Archive of Our Own

The letter comes out of nowhere.

Unlike the correspondence that arrives at the office through the Ghostly Mailman, this envelope poofs onto the desk one Thursday morning, while he is perched on the wooden edge of the table, staring out of the window into the rainy London sky. The address is written in a careless scribble, a reflection of who held the pen against the paper.

Mr. Charles Rowland
Dead Boy Detective Agency
London

He ponders whether or not to open the envelope. At war with himself—for way longer than what he’s ready to admit—he finally stretches one hand towards the letter, one finger poking at the paper as though he fears it might bite. It wouldn’t be the first time; he still remembers the Big Debacle Of The Toothy Invitation of ‘27.

But Charles Rowland isn’t a ghost who backs down at the first hint of danger.

When the envelope doesn’t attack him, he picks it up and tears it open with shaky hands. It’s surprising that he’s still affected by the whole situation seven years later—not that he’s been counting—but he can’t control the trembling, the sheet inside the envelope shaking as he slides it out. He can’t afford to admit what he’s really feeling, so he attributes the trembling to the nerves of receiving unexpected mail.

He can’t admit he’s terrified of the news that the letter might enclose.

Dear Charlie Boy, it begins, irony etched in every letter.

He sighs; sitting down at the desk instead of on it, he smooths the paper and keeps reading, mouthing the words as he goes, re-reading some of the lines for fear he’ll miss some important information.

Dear Charlie Boy,

I could start with the usual pleasantries, hoping you are doing well and that everything is fine with you, but we both know you’re, in fact, not well. And, although I know you consider me a trickster and a player, I don’t enjoy playing games on troubled souls. Much.

So I’ll cut straight to the point.

I’ve found him.

Don’t ask me how, and don’t ask me how much it cost, but I’ve found him. In one piece, as they may say, for what it’s worth given his ghostly condition.

He doesn’t know I know where he is. I didn’t want to spook him. Unlike others, I do learn from past mistakes, be them either mine or others’. But he is fine.

I guess you’ll want to talk to him and ask him questions. Demand some answers. It suits you and your abandonment issues to want to know why he left you seven years ago, even if the truth might break you. I strongly advise against going there on your own, but since I know you’ll be going anyway, I have taken the liberty of organizing a small trip.

He frowns at the abruptly ending of the letter. No further words, no signature, nothing at all. He turns the page, but the other side is blank, devoid of ink.

And just like the letter, there’s a sudden poof noise and a slender figure dissolves from thin air into corporeal state right in the middle of the room.

“I knew I’d find you here,” the Cat King greets him as he saunters towards the desk. “Brooding about the love of your life. Again.”

“Do you think this is the way to share that you’ve found him?” Charles demands, brandishing the letter like a sword.

“I thought a letter might be suitable,” the Cat King replies in a smooth voice. “Lay it all out in the open for you to read and re-read at length.”

“You’re not laying anything in the open! There’s no information on where he is, or when I could go talk to him!”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be ready for it, honestly.” Charles watches as the Cat King sits done on the arm of the couch, his slender figure almost flowing within the air. “Given you’ve already given up on finding him.”

Charles bristles. “I never gave up on Edwin!” he all but screams, barely refraining himself from slapping the feline smirk off that smug face. “I never found a clue, but now you know where he is. Why wouldn’t you share the location?”

The Cat King lets out a laugh. “Because you’d go there on your own, and I, unlike others, keep the promises I make.” He produces a cigarette and takes a short drag before continuing. “I promised Crystal that she would come with us when I found Edwin. We'll just wait for her to arrive and then we, as a team, will decide the best course of action.”

Charles huffs. For a moment he doesn’t say anything, but as the Cat King makes himself comfortable on the couch Charles hasn’t sat on for years, he can’t stop himself. “You’re enjoying this a lot,” he spits, voice etched with bitterness.

“You need to be a lot more specific, Charlie dear,” the other man retaliates. “I happen to enjoy several things at once.”

“This.” Charles gestures to the office, the emptiness that Edwin left behind when he vanished. “Knowing where he is, knowing you beat me to find out.”

“Ah, that.” the Cat King nods, a small smile playing on his lips. “Not going to deny that I’m finding this way too amusing. The detective being overpassed by the cat. But Edwin is my friend too. I know,” he continues, lifting a hand to stop Charles from interrupting him, “that by the end of everything you two were more than friends, but that still doesn’t invalidate what I feel.”

“You were never his friend,” Charles hisses. “Friends don’t let friends disappear into thin air.”

“Guess you were never his friend, either. For it was you who convinced him it was a good idea to accompany that poor lost soul to Heaven.”

Charles lets those words sink into his tortured soul. The Cat King isn’t lying; it was Charles who got them all into this predicament, but it’s the first time any of them has had the guts to say it out loud. For years, Crystal has looked back at him with pity in her eyes—and poorly concealed accusation. The Cat King was always vocal about what he thought, back then, but he never spoke of it after Edwin disappeared. Jenny still thinks Edwin crossed to his afterlife, but Charles knows better—Edwin would have never left him behind, at least not voluntarily. And Niko—Charles doesn’t know what goes through her mind ever since she came back from the Astral Plane.

“I’m finally here,” comes Crystal’s voice after a loud bang of the door being slammed open. “The Tube was hell today. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the noise and the crowds.” She stops curtly when she sees the Cat King on the couch. “I see you’ve already made yourself at home. Like you always do.”

“Pleased to see you again, too,” he greets. Charles shudders at the sweetness he manages to coat his words with.

“Charles,” she continues, ignoring the Cat King and turning to the ghost in the room. “It’s been way too long. I’m sorry I haven’t been around more.”

“Being alive is busy,” Charles dismisses her worries with his best fake smile. “I get it. But you’re here now. We will finally know where Edwin is so I can go and apologize to him.”

“Oh, it’s going to take more than an apology for him to come back,” the Cat King announces, carefully inspecting his nails with a self-sufficient smile. “But we’re still missing someone.”

“Who else is coming?” Crystal sighs. “Jenny isn’t even in the country, and she couldn’t have come on such short notice. And Niko is way too busy being—well, being Niko.”

“You’ll find out very soon, dear,” the Cat King says nonchalantly. “Meanwhile, why don’t you sit down? You seem exhausted from your travels.” He pats down the space beside him on the couch, but Crystal ignores him and walks towards Charles to sit down on the chair that nobody has used since Edwin.

She drags the chair closer to the edge of the table and reaches out to place her hand on top of Charles’s. It’s a small gesture—one that used to be their normalcy back in the day, before everything got blown up—but it fills Charles with something akin to warmth. Ghosts, he is well aware, cannot feel anything, but despite having been dead for over forty years, he still remembers the feelings that are now nothing but phantoms of what they used to be.

“Everything will be fine,” she reassures him in a soft voice. “Once this son of a mangy stray tells us everything he knows, that is.”

Not for the first time, Charles wonders what might possibly have gone awry between those two. Before Edwin—before everything got nightmarish in his afterlife, Crystal and the Cat King seemed to be hitting it off, much to Charles’s chagrin.

“Patience is a virtue you two evidently lack,” the Cat King says. He moves his hands in front of him, creating the illusion of a screen. “We’re all almost here.”

As if on cue, the screen starts beeping, a blurry image reflected on it, going in and out of focus until they can clearly see Jenny frowning. “Is this thing working?”

“Jenny!” Crystal exclaims, leaning forward. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to come today.”

“The Cat King told me it was imperative that I attended,” she explains. “Not sure how I could be of any help, given that nobody has ever found a clue on Edwin.”

“Oh, but I have!” the Cat King chirps in. “And you are most definitely an integral part of the solution!”

“Can you please stop talking in riddles and tell us where Edwin is?” Charles finally explodes, unable to contain his nervousness anymore.

“Maybe he doesn’t know where Edwin is,” Crystal suggests. “Maybe this is just another game of his.”

“It isn’t a game,” comes another voice from the doorway that Crystal has left open. When Charles turns to the source of the sound, he sees Niko standing in the threshold, wearing her Lost and Found Department uniform. “Thomas knows exactly where Edwin is, and we’re all going to bring him home.”

“We’re going to take him home.”

