I wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread and coffee after a night of dreamless, perfect sleep. No nightmares to speak of, no memories or thoughts or experiences to haunt my time. Just an endless rest.

  Then coffee.

  I open my eyes and I’m in my bedroom. It takes a few seconds for me to orient myself, and part of me wants to curl back up in my comfortable bed, but it’s overruled by the coffee.

  Wrath comes in with a tray loaded with a carafe of coffee, cream and sugar, a plate filled with gorgeous buttery French toast, and a small syrup dispenser.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Wrath says, carefully setting the tray down towards the foot of the bed, out of the reach of any sudden lunges.

  “Mmph.” I make grabby hands towards the coffee.

  Wrath hands the cup over to me, and I drink deeply. It is amazing. Truly coffee that is out of this…

  Realization strikes me abruptly. My moment of innocence shattered, my single moment of wonder brought back to a jaded reality.

  “You fixed it,” I say flatly.

  “It fixed itself,” Wrath says, not willing to hide his triumphant smile. “Turns out it just needed a little vacation from all the doom and gloom.”

  A cross ticking noise at my side makes me look down to see Pox clearly pouting at the news. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a new one to play with,” I say, patting him on the head. Just as I thought, he was curled up with me while asleep. Only this time he didn’t scurry away before I woke up.

  “How are you feeling?” Wrath tries to change the subject with nonchalance, but I sip at my coffee and gather myself.

  This… Wrath being nice. It’s uncharacteristic. Wrath can do nice things for someone else, but he has to wrap it up in an insult, or pair it with an appropriate slap to the face. He never just… makes breakfast for me. There’s always a sting to the sweetness.

  “What did you do—“ but I cut the question off before I’m finished. I remember the classroom. Freddie. The demon Garth. Wrath knocking me unconscious.

  The book.

  Even thinking about the book fills me with a need to possess it. But Wrath doesn’t want me to have it. So how do I—

  “Stop,” he says firmly. He hasn’t raised his voice yet, but if yesterday proves anything, he will at a moment’s notice. Between yelling at me and grabbing me, he was able to somehow stop my mind from focusing on the book.

  Even now, though, there’s a thread of desire there, and I pull away from him instinctively. He sighs, and sits on the edge of the bed, picking up the carafe of coffee and waving it gently in my direction.

  I let him fill the cup that I’ve drained by this point, and he just as carefully adds the cream and sugar, then stirs it together.

  “What did you do to me?”

  He makes a hmphing sound, showcasing irritation. “I saved you from yourself. Your very human, easily corruptible self. You’re welcome.”

  “Freddie got sucked into the Gate. Does that mean he’s dead?”

  Wrath considers it for a moment but then brings the breakfast tray closer to me. “Eat. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

  “How long?” I ask, just as my stomach starts to growl.

  “Not too long,” he says quickly. “Just the rest of yesterday and last night. Only about sixteen hours. Eat.”

  Only sixteen hours. Wrath clearly thinks I should be comforted by that fact, but sleeping away most of a day. What happened to me?

  I’m not exactly placated, but I am starving so I focus on my fresh bread French toast. It’s something Wrath used to make when I was really little and in need of cheering up, which makes me wonder what I need cheering up about now.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask between bites.

  “Freddie isn’t… well, he’s probably not dead. Which means he could come back someday. And Garth likes to play with his toys in weird ways. So I don’t know what we might get back when he returns. He could teach him to control zombies better than he was doing. Or he could teach him other kinds of dark magic. Or he could give him three heads and the ability to sniff you out wherever you are in the world. It’s anyone’s guess.”

  “Can’t you tell Garth to just send him back?”

  “I… can’t talk to my old friends anymore,” Wrath says, too carefully.

  I notice the change in his demeanor. “Can’t? As in you’re not allowed to?”

  He goes very still but doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. And I have to wonder again what my parents did to Wrath during the negotiation to be my guardian demon. I flash back to the vision I had when we were looking for the Doom Clock, the vision of a thoroughly ragged, wrecked Wrath. “You’re not supposed to be here, Theo.”

  Neither was he.

