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So am I done?
Or is my body breaking up with me?
—Haley Heynderickx, Fish Eyes
There’s a fish on Crystal’s plate.
Not a whole fish—just, like, part of one, because that’s how people who aren’t fucking savages eat fish. It’s skinless and boneless, vaguely coral-colored on top and off-white inside. She thinks maybe the pre-event menu had called it orange roughy, but who the fuck knows, honestly. Fish is fish.
It’s pretty. Fancy. There’s some kind of glaze on it, and a stupid little cilantro garnish on top. There’s seemingly always a stupid little cilantro garnish on top of the food at these fancy banquet events.
It would probably taste good, if Crystal could stop staring at it long enough to pick up her fork and take a bite.
Crystal remembers the taste of fish. She remembers the feeling of skin tearing under her teeth, thick and slimy; remembers how the rotten smell filled her nose.
God. She feels like she’s going to throw up.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to swallow it down—but then she just remembers sharp bones scratching her throat, and dead eyes staring up at her from above a gaping mouth.
“Jesus fuck,” she whispers, ducking down to press a trembling hand to her mouth.
A firm hand lands on Crystal’s shoulder. She almost jumps out of her skin at the feeling, biting back what probably would have been an embarrassingly-loud shriek, but it’s not—she doesn’t turn and see pitch-black eyes and a gold-fanged mouth, just—
It’s just her mom. Regular, human eyes; dark brown, the same as Crystal’s. Lips pursed, brow furrowed. She has a vaguely disappointed look on her face, which Crystal is starting to realize is sort of the norm for them.
“Crystal,” her mom hisses. “Don’t be rude.” And she flicks her eyes pointedly to the far end of the table.
Reality slides slowly back into place. There’s a talk going on, up on a stage at the front of the room; that’s what this whole dinner is for. A bunch of aspirational art-curator types pitching expensive exhibit ideas to a roomful of filthy-rich sponsors—or, at least, that’s what Crystal remembers from the minimal explanation her dad gave over the phone when he told her she’d be expected there.
That was all it had been; just a cursory phone-call, not even five minutes long, to tell her they’d be sending a driver to pick her up on the day of the event, with a lightly-exasperated “and try to wear something half-decent, this time” tacked on at the end. No “thank you,” no “we missed you and want to see you there”—not even an “I love you”.
That’s all it ever is.
Crystal remembers, now. The old version of her ignored this kind of thing as often as she could get away with. She’d decline the call entirely, or go out driving with her boyfriend of the week instead and just leave her parents’ chauffeur waiting. On the off-chance that she did go, she’d ditch the event a quarter of the way through to go get high in the bathroom.
But the New Crystal is here. She came, and she’s sitting in a banquet chair in a silver cocktail dress tighter than her skin with black tights squeezed on underneath, because it’s fucking November in London and barely any of the dresses in her closet go below her ass. Old Crystal’s idea of rebellion, probably.
She can’t even enjoy the food that probably would have been the only redeeming part of this whole experience if she was a little less messed up, because instead she’s busy having a mental breakdown over a fucking hunk of fish.
Crystal knows where all her anger comes from, now. Because as her mom turns back to the front of the room, satisfied that the danger of Crystal embarrassing them has passed, all Crystal wants to do is get up and scream in her parents’ faces. She wants to take their glasses of stupid fucking thousand-dollar red wine and throw it on them both; stain her dad’s pristine blue dress shirt, and her mom’s off-white designer jacket. She wants to scream until her voice goes hoarse—until they stop looking disappointed and start to look actually scared. She wants them to feel what she felt for months, fighting off witches and demons and not even knowing who she was. Needing them, while they hadn’t even realized she was gone.
Crystal doesn’t know what the hell made her think she could do this. Just—slide back into her own life again, like it’s nothing. Playing the perfect daughter—and she wants to laugh, because when the fuck has she ever managed that? When has it ever been enough?
