Page 3 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

3

MAREENA

Present Day, Six Years after The Undoing

F or as much as things were changed by The Undoing, as the world had come to call it, they also mostly stayed the same.

Six years ago, the world split into two.

Or maybe more than two.

To be honest, the details are still largely unclear. Pundits wasted their time in a desperate frenzy trying to nail down the specifics that seemed to be forever out of reach—like a goal post that moved every time you got too close to it.

One thing they all agreed on, though . . . there'd been what could only be described as a tearing of realms—the world as we knew it had expanded into . . . well, more.

Scientists didn’t have answers. Religious leaders and politicians pretended to.

New cults and religious factions started sprouting up everywhere. Some of them practically run the city now.

And it wasn’t just in The United States, it was the entire world.

A portal to hell (as some conspiracy theorists had dubbed it) had been opened, and the supernatural world had been unleashed. Some called it a demon realm, others were convinced it was an alternate universe, others swore it was the mythical land of Faerie.

I didn’t care much about arguing over the semantics. There hardly seemed a point.

All that mattered was that overnight, magic seeped into the everyday, sometimes even into people, rewiring life as we knew it entirely.

The few humans affected were changed in small, often meaningless ways. Sora and I knew someone who'd developed an unexplainable inability to walk in a straight line. But only on Tuesdays. Their Tuesday afternoon hikes through the neighborhood became nothing more than a strange, twisted meandering, as if guided by a force they couldn't control. Every other day of the week—no problem.

Occasionally, we'd hear of someone who'd changed more noticeably—they’d turn into a wolf, grow an extra limb, or their hair would change color whenever they had an orgasm.

Those were the exceptions. Most people weren’t physically affected by the aftermath. Humans didn’t all just suddenly turn into superheroes or mythological monsters overnight.

Sora had a pretty developed theory that any humans who had obtained truly useful powers were scooped up by the various supernatural factions, religious cults, or else held under quarantine by the leftover fragments of human governments that still remained, hunkered down somewhere.

A much less exciting version of the hair thing had happened to me, though I had no control over it, and it never changed.

A few weeks after waking up in that bush, the tips of my hair started to turn to white, like the color and life had simply been . . . sapped. My roots were still their usual inky black, but it was like the universe wanted to give me another useless reminder of Death’s ever nearness. As if I didn’t have enough of those.

I’d tried dying it back a few times, even shaved my head once, hoping that would fix it. But it eventually always grew back the same anyway—like life bleeding into death.

We didn’t tell anyone.

While Sora’s theory was kind of out there, there were whispers of people afflicted by The Undoing getting taken or killed by various anti-supernatural coalitions. And since I lived with a hair colorist, it was easy enough to pass the odd shift off as trendy and intentional.

Trivial enough that we were able to skirt under the radar.

When it really came down to it, though, it wasn’t humans that seemed most altered by The Undoing.

It was the world itself.

Buildings often buzzed with strange energy, the static in the air occasionally thick with the taste of something no one could name, but everyone felt. Infrastructure was destroyed. Electricity and cars were less reliable, their reaction to magical energy unpredictable and inconsistent. Phones and the internet? Virtually useless.

Of course, when I was desperate, I still took my chances on the bus system—when they were up and running anyway, and occasionally even unmanned altogether.

The first few years were a whirlwind.

We watched governing bodies fracture and fall, and new ones rise in their places. There were wars—too many for me to keep track of, especially with unreliable news sources, and fights for power, literal and figurative, erupting all over the world.

The supernatural creatures—demons as they usually called themselves—mostly stuck together. They were powerful in ways that humans weren't.

And that, more than anything, terrified the humans who’d held all the power in The Before.

No one who had power was ever eager to relinquish it.

In the early days, The United States took to exploring the tears and pockets leading to the new realm. The leaders and ‘adventurers,’ as they often called themselves, swore the expeditions were for scientific purposes. Eventually, the series of failed missions and the commitment to funding more revealed the truth.

The US empire did what the US empire always did—excited by new lands and all that they promised, it attempted to colonize them. Greed for minerals and resources transformed into greed for magic—a power that humans and governments couldn’t understand, let alone grasp. But they wanted it anyway—more even, because of its refusal to be taken.

Most of the people who went on those early expeditions never returned. Those who did rarely had the capacity to speak about what they'd encountered there in the other realm.

