by Emma Hamm
A ripping sound startled her, forcing her eyes back to Sil. The diamond strands upon her antlers clacked against each other as she ripped open a bright portal.
Lydia watched the muscles of her spine clench. She was trying not to turn back, Lydia realized. Sil wanted to look at him, too. She wanted to see the man made of darkness one last time.
But she did not turn. Instead, she inhaled so deeply that Lydia could count each delicate line of ribs and stepped through the portal back into her world.
Lydia was thrust back into the waking realm.
She couldn’t breathe. Her chest was too tight, and the book was clenched too hard in her hands. Her fingers had curled into claws around the outside of the diary. She shook the leather bound book from her hands and press her fingers underneath the weight of her legs so she could force them straight.
The pain might have been overwhelming if she wasn’t so distraught. There was something alive inside her chest again. A mass of magic pushing from her stomach and out her lips.
The sound of the book hitting the floor must have alerted something in the house. She heard the clipping steps that always preceded Pitch. If she had been in a joking mood, Lydia might have mentioned that it sounded as though he wore heels.
Instead, her eyes devoured the sight of him as he walked into the room. Here was a man, not a monster. He was tall and lean, everything a human man should be.
She knew now what monstrous capabilities he hid within his shadows. But she had also glimpsed pain he hid behind so many walls.
“Lydia?” his brows furrowed. “What is wrong? You are emotional.”
“Come here.”
“What happened? You read fifty-two, didn’t you?”
His long legs brought him to her side quickly. He sank to his knees and took her cold hands in his.
“I did,” she whispered.
“Your hands are cold.” He reached past her to wave a hand in front of the window and cursed. “I should have known, this house is far too drafty to place you by a window. This was my mistake.”
“Pitch-”
“We will move you back to your room. House, build a fire for her and have it roaring by the time we get there.”
“Pitch-”
“My sincerest apologies that I pressed you to go too fast,” he reached his arms to scoop underneath her.
“Pitch stop,” she caught his hand.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
His dark eyes weren’t just black, she realized. There was the darkest ring of deep blue around the edges. The deepest abyss of the sea in a face carved out of marble.
She raised a shaking hand and gently cupped his cheek. Her fingers flexed experimentally, brows furrowing as she watched her pale skin glimmer against his.
If he had flinched away from her, she might have been able to stop. A kidnapper did not deserve any kind of pity from the woman he locked away.
But he didn’t move. She saw the same expression on his face as she had in her vision. His eyes rolled back and his brows drew tight. As though he was trying desperately to hold onto the feeling of another person’s skin touching his.
Pitch’s hand raised. It hovered over the back of hers but never touched.
“I saw it,” she whispered. “I saw everything.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, his eyes rose to meet hers. He was frozen, with fear or horror she could not tell. “You saw?”
“The same way I see the future. I stepped into the world as she remembered it, but also as it was before she was there. I watched the two of you speak.”
“How is that possible?”
Lydia shrugged. “I don’t know, you tell me. You knew her. You know this power.”
“She could not do that,” he told her quietly. “The magic is manifesting in you. It’s changing to suit you, not her. Eventually I will be of no use to you.”
The thought of living without him writhed and squirmed. “You didn’t have a form.”
“Not back then.”
“You do now.”
“This is a much more physical world.”
“Could you-” she licked her lips, “could you go back to that? If you wished?”
His coal black gaze caught hers and held. Lydia watched with rapt attention as he slowly lowered the hand which still hovered above hers. Just as she might have discovered whether his hands were smooth or calloused, his arm from the wrist down turned into shadow.
It swirled above her hand, nearly so thick that she imagined she could feel it. Cold. The shadows were so cold.
“I am still the creature you saw in your vision,” he quietly remarked. “I am a more civilized version, but still the same.”
“You called yourself a nightmare.”
“And I am still that.”
Her heart broke as he pulled away from her. The tragic words echoing in her ears as he gently lifted her into his arms. Neither said a word as he carried her back to the opulent room which had become her prison.
Chapter 6
Blue smoke swirled in the calm night air. It twisted in patterns of vines and thorny stalks before dissipating, colors swirling into the dusty dim twilight.
The cigar in Pitch’s hand flared as he inhaled the sweet smoke. He lay upon the roof, staring up at the stars.
He raised a knee and puffed rings of smoke into the air which circled the full moon.
“Pitch?” a deep voice asked, grating his nerves.
Duty called, he supposed.
“Up here!” Pitch called out.
He glanced back to look at the distinctly catlike face. Unlike his father Leo, Louis had the most misshapen head Pitch had ever seen. His ears sat on top of his head, leaving him with a rather startled expression.
Pitch had promised to take care of Leo’s family. If that meant employing his useless son, then Pitch would have taken the burden willingly.
“What is it, Louis?” he grumbled.
“Just wondering where you were, is all.”
“I am here.”
“I can see that.”