The words leave Charles’s mouth easily, and they make Edwin shiver. There’s no such thing as home for ghosts, not even for the little boy who’s stepped into their office hand in hand with the Night Nurse.

He doesn’t seem older than five or six—the age Edwin was when his father first announced to him that he’d be attending St. Hilarion’s. It was a shock, knowing that he’d be separated from his dearest mother for so long, back then.

Edwin can relate to how it must feel, to leave one’s family so soon because of death.

Now, while the rest of them debate about his fate, the child is mindlessly drawing with some enchanted crayons that they got as payment for the Case of the Lost Artist a couple of months before.

“Wait a tick,” he says, putting a stop to Charles’s childish impulsiveness effectively. “What are we supposed to do? Is there any mystery to be solved?”

The Night Nurse keeps her cool, impenetrable mask. Edwin used to be like her—a shadow that didn’t allow himself to show any kind of feeling for fear he might be hurt in the process of simply being human. He was more than hurt because of it when he was alive, and he paid the price of going against nature. He’s not going back to Hell, but he’s learned that he doesn’t have to hide anymore.

“There’s no mystery,” the Night Nurse explains. “No case whatsoever. Her Finality needs someone to bring this boy to his parents in the afterlife, but he’s too young to cross alone.”

“And she asked specifically for us to perform this task?” Edwin asks suspiciously. By his side, Charles elbows him.

“Don’t be such a spoilsport,” he hisses. “It’s a cool task. And it should be quick. Just accompany him there. It’ll be an adventure.”

“As much as I hate repeating myself,” Edwin continues, ignoring Charles’s words, “has she actually tasked us with it? The ghost who won’t move onto his own afterlife, and the ghost whose afterlife is Hell?”

For a moment, the Night Nurse’s mask cracks a little, and Edwin can see the annoyance surfacing before she manages to reign it in. “Actually, Her Finality has informed me that only one of you could accompany him,” she explains. “This is highly inappropriate, but needed.”

“Only one of us?” Charles’s voice is colored with doubt. “We never work on our own. We are a team.”

“I don’t care, and neither does Her Finality,” the Night Nurse insists stubbornly. Edwin wants to retaliate—nobody is more stubborn than he is, actually—but she keeps talking. “One of you has to take this child to Heaven to be with his parents, and it has to be done before midnight.”

Edwin’s eyes open wide at the time frame. “Midnight tonight?” he almost screeches. Charles shoots a weird look at him, and Edwin manages to catch himself before his voice rises again. “No preparation, nothing. You come here, disturb our peace, and tell us that one of us needs to go up to Heaven tonight?”

The Night Nurse lets out an exasperated sigh, as though she’s dealing with children younger than the one they’re talking about. “Because of your special conditions,” she says slowly, “Her Finality can only ensure your safety during inter-plane travel until midnight tonight. But if you feel like you cannot do it, I will inform her and find a more suitable agent for this.”

“We’ll do it,” Charles is quick to speak up. “We just need to wrap our heads around leaving one of us behind.”

“Good. Now, quick thinking, who’s it going to be?”

Edwin frowns at her, but he doesn’t have time to say anything before Charles grabs him by the hand and tugs him into their closet. Edwin smirks as the memories of the activities they have performed there—and not all agency-related. He looks slightly down at Charles, who is probably thinking the same if the naughty light in his eyes is any sign.

“Now, I know this is unorthodox, but we have to choose who’s going with the kid.”

“Neither of us,” Edwin replies. “She said they could find someone else.”

“C’mon, Edwin! You know we’re the best they have. None of those fancy entities in that department knows how to treat ghosts better than we do.”

“But it’s Heaven,” Edwin insists. “I doubt I could even cross the threshold. And you—”

“We have to make it work,” Charles insists. “Have you seen that kid? He’s terrified. He’s gone through something traumatic, and he’s away from his family. I would have done anything to have my mum with me when I died, but I had the next best thing.” When Edwin looks at him, confusion colouring his features, Charles pokes him in the chest. “You, you dummy! And now this kid doesn’t have his family to help him move on, but he has us. And he needs us.”

Edwin sighs. “It’s still a place I am not allowed to step in. And there’s no way they’re going to let you come back to Earth after you get there, no matter what Death promised.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that we don’t know if Heaven is what my afterlife is supposed to look like? For all I know, my Heaven is being here with you.”

Edwin shakes his head, fully knowing that Charles is winning this argument. He knew he’d lost it the moment Charles’s eyes looked up at him pleadingly. There’s nothing Edwin wouldn’t give to him, and now that he can do it shamelessly since they’re officially dating—a year and seven months, not that he’s counting or anything—Edwin finds it very hard not to acquiesce.

“So you’ll go with him,” Edwin finally accepts. “But please come back to me, okay?”

Charles nods, and pecks him on the lips before floating through the door of the closet. Edwin follows suit, ready to tell the Night Nurse that they’re doing this on their terms.

He doesn’t have the chance.

The small boy lets go of the Night Nurse’s hand and barrels towards Edwin, hugging his leg tightly. At first, Edwin is shocked—even after so many years sharing his afterlife with Charles, he’s not yet used to being shown affection so bluntly. But then, a surge of something eerily similar to warmth creeps up from the places where the boy is hugging him up to where his heart used to beat.

“Now, let go,” the Night Nurse commands in her usual no-nonsense voice. “You need to get going. Who’s going with him?”

Edwin ignores her—doesn’t even notice if Charles ever replies to her—and he crouches down, swiftly managing to disentangle himself from the boy’s grip.

“What’s your name?” he asks softly. “I am Edwin.”

“Matthew,” the boy murmurs, so low that Edwin wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t been so close.

“Well, Matthew,” Edwin says with a comforting smile, “I believe you want to go to join your mum, right?” When the kid nods, Edwin’s smile broadens. “My friend Charles can help you with that. See? He’s going to take you home.”

Charles takes a step forward but Matthew quickly hides behind Edwin. It’s evident that he’s scared, but Edwin doesn’t really understand. Out of the two of them, Charles is usually the one everyone takes an instant liking to, and Edwin is normally viewed as cold and distant.

“Hey,” he tries to calm the boy, who’s now trembling at his back, one hand grabbing Edwin’s vest. “What’s wrong? My friend—”

“Can’t I go with you?” Matthew asks, voice distraught.

Edwin sighs. “I’m sorry, but I cannot go where your family is.”

“I want to go with you!” Matthew insists. Edwin looks up helplessly at the Night Nurse, who grunts.

“This is highly inappropriate,” she begins. “But I guess I can make an exception. But you need to stay outside the doors at all times, no matter what. Else, you’ll disintegrate. No Hell, nothing. Just poof,” she adds, making an exploding gesture with her hands. “Here, this might help,” she continues, flicking her hand twice until a golden badge appears on Edwin’s lapel.

Agent on official duty, it reads.

Edwin shares a look with Charles, who nods.

“Go,” Charles mouths. He smiles reassuringly, and Edwin makes up his mind.

He’s not going to disappoint this child, nor he is going to allow Matthew to spend an afterlife apart from his family. He stands up in time to see the Night Nurse move her hands in that way that’s mesmerizing and confusing at the same time, creating a white portal with electrified edges.

Without letting go of Matthew’s hand, Edwin steps into Charles’s open arms for one last hug before finding out what Heaven is like.

“I’m already missing you, Charles,” Edwin whispers against Charles’s temple, dropping a kiss right there before extricating himself from his boyfriend’s embrace and picking the kid up in his arms.

And with that, he steps into the white whirlwind the Night Nurse has created.

Charles misses Edwin all day every day, but there are moments when the gaping hole in his soul becomes more unbearable.

Traveling with humans simply reignites the pain in ways Charles doesn’t know how to cope with.

He remembers the first time they all got out of England the old-fashioned way—back when they ended up taking two planes and a ferry to arrive at Port Townsend. Back then, he had Edwin by his side; Edwin protested and bickered with Crystal, and Charles didn’t feel so lonely. Being dead is a very lonesome existence, Charles knows that—has experienced it for far longer than being alive—but at least before he had Edwin.

Now, it feels like he’s floating perilously in an ocean, waiting for some creature to tug at his leg and drag him down until he reaches the deepest depths of the sea.