The fish is still sitting completely untouched on Crystal’s plate, probably gross and cold by now. Her parents finished eating ages ago. All she’s managed to do since the main course came out is stare at it and push the roast potatoes and asparagus on the sides around a little. It feels like it’s mocking her; like it’s about to grow fins and start flopping around on her plate. What, you’re afraid of a little meat? I thought you were supposed to be powerful.
Of course it sounds like fucking David.
Jaw clenched hard enough it’ll probably give her a headache later, Crystal picks up her fork and forces herself to cut into the fish. She thinks, as forcefully as she can: You don’t own me anymore, asshole.
It gives easily. Fish always does. Soft sections slide apart under the edge of her fork to reveal tender white meat, tinted rusty orange by a smear of glaze.
The world tips back out of focus. There’s a thick metal taste in Crystal’s mouth, and a ringing in her ears.
None of this belongs to her anymore. Not the dress, pinching her throat, armpits and chest so tight every breath hurts, or the black platform boots squishing her toes until the bones ache. Not her body, full of memories she didn’t put there; food she didn’t eat, punches she didn’t throw—except she did, because he made her.
All the sounds in the room are muffled again, like Crystal’s hearing them from underwater—or like she’s back in that box. Small, frozen, and helpless.
She doesn’t know what the arms attached to her body are about to do. She isn’t in control. She can imagine it, so vividly it’s more like she’s reliving than remembering: dropping the fork and sinking her fingers into that cold, slimy flesh; the flavor of dirty ocean water and rot erupting on her tongue; how she won’t even be able to gag, because it isn’t her mouth anymore, either. Because he won’t let her. He’ll just swallow it right down; make her sick with it.
The backs of Crystal’s thighs sting where they must have slammed into the edge of her chair when she stood up—which she doesn’t even remember doing, but she’s there now. All she knows is she has to get out. Out of where? Who the fuck knows.
Her body, maybe. She feels like she could use a new one.
“Crystal,” her mom hisses again, snapping a hand up to grab Crystal’s wrist. “What has gotten into you?”
Crystal wants to laugh, or punch something, or maybe start sobbing. What’s gotten into me? Oh, I don’t know; just the fucking demon I fell in love with and was too stupid to realize letting possess me was a bad idea—which you never even knew about, because you don’t give a shit about my life unless it makes you look good.
Everyone’s looking at her. Even the speaker paused for a second, probably out of sheer confusion. Crystal thinks she might have been happy about that, once—everyone’s eyes on her—but all she feels right now is shame.
She was supposed to be done with David. She buried him, but it just feels like he’s rotting her from the inside out. She can’t even eat dinner without having a total breakdown, for fuck’s sake.
Crystal snatches her hand back from her mom, then fumbles her jacket and purse over her arm, stumbling away from the table.
“Sorry,” she croaks, swallowing around the rising tide of nausea. “Just, um—bathroom.”
And she runs.
Crystal’s parents both whisper-shout her name after her a couple times, but that’s apparently all the disruption they’re willing to cause. The fucking paintings lining the hallway off of the dining room follow her longer than their voices do. It’s all weird abstract shit she couldn’t make sense of when she was walking down this same hall an hour ago—but right now, it feels like there are eyes bulging out of every canvas, following her every move.
Pretty soon, Crystal slams through a set of heavy wooden doors and out onto the towering front steps of the presentation hall. The air outside is fucking frigid, but it’s enough of a shock to slice through some of the bullshit swirling in her head. She can actually feel her feet under her body now. Her knees wobble where she stands, like they’re ready to give out at any second.
She drops down onto the top step before they get the chance.
Crystal just sits there for a while, breathing slowly in and out until she doesn’t feel so much like puking. The ice-cold press of the stair railing against her bare shoulder helps as much as it hurts.
As soon as her hands have stopped shaking enough that thinks she can trust them not to randomly drop shit, she digs her phone out of her purse and pulls up the front camera. Her own face stares back at her, almost accusing: puffy, bloodshot eyes and tear-streaked cheeks.
