by Amir Lane
“I know. It’s fucked up. But you guys don’t get it. He’s the only person I have ever met who sees Shadows. They’re everywhere, Len. And I swear I’m not doing any Necromancy. Strictly sigil work. That shit’s okay, right?”
Lenna looked like she wanted to say no, but she shrugged instead.
“Whatever you say.”
THE FALL semester’s exam week left Dieter without much time for witchcraft throughout the first few weeks of December. Beyond reinforcing the seal on his window that kept Shadows from entering the room, his studying was restricted to his classes. He fully intended to spend the three-week vacation coming up poring over the new books Alistair had dropped off. But until then, it had to wait.
The burns on his hands weren’t as bad as they had been the first few times he’d tried it. And studying through the pain was easier than studying through the Shadows. Still, he’d taken to carrying small, travel-size bottles of moisturiser in his bag and brushing off Lindy’s insistence that hand burns needed medical attention. The Internet agreed with her, but Dieter wasn’t sure if that applied to burns caused by magic. His hands seemed to heal fast enough each time, and Alistair hadn’t given him any sign that he should worry. As a general rule, what Lindy said went. He’d read the Iliad, he knew better than to ignore Seers. But Alistair was a better authority when it came to this kind of witchcraft.
It had been days since he’d last spoken to Alistair. There was a series of text messages sitting on his phone that he’d been too distracted to reply to. Exams were taking up all his time. He had an average to pull up. His grades had been slipping over the past month. He’d never be able to get into grad school if he kept going this way. He reminded himself as he walked through the Science Complex to text him back when he got home.
A thin, wispy Shadow followed Dieter into Steven’s office, slipping in behind him before the door closed. It hovered absently but made no move to approach him. It seemed harmless enough, as far as Shadows went, so Dieter chose to ignore it for now.
Steven offered him a warm smile. Dieter’s lips pulled upward of their own accord.
“How was your exam?” Steven asked.
Dieter thought, not for the first time, about Alistair calling Steven an Empath. None of his research actually told him how to spot one. He kept wanting to ask Steven if Alistair was right, but he didn’t know how to without bringing up witchcraft. He wanted to keep his leverage to himself. As far as he knew, Alistair and Steven had never met before. He couldn’t see how Alistair would know. But Alistair had known that Dieter was a Sensitive, and he’d known that Lindy and Lenna were witches. Maybe he just knew these things. Maybe his Shadows told him.
It wasn’t important right now.
A warm thrum of electric magic ran just beneath Dieter’s skin. He felt like he’d left his inhibition back at that last exam. Discarding his jacket, he crossed the small room and pressed a quick kiss to Steven’s mouth. If Steven had any complaints about Dieter’s sudden forwardness, he kept it to himself.
“I take it that means it went well?” Steven said, the smile still tugging at his lips.
“It better have. I’ve been studying for weeks.”
Steven’s hand settled on Dieter’s waist. The hand felt warm through his shirt.
“I hope you take that attitude with my class, too.”
Dieter laughed and pushed his hair back from his face. It was getting longer than he liked to keep it. A few more weeks without a trim, and it would be completely unmanageable.
“Of course I do. I take your class very seriously,” he said with exaggerated sincerity.
Steven snorted and pulled Dieter down for another kiss.
“You’re one of the few students that do,” he said.
Dieter wondered if Steven could feel the twinge of sympathy in his chest. He’d watched the attendance drop after the midterm, watched his classmates turn from taking notes to browsing the Internet. He’d even spotted someone watching a hockey game during a lecture one day. It wasn’t just in Steven’s class, either. Dieter was surprised that none of his professors banned electronics. He didn’t have the ability to split his attention that way. His phone always stayed in his pocket, and his tablet rarely had Wi-Fi enabled.
“Are you going home for the holidays?” Steven asked, cutting off Dieter’s train of thought.
The Shadow that had followed him in was trying to pass through the filing cabinet.
