Among Us: A Supernatural Novel written by Carver Edlund

Angel Food

Supernatural in its entirety copyright Kripke Enterprises / Warner Bros. Entertainment / The CW

..::~*~::..

Aya cracked open her cookie, and then pulled the fortune free.

"Angels are among us;" she read, "when you find them, cherish their presence every day."

Smiling to herself, she crumpled the slip of paper in one hand and popped a cookie piece into her mouth with the other. She brushed crumbs off her top. Typical trite nonsense, fortune cookie fortunes, although this one didn't go well with the obligatory phrase her sister Mio insisted they add at the end, "between the sheets." Too bad. Angels among them? Probably not. But souls? Well. She didn't need a fortune cookie to tell her about those.

"Time for a refill, Latte," she said, reaching for her glass. She munched the rest of the cookie as she got off the couch she and Lemara had salvaged from beside the dumpster out back. Nobody cared that it was a castoff, and it had cleaned up nice. Every struggling college student not privileged enough to live in the dorms went dumpster diving, often in broad daylight. The girls completed most of their homework on their apartment floor.

Latte mewed, tail straight up in the air. The little three-legged cat, coffee and cream-colored, hobbled along at Aya's heels.

"Talking to your dead kitty again? You're like a kid with an imaginary friend. What are you, four?"

Aya's roommate threw a ball of dirty laundry right in front of her, causing her to pull up short or risk an infection from whatever that smell was. "Aren't pets supposed to cross the Rainbow Bridge or something? You know, all—cats—go to Heaven?"

Aya frowned at the laundry, less than half of which had made it into the round plastic basket. Coral pink. "She's a cat, Marr. It doesn't seem to bother her that she hasn't moved on. I doubt she realizes she's dead. Besides, housecats don't have that much to be mad about. They rarely turn into vengeful spirits."

Onryo, her grandmother had called them. Which she had once had a nasty encounter with, a twisted man who hadn't let death stop him from stalking the young and pretty. Lacking a body had enabled him to get into places he couldn't while alive. That soul, she'd lost to the dark in the end, but she couldn't bring herself to regret his passing. She still had the scars.

"Whatever," Lemara, who hadn't heard the story about Rapist Randy, said with a grin. She pitched a wad of panties overhand. She didn't believe in Latte any more than she believed in the tooth fairy—which she totally should, since those sprites liked to bite and the baby teeth they collected were sharp—but Aya never tried to enlighten her about things that went bump in the night.

It hadn't been easy, growing up with what her grandmother called reikan, uninspiringly translated as Sight, but she'd adapted. The less she said about it, the better off everyone was.

When the bundle of crumpled thongs passed right through Latte, however, she couldn't help making a face. Though, honestly, Latte didn't seem to care much about that, either. She meowed, her big green eyes as bright as ever, as though asking what they were going to do next. Aya smiled at her. Loving animal. Better than any boyfriend any day.

"Okay, the tiny chick is smiling at nothing. That's creepy, Aya." Lemara gave her an affectionate bump toward the kitchen.

"The tiny chick washes her gym socks from time to time, unlike the giant chick." Gingerly, Aya hooked a few pieces of clothing with her toes into the basket. She hopped over the rest.

After a moment of checking her balance, Latte copied her. She mewed again, probably wondering why Aya wouldn't scratch her ears.

"Shut up, ladies don't stink," Lemara said. Ignoring Aya's shout of laughter, she scooped up the socks in question. "Hey, it's Saturday. Don't you have class tonight?"