Chapter Text
Sunday, February 16, 2004
For the duration of this day, Eiden mostly cried into her pillow and talked to herself. She hoped no higher being was observing her during this, or else she’d feel extremely embarrassed.
She reasoned with herself, that she was making a difference being Agni, and that she’d leave it to Batman when he was competent enough. After all, she was just the substitute, and no one really cares for the substitute.
Eiden didn’t really know what she’d do after she retired as Agni. When she died at 20, she was in the middle of majoring in literature, like she was doing in this life. She didn’t know much pop culture, but maybe she could invest in bitcoin and become super rich? If Eiden knew she was going to time travel into the 2000s, she would’ve watched more video essays on how the 2000s were the best, and that people were regressing. Hmmmm, maybe go to some concerts?
Her head was starting to hurt. Too much thinking. Baby steps, Eiden. Save Amelia first.
Monday, February 17, 2004
When Eiden blazed through the Government Containment Center housing one nineteen-year-old girl hosting a demonic entity, it was with Zatanna Zatara.
This is important, because there are many ways to blunder into a government facility—some people do it by accident, via wrong turnings and badly labeled doors, and some people do it on purpose, via committees and laminated ID badges and the sort of confidence that comes from believing the universe is a flowchart.
Eiden did it the third way: with velocity, guilt, and a guest star.
Zatanna did not so much enter the building as persuade the building it had always wanted her inside. The fluorescent lights steadied themselves when she passed, like nervous students sitting up straighter because the substitute teacher had arrived and she was wearing heels sharp enough to punctuate a sentence. Cameras continued to exist, technically, but their little red recording lights developed a sudden interest in blinking at precisely the wrong moments.
Eiden noticed this the way a starving person notices bread.
“This is… illegal,” she whispered, half in awe and half because whispering is what you do in government buildings, as if bureaucracy is an easily startled woodland creature. She knew very well everything she did was illegal, but there’s a difference between punching some shmuck and hijacking government property, y’know?
Zatanna held up one gloved finger—a gentle, pedagogical gesture. “It’s not illegal,” she murmured. “It’s smart.”
“Same thing,” Eiden said.
“It’s only the same thing if you get caught.”
That was the sort of sentence you never hear in Gotham unless you’re already running, and it did something unsettling to Eiden’s stomach. She’d grown used to doing the moral math alone, in alleys, where your only witnesses were the rats and the moon and whatever part of you you were still pretending was innocent.
Now she had a magician at her shoulder.
They moved down the corridor as if they belonged there. This was, Eiden realized, one of Zatanna’s most alarming talents—not the magic, not the words spoken backward that made reality behave, but the way she wore authority like it was tailored to her.
Eiden, to be fair, could also “wear” authority. It just usually came with a mask and the threat of combustion.
The Government Containment Center did not call itself that, of course. It had a name like the Department of Anomalous Containment & Evaluation or Division of Metahuman Risk Mitigation, because governments love acronyms the way teenagers love secrets: fervently, defensively, and with a remarkable lack of self-awareness. The building itself was all right angles and institutional optimism, the kind of architecture that said, We have decided the world is predictable, and we have brought clipboards to prove it.
People in lab coats and security uniforms passed them, and here is where privilege came in, because privilege is often simply the ability to move through spaces without being questioned. Eiden had grown up in a life where doors opened for her. She had always hated that. She hated it right up until the moment she needed it.
She kept her shoulders loose. She kept her face bored. She kept her duffel tucked against her hip like it was nothing but an overnight bag and not, hypothetically, a portable confession booth. Every few steps her ash twitched under her ribs, eager, resentful, awake.
It didn’t like this place.
It recognized it.
White walls. White light. The antiseptic smell of things being scrubbed of meaning. Her past life had been poor, loud, and honest in its violence. This life had money, politeness, and a facility that could look at a girl with a demon in her head and call it a research opportunity.
Somewhere behind two sets of doors and one heavily-sighed password, Amelia existed.
Nineteen, now. Older than she’d been when she’d first started disappearing behind her own eyes. Older than she should have had to be for any of this. A girl who had once laughed at stupid videos and stolen candy from vending machines and held Eiden’s hand through panic attacks like it was the most normal thing in the world.
And inside her, like a tenant who refused to pay rent and had an opinion on your wallpaper, was the Stranger.
Eiden’s throat tightened.
Zatanna’s voice came softly at her side. “Breathe. Your magic is making faces.”
“My magic doesn’t have a face.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Zatanna said, very gently, “everything has a face. That’s the problem.”
They reached a security checkpoint. A desk. A man with an earpiece and the hard eyes of someone who had chosen, at some point in his life, to believe in systems because people were too complicated.
He looked up. His gaze ran over them: teenager in a hoodie, and a woman dressed like she’d walked out of a stage door and into his nightmares.
