid.”“Getting Charles and Edwin back is more important. I’m doing research.”The Night Nurse craned her neck to look at Crystal’s glowing laptop; the screen showed an empty Google doc.“Research isn’t my strong suite,” she mumbled, snapping the lid shut.Placidly, matter-of-fact, the Night Nurse said, “If Charles and Edwin are in the Dreaming, I can’t get them out. There is no combination of permits or forms that would allow it. Only Death herself has the authority to ask.”“What if I just went in there and got them? Like a heist.”The Night Nurse grimaced. “It doesn’t work like that. Technically, you go there every night. All dreaming humans do. I imagine manipulating a dream to be exceedingly difficult, if not outright impossible.”“But I’m…psychic.”They looked at each other in tense silence. “Yes,” the Night Nurse said, her tone suddenly sharp with focus. “Psychic.”The Nurse was asking Crystal something. Something she did not want to talk about just then.“I want to talk to Death,” Crystal said.The Nurse made a sound like a broken trumpet. “Out of the question.”“I don’t care how many forms or whatever we have to fill out – I need to tell her not take Charles and Edwin.”“In this fantastic, theoretical world you’ve invented where the Notary agrees to your request, it would take months, perhaps years, to move that request to the correct departments and up the chain of command.”Crystal didn’t have that. She had a pub that was open again in a little over 24 hours and nothing else.“I agree you should try to recover Charles and Edwin from wherever they are – it would be a shame if their spirits were lost forever – but if Death does take them to the afterlife, then that’s really not so bad.” The Night Nurse said it in such an even, soothing tone that it took a second for Crystal to parse.“What the fuck – ‘it would be a shame?’” Her voice climbed. “A fucking shame if they were literally destroyed forever or – or, they never came back and we never see them again?”The Night Nurse shrugged. “Such is life. People live, they die, they pass on.”Crystal’s power gathered in her limbs like the electrostatic crackle in the air before a lighting strike. She realized she was on her feet with fists clenched like she was about to throw a punch. “I thought you cared about them – we trusted you.”The Night Nurse’s stone features softened a fraction. “I do – in my own way. Crystal, when you live as long as I have – sometimes these things just happen. It is unfortunate, but inevitable. Best to simply accept it.”“Well I’m just a fucking human with just another 60 years left so ‘these things’ are kind of a big fucking deal to me.” Crystal hadn’t tried to get into the Night Nurse’s mind – her soul – whatever the fuck she had inside the woman-suit – since Port Townsend and the horrible encounter with a bunch of screaming baby skeletons. But her body buzzed with the need to do something.Pink sparks zipped off Crystal’s fingertips. She touched a glancing blow off the surface of the Night Nurse’s mind, like a warning shot.The Nurse took a step back. Crystal had never seen that expression on the other woman’s face before. It looked a lot like fear. It was intoxicating.“You need to leave,” Crystal said lowly. “Now.”“I’ll see you in a week,” the Nurse said, strangely muted and cold. Then she was gone in a snap of orange fire.Crystal stared at the spot where she’d stood until her body stopped shaking.  A long day of digging online left Crystal with nothing but a head stuffed with jumbled stories about Greek and Roman mythology. Searching for “Kai’ckul” had been even worse – sending her down rabbit holes into the mythology of a dozen different African cultures. She’d even gone to some of Edwin’s favorite magic bookstores, but they’d all turned up jack-shit.On her way home, her steps slowed as she passed a narrow storefront tucked between a vape shop and a deli. The faded, janky sign hanging from rusted wrought iron proclaimed Eye of Horus: For All Your Magical Needs. Two grimy windows were covered with streaky black paint.Edwin avoided this place like the plague. He’d insinuated on more than one occasion that it supplied the worst kind of magic items to the worst kind of people. As far as she could tell, it functioned as a front for some kind of magical drug operation. He’d also called the shop owner a “sharp-toothed bloodsucker” and Charles added that he was “a real creep.” She wasn’t sure if he was an actual vampire and she didn’t want to ask.The funk of cheap incense, mildew, and dust smacked her in the face as soon as she opened the door, underlined with the faint scent of rot. Everywhere she looked was like a shitty magical I Spy page – piles of dusty crystal balls, sun-faded tarot deck displays, half-empty crusty herb jars. She wound through the cramped aisles until she found what she was pretty sure was the cashier desk. She waited at the empty counter, deliberating whether she should just go, when a gaunt, sallow man of indeterminate age appeared from the back room.“Hello,” he said in a stilted monotone.“Um. Hi.”“Welcome to the Eye of Horus,” he added, elongating the final ‘s’ until it was almost a hiss. His canines were just slightly too sharp. His enormous, dark eyes roved over her body and left her feeling slimy in their wake. “What can I do for a lovely morsel like you?”If this guy wasn’t an actual vampire, he sure was committed to the bit.“I need something to help me with my dreams.”