Page 4 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

4

MAREENA

Present Day

T here was a time when I was younger, that my birthday didn’t hold quite so much weight. When it didn’t signify pain or survival.

I remembered when I’d rush into the kitchen at the crack of dawn, and Amto Amani would already be started on all my favorites—baked kibbeh in the oven, stuffed grape leaves on the stove, fresh fruit and labneh with pita on the counter.

We’d spend all day grazing on food, walking along the coastline collecting smooth rocks and listening to the waves. I’d swim while she waited on the shore, calling out whenever I let the water pull me out too far, but never rushing me, letting me float until my fingers were pruned raisins and I could barely feel my feet from the cold. Only then would we make our way back to the house, settling in for strawberry pie and ice cream in the late afternoon, because I hated the sponginess of birthday cake and the flakiness of baklawa.

In the evenings, she’d fish through her collection of old keepsakes, and we’d look at the few photographs she had of my father—her nephew—and the one of my mother—their wedding portrait—while she’d tell me whatever stories she remembered about them both. Most of the stories were about him; she’d only met my mother two or three times over the years, but I clung to every word, like she was spinning straw into gold.

I could hear the same story a million times, and I’d still listen enraptured, her soft, melodic voice, its own gift—one I didn’t even think to cherish as its own coveted memory, until it was gone.

Now, I hold onto the memory of her telling those stories more tightly than I did the stories themselves. I’d never met my parents, but Amto Amani was my entire world for the first decade of my life.

The rest of the night would be spent watching comedy films and laughing until we cried while we acted out our favorite parts. She had the kind of laugh that would make the entire room feel full with it, like not even the walls themselves were strong or sturdy enough to contain her joy. We’d cram in as many movies as we could until we couldn’t justify staying up a second later.

It had been more than fifteen years since I’d heard that laugh, and the loss of it still carved an ache deep in my bones—one I could never fully shake.

When I lost her, I lost everything that existed in that life—the photographs, the specific scent of our home, the recipes.

I couldn’t get the latter back, but when we took over Frank’s restaurant a year ago, I’d done my best to recover as many as I could by memory and by taste. It was a work in progress, but one I enjoyed pursuing.

The restaurant was quiet after the early morning rush.

It was my favorite part of the day.

As much as I’d grown to love our regular customers, and the labor that went into making this place run, there was something about the solitude that soothed me in a way that a busy diner never could.

The light above flickered as I stirred the cooling milk on the stove.

Another electrical surge. Hopefully, it would hold off until I got the rest of this finished.

I turned the light off and opened all he blinds, preferring to work in the natural light that shone through anyway.

Most of the food was already prepped for the lunch rush we’d get in another few hours, which Sora would take over for. We both handled the dinner service most nights, and we also had a few people we could tap in for a shift or two each week, when one of us couldn’t cover it.

Like me, Sora had taken quickly to the work, both of us experimenting with new recipes, searching for links to pasts that eluded us.

Sora didn’t know her family. We’d met in foster care during middle school, but she and Rina had been hopping from home to home for as long as they could remember.

When she found a Japanese cookbook a few months ago in Frank’s surprisingly robust stash, she’d made it her mission to cook her way through every recipe, making substitutes with ingredients we couldn’t easily find, just as I did with my attempts at recovering Amto Amani’s dishes.

Food had become an unexpected link to the parts of ourselves that had been taken from us too soon. It was inefficient, up against all that we’d lost, but it was something.

And it was strange that it was this diner that helped us along that journey, the very one that functioned as a refuge when we’d arrived in the city. Almost like it was growing with us.

I didn’t grow up wanting to own a restaurant, had never even enjoyed cooking until a year ago, but the daily routine of it had become like a meditation practice, one that I clung to dearly.

And when I had a chance to linger in my memories, trying to replicate Amto Amani’s spice ratios—never measured, always eye-balled—and flare, I felt closer to her than I had in years.

“It’s smaller than I’d pictured.”