  “Is there any way I can free you?” I ask quietly, setting my knife and fork gently back down onto the tray. Though I’ve only had a few bites, my appetite is suddenly gone.

  “Oh, Theo, no. Don’t think like that. I told you, I’d rather stay here with you than anything else. You’re my best friend.”

  “Dont you remember what they did to me? What you did to me?”

  His assurances don’t make me feel any better, but I paint a smile on my face and pretend to be fine. Pretending to feel emotions is often how I get through the day. Wrath doesn’t seem to notice.

  Or if he does, he’s better at hiding his emotions than I am.

  ***

  There’s a strange man in our Ecology class when we walk into the room later in the week. I head back to the corner where my friends and I have stationed ourselves.

  The man is older, with a carefully maintained beard, a flannel shirt with elbow patches on it, and a befuddled expression on his face.

  “Can we help you, sir?” someone from the front of the room asks.

  “I hardly think so,” the man says absently. “Where is the blasted lesson plan.”

  “Probably on Freddie’s computer. Which he… exploded last week,” I find myself saying.

  The man looks up at me, and it takes a moment for his eyes to focus in my direction. Dark hair and piercing blue eyes, from a distance he looks similar to Garth, but the voice is all wrong, and his features are just a bit too flawed to be him.

  “Of course, of course.” The man looks around the room before gravitating back towards me. It’s like I’m the only person he sees in the room.

  “That’s weird,” Wrath says flatly.

  “I’m Professor Alistair Gravechurch,” the man says, sounding rather pompous now. “With Freddie’s withdrawal from the semester, I suppose I’ll have to teach you now. It’s far too late in the year to find another TA that wants to take on my classes. Tragic thing, really. I truly can’t be bothered with teaching.”

  “Isn’t that your job?” the same guy from the front of the room asks immediately.

  “Too many questions,” Professor Gravechurch says as though he hasn’t heard. “Too many open minds and malleable wills. It bothers one, I suppose.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Oh this guy is going to be a treat,” Nico says under his breath. Neither he nor Winter have asked about what happened to Freddie. They seem to remember hunting for him two days ago but nothing about finding him in the classroom, or them being trapped outside the door.

  To that end, the room itself is remarkably pristine. Some of the desks are certainly new, but there’s no sign of the debris or destruction that Freddie’s Gate caused.

  Did Wrath take care of this too? And was he responsible for my friends forgetting part of yesterday? Or did the effect on the town start to cover them too?

  That doesn’t help my mood very much. I kind of liked having some friends who knew the truth about something that was happening in Hollow Hills. Even though Isaac forgot after the first night, the fact that Winter and Nico remembered was something of a relief.

  “Did you hear that?” Nico asks. “He said Freddie dropped out. Do you think that’s what really happened? Or did he run because he knew we were onto him?”

  “What?”

  Nico persists. “I think Freddie knew we were looking for him, and that we knew he was responsible for the zombies. So he skips town, drops out of school, and leaves it all behind.”

  The books from the Library-Under-the-World are still in my bag. With everything that happened, I haven’t had more time to read the books about The Lost Star and even as I think about the strange volume I immediately shift my thoughts in a different direction. It’s strangely easier this time, and I wonder how much to tell Nico and Winter.

  “Do you think we should try looking for him?” Winter asks.

  But before we can converse any further, Professor Gravechurch seems to have regained his focus. Or he’s just tired of us talking amongst ourselves.

  “So we’re going to discussing the ethical concerns of reanimation and it’s effects on the environment,” Gravechurch says at the start, eyes darting to several points around the room and ceiling before they train on me. “Are zombies the key resource needed for an independent workforce? And what are the ethical concerns with maintaining a body after the spirit has vacated it? And what if the spirit wants their body back, but it’s been allocated to a new purpose?”

  “Oh,” says Nico, sitting upright in his seat. So too are Isaac and Winter more focused than I’ve ever seen them in this class before. It’s a surprise - the opportunity to actually learn in a classroom.

  “I don’t like him,” Wrath says crossly but he doesn’t say why.

  ***

  After class, Isaac and Winter run off to get breakfast out of the cafeteria, leaving Nico and I to leave on our own. Wrath trails along with me, of course, hidden inside his stuffed animal.