He walks behind Crystal through airport security, head bowed down in an attempt to make himself small and invisible—even though he’s already invisible for most of the people at the terminal. Niko and the Cat King are a few steps before them, talking about how difficult it is to travel with a crow nowadays. Charles has to refrain from snickering; he would never have expected the Cat King to be sentimental, but after Esther’s demise he took Monty in, treated the crow like one of his own litter. So many years later, they seem to still be going strong.

Charles would be happy for Monty—after all, they kind of became friends—but Edwin’s absence has prevented him from feeling anything but anger for far too long.

“There’s Jenny!” Niko squeals as they walk out the terminal doors, right into the entrance hall of the airport. When Charles lifts his head, he surely sees Jenny standing awkwardly in the middle of the waiting crowd, a steady black presence in the whirlwind of hugs and kisses and long-awaited reunions. “Jenny!” Niko calls out, barreling through the crowd and colliding against Jenny in a swift movement that only Niko can pull off.

“Hi, Niko,” Jenny greets, one arm around Niko’s back in an attempt of a hug. “Hi, everybody,” she continues, lifting her free hand. Charles nods his head towards her, unable to say anything now that he is so close to seeing Edwin for the first time in seven years.

“Hi, hi,” the Cat King says loudly, sauntering towards Jenny and air-kissing her over Niko’s head. “Thanks for having us over.”

“Did I have any choice?” Jenny retaliates. “You call me saying you’re all coming here for a whole week, no explanation, nothing. The best part? You did this last night! It’s fucking ten in the morning now, what was I supposed to do? Leave you to rot at an airport somewhere none of you know or speak the language?”

“I, uh, I can speak any language?” Niko quips, stepping away from Jenny. “Perks of my new situation, you could say.”

Jenny huffs. “You know what I mean. Anyway, let’s get going. Madrid’s traffic at this time of day is a nightmare.”

“Aw, you brought a car?” The Cat King smiles at her. “How thoughtful of you.”

“I didn’t want to be kicked off of the public transportation for bringing a fucking crow, of all animals,” Jenny points out. Monty caws inside his cage; Charles thinks that he’s maybe protesting Jenny’s words, but Monty could be asking for food for all Charles knows. He’s never been able to actually understand Monty while in crow form. And he hasn’t been able to shapeshift to his human form ever since Esther was sent to Hell—or wherever Lilith took her. For all his bravado, the Cat King admitted back in the day that he wasn’t powerful enough to perform such kind of magic.

They all follow Jenny to a parking lot as crowded as the terminal, and stop next to a silver SUV. Jenny opens the trunk and places the suitcases along with Monty’s cage, trying for an angle that allows the crow to actually see the landscape when they move.

Charles finds himself in the backseat, sandwiched between Crystal and the Cat King, while Niko takes the passenger seat without a single complaint from anyone. In his position, he finds it difficult to enjoy the trip as Jenny dives into the morning traffic with practiced ease. Crystal is looking out the window, her face against the glass; Charles studies her profile. He’s done nothing but watch her for the past couple of days, ever since the Cat King gathered them at the office. It’s been way too long, he admits as his gaze traces the curve of her neck.

When Edwin disappeared, Charles lost himself in anger and grief. He knows he behaved childishly, lashing out at anyone who dared to try to comfort him. He managed to scare everyone away. Crystal stayed, though—she never gave up, but her attempts became fewer and farther between, as though she sensed that Charles needed space to get used to his new reality.

Seven years later, Charles feels lonelier than ever, and he doesn’t even have his friends to lean on, because he pushed them away and never cared to rebuild what he destroyed when he was so set on burning his whole world to ashes.

“So, Jenny, how are things with your girlfriend?” Niko asks, breaking the silence that’s settled between them. “How long has it been? Three years, four?”

Charles tunes out the platitudes that ensue—Jenny’s words about her Spanish girlfriend of five years for whom she moved countries, Niko’s squeals and Crystal’s almost imperceptible head movements—and focuses on the few details he knows of their rescue mission.

The Cat King hasn’t been very open about where Edwin is, except for disclosing that they’d be traveling to Madrid to find him. Charles would have thought that Edwin was trapped somewhere between planes, not in a city in the south of Europe. To him, it sounds as though Edwin didn’t want to come back from somewhere just a mirror-trip away, but doesn’t track with who Charles knows Edwin is—was. Charles isn’t fooling himself, at least not with this; it’s been too long for any of them to have remained the same.

But not one version of Edwin would have stayed away from him voluntarily. It’s the one thing Charles can bet his afterlife on—Edwin always came back.

Except that one time, seven years ago.

And that’s why Charles thinks there’s more to it than just a detour to Spain or even a curse keeping Edwin away from the office, from them, from him.

“Here we are,” Jenny announces as she parks the car brusquely by the curb on a narrow street. “Let’s just pop in, drop your bags, then you can go chase ghosts.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Crystal asks, surprise coloring her voice. “We don’t know the place, we could use you.”

“Oh, I’m coming,” Jenny replies as she opens the door. “But I need to go to work, so I’ll leave you to it for a while until my shift is over.”

Charles doesn’t say anything as they all descend from the car; his attention is caught by the window of a shop in the street where Jenny has parked. It’s nothing unusual—his mind doesn’t even register what the shop is—he can see everyone’s reflection but his own. Even Niko’s. His first reaction is to turn towards Edwin and comment on that, but the awful reality is that he’s on his own; he has been for seven years.

Suddenly, the closeness to finding why Edwin vanished off the Earth is too overwhelming.

“You okay?” Niko asks, her smile warming him up impossibly when he looks from the window to her.

“Yes,” he replies out of habit. Charles has never admitted to being weak, not even once, to anyone who isn’t Edwin. He is not going to start now. “I’m brills.”

“Don’t believe him,” Crystal intervenes, shoving him playfully with her shoulder. “He’d be scared to death if he weren’t dead already.”

Charles wants to retaliate, to deny it, but he doesn’t find a single word to refute what Crystal has stated. She’s right, like she always is—he’s scared of finding Edwin just as much as he’s thrilled to finally see his partner after so many years. Charles can’t make up his mind nor his soul about what he’s feeling, so his unbeating heart has settled on feeling everything.

“Let’s get unpacked,” Crystal suggests after a beat. “We can go explore the area until Jenny is ready to take us to wherever Edwin is.”

“I’ve already told you,” the Cat King says, exasperated. “With the coordinates we can get there ourselves, no need for a nanny.”

“That you could,” Jenny says, shrugging as she lets out a sarcastic laugh. “Good luck when you get lost and nobody around you speaks enough English to actually be of help.”

“That’s awful bigotry on your part!” Niko protests. “Spanish people are known for being kind and helpful.”

“And they are, you just can’t communicate in Spanish proficiently enough to be understood. You’ll need to use signs to communicate, and we all know how bad he,” she points towards the Cat King, “is at charades.”

Before the Cat King can defend himself, Jenny starts moving their luggage from the curb to inside the building—an old construction from maybe the early twenties with no lift in sight—and instructs them to start climbing up the stairs to the fourth floor. “And I mean the actual fourth,” she insists. “It’s wild, how they count floors here.”

“Like normal people do, you mean?” comes a chirpy voice from somewhere above them, speaking with a strong accent. When Charles looks up, he sees a young woman staring down at them from over the bannister.

“People, this is Ana,” Jenny introduces the woman. “Ana, these are the crazies I told you about.”

Ana waves at them to climb up the stairs as she steps backwards and out of sight. Footsteps echo in the empty stairwell and all of a sudden a blur of black curls arrives in front of them.

Ana seems like a force of nature—she greets everyone with a broad smile, complimenting Niko and Crystal, and laughing at the Cat King’s crass jokes as she picks up one of the suitcases and starts walking up the stairs again.

Charles hesitates; it’s not that he fears a few flights of stairs—he can’t die of exhaustion, after all—but Ana reminds him of himself while Jenny has always been much more like Edwin, and it hurts in places Charles thought were already insensitive.

“You coming with us?” Ana asks, turning around and tilting her head to the side. “Or would you rather float up and wait for us at the apartment? Either way is fine with me. Just make sure to show up at 4B, not 4A; my neighbor is old and she may have a heart attack if she sees a ghost she doesn’t know.”

