The Edifice

29. Why

tw: suicide mention

OLIVIA

"You motherfucking freak," Lee snarls, hands curled tight into fists as though it were, he himself who had been betrayed. Minutes now he's been poised as though on the verge of lunging, seconds from tearing Otis through magic and punches alike.

Yet he holds himself in check, and all I need is second sight to know why. Otis lights up the whole damn room.

Lee's aura curls around him like a seething nest of serpents, ripples from his hands like an oil-drenched fire. Next to Otis, however, it flickers with the wilted desperation of a dying candle. When I first met him, I'd thought him an angel. Looking at him now, though, he falls closer to a god.

Otysses is a hurricane. A snow storm. A blizzard of pure energy that whips around him like the eye of a hurricane, blistering against my skin and shining as brightly as the sun. No wonder his proximity had set me on edge. I wouldn't be surprised if he were radioactive at this very moment.

"I'm sorry," Otis repeats, letting his smile drop for the first time. "Really. But I can't."

"Can't or won't?" Lee growls, slapping his hand on the counter.

Were it not for Lee's protectiveness, I don't think I'd have the strength to keep arguing. Otis's words didn't shock me in the slightest, even as I felt my stomach plummet despairingly.

It was inevitable, really. Just another stroke of bad luck since I walked into Bob's cold, empty home two weeks ago.

Otis flinches at Lee's strike and in a flash of some dejected, detached awareness, I notice how young he is. This zealous, wide-eyed godling, head twitching between us at the slightest move we make. When we first met, I'd thought his movements predatory. But now, outnumbered by both Lee and I, they seem almost prey-like.

"Why can't you, Otis?" I ask softly. Trying a different tact, I twist my wrist to offer him my upturned palm. He stares at it with a frown of concentration as though mulling over its meaning. "Otis, if you need help, you don't have to hold my soul ransom to get it."

After a long moment, I feel the illusion of his fingers coalesce into something more, a light weight pressing against my own. It's a far cry from holding hands, but he makes the effort at least to touch, running a thumb across the skin of my palm.

"I- It was never about taking your soul from you," Otis mumbles, so quietly I strain to hear him. Even Lee shifts forward expectantly. "I never had any intention of keeping my word."

"Then why make the deal?" Lee asks, breathing out the heat of his ire in one long, exasperated sigh.

If anything, at least I can claim to have diffused the situation.

"Because the deal was only ever about the catch. The one I pretended I made just for you." Otis's fingers fade back to insubstantiality, passing through my skin as he withdraws them. He laughs nervously, ice forming along the benchtop where his touch slips through the surface. "If I fail to return your soul to you in seven days, and not a minute more-"

My heart catches in my throat.

"Then I get yours," I gasp.

___________

OTIS

"Olivia, can I talk to you for a moment?" Levi asks, the first to cut through the tension gripping the room.

I could almost kiss him in relief. I'm not sure I could keep my eyes locked on Olivia's any longer, face the grim, betrayed reflection of my own stare. Not with the guilt that broils in the pit of my aura, buzzing so violently it aches.