More clattering noises echoed as Louis attempted to climb out onto the roof. Pitch ground his teeth together and blew out a calming breath.
“You know,” Pitch said, “for a cat, you’re not very graceful.”
“I inherited the hearing and only a small amount of the natural grace.”
A few shingles slid past Pitch and shattered on the ground. “None of the grace, it seems.”
Louis landed next to him with a large huff of breath. One of his ears flicked to the side. “So.”
Pitch didn’t want to do this. Leo had always been a silent companion who kept to the shadows. That was why Pitch had gotten along with him so well. Silence was important. Subtlety was important. He did not like people who stomped through every situation without a care in the world.
“What do you want, Louis? If this is another attempt at a heart to heart, I swear-”
“Well someone has to have a heart to heart with you,” Louis blurted out. “You’ve had a woman locked up in this house for years. No one knows what you did to her! What you’re doing to her! And I for one am concerned.”
“Do you think I’m mistreating her?”
The tone of Pitch’s voice conveyed his anger, simmering underneath the surface. Louis’s face turned bright red and his ears flattened against his skull. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“It’s just… Well. A lady ought to get out and about every now and then.”
“She’s sick.”
“Then we should bring her a doctor.”
“Not that kind of sick,” Pitch leaned up onto his elbow and inhaled a lungful of smoke. “She’s the kind of sick that doesn’t go away. She’s managing well, given the circumstances.”
“I’d still like to help.”
“How could you help?”
Louis twisted like a small child caught with their hand in a candy jar. He mutte
red something that Pitch couldn’t hear.
“Speak up boy.”
“I could watch over her.”
Pitch couldn’t contain the bark of laughter. “Excuse me?”
“Well, she must be old by now! Father said she was young and beautiful when he met her, but that was fifty years ago! The old folks like me.”
“The old folks,” he repeated in an amused tone.
“Yeah. Do you not believe me?”
“She’s not old, Louis.” Pitch speared a meaningful look at the young Shifter, smoke swirling around the two of them. “She’s the same as I. Frozen in time.”
“Oh,” Louis bit his lip. “I could still watch over her.”
“Do you think you’d be any good at it?”
“I could fetch her oatmeal?”
Pitch sighed. He didn’t want to crush the boy’s dreams. If he wanted to be a servant, then so be it.
Then again, Louis’s father would be disappointed. Leo’s relationship with his son was tenuous at best.
Pitch remembered how excited Leo had been to have a son. He had planned to train the most legendary cat assassin to ever exist. That was not the son life gave him. Louis had been incapable of such things since the day he was born. Pitch swore the awkward Cat Shifter had entered the world with glasses on his nose, duct taped together at the seams.
Employing him permanently would ease the old man’s mind, if they avoided telling the job title. No one needed to mention Louis was a maid.
“Fine,” Pitch grumbled.
“Really?” Louis’s ears twitched back and forth. “Truly?”
“If she likes you.”
“I have to make her like me?”
Pitch begrudgingly admitted, “It shouldn’t be too hard. She likes everyone, even me.”
“I won’t let you down!” Louis jumped to his feet.
The Cat Shifter slid down the steep incline of the roof. Pitch cursed, reached out, and hooked a hand in Louis’s shirt.
“Would you get off the roof?” he shouted.
“Yes! Yes! I’ll be back tomorrow with all my things!”
“You aren’t moving in!” But the boy was already shoving himself through the window in a tangle of limbs.
“How am I supposed to take care of her if I don’t live here? See you tomorrow!”
Pitch wiggled a finger in his ringing ears, cursing Louis in the old tongue and the new. He could only hope that by employing the boy, he kept Leo’s pride intact.
The old man needed all the help he could get.
He lay back on the cool ceramic tiles. He raised his cigar, inhaling until smoke filled the air. This was the way he wanted to live forever, nearly disappearing into the shadows with a good cigar in his hand.
Another smoke ring rose toward the moon as he chuckled.
“I wonder what the boy will do when he realizes she will be asleep for a very long time.”
The thought was both humorous and sobering. He wanted to see the startled expression upon Louis’s face when he walked into a room cleaning itself with a mistress who would not move for years.
But he also wanted her to move. His brows furrowed in concentration as he probed the strange emotion. He hadn’t been fond of a person in a long time. The feeling was delicate in his mind, lacking substance and form.
Surely it was his mind getting used to caring for another person. She was living in his house. As a comatose roommate, but she was another living body occupying the same space. It was normal for him to feel partial to her presence. He had been alone for many years.
The thoughts mulled in his mind and took a new form. This wasn’t a familial response. Pitch didn’t think of her as a sibling. He didn’t think of her as a friend.
This was a genuine fondness. He sat up and stared into the distance.
“Huh,” he grunted.
That was an interesting new development. After Sil died, he hadn’t thought it possible to care about anyone but himself.
Before the strange Goddess had come into his life, he had been empty. Blank. With nothing on his pages but rage and anger.