Charles blinks at her, too flabbergasted to speak. He didn’t expect Jenny’s girlfriend to be able to see him.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Jenny smirks. “Ana can see ghosts, too.”

“Are you a medium, as well?” Crystal asks out of curiosity, eliciting a hearty laugh out of Ana.

“Not really. I just had my fair share of near-death experiences when I was younger,” she shrugs. “But enough of me! Let’s get you all unpacked so you can go find your ghost friend. It’s suitable, where he might be.”

“You know?”

Ana’s smile softens. She stops walking and leaves the suitcase at her feet to answer Charles’s question. “All I know is that there’s a very appropriate place in Madrid for ghosts who think they belong in Hell.”

“Even though they don’t,” Niko points out.

Charles couldn’t agree more. Ever since he first met Edwin, Charles thought that a soul so pure and generous couldn’t belong in Hell. Edwin usually retorted that he belonged to Hell—a difference worth mentioning—because of everything he did to escape during his first kidnapping down there. But Charles knew better; he knew Edwin was inherently good beneath the snarkiness and the apprehension grown from seventy years enduring torture.

The mere thought that Edwin still believes he needs to be punished for a sin he didn’t commit turns Charles’s stomach upside down.

“Can we go find him now, please?” he all but pleads. “I can’t—it’s too much.”

Jenny and Ana share a quick look before the former turns to Crystal for silent approval. She nods curtly.

“You finish here,” Ana instructs her girlfriend. “You have to go to work anyway. I’ll go with him.”

“Niko too,” Crystal says. “Thomas and I will help Jenny and will catch up with you guys after we’ve figured out a way to go with Monty in his crow shape.”

Charles doesn’t want to be surrounded by people when he confronts Edwin for the first time in seven years, but he understands that Crystal means well. Ana knows the area, and Niko has always been a calming presence—more so ever since she came back and joined the Lost & Found Department.

“Let’s go.”

“Let’s go,” Edwin says before stepping into the portal. As usual, the Night Nurse’s powers have created a comfortable passage through space and time, and all of a sudden they’re standing in front of a golden staircase which leads up to a golden gate. There are groups of people floating around the gates—some of them are waiting their turn, others are chatting with the angels at the door, a few are climbing up the stairs. Edwin notices that some groups seem to be kept away even from the bottom steps, like they don’t belong there.

Edwin brings his hand to the golden badge, hoping that it’s enough to grant him clearance to the doors.

Matthew looks around warily. He hasn’t said anything during the time they’ve spent inside the portal—it’s hard to tell how long that was, since portal traveling is a science Edwin hasn’t mastered yet. He controls mirror traveling, but that’s instantaneous.

“See, we have to go up those stairs,” Edwin explains, pointing at the group of people that are waiting their turn to go up. “We’ll talk to that nice angel there, and they’ll help us find your family, you’ll see.”

Matthew nods but grabs Edwin’s jacket even more tightly, and Edwin wishes he felt as confident as he sounds.

As much as the Night Nurse assured him that he won’t be thrown out if he doesn’t place a foot inside the golden gates, Edwin isn’t sure he believes her. During his time in Hell—and the time he spent trying to escape—he heard stories about holy ground and the punishments that can come to those who dare to step into Heaven uninvited. All these stories came from fallen angels and souls who had been sent to Hell for their sins, so Edwin doesn’t know for sure how much truth hides behind the words.

Still, he doesn’t want to push his luck.

Matthew clings to his neck as they approach the first group of souls by the bottom of the staircase. There’s an angel there—pristine wings fluttering in a wind Edwin can’t feel—so Edwin decides to address them first.

“Excuse me,” he begins, trying to have his badge visible, “I am here on official duty to bring this child to his family in Heaven.”

Everyone in the group turns their heads towards him, frowning because he disrupted their conversation. The angel cocks their head to the side, silently studying the image Edwin and Matthew present—a ghost kid and a ghost who belongs to Hell—and smiles.

“I can see, Edwin Payne,” the angel says with a melodious voice. “Lost and Found Department. You need to climb up the stairs and talk to my sibling Peter, who holds the keys to Heaven. But beware,” the angel adds. “Souls who belong to Hell cannot pass the golden doors.”

“I am aware,” Edwin replies in what he hopes is a soft voice. He doesn’t want to sound snarky in Heaven. “I will be careful.”

The angel doesn’t waste any more time with them, getting back to their conversation. Edwin takes a steadying breath—despite not needing it—and begins climbing up the stairs with Matthew still against his neck.

“Everything will be fine,” he tries to soothe the child, but Edwin isn’t sure who he is trying to calm—Matthew or himself.

It takes forever and still no longer than a few seconds for them to reach the top step. There are different groups and queues around the golden doors, which murmur Edwin’s name as they approach the site. In front of the gate there’s an angel making sure everyone is in their right place. They have soft features—ringlets in their hair that remind Edwin of Charles’s—while they speak to each soul waiting their turn. Edwin locates a sign above the angel, floating in the air a little off to their right.

Priority Lane. Lost and Found Department

“That’s us,” he tells Matthew with a smile. When the kid doesn’t react, Edwin pries the child away from his neck and repeats, smile softening, “we are up next, right there.”

Matthew looks up at him wearily. “’m scared.”

“That’s perfectly normal,” Edwin replies almost automatically. He wonders when he became the ghost who soothes others; that has always been Charles’s task, being as he is much more personable than Edwin. “But I will make sure that your family comes right up to the door to pick you up, okay? I won’t leave you alone until you are ready.”

He steps up until they’re positioned right below the sign, and waits for their turn to be tended to. It surely doesn’t take long, but Edwin grows uncomfortable as seconds tick by and the souls gathered around the entrance notice them. He knows he’s got an aura around him that gives away his belonging to Hell, but it doesn’t diminish the pain he feels whenever someone points at him and says something under their nonexistent breath.

It’s when he’s trying to hide behind Matthew, making himself as small as possible, that he hears it.

At first he doesn’t know what it is, but it grows louder and louder until he can’t ignore it.

Edwin.

His name sounds different in that ethereal voice that comes out of nowhere. It’s appealing, even soothing, the way those two syllables envelop him.

“Edwin Payne,” he hears, but this time it comes from much closer. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Edwin turns to see the soft-faced angel approaching them, a frown marring their otherwise perfect features.

“I am here on duty,” he starts, tugging at his lapel to show the badge. “To bring Matthew back to his family.”

“Do not cross that line,” the angel says, pointing at a golden line on the ground, something that Edwin hasn’t seen before. “You’re awfully close to it as it is right now. Step away, or else you risk obliteration.”

Edwin obliges, too scared to think properly. He takes a step back, away from the door, but the whispers calling his name only intensify.

“I am Peter,” the angel introduces himself, smiling at Matthew. “I will make sure you’re sent to your family in no time. But he cannot enter with you.”

“Can I wait for my mom with Edwin?” Matthew asks.

Peter purses his lips for a second before shaking his head. “Souls who are granted access to Heaven should wait inside the golden doors. And he cannot enter.”

“But I want to be with him!” Matthew insists. Edwin doesn’t know where the kid has got such stubbornness from, but the truth is that he has only felt so unapologetically accepted once before—when Charles chose to remain on Earth as a ghost instead of following his path.

“Matthew, it is fine,” he says, leaving the child on the ground—soft and spongy like marshmallows. Matthew clings to him, putting his arms around Edwin’s leg once again. “You need to get inside, and I can’t step inside, but unless Peter tells us otherwise, there is no rule preventing me from waiting with you on this side of the line, right?” He looks up at the angel as he points at the side of the golden line he is currently staying on. Peter’s features flicker with something that looks eerily similar to pride and they nod.

“Would it be better for you if I called for another angel to hold your hand while you two wait?” Peter offers, and Matthew nods, face hidden against the fabric of Edwin’s knickerbockers.

It is quicker than Edwin expects, and in less than a heartbeat—or what should be a heartbeat—another angel shows up, gently separating Matthew from Edwin and crossing the door with the kid. Edwin feels the loss immediately; it’s eerily similar to the feeling he faintly remembers, when his mother withdrew from the tight hugs she used to give him while his father wasn’t watching.

