My uniform at the diner was a dark shirt and either black pants or dark-wash blue jeans, while my barista one was all black from head to toe, but I liked to play around with it when I could. Thankfully, my drycleaning job just let me wear whatever, so on the few days I had that, I could really express myself. But for the majority of my more restricted clothing schedule, I had all sorts of different outfit combinations depending on the weather and how I felt. Some were thrifted, some given to me, and some I’d made myself. I found myself reaching for my longest sleeves. Sure, I had the Band-Aid already over the mark, but I wanted to be extra sure. One of the few times in my life where function won out over fashion.

  I hoped that it didn’t become a trend.

  I packed my usual bag with deodorant, extra socks, extra Band-Aids, and a granola bar for a snack just in case either manager had lied to me, then I headed off.

  Thankfully, I got to the coffee shop without any strange shadow creatures attacking me, people dying, or voices in my head.

  It was predictably busy, being a weekend and all, but I preferred that over standing idle. Sure, I liked breaks as much as the next person, but whenever Cassandra was on shift and saw one of us not actively doing something, she would screech about if you have time to lean, you have time to clean and harangue everyone on shift until they were doing pointless, attention-demanding tasks.

  I was almost able to forget everything that was going on as I fell into the rhythm of taking orders, filling them, or rushing to the back and grabbing supplies. I was in the zone so much that I didn’t realize that the steam from making so many lattes had loosened my bandage enough that it had sort of peeled back. The only reason I found out at all was because I was reaching for a box of drink stirrers that were up on a high shelf—being the tallest person on shift—and Cassandra’s eyes zeroed in on where my sleeve had pulled back.

  “Bridgette, is that a tattoo?!”

  I jolted enough that I dropped the box, whirling toward my boss with shock. “Huh? I, uh—”

  “Why would you ever get that in such an obvious place? Are you kidding me? You know it’s against policy!”

  “It’s covered,” was all I said lamely.

  “It’s not covered if I can see it!”

  “You’re not a customer, and you only saw it because I’m reaching. It’ll be fine.” Normally I would capitulate a little more, but it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. I’d woken up with the mark on me. It wasn’t like I’d gone out on a lark and gotten one.

  I couldn’t tell her that without sounding absolutely bonkers though.

  But still, some part of me was grateful that someone else saw it. That meant that not everything could be in my head. However, I didn’t know if that was necessarily a good thing. Wouldn’t it be better if none of those things last night were real?

  I didn’t know. Everything was so confusing.

  “You know, Bridgette—”

  “Bridges.”

  “—I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I don’t appreciate this new side you’re showing!”

  I wanted to tell her off. Oh goodness, how I wanted to tell her off. But I just couldn’t afford to. So, instead, I took a deep breath and swallowed my pride. “I have another bandage in my bag. I’ll go put it on.”

  “Yeah, see that you do that, and you need to think more about the consequences of your actions.”

  . . . I reeeeaaallly wanted to tell her off.

  Naturally, that didn’t exactly put me in a very good mood, so instead of staying a minute longer than required, I clocked out at exactly noon and headed straight to my bike. I was sure I’d eventually get an earful from Cassandra, but I just didn’t care.

  I needed a palette cleanser. And what better escape from the capitalist hellscape I was locked in than going to the Stitch Witchery?

  Gods or no gods, the fabric store was always a magical place. My escape from the mundane where I could go and dream, plot, or otherwise fantasize about all the things I could make if I had the time and money. Sometimes, even just walking down the clearance aisle or sifting through remnants would give me the inspiration for an entirely new design. I’d sit at the pattern tables and dutifully draw it in my worn sketchbook that I pretty much carried around with me at all times.

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  I could have just biked home, but it was a twenty-minute ride there, and then a twenty-minute ride to the diner, so it felt like a bit of a waste. Especially since one of my favorite fabric shops was just under ten minutes from the coffee shop and only fifteen away from my server job.

  Yeah, I definitely needed some retail therapy, and I needed it ASAP. Granted, I couldn’t actually afford to buy anything, but that didn’t matter. Most of the staff knew me by name—and actually used it—so they were fine with me hanging around. It wasn’t like I made a mess or ever tried to steal.

  As I listened to music on my headphones, everything that had been dragging me down began to drift away. It was like the promise of some form of creativity was making a buffer for my soul, which was exactly what I needed.

