The distraction worked. Aodhan stepped away from the horror in the corner of the kitchen. Of course there are body parts in the freezer. Of course. Why should the land of Her Batshitness return to normal now that the wicked witch is dead? Because that would be far too easy.
Startled laughter from Illium that Aodhan heard both in his mind and in the real world. That’s good. You make me miss her even more.
Aodhan almost smiled, and that, he could’ve never predicted only a minute earlier. Fortified by the interaction, he carried on down the small hallway lined with what looked to be family photographs. An old woman, perhaps the grandmother, with a younger couple. No children.
“Thank you,” Aodhan whispered, though he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Maybe the Ancestors. He was just glad he hadn’t had to face the remains of an innocent, though he knew some must’ve lost their lives during this neat and tidy massacre.
Then he saw it: image after image of a child from birth to about ten years of age, that last one with one foot on a soccer ball, the child dressed in a blue sports uniform.
Fuck.
Swallowing his rage, he carried on.
Another frame held a black-and-white photo of a middle-aged man. Probably the grandfather, passing away before he got to old age. He’d been lucky.
A few other photographs, then an amateur watercolor that had been lovingly placed inside a golden frame. Beside it was an equally nicely framed cross-stitch of a rabbit in a field.
People’s lives. People’s dreams.
It hurt him to know that something monstrous had ended those dreams. Another angel might not have reacted that way to the death of mortals, especially mortals he didn’t know, but another angel hadn’t grown up with Illium for a best friend.
Illium and his wonder about mortals, his respect for their short, bright lives.
It wasn’t linked to Kaia but rather the opposite way around. Illium had been fascinated by mortals since he and Aodhan were halflings.
“So many things they’ve invented, Sparkle,” he’d said more than once during their friendship. “Our kind gets lazy. We live such long lives that we think we have forever to solve problems and make discoveries—and so we rarely do anything. But mortals, their lives run so fast that they’re always racing to solve the next mystery, unearth the next secret.”
Illium’s wonder in the mortal drive to grow and change the world had opened Aodhan’s eyes to the same. Along with that had come a far deeper understanding of what it meant to have a human friend. It was why, for so long, he’d kept his distance from those brilliant firefly lives.
Because he’d known that one day those people would all be gone, nothing but memories that made his heart hurt. Then he’d come to New York and it had become impossible to ignore how much he liked certain mortals. So now he had friends who would one day break his heart by dying.
“Perhaps it’s a kind of insanity,” Illium had said a couple of years ago, after returning from the funeral of another mortal friend. “To keep on trying even though each loss puts another scar on my soul.”
Aodhan’s mind hitched on something important in that memory, but right then, his attention caught on an empty spot on the wall. It held the ghostly echo that forms when a picture has been hanging in the same place for a long time, a perfect rectangle of jarring brightness.
He looked back down the hallway again. All those photographs, only this one missing. Could be a coincidence, the image removed for some reason before the inhabitants were butchered.
Aodhan’s instincts said otherwise.
Which was why he wasn’t the least surprised when he reached the doorway to the left, and looked inside to find a small but tidy living space. In the center of it was a small table of carved wood. On top of that table sat a framed image of the right size to fit into that missing space in the wall.
Around the image were arranged candles, fresh flowers that had long wilted and turned black, and what looked to be keepsakes from the family—a makeup compact, a journal or notebook, a bracelet of delicate metal flowers of a size unlikely to fit a man’s wrist, a lightweight top of pale citrine that had been neatly folded, and a bottle of half-finished nail polish of a shade the woman in the photograph might wear.
No, not items that had belonged to the family. Items that had belonged to her.
Aodhan recognized her as the same woman who’d been in the family photograph—but she was a touch older here. And in her arms, she held a baby, her face beaming as she looked down at the infant’s scrunched-up little face.
The child wore a hospital bracelet on his little ankle, the mother one around her wrist. Her hospital gown was pale blue, the baby wrapped up in what looked to be a hand-knitted or woven blanket of what might’ve been yellow, though the color of the photograph had faded over the years so it now looked cream.
Aodhan, what’s happening in there?
I don’t know. He described what he was seeing. It’s almost like a shrine. The candles appear to have been lit at some stage. Droplets of wax pooled against the wood of the tabletop.
If, Illium said, the rest of the hamlet wasn’t empty, too, I’d say that someone became obsessed with the mother of the child and decided that if he couldn’t have her, no one could.
Yes. Aodhan looked around the room. But this . . . it’s different. There’s an absence of the kind of sexual perversity that accompanies such obsession. A pretty top chosen rather than intimate garments, a total lack of violence. The way the photograph has been cleaned of dust, the arrangement of the candles and the flowers, it almost looks like love.
Is the boy of an age where he could’ve done this to his family? Illium asked.
The last photo I saw of him was of a child—nine or ten—and that photo was bright, not faded by the years. That leaves the husband . . . but none of that explains the silence of the village.
Are you coming out soon?
Aodhan’s neck muscles tensed. No. There are more rooms to check. He tried to keep his voice even. There was no use snapping at Illium, no use stirring up a fight they’d been having for over a year. Not right now.
Because sooner or later, they had to finish that fight.
Just be careful.
Aodhan bit back the words that wanted to escape. Failed. I was planning to take every dangerous risk possible, but you’ve made me think better of it. He wanted to kick a wall the instant the words were out. Why had he just said that? He wasn’t like this with anyone else.
A pause, before Illium said, You know what? Why don’t you come stand out here, while I go into the house with THE SKINNED PELTS OF MORTALS and then we’ll talk about why you’re snapping at me for behaving normally.
Aodhan closed his eyes, took a second, opened them again. You’re right. You be careful, too. I think this house is empty—which means the danger is outside. And now that he’d put it into words, his skin prickled with the urge to get out there, shield Illium from harm.