Page 147 of Violent Possession

His smile slowly fades, and the weight of what we lost seems to crash down on us. We were a family, in our own twisted way.

“And the others?” I ask, softly. “Theo, the boys, Anya? What happened to everyone, Sera?”

Seraphim looks away. “Anya… she left. Got married, has kids. She’s somewhere in the south. It’s what she always wanted.” He pauses, and I know the next news won’t be good. “Theo… he didn’t make it. An overdose, three years ago. I buried him next to his sister.”

Of course. Theo, with his easy smile and fierce loyalty. Another grave.

“The rest… some are still with me. Others… died in jobs that went wrong.”

I nod.

I could stay here forever, in this forgotten garden, until the rest of the planet forgot to exist. But that never lasts, not for people like us.

Just then, a siren stutters on the avenue, and the spell breaks.

There are too many graves.

“I… I don’t want to become a corpse either, Sera,” I let slip, with more honesty than I intended. His name feels different now. “…Alexei… Alexei Malakov believes you can prove Vasily’s betrayal in some operation… I don’t know the details. But he…”

Seraphim pulls away, first removing his hand from my shoulder with extreme care, then sliding back into his own orbit. He leans against the balustrade and doesn’t look at me—he looks at the city’s dirty horizon, as if some redemptive answer were there.

“…He sent you,” he completes, and he’s back to being the Seraphim who commands, who never yields ground. It’s bitter. “You’reMalakov’s message.”

I shake my head, trying to laugh again. My throat won’t let me. “It’s not that simple. I… Sera, I could never sell you out like that. I just… I need you to fucking protect yourself. Alexei… he’s not a second-chance kind of guy. If he thinks you could be an obstacle, he…”

“He’ll kill me,” Seraphim concludes, without emotion.

“He will.” I rest my forearm on the low wall, poking the thick stone with my metal fingertips. “But he doesn’t play dirty. He just eliminates the problem. He keeps his word. If you cooperate, if you show you can be useful, even for a short time, he guarantees your safety. That’s why I?—“

“Isthatwhy you came back to me now?”

His gaze finally meets mine, and there’s a shadow of mockery in it, but also weariness.

I shake my head. I whisper, “The only thing I want is for you to survive.”

He laughs. A hoarse, shattered sound that might have been a sob in another life. “You’ve become a romantic, Myrddin. What exactly do you think will happen if I sayno?”

I turn my body, forcing him to look at me up close. “If you say no, someone, from some side, if not all of them, will come after you. I know this game, Sera. I know it because I’m a part of it now.”

He just leans on the balustrade and studies the sky.

“Do you really think Alexei is better than Vasily?” he says.

I hesitate, because Seraphim can always smell a lie from a mile away, and it doesn’t matter that I’m smarter now, more thick-skinned; with him, it never works. “I don’t know. But Vasily tried to kill me. Alexei…savedme. I didn’t come to blackmail you. I just… want you to not become a target. You’regood at that, remember? Adapting. Inventing a way out when there is none,” I say. “Alexei wants proof. That should be enough.”

“And after? What about when I’m no longer useful?”

“You’ll figure something out,” I say, knowing how empty that sounds. “You can run. You always ran when you wanted to.”

He gives an ironic smile. “This time, I have nowhere to run.”

Silence. I think: maybe he’ll just disappear now—vanish like last time. But no. He just lights another cigarette.

“You really believe that,” he says, regretfully. “You believe thisnew worldhas room for people like us.”

I don’t answer. I don’t know. I never have.

The cigarette burns slowly.