  That was the thing about being a bit on the down and out, I had to find my happiness where I could. And my happiness definitely lay in designing and creating beautiful pieces of art that could be worn by anyone. Well, usually they were just worn by me, but someday, I was going to be a real fashion designer who made things for all sorts of body types. People would feel good in my clothes because they flattered them, not because they spent a bunch of money unnecessarily on a brand that outsourced most of its work to people in foreign countries making pennies a day.

  I had a long way to go to get to that point, but that was my dream. And my dream was what often got me through working three jobs back-to-back-to-back. It got me through the lonely nights and rough mornings.

  Just when it seemed that my day was really turning around, something caught the corner of my eye. Slowing my bike to look over my shoulder, I saw that there was a stereotypical little old lady across the street, complete with a cardigan and a cane. But it wasn’t the woman herself who gave me pause. Rather, it was the fact that she was being followed.

  I pulled over to the curb as I skidded to a stop, trying to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating again. But even after I rubbed my eyes, her pursuer was still there. Sure, a little old woman being followed in the city wasn’t exactly the most unprecedented thing, but the issue was that the thing following her was very much . . . NOT A HUMAN.

  It was silvery and had a sort of malevolent presence to it that I couldn’t explain but could feel all the way from where I was standing. Its form shifted this way and that, and the only word I could think of to describe it was phantasm. My skin crawled the more I looked at it, and I had no doubt that it was evil, if there ever was such a thing.

  “Don’t stare directly at it! You’re gonna draw its attention.”

  I yelped at the return of the voice and snapped my head straight ahead, closing my eyes. So much for my reprieve. I knew it was foolish to think that it had somehow been a phenomenon tied to my bathroom, but still, I had hoped.

  What is it? I tried to think really loudly. It seemed that the strange voice couldn’t read all my thoughts, or if she could, she was incredibly polite about it. I got the impression that she could only catch the things I directed straight toward her. Those were the things that she usually complained were too loud.

  “A lost spirit. It has attached itself to someone it shouldn’t have. That's why it’s following the woman.”

  Oh boy. Why did I get the feeling that I had just stumbled across something that I very much should not have been able to see or even be aware of?

  “What do you mean by attached?” I whispered, pulling my bag out of my bike basket and rifling through it as if I had forgotten something. At least with my headphones in, if anyone overheard me, they likely thought that I was on the phone. Although, with prophets and gods becoming more and more common, maybe fewer people would be all that worried about someone talking to herself as she stood halfway on the curb and halfway in the road while straddling a bike.

  “I . . . hold on.”

  I held, because what else was I going to do? I also kept my peripheral vision stuck on the woman, acting like I wasn’t watching and occasionally rolling a bit forward to get a better view. As long as she stayed straight ahead of me, I was pretty sure that there wouldn’t be a problem. But if she turned, I would either need to catch up to follow her or let the whole thing go.

  And it really wasn’t in my nature to let something weird and extraordinary go.

  Because something in me, something I wasn’t used to feeling, was adamant that the shadow I saw was wrong. Wholly bizarre and entirely unnatural. And from that discomfort came the urge to fix it. Which really was stupid. What was I even going to do? Snap a measuring tape in its direction? Take its order and poison its eggs? Ultimately, I was just a nineteen-year-old orphan who had barely graduated high school before the world was turned on its head by the new pantheon of gods. I wasn’t equipped for whatever was going on.

  “I got it. Attachment is the term we use when certain energies are linked. This whole thing you and I have going on is an attachment. I transferred my power to you, and now we are intertwined.”

  “And that’s what that thing did to that woman?”

  “Kind of. Not quite. I . . . I’m having trouble staying here.”

  “Please don’t bail on me now.”

  “Oh, really? And just this morning I thought you couldn’t be more eager to get rid of me.”

  For being the ghost/voice/whatever of a much older woman, sometimes the voice in my head sounded like a teenager younger than me. “Now is really not the time.”

  “Right, right. I just . . .” the voice again vanished, and I was sure that I was suddenly stuck in a very awkward situation alone, but she came back a moment later. “When some souls pass, due to a litany of different circumstances, they aren’t properly collected in the system and instead get stuck in places or on people or even in certain times. The more traumatic a death, the more likely it is to happen. It’s my job . . . I mean our job to find these lost souls and get them back into the system. But I have to warn you, it really isn’t easy. But such is the plight of a Reaper.”

  That relatively simple explanation brought out so many questions in my head, but it wasn’t the right time to systematically go through them all. So instead, I decided to try for the most important and see where we got from there.

  “What in the fish sticks is a Reaper?”

  The voice almost seemed to chuckle, which was a strange thing to experience considering it made no sound at all.

  “Why you are, of course.”