Doesn’t know that our grandmother, her step-grandmother, technically, from Mom’s first marriage, was even more powerful than I am.
I look at the letters again while I think about my grandmother’s obituary. The clinical language of it. I keep it saved on my phone. In a strange, macabre way, it feels like it keeps part of her with me. Meredith Vesper, 71, passed away suddenly at her home on March 15th. Cause of death: cardiac arrest.
Sudden. Unexpected. At home in the middle of the night.
I’ve read that obituary a hundred times in the last six months. Memorized every word. Looked for answers in the empty spaces between the lines.
I pick up my phone again, text Luna back with hands that are still steady even though my heart is trying to climb out of my throat:
Can’t today, sorry. Work thing came up. Rain check?
The response is immediate:
Okay! Miss you
I set the phone down before I do something stupid. Before I can call her and tell her everything. Before I can warn her about things I don’t fully understand myself.
Because that’s the trap, isn’t it? Telling Luna makes her a target. Makes her aware. And awareness in this world is dangerous.
Gramms taught me that. Drilled it into me over years of cold lessons in her cold kitchen.
The less they know, the safer they are, she’d said, over and over, like a mantra. Normal humans can’t defend themselvesagainst angels or demons or any of the things that hunt in the dark. Ignorance is armor. Let them keep it.
So I’ve kept Luna ignorant. Kept her safe. Kept her wrapped in the comfortable lie that her sister is a consultant who does boring research work for law firms and occasionally travels for contracts.
The lie has protected her for nineteen years.
I’m not about to unravel it now.
I drain the rest of my coffee even though it’s cold and bitter. The caffeine hits my system, sharpening the edges of everything. Makes the letters seem brighter. The apartment smaller. The trap tighter.
Three days. I have three days before I have to report to the House of Gold.
Three days to prepare for something I don’t know how to prepare for.
I stand, start pacing. The apartment is small enough that pacing means walking in tight circles between the kitchen and the futon and back again. Twelve steps one way. Twelve steps back. The floor creaks under my boots. The sound is familiar, comforting in its mundanity.
I need information. That much is clear.
I need to know what I’m walking into, who Croesus is, what the House of Gold actually does beyond the vague horror stories whispered in sin eater circles.
I cross to my laptop, old, beaten up, held together with duct tape and prayers, and flip it open. The screen glows to life, too bright in the gray morning light. I squint, adjust the brightness, and pull up a search engine.
House of Gold.
The results are useless. Historical houses, investment firms, a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont. Nothing supernatural. Nothing real.
I try again: Croesus angel.
More nothing. Just references to the historical King Croesus, the one from ancient Lydia who was supposedly the richest man in the world. Whose name became synonymous with wealth. Did the angels choose their own names? Were they something else before they fell?
Fitting for an angel of greed.
I try different search terms, different combinations. Seven Houses supernatural. Angel contracts. Sin eaters.
Every search comes up empty, or worse, filled with fantasy fiction and role-playing games and conspiracy theories that are somehow both too close and completely wrong.
The real world–the one where angels make deals and sins can be eaten and people like me exist in the cracks between normal and nightmare—doesn’t show up on Google.
