I kept hesitating to activate the device Nyx had brought me. Something felt so ominous, so unnerving about the way it sat in my hand that my thumb would continually hover over the button before shying away again. Jack sighed from my desk; he was sitting by the computer, a new email window open, waiting for my "go" to start writing to Morgan. I'd told him we could start as soon as I heard the message—he still didn't know Nyx had been the deliverer, and I intended for him to never find out. The idea of her being alone with me in the human world, and in my own house to boot, would have angered and worried him to no end.

"You know," he said after my fifth attempt to get over myself and open the damn thing, "you're going to have to hear it eventually."

"Yeah. I-I just—what if it's them? What if it's some sort of curse, and when I open it something tries to attack me—"

"Then we'll fight it off."

He said it so plainly, and without the slightest bit of bias in his voice that I was almost inclined to believe him. After all, I'd performed the shield spell with my eyes closed and was able to drive the demons off with a few empty threats.

But that was different.

"Okay," I said, heaving a sigh and giving the main button one jab with my thumb before holding it away from my face. For a moment, there was only silence. Then...

"Hey, handcuff-girl."

I was met with the jovial and unbearably smug voice of Vickson, clear as day and right next to my ear. Surprisingly, I didn't flinch; I was overcome with anger far before my other primal instincts could kick in.

"Heard what happened to you through the grapevine...so sorry for your loss," they said, clearly not meaning a word of that. "Upper management's been awful quiet lately. I can't help but feel like maybe they're planning out another little message for you in case you decide to come back. I mean...come on, human, you didn't think we actually wanted you here, did you?"

They broke out into quiet laughter and sighed.

"Hold on, is Jack there with you? You know what, I'll just pretend he is. Hi, Jack-a-boo! Oh, Christ on a cracker, how we've missed you down here. Boss is getting worried, you know. Thinks you're falling into a pit. Don't you fret now, darling, don't you fret. I know better than that. I'd say you're more of the sinking type.

"If I had to guess...that healer girl, Smith, gave this to you, didn't she? So obedient. Wouldn't know right from wrong if you held 'em in front of her face. At least, if you mentioned her sister in there somewhere. Ha ha ha!"

Jack seemed to hold back a snicker at that part, despite everything that had been thrown at the two of us before. I tried not to let it annoy me. Vickson's voice was now all that rang in my ears, one scathing remark or petty insult after the other. They never run out of those, do they?!

"Ahh...anyway! Get better soon, Sawyer, dear. Or...well, I guess it'd also be a plus if you died. Just don't stay in that middle area too long. You've seen what happens there well enough yourself.

"Toodles!"

The receiver (or whatever kind of demonic entity was playing this message) nearly broke in my hand as a loud hiss echoed throughout the room. I guessed that Vickson had pulled some horrifying, grotesque face at the end as a final attempt at intimidation. Whether they'd forgotten I couldn't see this or simply wanted my imagination to fill in the blanks was beyond me. I narrowed my eyes and started fiddling with the other various knobs on this remote-thing.

"Well, fuck you, too," I said under my breath.

"Asshat," Jack muttered at almost the exact same time. He sighed, and a squeaking sound told me he was leaning back in my desk chair. "Try not to take it personally, Sawyer, they just hate—"

"Yeah, yeah, they just hate all humans. I know." I let out a small sigh of my own and narrowed my eyes at the remote. "They better be extra careful where they step from now on," I said scathingly. "'Cause if they get hurt, I'm not helping to fix them up."

I could almost hear Jack's thoughts from where he was sitting: I really don't think they care.

"Mhm," he said. "You ready to start writing?" At my lack of a response, he rolled the chair forward and found one of my hands, linking our pinkies for a moment. "We can do it tomorrow, if you want."

"I'm okay. Just thinking. About what I want to say."

"Whenever you're ready."

He scooched back to the desk and tapped his fingers lightly on the keyboard in waiting. I puffed up my cheeks and let out a giant breath.

"Dear Morgan," I began. It took everything in my body to keep my voice from breaking. Jack didn't start typing just yet.