A gravelly voice pulled me out of the mindless routine of chopping parsley and mint. When I looked up, I saw Claudine, seated at her usual booth—mine and Sora’s old favorite—with another older woman I’d never seen before.

She was a shorter white woman, her back hunched slightly, and she had spiky hair that stood out in every direction. Her face was wrinkled, but in an expressive way that made it clear that she’d had a lifetime of laughing.

“Shit. Sorry.” I smiled at them both, “Was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t even hear you guys come in.” It was Tuesday, but a bit earlier than Claudine’s usual time. I searched through the cluttered shelf of mugs until I found two matching ones without chips. “Would you like some tea as well?”

The new woman glanced from me to her friend, her drawn-on brows arched in interest. “No, nothing for me.”

“You’re sure?” When she nodded, I brought Claudine’s usual to her table.

She smiled up at me, green-eyes wide as she leaned over the cup of tea and breathed in the minty steam floating towards the ceiling.

Claudine never actually drank the tea.

She didn’t exactly pay for it either, but that wasn’t a big deal. Most things were bartered for when money was difficult to come by, and I supposed she saw her (often unsolicited) advice as payment enough.

I’d grown so used to her nosy presence that I found myself often looking forward to her visits.

“I’m Mareena,” I said to her friend. “Do you live in the area?”

“Greta,” she responded, the name almost like a bark in her wispy voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mareena.”

I glanced at Claudine. “Good, I hope.”

“Of course, dear,” Claudine said, her thin-lipped grin wide and warm.

“You sure I can’t get you anything?”

“We’re just here for the company if that’s all right?” Greta asked. “Good company is hard to come by these days.”

“Of course. I’ll be behind the counter if you need anything.”

I left them to their whispered chatter, glancing over occasionally whenever one woman would lean in and the other would let out a loud, resounding cackle.

There was something so incredibly normal about the interaction—like a window into the past, of what old age was meant to be—that I could almost forget the chaos of the last few years.

I dipped my pinky into the tepid pot of milk, holding it there as I counted, waiting for the moment when the lick of heat would be too much, as Amto Amani had taught me—but after ten seconds, it didn’t come.

Perfect.

I spooned in the yogurt starter from last week’s batch, before covering the pot and wrapping it in linens. The laban would incubate until tomorrow.

When I reached for the knife, ready to finish chopping the herbs for my tabbouleh, the door flew open.

I froze.

A tall, lean man with dark wavy hair set a bag of things down in the booth nearest the door, his back to me as he shrugged out of his backpack.

My body forgot how to move, as I held my breath, waiting for him to turn around.

It had been years without a word and?—

When he did look back, unfamiliar brown eyes met mine, lips that were too thin, skin a shade or two off, a nose too straight.

The knots in my stomach unwound.

Two strangers in one day, that was quite rare for Frank’s.

I exhaled, my muscles releasing whatever they’d been holding—anticipation, relief, disappointment. I honestly couldn't be sure.

Mustering a smile as best as I could, I moved towards the man, only to notice the counter was smeared with dark red.

“Shit,” I hissed, dropping the knife into the sink.

“Oh dear,” the woman, Greta, sat up straighter, studying me.

“Sorry, it’s fine.” I turned to the man. “I’ll be right with you. Just give me a sec.”

When I glanced back around, Greta was only a foot or two away from me. She was remarkably quiet and agile for her age.

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the cut, then the knife.

“Blade was sharp,” she said, nodding, “that’s good. Rinse it off and use some mild soap if you have it. Doesn’t look like you’ll need stitches. Probably just pressure for a few minutes and a solid Band-Aid.”

I did as she said, applying pressure with a clean rag. “Thanks.”

“Pardon?” The man was watching me now, brows dipped in concern.

“Can I get you some water?” I asked.

He nodded, and I got to work, setting the glass in front of him as I took his order.

Greta was back in the booth with Claudine.

“Thanks for the help,” I whispered to her on my way back behind the counter.

