The Halo of Amaris

by Jade Brieanne

  Everything came back to her slowly–like drops of water out of a leaky faucet. She’d visited a record store slash late night neo soul spot on East 72nd to grab a record for Aiden. He’d recently picked up a love of hearing the distinct beats of “old skool” over the scratchy sounds of vinyl. It was a just-because gift, something she’d thought of as she wandered around the city, using window shopping as an escape from whatever unsettling feelings fluttered in her chest.

  It was October 4th. October 4th. October 4th.

  She clutched hard at her necklace and the pocket watch fell open.

  11:42.

  The damned thing didn’t work, but it was one of those gifts where the intent meant so much more than functionality and it had never made sense to go get it fixed or throw it away. Not when it calmed her like it did.

  Jin stared as the blue lights from the tunnel blinked outside the scratched subway car window. They flashed one by one, seeming to get brighter and brighter with each flash. A particularly bright beam burst into the car and her eyes fluttered. Her heart raced. Panic clawed at her throat, and Jin eyed the exit doors with wild eyes.

  “Astor Place, next stop,” blared the conductor’s voiceover the loudspeaker.

  “Damn it.” She tried to remember what her psychologist said. Breathe. By the time the train rolled into the station, she’d found some sort of calm sandwiched in between clutching her necklace and thoughts of clouds—the mumbo-jumbo calming technique suggested in her therapy sessions. She got up and faced the smooth chrome doors, waited for them to open, and stepped over the yellow line.

  Pale concrete steps led up to street level and Jin took her time walking to her last stop, Dolce Confections. The plan was to pick up an order of Red Velvet cupcakes she’d placed earlier in the day, and lucky for her, the bakery stayed open until midnight, catering to the local college students. Inside, she warmly greeted the bakery owner, Imane, and they discussed random topics while Imane served her customers—the phoenix tattoo on her wrist, her adoptive parents, her boyfriend. Since it turned out that the order had already been delivered, Jin left with a smile when a fresh wave of students filtered into the bakery, demanding all of Imane’s attention.

  As she walked home, Jin looked around, seeing streets still littered with people even at the late hour. As much as she wanted to greet some of the people she ran across, her old training took hold and she kept to herself. As she made her way down Spring Street, she ran right into the neon lights of a liquor store. Jin quickly averted her eyes, walking faster and ticking off her sobriety checklist in her head—a mental list she’d created of all the reasons why she should never drink again. Her fingers curled into a tight fist and her nails pressed into her palms as the desire took over. It sizzled. It burned. A demon grabbed her by the back of her neck, forcing her to look back.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick…

  The store sign flashed CLOSED.

  Sighing, she continued walking toward her apartment building, shelving her need for a distraction. She was the last person who needed a distraction. Aiden did. Him and his nightmares.

  It was times like this when she really wished her family had a chance to meet Aiden. So the people who meant the most to her could meet the man she loved more than anything. To meet like any normal family would. Cookouts, Christmas mornings, sitting around the television on New Year’s Eve, and learning about good luck meals of collard greens and black eyed peas. For her mom to sit him down in her office, stare at him until he unravelled, and then smile as she hugged him for the first time. A chance for Jin’s dad to ask Aiden those really uncomfortable questions that fathers ask boyfriends, watch him squirm, even if he had to look up at Aiden to do so. One day this would all be over and they could meet, all of them. A time when they could stop being scared.

  Jin ducked under an awning and glanced up at her building. This would be their fourth year living here. It was nice…well, nicer than other places. Jin pulled her key out of her purse and slid it into the lock, first pulling back the heavy glass and wood door, and then the second inner door before greeting the warm air in the foyer with a happy shiver. She climbed the steps until she came to her floor and ambled down the brightly lit hallway. As she passed her neighbor’s apartment, the sound of the news filtered through his door.

  “…as of eight-oh-five a.m. Korea Standard Time, officials are reporting the death of convicted criminal…”

  She continued walking with a roll of her eyes. She didn’t like looking at the news. It was depressing.