After far too many sacrifices, the desire to survive outweighed the desire for power, and humans finally started to avoid the mysterious tears between worlds, keeping to their own instead.

The first year was terrifying, the second year less so. Strange became normal, and humans did what they did best—they adjusted, adapted, and found ways to keep going.

In a lot of ways, it wasn’t all bad.

In fact, some things were a lot better than before.

We focused on the hyper local, tying ourselves to our communities and carving livable paths forward.

Eventually, waking up to a new, infinitely transforming world was just like your average Monday—a bit of a drag, but survivable with strong coffee and the promise of Friday on the horizon.

A soft tapping above my head ripped me from my journal. I set it down on my comforter and grinned at the beady eyes locked on mine.

"Morning, Menace."

I stood on my bed to unlock the hatch, then shoved the heavy window open a few inches so that he could fit through.

Menace had his own entrance, of course—a doggy-door style flap we'd installed in the kitchen window, there for him to come and go as he pleased—but he'd taken to ignoring it, preferring to interrupt my few minutes of quiet each morning instead.

I didn’t mind. I enjoyed his company while I watched dawn lazily creep over the trees.

He dropped a small metal skeleton key on my pillow before busying himself with the treat jar that I kept on my nightstand.

"Hope whoever you stole this from doesn't need it to get home tonight, you little klepto."

I slid the top drawer of my nightstand open and added the new trinket to the rest—stones, dried flowers, broken jewelry, pieces of tinfoil, spare change, twigs.

Menace didn't always deliver gifts with his morning greetings, but when he did, he delivered them with the kind of pride a student used to wear on their graduation day.

I did my best to clear through the collection every few months, but I rarely had the heart to throw any of his gifts away. I redistributed them, of course, when I recognized a stolen item, but I usually held onto the rest like a mother who hoarded her child’s decaying baby teeth.

He was quite fond of the collection he’d amassed. I often walked into my bedroom to see his tiny head shoved inside the drawer, adding to and sorting through the hodgepodge of items when I wasn’t here, a pirate perusing his precious treasure.

"We're never getting rid of you, are we?" I muttered, biting back a smile when he flew onto my shoulder, nuzzling his head against my cheek. He was a stubborn little dude, but he’d grown quite affectionate in his old age.

Although old might have been an odd way to refer to him. I wasn’t exactly sure what a normal lifespan was for an undead crow.

Sora and I watched over him as his wing healed—kept him fed, consulted books on crows when we couldn't get him into a vet, and provided a relatively-comfortable shelter from the strange, changing world.

Truthfully, he'd been a welcome distraction during those early days. But we’d always expected him to one day get back to being a typical neighborhood crow.

Menace had other ideas though. He’d taken quite eagerly to the partially domesticated life we provided, almost never even interacting with the local murders.

He'd followed us through two apartment moves, and while he'd occasionally disappear for a day or two now and then, he'd become a permanent resident in our lives.

In a world where the strange had become conventional, the shock of his undeadness sort of just eventually . . . wore away.

I lifted my hand up to my shoulder, waiting for his thick, black claws to grip my fingers. When they did, I shifted him in front of me, lightly petting the side of his neck with my free hand.

"Did you get up to anything fun this morning?"

He cawed, his eyes flashing briefly from dark as night to a peculiar midnight blue, in the way they often did.

There was a sharp knock, and I jumped.

Menace flew away, feathers ruffled and an indignant shift to his neck at the disruption of his morning attention time.

"Come in," I yelled.

Sora burst in. Her lips curved into a hook, eyes brightening when they landed on the crow. “Hey, you little shit.”

He turned away from her, stubborn and unyielding.

With a soft laugh, she tossed him an unsalted peanut—one of his favorite snacks—and his cold shoulder dissolved almost instantly.

He let out a loud caw, picked up the peanut, and started cracking the shell against my dresser.

I swallowed a groan, knowing I’d have to pick up the remnants of his feast later. Hopefully this time, he’d avoid traipsing them all over my sheets. I had no desire to sleep amongst his peanut carcasses.

"Most dramatic bird on the planet." Sora shook her head as she watched him, her expression both annoyed and bemused. They had a strange, antagonistic but loving relationship that was amusing to watch fester and grow. It made sense in a weird way. They were two of the most stubborn creatures I knew, and they both got great enjoyment out of pushing the other’s buttons. "Have you seen my pendant?"

"What pendant?"

