Breathe

Chapter 5

Lucie

While I still worked my low-paying and semi-frustrating job at Wal-Mart, Jiya, my best friend since middle school was doing better as a barista at a coffee shop not far from the park I'd been at last night. She'd only started working there a few weeks ago, but was already good at mixing a variety of drinks—a majority of which had long, complicated Italian names that I could not pronounce.

After my shift the next day, I strolled into the place—wood paneling, dark concrete floors, cozy booths and loveseats—and marched right up to the counter. Jiya looked up, and her face lit when she saw me. Her hair was in a dense side braid, her winged eyeliner done flawlessly and her russet skin free of imperfections. Once again, she one-upped me in every single way possible. Whenever I tried to wing my eyeliner, I made myself look like I'd gotten punched in the face.

I was never going to be a makeup artist, and we're going to leave it at that.

"Hey, Monty," Jiya said, grinning at me. "Can I get you something?"

"Yeah. One of your latte things, and a slice of coffee cake," I replied, adding the last one after a brisk glance at the sweets counter. As Jiya punched my order in, I added, "Also, can...I talk to you, Jiji?"

"Talk to me?" her voice sounded wary.

"Like, outside, privately. Unless you're too busy—"

She must have read the alarm in my eyes, for she shook her head and called for another worker. "I'll get someone to cover me. Is everything okay?"

I leaned across the counter, fighting the dismal images of last night that kept replaying in my head. I cast my eyes away from Jiya's. "I'm not sure."

We snagged a table on the outside patio, near the corner, further away from everyone else. As most days were in the summer months here, the temperatures were high and the sun was up, drawing sweat from my bare skin and causing the dark curls of my hair to acquire an extra layer of frizz. I sat back against the warm metal of the patio chair and unwrapped the paper around my slice of cake, digging into it gently with my plastic fork. "Here's the thing," I began, exhaling into the humid air. "Well, there's lots of things, so here's a thing."

"Okay?" again, Jiya sounded dubious. More than once I talked to Jiya about anything that had to do with ghosts or angels or anything about the border of the living and dead worlds and she sounded dubious, but she was getting used to it. I mean, she had to, considering I'd been dating an angel for almost three months now, and his brother—my best friend—had been a ghost not too long ago.

"Last night, Cian's heart stopped, you know," I said, looking up from my cake to check her level of attention, which I found to my pleasure. She didn't seem surprised, as I'd explained that Cian's heart stopped way more often than the hearts of most people did, and that it was totally normal. Nevertheless, there was something subtle twisted into her expression, like an unasked question in the depths of her dark eyes. "So I went with him, and...I don't know. You probably saw it on the news by now, but some guy got decapitated."

"Decapitated?" gasped Jiya, and I nodded, understanding her astonishment. It was a particularly bloody and painful death, especially if he'd been alive as it happened, and things like that didn't typically happen around here. "That's dark."

"Wanna know what's even darker?"

Jiya narrowed her eyes at me. "Actually, I'm not sure I do—"

"There was a girl next to him. Unconscious, but alive, and she woke up. She didn't have any idea what had happened, but there was...she had the murder weapons hooked on her waist, Jiya. She must have done it, and yet she didn't remember," I observed. I had slowed on chowing down on my coffee cake, as my appetite was starting to lessen the more I thought about last night. I couldn't stop seeing the blood-stained grass, the girl's wide, tear-filled eyes, her scream when she realized her beloved Max was dead.