“Once a nurse, always a nurse,” she said, though there was a softness—or sadness—to her expression that hadn’t been there before. Nostalgia, maybe.

I leaned over the counter, my chin resting in my hands as I studied her. She was undoubtedly retired, and I couldn’t imagine her still wanting to work, but someone with a lifetime of nursing skills was beyond useful in these times.

My mind flew to Frank, to the few doctors we had available to us here. “If you’re in town for a bit, you should stop by the medical center a few blocks down, they’re always looking for help. I mean, if you’re interested, of course. No pressure.”

The women shared a look, and Greta nodded, her lips pressed into a grim smile. “Thanks, dear. I’m just passing through, but I’ll look into it if I change my mind.”

“Actually, I think I’m going to head out,” the man said, his words hesitant and expression unreadable. He gave me a slippery grin, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “Forgot I had somewhere to be.”

He collected his things, his gaze shifting from me to the women, confusion etched in the lines between his brows.

“Are you sure? I can get your order to go—” When I reached for a container and turned around, I saw only his back again, as he rushed out the door, his water untouched on the table.

Had the blood made him squeamish?

I’d made sure to wash and sanitize my hands before serving him.

Claudine winced at the sound of the door clanging shut. Her lips pressed into a thin smile as some unreadable conversation passed between the women. She let out a harsh laugh, before turning back to me. “Well, that was rude. But enough about him. Tell me, how are you today, dear? Any new developments to report? Have you started the journaling practice, like we discussed last week?”

I had less than an hour before I needed to get back to the diner for the dinner service, which meant that I had just enough time to sneak in a quick visit to Frank.

Sora and I did our best to make the trip every day, trading off when the other had a shift in the diner.

The walk to the medical center—a refurbished hospice with outdated supplies and tech that only occasionally worked—was quiet.

I leaned my head back, soaking in the feel of the sun against my skin. It was hot, and living without air conditioning was becoming more and more difficult each summer, especially now that I spent a good portion of my day in the relentless heat of a kitchen. Maybe one day, I’d get used to my skin feeling constantly sticky, but all I wanted right now was to go for a solid swim.

Maybe I could convince Sora to postpone our night out long enough for a quick dip in the lake before sunset.

“Mareena.” A soft voice pulled me from my reverie.

“Hey, Jo. How’s your mom today?”

Jo scooped her long, thick braids, holding them off her neck in a makeshift ponytail as the sun drew beads of sweat along her skin. She shrugged; her smile full of warmth even as some of it faded from her eyes. “No change, you know how it is.”

I did.

Jo spent most of her afternoons working in the med center. That’s where I’d met her, though she’d since become a frequent visitor at the diner whenever she could be convinced to get some fresh air and a hot meal, which wasn’t as often as Sora and I would have liked.

Like most of us, Jo’s plans have radically shifted in the last few years. Before The Undoing, she had an ambitious and rigorous life laid out before her. She’d been admitted to a competitive anthropology program down south and had every intention of seeking a prestigious fellowship after completing her doctoral program.

When her mother and sister got sick, she tossed those plans, abandoned her dissertation, and pivoted to learning as much as she could about medicine. “Research was research,” as she often said, and her skillset made the pivot with remarkable ease. It had been too late to save her sister, but she still clung to the possibility that she might find a way to help her mother.

Without money or influence, though, the options most of us had were slim.

The community kept the medical center up and running, and we had volunteers—one former med student, a doula, a seamstress, and Jo. It was more than a lot of the humans living outside of the compounds had, though our access to any state-of-the-art medicine was nothing compared to what it had been in the Before.

Occasionally, if Jo submitted her research to the closest compound specializing in healing—the one run by the Sect of Azrael—along with some patient blood samples, they’d send back enough to update a piece of equipment or add an extra bed or two. It was their attempt at ensuring our compliance and goodwill, while they benefited from the fruits of Jo and the other volunteers’ meticulous labor. Jo would do the work, and their patients would be the ones to survive because of it. Hers were collateral damage, cheap test subjects along the way.