"You sure you want to open with that?"

"Well, what else can I say?"

"I don't know, just seems a little fancy for something like this."

"Don't judge my wording and just write, please."

"Okay, okay. Dear...Morgan." I heard the loud clack of the enter key and the sound of him turning around in his chair to face me. I took a breath and folded my hands in my lap, coming over all shaky for some reason. I was supposed to be over the shock of it all by now. But this was different; I was actually going to tell somebody about it. Somebody who didn't know the first thing about Jack, or the demons, or how I barely scraped selling my soul just to learn how to heal people faster.

"...I got into an accident two weeks ago and went blind. I've been staying home for a while, and I'm not sure when that's going to change. I would call my family, and I really should, but...I-I'm scared of what they'll say. How they'll react. I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, but I needed time on my own to think.

"You don't have to come over if you're busy—actually, if you are busy, sit your ass down and shove me to the back of your mind, because you need to get all your stuff done first. I don't want to be an inconvenience right now. But when you're free, I'd really appreciate it if you came over and we could just talk. I've been alone for a long time, and..."

I trailed off, not knowing what else needed saying, and after a while forgot that I hadn't ended the sentence. I was snapped back to reality by Jack waving his hand in my face. Not that I could see it, but I felt a small gust of air hit me and jumped awake.

"Oh. I—sorry."

"It's okay. Is that all you want to write?"

I furrowed my eyebrows and started chewing at the dead skin on my fingertips. Gross, I know, but slightly comforting.

"I don't know. I...well, I guess if there's more I want to say later, we can just send another message. Right?"

"...right."

I lifted my head to "look" around the room. Nothing seemed off; in fact, nothing had for a good few days. I still couldn't help but worry.

I turned back to Jack with pursed lips. "I haven't seen the inside of my house for two weeks now. Tell me you didn't coat everything I own with that tar of yours?"

"No, it's good. I learned my lesson with that. Trust me."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, just—whenever I got tar on your stuff, just by accident, you'd get this little sad, disappointed look on your face. Broke my heart every time," he added in a melodramatic croak, causing me to snicker.

"I can't blame you. My disappointed looks are lethal."

Jack sniffed, and heavy silence fell over the room.

"Be right back," he said, his voice suddenly stifled and gravelly. He got up from his seat and walked across the hall to where I assumed was the bathroom. Without giving me a chance to ask, he started coughing violently—either into the sink or the toilet, I couldn't tell—and something landed there with a splat. He gasped for air as I sat up, alarmed.

"Jesus! Are you okay?"

After a few more hoarse breaths, he muttered, "I think my boss is trying to get the last of him out of me."

"That's not what I asked, dude. Are you okay?"

"...yeah. I'm fine." He groaned, and I heard a series of disconcerting cracks as if he was stretching himself to the limit. "Think I'm gonna be coughing up good old demon juice for a while, though."

I immediately cringed and brought my knees up to my chest. "Wow. Please don't ever say those words in that order again."

"What? Demon juice?" Jack sounded amused, and the sudden desistance of an echo told me he'd poked his head outside of the bathroom for a moment. I shook my head with shut eyes and a wrinkled nose.

"You're disgusting."

—

I didn't manage to get much better by the day Morgan visited. I was eating oatmeal, out of all things, and slouching in my kitchen like some moody teenager when I heard the doorbell ring. Frantically. About five times. I raised an eyebrow.

"...wow. Excessive," I settled on.

Jack piped up from the upstairs bathroom, where he'd been visiting for however many days with his ceaseless coughing fits.

"You think it's her?"

"Only one way to find out, I guess." Trusting that I didn't have to tell him to keep out of sight, I guided myself to the front hall and rested one hand on the doorknob.

Once it's open, there's no more hiding. No more keeping all this to yourself.

But I have Jack. He knows everything that's happened.

You know plenty well that's not enough, I fired back at myself. I bit back another morose sigh and twisted the knob.

I didn't need to open the door all the way; Morgan threw it open for me once she caught sight of my face and crushed me in a hug.

"Sawyer! Are you okay? What have you been doing all this time?"