  “It’s been pretty crazy this week,” Nico points out, and it reminds me that we’re only a week or so into the semester. I’m exhausted already.

  “Me too,” Wrath says in my ear, even though I didn’t speak out loud.

  “Stop that,” I say under my breath while Nico takes a moment to check his phone.

  “Oh,” he says again, in the same tone that he said it in the classroom. A pleased sort of surprise. I have to wonder who’s on the other end of that text message, to make him happy like that. I kind of hate them already. “I have to go,” he says, and starts to hurry off before I can even say anything.

  Then, like he realizes what he just did, he jogs back over to me, waving his phone in explanation. “Sorry, it’s my grandmother. She flew in last night and she’s on her way to the house.”

  This is the first I’ve heard about family members. “Your grandmother?”

  “Yeah, I’m fixing up the house for her. You didn’t think a college student could afford the house across the street, could you? I mean, you get it. The Manor’s one of the most expensive houses in town, right?”

  Maybe in terms of all the people it’s killed over the years, I think to myself. No one is beating down my door trying to buy the Manor off of me. If I even actually own it. I’m not sure how we came to live here, exactly, just that my parents left me here when I was a kid.

  The people in Hollow Hills would prefer to pretend our two houses aren’t looming over the town like a pair of albatrosses, ready to strike when their guard is down. Or maybe as the unsightly boils on the ridge outside of town. It’s hard to say what people think of the Manor, mostly because they run screaming whenever I try to talk to them.

  All I know is that no one’s ever shown up trying to evict us. Maybe the awkward evil they know is better than… whatever evil might fill my spot if Wrath and I get evicted.

  “Is more of your family coming, then?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s just the two of us,” and there’s a solemnity that I recognize. After all, it’s just been Wrath and I for so long. He brightens though, flashing me a smile. “Okay, I’ve got to go pick her up, but we should try watching Nec-Romance again this weekend. Now that there aren’t any other zombies running around town.”

  “Sure,” I say faintly as he jogs back off towards the parking lot.

  ***

  It takes Theo forever to fall asleep.

  It’s late evening when Wrath slips out of the Manor and drifts through the town of Hollow Hills. Past all the roads that inexplicably curve towards the university, past buildings and storefronts that aren’t visible during the daylight. Crossing streets that no one ever crosses, and passing children that no one else can see. There are many hidden truths within Hollow Hills, secrets that could be traded like currency but with a weight that would drag down even the heartiest of humans.

  He likes this world. He likes this town. There has never been a boy like Theo, and Wrath would do anything for him. That was an unexpected realization. In the first few days, he sought to make the child laugh only so that it would not sulk, and now they’ve become close as to be soulmates. If a demon could be said to have a soul, and if it could find a mate in one wearing human flesh.

  Wrath narrows his focus and finds himself drawn towards the peculiar energy pulsing near the center of town. Normally masked by the thrum of humanity all around it, he might never have noticed it if it hadn’t introduced itself to Theo on the first day of school.

  He descends to the street, considers for a moment, and his mouth sours as he takes a human form. Still too tall for a human, nearly seven feet in height, and with thoroughly unnatural hair in colored spikes of currant and sable, shades so deep that they look like the color would stain anything to touch them.

  It’s a shame he cannot disguise himself better, but he is a creature of power and that cannot be hidden away, even when attempting to masquerade as a… human. And so he must pretend to be something called a ‘gym rat’ who lifts for a living.

  No one can know of this. Especially not Theo. If he dressed as a human once, Theo would expect it every time. Wrath knows it bothers him, to have a friend that no one else could see. And he knew Theo would be overjoyed if Wrath consented to this one small request, but Wrath is a creature of vices and violence. Theo has never looked at him askance before, no small feat for a human child. But once he saw a human Wrath, he would never look at the demon in the same light again.

  And that might kill him.

  Wrath sighs, putting the thought down and then knocks a single time on the door. Almost as though she’s been waiting for him, the door opens and an older woman, surprisingly tall and severe looking stares him down. An amazing skill, that. To stare him down even though she was shorter than him, though not by as much as most.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she says and it’s not a greeting but a dismissal.