Like I said, some things changed after The Undoing, but a lot of things stayed the same.

“Sora has a plate saved for you when you’re ready,” I said.

We did our best to make sure no one in the area went hungry—which meant that we were often at the will and kindness of the local farmers to supply us with ingredients at an affordable price, but we made sure during the slimmer seasons that we at least always had enough for the med center volunteers. It was the least we could do for them after all they’d done for us—and for Frank.

She yawned, nodded, and thanked me, before heading in the direction of the diner. Knowing Jo, she probably hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a week. And not just because she was balancing her research with caring for her mother. She’d taken to caring for all the patients who showed up at the med center.

Because of Jo and the rest of the volunteers, they never turned anyone away, no matter how understaffed they were, how exhausted she was, or how unclear or strange the symptoms often presented.

When my hand closed over the metal handle of the entrance, my stomach lurched, any ease I’d felt instantly distorting into a sharp, familiar fear.

A chill settled deep in my chest, making it impossible to take a full breath. My vision blurred, the building collapsing and then doubling into a ghost of itself, like a film projected on top of reality. My skin tingled with an electric surge that made my stomach twist into knots.

It had been months since I’d felt this so sharply. I’d almost let myself believe that I’d imagined the other occurrences entirely.

I blinked, willing the panic to subside—half of my brain telling me to go back, to leave this place.

Death.

Death was here.

But so was Frank.

My heartbeat thundered in my ears, reverberating through my skull as I yanked open the door and ran.

The building was quiet, as it often was, though the usual hum I felt buzzing through the walls was conspicuously lulled as well.

“No. Please no. Please be alive. Please.” I muttered the plea, over and over, a mantra to whatever god existed, as I ran up the staircase to the left, counting the doors until I got to Frank’s room.

There were currently fifteen long-term patients in the med center. Frank was one of them.

A little over a year ago, he’d developed a pretty bad cough. It started slow, almost imperceptible at first, but eventually we noticed his dinner service slowing down a bit, and some of the odd jobs around the diner taking a backseat—the corners of the ceilings were covered in cobwebs, the floors were swept every few days instead of being meticulously tidied after each rush, the more time-intensive concoctions replaced by dishes he could whip up in ten minutes or less. Frank had never been a master chef, and the diner may have been in dire need of some upgrades, but he’d always taken the cleanliness of the establishment seriously. He was the sort of guy who welcomed the food inspector twice a year with beaming pride.

At first, we thought it was just the effects of heightened demand. Frank’s had become a bit of a community refuge in the early years after The Undoing.

While he was a lot grumpier about it, like Jo, he never turned anyone away, even if they couldn’t pay or offer something in return.

When he started slowing down, he hired a couple of teens in the neighborhood to tidy up the place between rushes and agreed to let Sora and I split shifts with him. We helped balance where he was falling short, but it became clear soon after that whatever was going on with him was more than him simply being spread too thin.

Sora and I had done everything we could to convince him to see a doctor.

In all honesty, convince was perhaps too tame a word. Sora had threatened to kidnap him and drop him at a compound if he didn’t “buck up and make an appointment at the med center.”

Frank, being Frank, brushed off our concerns, even as his health started to decline more visibly. His clothes fit more loosely, his skin turned sallow, and his breathing became labored after every climb up to his apartment. Eventually, he announced that he was taking a break from the diner altogether.

He let Sora and I take over the placer until he was back on his feet, which we were happy to do—even if our skills in the kitchen left quite a bit to be desired at first. Some days, he seemed to glow with the excitement of watching us struggle, barking orders from our usual booth while we tripped over ourselves trying to get mediocre brunches served up to his patrons.

Sora often joked that his heckling would be the antidote to whatever ailed him.

For a while, it actually seemed like it was.