“Identification,” he said.
Eiden’s heart did a small, panicked cartwheel.
Zatanna didn’t even blink. She smiled, bright and professional, the exact smile you’d use if you were about to donate to the building and also sue it.
“Of course,” Zatanna said, and reached into her jacket.
She produced a card. Not a fake ID. Not a forged pass. A business card, glossy and elegant, with her name embossed.
The guard stared at it, brow furrowing as his brain tried to fit this into a category. Eiden watched his internal filing cabinet jam.
Zatanna leaned forward, voice lowering into something confidential. “We’re expected.”
“We—” the guard began, then stopped as Zatanna’s gloved finger tapped the desk once.
It was not dramatic. It was not even obviously magical. It was simply final.
The guard’s gaze slid, abruptly, away from the business card and toward a clipboard that didn’t exist a second ago but now clearly had their names on it. He frowned at it with the weary resignation of a man who understood, deep down, that reality was mostly paperwork and he was losing the fight.
“Proceed,” he said.
Eiden stared.
Zatanna walked past him with the serene confidence of someone who had never been told “no” by someone n her life.
Once they were out of earshot, Eiden hissed, “Did you just—did you just manifest a clipboard?”
Zatanna’s smile didn’t move. “It’s not manifesting,” she murmured. “It’s… encouraging. Clipboards are naturally drawn to places where people pretend to be in control.”
“That is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard,” Eiden said, and she had fought a girl who stole her entire secret identity.
They took another turn. Another corridor. The air cooled. The walls thickened. The building stopped pretending to be a workplace and started being honest about what it was: a cage with fluorescent lighting.
Eiden’s ash pressed against her ribs like a dog straining at a leash. It remembered the glass. The intercom. The way Amelia’s voice used to crackle through static. The way the back of Amelia’s head had moved.
Zatanna slowed. “We’re close,” she said.
“How can you tell?”
Zatanna’s eyes sharpened. “Because the building is trying not to listen in on us.”
Eiden swallowed hard, closed her eyes as she regretted every decision made that led her up to this moment. What the fuck did that even mean? She had a fair share of ominous moments, but wow, these heroes really took the cake. Or however the saying went.
A door waited ahead, heavier than the others, with a keypad and a sign that read RESTRICTED ACCESS in the helpful, optimistic way signs have when they think they can stop human desperation.
Zatanna lifted her hands.
Eiden expected Latin, or backwards speech, or a dramatic gust of wind.
Instead, Zatanna sighed like someone about to do a chore. “This is always the tedious part,” she muttered, and tapped the keypad with a single finger.
The keypad beeped. Green light. The door clicked open.
Eiden stared at it with a mixture of admiration and offense. “You didn’t even—”
Zatanna raised her brows. “Eiden, darling, I’m a stage magician. If I can’t open a door as easy as I just did, I should retire.”
They stepped through.
The hallway beyond was quieter. The kind of quiet that had weight. The kind of quiet that came from thick walls and the assumption that no one in here needed to be heard.
Eiden’s heart hammered. Her mind filled with the image of Amelia—nineteen now, older and sharper and more tired—sitting under that relentless light. Of the Stranger coiled behind her eyes, patient as rot.
Zatanna’s voice, soft at her shoulder: “When we see her, you speak first.”
“What?”
“You’re her anchor,” Zatanna said. “Whether you like it or not.”
Eiden’s throat tightened. “I haven’t seen her in—”
“And yet you’re here,” Zatanna replied. “That matters.”
They reached the final door.
No sign. No label. Just metal and a small observation window, currently shuttered.
Zatanna placed one hand on the door. Her other hand hovered, two fingers poised as if to knock on reality itself.
Eiden felt her ash rise, not in threat, but in recognition. Like something in her had been waiting for this moment and now didn’t know whether to beg or bite.
Zatanna leaned closer, voice barely above a whisper. “One more thing.”
Eiden swallowed. “What?”
“If the Stranger speaks to you,” Zatanna said, “do not answer like you’re alone. Do not answer like you’re ashamed, and for the love of whatever gods are listening, do not answer like you think you deserve pain.”
Eiden’s breath shook. “What do I answer like, then?”
Zatanna’s smile turned sharp, almost fond. “Answer like someone with friends.”
Then she opened the door.
The room beyond, in its bright white cruelty, held a single constant, sitting very still—as if she’d learned the hard way that stillness was the only thing the monster couldn’t steal outright. Amelia looked up. For a heartbeat, she was only Amelia.
Then, behind her gaze, something else unfolded—slow, deliberate, pleased as a knife. Eiden’s ash curled in her lungs.
Zatanna’s gloved hand tightened, almost imperceptibly, on the doorframe, and the Stranger—old, hungry, and delighted by the arrival of a glitch and a magician—smiled through Amelia’s face like it had been expecting them all along.