“My dad lives across town,” he said, “so I’m technically always home.”
Not that he visited his father often, especially not lately. Ekkehardt had taken Dieter’s demands to be taken off his anti-psychotics as a personal front against him. It was a talk Dieter wasn’t looking forward to having again.
“Now I feel bad for leaving you behind. Brigitte and I are going to Costa Rica. Speaking of which… Excuse me.”
Steven reached for the cell phone vibrating on his desk. The conversation with his wife was filled with assurances that he was leaving in a few minutes.
Dieter turned his attention to the Shadow attempting to climb the filing cabinet, only to watch it slide down in defeat. Apparently, Shadows didn’t have much in the way of friction. He almost wanted to laugh, until the Shadow fixed him with a hard stare. He looked up at the ceiling as if it hadn’t already noticed him looking.
“Dieter?”
“Hm? Sorry, what?”
Steven sighed, standing and tucking his phone into his pocket.
“It looks like I need to head out. Brigitte needs help packing,” he said.
Dieter gave a small nod.
“I’ll see you in January, then?” he said.
“Mhm.”
They exchanged another kiss before Dieter slipped out. There was a heavy weight in his stomach. He knew exactly what it was from.
Dieter had known from the start that Steven was married. There was a wedding photo of them on his desk. He had felt the metal of his wedding band on his skin at least once. And yet, here he was.
He told himself that it wasn’t guilt. He was just worried that Steven would lose interest in him after three weeks apart. Anyway, Steven was the one who had started this. It wouldn’t be happening if things with his wife were good.
It still left Dieter feeling used and dirty and wrong. But he was used to that at this point.
Walking home was not an option. It was well below freezing, visibility was virtually non-existent, and Dieter’s toes and fingers were already going numb by the time he made it onto the bus. He settled into a seat in the back and peeled his gloves off. The contrast between his cold skin and the sudden warmth of the bus’s heater made his fingers burn.
Dieter rubbed his hands together, soothing the pain that, for the first time in weeks, had nothing to do with magic burns. The pain subsided, and Dieter fished through his pocket for his phone. He brought up his text messages, first opening the one from Alistair. His frozen fingers tapped out a message. Auto-correct was the only thing that made it legible.
‘Sorry, exams. Just wrote the last one. When are you done?’
The next was a message from Sandra.
‘Track team celebrating at Brim tonite u in?’
He replied with a quick, ‘Hell yeah.’
BRIMBORION, ‘THE Brim’ to the locals, was a cheap club masquerading as a high-end establishment. While it looked nice on the outside, anyone who so much as stood in the doorway could see through the marketing.
The music was loud, almost deafening, and Dieter could practically taste the alcohol on his tongue before he’d even made it halfway to the bar.
“Hey, pretty boy!”
Dieter couldn’t be sure the call was aimed at him, but he glanced over anyway. He spotted Laurie Mills waving him over. Sandra was next to her, knocking back a shot. He weaved through the crowd, throwing out an apology when an elbow almost caught his cheekbone.
“Look at you, dressed up all fancy,” Laurie shouted above the music’s pounding bass line.
“T
his?” Dieter motioned to himself. “This is the only clean shirt I have left.”
The shirt had been in his closet since high school. It was nice, and it still fit fine, even if it was a little bit tight.
“Total babe,” Sandra said, only just audible.
Dieter let himself be pulled down into a kiss, first by Sandra, then by Laurie.
A few drinks later and Dieter was sure he’d kissed more than half the track team. He was wedged between Nadia Asghar and Addie Moore. Strawberry lipgloss was smeared across his lips. He had no idea whose mouth it came from. He couldn’t really bring himself to care.
And then he was grinding against Demarco Kane. The movement around him felt like whiplash. He was handed another drink by someone he thought he might have recognised. But Demarco’s mouth was on his neck and someone was pressing up against his back and he couldn’t bring himself to twist away from them to look. He knocked the drink back and pushed the glass into someone’s hand.
