Chapter 4: Coffee Can't Fix Everything

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There’s none of the usual fogginess when I wake up this time. My eyes open and I spring out of bed so fast the covers briefly wrap around my legs. I struggle with them for a moment — I snarl at them, actually, as absurd as that sounds — and then bolt out of my room. My shoulder hits the door on the way, but I ignore it. I’m inventorying things in my head. There’s a block of knives in the kitchen. I’m pretty sure I still have that bottle of pepper spray my mom bought me buried somewhere in the coat closet near the front door. Everything is crystal-clear and coming at me fast, and my brain is clocking a million miles a minute.

Damn, I think. Where was this when I was being kidnapped?

I don’t see Lucas anywhere, or his creepy book. I stand for a moment just outside of my room, peering into the light of what I take to be early morning streaming through the window to my left. My dining room is in front of me, with my trusty table in the middle, one of the legs propped up by an old organic chemistry textbook. There’s a simple divider between the dining room and the kitchen. I’ll go for the knives. The knives are closer…

“I believe we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

I screech. It’s practically a banshee wail. Whirling around, I hit my thigh on the edge of the table, wince, and then skitter to a stop, panting.

Lucas frowns at me. The expression is comically disapproving. “I’m rather put out that you’re so eager to stab me, especially since I’ve gone to so much trouble to get you back on your feet.”

I blink at that. Drawing a deep breath through my nose, I let it back out again slowly, forcing my shoulders to relax. Then I clear my throat and say:

“Do the magic thing again.”

He stares at me, his brows furrowing. “What?”

“Do magic. Make something float. Levitate. Spit fire. I don’t care, just show me something.”

Tilting his head to the side, I can see amusement twitching in the corners of his mouth. It pisses me off for some reason, but I don’t acknowledge it. “…Why?”

“So I know I’m not going crazy,” I say. In spite of myself, I realize I’ve gritted my teeth.

He gives a shrug. “Well enough then.” He stretches a hand out towards me, and I feel an abrupt pressure at the small of my back. It isn’t painful — it’s as if someone has put their palm against the base of my spine. Hell, it even feels a bit…warm. I begin moving forward, scooting over the floor, the tiles cool against my bare feet.

“Not ME!” I shriek. “Something else.”

This asshole. I swear I’m gonna throw him out a window.

The pressure stops, and I stagger for a moment, imbalanced. He lets out a soft chuckle. “You’re a terribly strange woman, you know. And so hostile. Not a minute out of bed, and you’re plotting how best to kill me.”

My jaw drops open. That inkling of a feeling I’d gotten before now roars to the surface, knocking me upside the head.

“Holy shit,” I breathe. Is he reading my mind?

“In a manner of speaking,” he replies, “Yes.”

I’m glad I’m already in my living room. I grab a chair and sit down in it with a hard thump before I have the chance to fall over.

“…Well, stop it,” I say. My voice sounds piddly and pathetic, so I clear my throat and look up at him, trying to sound firm. “Stop it.”

“I cannot.”

“Why,” I say, grinding out the word, “The hell not?”

Lucas holds up a finger to me, signaling me to hold that line of thought. “Lydia. Have you noticed anything different since you woke?”

I stare at him, saying nothing. He lets out the most longsuffering sigh known to man.

“Your back, Lydia. Do you feel any pain?”

The question derails my train of thought. I blink, then unceremoniously reach my hand up and plunge it down the back of my shirt. My fingers skim unbroken skin. No sign of stitching. No hint of anything but a raised, puckered scar.

The stab wound has healed.

“I understand that this,” he gestures at himself, “this man tried to kill you. Your hostility is understandable, as is your confusion. But I think I’ve earned the right to at least try to explain what is happening. Don’t you?”

I draw my hand out of my shirt, staring at my fingers. I’m not sure what I expect to find. Blood, maybe?

I want to argue. I want to demand he get out of my apartment. I want him to leave so things start making sense again. Basic things like the fact that gravity doesn’t randomly let things float in the air. Like the fact that demons don’t exist.

Instead of any of that, I reply: “Fine. But I need some coffee first.”

I stand up before he can respond. Moving towards the kitchen, I begin warming up my coffee maker, dumping fresh grounds into a filter. The smell of it calms me somewhat. It’s a sense of normalcy that I can cling to. I was never really a fan of coffee until Nathan got me into it. The man’s a genius with coffee. Wants to open his own shop when he graduates.

The thought of Nathan puts an idea in my head. I click the carafe into place, then whirl on Lucas, nodding my head to myself.