"The blue one. Small, pretty, matches my hair.” She ran her hand through her shiny, shoulder-length waves, now equal parts blue and black, as if to emphasize her point. “I bartered for it last week at the market. Paid a hefty price, too, but now I can't find it anywhere. I could’ve sworn I left it hanging on my doorknob.” She grimaced. “Anyway, I’ve clearly misplaced it. I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually, but I was hoping to wear it tonight.” She snorted before adding, “So much for being a good luck charm."

I bit my tongue. I’d done everything I could to avoid the supernatural world—putting my head down and staying away from all of the new magical shops and attractions that had popped up in the last couple of years. I’d had more than enough brushes with death and the supernatural to last me a lifetime.

It felt like tempting fate, especially when things had been relatively calm and stable lately.

Of course, it also definitely didn’t help that being around magic shot my nervous system into overdrive. Any time I was close to an unfamiliar supernatural presence, an electric tingling feeling darted across my skin, impossible to ignore.

Occasionally, it would get bad enough that my vision would start to blur, and strange mirages of buildings or people would emerge transposed on top of whatever setting I was in, as if through a fog.

It was unsettling as fuck, and after watching a vampire rip out the heart of a werewolf with his bare hands, I couldn’t wrap my head around why Sora wanted anything to do with the supernatural world.

No thank you.

Menace was the only exception to my rule.

Sora, on the other hand, seemed infatuated with the new world. She often wasted entire paychecks collecting random talismans sold by swindling humans, that were more often not duds. She hoarded research on the supernatural and was excited by every demon and magic-afflicted human she encountered.

I still hadn’t brought myself to tell her that I was one of them—beyond the weird hair thing, that is.

My visions . . . premonitions? Whatever the hell they were, they hadn’t stopped after watching the wolf’s murder. It didn’t happen often, but every so often, I’d feel death’s nearness like a sixth sense—more acutely than any bad omen I’d been plagued with before The Undoing.

I tried desperately to ignore it, as if I could somehow will the unwanted awareness away. But death was a thing that demanded you look.

And sure enough, whoever inspired the feeling—usually a passing stranger—would turn up dead shortly after.

She cleared her throat, brow arched.

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“My necklace?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Doesn’t sound familiar,” I said.

Menace let out a caw then flew into the living room where we kept a small dog bed and cat toys for him. He seemed to prefer the dog bed to the birdcage and perch we’d tried first. Couldn’t say I blamed him. I wouldn’t want to sleep in a cage either, even if the door was kept open.

“Actually,” I snorted, nodding towards my nightstand. "Check the top drawer."

"Fucking bird is a nuisance." Sora cursed as she sifted through Menace's makeshift treasure chest, holding up a small, sparkly pendant with a triumphant wave. "Is nothing sacred in this apartment anymore?"

"You're just mad he saves the shiniest presents for me."

"Well," she shot me a glare, "it's not like you're the only one who feeds him. And I let him stay here too, you know." She raised her voice at the last part, speaking more to the crow than to me. Sora had a theory that Menace understood us when we spoke to him, but I didn't buy it. Mostly because having a wild crow that had been resurrected from the dead as a pet was more than enough strange for me. "Those peanuts he likes so much? I’m the one who bartered for them. Just saying, if he decided to bring me a nice pair of earrings or something, I wouldn't fight him on it."

I nodded to the drawer. “Take what you’d like, I don’t think he’ll mind.”

"Speaking of presents." Sora ran out into the kitchen, returning with a bag that she tossed onto my bed, all faux anger abandoned for a contagious joy that leaked out of her every pore. "Happy Birthday, Mars!”

Right. That was today.

Well, that explained my general grimness and the headache I woke up with.

“Twenty-seven! You know what that means?” At my blank stare, she added, “You officially won’t be inaugurated into the twenty-seven club. That’s cause for celebration."

“Pretty sure I have to make it to twenty-eight to avoid that, actually.”

“Oh. That makes sense, now that I think about it, but that totally ruins what I was going for.” She shrugged, then fished a small envelope out of the bag. “I’ll just save that card and joke for next year then.”

"You didn't need to get me anything." I stared at the bright pink bag, stuffed to the brim with vibrant green tissue paper, as if something might crawl out of it and attack.

"I did.” Her body was stiff with barely contained excitement, as if she was the one receiving the present. “You need something to wear tonight."

