Page 105 of Mortis

I was so wrapped up in imagining the night ahead that I didn’t hear the embalming room door open. Didn’t register the footsteps behind me, despite the fact I was supposed to be alone. Didn’t realise someone had just walked into the room with the power to tear my future apart.

I was so distracted that I barely had time to react before something covered my mouth and a sweet smell filled my nose. My head immediately began to feel light, and an arm wrapped around my waist held me upright as my knees began to buckle. Someone pulled off my glasses. I tried to protest, but the sound was muffled. My tongue suddenly felt too big for my mouth, and I couldn’t seem to shape it around the words I wanted to say.

I grabbed at the arm holding me, digging my fingers into the skin of someone’s wrist. But my grip quickly weakened as a strange heaviness spread through my limbs. My eyelids began to droop, and my knees finally gave way. The arms supporting me loosened, allowing me to sink to the floor. I stared up at the ceiling, but without my glasses, my vision was nothing more than a blur. A mess of colourful shapes bleeding into one another, fuzzy around the edges thanks to whatever I’d breathed in.

Sleep tugged at me, which was odd. It was the middle of the day, wasn’t it? I was in the embalming room. At work. Not tucked beneath the duvet at home. So why did I want to sleep? And Kael wasn’t here. Kael was always there when I went to sleep, except when I slept next to Arlo. But Arlo wasn’t here either.

A dark shape loomed over me. I thought it was a person, but it couldn’t be Lo or Grandad. Too tall. And it couldn’t be Kael. No horns.

A deep chuckle echoed through my skull, sending goosebumps prickling across my skin. The sound was wrong. Familiar, somehow. Something about it should’ve scared me, but my thoughts were too scrambled to understand why. My eyelids sank lower. As consciousness began to slip through my fingers, I caught a glimpse of mismatched eyes through the haze.

Ice and honey.

They were eyes I . . . eyes I . . .

I heard a voice, a split second before the darkness swallowed me whole.

“Let’s see what your beast is willing to sacrifice for you.”

16

KAEL

“You did great today, Kael.”

My chest puffed up at Arlo’s praise, and I immediately looked forward to telling Teddy.

The service had gone smoothly. Maurice had driven his own car, while Arlo and I travelled with Mr Syed’s body in the hearse to the crematorium. When I asked Arlo exactly what a crematorium was, he’d raised a brow before explaining it was a place where mortals burned their dead to ash. It was a stark reminder that Hellfire wasn’t readily available for such purposes in the mortal realm.

The service had also provided an excellent opportunity to put my growing understanding of human emotions into practice. I greeted the Syed family appropriately, tried my best to comfort the grief-stricken mourners, and even offered tissues to those who needed them. An act I’d made sure to thank Arlo for after he’d informed me they were essential and proceeded to shove two small packets into my pockets that morning.

There had only been one slight hiccup.

Wanting to be helpful, I attempted to lift Mr Syed’s coffin without assistance while Arlo and Maurice spoke with his son. But before I could move it more than an inch, Arlo rushed over to stop me, worriedly informing me that I’d “put my back out” if I tried to carry it alone. Something mortals without superior strength were apparently prone to doing.

Fortunately, six pallbearers arrived shortly afterwards, which was six mortals more than I required if doing it alone. Still, I held back, reminding myself that I was supposed to be one of them. Weak and fragile.

Human.

I had to blend in for Teddy.

After that, the service was straightforward. Words were spoken. Tears were shed. And at the end, Mr Syed’s body was taken away to be burned. Maurice informed me that he would return in a few days to collect the ashes and give them to the family. I wasn’t entirely sure why they would want a container filled with dust and fragments of bone as a keepsake. But it was yet another facet of humanity I hoped to understand in time.

With the job complete, Arlo and I headed back to Adler & Sons in the hearse. Arlo had sent Maurice home, promising to lock up the premises, while I swore to make sure Teddy wasn’t working too hard. After parking the hearse in its designated space behind the building, we exited the vehicle. Arlo unlocked the service entrance rather than walking around to the front, and we stepped inside.

Immediately, my skin prickled.

Something was wrong.

I froze just beyond the doorway. At first glance, everything appeared as it should. The lights were on. The embalming room door was closed. The hallway was empty. But it was quiet. Too quiet. Teddy’s work didn’t create vast amounts of noise, but my superior hearing always found something. The rhythmic hum of the aspirator. The clink of metal instruments. The quiet melody of whatever song Teddy had lodged in his head that day, hummed beneath his breath as he worked.

Now, there was nothing.

No movement.

No humming.

No Teddy.