Chapter Text
And I think / of that feeling when you’re really full, or life is full / and you can’t think of anything else that could fit in it, / but then even more sky comes and more days / and there is so much to remember and swallow.
“Someplace Like Montana”, Ada Limon
***
It was ten PM when Hob Gadling’s cell phone rang, vibrating the dish sitting on the coffee table that contained the remains of his dinner. He’d just finished marking a stack of texts and had been contemplating getting up and grabbing a beer or calling it an early night, but instead his attention went to the name Zed Martin emblazoned across his phone screen.
“Hey, Zed,” he answered. “Something the matter?”
He had met Zed Martin in an occult shop, a place that he had wandered into on a whim and one that she frequented. She was an artist and a psychic, and they had become friends over the course of the past five years as he picked her brain about the less usual sides of London and she took advantage of having a friend who owned a pub. They were certainly friends, enough that she knew a bit about his own involvement with the arcane if not the whole of it, but not usually the type of friends to phone each other up late on a Thursday evening.
“Yes,” she said. “Calliope’s ex showed up and he’s fucking terrifying.”
Hob abruptly abandoned his plans to settle in. Calliope was Zed’s roommate, and he knew from Zed that she’d had relationship trouble in the past. “What’s he doing? Have you latched the door?”
“She let him in,” Zed said. “Opened the door right up. They went up to her room.”
“Okay,” Hob said. “And she seemed scared?”
“I don’t know,” Zed said. “But I’m scared.”
Zed didn’t scare too easily, and that got Hob to stand up. “Did he threaten you?”
“He was threatening,” she said. “In how he acted. He didn’t make a threat. I opened up the door and he looked right past me at Calliope, said he had to speak with her, and she told him to come in and come upstairs, and—” Zed broke off.
“What did he look like?”
“Tall,” she said. “Dark hair. His eyes are—I don’t know. Horrible. Pitch black. And pale, he’s pale, like a vampire. Are vampires real?”
“I don’t know,” Hob said. “I’ve never met a vampire.”
“Me neither,” she said. “I might’ve now.”
“Anything else?” Hob asked.
“He was dripping blood,” she said. “From his hands. There’s blood splatter on the living room floor. I didn’t clean it up in case it’s evidence.” Her voice was shaking badly.
“Alright,” he said, working to keep his own voice calm to counteract her rising panic. “Can you see them now?”
“She went up to the room and shut the door.”
“And you already tried knocking?”
“Twice, no answer,” she said. “Oh, fuck, what if he’s murdered her? Why did she let him in?”
“I’m coming over,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I have no idea what to do.”
“You didn’t get a name?” he checked, shifting to hold the phone against his shoulder with his cheek while he searched for his keys.
“No, she called him something—she said he was her ex.”
“Not the recent one,” Hob checked.
“I don’t—think so. Oh, fuck, Robert, what do I do?”
“Stay calm,” he found his keys on the kitchen counter and headed downstairs. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Okay,” she said, but didn’t hang up. He set his phone on the passenger seat and put it on speaker phone.
“I’m driving now,” he told her. “She said ex?”
“Yeah. Ex-husband.”
“And you didn’t get a name?”
“She called him something,” she said. “She said—I don’t know, it didn’t sound like a name I know, I’d butcher it.”
“Greek?” Hob guessed.
“Probably,” she said glumly. “Maybe it wasn’t even a name.” She fell silent. “I can’t hear them anymore,” she reported.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s probably good.”
“What if he’s,” she lowered her voice. “What if he’s killing her?”
“Hard to do that quietly,” Hob said. “You didn’t hear any, uh,” he tried to think of a delicate way to phrase it. “Anything concerning?”
There was a silence, and then she said, “Oh, sorry. No. I was shaking my head.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then probably we’re fine.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll meet you downstairs and let you in, don’t ring.”
“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Finally, she hung up, and Hob could put his full attention on the road. Zed’s worry was palpable, which made sense. She’d picked up Calliope as a roommate a year ago, fresh from some kind of abusive relationship, although she’d told Zed it was all over and there was no more danger. They’d met through some mutual friend in the arcane-adjacent community, so Calliope had to have some sort of experience or ability, but Hob hadn’t gotten any details.
He'd met Calliope a number of times now—she was a beautiful, well-spoken Greek woman, and she had an air of something magical about her, beyond the sort of occult-y vibes of minor practitioners like Zed. Hob hadn’t asked, because he also hadn’t offered up his own identity. He only knew about Calliope’s past experiences because she spoke about it frankly, and because Zed had explained that she needed to tell Calliope before bringing Hob over to the apartment because they were being careful about men.