It burned the back of his throat, and it burned a path to his stomach, but the burning didn’t stop.
The music was replaced by high-pitched shrieks. Dieter covered his ears, but it did little to drown them out. The sound bored holes through his hands to get to his ears. Demarco’s mouth was moving, forming words that Dieter couldn’t hear.
A dark fog filled the club, blocking out the lights. It was worse than trying to see through the snow. The part of Dieter’s brain that wasn’t screaming thought of Pompeii.
Dieter stumbled back, reaching out to find his way through the fog. Hands grabbed at him, some warm and solid, some faint and icy. Both burned his skin. He pushed them off, reeling from the pain. Every nerve in his body was on fire. It was blinding and nauseating at the same time. Even his hair hurt. His vision swam, a mixture of white lights and black smoke.
His hand found what felt like a door. He pushed it open and fell through the empty space. The rawness of his hand drew a scream from his throat. He was sure his skin was peeling off but he didn’t dare look down to check.
The air was frigid. His lungs burned from it. The fog thinned out, allowing him some measly visibility. He could see snow, white and spotted with red. And then the fog was back. It pressed around him, peeling his skin back and choking him from the inside.
He felt more than heard voices calling his name. The shrieking was beginning to sound farther away, but it still made his teeth rattle and left a ringing in his ear. He must have gone deaf.
A cough had blood spraying from his lips. It landed on the snow in thick clumps. The dark stains seemed to grow with every cough. His body rattled with the force of it. He tried to pull his thoughts together, to focus past the pain.
“Help me,” he managed to moan out, reaching towards a figure.
The figure only responded with a shrill wail.
Two of Dieter’s nails were missing. He was sure he’d had them before opening the door. His face was soaked with some combination of blood and sweat and tears. He wiped his eyes and tried to push himself up off the ground. A sharp pain ran through his left arm like a knife. It paralysed him, choking off any calls for help he had left.
Another wail joined the ones already resonating through his eardrums. Flashes of blue and red traveled across his vision. It felt muted and amplified at the same time. Everything sounded like it came through a broken speaker.
Maybe he was dead. Maybe this was Hell. Maybe this was what he got for having affairs with married men, or kissing half the track team.
He fought weakly against the hands that tried to drag him. Every touch renewed the pain in his skin. Muffled words passed through his ears. He felt a sharp prick in his arm. The pain and the sounds ebbed away, and Dieter was left in the dark.
THE FIRST thing Dieter noticed when he awoke was that he wasn’t alone. Shadows—three or four or five—moved through the room, a stark contrast against the white walls. His body felt too heavy to do much else but watch them. They were darker than any other Shadows he’d ever seen before. Even darker than Abigail and Abaddon. They almost looked solid. He tried to reach up toward them. A sharp tug in his skin made him stop. He rolled his eyes down to see a needle sticking out of the back of his hand. His throat itched, but if one hand was restricted, the other must have been, too. It was almost unbearable even through the haze of morphine. He tried to swallow, to move his tongue around, only to find his mouth restricted.
Muted panic began to rise in Dieter’s chest. The haze around his mind began to clear, and he could hear a steady beeping coming from his right.
This was a hospital room.
Dieter was no stranger to hospitals. He couldn’t count the hours he’d lost in them. Brain scans, blood tests, appointments. Not to mention the days he’d spent in the psych ward after one breakdown or another. They were unpleasant enough on their own to make him hate hospitals as it was. But there were more Shadows in hospitals than there were anywhere else. They were louder, more aggressive, and he really didn’t want to be around them if he didn’t have to.
Did anyone know he was here? Someone must have known.
He tried to remember where he’d been before waking up. Sifting through his memories felt like sifting through cold oatmeal.
Even with his eyes closed, Dieter could hear the Shadows becoming agitated. There was a buzzing behind his eyes that had never been there before, accompanying the usual scratches and hisses. He tried to tune the sounds out to no avail. They were so loud, louder than Shadows usually were, even for hospital Shadows. It was making his head throb. He couldn’t speak, and even thinking was painful. But he tried to will the Shadows into silence anyway. As if that had ever worked before.