“Ah,” he said, pointing to a shelf off to her right. “We have a lovely collection of potions to encourage dreamless sleep, healthful rest, to wake up more youthful looking – whatever you need.”“No,” she said. “I need something to help me lucid dream.”His gaze sharpened and he gave another once over, more appraising and calculated.“And not some snake oil crap,” she added, “I need something that will really work.”“I can see you are a serious customer,” he said. “We do have something that is particularly effective. Are you prepared to pay the cost?”“I have money.”He fixed her with a long look, letting the silence stretch. “Not money. We don’t offer refunds, and we could not give one to you anyway.”“You promise it will work?”His thin lips curled into a Cheshire grin. “Undoubtedly. You smell of power. The potion will certainly take.”“Is it…dangerous?”His grin turned sharp. “Would it matter if it was?”She thought of the pile of books in their office. The empty Google document where research was supposed to be. The Night Nurse saying, “people live, they die, they pass on.” Her ancestors shrugging their shoulders to question after question. Useless. They were all useless. She thought of Edwin’s dirt-smeared face, Charles’ watery screams. Crystal was useless too.“No,” she said. “It wouldn’t. I’ll take it.”“Wait here.”The man returned with an unmarked cardboard box and opened the lid with a flourish, displaying nine small corked vials in clear glass organized between dividers. She took one out, trying not to think about the hungry way the shop owner tracked her movements. A viscous, light blue liquid shimmered in the bottle as she tilted it this way and that. Each vial had a small label on the back with microscopic print. She squinted at the words and then her eyes widened. “This says it can be highly addictive.”“Indeed it can, for certain individuals. But I guarantee success. You will be totally aware of your dreams and wake up with perfect recall.”She weighed the potential for turning into a drug addict against the promise of lucid dreaming. Between months of the igloo and now images of Edwin and Charles, something fucky was going on with her dreams. The answer felt like it was playing stay-away with her, hiding in her periphery, darting off each time she turned her head. It was making her insane.“How much does it cost?” she said, still deliberating. She looked back up to find the creepy shop owner far closer than he was before, pressed up against the counter and leaning towards her.“Just a taste,” he said. This close, Crystal could tell his irises were such a deep red they were almost black, the pupils elliptical, like a snake. The rot smell was coming from him.“A taste of what?”He grinned again, displaying his yellowed teeth, far sharper than before. “I think you know. Your power…” he sucked in a giant lungful of air, his eyes fluttered. “It’s exquisite. I simply must try it.”Creepy fucker, Crystal thought, her stomach churning. He wanted to get up close to her? Fine. He didn’t know what he was asking for.“Just do it,” she said, lip curling in disgust as she held her arm out.He didn’t grab it like she thought he would, instead bending over slowly, hands braced on the counter. He took his time. Crystal wanted to grab him by the throat and squeeze.Just as his yellowed teeth indented the thin skin of her wrist, she clapped her other hand over the back of his head. Her eyes went white.His mind felt like a pit of rotting worms. Black and slimy things with too many legs and pinching jaws crawled and slithered in the muck. She staggered and gagged, tiptoeing around blood-sodden memories of sobbing women, tied up, pinned down, in chains – No no no please don’t please stop please I’ll do anything. The memories spun past, going back and back and back. She could identify at least five decades. She pushed past all of it and found what she was looking for – assurance that the potion was legitimate and wouldn’t just leave her feeling like she’d OD’ed on DMT and shrooms.Her mouth was dry and sticky when she grit out, “You’re going to give me this fucking potion for free.” And then, “When I leave, you’ll count to 100, and then you’ll walk out of this shop into the sunlight and you’ll never go back in.”She shoved away from him, her stomach doing wild somersaults. She swiped the box off the counter and lurched for the door, clipping a metal shelf covered in trinkets with her shoulder on the way. She stumbled out of the shop, barely checking right and left before dashing across the street and ducking into an alley. Her heart pounded, her clothes stuck to her body with clammy, chill sweat. She didn’t know if sunlight actually killed vampires, but she had to try. She counted to 100.The shop door opened. The man walked out, immediately cowering, throwing up his hands to cover his face from the blazing sunlight. It was pointless.Smoke rose off his skin, sizzling like a steak on a grill. A low, animal whine began in the back of his throat and rose higher, until the bones in her face started to ache. Customers from nearby shops were running out onto the sidewalk, passerby’s started gasping and screaming. Someone down the sidewalk from her was calling 999, struggling to explain what was happening to the dispatcher, his other hand clapped over his ear to block out the bone-rattling whine. “There’s a man on fire!” he said, his eyes fixed on the spectacle across the street.The vampire’s arms were blackened now, the fire spreading down his body. They