The youngest of his family, Pitch had always been scrappy. He fought for everything he wanted and everything he didn’t want. His siblings had been ruthless in their training of him. He would be a monster. He would be shadow and night incarnate until he didn’t know what a man was.
Then she showed up. Sil who was everything he had not experienced. Tenderness, love, a bright bubble of laughter floating over his shoulder even when she wasn’t there.
Her death had nearly killed him. Yet, he had survived to fight in battles untold until all emotion was beaten out of him.
Coming into this realm hadn’t changed that. He had created his own empire, another thing to rule even though there were no kings and queens here. Juice was his product, the people who abused it his kingdom.
The lost, lonely, downtrodden. These were the people he took under his wing.
And now he made his bed with them. Whores, thieves, junkies, all people he scraped from the bottom of the barrel and promised oblivion.
Nothing was free in his kingdom of darkness. They understood and lived happier lives because of it. He made sense to them, in a twisted way which only their demented minds could understand.
The years had not been kind. Pitch had torn through the fabric of reality with every breath. Emotions crawled back into his life. Each time he felt them raise their ugly head, he pushed them back down.
Emotions were useless. They had destroyed him once, and he thought he’d learned his lesson.
Apparently not.
The “fondness” he felt for this woman burned inside his chest. He felt it pulsing where his heart used to be. Powerful and aching, like a star. So far away that its scalding heat couldn’t touch him, but close enough that its light would soothe his nightmares.
He snorted.
“Nightmares,” he chuckled as he blew another smoke ring into the sky. “Since when do I have nightmares? I am the nightmare.”
He was soothed all the same. He did not turn his gaze toward the house or her darkened window. She was in another healing sleep. He felt the soft rise and fall of her chest as though it was his own.
Pitch would wait for her. Again.
Chapter 7
Her dreams turned dark. Lydia saw shadows move in the corners of her eyes. They were just out of reach and she couldn’t tell what they were. If they were Pitch, then she was safe. But if they weren’t… Well she didn’t want to think about what dark creatures could lurk in dreams.
Eventually, she dragged herself from that abysmal world. Awakening from sleep was different. Lydia was used to the gradual loosening of the shadows in her mind until she opened her eyes. This time, she was awake in a rush that caused her to gasp.
“Oh!” she squeaked.
Two ginormous eyes stared down at her. Bright yellow with smudges of dark brown, the pupils slit down the center. They widened, and she heard a masculine voice shout before they disappeared.
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm her nerves.
There was a man in her room. Lydia blinked. A very odd man. Two large ears perched atop his head, swiveling in all directions as he listened for something. Or someone.
Probably Pitch, she decided. The man made of shadows was always running to her rescue.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Louis.”
Lydia pulled her blankets up to her chest. “And what are you doing here, Louis?”
“I’m your maid.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Louis ma’am, and I’m your new maid. Or well, not new. I’ve been here for some time but you’ve been sleeping. I was hoping you weren’t dead and every now and then I like to lean over to make sure you’re still breathing because…” He paused. “I should stop now shouldn’t I?”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Lydia said.
She could see this man was no danger. He wore pl
ain brown pants hitched up to his ribs, the ugliest yellow plaid shirt she had ever seen, and a pair of worn glasses perched on his rather unremarkable face.
She had never seen a more perfect man.
“You’re normal,” she said with a happy sigh.
“Oh I don’t know about that.”
“You most certainly are. And you are the most welcome sight I have had in a very… very long time.”
He flushed, stammering and rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, that’s a high compliment from a woman like you.”
“Did you say you were my maid?”
“That’s what Pitch said.”
Lydia snorted. “Of course he would. I think he meant butler.”
“No, no I’m certain he said maid. That’s what I am.”
She didn’t know how to say Pitch had played him for a fool. “I would suggest that ‘maid’ is usually a feminine term.”
Louis shrugged. “Feminine or not, it’s what I am. I clean.”
“The house cleans itself.”
“I pick up after you.”
“I’ve been asleep,” she reminded him.
“Well,” he seemed to ponder, “I’ve been doing something all these years you’ve been asleep.”
Years. She squeezed her eyes shut and told herself it didn’t matter. “How many years this time?”
“Only a few ma’am,” he told her.
It was more than a few. He was fidgeting with the blankets smoothed over her legs.
“How many, Louis?”
“I’m thinking somewhere around three years?”
“So long.” She tried to keep the sadness out of her voice, but was unsuccessful.
Louis’s ears flattened against his skull. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine that it’s easy for you.”
“No, it’s not.”
How could it be? Lydia was fairly certain that she was as immortal as Pitch. But that didn’t mean that the passing of years wasn’t countable. She was old now. Old enough to die and be put to rest.
Yet, here she was. Lying in the same bed with the same damned coverlet that never seemed to fade or age. This place wasn’t a prison.
It was a tomb.
She raised a hand to her aching head. “Louis, I need to get up.”