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Hayley winked at her, the look in her eyes suggesting that she was very likely going home with them.

When they eventually ended the call, Naomi found herself again in the quiet of her lonely chalet, the sound of her deep sigh filling the room.

CHAPTER 9

Welcoming Krampus

KRAMPUS

Walking out on Naomi had felt much more intense in comparison to before, despite them not saying goodbye the first time.

Now, with the promise of seeing each other looming over him, he felt the weight of his powerlessness pulling him down. Every breathing moment, he worried about disappointing her.

Would she wait for him aimlessly until the end of her days? No matter how flattering her affection was, he didn’t want that for her; he didn’t want her to waste her whole life waiting for him. After all, their meetings would always be so short and spread out, that they couldn’t even compare in importance with the rest of her life.

Still, a part of him hoped for an answer to his problems.

When he went back to Hell after their first encounter, he had immediately tried to investigate the gray krampus that attacked them. He must have had connections with demons of other levels, because Kilean struggled to find whoever had fed him the information about absorbing others’ powers, but he did find some other interesting information.

In addition to not being allowed to interact with many other demon species, Krampus also weren’t allowed to venture too deep into their old libraries—as a way to keep them ignorant—so it took Kilean a very long time to find information that could work as a silver lining, and even more time to find a way to talk about it with the right demons and not arouse suspicion.

The year when he had his second encounter with Naomi, he found someone who could help him—a Nightmare whom he had interacted with before, and who had come to visit his section of Hell.

Part of him was scared, and he couldn’t deny it even to himself. Even though he didn’t like his job or current status, there was familiarity in it, safety. He wanted to be with Naomi—in any capacity she’d allow—but that meant fighting against the system that would oppose it, and anxiety choked him at just the thought. It would mean taking a leap into the unknown, likely taking away all the order he knew and had worked with for centuries. He was conflicted: one side telling him not to leave the bit of comfort he had, and the other desperately asking him to try, for Naomi. For his own potential happiness, too.

“Is there a way for us demons to change our roles and ranks?” he had asked the Nightmare, hesitant, picking at his nails.

She kept quiet, studying him and his question. In the silence, he grew ashamed at subtly wishing the Nightmare wouldn’t have a solution, so that he could have an excuse that he tried and go back to what was familiar.

“I’ve heard of it before, but I never looked into it properly since it never interested me,” she eventually replied.

Nightmares were demons with smoke-like forms, who could shapeshift to look like other beings—mainly humans. Their main job was to enter people’s subconscious and cause nightmares, and while they often did that to the same people the krampuses then punished, Nightmares were tricksters and more spiteful demons, instead of punishers like Kilean’s kind. If the Nightmares weren’t expelled from the person’s home soon enough, they would take root and bring them bad luck until the person eventually died a brutal death.

Despite having similar tasks, Nightmares were higher ranked than krampuses, which came with more freedom.

Both groups were violent in nature, but krampuses focused on bad people while Nightmares targeted everyone. Despite that, Kilean still felt that he could trust her. She seemed good at her job, and seemed to enjoy it too, but she never gave him a reason to think she was foul or devious in her private life.

“Could you help me find out more?” he had asked, cautious. “What I can personally discover is limited.”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

He caught himself wondering if she had a name—if Nightmares, in general, had names. If so, she had never shared it with him before, and never having had one himself, he had never even though to ask, not thinking it would be important. Now, he couldn’t help his curiosity.

She was about to walk away when he stopped her.

“Do you have a name?”

A side of her lips pulled upwards, exposing her sharp teeth.

“I had one, but it wasn’t mine. We Nightmares are many people, but very rarely we are ourselves,” she said. “An old friend called me Clementine, Clemmie for short. You can use that one.”

Clementine didn’t ask the question back to him, and he was glad. He likely would have given in and told her the name he should have only been sharing with Naomi.

Clementine went to do her job, and he was left alone with his confusing emotions. He trusted her with the task and waited to hear more from her; meanwhile, he still kept trying to find more on his own, too. He was never very successful in finding clues, though, and every day, he hoped that she would have more luck than him.

The more time passed, the more his hope faded, and again, he couldn’t figure out if he was sad or not about not being able to change his life.

The following year, Kilean couldn’t go visit Naomi, only making him more closed off. He never really interacted with others, but the fear and confusion he was feeling—added to the increased distance from the one person who seemed to be able to ground him—was only making him gloomier.