  Jin approached her door, and kicked the newspaper sitting across her welcome mat out of the way. She’d told Aiden to cancel it and he’d called like he’d promised, but because someone who sounded like his grandma answered the phone, he ended up agreeing to another year-long subscription. Aiden had a really hard time saying no to little children and old people.

  Jin shuffled through the keys on her ring, and found the key for her apartment door. She twisted the key and heard a sharp click. Frowning, she twisted the key again, this time hearing a hollow thunk. She narrowed her eyes. Aiden was like some avatar of the safety gods. He’d never leave the door unlocked. Ever.

  Her pulse throbbed against her throat.

  Calm down, Jin. It’s nothing. Focus.

  Light and slow, she pushed the door open, grateful that it didn’t groan. Their foyer was small, but as she skulked toward her kitchen, she imagined the floorboards creaking with each step. Wincing, she paused long enough to slip off her shoes and shove them out of sight. As she entered the kitchen, she could just make out the shape of a box on her counter. With her foot, she toed open a lower kitchen cabinet, an empty one, and slid her purse inside.

  Jin stood, frozen, and stared over the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room and looked around. From what little she could see in the darkness, everything seemed the same. Except for one thing. It was soundless. No gentle buzz emanating from the electronics, and no quiet hum from the heating unit that warmed the apartment. She glanced toward the couch in the living room. There was no Aiden parked there with his feet up on the coffee table and there was no soccer game blaring over the surround sound.

  Jin couldn’t ignore her intuition. She tried the light switch in the kitchen and was greeted with more darkness. Sliding her hand against the wall, she found the breaker box and opened it. Fishing her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans, she held the light up to the switches.

  They were all flipped to ON.

  Jin knew everything she needed to know. This wasn’t because someone overloaded the breakers or there was a power outage in the building. She’d seen the lights from the other apartments, and she’d heard the news report from her neighbor’s television.

  Someone cut our power. The realization made her stagger. Her pulse quickened to a roar that short-circuited her common sense. Get out! Call the police! Remember what you’ve been taught! Run! Run! Run! Leave him! Save yourself!

  Jin set her shoulders and ignored the voices. Common sense could kiss her ass. She’d drilled for months, years, on how to perceive and identify danger, to be aware at all times, to never be taken off of her guard. Every single thing she had learned was firing off a multitude of signals, bright and unmistakable.

  If you live among lions, you have to act like a lion.

  So Jin stopped, inhaled deeply, and concentrated. By the time the breath seeped back out through her lips, she was ready. As she walked out of the kitchen, the large window in their living room caught her attention. Peering through the inky blackness, she saw the thin yellow light from the markets and convenience stores on their street. Only a thin line of light shone through, bleeding around the edges of the shut blinds.

  Why were the blinds closed?

  Aiden had a peculiar fascination for people-watching. He watched after people in real life, so it kind of made sense. Due to his weird habit, the blinds were never closed in their apartment. She remembered each stupid argument they'd had because Aiden liked to eye-stalk
strangers at some ungodly hour when normal humans slept.

  Jin padded through the living room, slow and methodical, trying to think on her feet. When she reached the wall their sofa bed was shoved up against, she sank to her knees and grappled for the wall safe behind it. She punched the numbers into the pad and felt it fall open.

  The small-caliber handgun—a Bersa Thunder380—fit in the palm of Jin’s hand. “Small guns for small hands,” Aiden had proclaimed on the day he decided to finally put her gun permit to use and purchase one. She stared at the gun. Admittedly, she wasn’t the most proficient shot, and in the beginning she was a menace at the shooting range. However, she was very persistent and her aim was getting steadier with each practice session. Grabbing the full magazine, she snapped it up into the grip and disengaged the safety.

  Standing, Jin held the gun as she’d been taught, the familiar heaviness weighing her arm down as she crept toward the bedroom door, dizzy with adrenaline and her heart thumping loudly in her ear.

  When she reached the door, she put her ear up to it in an attempt to hear what was happening on the other side. Nothing. Silence. Biting her lip, she turned the knob and pushed. The bedroom door creaked open and a noise bounced off the walls, sounding more like a blaring siren that a tiny beep.

