Between Shadows

Between Shadows: Chapter 03-A (Morning Ritual)

Lorian awoke to the blaring alarm of the digital clock on his nightstand. He rolled over, glaring at the offender, and considered tearing it out of the wall. He turned it off, then pulled the covers over his head. He stayed under a moment longer, trying to grasp the silence amidst the hum of brutal accusation.

Slowly, he sat up and swung his feet over the bed. The apartment felt alive in all the wrong ways. Every creak of the floorboards, every hum of the radiator, became an interrogation.

He was unaccustomed to waking up alone. His usual shadow—or anchor, he wasn’t quite sure what to call it—had vanished without warning. Lorian’s thoughts fractured along a thousand jagged edges, jumping between unfinished tasks and the raw ache of need, now devoid of purpose. The throbbing in his head made them impossible to reconcile; he tried to lock them out, to impose a quiet he hadn’t felt in weeks, but the noise was relentless, a gnawing echo that mocked him, empty and chaotic.

Lorian struggled to find purchase through routine, stumbling on empty whiskey bottles—a remnant of measures tried and failed—as he made his way to the kitchen. He went straight for the sink, hovering, then filled a glass of water, pressing it to his forehead, a fleeting attempt to carve out some sense of clarity before downing half the glass. He set the water aside and busied his hands with the kettle, the scrape of metal on metal grounding him for a moment. Coffee. Routine. He could survive by routine. The water began to boil, steam curling into the air.

A minute. Two minutes. Five. A whistle rose to a scream, interrupting his thoughts. His hand shot out for the kettle, and he abruptly withdrew it, scalded. He hissed, wrapping his hand around the half-empty glass of water.

His phone rang from the other room. Lorian finished the remaining water, then set the glass down. He muttered a curse, stalking clumsily into the lounge. He picked up the phone and looked at the screen. Evelyn.

His thumb hovered over the decline button as the kettle shrieked. Against his better judgment, he picked up. “Evelyn? To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, trying to sound lively, cheerful, and some semblance of put-together, but an edge of sarcasm crept in.

He was greeted with momentary silence on the line, then: “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“It’s Sunday,” he said, harsher than intended. “I have to open up the shop this morning. You did interrupt my coffee, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” An attempt at his usual playfulness.

“Well, once you’re done, meet me over at the archive?”

“It’s Sunday,” he said again. “Why not just wait until tomorrow? I’m supposed to be avoiding the weekend staff, remember?”

“I wanted to get a jump on digitizing some of what we already had sorted, so I’ve been working on–”

“You’re there—now?” Lorian asked. “Ev, it’s not even six yet. Wasn’t it just yesterday that you suggested we cut back for a bit?”

“I know. Something changed—in the dream, I mean,” she said quietly. “I need to check something.”

He pressed the bridge of his nose, willing his headache away. He walked toward the kitchen to silence the kettle, then filled the grinder with more coffee than usual. “Hang on,” he said, putting a mug under the grinder before turning it on. The scent hit quickly, warming and relaxing. “I’ll be over with coffee.”

Lorian hung up and set aside his phone before Evelyn could respond, inhaling deeply, returning to routine. He grabbed the kettle and put a filter in the pour-over, briefly moving over the sink to soak it with hot water. He poured the coffee into the filter and rested it on the mug, slowly pouring water over the grounds, spiraling out in a circular motion, carefully avoiding the edges.

He tossed the grounds in the countertop bin and wrapped his hands around the mug, heading back to the living room, sinking into the recliner by the window. He heaved a sigh, then held the coffee just up to his mouth, inhaling again, closing his eyes.

He swirled the coffee around in his mug slowly before he drank. He could immediately feel his pulse pick up, refreshed and more awake, his headache subsiding as he opened his eyes. An unopened bottle of bourbon glared from the end table, beside a glass containing a half-melted stone. Finishing off his coffee, he took the mug and glass to the kitchen sink before preparing another coffee in one of the Nightjar’s paper cups.

Lorian grabbed his keys from a countertop dish, then slung a heavy scarf around his neck and a jacket over his shoulder. He grabbed the coffee on the way out, not bothering to lock the apartment door behind him. Heading quickly down the access stairway, he unlocked the door to the bookstore on the bottom floor and pocketed his keys. He retrieved his phone to text his receptionist. Back door’s unlocked. I’ll be out today.

—

Peering into the hotel, a sign at the front desk indicated that the receptionist had stepped away, probably to make coffee from the spice-warmed scent that greeted him in the lobby. He headed past the elevator lobby and to the stairwell. On the way down, he noticed the archive door was ajar.

He quietly opened the door, coffee in hand, jacket still over his shoulder. Evelyn was already poring over a binder on the table, scanner forgotten on top of an untouched box of ledgers. He recognized some of the blueprints from his own archive, sprawling across the table. Moving along the shelves, he didn’t have to try to stay out of her peripherals—she was entirely absorbed in whatever she was reading.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said, not loudly enough to scare Evelyn. He slung his jacket over the chair next to her, extending her a cup of coffee. Still, she jumped, letting out a sharp breath as she turned toward him, clasping her hands together before taking the coffee in both hands.

“This smells amazing,” she murmured. “I’m awake now. Thanks for that.”

“Specialty. Straight from the kitchen,” Lorian said. “Hopefully better than what they’re serving you upstairs.” He looked at her, pushing a bit of hair out of her eyes and smoothing the fringe off to the side. “You have that look about you again.”

“Wrecked?” She chuckled.

He nodded. “It works.” A pause. “I see you’ve been…digitizing? Your scanner’s not even on.” He nodded to the peripheral on the box, not yet plugged into her laptop.

“Yeah, about that—”

“No need. You’re just taking notes,” he said with a half-smile. Then, voice lilting, “Early-morning note-scrawling, spontaneous cross-referencing, dragging blueprints across the table like you’re summoning the dead—looks familiar.” He looked at the binder she’d been working through. He noticed the letters to the side, sorted into neat piles. “More letters? Thought you’d had enough Silas for an eternity.”

Evelyn took a sip of coffee, sliding into the chair in front of the binder. “I just— I wasn’t going to come back to these until after we’d had a break. But I keep feeling like something’s here that I need to find. Like it’ll help me find this…thing that I keep circling.” She took another drink, relaxing into the scent of the coffee, as warmth must have worked its way into her bones. She loosened her scarf, shrugging her cardigan off her shoulders.

“You were right, you know.” Lorian sat in the chair next to her, wheeling closer. “We need to put the red strings away for a bit. They’re just letters. There’s a story here, but nothing that’s going to help piece together your archive. These ledgers aren’t going to sort themselves.”

“It’s not that,” Evelyn said, rolling her eyes. “It’s— I don’t know. The mezzanine. Everything in the sub-basement that got lost in the flood. That’s the story I’m needing to piece together.” She motioned to the letters. “There has to be something here before Silas went missing.”

Lorian sighed. “So, Sunday morning penance?” he asked, laughing. “I’ll help, but we can’t spend more than a day on this. It’s not healthy for either of us.”

Evelyn nodded. “We’ll go back to organizing tomorrow. No more letters for a while.”