"What do you mean?" Since The Undoing, our Anniversary Extraordinaire celebrations had taken a bit of a back burner.

Partially because it was now also the anniversary of the day the world turned all topsy-turvy, and people went a little wild across the city—some celebrating recklessly, others hoping to usher in whatever impending apocalypse they were touting to their followers as the next big cosmic shift.

House of Gluttony, one of the competing compounds of The Seven Sons of Lucifer, always had a day-long feast that turned into a raging party. Last year I heard five people died from overconsumption. Apparently if the devil did exist, he didn’t waste his time rescuing his loyal followers from alcohol poisoning.

And that was one of the tamer celebrations I’d heard about.

The Undoing made today feel less like our day, and more like one we shared with everyone else, however reluctantly.

Last year, we tried to bring the tradition back a bit. We'd gotten our hands on a particularly nice bottle of wine, a true rarity these days, and spent the night passing the bottle back and forth, chugging while we meandered aimlessly through the city. We went for a swim in the lake and then gorged on the perfect mixture of salty and sweet snacks. Perfection.

I'd been looking forward to something similar tonight, but judging from the guilty expression painted across Sora’s face, I wasn't going to be quite so lucky this year.

As if sensing my hesitation, she fell back on my bed and shoved the bag closer to me. "Don't hate me, okay, but I made some plans for us tonight."

"Sora, we agreed."

"I know the last few years have been a little more low key than in the past, but this year has been great. Darling,” she tilted her head, put on a drawn-out, affected accent, “we’ve got a beautiful apartment, the restaurant’s doing great, and our obnoxious crow-son is a thriving little thief.” She gripped my shoulders, shaking me lightly. “Do you know what that is? It’s stability, Mars. No curse or bad omen in sight. We’re practically a post-apocalyptic white-picket family. We have a lot to celebrate, to be thankful for. So, I was thinking we should go all out tonight. Like we used to. Usher in the next phase of our lives."

I took a deep breath, scrunching my nose. When Sora set her mind to something, it was almost impossible to say no. My exhale turned into a sigh at her victory. “What did you have in mind?"

With a coy grin, she ripped the tissue paper out of the bag, reached inside, and pulled out a short, slinky bunch of fabric. As it unfolded, I realized it was a dress—spaghetti-strapped satiny material up top that flared out with layers of black tulle at the waist. Very punk ballerina.

I loved it.

"A friend of a friend got us on the list for a club tonight,” she said, then tossed the dress at me.

I caught it, letting the surprisingly soft fabric roll over my fingers.

There was no denying it, the dress was stunning—the material both liquid and structured. It was nicer than any piece of clothing I'd ever owned. "Sor, this is way too much."

"Shut up." A wide grin split her face as her gaze dipped from me to the dress.

"Sora—"

"Look, I promise I got it for a bargain, okay?" She grabbed it, then leaned forward to hold it up against my chest, closing one eye as she studied the effect. "You know, I think you can even get away with wearing your boots with it. Permission to scrap the heels. So no arguments, okay? It's perfect and you're going to look killer in it, and we've been busy as hell. We deserve to go all out tonight.” Her brows slinked up and down a few times. “Maybe you’ll even get lucky. It’s been, what, three or four months since you’ve seen Alex? Not that I’m complaining.”

Alex was my no-strings-attached hookup. He traveled a lot, we had nothing in common, and he was allergic to emotional attachments.

That made him perfect in my book, and the only one I broke my ‘no repeats’ sex rule for.

Sora hated him, which only added to the simplicity of our arrangement.

I could never get into something long term or serious with someone my best friend hated.

She was also right.

It had been over three months since I’d had any kind of release with someone other than myself. I may have avoided getting attached to people, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t into getting laid.

And, well, I was long overdue for a proper fuck.

I glanced down at myself as she held up the dress, trying to picture her vision, but it was hampered by the baggy T-shirt and boxer shorts I was wearing. I let out a loud sigh that transformed into a groan. I already saw my defeat coming from a mile away. So did she. "Which club?"

"Just say you'll go first." Her voice was higher, and she wouldn't meet my eyes.

“Sora,” I narrowed my eyes, “which club?"

When she didn’t say anything, I grabbed the dress, and tossed it back so that it draped over her head. “I need details, or it’ll be a no from me, babes.”

