I knew she didn’t mean to be a tyrant, but the DFZ wasn’t exactly a city known for her relaxed pace or healthy work-life balance. People died of overwork here on the regular. I’d almost died of it during the crazy three weeks Nik and I were raiding. My service was supposed to be strictly voluntary, just a temporary gig, but I’d clearly been here too long. Now she was talking about taking away my sleep like it was a done deal, and I just couldn’t. I had to get my dad up, get this debt paid off, and get away from this situation before I slipped and accidentally ended up in the DFZ’s service for the rest of eternity.
“Thank you for the help,” I said, bowing reverently to hide the nervous sweat rolling down my face. “I promise I won’t fall behind on my duties while attending to my father.”
“You never do,” she said in a voice that was equal parts praise and warning. “Just make sure to stay on your guard when you do the summoning. This may come as a shock, but the Spirit of Dragons has a bad habit of taking what isn’t hers. I know she’s stolen priests from other spirits. Not saying it’ll happen to you, but I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “The last thing I want to be is owned by a dragon ever again.”
“That’s my girl,” the DFZ said proudly. “Dr. Kowalski is getting nervous, so I’ll go ahead and give you back to her. Good luck on the rest of your training today, and keep me posted on what happens with your dad. I’ll already know, of course, but I still like to hear your version.”
“Thanks,” I said flatly, but the god was already gone, fading back into Dr. Kowalski, who gave herself a shake.
“She’s chatty today,” my teacher said, blinking rapidly as if she were getting used to being back in her own head. “Not that I mind being a vessel for the divine, but I don’t understand why she feels the need to check in on you so often. She can see your progress through my mind anytime she wants.”
“You mean she doesn’t do this to all her priests?” I asked, carrying my crate of liquor over to the kitchen door so I wouldn’t forget it when I left.
“No way,” Dr. Kowalski said. “She’s normally pretty hands-off, but I guess she doesn’t need to keep tabs on those of us who’ve already committed like she does for you.”
I could have done with far less tabbing, but arguing with gods didn’t normally end well for mortals, so I let it go and moved on. “Ready to get back to the trellis?”
“Absolutely,” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “But let’s do it by hand this time. We don’t want to overwork your magic, and a strong body is also part of being a good Shaman!”
I shrank back with a shudder. I know I’d just been complaining that pulling up stakes with magic was hard, but that was a lot of holes to dig by hand.
“Don’t make that face,” Dr. Kowalski scolded. “Weren’t you a Cleaner? You should be used to hard labor, so grab a shovel and let’s do this. Gardens don’t tend themselves, you know.”
With a mournful look at the sun riding dangerously close its zenith, I retied my sweat-damp hair into a higher ponytail and got back to work, reminding myself over and over that this was my chosen torture and a lot better than the alternative, which was dead.
***
By the time we got the trellis set up in its new location two hours later, I was done both physically and mentally. Dr. Kowalski fed me lunch as always, setting out the usual spread of boiled beans, grains, and fresh vegetables from the garden. There was steamed pumpkin this time as well, which I didn’t have the heart to tell her I couldn’t stand. Even though the orange North American pumpkins tasted nothing like kabocha, the smell still made me ill. I couldn’t even eat pumpkin pie, which was a tragic loss if American holiday specials were anywhere close to reality.
Technically, Dr. Kowalski didn’t need to eat since she wasn’t actually alive, but that didn’t stop her from wolfing down her half of the meal, encouraging me to eat more between giant bites. I did so to be polite, though to be honest, I was getting pretty sick of the leafy greens and quinoa parade. But free food was free food, so I forced down as much as I could stomach, washing my plate in the sink and placing it on the drying rack before grabbing my crate of booze and heading for the back door that led to the garden.
At least, that was where the door normally went. But being a priestess of the DFZ wasn’t all downsides. There were definitely a few perks to the job, and one of those was getting to travel as the DFZ did. All I had to do was turn the doorknob while picturing where I wanted to go. When the back door from Dr. Kowalski’s cozy kitchen opened this time, it was no longer into her sunny garden, but a small one-bedroom apartment that had been recently refurbished.
“Take care!” the doctor called, waving at me from the cluttered table. Shifting the heavy crate to one arm, I waved back and stepped through into my apartment, shutting the door behind me. The moment the latch clicked, the sounds of Dr. Kowalski’s house in the woods—the wind in the trees, the drone of insects, the casual rustles of another person going about their day—vanished, leaving me in the deep, unnatural silence of a place lost in time and space.
I let go of the door with a wince. It didn’t matter how many times I did this, I was never going to get used to coming back here. Technically, it was still my apartment. All the tacky furniture my mom had bought was long gone, but I’d managed to scavenge enough replacements to make the place livable again, including a couch, a vintage wicker peacock chair, and a super-cool coffee table made from recycled hammered-tin ceiling tiles. They were all solid vintage pieces that matched my admittedly eclectic aesthetic. My stuff, in other words, which should have made this my home. But no matter how many quirky pillows I piled on my sofa or how many curtains I hung over the terrifying chaos that existed outside my windows, I couldn’t make the place feel like anything other than what it was: a detached set of rooms floating like bubbles in the void. If I focused hard enough, I could actually feel the floor moving under my feet, which was why I didn’t do that anymore. If it wasn’t for my dad, I wouldn’t come here at all.
And speaking of.
I set the crate of liquor down and walked to my bedroom. Unlike the living room, I hadn’t replaced the furniture in here yet. I’d cleaned up the blood as best I could, but otherwise the small room still looked exactly as it had when the DFZ had brought us here after the fight with White Snake, right down to my dad’s body on the floor. He was still naked under the blankets, his body lying on what had once been my mattress on the floor. I knew I should have gotten him clothes and a real bed, but other than cleaning the blood off his skin, I hadn’t done a thing. It wasn’t that I didn’t care—the last two months were proof of that—it was just that touching my dad felt wrong on a level I couldn’t describe. He wasn’t deathly cold or anything obvious like that, but his face was the color of ash and his skin just felt…empty. Like tapping on a hollow shell.
It was insanely creepy. He hadn’t moved since we’d arrived. There’d been no fluids in or out, no bed sores or soiled linens or any of the biological unpleasantness I’d braced myself to deal with as caregiver to someone in a coma. I supposed I should have been happy we’d both been spared the indignity, but I would have far preferred emptying a bedpan to this unnatural stillness. He barely even breathed anymore.