“Where’s my phone?” I ask him.

He’s leaning a hip against the dividing wall, watching me with a kind of self-possession that is at once attractive and circumstantially infuriating. “Your phone.”

“Yes. My phone. I need it. Do you know where it is?”

He appears to consider for a moment, then wafts a hand nonchalantly through the air. I think I see a shadow pass over his eyes for an instant, but it’s difficult to be sure. Suddenly my phone is floating in front of me, weightless as air, lighting up with a picture of my cat, Purrcifer.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I snatch the phone out of the air, flip open the camera, and take a photo of Lucas Hallowsworth. He doesn’t appear bothered — in fact, he smiles, cheesing. I notice there’s a dimple in his left cheek. In spite of myself, my heart skips a beat in my chest.

Stop it, I think, biting down on the reaction harshly. He’s not that hot, you’re just in a dry spell.

“I could fix that—”

“Shut up.” I sift through my texts, find Nathan’s number, upload the photo, and hit send.

It shouldn’t take long. Nathan is completely attached to his phone. He’s obsessed with the thing. If he isn’t posting to some social media or other, he’s playing one of his time-sink games…

My phone buzzes. Nathan’s reply comes through.

Omg. Tell me where you found him this instant. I want one.

Relief hits me like a ton of bricks. My knees feel weak. “Oh thank god,” I breathe. “Oh thank god.”

Nathan sends another message on the heels of the first.

Don’t you dare hold out on me, lyds. Spill.

My fingers fly over the keypad. Tell you later. I set the phone down and lean back against the counter, rubbing my hands over my face.

“If I might interject,” Lucas says, keeping his words light, “What on earth was that about?”

Lifting my head again, I turn around and pour myself a cup of coffee. No creamer today. I want it searing and bitterly black enough to bite. It’s been that kind of week.

“I was making sure you were really here,” I answer, brushing past him. For some reason the confirmation of his solidity has done wonders to calm my nerves. He’s really here. Which means I haven’t hallucinated anything. Everything up to this point has been real. It’s actually happened.

Pretty telling that you’re more afraid of going crazy than the supernatural, I think, but then squash that thought. Save it for later. Now’s not the time.

I move into the living room. I know Lucas is following me — I can hear his shoes on the floor. Come to think of it, he’d found a change of clothing. I take a seat on my beat up pleather futon and peer up at him. He’s found a change of clothes somewhere. Dark blue button-down shirt, black, slim-fitting pants. Dress shoes. No wonder Nathan was drooling over him.

“So,” I say, holding my coffee close to my chest. “You’re a demon.”

He smiles broadly at me. His teeth are ridiculously perfect. “In a manner of speaking, yes. I am an entity one might call a demon.”

“That sounds like legalese for ‘not really, but you’re too stupid to understand the fine print.’”

He laughs. In spite of myself, I have to acknowledge the sound is pleasant. I can’t quite fit the image of creepy-cult-dagger-wielding Lucas with business-casual-in-my-living-room Lucas. It’s like they’re two entirely different people.

Because they are.

“I assume you’re familiar with the idea of ghosts.”

I just look at him flatly. He puts up his hands in a placating gesture, then continues.

“When a person dies, the essence of who they are is supposed to disperse into something called the Aether. Think of it as a vast well of memory, a sort of primordial spiritual soup.” He pauses, peering at me as if to make sure I’m following.

I take a long sip of my coffee. Clearly, I’m going to need it.

“Sometimes an essence will remain tethered to the mortal plane. It’s what leads to hauntings — a confused spirit, halfway caught between this world and the next. Believe me, the chaos of the Aether would be enough to confuse anyone.”

“This is starting to sound like the script from a cheesy ghost tour,” I say dryly.

He cocks his head to the side. “A what?”

“…Nevermind. Just. Get to the part where you come in.”

“Over the years, certain people have found ways to reach into the Aether and pluck spirits out. The name for those spirits changes depending on where you are and what time period you’re in. Banshees. Djinn. Demons.” He offers a shrug. “The people with that talent will often put it into words, and for whatever reason, those words serve as a tether. They draw a spirit out of the Aether, and from that point on, that spirit is bound to that book.”

I purse my lips at this, trying to take it in. It’s not that the idea is complicated — it’s just that different mythologies have so many different nuances. It’s hard for me to swallow that they all come from the same root phenomenon.

“So you’re actually a ghost.”

He shrugs. “Technically, though I’ve been more than that for quite some time, as I understand it.”

“…As you understand it?”