Amelia blinked.
Just once.
And in that blink there were entire years—coal dust and hospital sheets and fluorescent light and the way time stretches when you’re sharing your skull with something that does not respect tenancy laws.
Eiden’s brain, being unhelpful at the best of times, immediately began doing what it did whenever confronted with trauma:
It started narrating.
Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is just a room. White walls. Chair bolted to the floor. Table. One girl. Possibly one demon. You’ve done worse. You’ve fought worse. You’ve—
Her ash flared.
No. She hadn’t fought worse.
She had fought muggers. Corrupt men in better suits than morals. The occasional thing that slithered out of Gotham’s underbelly like it had read too many horror scripts.
She had never fought something that had once borrowed Amelia’s laughter.
Amelia’s eyes locked onto hers.
For one beautiful, impossible second, they were clear.
“Eiden,” Amelia said.
Her voice was thin. Human. Fractured by too many nights without sleep.
Eiden forgot every clever line she’d rehearsed on the train.
Say something normal. Say something grounding. Say something like “Hi.” People say “Hi.” That’s what humans do when they enter rooms that don’t contain ancient predators—
“Hi,” she croaked.
Brilliant.
She stood there like a malfunctioning greeting card, ash coiling under her skin like it wanted out, like it wanted to leap across the room and wrap itself around Amelia and say mine in a language no one else understood.
Zatanna did not move. She did not speak. She did not so much as breathe differently.
Which meant this part was hers.
Great.
You are her anchor, Zatanna had said.
Eiden had never asked to be anyone’s anchor.
Anchors sink.
Anchors hold ships in place while storms happen around them.
Anchors rust.
Amelia tilted her head slightly. Too slightly.
The movement was wrong by a fraction of a degree. Subtle. If you didn’t know her, you’d miss it. If you did, you felt it like a paper cut in the soul.
The air shifted.
Eiden felt it before she heard it.
The Stranger did not take over the front mouth immediately.
It was polite like that.
It let Amelia speak first.
“I thought they said you weren’t allowed back,” Amelia said softly.
Eiden’s brain split into three parallel tracks.
Track one: She sounds tired. She sounds like she hasn’t slept in a year. You did this. You brought her here. If you hadn’t insisted on being brave, on being curious, on being involved—
Track two: The cameras. There are cameras. Act normal. Don’t mention demons. Don’t mention portals. Don’t mention metaphysical paperwork errors.
Track three: The back of her head. Don’t look at the back of her head. If you look, you’ll see it. If you see it, you’ll react. If you react, Zatanna will have to intervene. If Zatanna intervenes, the Stranger will escalate. If it escalates—
“Oh,” Eiden said brightly, because panic often chooses cheerfulness as camouflage, “I brought a plus-one.”
She gestured vaguely to Zatanna.
Yes. Good. Casual. This is just me and my glamorous magician friend visiting our possibly-possessed mutual acquaintance in a federal holding cell.
Amelia’s gaze slid past her.
And something in it sharpened.
The temperature in the room dipped by a single, deliberate degree.
Ah.
There it is.
The Stranger did not bother with the theatrics this time.
No cracking bones. No split lips. No grotesque second mouth unfurling like an obscene flower.
Instead, Amelia’s smile stretched.
Just a little too wide.
Her pupils dilated until the irises were almost gone.
“Oh,” said the Stranger, through Amelia’s perfectly intact face. “You brought entertainment.”
Eiden’s stomach dropped into her shoes.
Do not answer like you’re alone.
Do not answer like you’re ashamed.
Right.
Because that was her default.
“Well,” Eiden said, and she was very proud that her voice only wobbled like a bridge in mild wind instead of catastrophic collapse, “you did say you were bored.”
The Stranger’s gaze pinned her.
There was something deeply unpleasant about being studied by something that did not consider your species its peer.
“I said,” it corrected gently, “that your visits were… stimulating.”
“Oh good,” Eiden replied. “I live to serve.”
Why are you antagonizing it. Why are you like this. You had one job. One job was to not poke the ancient evil and you—
Because if she didn’t poke it, it would poke her first.
That was the unspoken rule they’d developed behind glass and static and government funding.
The Stranger’s smile thinned.
“You glow,” it said.
Eiden blinked.
Excuse me? I do not glow. I moisturize, occasionally. That is different.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“Your edges,” it continued, as if discussing the weather. “They blur. You are not aligned with your vessel. You are… layered.”
Zatanna shifted slightly beside her.
Not intervening.
Just observing.
Eiden felt heat crawl up her spine. Do not answer like you’re ashamed. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed. Turns out the afterlife has terrible customer service.”
Amelia’s fingers twitched. Just once. That was real. That was her.