She pulled the dress from her face and walked over to my closet, ruffling through it for a spare hanger. There weren't any, so she reached into the back, tugged an old sweatshirt off its cracked plastic hanger, let it fall to the ground in a crumpled heap, and hung the dress up in its place.

My gaze lingered on the hoodie.

Only when the dress was neatly pressed between my jacket and a significantly less-revealing black dress did she turn back to me, her chin raised, defensive.

My stomach tightened. I knew what was coming before the word even left her mouth.

"Incendiary."

I snorted, followed her to the closet, ripped the dress off the hanger, and pressed it into her chest. Then, I grabbed the discarded sweatshirt—one I refused to wear but still couldn’t bring myself to let go of. As I shoved the hanger into its neck hole, I resisted the urge to press my nose to the cotton. His scent was long gone. And even if it wasn’t, well, I needed to move the fuck on. It had been years—and if I was honest with myself, I knew it was for the best. For his sake, as much as mine.

Instead, I shoved the sweatshirt carelessly back into its spot, where I could forget about it until the next time I did laundry, or woke up in the middle of the night craving a comfort I was too weak to ignore in that liminal state.

I turned back to her. "Absolutely not."

"Mars,” her head tipped back, and she stared at the ceiling like she was arguing with some invisible god, “do you have any idea how difficult it is to get into that place? The waitlist is, like, six months long. Sometimes more. And tonight is the night."

"Then it sounds like someone will be very grateful to get our spot. I’m not kidding, Sora. Pick somewhere else.” I leaned against my closet door frame, refusing to back down when her eyes met mine. She was stubborn, but so was I. “Literally anywhere else."

"Tell me why."

"You know why.” Incendiary was a popular club in one of the demon-owned blocks. It was in one of the old warehouses that had been affected by whatever power The Undoing had unleashed. The entire structure flared with it—which meant that it was unpredictable and incredibly dangerous for humans. “Besides, it’s like a sex club, isn’t it? Owned by what, a lust demon? A succubus, if I remember correctly?”

“Don’t get all puritanical on me in your old age.” She rolled her eyes. “And it’s not a sex club. But even if it was, didn’t we just decide you needed to get laid?” She scrunched her nose, studying me. “Which, clearly, you do.” She gestured at me vaguely. “You’re so uptight.”

I clenched my jaw.

It wasn’t just the rumors I’d heard about that place.

I avoided that neighborhood entirely. I wanted nothing more than to stay the fuck away from the unpredictable magic that had overtaken the world, and Incendiary was smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest supernatural hotspots in the city.

Occasionally, when I got lost in my thoughts and accidentally wandered within a street or two of that area, I’d get the same feeling I’d had the day we saw the werewolf murdered.

It crept up my spine, sending a wave of ice through my chest—an undeniable conviction that someone was about to die. In those moments, the world would blur, and I’d see strange, unexplainable hallucinations. Visions I couldn’t put into words, that I refused to even admit out loud.

Death haunted that neighborhood. I was sure of it.

And I couldn’t fight the gnawing feeling in my gut that one of these days, Sora would be the victim of one of those visions.

Sometimes it felt like the more I insisted on keeping us—her—away, the more determined she was to get closer. Like she was a magnet drawn to the supernatural.

Her interest started slowly at first—but more recently, it had grown into an obsession.

“Come on, you used to live for this kind of fun. What happened?”

I shot her a glare. “The world fucking exploded, Sora, what do you think happened?”

“Yes,” she said, stretching the word out, “and we survived. Even more reason to enjoy our lives.”

"Humans who go there are like fucking feeder fish, asking to be killed,” I shot back, though there wasn’t any bite to it.

She rolled her eyes. "That's not true. Incendiary has very rigid safety measures in place for humans. And it’s owned by a succubus, not a vampire.”

"They both feed on humans."

Menace flew back into the room, landing on my shoulder.

I stroked the top of his head absentmindedly. His presence had become like a natural tonic, fighting the tension that built up in my chest.

“Look around, Mars,” she gestured absently, “humans die all the time. And when they’re murdered, they’re murdered far more often by other humans than they are by demons or stray bits of magic.”

She wasn’t wrong. Most of the people we’d known who’d died since The Undoing had been killed either by lack of adequate resources or by other humans.

Demons mostly kept to themselves.