Except apparently not careful about this man, whoever he was.
Hob stepped on the gas.
He got there in twelve minutes instead of fifteen, and found Zed waiting for him on the front steps. They took the stairs up to the flat instead of risking the ancient elevator, Zed taking them two at a time. When she swung the door open, only silence met them.
“Calliope,” Hob called. No one answered. The living room, kitchen, and small laundry area towards the back of the ground floor were all empty. He ascended the stairs, trailed by Zed. Calliope’s room door faced the landing, and the door was shut. “Calliope,” he said. “It’s Robert. Are you in there?”
Nothing.
“What do we do?” Zed asked, right over his shoulder. He started; he hadn’t heard her come up. “Can you kick the door in?”
“Probably,” he said, eyeing it. “Let’s see.” He reached and grasped the doorknob—and to his surprise it turned, and the door swung open.
“Oh,” Zed said, sheepish. “I didn’t think—” she cut off because Hob, stepping into the doorway, had stopped moving. “Oh, fuck, is she—”
“She’s gone,” Hob said. He stepped through to confirm it, but the room was empty. The bed was made, everything was in place, but neither Calliope nor her terrifying visitor were there. The closet door was ajar, all the clothes in place. There was nothing on the surface of the desk.
“They couldn’t have gone out past me,” Zed said. “That’s the only way out of the building. Fuck!”
“Okay,” Hob said. “Let’s—stay calm.”
“I’m calm!” Zed said, not calmly.
“Can you text her?” Hob asked.
“Yeah,” Zed went and got her phone, and texted.
They waited a moment, and then there was a chime from the desk drawer.
“Shit,” Hob said. Zed stalked over and jerked the drawer open, pulling the phone out.
“Her keys and wallet are here, too,” Zed said. “She didn’t—did she go out the window?”
Hob thought of Calliope, who tended to wear dresses—mostly white—with her hair just-so. He went to the window and looked, but he really couldn’t imagine her climbing down the brickwork or even the wrought iron fire escape. She had more of the vibe of someone who would drift gently to the ground like a fairy. “The way we met,” Hob began, carefully.
“What, through the magic shit?” she asked.
“Yes,” Hob said. After what he thought of—when he thought of it at all, which he tried not to—as the Witchcraft Incident, he was very careful about what he let on about his own involvement in arcane matters. He liked to keep his finger on the pulse of things, but everyone knew him as a bloke who was just a bit knowledgeable, not a practitioner of any kind and certainly not an immortal. But Zed, and many of the other humans these days, were fairly open about who they were and what they did. “Do you think that’s how he and Calliope know each other?”
Zed frowned. “I haven’t seen him before,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean much. I don’t know that many people.”
“How involved is Calliope with—that community?”
“Not very,” Zed said. “She didn’t know anyone else, she just turned up looking for a flatmate, said she was new to London. Can I say something crazy?”
“Sure,” Hob said.
“I don’t think she’s human,” Zed confessed.
“Oh,” Hob said. He’d wondered the same thing, but he hadn’t known whether Zed had considered the possibility. “Is that…just a vibe?”
“No,” Zed said. “Well, yes, but she’s said some things. I think she’s been around a long time.”
Maybe inhuman, maybe another immortal, then, except if she was just a human who didn’t die and anywhere near as old as Hob she would have learned not to let things slip. And there was the feeling Hob got around her, too. He hadn’t met many people who had that feeling, even of the magical sort. Calliope was the second.
His Stranger—Morpheus, Dream of the Endless—was the first.
“Well,” Hob said, letting all of those pieces arrange themselves in his head. “We don’t know for sure that she’s in trouble.”
Zed gave him a flat look, a glaze of panic to her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me,” she said.
Hob raised his hands defensively. “No, I know. It looks bad. But you said she let him in. It’s possible she went with him willingly. And if that’s true, and she’s not in any danger, we don’t need to sound the alarms just yet.”
“What alarms?” Zed wanted to know. “She’s said she has mums, but I don’t know their names or numbers. I didn’t press about other people because of the ex, but—I don’t even know who I’d call.” She sighed.
“Let’s make tea,” Hob said. “And we’ll talk it through.”
Down in the kitchen with the kettle going, Zed was back to pacing. “I could just start calling people up,” Zed said. “But they’re all going to be like, she’s your flatmate, why would the rest of us know where she is?”
“Do you know anyone who finds people?” Hob said.
“There are some PIs, yeah,” she said. That thought seemed to settle her enough to flop in one of the kitchen chairs. “I can call them up in the morning, no one’s going to answer me this late.”