Eiden’s heart cracked open a fraction.
The Stranger’s eyes flicked down to Eiden’s pocket.
Ah.
The disc. Of course. It could smell it. Or feel it. Or recognize that Zatanna had come armed.
The air tightened.
“You bring trinkets now,” the Stranger said, almost amused. “Do you think this one can hear you?”
Zatanna finally spoke. Her voice was smooth silk over sharpened steel. “I don’t need to try very hard,” she said calmly. “You’re loud.”
The Stranger’s attention snapped to her fully.
Ah. Now we are in the part of the story where two magical entities partake in a dick-measuring contest. Eiden’s brain, traitorous and overactive, immediately began catastrophizing.
Okay. Worst-case scenario. The Stranger lunges. Amelia’s body convulses. Zatanna counters with some backwards incantation. Reality cracks like cheap glass. Government panics. Containment protocol initiates. You get shot. Or tranquilized. Or labeled EXT-01 again and filed under “collateral.”
Alternate worst-case scenario. The Stranger ignores Zatanna entirely and goes for you. Because you’re the anomaly. Because you’re the glitch. Because it hates things it can’t categorize. Because you smell like borrowed time.
Alternate alternate worst-case scenario. Amelia is still in there. Listening. And every word you say right now either strengthens her or hurts her. Choose carefully. No pressure.
She became hyperaware of everything. The hum of the fluorescent lights. The faint scrape of Amelia’s shoe against tile.
The way Zatanna’s gloved fingers hovered, not touching anything, but ready. “Stranger,” Zatanna said conversationally, as though they were at tea and not in a containment cell, “you’ve made quite the mess.”
The entity tilted Amelia’s head. “You speak as if I were not invited.”
“You were summoned,” Zatanna corrected.
“Summoned is such an accusatory word.”
Eiden’s thoughts spiraled. Don’t get distracted by semantics. It loves semantics. It will drown you in language until you forget which side of the fight you’re on.
“You’re squatting,” she blurted.
Both Zatanna and the Stranger glanced at her.
Eiden immediately regretted being alive. “I mean,” she continued, because momentum is a terrible thing to waste, “you didn’t sign a lease. You don’t pay utilities. You definitely don’t clean up after yourself.”
The Stranger’s smile deepened. “How quaint,” it murmured. “You think in tenancy metaphors. Perhaps because you have worn a body that was not originally yours.”
There it is. There it is. Her heart began pounding so hard she thought the cameras might pick it up on audio.
Do not answer like you’re ashamed. Do not answer like you’re alone.
Zatanna did not look at her.
But Eiden felt the steadiness of her presence like a second spine. “I didn’t steal anything,” Eiden said. It came out sharper than she meant.
The Stranger’s eyes gleamed. “Oh?” it said softly. “Then where is the original?”
The room felt suddenly too small for oxygen.
Zatanna’s voice cut in, light and deliberate. “Careful,” she warned the Stranger. “If you poke the wound too hard, you’ll bleed on my shoes.”
The entity regarded her with something almost like respect. “Magician,” it said, “you meddle.”
“I specialize,” Zatanna replied.
Eiden’s brain would not shut up.
What if it’s right? What if you did steal something? What if this entire life is just fraud and you’re clinging to it because it has silk pillowcases and a father who texts you goodnight? What if Amelia sees that every time she looks at you? What if the only reason you’re here is because you’re trying to compensate for a debt you can’t name?
Her ash surged in response to the spike of shame.
The Stranger noticed. “Oh,” it breathed. “There. That is the flavor.”
Zatanna’s hand moved—just slightly—and the air between them thickened like invisible glass. “Enough,” she said.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Final.
The temperature stabilized. The lights stopped flickering.
The Stranger’s smile flattened. “You think you can remove me,” it said. “You think you can peel me out like rot.”
“I think,” Zatanna replied coolly, “that you are overstaying your welcome.”
The Stranger laughed. It was a layered sound, like someone playing two records at once.
“You misunderstand,” it said. “I am not here because I am hungry.”
A pause. “I am here because she opened the door.” Amelia’s fingers twitched again.
Eiden’s mind screamed. What door. What door. What door.
“I didn’t mean to,” Amelia’s voice slipped through, thin and strained. Just for a second, and that was worse than anything. Because that meant she was still there. Still listening. Still trapped.
Eiden stepped forward without realizing she had moved. “Amelia,” she said, voice breaking, “look at me.”
Amelia’s eyes flickered.
The Stranger resisted. You could see it. The tiny muscular war under skin.
Eiden’s thoughts detonated. If you say the wrong thing, you hurt her. If you say nothing, you abandon her. If you push too hard, the Stranger punishes her. If you don’t push at all, you’re just another visitor behind glass. “Remember the hairclip,” she blurted.