The diner grew busier as locals came by every day to spend time with and help Frank. We developed the menu, networked with local suppliers, and remodeled the basement so that Sora could have space to take on hair clients during the afternoons.

Each of us carved out a new purpose, one with meaning in a world that often seemed arbitrary and meaningless.

Before taking over Frank’s, I’d spent most of my working hours helping Jo and the others at the med center, teaching swimming lessons to the local kids, and whatever other odd jobs were in need of support. It was fulfilling, but chaotic, and I’d been more than willing to settle down into one line of work I could really sink into—especially if it meant helping out Frank. Grumpy as he was, he was the closest thing Sora and I had to a family besides each other.

The edge of The Undoing was softened as fear bled into purpose, into community.

Until it wasn’t.

Eventually, Frank’s upward swing shifted focus, moving just as dramatically in the opposite direction. He stopped coming downstairs altogether, handling the bookkeeping and work from his apartment upstairs.

One day, a few months ago, he marched downstairs, announced that he’d be moving into the med center, and told Sora and I to take over his apartment, as he wouldn’t be back.

At first, we didn’t take him seriously, both of us convinced this was just another of his strange whims.

Two days later, he slipped into the first coma. His vital signs remained steady, and whatever tests we could find and afford came back fine, but he still didn’t wake up. For weeks, we had no idea what was wrong with him.

Until one day, two weeks into it, he opened his eyes.

Only then did he see fit to offer any explanation.

Apparently, just before The Undoing, he’d been diagnosed with a rare cancer. One that he’d stubbornly told no one about, and one that had been transformed by whatever magic lived in the world now, fueling him somehow. He was fine for a few days, got some of his affairs in order, and then fell into a coma again.

After that, every few weeks, the timing impossible to predict, he’d simply wake up. As if nothing had happened. He would remain lucid and like the old Frank for a few hours—once, an entire day—with enough energy to hang out in the diner, visit with his friends, critique our new dishes, and reminisce about the Before. And then, just as suddenly, he’d fall back into a sleep, even deeper than the one before.

When he was first diagnosed, his doctor had given him less than six months to live, but whatever power had been unleashed in the world had sustained him far longer. He thought of every day beyond that prognosis as a gift, but I couldn’t help feeling like his disease was a ticking time bomb.

No one fully understood the effects this new world had on the human body, especially since it seemed to affect everyone so differently. Would we have Frank for another month or another decade? Would he get better, these deep sleeps his body’s way of healing? Or would he simply fall asleep so deeply one day that he simply would never wake up? There was no way of knowing.

I stopped outside of his door, my fingers trembling as I fought for the strength to open it and see him for myself. The memory of every patient I knew who’d occupied this room before him filtered to the top. They were all long gone now.

Years before Frank took up residence here, before Jo and the other volunteers even, back when this was just a run-of-the-mill hospice, I volunteered a few times a week. For a while, it had seemed the obvious place for me.

If I was going to be haunted by Death, why not spend my time in the place where Death was most welcomed—desired, even?

It was difficult, at first—getting attached to people, knowing my time with them would always be cut short.

Sometimes, I swore I could feel it, would know within a day or two when someone would surrender to Death’s grip, their breath a rattle in the shape of his name.

Eventually, the more time I spent here, the more I started to understand that in some cases, death could be a form of grace. That sometimes there was peace in the quiet of it, in the absence of a pain that couldn’t be otherwise silenced.

But I had never known the people in the hospice—who they were before they stepped into this building, before they desired that specific kind of peace. They didn’t take shape in my life outside of these walls, I didn’t cling to them in the way that I did to people like Sora.

And as much as I desperately tried to keep everyone but her at a distance, Frank had long ago weaseled his way in. Become family.

People had a way of doing that, no matter how hard I fought against it. One moment, they were acquaintances—sometimes, like in Frank’s case, one I didn’t even particularly like much—then, one day I’d wake up to find they’d become an essential figure in my life.