They were on him in an instant, pinning his body to the bed.
Dieter’s eyes flew open. They were sitting on his limbs. He struggled against them, thrashing as much as he could, trying to wrench his arms free. One was on his chest, shrieking while the others laughed cruelly. Its hands came down on his throat, passing through the tube taped to his mouth as if it wasn’t there. The weight was more solid than it should have been, cutting off his air supply.
The machine’s beeping sped up with his increasing heart rate. It felt like hours, but it was in reality only seconds before the door slid open and a doctor, accompanied by two nurses, rushed in.
There were words floating around over his head. He couldn’t focus on them. His head was getting light. White spots danced across his eyes.
The doctor leant over him, ripping the tape from over his mouth and pulling the tube out with each of his coughs. He gasped for air, trying to form words. She ignored him, forcing each of his eyes open and shining a light on them.Her arm moved through the Shadow on Dieter’s chest, forcing it out of the way. It wailed in displeasure and vanished. The others followed suit.
Dieter’s hands flew to his throat. The needle in his hand came loose, drawing blood.
“Easy there,” the doctor said. “Can you hear me?”
Dieter nodded, swallowing. His throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper. He was sure it had to be bleeding.
“Do you know where you are?” the doctor asked.
“Hos—”
Dieter cut himself off with a cough.
“Easy. Can you get him some water? You’re at Grace Memorial. Do you remember what happened to you?”
He shook his head this time. He looked around the room in search of the Shadows. They could be back at any moment. His eyes landed on the doctor. A mask covered the majority of her face, but he could see black eyes and black eyebrows and black hair pulled into a tight bun.She wore a yellow, plastic covering over her lab coat.
“From what we can tell,” she said slowly, “you were at a club. Someone gave you a drink and you started bleeding. Do you remember any of that?”
Again, Dieter shook his head. But as he tried to remember, it felt familiar. He remembered screaming. And he remembered red on white. Blood on snow. He gave a slow nod.
“We think there might have
been some kind of toxin in the drink. The Public Health Agency is running your blood work. Someone from the RCMP is going to want to talk to you now that you’re awake.”
The nurse came back with a bottle of water. She cracked it open, set the cap down, and stuck a straw in it before holding it to Dieter’s mouth with a gloved hand.
He drank deeply, stopping only to breathe. He couldn’t get enough of it as if he hadn’t had anything to drink for weeks instead of days.
“Your family is just outside. They can’t come in until we’re sure there’s nothing contagious, though.”
Something heavy settled in Dieter’s stomach, but he couldn’t tell if it was guilty relief or disappointment.
The doctor checked his vitals, asked about his pain, and left.
Dieter looked over at the window. It helped make his muscles relax, knowing that Lindy was on the other side. Ekkehardt being with her was another story.
Dieter didn’t resent their father the way Lindy did. He’d tried to. More than once, he and Lindy had fought about it. Ekkehardt had never been there for them, never done more than the bare minimum. She was right, and Dieter knew it. And sometimes, he could make himself be angry over the track meets that Ekkehardt was always too busy to attend, the appointments he had to get himself to. But he just didn’t have the kind of energy to hold onto anger that Lindy did.
Dieter hadn’t noticed the amount of morphine in his system increasing until a heaviness came over his mind like a weighted blanket. His eyelids closed of their own volition. Before they closed completely, Dieter caught sight of a Shadow standing at the foot of his bed. He tried to force himself back into wakefulness, but it was too late. The morphine had done its work.
DAYS BLURRED together as he drifted in and out of consciousness. At some point, he was vaguely aware of being wheeled into another room. The motion had him falling asleep before he’d even fully awoken.
Lindy was beside him when he awoke properly for the first time since the Shadows had tried to strangle him. She was curled up on an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair, her tablet in hand.