"M'okay," I said, muffled by her coat and hair. "Christ, let go for one second, you'll suffocate both of us!"

"I can loosen up, but I'm not letting go. Not for another lifetime."

"Morgan..."

"Okay, okay. I'm just"—she drew in one shaky breath and held me at arm's length—"I've been worried sick. You didn't respond to any of my texts, I haven't seen you in forever!"

I winced and bit the inside of my cheek guiltily as I remembered how little I'd checked my phone over the past few weeks. Not that there would've been much to check, anyway—even if there was, I couldn't see it.

"Yeah, I...didn't answer you, did I." I quickly shook my head and pulled her inside by the hands. "Come on. Let's get something to eat. Catch up."

"Not so fast, young lady—!" Morgan let out a squeak of alarm as I started dragging her to the kitchen, along a memorized path that was now second nature to me. She didn't seem to trust this path all too much. I couldn't blame her.

"Hold on! What happened to you, how did this happen in the first place? Sawyer? Hey—listen to me." Morgan pulled us both to a stop, and I didn't bother turning around to face her. It was clear I was in for another one of her motherly lectures about my health, and putting others before me, and blah, blah, blah.

"You scared me, you know. You've been alone for, what, two weeks now? That message you sent me...god, I can't lie, it was a little depressing. You're always putting me and everyone else before yourself—"

Called it.

"—and now you've gone blind and that hasn't changed one bit! You're not an inconvenience, you're a human being. I can't believe I have to tell you that at this point." She sighed and stepped closer to me, turning my body to face hers and shifting her grip to my forearms. "Soy, you can't just act like nothing's wrong when I finally get to see you. It isn't fair. I know you're not really fine. I know you."

"Morgan, really, it's okay. I've had time to process this, I've come to terms with—"

"Oh, knock that off. Two weeks is not 'time to process this,' it's a grieving period. You don't have to rush all this, something horrible happened to you and you have the right to be upset!"

"You should sit down—"

"Not until you do."

I was about to insist, and really pathetically at that, when one of the floorboards upstairs creaked. I heard a muffled "sorry" from my room, and sighed after silence rang through the house a second too long.

"Okay. One thing I probably could've told you: Jack's here. Just don't go looking for him, or anything."

Morgan scoffed. "So you brought old Jack Nichols here before telling me?"

Note to self: make sure she never finds out about Nyx. "Come on, that's different. He was...well, he was kinda there when it happened. It's hard to explain. He's just been staying here for days, I think he might be more traumatized than I am."

"Not true," Jack called from his little hideout. Not one minute after, he hacked and coughed like he was about to take his dying breath.

"...and he's sick," I said, unsure if the lie was horrible and rushed or perfectly timed. It would give me a reason to hide him on the second floor, anyway.

Morgan let go of my arms.

"Y'all shouldn't be in the same...nope. Not today. Let's just get you in a seat," she said firmly, leading me by the shoulders to the living room, "and get talking."

The next two hours dragged on without a tangible end. Every minute was just a new question Morgan asked me followed by my bland, emotionless answers. We sat on the couch, practically leaning into each other, a sort of sad tension between us. It was as if we were both avoiding any sort of wording that would lead to another argument—if you could even call what had happened before an "argument." Everything simmered down a little more with each passing second, to the point where it felt like we were two kids wrapped together in ice. Like it was just us against the world. I kept blinking a lot more than was normal; maybe to hold back tears, maybe because there was something in my eye. I wasn't really sure, but I kept doing it.

Finally, Morgan drummed her fingers on my arm in thought.

"Um—so, sorry if this is a bad time to ask, but I'm serious right now. Are you and Jack...dating?"

I closed my eyes and sighed. "Oh, no, you caught us," I said dryly. "We have plans to elope in two years' time."

"Soy, I'm not making fun of you, or any of that. It's fine if you are. I just wanted to know."

Well, this could certainly make things more complicated.

But what can it hurt?

After a moment of hesitation, I hugged my knees and nodded. "Yeah. I guess you could call it that, 'dating.' It's...ugh." I shook my head and screwed up my face like I'd just sucked on a lemon. "It's been a crazy year."