Zatanna made a tiny, approving sound.
The Stranger’s brow creased, almost annoyed. “What hairclip?” it asked.
Good. It didn’t know.
“Ugly as sin,” Eiden said, forcing her voice steady. “Plastic. Neon green. You said it looked like it lost a fight with a lawnmower.”
Amelia’s lips trembled. There.
“There are no futures here,” the Stranger snapped quietly. “There is only inevitability.”
“Shut up,” Eiden said automatically.
Brilliant strategy. Tell the ancient entity to shut up. Excellent. Five stars.
But Amelia’s mouth twitched. Just barely, and in that twitch was defiance. The Stranger recoiled the slightest fraction.
Zatanna’s eyes flashed.
Ah. There it is. The anchor.
Eiden’s heart was a war drum now.
Okay. This is the part where you either save her or doom her. No pressure. Again.
“You don’t get to decide her future,” Eiden said, staring at the Stranger through Amelia’s face. “You don’t get to decide what she opened or why. You’re just—” Careful. Choose the word. “—a guest,” she finished.
The Stranger’s smile sharpened. “I am older than—”
“I know,” Eiden cut in. “You’re older than Christ. You’re older than mountains. You’re older than basic manners. Congratulations. Still a guest.”
There was a beat of silence.
The Stranger’s eyes burned. “You think humor protects you,” it said.
“No,” Eiden replied honestly. “I think it annoys you.”
That did it. The air snapped like a live wire. The lights flickered violently. Amelia’s body jerked.
Eiden’s brain, ever faithful in its overthinking, screamed: This is it. You pushed too far. You always push too far. This is the moment everything breaks because you couldn’t shut up.
Zatanna stepped forward, and for the first time since they entered the room—
She began to speak backwards.
Zatanna stepped forward.
And for the first time since they entered the room—she stopped pretending this was a conversation.
Zatanna’s hands lifted, palms open, like she was about to applaud. Then she spoke. The words slid out of her mouth like silk being pulled through a ring. They didn’t sound reversed so much as they felt reversed—like the universe took one look at them and, with a resigned little sigh, flipped itself over to accommodate.
Eiden’s ash rose up inside her like a dog hearing the leash unclasp.
Amelia—Amelia’s body—jerked once, hard, as if something inside her had been yanked by the collar.
The Stranger laughed. It tried to laugh, anyway. It came out wrong. Choked. Zatanna snapped her fingers.
And the Stranger was…caught.
Not in a net, not in a cage, not in any dramatic spiraling vortex of purple light that would make for a good poster. It was caught the way an insect is caught beneath a glass: suddenly, simply, with embarrassing inevitability.
A thin lattice of violet script formed around Amelia’s head—letters that weren’t letters, circles that weren’t quite circles. The air thickened into a transparent boundary. The room’s fluorescents steadied. Even the cameras seemed to lean in, curious.
The Stranger moved.
It tried to pull back, to coil deeper, to hide behind Amelia’s eyes like it always did.
Zatanna made a small, annoyed sound—like a person shooing a cat away from a countertop.
She said one more word backwards.
And the Stranger came out.
Eiden had expected…something. Smoke. Teeth. A shadow with a voice like rot. A creature that would crawl, laughing, across the floor. Instead, it peeled out of Amelia like a bad overlay being removed from a screen. A ripple. A shiver. A black seam unzipping from the inside.
For a heartbeat, Eiden saw it—more concept than creature. A slick, ink-dark suggestion of a face where no face should be, eyes like punctured stars. It bucked, furious.
Zatanna flicked her wrist.
The thing folded. Condensed. Shrank into a point of impossible darkness suspended over her palm, like a drop of night refusing to fall.
And then she closed her gloved hand. That was it. No screaming. No blood. No ancient tantrum that shook the building down to its foundations. Just—done. Eiden stood there, blinking like she’d missed the important part. How anticlimactic, her brain supplied, offended on Amelia’s behalf. Wow. It’s that easy. You mean to tell me we could’ve avoided months of suffering if someone with a top hat had shown up and said a few words backward?
Amelia slumped forward, suddenly boneless.
Eiden lunged without thinking, catching her by the shoulders.
Her skin was cold, but her breathing—her breathing was hers. Amelia blinked, slow and disoriented, and when she looked up—It was her. No double-focus. No wrong-smile. No shadow behind the pupils. “Eiden?” Amelia whispered, voice raw with disuse.
Eiden’s throat tightened so fast it hurt. She had the sudden irrational urge to laugh and cry and punch a wall, all at once. Instead she did the only thing she could manage without combusting.
“Yeah,” she said, and it came out like a prayer. “Yeah. I’m here.”