No black scleras.
No David.
Crystal closes out the camera app, lets her phone fall limp at her side, and drops her head onto her knees. It feels like she just ran a marathon. Her heart is still pounding like mad, and all her limbs feel like they’re made of Jell-o.
She thinks back to the conversation she had with Charles and Edwin earlier today, before her driver showed up. They’d known about the dinner for a while—ever since her mom called while she was hanging out at the office after a case—and came to check on her while she was getting ready. Edwin said they just came to clarify some details for their latest case report, but that was a bullshit excuse and they both knew it.
Crystal had been nervous; nervous ever since that fucking phone call and nervous then, flipping through the entire catalogue of dresses in her walk-in closet for maybe the third time in a row. The boys had both offered to come with her as moral support. Charles had said they could just haunt a gallery or something if she wanted, so they’d be there but out of the way unless she needed them—but Crystal had turned them down. Told them she could handle it on her own.
What a fucking joke that turned out to be.
That hysterical urge to laugh out loud is getting bigger. Crystal’s too tired to punch anything anymore—and apparently, she already cried. Her phone is a dead weight in her hand; free of buzzes and notification sounds. It’s not like she really expected her parents to text her—it’s still the middle of dinner, and neither of them are famous for worrying about her when she storms off—but she’d been wondering if she might get a message scolding her, at least. Telling her they’d talk about this later in a threatening tone she’d be able to hear even through type.
Asking her to come back quickly, please, and quit causing a scene.
She keeps half-expecting the doors to swing open behind her and admit her mom’s crisp footsteps and long-suffering scolding in-person, but that never happens, either.
The next time Crystal opens her phone, it’s to call an Uber.
— ONE EMOTIONALLY FRAUGHT UBER RIDE LATER —
The driver drops Crystal off at the pub across the street from the Dead Boy Detectives’ office. She learned a while back that the pub generally invites a lot less questions than sending them to an address that’s been chronically vacant for three decades—and she kind of fits the part right now, anyway.
“Ah,” says Edwin in surprise, when he opens the Agency door and sees Crystal standing on the other side. “Crystal. I thought your… event concluded at eleven.”
It’s barely a quarter to ten right now. “It does. I left.”
Edwin’s brows go up as he steps back to let her in. “It did not go well, I presume?”
Crystal snorts. Like her face wouldn’t have made that obvious enough. “Nope.”
She stalks past him, bee-lining for the big purple beanbag chair that’s been squeezed in next to the sofa and throwing her purse down in front of it. Her boots sound like fucking gavels striking the floor with every step, while his are dead silent.
Dead. Ha.
Crystal flops down on the chair, letting the impact overwhelm the weight of her thoughts.
Edwin closes the door carefully and makes his way back to the desk. Crystal can see a book with an old-fashioned ribbon bookmark sticking out of it at his spot; he must have been sitting there when she knocked. It’s something old, embossed—maybe one of the Jane Austens he’s been getting more into recently. He doesn’t reach for it, though; just watches Crystal with calculating eyes.
She’s about to snap and ask him ‘what?’ when he clears his throat and asks, “Would you… like to talk about it?”
Oh.
She knocks her head against the top of the beanbag. “No.”
“Very well, then,” Edwin says, with a prim little nod. Crystal wonders briefly if that’s him calling an end to the conversation, but he shifts in the desk chair and continues, “Charles should be returning soon. He is out hunting for pixie teeth at the night market. Our stores are running low.”
Crystal looks back up at him, frowning. “You didn’t go with him?”