  Her eyes slid closed. How could I forget that?

  Jin thought about all of the changes that Aiden’s paranoia had bought them over the years—a large map of Manhattan with sections blacked out, strings and thumbtacks, safe zones and detours. Frequent check-ins and written itineraries on a dry-erase board in the kitchen. She’d checked in so many times on Foursquare that she was the mayor of the Gourmet Garage on Broome Street. Over time, they began to relax, feeling safer with each passing day and with that the precautions began to fade. Yet of all the things they’d stopped using, they never got rid of the alarms on all of the interior windows and doors. She glared at the square, white box balanced on the doorframe, now disgusted that it existed.

  Jin waited for something to happen…but nothing did. No bad guys jumped out of a closet, no gunfire rang out over her head. No past breathing down her neck. It was quiet.

  She exhaled nosily, almost wanting to laugh at herself. Maybe Aiden had stepped out. Maybe he’d just forgotten to lock the door. Maybe a fuse had blown.

  She was safe. The gun dropped to her side.

  “Took you long enough, Jinni.”

  No.

  Her heart leapt into her throat and Jin counted this as one of the few times in her life she was scared. No, she wasn’t scared. She was petrified.

  Jinni. Only one person called her that.

  The name echoed in her head and produced fear, palpable, tangible fear. The low register of the man’s voice sped through her memory like a hot bullet, leaving a trail of fresh images in its wake—hastily packing a suitcase, shaking hands and short breath, Aiden throwing her things in the back of a black Suburban, nervous glances and squealing tires on a crash course in survival. Chaerin. Testimonies. Fresh lilies on brushed, black steel.

  Jin pulled the gun back up and swung it toward the sound of the voice, panic blowing her brown eyes wide as the door flew against the wall with a bang. She scanned the room and made out a shadow in the corner, the burning end of a cigarette parked between two lips, glowing like a northern star. Her hand tightened around the grip and she racked the slide.

  “A gun, Jinni?” He laughed. “Really?” Jin frowned, but kept the gun steady.

  “The universe expands. It doesn’t shrink and it doesn’t stand still. Black holes consume and novas destroy. But you? You do neither.”

  What the hell was he talking about?

  “I’m confusing you, ain’t I,” he said, voice full of concern. “I get it, I really do. I mean—” He laughed. “I go to jail, and the next thing you know I’m ranting in your bedroom like I got some fancy degree or something! I’d be confused too.”

  “I don’t underst—”

  “I’m simply saying,” he said, interrupting her, “that you—sweet, sweet you— might be capable of a lot of shit, but it ain’t destruction. You don’t explode. Explosions are noisy—people notice them and we all know you’re far too sneaky for that.” The end of the cigarette brightened as the man took a long drag. “Hurry up and put the gun down before I get angry.”

  Jin did the opposite. She kept her gun trained on the fire-red tip of his cigarette and backed toward the closed blinds. Wrapping her hand around the cord, she yanked hard, and the blinds to fell to the floor. Light from the street flooded into the room, casting them in bright white light. Her eyes shifted and her mouth fell open in horror. Aiden.

  This shouldn’t be happening! We’re supposed to be safe. No one was supposed to find us here!

  She turned away. She couldn’t stomach seeing him like this, his face battered and bruised, his lip busted, globs of blood running from his nose to his lap. The dizziness returned and the world tilted.

  “My god, what did you do to him?” she asked in a weak whisper. Her free arm shot out to brace against the wall, and her hand slid across something wet. Ignoring the lump in her throat telling her to look the other way, she turned. A wide, bloody streak marring the cream paint greeted her, trailing downward from a cratered indent in the drywall.

  Horrified, she turned back toward Aiden. The intruder pushed Aiden’s head away from him, and Aiden groaned as he slumped forward against the ropes tying him to the chair.