“I know, I just—” I massaged my temples, fighting to find the right words, “I can’t explain it, okay? I know you don’t believe in the curse,” not least of all because no one particularly close to us had died in a few years, “but I just—it’s just a feeling I get, okay? There’s this whole new, inexplicably terrifying world now, and I’m just . . .” I took a breath, my thumb wearing its familiar path over my ring. “You run headfirst into things. And I get why, I really do.” Of the three of us, Rina had always been the adventurous one. After she died, it was like Sora had taken up that mantle as a way to honor her. We all processed grief differently. “I’m just so fucking terrified that you’re going to end up collateral damage. And if something happens to you, if I lose you too—” My voice cracked, and I shook my head, begging the liquid coating my eyes to evaporate. It was too early for this shit.

“I know that it can be scary.” Her features softened. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be exciting too. This is the world we live in now, Mars. And for better or worse, I’m in it with you. Until the end.” She nudged my foot with hers, her eyes latching onto mine when I looked up. “You’re twenty-seven today. You’ve survived some seriously diabolical shit, and we’ve built a damn impressive life from almost nothing. That’s something worth celebrating. I want you to have fun tonight, and I think you would if you gave yourself permission to let loose a little bit. That’s the whole point of the Anniversary Extraordinaire. Celebrating. For us and for Rina.” Her voice wavered on the name, but she took a deep breath and pushed through. “But if you legitimately want to stay in or go to one of our usual spots, we can do that too. I’m just afraid that you’re going to spend the rest of your life holed up on this block, avoiding everything—avoiding connecting with people—just because you don’t trust that this life we’ve built will last. Not everyone leaves, Mars.”

I nodded; my throat tight. She rarely brought him up, but I heard his name in the silence anyway.

“And, in case you didn’t realize it, I’m still here.” She nudged her chin towards my shoulder. “The crow is still here, too, right? Not everyone you let yourself love dies, okay?” Her lips curved into a soft grin. “I mean, yeah okay, Menace did die once, and we will all die eventually, so I guess that’s not entirely true, but you get what I’m trying to say. And I’ve got a pretty good track record thus far, yeah?”

I grinned, my shoulders loosening a bit.

“What was that phrase your therapist used again?”

Therapist was perhaps a generous label. Claudine, an old woman who recently started stopping by Frank’s every Tuesday afternoon, had taken to dispelling unsolicited advice to whoever would listen while she sat with her mint tea.

But Tuesday afternoons were particularly slow, so, more often than not, I was the sole, unwilling recipient of her shrewd observations.

Claudine wasn’t a psychologist, but she’d assured me (and anyone who’d listen) that she was an assistant to a very famous one before The Undoing.

For those of us who lived outside of the expensive compounds and districts scattered across the state, licensed professionals were difficult to track down—and meds were beyond expensive.

Not every sector had figured out how to come back from the instability The Undoing created, though the local community groups were working on filling in all the gaps the declining governments had left gaping open.

Until then, Claudine was probably the closest thing to a professional I was realistically going to get for a few more years.

It was at her suggestion that I start journaling in the first place—to help process what we’d all been through when I couldn’t shut my brain off.

Sora hadn’t even met the woman yet, but she was already a big fan. She’d taken to reciting the bits of wisdom I reported back to her as if she were a kid collecting jokes on popsicle sticks.

“She said—” I cleared my throat, adopting Claudine’s easy confidence and soft Boston accent, “some ships sink, Mareena. That doesn’t mean all ships sink.”

“Right.” Sora’s grin widened; her smile contagious. She jabbed her pointer finger against her chest. “I’m the floating ship, okay? I’m not going to sink. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you’re the one who taught me to swim, remember?”

Bit of a mixed metaphor, but I got the point.

“So, what if we try, just for today, to do something a little bit out of your comfort zone?” she continued. “Open yourself up a bit. And if it ends badly, I promise that I’ll join you in staying the fuck away from that neighborhood for the rest of my life. Hell, we can move to,” she paused, searching for a spot, “anywhere. We can make our way all the way to Chicago if you want.”

Strange, how big a journey that felt like now. We’d taken for granted so many things.

“Or,” I said, voice flat as I swallowed my grin, “we’ll just be dead.”

“Exactly.” She winked. “And in that case, it won’t matter either way, will it?” She slid the straps of the dress over my closet handle, a makeshift hanger. “So what do you say, birthday girl? Anniversary Extraordinaire—revived and extravagant as it was always meant to be? Do we have a deal?”

“Deal.”