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I touch my bare wrist. The skin there feels wrong without her watch. I remember it on her thin, pale hand. Gold against bone. Elegant. Too loose by the end.
After her death, my father was constantly drunk out of his mind, wandering through cemeteries. One day, he couldn’t take it anymore. He went to her grave and shot himself in the head. I didn’t touch his body. Maybe I should have. Maybe I would understand him better if I did. Reliving your father’s death over and over again is a special kind of insanity, and even I’m not that far gone.
So, there I was. Left with two tombstones, one empty apartment and debts my father made while drinking, gambling and losing his mind.
He was losing to life.
Maybe I am too.
Maybe I’m no better than him. Fighting the same demons. Being a necromancer is a nightmare. Death speaks to us from the day we’re born, and every time we use the gift it cracks us a little further.
My face starts itching. I touch my nose, and blood comes away on my fingers. Stardust.
A knock at the door.
I nearly drop the picture frame.
The bedroom door closes behind me as I go to the front door. The only person it could be is Ezra, but he knows better. He knows I will crawl out when I’m ready. I open the door and see a towering figure. The hooded demon. The familiar frame that’s haunting me.
“I brought you soup,” Nero says. His black hair drops over his forehead, and his blue eyes shine in the sunlight.
I blink. “Soup?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My mother used to say hot soup is good for everything.”
His mother. For a second, I almost forgot he wasn’t created in a lab somewhere. I take the soup and step back to let him in. We go to the open space kitchen, and I turn off the TV in the living room.
I set the jar on the kitchen table and sit on one of the stools. Nero leans against the wall by the fridge. He wears a hoodie and gym shorts which makes him look almost like a normal person. The shorts reveal one of his legs covered in tattoos, dark ink over hard muscle. I have never seen him like this, just a casual monster in my kitchen.
“You stopped visiting clubs,” he says. “Haven’t seen you.”
“I needed a break.”
“I wanted to check on you.” His gaze moves over my face with care. “What happened there, with Julian… When you touched him… You looked in pain.”
“I was.” I look at the soup. “I am.”
“How long does it last?”
“Forever.”
Dead silence. We look at each other across the kitchen.
“That’s why you take stardust?” he says.
“Let’s not do this.”
“What?”
“You asking these questions.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about this. Especially with you.”
