Page 53 of Architecti
Lex pulls some journals out of her suitcase.“These are my sister’s study notes from when she was here.They’re ours now.This is going to be a tough year and I don’t want to do it alone.”
“That’s very generous,” I say, and she beams at me.“What’s your story?I said in the Hall of Unfinished Business if we made it through, I wanted to know what your stories were.What better time than now?”
She sighs.
“Is it to do with your sister?”Bastien asks.
Lex flinches and slumps against the wall.“I made a mistake.”
“We’ve all made mistakes.”
“Not like this.”Her braids fall in front of her face as she rests her head in her hands.
“I fucked up, made a deal with a lesser demon.My sister was the pride of our family.She’d made it through Finis.”
She stalls out, sits up and stares out the window.Bastien and I share a look, but he shakes his head no, so we leave the silence, and wait for her to be ready to tell us.
A moth flutters against the window, trying to reach the light in here.
“The night I was due to have my soul reaped, my sister was with me.She’d come back from some job she was on.I confessed what I’d done, and she was understandably furious.”
She turns to us, two streaks glisten down her cheeks.
Bastien gets up, moves to the bed and slides his arm around her, and then uses his other one to tug me in.He squeezes until we’re all laughing and collapse on her bed.
My head rests on Lex’s stomach.Hers on Bastien’s chest.
“When the demon arrived to take me, my sister intervened.The demon took her soul instead of mine.I still don’t know why.I don’t understand what happened that night.”
“And that’s why you want to learn the necromantic languages?”I ask.
She nods, her braids rustling against her duvet.“I have to know why.She had such a bright future.And the demon took her so fast, I didn’t get a chance to speak to her...to tell her to stop…”
We’re silent for a while.Lex’s truth lingering cold and palpable in the room.
“My story isn’t much better,” Bastien finally says, sitting up.The three of us reposition ourselves and get comfortable.
This time Bastien goes out to make tea.When he returns, it’s Lex who pushes him to talk.
“What happened to you?”she says, as he hands her a cuppa and three biscuits.
Bastien sits back in his armchair and picks at his leg bandage.“Anyone know the first rule of resurrection?”
Lex shrugs, unbothered.“Not a class I’ll be taking.”
“Don’t resurrect your family,” I say, something I’ve heard from some reapers who ended up dispatched to deal with wayward family pissed at the loss of their loved one.
“I had an older sister, too.She was a fair bit older than me.She, umm… she died.”
Lex’s face falls.
“It was natural.She had a dicky heart, she was never going to live a long life, but she was talented too, successful.Anyway, it broke my parents when she died.They disengaged.Became depressed.”
His words make my ribs ache, filled with longing and regret, and the kind of yearning for something more, something unobtainable you only find buried in the coils of grief.
“I was young and stupid.”
“Weren’t we all?That might be the one thing we all share,” I say.