It was infuriating and heartbreaking all at once—and each time it happened, it was like the protective walls I’d built had all been for nothing. They’d have to be restructured and reinforced to account for the new liability just waiting to rip my heart out all over again.

Other than Sora and Amto Amani, Frank was the longest fixture in my life. And while this place was no longer one meant to house people as they waited for death to deliver them to whatever came next, I still struggled to shake the feeling each time I walked inside.

Like I carried the stench of decay in my skin.

My world had become inseparable from Frank’s, even more so since The Undoing. I worked in his restaurant, I lived in his apartment, I fed his community.

Like I said, he’d weaseled his way in. And that meant that every day, I woke up petrified that whatever had been holding death back would let go, that whatever strange gift Frank had been given in the form of added time would be stolen—permanently.

It may have been greedy to demand more, to want Frank to have more time, but I couldn’t help it.

I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want to lose anyone else.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. I waited until I was steady, and then I opened his door, silently praying that whatever strange sense I had was wrong. Distorted. Just this once.

The room was white, as plain as it had always been. Frank didn’t have much taste for knick-knacks or decor. His apartment had been equally plain before Sora and I moved in—nothing but the essentials, though many of those were missing, too.

The familiar, gentle whir of beeps permeated the room, the machines scattered around the bed blinking their usual lines and numbers. We had a few generators, but the med center hadn’t experienced power issues in the last year or two—almost like the building itself protected the people here.

I exhaled sharply, the sound of it as desperate as I felt.

There, in the bed, lay Frank.

His feeding tube and catheter were still hooked up, his pajamas clean and newly changed.

I leaned back against the wall and watched him breathe, swearing that I felt the walls breathe along with him, that his breath flowed through me, too.

My vision blurred, this time from tears that I failed to keep back.

I slid down the wall, burying my head between my knees, and took slow, painful breaths.

He was okay. He was alive.

It was just in my head.

Not real.

Silently, I echoed the sentiment over and over, sliding the beads on my ring with each repetition of the promise.

I wasn’t sure how long I stayed like that, how long I sat with him in that room, how many times I watched the oxygen fill and empty from his lungs before I could convince myself that he wasn’t gone—that he was here—but the feeling had long gone from my legs.

Sora was right.

I couldn’t live like this forever—locked in fear, constantly waiting for the worst to happen.

That was no life, and it helped no one.

I stood on tingling feet, pressed a quick kiss to his forehead, before closing the door behind me, quietly as I could, even though most of the patients up here were deep in a sleep that I could never shake so easily.

“Shit.” The word was low, deep—an echo.

When I turned to search for it, I found Menace flying through the hall—a ball of wings and feathers and chaos. He let out a sharp caw, the gentle thrust of his wings weaving wind through my hair as he landed on my shoulder.

A tall figure was hunched over near the top of the stairwell, just outside of Mrs. Pederson’s room. They stood slowly, their eyes locked on mine.

Or at least, I assumed that they were.

They wore a dark jacket with a thick hood pulled up so far that I could only see the briefest glimpse of pale-pink lips and a sharp, smooth jawline.

“Sorry,” I called out, embarrassed by the waver in my voice. “He’s a bit obnoxious, but he won’t hurt you.”

My breath hitched when I glanced at the figure’s hands, the only other part of them not covered by shadow or cloth. Long fingers, banded by silver rings, wrists covered in ink.

A flare of recognition hit me like a bullet to the chest.

The memory of the man on the day of The Undoing. His hand on my arm, the feel of his grip forever tattooed against my skin.

When I blinked, he was gone.

I ran back down the hall, took the staircase two at a time, but he was nowhere to be seen. Disappeared, just as he had before.

Menace, annoyed by the rocky movement of my chase, flew above me and back out the open window.

“Mareena, you okay?”

I tensed, then let out a shaky breath when I turned around and found Aidan studying me, his blue eyes shining with concern.