  The man looked up and pinned Jin with an apathetic stare. “The human skull really is a fragile thing. One firm blow and…crack.” His fingers twinkled as he spoke, flinging droplets from his hand. He scowled at the blood and cleaned his hands off on Aiden. “Surprisingly, he’s not as quick on his feet as he’d have people believe,” he said with disgust.

  Jin filtered his words into nothing, choosing instead to steady her shoulders, tilt her head, and peer down the barrel of the gun. Her shaking hand prevented the precision she was hoping for, but that wasn’t going to stop her, not with the voice rasping in the back of her head, making her think of nothing but her target. Time, it kept saying. You’re running out of time. Have courage, young lion. Courage… courage… courage.

  Jin listened, and inhaled the words as if they were as tangible as the gun in her hand. She looked at the face washed out from the light. It was a familiar face— unremorseful, arrogant, angry. The twisted smile disrupted his handsomeness, blurred his charm, and distorted the love that Jin once had for him.

  “Shen,” she whispered.

  “Oh, snap! You remember my name!” He turned towards Aiden, a smirk stretching his lips. “You know, the reason I fell in love with her is because she’s so goddamn smart! Every time I turned around she was studying. Studying this and studying that. Trying to remember this and trying to remember that. Problem is she is good at remembering shit she ain’t supposed to. All that studying.”

  He tilted his head and a thin line of blood dripped from his nose. Jin narrowed her gaze at him and saw bruising on his face. When he paced, he favored one leg, as if he couldn’t bear weight on that ankle. Remarkably, a sense of associative pride strummed in her chest. Aiden had fought, and he’d fought hard.

  Shen took her narrowed gaze the wrong way. “Why the hell are you looking at me like that? What? Did you think I wouldn’t find you? That you could hide from me? The universe is too small to mask your scent!” Shen’s face darkened and he lashed out, smashing his fist against Aiden’s face again.

  The gun wavered in Jin’s hands. “Shen, stop! Please!”

  “Shut up!” he screamed across the room. “I told you. I told you, nobody leaves me and you told me time and time again that you’d never do that to me. But you did. You left. How are you going to pay for that, Jinni?”

  Jin shook her head and her hand flew to her face, smearing blood across her lips.

  “Answer me!” Shen roared and Jin flinched.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

  Chapter Three
/>   Five years ago…

  Gangnam Yoksam, South Korea

  Residence of Chaerin Williams, TV Host

  A loud knocking jarred Chaerin awake. She tried to burrow under the covers like a mole, but the knocking got louder, sounding as if someone was trying to tear her door off its hinges, and she couldn’t ignore it anymore. Resigned to her lost sleep, she peeked through her long, dark-red hair and yawned. She might be used to people knocking on her door at all kinds of late hours—it was a sad, sad aspect of her job—but that didn’t mean she appreciated it. Squinting through one eye, she glanced over at her alarm clock on the oversized stool she’d turned into a nightstand. She blinked, and then smacked the clock to make sure the numbers she was seeing were real. It wasn’t just late.

  “It’s four in the fucking—”

  The knocking—it was amazing—got even louder.

  “Hold your shit, I’m coming, I’m coming,” Chaerin mumbled. She crawled out of bed, shoving her long, thin legs into a pair of flannel pants, and pulled a large gray cardigan over her shoulders as she wobbled to the front door.

  “This better be an emergency,” she yelled, “like a ‘you’re nine months pregnant and the baby is waving at me from between your knees, just dying to give me its first interview’ emergency, because I’m going to kill you, strange person knocking on my door, for waking me up in the middle of the night like this!”

  Chaerin slapped the chain out of the guard and twisted the deadbolt, ignoring the person on the other side’s continued beatings on the door. The sleep drained from her face and was replaced by a scowl as she swung open the door. “Jesus Christ, what do you wa—”

  Chaerin’s jaw went slack. On the other side of the door stood her best friend, clutching a large manila envelope to her chest. “Jin?”

  Jin’s response was a decomposition of composure—a shattered face and a fresh set of tears, further smearing her mascara and smoky eye makeup. Chaerin rushed to usher her in, closing the door behind them.