Matthew looks back once before crossing the door, and smiles at Edwin, childish and unsure, and Edwin motions for him to keep moving. Heaven is what Matthew’s afterlife looks like.

The change is immediate.

Once Matthew crosses the golden line separating Heaven from everywhere else, an intense light surrounds him, covering every inch of his soul. Edwin has to cover his eyes from the brightness of it; when his eyes adjust to the new lighting, he can see Matthew at the other side, white and perfect, tiny wings sprouting from his back. Matthew seems delighted with them, flapping the wings a little to get a sense of how they work; he turns to Edwin without hesitation and exclaims, “Edwin, I am an angel!”

“Of course you are,” Edwin replies, swallowing the pain that only intensifies as Matthew’s smile broadens. “A perfect angel.”

There’s a ruckus behind the angel who brought Matthew into Heaven, a woman and a man—both with their own set of wings—show up with wonder coloring their features.

“Darling!” the woman says, kneeling close to Matthew and pulling him into a tight embrace. “We thought we’d lost you forever!”

“Mom!” Matthew hugs her back. “A nice lady found me and Edwin brought me back to you.”

The man turns to Edwin while the woman keeps Matthew close to her. Edwin notices the moment the man realizes who he really is—why he is outside the doors. His face morphs with a worried frown, but that doesn’t keep him from nodding at Edwin. “Thank you for bringing our little Matthew with us.”

“My pleasure,” Edwin replies softly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He turns around to leave, but Matthew’s voice stops him momentarily. “Will I see you again, Edwin?”

Edwin’s unbeating heart drops at the innocence in those words. He knows the answer, and he knows he shouldn’t give Matthew false hope. But the kid’s voice is breaking and it somehow reminds Edwin of Charles’s.

He schools his features and faces Matthew again with what he hopes is a happy-passing smile. “Maybe next time I bring a soul to Heaven. I could send word so you can be waiting for me by the doors.”

Matthew nods energetically before his mother starts pulling him away from the doors and definitely into Heaven. Edwin stands there until they disappear into the clouds, and once he can’t see Matthew anymore he lets out a long sigh.

By his side, Peter scoffs. “No wonder you belong to Hell, lying to a kid like that.”

“You have no idea why I belong to Hell,” Edwin retaliates, anger boiling inside of him.

Peter shakes his head. “All I know is that you’ve got to leave right now. There’s nothing keeping you here, and you’re scaring the others.”

As if on cue, Edwin catches the string of murmurs and gasps around him, somehow silenced while he had been taking care of Matthew—as though he had a grave case of tunnel vision until he let go of the child. Every soul around him feels judgy towards him, pointing fingers and whispering.

He knows he doesn’t belong to Heaven—he is painfully aware of it—but he knows someone who does. Someone he’s been keeping from finding his true afterlife.

Charles deserves Heaven, not thirty-odd years on the run only to be spared by Death simply because some entity at the Lost and Found Department thought they’d be useful.

“Are you leaving or what?”

Edwin’s face turns stony as he balls his fists at his sides and makes a decision.

“Yes, I am,” he announces, mind already racing with all the possibilities. His heart is breaking, but deep down he knows it will be for the best.

It will free Charles and it will condemn Edwin, but he is already doomed.

“I need a mirror or a reflecting surface,” he demands. “And I will be out of here in no time.”

Peter acquiesces, looking relieved that Edwin is leaving such a sacred place, and produces a small mirror with a flick of his wrist. Edwin takes it with both hands and closes his eyes, focusing on a place he doesn’t know yet, and hopes it works.

He reaches into the mirror, fingers trespassing the surface, and allows the magic to do its job.

When he opens his eyes, the nausea from the whirlwind receding, he finds himself in a park in the middle of autumn—orange leaves descending towards the ground in swirls of wind and force of nature—with a dark sculpture in front of him, standing tall in the middle of a small square. He recognizes who the sculpture represents, and he immediately knows where he is.

Edwin has heard of this place before. He’s been around long enough to have listened to all the tales and the stories about Satan and his demoniacal sculptures. He thinks it is fitting, after all, that he’s ended up mirror-traveling to the self-proclaimed only place on Earth that celebrates the Prince of Hell.

He starts walking towards the statue, threading through the people jogging and walking and laughing and enjoying life, each step towards the statue feeling like shackles on his ankles.

The trees sashay softly as he finds his way through the falling leaves.

The trees sashay softly as Niko and Ana lead the way through the park. It reminds Charles a bit of Hyde Park, despite the glaring differences in size, and it soothes his soul a bit.

“We’re almost there,” Ana mumbles as she turns left and follows a path flanked by pines. “It’s a pretty well known spot, so it should be a bit crowded.”

“If he’s there,” Niko says, “wouldn’t he hide away from people? The more people around, the more chances of being seen. And found.”

Before Charles can reply, Ana stops walking. They’ve neared a small circular space in the park, devoid of trees, with a large black fountain standing tall in the middle of it. Ana has called it a square, even though Niko has tried to argue that squares shouldn’t be called that when they’re circular.

“This is the Fallen Angel Fountain,” Ana explains. “There are several legends around it, and most of them are just that, legends. This is the only sculpture in Madrid devoted to the devil that stands at exactly six hundred and sixty-six meters above sea level.”

“Does that mean there are other devil sculptures around the world sitting at Hell’s number?” Niko asks as they approach the fountain.

Charles would have entered their conversation, but the sight on top of the sculpture that crowns the fountain takes his breath away.

Edwin is perched on the right wing of the Fallen Angel, his legs swaying below the extended black feathers. He is facing away from them, seemingly looking at some point far inside the park. Charles follows his line of sight and his eyes fall upon what looks like a pond where the sun’s reflection is blinding. Even though he is halfway turned away, Charles knows it’s Edwin. He could never forget the curve of that neck, the curls that are usually gelled back and can now be seen in Edwin’s nape, the slender fingers that grip the blackened bronze of the sculpture.

Charles could never forget the feeling of belonging whenever Edwin held him, now assaulting him, paralyzing and overwhelming.

“It’s him,” he murmurs, his voice barely a breaking whisper. All of a sudden he feels like he needs air—an occurrence that hasn’t happened to him in over forty years—and the suffocating feeling is way too much for him. “It’s really him.”

“Do you think so?” Niko asks, her eyes roaming up from the basement of the sculpture to the wing. “Oh my, it really is him.”

Charles doesn’t say anything, enthralled as he is by the sight of Edwin. It feels like a mirage on the hottest day of a desperate journey throughout the desert. Everything that he’s been bottling up for seven years bubbles up in his soul, fighting to burst out of the seams Charles has carefully tailored during endless nights of loneliness.

He’s finally found Edwin.

“I need to go talk to him,” he declares, taking one step forward. He doesn’t go far, since Niko reacts quickly and stops him by grabbing his sleeve. “Niko!” he protests. “Let me go.”

“We have to wait until the rest come,” she says. “We promised. Plus, Thomas said that there were some obstacles around Edwin that we should overcome together.”

Charles huffs. “There’s literally nothing keeping Edwin from us,” he points out. “Only the air and this distance that I’m about to close right now.”

“Who’s that?” Ana questions, effectively diverting Charles’s attention from his throes back to their surroundings.

His eyes follow her finger until his gaze lands upon a familiar figure; one he hadn’t thought he’d ever see again. Not since he kicked her out of the office.

The Night Nurse is approaching the fountain from the side opposite to theirs, walking like she has not a single worry in the whole world. Her bright red hair is up in a tight bun, like she used to wear it before, but it’s a shock seeing her in normal clothes; her flowery blouse floats slightly around her lithe frame, tucked inside of a pair of fitted jeans. Her heels don’t seem the best choice to walk through a park, though, but she pulls it off with the elegance Charles always saw in her.

Now he only sees a traitor.

“What is she doing here?” he hisses, struggling to free himself from Niko’s grip, now tighter than before.

“Don’t look at me,” she replies, her fingers steel against his biceps. “The Department lost track of her after she resigned seven years ago.”

“Well, she’s here with him.” Charles frowns when the Night Nurse gets closer to the fountain and looks up at the wing where Edwin is sitting. “Why?”