charred, they cracked. The wind changed, blowing a cloud of rotting meat smoke right into her face.The top of his head crumbled to ash, and then his arms, and then his shoulders – down down down, until he was just a smoking, flaming torso.Crystal turned away, the potion box clutched to her chest, feet pounding pavement as she zig-zagged between alleys until she couldn’t hear the screaming anymore.She put her back to a brick wall and slowly slid down until her ass hit the ground. She put her head between her knees and tried to breathe. Every inhale brought a lungful of the rancid smoke from the vampire’s incineration – it was in her hair, in her clothes, on her skin. She gagged and spat up mouthfuls of stringy yellow bile until her stomach was just cramps and dry heaves.Crystal Palace – psychic, detective, reformed mean girl, and now murderer.And future drug addict, she added with a hysterical, gasping laugh.She imagined the looks on the boys’ faces when she told them she’d convinced a vampire to set himself on fire. Charles would ask if she was okay with nothing but 100% genuine concern in his puppy dog eyes. Edwin would reprimand her for the unnecessary risk, but finish it with a quiet, satisfied smile. Getting that smile out of Edwin was better than any compliment she’d ever gotten from her parents or teachers.She missed them so fucking much.  Crystal took a scalding shower, scrubbing at her skin again and again until she couldn’t smell the roasted vampire anymore. She ordered Chinese takeout and dutifully ate what anyone would consider a full meal.With her curls tucked up into a silk bonnet and her sheets clean, she sat cross-legged on her bed, hands poised over her knees in padmasana. It made her feel like a tool but it was one of the few things that actually helped her stay calm. Every dream, she got closer to the igloo. She was tired of waking up with only a smear of images, like a Monet painting – ice and fire and pink. Tonight she would go inside, assuming she wasn’t assaulted by another series of nightmares or visions or whatever the fuck what happening to the boys. Something had to go right.She turned a vial of the potion in one hand, wishing she’d thought to ask the shop owner how much she was supposed to take. For a moment, she wished she was religious; she could really use someone to pray to for protection. With a deep breath, she uncorked a vial and tossed it back like a drink, grimacing at the oily residue it left in her mouth, and then at the taste.“Fucking bubblegum flavored,” she muttered. She flipped off her light.  Everything was too bright. The snow glared like a migraine, the Aurora Borealis flared overhead like fireworks, the cold stung like a million needles jabbing into her skin.She knew she was in a dream. She knew she was supposed to get inside the igloo. At least that damn potion worked.The igloo rose up in front of her, the glowing light inside pulsed like a heartbeat.She hesitated for just a moment, heart pounding, and brushed numb fingers over the icy surface. This was it. After months of the same damn dream driving her nuts, she was here. She ducked inside.A fire blazed in the center, ringed by three figures. Her jaw dropped when she saw Litty and Kingham. They weren’t two inches tall anymore – they were full-sized, honest-to-god people. They both gave her bored, unimpressed looks.“The fuck?” she blurted out. “What are you – that means…”Her gaze snapped to the third figure where they sat opposite of the fire with knees pulled up to their chest, wrapped in a pink parka that concealed their face.The fur-lined hood raised their head. Hair like moonlight spilled out, framing the heart-shaped face, the high cheekbones. Sable eyes blinked at her, the fire scattering orange flickers across their surface like they were lit from within.“Oh my god,” Crystal breathed. “Niko!” She threw herself across the igloo, heedless of the fire, and launched herself into Niko’s frame, knocking them both against the wall.She couldn’t think, she could barely breathe from the flood of relief. She was right, she’d known Niko was still out there, and she was right. Her powers had been drawing them together almost every night for months. She was right.She was blubbering and sobbing and getting snot and tears all over and she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop saying Niko’s name over and over.“Niko,” she cried. “Oh my god, Niko. I found you.”The other girl was stiff in her arms. Crystal pulled away. The perfect bow of Niko’s lips were stretched and pinned down, her eyebrows drawn together until they creased her smooth forehead. She had no idea what misery Niko had been through but it was over now. She pulled Niko close again, squeezed her harder, one hand stroking down her back.“It’s okay,” she soothed. “I’m here now, we’re going to figure this out.” She buried her face in Niko’s neck, the skin there softly warm from the shelter of her long hair and parka. She smelled like her shirt used to – sweet and floral – mixed with smoke and winter. Just like Crystal remembered, and just a little different. She wasn’t imagining this. She could feel it in her chest.Niko still hadn’t spoken. She was barely moving, just sniffling quietly into Crystal’s hair. She pulled away and cradled Niko’s face in her hands. “Niko? What’s wrong? I finally found you. I’m going to get you out.”Niko’s mouth twisted and wobbled. A tear crested her lashline, sluggish in the cold. “You always say that.”