Amelia stared at Zatanna with the sleepy suspicion of someone who’d just woken up in the middle of a magic trick. “Who—”
“A professional,” Eiden said quickly. “A magician. Long story.”
Amelia’s brow furrowed, then she sagged against Eiden’s shoulder, exhausted in a way that went past tired and into the marrow.
Eiden held her tighter. Then, because her brain was an incurable nuisance, it circled back to the obvious problem. Okay. Great. Wonderful. Amelia is Amelia. Demon is gone. But where did it go? Did it just…evaporate? Is it in the vents? Is it in Zatanna’s pocket? Did it—
She looked up at Zatanna sharply. “So—uh. Where did it go?”
Zatanna flexed her fingers once, as if shaking off something sticky. “Back to its home.”
Eiden blinked. “Home as in…hell?”
Zatanna’s expression went very carefully neutral in the way people do when they’re about to explain something unpleasant to someone who has been spared too much context. “Not hell,” she said. “Not exactly. More like…where it was anchored. Where it found the crack.” She paused, head tilting slightly, as though replaying Eiden’s earlier account and pulling out a detail with tweezers. “Where did you say your friend met the Stranger again?”
Eiden’s mind stumbled, catching up. “The Appalachian mountains,” she said. “Some fence—people called it Devil’s Fence, like that makes it less stupid.”
Zatanna closed her eyes. It wasn’t dramatic. It was the expression of a person who had just remembered an appointment they very much did not want to attend. She exhaled through her nose. “Of course it’s the Appalachians.”
Eiden blinked. “Is that…bad?”
Zatanna opened her eyes, and there was something tired behind the glamour now. Not exhausted—Zatanna didn’t seem like the type to do exhausted, she seemed like the type to do annoyed at the universe’s lack of professionalism—but the weight of responsibility settling neatly into place.
“I’ll have to go there,” she said, voice calm in the way of someone stating they’ll have to go buy milk. “Properly seal it. Make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Eiden stood there holding Amelia’s limp weight, brain short-circuiting. You mean to tell me the climax of our months-long horror arc is: magician tosses demon back into its hole, then makes a to-do list about it. Eiden’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Oh,” she said, brilliantly. “Thank you?”
Zatanna’s brows lifted.
Eiden’s thoughts scrambled, colliding into something painfully mundane. “Do you—um.” She glanced around at the cameras, the white walls, the bolted table. She lowered her voice, because this felt like the kind of thing you didn’t want to say loudly in a government facility. “Do you want cash? Like—payment. For the—demon thing.”
Amelia made a weak sound against Eiden’s shoulder that might have been a laugh, or might have been her body remembering it had lungs.
Zatanna’s mouth curved, slow and dangerous. “That’d be nice.”
Eiden stared.
Zatanna held her gaze, perfectly composed, as if she’d just asked for a cup of tea and not money for a supernatural intervention.
Eiden fumbled automatically into her pocket—hotel keycard, train stub, the violet disc that felt warm now, like it had done its job and wanted applause. She pulled out her wallet. It was, infuriatingly, a nice wallet. Leather. Minimalist. The kind of thing you didn’t buy for yourself when you’d grown up on discount noodles and static-filled radios. The kind of thing that appeared in your life when you had parents who liked the idea of their daughter being prepared.
Her fingers trembled as she flipped it open.
How much does one pay a magician for removing an ancient entity from your best friend? her brain demanded. Is there a menu? Is there a suggested tip? Is it like therapy where you’re supposed to value the service but also you’re dying inside because the bill is—
She looked up, helpless. “I don’t know what the going rate is for…exorcism adjacent services.”
Zatanna’s eyes glittered. “I take cash, card, and occasionally firstborn children,” she said, perfectly straight-faced.
Eiden froze. “I—”
Zatanna’s smile broke, just a fraction. “I’m joking.”
Eiden exhaled so hard she nearly dropped Amelia.
Zatanna nodded toward Eiden’s wallet. “Cash is fine. Don’t insult me with twenty.”
Eiden made a strangled sound that might have been laughter or might have been her soul attempting to escape through her throat. “Right,” she managed. “No twenties. Got it.” She pulled out bills with the careful seriousness of someone defusing a bomb. Handed them over like she was offering a sacrifice to a god.
Zatanna accepted them without looking, tucking them into her coat as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
Amelia stirred. “Eiden,” she whispered again, eyes half-lidded, “did you—pay the magician?”
Eiden stared down at her, face burning. “Shut up,” she muttered, and her voice shook on the edge of a laugh.
Zatanna adjusted her cuffs. “Now,” she said briskly, “we should leave before someone decides to ask why the room’s spiritual pressure suddenly dropped by half.”
Eiden nodded, because yes, that sounded like a reasonable concern.
Then her brain, unrelenting, added: Wait. We’re just…walking out? With Amelia? Like this is a normal discharge? Like the government’s just going to shrug and let the demon-host walk out because a magician clapped twice?