Niko shrugs—or tries to, not letting go of his arm—before saying, “Maybe she’s just found him, like us.”

Her words loom over them as they watch the Night Nurse wave at Edwin, who slowly floats down to the ground to greet her. There’s an intimacy there, a complicity that wasn’t there when Edwin was in London—Charles remembers how Edwin advocated against having a babysitter when the Night Nurse’s presence was forced upon them. Edwin didn’t like her one bit, barely tolerated her most of the time, and always found the occasion to remind her that he’d been sent to Hell a second time because of her.

All that history doesn’t track with what Charles is witnessing right now—with the gentleness in the Night Nurse’s touch as she pushes Edwin’s uncharacteristically loose fringe off his forehead. Or with the way Edwin doesn’t jerk away. He doesn’t lean into the touch, Charles notices, but he isn’t actively rejecting it either.

“Somehow I don’t think she has just found him,” Ana whispers.

“Now that I think of it,” Niko starts, swallowing hard as the Night Nurse says something in a voice so low they can’t hear it in the midst of Madrid’s chaos. She doesn’t finish her line of thought because that’s the moment Crystal, Jenny and the Cat King choose to show up.

“Holy cow,” Jenny splutters in greeting. “He is really here. But what’s she doing here?”

“They kind of hated each other before,” Crystal says cautiously, “but maybe there’s a reason?”

“Everything happens for a reason,” the Cat King states, a Cheshire cat smile creeping up his face. Charles has to fight the urge to punch it off those lips. “How else would I have known Edwin’s whereabouts?”

“She’s your source!”

The chorus of voices overlapping each other attracts the gazes of some passersby, otherwise oblivious to the ghost on the fountain and the interdimensional being talking to him. Charles takes advantage of the ruckus to take a few steps closer to the fountain, given that the few people who can actually interact with him are engrossed in a pointless discussion. It doesn’t really matter where the Cat King got his information from, or at least it’s of little importance to Charles. What’s important is that he’s finally found Edwin. He can finally ask all the questions that have been eating at him for years.

But fear has a powerful grip on him, and he stops after a couple of meters.

All of a sudden, the anger that has been fueling him for so long deflates like a punctured balloon, hissing on its way out. Charles finds himself paralyzed, terror creeping up his spine even though he thinks he isn’t in the wrong here—it was Edwin who disappeared out of the blue, leaving Charles without as much as a goodbye.

But right now, watching Edwin softly turning his back to them once again as the Night Nurse’s hand remains on his arm, Charles isn’t sure anymore. Maybe he drove Edwin away—he’s known for being too intense—or maybe he didn’t listen to Edwin’s needs and missed something integral that forced Edwin to flee.

Monty flies to him and lands softly on his shoulder. He must be a weird sight—a crow standing on empty air. Charles shakes his head when Monty caws what sounds like a question.

“I can’t,” he mutters. “It’s all my fault.”

“Don’t be silly,” Niko intervenes. “How’s it your fault that Edwin went missing seven years ago?”

Charles shakes his head. “It just is,” he repeats. “He’s better off without me.”

He begins to turn when his surroundings start to slowly freeze in place. It’s subtle at first—the leaves don’t fall down, suspended on air like they’re weightless, the dust created by human footsteps a kaleidoscope of browns and whites—but it quickly becomes evident when the people around them seem to have stopped mid-movement.

“What in the—” he splutters, surprised and worried when he sees Jenny and Ana unmoving. Crystal quirks an eyebrow up at him, so he knows she isn’t frozen, which confuses Charles more.

“It needed to be done,” the Cat King states, shrugging. When Charles turns to glare at him, he realizes that the Cat King’s arm is outstretched, as if he’s getting ready to cast a spell.

Maybe he already has.

“What have you done?” Charles asks aggressively. “How come you can control movement?”

“And time and space,” Crystal adds. “You would’ve known if you’d been around more instead of mourning alone.”

“Don’t go there,” Niko says. “We agreed there would be no guilt-tripping here.”

“Why does it affect Jenny and Ana but not Crystal?” Charles asks. His mind is racing; if whatever spell this is only affects humans, he understands that it wouldn’t affect Niko since she’s something else entirely after having survived the Astral Plane, but it should affect Crystal.

And yet it doesn’t.

Before the Cat King can reply, a smug smirk already forming on his lips, a voice at Charles’s back has the power to freeze him in a way the spell couldn’t.

It’s a voice he hasn’t heard in seven years—except for in his dreams—but it sounds exactly like he remembered it.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

He doesn’t sound harsh, at least he doesn’t think so. He’s just surprised to be having a visit.

And flabbergasted that she is here.

The Night Nurse stands right in front of him, hair disheveled from the effort of traveling between planes.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” she repeats, fingers carding through her bangs, magically fixing her hairdo. “What are you doing here? The whole agency has looked for you everywhere!”

Edwin fixes her a blank stare, one that he perfected while in Hell—one that keeps him safe from showing his feelings and thus becoming vulnerable—and waits for her to catch her breath. The Night Nurse holds his gaze steadily as she breathes in and out, as if she’s assessing the situation. She opens her mouth once again—most probably to tell him off some more—but her eyes lock on Edwin’s hands on the bronze of the statue, and he can tell the exact moment when she realizes his true situation.

“How long have you been fading away?” she asks instead of whatever diatribe she would have subjected him to.

Edwin doesn’t reply. He looks down at himself, the same uniform he’s been wearing like armor for forever, the same shiny shoes, and the paleness of his skin. His smile is sad when he looks up at her.

“That’s what happens when you’re not where you’re supposed to be,” he explains, shrugging.

He’s aware of how bad it sounds, to admit that he isn’t where he should be, but he couldn’t bring himself to step back into Hell after running away from Charles. When he found himself walking towards the Devil’s sculpture in the middle of this park, it was already too late. He’d made up his mind, and in the very same moment his ethereal skin had begun to lose color.

Ghosts can fade away, he knows that. He knows everything about ghosts and how they can move on, pay for their sins, be obliterated or simply fade away. It’s not as glamorous as walking into Heaven, but definitely not as painful as being tortured in Hell. It still surprises him that he didn’t fade when he escaped Hell and found Charles, but as much as he prides himself about knowing everything about ghosts, there are some things about Eternity that he ignores.

“So you admit you shouldn’t be here,” the Night Nurse says carefully. “Let me help you get back.”

“No, thank you,” he is quick to reply, horrified. “You already sent me to Hell once.”

“I am exhausted to repeat that it wasn’t me,” she retaliates before adding, “I didn’t mean Hell, Edwin. I meant home, London, with your boyfriend. With your family.”

Edwin shakes his head. He knows they must be suffering right now, but pain recedes with time until it becomes an old scar. Charles would forget about him soon enough, and then he would voluntarily step into Heaven. Edwin has seen what it’s like. Charles doesn’t deserve to be held captive when the glory and the happiness of Heaven are waiting for him.

Charles just needs to be free, and Edwin has the power to give him freedom.

Even if it costs Edwin his own damned soul.

“They’re better off without me,” Edwin says softly. “I’ve seen Heaven. It’s what Charles deserves. I won’t be the one keeping him from his afterlife.”

The Night Nurse chuckles—dark, dry and devoid of all happiness. “You can be so thick sometimes.” When Edwin glares at her, she shrugs. “That’s what Crystal says all the time. And, right now, I believe that girl is onto something.”

“I still don’t understand why they have sent you to convince me to go back,” Edwin muses, in an attempt to change the subject.

“Nobody sent me,” she explains. “Nobody knows I am here. I found you on my own.”

Edwin feels his soul freeze. He would have expected Charles to start a hunt after him, maybe Crystal cheering him on. He knows that Niko would have led the quest, had she been alive. Edwin wipes away a tear that comes with the thought of his best friend—apart from Charles—gone far too soon. Vanished off the face of the Earth. Most likely passed on to Heaven where she belongs.

That’s exactly what he’s trying to do here, help Charles cross over. And by what the Night Nurse is implying, Edwin is halfway to success.

“That boyfriend of yours kicked me out. Said I was to blame for you leaving. That I pushed you both to take a case that wasn’t yours to take.”

“It was his idea, to help Matthew,” Edwin quips, but the Night Nurse doesn’t seem to hear him.