  “Darkest evenings,” Wrath begins. “I’m looking for your…” he takes a closer look at the woman, beyond the skin and sinew. “Oh, well. She’s not actually your granddaughter, is she? Does she know?”

  “Do I need to send you back where you belong?” the woman asks, nonplussed. There is no other word for the sharpness in her eyebrows but judgemental.

  Wrath resists the smile, pressing his lips down against each other to hide the too-sharp cut of his canines. “Let’s all remember our manners. So great-great-great-grandmother Nettles is alive and well.”

  The woman’s expression doesn’t change. “You’re the demon, then. Not the one I expected, I suppose.”

  “I’m just here to talk with Winter. Won’t take but a moment.”

  “You’ll take even less than that from her if you’re smart.”

  See, these are the types of humans that he likes. The spicy ones. Ones who tangled with Wrath’s kin long before he settled on this plane and lived to tell the tale. They’re always so… exciting.

  “You won’t be invited in,” the woman says, folding her arms in front of her. He can see the curse wafting off of her like a perfume, something that smells equally of chaos and carnage. It’s extremely elegant in appearance which is unusual for the curses that he’s seen. It almost has the comely appearance of a gift.

  “I can say what I need from the porch,” he agrees.

  Her eyebrows arch. “You’ll say less than that and mind your words. I won’t tolerate incivility in my home or on my property.”

  Oh yes, he likes her. Wrath is extremely civil, thank you very much. “Out of curiosity, what did she think when a new grandmother appeared in her life? Your curse doesn’t pass down the line like she thinks it does. She’s not cursed like you, is she? But when her gift appeared, so did you.”

  There’s a long pause and the woman calls over a shoulder, “Winter. The door is for you. But you don’t step a foot outside, you understand me?”

  The girl comes downstairs, in a pair of pajamas that are black with tiny skeleton cats on both the top and bottom. She slows when she sees Wrath on the porch, and ends up switching places with her grandmother, but putting half of the door in front of her.

  “Darkest evenings, Winter,” Wrath says formally.

  If the grandmother is openly hostile, the granddaughter is guarded and untrusting. “‘Sup.”

  “I won’t be far,” Grandmother Nettles warns with a pointed look in Wrath’s direction. “Make sure the trash takes itself out when you’re done.”

  “You have the evening you deserve,” Wrath says cordially to her as she disappears back into the house.

  The exchange does little to thaw Winter’s mood. “This is a new look for you.”

  Wrath frowns in distaste. Did she really have to call it out like that? It’s embarrassing enough as it is. He clears his throat. “That’s not the point.”

  “The point is that you want to talk about Theo,” Winter interrupts. “Yeah, obviously. So say what you want to say.”

  The foresight throws him off his guard a bit. He thought to drop a few threats, wish her a morbid evening, and be on his way before Theo woke up to pee. Unfortunately for the girl, though, this foresight means she bears even closer watching than before.

  “You should transfer,” he says smoothly, as though it was always his intention. Already, he’s thinking through potential conversations, ways to sever the budding friendship with Theo before he gets hurt.

  Winter crosses her arms in front of her. “Yes, I could see why you’d want that. But counterpoint. I’m not going to say anything to Theo about the things you’re keeping from him. It’ll hurt him, and I don’t need Grandmother’s gift to know that.”

  Be very still.

  He is very, very close to the edge. No one has ever threatened his bond with Theo like this before, and it rankles him that he’s trapped inside this mortal shell. Imagine, a demon of Wrath’s rank and caliber, at the mercy of a secret. And to a human no less.

  It’s so very good for this girl that Wrath’s banishment coincides with an inability to reach out to his friends in the Broken Hells. Theo’s mother was quite meticulous in her conjuring. And his father…

  Well, the less said about that madman the better.

  Winter looks up at him with her mascara lined eyes, guileless and as though unaware of the danger she has put herself in.

  “See that you don’t,” Wrath says, realizing that there is no way to win this war. He will watch. And he will wait.

  And when she least expects it…

  He vanishes.