Zatanna glanced at her, as if hearing the thought. “If you’re worried,” she said, “don’t be.”
“How can you tell?” Eiden asked faintly.
Zatanna smiled, bright and sharp. “Because I’m very good at paperwork.”
And then, with Amelia heavy against her and Zatanna moving like the world made room for her by instinct, Eiden did what she always did when faced with something impossible.
Trudged on, but with several complaints.
—
What do you do when you are harbouring a friend who has been announced dead for a year and she comes back—herself, alive, breathing, exhausted, and very much not a ghost?
Eiden, notably, is not a genius. She is not the sort of protagonist who keeps a laminated binder labeled EMERGENCY PLANS: RESURRECTED FRIEND EDITION tucked in her duffel. She does not have a secret bunker. She does not have a trustworthy adult.
She has, at best, lungs full of ash and a phone.
So she goes to the next best thing.
Sawyer.
Because Sawyer, for reasons known only to Sawyer and the gods of poor decision-making, had become the person Eiden called when the universe did something rude.
They didn’t meet at a coffee shop. Eiden was not that optimistic. They met in the most inconspicuous place she could think of in Metropolis: the hotel lobby, at a table beside a decorative fountain that looked like it cost more than Eiden’s past life.
The Halcyon’s lobby smelled like lemon polish and quiet intimidation. Everything was marble. Everything was soft. The staff moved like trained ghosts. There was a pianist in the corner playing something that sounded expensive.
Amelia sat rigidly on the velvet couch, hands folded in her lap like she was trying to prove to the room that she knew how to behave. Someone had given her one of Eiden’s spare hoodies. It swallowed her. Her hair was still a mess. Her eyes kept darting, snagging on details as if she expected the walls to lunge.
She looked—impossibly—like herself.
That was the problem.
Eiden could handle monsters. She could handle violence. She could handle blood on her hands and the taste of smoke on her tongue. She could not, apparently, handle normal. Not when normal had been declared dead on paper for a year.
Sawyer arrived late, naturally, because the universe has a sense of timing and it is petty.
They blew through the revolving doors with the kind of momentum usually reserved for meteor strikes and people who have not slept in forty-eight hours. Their coat flared behind them. Their hair looked like it had been argued with. Their expression was already set to exasperated—the default face of someone who had been dragged into too many metaphysical messes by teenagers with feelings.
They spotted Eiden.
Their gaze flicked to Amelia.
Sawyer stopped so abruptly they nearly collided with a bell cart.
“…Eiden,” they said slowly. “Tell me I’m hallucinating.”
Eiden lifted one hand in a small, weak wave. “Hi.”
Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. “Hi? That’s your opener? Not ‘Sawyer, please don’t panic, but I have violated several federal laws and possibly the natural order’?”
Eiden’s mouth twitched. “I thought easing you into it would be kinder.”
Sawyer made a sound that belonged in a dictionary under deeply unfair sigh. They walked closer, gaze pinned on Amelia like if they stared hard enough she would either vanish or become something explainable.
Amelia stared back.
She looked like a person who had woken up in the wrong season. She looked—honestly—like she might start screaming at any moment just to see if anyone would stop her.
Sawyer’s voice softened, just a notch. “Amelia?”
Amelia blinked. “Yeah?”
Sawyer’s shoulders dropped an inch, like something in them unclenched. “Okay. Okay, cool. So you’re… alive.”
Amelia frowned. “I mean, I think so. I’m… tired.” She glanced down at her hands as if verifying they were still attached. Eiden coughed. “Technically—”
Sawyer shot her a look. “Do not say technically.”
Eiden shut her mouth.
Amelia’s eyes widened. “Wait. No. Hold on. Have I—have I been gone?”
Eiden’s stomach did a slow, guilty turn. “For a while.”
“How long is a while,” Amelia demanded, voice rising.
Sawyer sat down opposite them with the measured calm of someone trying not to set their own hair on fire. “One year,” they said, blunt because Sawyer did not believe in gentle lies. “You were announced dead. There was—there were reports. It was official.”
Amelia went very still. “A year,” she repeated faintly.
Eiden watched the words land in Amelia’s chest like a dropped stone.
Amelia’s hands clenched. Unclenched. “But I—I remember being in the facility. I remember the lights. I remember…him.” Her jaw tightened on the pronoun, as if it tasted bad. “And then I remember—nothing. Just…dark.”
Sawyer’s gaze sharpened, all the exasperation temporarily replaced by something clinical and wary. “And now you’re here. In Metropolis. In a hotel that looks like it’s allergic to poor people.”
Eiden opened her mouth. Closed it again. “My mom booked it.”
Sawyer stared at her. “Of course she did.”
