Present

I glance over my charge’s sleeping form and his bed partner for the night. A pretty dryad curls into his chest with his arm wrapped around her. I look at the bright pink scar across his wrist and not for the first time am glad that Tristan had bit the dust. The man had been cruel and vile.

Before my presence can stir Raziel I whisk myself to the ground floor. If he caught me peeking at him and his lover he’d get angry and order me to spend the night in my coin. I watch the night through the glass entryway and marvel at the sight of cars still driving about even as the moon has passed by its zenith. Even after spending so many years in this current era I feel like a stranger in a new land. Eight hundred years ago the fastest form of travel had been by horse and only the wealthy had the means to house and feed those beasts. In the 21st century it seems like everyone has an automobile at their disposal and sleeping seemed to be an optional luxury with the invention of electrical lights to keep the darkness at bay.

I watch the night drift by a little longer before turning away from the glass front. I’m surprised to find that I’m not alone. For a moment I warily watch the small girl. She appears young and girlish in a long frilly dress with a ribbon tied in her hair. The wardrobe gives her a doll-like appearance. It’s when I take a step closer I realize that she’s actually in her teenage years and her outfit simply makes her look younger.

“Hello. May I help you?” It’s very strange for a ghost to appear in the middle of the shop, but until I can tell that she’s malignant it’s better to act calmer and non-aggressive so as to not agitate her. Any ghost able to arrive at a place that it has no prior connection is usually a powerful one.

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She opens her mouth to speak, but no sounds come out. As I watch I see pieces of her fade in and out. So not as powerful as I initially thought. Whatever is tying her to this realm is already calling her back.

I reach out hoping to ground her with my presence, but when I touch her a sharp pain sears into my chest. I instinctively gasp out even though I have no breath and clutch at my sternum. When I look down I see myself as the girl drenched in blood. I look up and witness my murderer holding a smoking shotgun, but his eyes are solid white.

I groan out and fall to the floor. I’m dying! I’m dying and there’s nothing I can do! Oh God the pain! Panic worms its way into my brain as I die alone and afraid. When will it end? Please be quick! I find myself begging any god to listen to my plea. As I bleed out one of them must hear because soon after darkness pulls at my vision and my body goes cold and numb.

“Henry!” I snap out of my trance to find Raziel standing next to me. I see his look of concern start to relax as I become aware again of my surroundings. I blink as I realize that the shop is aglow with the morning sun. I’d been standing in the middle of the room completely unaware of myself all night. A quick inspection reveals that my midnight visitor had left without a trace. “What are you doing?”

I hesitate as I think on how to describe last night’s events. “…I think we might have a client.” I eventually answer. I’m about to say more, but Raziel’s paramour stirs in the bed upstairs and before she can fully waken and see me I whisk myself to the safety of my coin.

I hide myself away in my library, a mental palace I had created and filled with all of the books I’d read while I was alive. Here everything feels solid enough, but never real enough for me to ever believe that it is anything other than a figment of my imagination.

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I gently trail my fingers across the spines of books that no longer exist while I absentmindedly touch my chest. Reliving the girl’s death had been both painful and exhilarating. To actually feel something no matter how horrible was like a sudden splash of warmth in an endless pool of ice and eternal numbness. I wonder if I’ll see her again. Questions about her pepper my thoughts as I amble through the long dimly lit corridors of my mind palace.

Eventually I shamble to the end of one bookcase and select the most worn and beaten looking book. If I could go back and give myself one advise it would be to read more fiction. After having spent many lifetimes reading and rereading the works of scientists and wizards alike I find myself craving stories instead about people and life. One can only read so many treatises and diatribes over out of date subjects and long-winded grimoires by pompous, arrogant wizards before wishing for true death. Aristophanes, though, manages to break up the monotony of my afterlife no matter how many times I read his plays.

I wonder what types of stories the girl had liked to read.

I whisk myself to my chair looking out a blackened window. Some days I’m in a good enough mood that sunshine might lighten the panes of glass, but today my thoughts swirl with death and blood. I try to take my thoughts off of the girl and distract myself with bawdy humor, but my mind refuses to be drawn away from the events of last night and it feels like hours before Raziel summons me.

The sun is setting again and long shadows cast by the nearby buildings darken the shop front, but Raziel had lit one of his electrical lamps placed on a desk to keep the shadows away.