Aidan was what he called a ‘forever student’ working his way through a never-ending internship. Like most med students around the world, he dropped out of school after The Undoing. Now, he spent most of his time here, trying to help where and when he could, never able to quite shake the itch to help people who needed it.

“Fine.” I offered a small smile as I tried to calm my racing heart. “Do you—who was that guy?”

His brows bent in question.

I gestured back in the direction I’d just come vaulting, as if that offered something helpful. “Upstairs, just now.” I gestured awkwardly above my head. “Had a hood on.”

Aidan shook his head, lips pursed as he studied me. “I haven’t seen a man. Mary just left to get help with the body, but there’s no way they’re back already.” He took a step towards me, his hand lifted as if poised to touch my forehead, before he took a step back. He cleared his throat, his gaze dropping from mine. “Mareena, are you—are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Aidan asked me to dinner a few weeks ago—an invitation I politely rejected, but things had been a bit stiff between us since. I’d turned him down as kindly as I could, told him that I wasn’t in a place to get serious with anyone.

Which was true. I just didn’t fully explain to him why.

It wasn’t like I could explain that I said no for his sake, not mine.

I actually really liked Aidan. He was smart, cute, kind—genuinely just a good guy all around.

But he also made it clear that he wasn’t interested in something casual—a one-off fling.

This community needed him. Frank needed him.

Which meant that he was off limits, as far as I was concerned.

In another world, things might have been different. But until we lived in that other world, they couldn’t be. Aidan and I could be casual friends, friendly acquaintances, nothing deeper than that.

I nodded, then tensed as my brain caught up with the rest of what he’d just said. “The body?”

“Yeah,” Aidan took a deep breath and ran his hand through his golden waves, “Mrs. Pederson died a few minutes ago. She’s been circling the drain for days. It’s sad, but I guess—I don’t know, at least she’s at peace now, you know?”

My stomach sank as I realized that I’d felt her death coming, that it was her death I’d sensed. Not Frank’s And then it sank further with guilt when I thought of how grateful I was that Frank was still alive, that we hadn’t lost him yet.

He winced, misinterpreting my expression. “I’m sorry, I hope that’s not too crass. I didn’t realize you were upstairs all this time, or I would have told you. You two weren’t close, were you?”

I shook my head.

I’d only known Mrs. Pederson for the month or so that she’d been admitted here, and she’d been unconscious for most of that time.

“Did she have a family? Did they know—” I let the question trail off.

Was it possible that man had been her grandson or some distant relative?

Aidan shook his head, his eyes softening. Like Jo, he was in dire need of a few nights off. The skin beneath his eyes was practically bruised from lack of sleep. “No. She was brought in by a few folks who found her sleeping down by the canal. We haven’t been able to track anyone down since. From the bits we did get out of her, it sounds like most of her family has long passed on.”

I nodded, both of us quiet in the heaviness of the moment, unsure what to say.

“Do you—” My voice cracked as I met Aidan’s crystal stare. “You mentioned that she’s at peace. You don’t think that Frank—” I cleared my throat, pausing as I calculated how long it had been since he’d last been awake. Almost four weeks. The longest he’d been under yet. “You don’t think he’s in pain, do you?”

Aidan set his hand on my shoulder, and I tried not to flinch under the weight of it.

I knew, on a practical level, that whatever bad omen I carried wasn’t contagious by touch, but that didn’t stop the rumination from cycling through my thoughts relentlessly.

That something bad would happen.

That I was wrong. A contaminant.

“I can’t say for certain whether or not he’s in pain, but I don’t think that he is, if that helps at all.” He squeezed my shoulder, and I took a step back, wishing immediately that I could ease the flash of hurt in his expression as he let his hand fall back to his side. “He’s lucky to have you, Mareena.” He cleared his throat. “We all are, actually.”

I swallowed the sudden urge to laugh.

Lucky.

If only Aidan knew the kind of luck I brought to the people that I cared about.

It would instantly sour whatever crush he still harbored—and far more swiftly than any rejection ever could.