She’s heard plenty about the night market since they all landed back in London. Charles and Edwin have told her tons of stories about shifty potion-vendors, irritable witches, and regular trips that turned into high-stakes heists when they’d accidentally offended a fairy supplier (as in a supplier who was a fairy, not a supplier of fairies—Charles had stressed that distinction). She’s even gone herself a couple times, and personally bore witness to how quickly things can go to shit when she made a snide comment about one of those fake fortune-teller tents—whose owner, surprise surprise, turned out to be a very irritable witch, and did not take kindly to a teenage psychic pointing out the culturally-appropriative aesthetic of her scam operation. A fake fortune-teller with otherwise very real, very life-threatening magical powers. Seriously, why had she even been scamming people when she could cast spell-of-turn-your-skin-to-fruit-rollups at the drop of a hat?
Anyways. Crystal has learned enough to get the impression that night market visits are not a single-person kind of shopping trip. But Edwin isn’t meeting her eye, and his shoulders are squared almost defensively when he says, “I thought it best for one of us to stay behind and man the office, in case of emergency after-hours customers. In any case, pixie teeth should not be too dangerous of an endeavor. We have quite a reliable supplier at the London market.”
It hits her before he’s even done talking: Edwin’s never given half a shit about customers showing up after-hours. They come when the agency’s open for business or they don’t get seen at all. Obviously there are exceptions,but Edwin’s never been the type to stay in the office just in case a customer that’s truly in need shows up on their doorstep after closing. Off-hours are off-hours for a reason.
Which means he stayed for Crystal. Because he was worried about her. Because he wanted to be there for her, if her night went to shit and she didn’t want to be alone.
Crystal tends to get in her head sometimes, about where she stands with them—with Charles and Edwin. She’ll be watching them work together on a case, or listening to them tell a story from the three fucking decades they spent together before she came along, and the gap between her and them will feel so fucking big. No matter how much she fools herself into thinking she’s a part of this, she’s gonna age and die and they won’t. Maybe they’ll be sad, but in the end it won’t matter, because they’ll have each other—just like they always have. Just like they always will. And who the hell is she, up against that?
They’re forever, and she’s a kid playing fucking make-believe.
But right now—
Crystal spent the whole ride over here waiting for her phone to buzz; waiting for her mom to call her and ask her to come back, just so she could tell her no. But she came here, because she knew without looking that they’d catch her. She’s sitting in a purple beanbag chair Charles smuggled out of a charity shop so they could have all-agency sofa time together, and Edwin was there to open the door for her because he’d been waiting; because he’d been worried.
Crystal thinks that maybe all those times she was wrong about which part of her life was real.
Instead of doing something stupid, like starting to cry again, she says, “You didn’t have to do that. I would have been fine on my own.”
Edwin levels her with a judgmental, single-brow-raised look she’s started privately labeling The Bitchy Eyebrow (TM). “Yes, well. That may be true, but seeing as you are, in fact, here two hours before schedule, it is good that I did.”
Crystal huffs and crosses her arms over her stomach, playing at offense—but Edwin’s sharp retorts have a way of making her feel way better than they probably should.
“Touché,” she says. But she’s smiling, a little bit, and she can see the corner of Edwin’s mouth twitching up as he glances at her.
The office lapses into silence after that. Edwin finally reopens his book, and Crystal’s eyes start wandering over the office’s plentiful shelves full of random shit, just for something to do.
She’s kind of glad it was just Edwin at the office, honestly. It feels mean to think, but she’s not sure what she would have done with the way Charles would be coddling her right now. His intentional gentle-handling always just makes her feel even more fragile than she already does.
Scanning the office shelves keeps Crystal occupied for a little bit, but there isn’t much on them that she’s not already familiar with—not after spending almost every minute of her free time in this place for the past eight months. Eventually, there’s nothing much to distract her besides her own thoughts and the phone she’s refusing to pick up on principle—and Crystal’s thoughts, as the entire shitshow of tonight’s dinner demonstrated, are a really shitty place for Crystal herself to be right now.
