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In my panic, I grabbed my bag but left my keys, and I just ran. I chased the cat through the building, out the back exit, and the heavy security door slammed shut behind me, auto-locking me out.

And as for the week-long gap?

“I just kept walking, Piper,” I’d told her, making sure my voice trembled just enough, letting the exhaustion of Hell look like the exhaustion of a breakdown. “I chased her for blocks. And then… I don't know. I just couldn't stop. It felt like if I lost the cat, I was losing the last piece of Matthew. I just… snapped. I think I went into a fugue state.”

I told her I dropped my phone in a gutter during a panic attack—which neatly explains why I never picked up and why it’s currently untraceable, likely still sitting in Serena’s office.

It was a watertight lie because it was pathetic.

It relied entirely on everyone's perception of me as the grieving, fragile girl who was one bad day away from a total psychotic break. They didn't question the logic of me wandering the city for a week in a daze. They didn't ask for details. They just looked at me with pitying eyes, put up posters for Vesper, cancelled the police search, and whispered about how "trauma does strange things to the brain."

I pulled the ‘broken bird’ card, and they bought it. Hook, line, and sinker.

My eyes drift to the mantelpiece, where for a year, the ceramic urn holding half of Matthew’s ashes sat like a judgmental paperweight, anchoring the room in a permanent state of mourning.

But after Hell… after meeting the real Matthew again… I couldn't look at it.

I boxed it up two days after I got back, taped it shut, and shipped it back to his parents without a note. I didn't want him watching me anymore. I didn't want his dust in my air.

Now, the space is guarded by something else.

Two small, cheap, polyester nightmares sit side-by-side where the death-jar used to be. The Tax Collector and The Auditor. One electric blue, one neon pink, both with slightly wonky eyes and stiff, synthetic fur.

They look God awful, but I remember the look on Malachi’s face when he won them, looking so stupidly pleased with himself for bagging two teddies and scaring the worker. They’re the most colorful things in the entire apartment. Ridiculous, tacky, and absolutely priceless.

The silence in the apartment presses against my eardrums. It’s too clean. There’s no low, tectonic rumble of a Hellhound snoring in my general vicinity. There’s no sharp, demanding cat digging her claws into my thigh because her food bowl is only ninety-percent full.

Vesper is fine. She has to be.

She’s probably still with Litha in that chaotic museum of a house, sleeping on a velvet chair and getting fat on premium flank steak. She’s safe. She’s loved. She’s just… not here.

And there’s no Malachi either.

There’s no six-foot-four demon pacing a trench into my rug because he’s bored. There’s no arrogant drawl calling me ‘baby girl’ from the kitchen. There’s no massive, solid heat radiating from the other side of the couch, and no one stealing my favorite vests and stretching the hems to their absolute limits.

My mind spirals, tangling itself in knots of ‘what ifs.’ I wonder if Veraxia made good on her threats. Is he locked in some damp, dark cell somewhere, paying the price for everything he did? Or is he looking immaculate, torturing souls and filing the paperwork for it?

I hope he’s bored. God, I hope he’s sitting at a desk right now, complaining about the fluorescent lights. Because the alternative... the alternative is that he’s screaming my name in the dark, and I’m sitting here drinking tea.

Either way, I hope he’s okay.

Please be okay.

Sinking deeper into the cushions, I pull the thick, knitted throw up to my chin. It used to be just a blanket—something I bought on sale an age ago. Now, in my head, it’s his blanket. It doesn't smell like him anymore—that intoxicating scent of spice and bonfire faded three days ago—but I bury my nose in the wool anyway, inhaling the ghost of him.

I need noise. I need normal. So, I have a plan. I’m going to order a pizza with enough grease to stop a heart. I’m going to binge-watch that terrible dating show where everyone cries over people they met yesterday, and then I’m going to open Shattered Desires and disappear into someone else’s messy love life for a few hours.

I’m not ‘fixed’—God knows I’m still a broken mess of frayed nerves and anxiety—but something has shifted in the foundation. I walked through the fire, and I didn't burn. I stood in the dark, and I didn't dissolve. I’m a little braver. And for now, in the quiet of this rain-soaked afternoon, with a trashy book in my hand and the promise of melted cheese on the way, that has to be enough.

Chapter 41

Malachi

“You’re not real. Take a ticket and get in line,” I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut to try and block the light. But it doesn’t work. It never fucking works. The lumens punch right through the thin skin of my eyelids, turning my vision into a wash of searing, aggressive red static.

“Malachi…”

“Go. Away,” I grit out, my wrists screaming in protest as I strain against the iron cuffs. “I’m not buying what you’re selling. The visual effects are cheap and the dialogue is derivative.”