Pyre

There’s a place between the lights, in the darkest gutters of this world, where the misfits and the disavowed find sanctuary. While Inglemouth Narrows fit Yves like a glove, Asha had never really belonged here. She'd been meant for greater things.

Now she was dead.

Yves sat against the wall he'd staggered back into, trenchcoat pooled around him, his one good eye staring unblinking at the body. She was framed in a square of moonlight, and that was wrong.

Sunlight, thought Yves. It's supposed to be sunlight.

He'd been dead before. He didn't want that for her. Every time he'd found himself floating in that void, discarnate and nameless, she'd brought him back. She'd mended his wounds with her own djinn fire, knitting flaming scars on his skin. He was half surprised that he hadn't fallen down dead the moment her soul was extinguished. Her power was the only thing holding him together, literally and metaphorically.

His hands moved independently of his brain, finding a cigarette and lighting it with his bad eye. His burning eye. This fire was all that was left of her now. He breathed it in.

Rain blew in through the broken window, tip tapping on the broken glass. He couldn't make sense of the crime scene, nothing was fitting together. Clues and leads blew away on the wind every time his eyes crossed her body. He couldn't tear his attention away from it. He didn't want to.

As soon as the O.R.B arrived they'd tape the door and take control, standing over her with rubber gloves and flashing cameras. Soon she'd be bagged up and frozen. Yves tightened his fist. He couldn't let that happen.

Later, he barely recalled his panicked actions in the minutes after the murder. He remembered snippets, like snatching up all her old books, ritual oils and candles, and stuffing them into a bag. He remembered picking her up in his arms, making sure to support her head as he made his escape. He remembered opening the boot of the car and closing it again without putting her in.

He drove to a cheap hotel with her in the back seat, covered with a blanket. Against all odds, he managed to carry her all the way to their room unseen.

Five days he spent without sleep, performing rites and sacraments, surrounded by candles and flaming bowls of alchemical powder. He read incantations that burned his larynx and tasted like smoke. The words in the grimoires branded his retinas with glowing sigils. On the brink of madness, he pit his will against the will of the djinnheart, shaking his fist at the god of living flame and demanding that it bring her back.

She didn't wake up.

Eventually the hotel burned down, in a pillar of fire that twisted high into the stormy sky, mingling with the clouds and rain, reflecting in Yves' good eye. Illuminated by the blaze and the flashing lights of the fire brigade, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, which merely served to smear the soot around.

That was it. She was gone.

Turning up the collar of his trenchcoat against the cold he watched the pyre until it burned out, then wandered alone into the night, leaving the flashing lights behind.