Like it was fucking waiting for the opening, a mental picture—unstoppable, vivid, fucking disgusting— slips into the silence: Crystal submerged in a pit-full of dead, decomposing fish. The putrid slime of their decaying flesh—blood, guts, stale old sea-water—coats her skin, clogging every pore. It’s in her nose, her mouth, her ears and eyes and hair; and the smaller bodies are sliding down her throat when she gasps for air. Any attempts to get out—fingers scrabbling over cold, slimy scaled skin—just feel like they’re pushing her farther down; like she’s stuck in the world’s worst ever ball pit. She can’t breathe, can’t even think past the miasma of rot eclipsing every sense—
“Fuck,” Crystal says, loud enough to stop the thought in its tracks. She sits up and puts her hand over her mouth, just to give her body some assurance that she is not about to consume rotting fish.
Across the room, Edwin looks up from his book. “Crystal? Is something the matter?”
He looks genuinely concerned. Brow furrowed, book halfway to closed in his lap, his finger trailing down the line he was probably reading.
Crystal thinks about how he’d opened the door for her. How he’d stayed for her. How she’s learning, better and better, how to pick out the signs of him trying to be nice, him caring—and how, now that she knows where to look, she’s finding them fucking everywhere.
This shit isn’t going anywhere until she actually talks to someone about it. Better have it out in the open than holed up in her head with nowhere to go. Probably.
“Ugh, okay,” Crystal says. “I’m gonna tell you something, and you can’t laugh. Okay?”
Usually, Edwin would make some bitchy quip about not being able to make any promises, or about how he’s never laughed at her—despite the fact that he totally has with his eyes, or with that stupid little smirk he does, and they all fucking know it—but he must be able to tell how serious she is, because all he does is nod.
Crystal opens her mouth. Closes it. “I think—“ she starts, then licks her lips and looks up at the ceiling, because it’ll be easier if she’s not watching Edwin’s face when she says it. “I think I’m scared of fish.”
A beat passes. She can hear the confusion in Edwin’s voice when he repeats, “…Fish?”
She shrugs, throwing her hands up a little. “Yeah, I mean… that’s what the main course at this dinner thing was, and—I don’t know, I just lost it. I froze. I couldn’t even touch the thing without feeling like I was gonna be sick.” She can’t think about it without that either, apparently. “I was terrified, of a fucking lump of meat. And I couldn’t stop thinking about—”
I couldn’t stop thinking about him, she almost says, About David, but the words run dry before she can get there. The most embarrassing part is, she’s afraid now, too. Afraid that even saying his name could somehow open a door for him.
“That’s why I left early,” she finishes. “I was freaking out, and my parents were being— my parents, so… yeah.”
She waits a second, then a few more. When about ten go by with no response, she finally braves a look at Edwin and finds him staring not at her—which is both a relief and kind of annoying—but down at the surface of the desk, frowning in thought.
“Edwin?”
Say something. Please.
It’s not like she really expects him to be insensitive,but there’s a part of her that does worry, just a little, that he’s gonna pull his “your silly hang-up is nothing compared to literal Hell” shit—or at least visibly struggle not to. And that worry doesn’t get any fucking smaller the longer he goes without saying anything.
But then Edwin plops his book on the desk and says, “I am afraid of dolls.”
Crystal blinks. “Dolls? Like, baby dolls?”
Edwin nods. “Whenever I see them, I freeze. The first time Charles and I encountered one on a case, Charles spent a great many hours attempting to console me. The severity of the fear diminished over time, but lately it has been…” he pauses, and Crystal can just about see his hands wringing in his lap. “Flaring up again.”
The mention of dolls rings some kind of bell in Crystal’s head, but it’s too faraway for her to remember why it’s familiar. She wants to ask for details, or ask why he’s even telling her this, but she has a feeling he’s working up to that, so she just waits.
Sure enough, Edwin bends down and retrieves his pocket journal from a drawer in the desk, then stands and starts making his way over to the sofa. He rifles through the pages and finds a passage without looking, then holds it out for Crystal to take.