He grimaces. Damn, even with that expression on his face he’s handsome. “As I mentioned, the Aether is a…very confusing place. I’ve been there for quite some time. It will take a while for me to fully remember certain…aspects. Specifically those of my past.”

I let those words hang between us for a moment, my own brows puckering. “Right. So even if I swallow all of this, there are a few things I’m finding hard to believe.”

“Such as?” he asks. He finally moves to take a seat in the chair across from me — it’s a threadbare thing, with scratch-marks in the armrests from Purrcifer’s relentless attacks. I haven’t seen him around yet — but he’s a pretty shy cat. He’s probably hiding from Lucas. He has an automatic feeder and a water fountain, so he should have been fine for a few days without me.

I clamp down on that bit of niggling new worry and continue my interrogation.

“I’m not exactly well versed in all the different mythologies, but you’ve just painted them as a monolith. I’m pretty sure different cultures have wildly different takes on life after death. Hell, half the time I don’t even think their spirits were originally people. Djinn weren’t.”

“Neither were demons, supposedly,” he points out. I just squint at him, and he makes that placating motion with his hands again. “It’s a fair thing to point out. The writer of the book also has the ability to shape the spirit, to a certain extent. There’s something at the core of the spirit that relates to whatever creature they’re trying to summon — that’s why they’re pulled from the Aether in the first place — but you should think of a spirit like particularly stubborn clay. Malleable, to a certain extent. Different books, written with different intentions, have different effects on what manifests.”

“…So if I wrote a book about summoning a unicorn, what. That’s what I would get?”

He laughs. “I suppose you could try to find a vessel for that. It may work. I can’t say I’ve seen it, personally.” He leans forward, forearms on his knees. “Most spirits need a host if they’re going to stay outside of the Aether for any length of time. Most.” His lips twist, and I get the feeling he’s thinking about something distasteful. “Unless they happen to be particularly powerful.”

I blink at that. “…What happens then?”

He smiles faintly. “The results of that do not tend to be pretty.”

I suck in a breath. I should pursue that line of questioning — I know I should — but my head is pounding from caffeine withdrawals and I don’t feel like pulling teeth at the moment. I make a note of it and promise myself I’ll grill him more later before switching tracks.

“Who are you, then?”

He peers at me questioningly, tilting his head.

“If you’re really some dead guy, I mean. What was your name?”

He narrows his eyes. I can’t tell if the expression is scrutiny, or if he’s struggling to remember. He runs his tongue over his lips and replies: “I’m afraid I’m not yet certain.”

I feel an odd sensation, like a breath across the back of my neck. I feel the hair on my arms lift up, glancing around behind me, frowning. No one’s there.

“Something wrong?” Lucas asks. I look back at him. His features are smooth and placid, giving nothing away. For some reason, the calm makes me suspicious.

“You don’t remember your name.”

He gives me a smile, one corner of his mouth quirking higher than the other. I see a thin line of perfectly white teeth. Then I feel the whisper again — breath on skin, a soft skittering across the hairs on my arms.

I’m not sure how, but instinctively, I realize that he’s lying. A moment of silence passes between us. Two. He’s unbothered. Nonchalant. He crosses his ankle over his knee and studies me in turn, waiting.

The feeling becomes more pronounced. I close my eyes, feeling the still-hot coffee mug between my hands, smelling it in the air. I filter out those senses and try to whittle everything down to that sensation. The breath on my skin becomes more pointed. It shrivels down to a pinprick. I picture myself following it, hand over hand, moving my way up like a climber with a belay line. I don’t know what I’m doing, not on any cerebral level, but somehow I know I’m getting somewhere. It’s instinctual, bone-deep. The knowing you feel when someone is following you just out of sight.

And then I get to the end of the tether, and I hit a wall.

It’s abrupt. I almost want to twitch a hand up and rub my nose, make sure it isn’t broken, but I’m bogged down in it now and I’m too curious to want to pop back out again. I begin feeling around the blockade, trying to figure out how to get past it. I’m certain that if I could just get beyond it, if I could just…

A sound wrenches me out of the fog I’ve fallen into. My eyes snap open, wide. I lock eyes with Lucas. He’s watching me, and though his features are still mostly inscrutable, I see something written in them, in between the lines. Awe.

And fear.

The sound comes again. Knocking, loud and rough against my front door. More than that, the voice that comes through chills my blood.

“Lydia Grace? This is the police. Open the door.”

I cast a glance towards Lucas, my heart jumping into my throat.

Well, I think. Shit.