“And if they did, they’d say to wait for her to come home,” Hob reminded, gently. “Seeing as she’s an adult and she’s hardly been gone an hour.”
“Yeah,” Zed shook her head. “Fuck. He just gave me such a bad vibe. Come here, look at the blood.”
Hob obligingly went over and stared at the spot on the living room carpet. It really was just a splotch of dark brown. It nearly blended in, such that he wouldn’t have noticed it if Zed hadn’t pointed it out, and it didn’t even look particularly like blood.
“Hmm,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I’m sure it was blood,” she said, shooting him a look. “Before you ask.”
“Alright,” he said.
“It smelled of it,” she said.
She had calmed down, though, and once Hob had made the tea they settled together on the sofa in the living room, backs to the front door and the ominous splotch. Hob stirred in sugar while Zed prodded at her teabag with the spoon.
“I just don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t come back,” Zed said. “Well—find a PI, I suppose. I don’t want to phone the police.”
“Probably for the best,” Hob said. “Especially if you think she’s, ah. Not our sort.”
“Yeah,” Zed looked down at the tea. “What would you do?”
“Well,” Hob said. “I think I’d be calling up the same PIs as you, mostly.” Being an immortal was conducive to a lot of things, but building a broad network wasn’t one of them. Money, property, information—all of those things could be carried with him from life to life. People tended to pass on.
“Shit,” she said.
“If things seem really bad,” Hob said, “There is someone I can ask.” If Calliope was closer to Dream’s sort than Hob and Zed, he might have an idea. “But I can’t exactly phone him up, so…”
Zed nodded. “Last resort,” she said. “Got it.”
“Yeah,” Hob said. “Probably for the best.” He wasn’t even sure how he’d get a message to Dream if it turned out he needed to. It wasn’t like he had a mobile.
“So,” Zed said, finally. “There’s really nothing to do tonight, is there?”
“I don’t think so,” Hob said. “Unless you do want to phone the police.”
“No,” she said. “I think that would make things worse.”
Hob nodded. “Then we wait.”
Hob finished his tea; Zed oversteeped hers and let it go cold on the coffee table. Then she dozed off. Reluctant to wake her, Hob moved the cups to the sink and returned. He thought about going, but he didn’t much like the idea of her waking alone in the morning, so he settled down on the other side of the sofa and closed his eyes himself.
He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d fallen asleep, but there was sunlight coming in through the windows when he woke. The smell of coffee permeated the air. Hob blinked awake and saw that Zed was still where he’d left her, curled into the arm of the couch.
“Good morning,” Calliope said, from where she stood at the counter, making coffee. She smiled; there was a tiredness around her eyes, but the cheerfulness of her expression didn’t seem feigned. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Zed called me last night,” Hob said, sitting up. “When did you get back?”
“When did I—” Hob could actually pinpoint the moment when she decided not to lie. “This morning.”
“She was worried about you,” Hob said.
“What time—” Zed groaned, rolling over, and then rapidly sat up. “Calliope!”
“Good morning,” Calliope said.
“You can’t fucking do that,” Zed said, springing to her feet. “You can’t just—fuck off with your scary ex and not say anything! I thought you’d been murdered!”
“No, of course not,” Calliope said, seeming genuinely baffled.
“Or at least been kidnapped,” she snapped. “I called Hob because I thought he might need to fight off that guy!”
Calliope looked at Hob and then laughed. “Sorry,” she said, mirthful, somehow even more beautiful even as she was clearly laughing at him. “The idea of you fighting Oneiros is—it’s very funny.”
“Oneiros,” Hob said.
“Yes,” Calliope said. “My former husband. He—I am sorry to have worried you, Zed, I didn’t realize.”
“Don’t do it again,” Zed said. “It’s bad roommate etiquette.”
“I did not know,” Calliope said, finally seeming abashed.
“How about we sit down and talk about it,” Hob suggested.
“Yeah,” Zed said. Worry and anger gone, she just seemed a mix of tired, abashed, and a little annoyed. “But only if you cook us breakfast.”
“Alright,” Calliope agreed. “Breakfast it is. And you will explain roommate etiquette to me.”
“And you’ll tell me about your former husband,” Zed said, stalking over to the table.
“Alright,” Hob said. “Well, call me if you need anything.”
“Oh, no,” Zed said. “You’re staying. Calliope owes you breakfast, too, since you drove over here last night to rescue her from Mr. Bloody Hands.”
“Oneiros,” Calliope said. “He is called Oneiros.”
“Yeah,” Hob said. “You might want to explain about the blood, too.”