Among Us: A Supernatural Novel written by Carver Edlund

On the Road Again

Due to the damages done to Apt. 3-301, Aya Nakano was served eviction paperwork. The apartment manager couldn't slap the pink slip to the missing door, so she glued it to the remains of Aya's coffee table. At least she had requested a police presence to keep anyone from entering the apartment until Aya returned, so Aya hadn't been robbed blind on top of everything else. That weekend, instead of attending her graduation ceremony, Darika, Paulie, and Desmond helped her pack, and to prepare Lemara's things for shipping home to her parents in Chicago.

Aya's diploma had arrived, and with it, her entire future. However, it was hard to think about a future right then, sitting in the middle of her bed, a small box to her right and a pile of newspaper to her left, a stack of photos in frames balanced in front of her.

Honestly, she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been set adrift. Lemara was gone. Paulie was trying, but it would be a long time before he would be himself again. Her home was no longer hers; she wasn't prepared to go running back to her family. School was over, her schedule up in the air. Several things had happened in the last few days, some wonderful, some terrifying, and some flat-out bewildering. The only thing she had left to anchor her, it seemed, was that her reikan was still a part of her. She could See, and that was all she could do, just like . . . before.

A noise from the front room pulled her off her blue comforter and out of her bluer mood. She tiptoed in her fuzzy socks to investigate, a picture frame clutched in her hand and raised like a weapon.

She rounded the corner out of the hall and stopped in surprise. "Castiel?"

He turned, his hair sticking up in dark brown tufts. He stood with his arms at his sides, his jaw shadowed with stubble, his eyes tired.

"Hello, Aya," he said.

Sheepishly lowering the heavy frame, Aya stepped around her couch, careful not to knock her knees into the old, scuffed coffee table. Latte, her tail in the air, perched on the back of the couch. "What are you doing here? I didn't think I'd see you again."

Castiel's eyes dropped, and then lifted, apologetic.

Oh. Was she seeing him again? Aya took in her furnished living room, the intact door, the purses and scarf hanging next to it. She peered at the microwave in the kitchen with its red digital numbers, unreadable, then examined the picture frame in her hand, which hadn't survived dropping like a grenade on Sam. Just that afternoon, she'd left this apartment empty and as clean as she and her friends could get it before gorging herself on pizza and Coronitas until she passed out, moderately and gratefully drunk, on Darika's hideaway bed.

Latte let herself down to the arm of the couch in her usual sideways shuffle, claws catching in the textured fabric. She regained her balance and then looked up at Castiel with her big green eyes. She meowed imperiously. A faint smile touched his lips, and he offered the cat spirit his hand. Latte pushed her head into it.

"I wanted to find some way to thank you for what you did," he said at last in his low, gruff voice, though he directed the words at her shameless cat. "You saved so many. Without you, they would have been lost."

Aya spoke to her cat, too. "You don't need to thank me."

Castiel gave a tiny sigh. "I want you to know that I will be here. If you need me."

Need wasn't exactly the right word. She watched Latte fawn over him, vaguely jealous of a cat. Gradually, it dawned on her that there was one more thing that needed to be done. No matter how much it hurt. "Castiel, I . . ."

He tilted his head at her, patiently waiting.

"I can't live here anymore, but I can't explain that to Latte," she said slowly, not sure she was allowed to ask this. "Will you take her with you?"