I smother a giggle behind my hand. “Quit while you're ahead.”
Sometimes I really think the whole dark and ominous presence he exudes is just a front behind which he hides his social ineptitude. No one would exactly cower in terror at him if they knew he was kind of a dork.
The feeling of my smile fades as I watch him. If I thought there were shoulders under that cloak of perpetual billowing, I would have thought they’d sunk down in frustration.
“I’m at a loss, Lily,” he says, the cloak’s hood turning to look deep into one of the greenish fires. “For how to complete this ritual.”
My eyes fall to the ritual circle. Now that he brings it up, it does look about the same as I saw it arranged last week. Usually things get moved around, new symbols drawn on it, etc.
“If you need me to order more ingredients, I can take down a list,” I begin, wondering where I’m going to get a copy of the requisition forms when my usual desk is now ash.
But Soven shakes his head.
“There are many magical things that can’t be collected in vials,” Soven explains. “A last breath. A first kiss. A shiver over the skin.”
I fall silent, his words provoking my imagination. I don’t know much about magic, and he’s never told me much about how he does what he does.
“Last week, the woman who was in the waiting room, before I—” he jerks his head and makes a clicking noise with his teeth, referring back to the vaporization event, “But these assassins are becoming craftier by the day, they must have infiltrated that agency. There’s no knowing who I can trust, now.”
I nod. Initially, we had hired the woman through an agency, had her vetted for her services through them. I hadn’t really known what services exactly she was supposed to provide at the time, and when my brain puts two together, I nearly laugh.
“Hang on, is that what you needed? A shiver?” I ask skeptically. “That’s what we’re outsourcing for?”
The cloak’s hood turns slowly to me, and he nods.
I’m doing my best to keep my face straight. I let out a quiet laugh as I say, “You could have just called me in. I’ve got skin.”
I wonder if that last remark is rude or something. After all, he doesn’t really have skin, to my knowledge. I hope I don’t have to take an undead sensitivity training class now.
The cloak’s hood stares through me for a few long, uncomfortable moments. The air doesn’t grow colder, instead I’m too warm about the collar, and maybe it’s not anything supernatural, my face is reddening under the intensity of his attention.
Every second in the hourglass slipping by makes me think my suggestion was perhaps really dumb. I don’t know, maybe he needed a professional to shiver for him. Maybe professionally rendered shivers are higher quality? I’ve never really thought about it before.
“You do,” he notes, something different in his voice. He’s looking at me, and I don’t think he’s ever stared at me this long.
Is he looking at my skin? Everything that isn’t covered by my office clothes, my arms and shins and my collar, all of it feels oddly on display. I fight the urge to cross my arms over myself or any other way of covering myself up.
“You do,” he repeats, crossing the Sanctum towards me, less like he’s moving towards me, more like the room is shrinking the space between us. With him comes that scent of herbs, a heavy dose of clove, thyme, lavender, cedar, and a slight hint of embalming fluids.
“Yeah, I do,” I echo, my voice nearly a whisper and more than enough for how close we are. Either I feel like I’m underwater with him or I feel that I’m in over my head. Maybe I’m not as used to being in my boss’s presence as I think I am, because by now I’d usually have gone back to my little not-a-real-office.
He towers over me, staring into my soul probably. I mean, as far as I can tell, the cloak’s hood doesn’t have eyeballs, but even as I look into that endless void, I can feel his gaze sweeping over me, sending goosebumps over my skin.
His head tilts ever so slightly, like he can tell.
When my coworkers talk about the chills Soven gives them, it’s all ‘frailty of life’ this, and ‘acute sense of my mortality’ that.
And for an undying Lord of Darkness, that makes sense.
But when he looks at me, I get this feeling like walking through an old house, where all the furniture has sheets draped over them while the house is dormant, and suddenly, someone is dragging the sheets off. Like he’s unveiling me; like plucking petals off a flower, to see what’s hiding at the center.
“You would really do that,” he says, unconvinced. He makes it sound like I’m chopping off an arm.
“Shiver-rly isn’t dead yet,” I say, trying a wide smile. It feels like the best thought I’ve had today, until I hear myself say it and wince. I cough. “Uh. Yeah. It’s no big deal.”
He’s still for a long moment, before he nods. He tilts his head to the ritual floor. “Come then.”
It’s then, creeping down into the ritual floor, careful not to step on any of the lines, that I realize I’ve never been so far into this room. Maybe I’m too used to being able to duck back out the door as soon as I’m done.