“He’s been searching for three years, and he blames me. So he kicked me out, and the worst part is that Her Finality agreed with him. They didn’t even let me tell them that I found you.”

Edwin frowns at her, confusion marring his features. It doesn’t sound like the Charles he loves so much—his Charles is sensitive and understanding, goofy most of the time, not this ghost the Night Nurse is describing. He waits for her to elaborate, which she does with an exasperated huff.

“Charles thinks it was my fault that you disappeared. He actually thinks you’re in some kind of trouble, because he can’t even contemplate that you might have run away. Which, by the way, you have,” she points out. “He’s been campaigning against me this whole time, even when I have been working to find you. You’ve proved really hard to find.” She pauses, looking up at him with pity in her eyes—such a strange sentiment for her—before continuing in a soft voice. “We fought, and he kicked me out even though Crystal tried to stop him. But I never stopped looking for you, because I know it wasn’t solely my fault. When I found you, I tried reaching out to them, but Charles has managed to cast a powerful spell over the office so I can’t even get close to it. And well, here we are.”

Edwin keeps silent as her words land on him. He looks down at his own hands, grey and faded, and sighs.

Three years aren’t enough for him to fade completely away, either.

“How did you find me? I covered my tracks.”

“You did,” she acquiesces. “But there are very few places where a soul who belongs to Hell can go on this Earth. And you have always been so predictable.” She points at the statue he is currently perched on, and has to admit that she isn’t wrong.

“I wouldn’t have thought so, but apparently I am,” he whispers. “I can’t go back.”

She looks at him with pity in her eyes, and the light of determination shines behind her eyelashes. “You should.”

“I won’t.”

“Then I will stay here until I have convinced you to, or until you actually fade away,” the Night Nurse says sternly. “At the rate you seem to be fading, maybe the latter will happen sooner than the former.”

Edwin remains silent as the Night Nurse sits by the feet of the fountain, on top of a stone that’s being caressed by the water behind the sculpture. He doesn’t say anything as she gets comfortable—or as comfortable as one can get when they are sitting on a cold, hard stone—but he speaks up when she reaches out to touch his ankle, because that small gesture spikes a surge of heat in Edwin’s soul that he hasn’t felt in decades.

“What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she replies quietly, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m making sure you don’t fade away under my watch.”

“You know that’s what’s going to happen,” he says with resignation. “That’s what I have chosen. That’s what I deserve.”

“That’s not true,” the Night Nurse insists. “Ask Charles. Ask anyone. You deserve much more than Hell. That was a mistake.”

“You didn’t think so, the last time you sent me back there.” There’s mourning in Edwin’s voice, but that doesn’t deter the Night Nurse from talking over him.

“I’ve already apologized for it. Profusely. I didn’t know you, and I certainly hadn’t listened to your story. Her Finality and Death have been working on fixing it, but you know how Lucifer is. It’s going to take time, and some convincing, and you running away and hiding isn’t helping your case.”

Edwin doesn’t reply. He doesn’t think he can form any words now. It’s always been hard for him, to believe that he deserved more than pain and strife and torture. That’s all he knew for half his life and most of his afterlife. Getting to know Charles—getting to love Charles—was a blessed surprise. But Edwin always knew that the bliss would be temporary.

Souls like his don’t deserve happiness.

“You can stay for as long as you want,” he finally says, voice even and stern. “But I’m not going to change my mind. I’d rather fade away than cause Charles any more pain.”

“And haven’t you thought that you’re causing him more harm by vanishing?” she insists, but Edwin doesn’t want to acknowledge that she might be right.

Instead, he addresses another elephant in the—figurative—room. “If you’re going to remain here, I can’t call you by your title. Do you have a name I can address you by?”

She smiles, a sad, lopsided grimace that holds much more pain than Edwin would have thought possible, for any kind of being—human or interdimensional. “Once, someone I loved very much called me Asa. You may call me that.”

“Someone you loved?” Edwin repeats, unable to stop himself.

“You are not the only one who suffers from a broken heart, Edwin Payne,” she says, wisely. “And you are not the only one who brought that kind of despair upon yourself.”

The silence that follows her words—raw, painful and bleeding—is deafening.

The silence that follows is deafening.

Here they are, in the middle of one of Madrid’s busiest places, and suddenly nothing can convey what Charles is feeling when those six words fall like a slab on his shoulders.

Nobody replies. Charles can feel the heat of Edwin’s stare on him, steady and dreadful, until he turns around to face the one who got away—the love of his afterlife.

Up close, Edwin doesn’t seem to have changed much. Not that Charles had expected that, they are ghosts after all, but it’s still a surprise that time hasn’t taken its toll on Edwin the way Charles feels it has done to him. But there’s something else that catches Charles’s attention and pins him down to Earth.

Edwin’s colors—his uniform, his hair, his eyes—don’t seem quite right. They’re dulled, as though Charles is watching Edwin from the other side of a darkening screen. It’s like watching one of those old videotapes with faded colors. It would make Charles nostalgic if he didn’t know what it means, for a ghost.

Edwin, just as much as his colors, is fading away.

The implications of what happens to a ghost who allows himself to fade away—the places it would send Edwin—terrify Charles much more than seven years of not knowing.

Beside him, the Night Nurse is standing standoffishly, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.

Nobody says anything until Edwin breaks the silence, addressing the only thing he couldn’t have possibly known about.

“Niko, is that you?” he asks, frowning. “How—”

“She came back from the Astral Plane about five years ago,” the Cat King interrupts dismissively, making Charles want to strangle him. “Now she’s training at the Lost and Found Department. Could we please address the big pink elephant in the room so we can go home? Who would have thought it would be so freezing in Madrid?” he complains.

“There’s no elephant and we are in no room,” Edwin replies primly, causing a rivulet of laughter bubble up in Charles’s chest.

“I wanted you to go to Heaven,” Edwin reluctantly confesses. “That’s what your afterlife looks like. And being with me was only keeping you from it.”

Edwin’s confession echoes loud in the silence, breaking it in a million pieces. His words leave a lingering ache in the air, self-explanatory and incomprehensible at the same time. It’s not immediate, but when Charles understands what Edwin means, the silence isn’t the only untouchable thing to be broken.

Edwin thought that he was keeping Charles from going to Heaven, that somehow he was stopping Charles from getting the afterlife he deserved. The realization that Edwin didn’t even think about how being together was something Charles chose is more hurtful than the words.

Charles reaches out in an attempt to comfort Edwin, but it earns him the exact opposite reaction, something that hasn’t happened since the beginning of their friendship, with one of them fresh from death and the other fresh out of Hell.

Edwin recoils as though he’s been exposed to fire. It makes Charles’s soul ache in ways he didn’t think possible—and he’s been surviving on heartbreak and hope for way too long.

He wants to do something, say something that might ease the pain he hears in Edwin’s voice, but it all comes out wrong.

“Did it ever cross your mind that you are my Heaven?” Charles shouts. Even he is taken aback by the force of his own words. It isn’t the right thing to do when confronting a scared ghost like Edwin is right now, so Charles tries to calm himself before continuing. He clears his throat and speaks again, voice softer but not devoid of pain. “That I wasn’t meant to cross over because there was never anything in my afterlife that could compare to you?”

Edwin doesn’t say a word. By his side, the Night Nurse scoffs as though Charles’s words are ideas she’s been trying to drill into Edwin’s hard skull. Knowing both of them—if he can say that after seven years—Charles is sure that might be the case.

“You’ve always believed you aren’t worthy of love,” he continues, fully aware of the pain he must be inflicting on Edwin, who never liked being told good things about him. That was always Edwin’s hindrance.

He's never thought, not even once, that he is deserving of the love he is shown, simply because he is sure his soul was tainted by Hell.

“I loved you,” Charles says in an even voice. “And I still love you, despite you running out on me because you thought that was the right thing to do. Can’t you hear how contradictory that is? You believing you’re Hell material and then going above and beyond to make sure I got the afterlife you think I deserve?”

