Page 52 of How (Not) To Raise The Dead

The air leaves my lungs in one big whoosh, like I’ve been kicked right in the solar plexus. I whip my head around to my sister, the healing cut under my sleeve throbbing at the reminder. “Piper?! What?! I told you that wasn't self-harm!”

“Edes, please,” Piper says, her voice thick with that agonizingly earnest, supportive tone that makes me want to scream. She reaches for my hand, but I pull back, tucking my arms against my chest, shielding the bandage hidden beneath my sleeve. “Even if what you did was just part of some… ‘grief ritual’… You’re hurting, and you’re taking it out on your body.”

“It’s okay, Eden,” Dr. Aris diffuses smoothly. “There’s no judgment here. We’ve talked about this before—when someone has been through a trauma as profound as yours, witnessing the accident, losing your partner so suddenly… it’s common to feel a need to take that pain out on yourself.”

A familiar, prickly heat crawls up my neck. It tingles through my fingertips—a static charge that has my fists clenching until my nails dig little crescents into my palms.

He leans forward, the light catching his lenses. “We call it survivor's guilt. But in your case, I suspect it’s complicated by what we call 'legacy pain.' The things they made you believe about yourself when the doors were closed.”

A high-pitched, tea-kettle of a whistle sparks in my mind. He’s reaching for the part of me I keep buried in the dark, the part that lived in silence long before everything that happened.

Survivor's guilt. Legacy pain. The words are too small. They’re clinical labels for a catastrophe and they don’t even begin to scratch the surface.

They’ll never know. They’ll never fucking know.

I chew my lip, the already-chapped skin breaking under my teeth until the sharp tang of iron coats the tip of my tongue.

“Eden, do you think,” Dr. Aris continues in a comforting murmur, “that maybe you’re trying to punish yourself for something that was entirely out of your control? That you’re hurting yourself because you couldn't stop him from hurting you then?”

I’m not hurting myself. I’m not a victim. I’m the woman who tore a hole in her life and then tore one between realms too. Dr. Aris might as well be trying to fix a hurricane with a Band-Aid.

Breathe, the poster said. Inhale. But my lungs are full of lead, and I can't find a single breath of air that feels clean enough to suck in.

I need air. I need out.

And God help me, I think I need the monster in the waiting room.

Chapter 20

Malachi

Nineteen minutes and forty-two seconds. That’s how long I’ve been without my little summoner, and I am fairly certain the white-noise machine is a low-grade psychological weapon designed to liquefy the brain.

I am bored. Deeply, dangerously bored. So bored that I’m currently debating whether to rearrange the furniture or see if the receptionist’s head will actually explode if I look at her too hard.

My fingers drum against the plastic armrest, seeking some form of distraction, when my gaze lands on the creature sitting across from me.

I tilt my head, eyes narrowing as I trace the architecture of her face. It appears to be an elderly female, swathed in a purple pashmina that smells faintly of mothballs. But the structure is… wrong. The skin around her neck is loose, hanging in soft, draped folds that don't quite adhere to the muscle beneath. The eyelids are heavy, drooping significantly over the eyes in a way that suggests gravity is winning a war against the tissue. It looks sloppy. That shell’s at least two sizes too big for her.

Who is she? A spy? A low-level imp sent to stare at those seeking their ridiculous therapy?

“You’re slipping,” I whisper as I lean forward, gesturing vaguely to the loose skin of her throat.

She blinks, her watery blue eyes widening behind thick spectacles. She clutches her purse tighter to her chest, the leather creaking. “I… excuse me?”

“The shell,” I clarify, keeping my voice low. “It’s sagging. Did you get this off the rack? Or is your boss cutting corners on the biomass budget again? It looks like it’s about to slide right off the bone.”

She stares at me, her mouth opening and closing. She’s playing the part well, I’ll give her that. Dedicated to the performance.

“What do you think about the atmosphere in here?” I continue, inhaling deeply and curling my lip at the taste of the air. “I don’t know how you tolerate the humidity in this skin. My pores feel like they are suffocating.”

I lean in closer. “So… what Division are you with? You aren’t Ninth… Eleventh maybe? Or are you independently contracting?”

The woman presses herself so far back into the chair I think she might actually merge with the upholstery.

I lean in a fraction more, my nose hovering inches from her face, and finally, I take a proper scent. Only to be hit with a wall of peppermint, stale cat dander, and the unmistakable, sour decay of actual biology.

My stomach drops.