Amelia looked between them. “Who are you?”
Sawyer blinked, as if remembering introductions were a thing. “Sawyer,” they said. “I’m—” They paused, visibly considering how much truth to give a girl who had been dead for a year. “I’m a friend of Eiden’s. Sort of. Unfortunately.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Eiden muttered.
Sawyer ignored that with practiced ease. “Eiden,” they said, leaning forward, “tell me what happened. And this time, start with the part where you somehow acquired an undead friend without calling me first.”
Eiden rubbed her forehead. “Okay. So. We went to the containment center.”
Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. “We.”
“Me and Zatanna,” Eiden corrected.
Sawyer went blank. “Zatanna as in—”
“Yes,” Eiden said quickly. “Top hat. Backwards words. Violet magic. Very exquisite aura.”
Sawyer stared at her like she’d admitted to doing drugs with a celebrity. “You what,” they said, flatly.
Eiden shrugged, helpless. “I needed help.”
Sawyer looked like they were trying to decide whether to scold her, hug her, or throw themselves into the fountain behind them. “You needed help,” they repeated. “So you recruited a professional stage magician.”
“She’s a real magician,” Eiden hissed.
“I’m not disputing that,” Sawyer said. “I’m disputing that this is your idea of a normal way to do things.”
Amelia raised her hand slightly, like she was in class. “Sorry. Wait. A magician? Like… magic magic?”
Sawyer glanced at Amelia, then back to Eiden, and their expression softened again—annoyed, yes, but relieved in the way people get when they realize the worst thing hasn’t happened yet.
“Yes,” Sawyer told Amelia. “Magic magic. Your life is terrible. Welcome back.”
Amelia stared at them. “Wow.”
Sawyer turned back to Eiden. “Okay,” they said, brisk, trying to regain control of a universe that clearly didn’t want to be controlled. “So you went to the facility with Zatanna, removed the entity, and—what? They just let you walk out with Amelia? Like a library book?”
Eiden’s ears went red. “Zatanna said she was good at paperwork.”
Sawyer closed their eyes for a second, the way someone does when trying not to start screaming in public. “Of course she did.”
Amelia leaned forward, voice small now. “So what happens to me?”
The question hung there.
Eiden’s chest tightened.
Sawyer looked at Amelia, then at Eiden, and something steadied in their face. Exasperation rearranged itself into something like care. They didn’t like being pulled into crises, but they did it anyway. Like gravity. Like habit.
“What happens,” Sawyer said carefully, “is we keep you out of sight for now. Because if anyone official realizes you’re alive, you become a problem they want to solve.”
Amelia swallowed. “Solve how?”
Sawyer gave her a look that said: You already know how governments solve problems they don’t understand.
Amelia’s shoulders drew in. “So I’m…hiding.”
“For a bit,” Sawyer said. “We might have to give you a fake identity, then you’ll have to live with yourself with the fact that you’re probably not going to be able to contact your loved ones anymore.”
Amelia’s face soured, she bit her lower lip. She opened her mouth to object to that, but closed it as she had worried look on her face.
Eiden’s brain immediately began sprinting. Fake identity. New hair. New city. Smuggle her to Gotham. Or worse—send her back to my parents’ house. Jesus Christ, my mom will try to feed her soup and call it rehabilitation—
Sawyer snapped their fingers once, sharp. “Eiden. Breathe.”
Eiden blinked. “I am breathing.”
“You’re breathing like you’re about to combust,” Sawyer said. “Stop doing that.”
Amelia stared at them both. “Do you two always talk like this?”
“Yes,” Sawyer said. “It’s how we avoid crying.”
Eiden shot them a look. “I don’t cry.”
Sawyer’s eyebrows rose. “Sure.”
Amelia’s mouth twitched, as if she almost remembered how to smile.
Then she looked down again, fingers twisting in the hem of the borrowed hoodie. “So,” she said quietly. “I’m dead. But I’m not. And I’m supposed to… what? Hide?”
Eiden’s throat tightened. She reached across the small table, tentative, and covered Amelia’s hand with her own.
Amelia flinched, then didn’t pull away.
“We’re going to figure it out,” Eiden said, because it was the only promise she knew how to make.
Sawyer watched them, expression unreadable. Then they sighed—the kind of sigh that meant yes, fine, they would help, even though they’d complain the entire time.
“Alright,” they said. “First step: we get you out of this lobby before someone with a clipboard asks why a dead girl is sitting on a five-star couch.”
Amelia blinked. “Is that a thing that happens?”
Sawyer gave her a grim little smile. “In my experience? Yes.”
Eiden tightened her grip on Amelia’s hand, and somewhere deep in her chest, the ash—quiet for the first time in what felt like forever—settled, as if even it understood that the real work always started after the monster was gone.