He pauses for effect; his words seem to dent into Edwin’s soul, for his partner lowers his head. The Night Nurse nods her assent while Niko and Crystal mutter something that sounds eerily similar to I told you so. “You never really wanted to believe that anyone could love you, least of all me. But Edwin, if there’s something I have learned these past years, probably before we were ever more than just partners in crime, it’s that there’s no afterlife for me if you’re not in it. And I’m sorry, but you have no say on it. You cannot dictate how the rest of the world feels about you because some bullies cursed you to Hell as a prank.”

Charles breathes in heavily. This is the most he’s talked in forever, because he felt it wasn’t worth it if he didn’t have Edwin to tell his crazy thoughts to. It dawns on him now—among Crystal’s murmurs and Niko’s delighted low squeal—that Edwin’s disappearance has taken a heavier toll than he thought. He’s slowly been drifting away from his friends; be it because he was mourning a loss or because he sensed nobody could ever understand how it felt to be left alone in the dark of afterlife, he doesn’t know.

But now Edwin’s right in front of him, and Charles has had the guts to give his partner a piece of his mind.

Edwin has the decency of looking ashamed. But there’s also a hint of something deeper—something stronger than sadness—in the way he takes a step backwards and sighs.

“You’ll thrive without me,” he says, a pitch in his voice the only indicator of his true feelings. “I know. As much as you say you missed me, you’ve moved forward. I didn’t expect you to cross to your afterlife the moment I left, but I do believe you’ll get to it eventually. I would just hinder that.”

Behind Charles, the Cat King scoffs. “Not even seven years can change your insufferable entitlement. Can’t you just accept that you’ve been wrong all this time and make amends so we can all go home?”

Charles turns in time to see Crystal hitting the Cat King slightly on the arm. “Not the time, Thomas,” she warns.

“But I—”

“Actually,” the Night Nurse interrupts them, “he’s got a point. Edwin, this is what I have been telling you about for years, this is what you were scared about. Whether it was about it happening or not happening, I am not sure. But your friends, your family is here. They never stopped searching for you.”

Edwin looks away stubbornly. “They never should have started searching for me in the first place.”

“It’s a testament on how well you hide that it’s taken them so long. But they’re here now, they’ve found you. Don’t you think that maybe that means something?”

Charles blinks at the softness he hears in the Night Nurse’s voice. It’s almost as though she cares; and it clashes with the memories he has of her—the interdimensional being thinking she knew more than anyone, that she was above them all, the one who never once let the chance to antagonize Edwin pass her by. He doesn’t know what to do with this situation, not when he barely recognizes the people playing a part in this charade, but he can be even more stubborn than Edwin is. He’s been compared to a golden retriever before, but right now he needs to channel his inner bloodhound.

He can’t let go of Edwin now that he has finally found him.

“It isn’t that simple, Asa,” Edwin says, still looking everywhere but at Charles. “And you know that.”

The Night Nurse—who now has a name, apparently, Charles realizes—scoffs. “Why? Because you went all the way to Heaven and got blinded by white lights and promises of happiness ever after?”

“Because it didn’t hurt!” Edwin exclaims, anguish evident in his voice. It’s so sharp that Charles takes a step backwards, hit with the sudden force of sheer pain he can feel coming from Edwin. “And you, you always complain that it hurts so much and I wanted for it to stop! I wanted for you to just go on and be happy, and that should be Heaven for you!”

Everyone remains very still for a heartbeat. Charles swears he can almost hear Crystal’s breathing and the rustle of Thomas’s coat in the wind, such is the silence that envelops them. It takes him a moment to find his balance again.

Edwin, who’s now bristling while a stream of silent tears runs painfully down his face.

Charles has only seen Edwin cry a handful of times, and almost never in public. He’s always been reserved—understandable after what he went through—and that’s why Charles always felt important by Edwin’s side, because he got to see a side of Edwin that his friend only shared with a few. But now Edwin’s crying right in front of the Cat King of all people, and it’s a contradictory scene to be witnessing.

The last time Charles saw Edwin cry, he vowed to never let his friend go through so much pain ever again. Even back then, young and naïve and powerless as he was, Charles would have given his afterlife to stop Edwin from hurting.

Which would have been an absolute feat, given that they were escaping from a spider made of baby dolls.

Back in the present, Charles has to fight the urge to wipe those tears away the way he used to—what feels like a lifetime away—with a kiss. Instead, he balls his hands into fists and bites the inside of his cheek while he tries to find something to say.

The silence is so loud it’s deafening.

“You don’t decide what Heaven is for someone,” Niko finally intervenes. Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it echoes in the stillness that’s surrounding them. “You can’t know what’s in store for them. You can’t even know what’s in store for you,” she adds softly. “But I do. I do, Edwin. And this isn't your fate, and Heaven isn’t Charles’s.”

Charles is already used to Niko’s newly-found wisdom—it comes with the territory, as they say—but Edwin has never heard her speak like this. He didn’t even know she had returned, because he left long before she could find her way back to this plane. Charles finds himself scrutinizing Edwin’s face as the words sink in, the implications vivid in the minds of those who are already aware of Niko’s true nature.

And although Edwin is new to it, Charles knows he’s not an idiot.

“You didn’t come back because the Sprites helped you,” he mutters, one hand up to cradle his chin. “Somehow you became very powerful wherever you were.”

“I am the only one who can see everything, Edwin,” she confesses. She takes a step forward, and this time Edwin doesn’t move. “Somehow.”

Niko approaches Edwin, breezing past a frozen Charles, and the Night Nurse makes an overexaggerated curtsy. It’s a testament to the importance of this new Niko that the being who previously treated her with indifference—if not straight-up disdain—is now bowing to her power.

“You’re not alone, Edwin. You never have been,” she says, reaching out to touch Edwin’s face. “Let us help you.”

Charles watches as her fingers touch Edwin’s cheek. A soft gasp escapes his lips when he sees color spreading from the point where her fingertips have wiped Edwin’s tears away, bringing back the light to Edwin’s eyes. It’s subtle, and at the same time Charles feels like he’s watching a black and white movie turn into technicolor in one swift swipe.

When Edwin looks up once again, Charles is met with those blue eyes that could always read him like a book.

“It’s been so long,” Edwin begins, his gaze never leaving Charles’s. “I don’t think I remember the way back home.”

Before anyone can break their moment—even though he can hear Crystal scoffing at his back—Charles takes another step forward and stretches out both his hands. “We’ll find it together. We can do anything together, remember?”

Edwin nods slowly, eyeing Charles’s hands, palms facing upwards. He seems to be deep in thought; for a moment Charles thinks he’s going to reject the offer, but finally Edwin offers him his signature lopsided smile, albeit still a little sad.

“You sure? After everything I’ve done?”

“I raided Hell for you, Edwin,” Charles tells him. “I don’t think there’s anything that you could possibly do that would scare me away.”

Edwin reaches out too, hand on top of Charles’s. Around them, their friends hold their breaths while his fingers feathers over Charles’s until he decides to touch Charles’s palm. And Charles seizes the moment, intertwining their fingers and holding onto Edwin for dear afterlife.

“You ready to go now?” the Cat King asks, sounding bored. “I would very much like to go back to Jenny’s apartment.”

“And spend quality time with your girlfriend, huh?” Edwin fires out nonchalantly, a hint of amusement in his words. Charles snickers, happy that Edwin is almost back to bickering with his former sworn enemy, before realization dawns on him.

“Girlfriend?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t realize Thomas and Crystal are together?” Edwin points out while Niko and the Night Nurse shake their heads. “It’s quite evident, even for me. And I've been away for seven years.”

“Don’t remind me,” Charles growls. “When we get back home, I want you to tell me everything!” he tells Crystal, who laughs heartily.

“Now, we ready?” the Cat King insists. When everyone nods, he lifts the spell that has kept every human but Crystal frozen in time, and grabs his girlfriend’s hand. Jenny and Ana come back to life to see Edwin holding hands with Charles—and if they point at their entwined fingers and snicker, Charles chooses to be none-the-wiser.

Not everything is right, and there are so many questions yet to be answered—starting with when on Earth Crystal chose the Cat King as her romantic partner—so many wounds to be mended with time and love.

But that’s exactly what they have now, Charles realizes as he feels the familiar tug of Edwin’s hand on his.

They have all the time in the world to sort their afterlife out, and all the love that’s been bottled up ready to glue them back together.