Morgan rested her head on my shoulder. "I get that. He does seem nice. Not very much of a people-person, though, right?"

"Eh. We're working on it."

For some reason, right then and there, I wanted to start crying. This is what I'd been missing. All year, ever since that one day in August I hadn't told a single person about Jack. The real Jack, not that weird, stick-up-his-ass human version. We're working on it. Isn't that what had been happening all this time? Of course, nobody could ever know what he really was. His whole history, the nights I'd spent treating his wounds, the missing eyes, I knew I would have to take all that to the grave. But I was talking about him to someone I loved. Even if we weren't together in that sense, it would have been torture to keep him a secret. I could find ways to explain the tar and blood later on—maybe his imaginary illness?

I leaned into Morgan and closed my eyes again. I wondered what it was like to deal with the things he did, every day. It baffled me, just then, how he didn't fall into an identity crisis at any given moment; Jack Gordon versus Nichols versus "Eyeless Jack" must've been a pain in the ass to sort out.

After a moment, I started letting it out. All of it; the tears, the shaking, the clutching both of my arms until I almost bled.

"I...Morgan, thank you." I could barely keep my voice from trembling between sniffs. She sighed and hugged me closer, resting her face between my neck and shoulder.

"Oh, c'mon, Sawyer, you're going to make me cry," she muttered, not sounding too put-together herself. I started laughing, quiet as it was.

"Then cry, you coward!"

Oddly enough, that was what got us to stop. Morgan let go of me eventually, like she was about to try prying more information out of me. I winced in anticipation.

"D'you want to tell me how it happened?" she asked gently. "Your eyes look fine. Just...glazed over."

"You already asked me that."

"And you said you'd explain it. But you haven't."

I bit my lip. Somehow, I still hadn't come up with a likely story for that. I gave myself all week, and still could only chop it down to an "accident" to anybody who asked. Which wasn't many. Besides, I knew Morgan would call bullshit on any lie I spewed. As much as she respected my privacy, I had a feeling she wouldn't let me avoid the question this time.

"It was an accident," I repeated dumbly. I felt pathetic, using that phrase over and over again, sounding less sure of myself each time.

"I know that. Could you at least tell me what you were doing? Where you were? It could be important."

My mind raced for any specific, harmless thing I could throw out to pacify her. "I-I don't know! It just happened, I was in the park, Jack was there—"

"Alright! The park! That's all I wanted to know." She'd taken off her glasses by then, by the sound of her tapping its temples together. "You are horrible to interrogate, you know that?"

"It's a gift." I flopped back with a sigh. "I'll be fine, Morgan, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a temporary thing. I just have to wait until I can see a doctor, a real one."

"What do you mean, real one? What other kind of doctor could you go to?"

I smiled and looked up at the ceiling—at least, where I knew it was. "I don't know. Witch doctor?"

Upon saying that, hope fluttered in my chest, if only for a split second. Maybe Nyx could help somehow. She's technically a professional, right?

But wouldn't she have helped you when she visited?

The bitterness of when she'd dropped by, days ago, started seeping back into my veins. For once, just once, couldn't she have done something more? Something forbidden? Was her precious "god" really worth more than helping me live my life? None of this was fair, it wasn't deserved, not one bit of it.

Did she really mean what she said? About being on the other side?

So obedient, the voice of Vickson taunted me. It had already latched onto the innermost parts of my brain, threatening to never let go. I held myself tighter.

Morgan shifted in her spot, and I was pulled back to reality.

"Sawyer? You okay?"

I slowly turned my head to face her. God, I wished I could see her face. Even if it was the most distraught thing in the world. I wanted to see her.

"No," I said. I could feel her shoulders relax at last—that had probably been the first time I answered her honestly today. I curled into myself and traced the treads of denim across my knees.

"I'm not...but you're here. Things could be worse."

Morgan sighed. "That's what they all say."

I wished that Jack could come downstairs and be a part of this. I knew he wished that, too. And we both knew why it could never happen.