The two-page spread is covered in drawings of a… Well, a monster is the best word Crystal can find to describe it. Eight-legged, red-eyed, probably thousands of cherubic faces and tiny baby arms bulging out from its bulbous body.
“What—“
“This,” says Edwin, “is the creature that tormented me for the majority of my time in hell.”
Crystal remembers why dolls sounded familiar, now. “A giant spider made out of baby-doll heads,” she recites faintly.
Seeing the way he draws it is ten times worse than the random bullshit her brain came up with when she was trying to imagine what the fuck he could have meant by that, back in Port Townsend. Every single line and every little note in the margins is filled with a primal, hunted kind of terror. Crystal doesn’t have to be psychic to be able to feel that.
Edwin looks a little shocked that she remembers, but doesn’t otherwise react. He just sits himself down on the sofa and keeps talking as Crystal scans over the drawings.
“It enjoyed—chasing. It would chase me through its lair, catch me, and tear me apart, then I would reform in a new body, and the cycle would repeat.”
He says it in a monotone, like he’s reading from a textbook. Like it’s just what was normal.
“Shit, Edwin,” Crystal breathes. “That’s—god, that’s awful, I’m so—“
“I do not need your sympathy,” Edwin cuts her off, sharp as the edge of a knife.
But something in Crystal tells her that’s not really true. She figures the truth is closer to the same reason why she can’t take Charles being careful with her when she’s upset; why she prefers the way that Edwin will argue with her like nothing’s different, or else just leave her alone: I don’t know how to handle your sympathy. I don’t know how to face a kind hand without biting it.
That’s fine. Crystal can do unsympathetic with the best of them. She closes the journal and hands it back to him without another word, and something in Edwin’s face—a few layers of that hard, unfeeling mask—drops.
“I apologize,” he says, voice softening. He takes a breath, folding his hands over the journal. “I only mean to say, hell and its inhabitants leave… strange scars. Cause strange fears. You do not need to explain yourself to me, or to Charles, ever. Rest assured, I…” he pauses. “We will understand.”
Oh.
Somehow, that hadn’t been what Crystal expected him to say. She’d expected solidarity, a little—something something, I know a thing or two about sudden-onset phobias of peculiar things —but not anything so… open. The way he said it, it was like he’d seen this big, ugly wound on her stomach—still fresh, bleeding deep red and oozing pus through the gauze—and unwrapped his own bandages to show her his.
“Thanks,” she says quietly. “Seriously, that… that helps a lot.”
Edwin clears his throat and stands, tugging on the hem of his slipover to straighten it. “Think nothing of it. It will be practical for us to know each others’ handicaps, should we encounter them on a case.”
Crystal huffs, amused. Seems like he’s reached the end of his emotional tolerance for the night. “Yeah, for sure.”
Edwin heads back to the desk, and Crystal flops back fully into the supportive embrace of the purple beanbag chair.
The chair is comfy,but her dress hasn’t gotten any less hellish in the four-ish hours since she put it on. It’s still pinching under her armpits and itching like mad around her waist. Maybe she has a change of clothes in the emergency post-case duffel bag she keeps in the bathroom. In a minute, she’ll get up and check, then maybe order a pizza from the place down the street. Now that the stress is starting to wear off, it’s hitting her that she hasn’t really eaten yet—aside from two tiny appetizer courses that did all of jack shit, as far as actually filling anyone’s stomach was concerned. Yeah, a pizza’s sounding pretty good.
Crystal realizes about halfway through her daydreamt perfect night that Edwin hasn’t actually sat down yet. He’s just kind of standing at the corner of the desk, staring at his chair like he has to answer a riddle before he can sit in it.
“Crystal,” he says—and it has half the tone of a question, so she looks up expectantly. “If you ever find yourself in need of… someone to talk to, about—this fear, or… about David—”
Crystal smiles. “I know where to go.”
It’s maybe the weirdest—but best—feeling in the world, to realize how much she means it.
Edwin smiles back, then nods, small and pleased.