So, all of that stuff I hit you with last time—it actually happened a few weeks ago. Sorry for the delay. There’s a reason it took me a while to update you: I’ve been adjusting to a new version of life since everything happened.
I suppose the easiest way to talk about it is to compare it to my life months ago, before the murders started, before I even knew Faith or the Ancient One or harbingers existed.
Have things changed? Well, yes and no.
Back in the beginning, I started this with a once upon a time. To be exact: once upon a time, in a magical land far, far away, there lived a handsome, powerful prince, so incredible that the sun itself rose at his command.
Most of that setup is just as false now as it was then. I’m still not that far away. The sun still doesn’t know I exist.
Still handsome, though. And more powerful, supposedly. But let me back up.
I told Asher, Acacia, and Milo everything that had happened as we returned to Griffin’s Edge. For once, I knew exactly where we were going; it was like I could see a map etched into the fog. Finding our way to its edge, and then to the paths leading to the bar, was the easiest it had ever been.
I explained that, too: the whole me-being-immortal and keeping-the-world-alive thing. Milo seemed relatively unfazed, though I suppose considering the stuff I’ve put him through, nothing surprises him anymore. Besides, he was too focused on the fact that he’d pulled water from a person, which he’d never done before and felt kind of conflicted about, even after we reassured him that Faith had deserved it.
Asher and Acacia, though, seemed to look at me almost reverently. “So, you’re the Ancient One now?” Asher asked, eyebrows raised.
“I guess,” I said awkwardly, trying not to look at the soft silver glow I could see around my hands. “Don’t make it weird.”
He chuckled, and I turned to see him smirking. “Oh, I’m just remembering all the times I saved the Ancient One’s life because he doesn’t know how the dark forests work,” he said. “And thinking that he better keep that in mind while he’s shaping the world for eternity.”
“Shut up,” I said good-naturedly. Just then, Griffin’s Edge came into view, and as I watched its familiar sign wave in the fog, I felt like I was home. “Hey, I’ll start repaying you now.” I grabbed his arm and began to drag him towards the door.
He dug in his heels, but I was stronger now. I kept pulling him. “What are you doing?” he whispered, dark eyes wide. “They’ll tear me apart in there!”
“No, they won’t,” I said. “Because I’m continuing what Henri started. I’m un-banishing you from the forests. And it starts here, at the edge of reality, where everyone is welcome.” I stared him down. “Including harbingers, who are some of my best friends.”
He met my eyes and, after a moment, nodded. “Okay. I’ll follow you.”
We were on the front step now. I looked at him in surprise. “Really? That easy?”
He shrugged. “I’d follow you anywhere. Except onto another skyscraper.”
“Fair enough,” I said, and crossed the threshold with Milo, Asher, and Acacia in tow.
I’d love to tell you the transition has been seamless, but of course it hasn’t. Ending centuries of grudges and superstitions doesn’t go away overnight. It’s still a work in progress, but I am making progress.
Which brings me back to one of the things that’s different now: Griffin’s Edge. I mean, it has to be. It can never be the same without Henri’s calm presence and piercing lilac eyes. I spread the news about his death as soon as we got back, along with the news that the murder spree was over, and the announcement that I would be keeping the bar open and running it myself. I made it clear that everyone was welcome, including harbingers, and that I’d throw out anyone who disagreed.
There’s been growing pains, of course. I got in a shouting match with a gnome the other day—turns out gnomes say some surprisingly racist stuff when drunk. After significant cursing on both sides, I finally just picked his two-foot-tall self up and threw him out the door. I’ve kicked out some more intimidating visitors, too, although they don’t give me as much trouble as you’d think. I see the side-eyed glances they give me. They sense it, that aura of time and power around me, and they respect it.
Or are threatened by it. I’m not totally sure which. But I’m cool with not having to find out.
Asher, Acacia, and Milo have been a huge help as I figure out how to run Griffin’s Edge. I mean, I’ve known how to mix cocktails since I was like eight years old, but I guess I never realized how much extra work Henri put in: budgets and supply chains and staff. I don’t think I’d be able to do it entirely alone, which is why my friends and the existing staff have been a huge help. Well, some more than others.
Acacia, for instance, has been drawing in more harbingers. “The people of Oasis hate me less than they hate Asher,” she whispered to me before leaving one morning. “I’ll have a better chance than he will.”
And I guess she was right, because slowly but surely, she’s dragged several other harbingers to the bar, and though they sit in the shadowy corner and look kind of uneasy, they come back. Their favorite seems to be our Witch’s Brew cocktail. Hey, I’m as surprised as you are, but I’ll take it.
Milo has decided that he will be in charge of renovations, particularly pool renovations. He’s been bringing me blueprints—and by blueprints I mean scribbled sketches on Griffin’s Edge napkins—of expansion ideas. These, so far, have included a wave pool, a waterslide taller than the bar, and an artificial beach.
Remember how I said some of my friends have been a bigger help than others? Yeah.
Speaking of Milo, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed at all: our errands together. I know, I know, you’re probably like, Ian, you just said you’re super busy with running the bar! How do you even have time for dumb errands, and why are you even still doing them??
Well, I make time, and I want to. Simple as that. I wasn’t planning to keep doing them. But a few days ago, Milo came running up to me, a wad of scrunched-up napkins in his hand, and I thought, Oh no, I’m gonna have to tell him that I’ll consider adding a koi pond. But instead, he threw the napkins on the counter and grabbed my shoulders, the glow of the bar’s lights making his skin shimmer electric blue.
“Ian,” he demanded. “Ian, a human over there is here for a blind date that never showed. He’s not responding to her texts and she’s getting worried. I offered to go pay him a visit. I know you’re a bigshot bar owner now but deep down you’ll always be a Valiant Errand Boy. What do you say? Should be perfectly safe. Ten minutes.”
I looked at him, at his eyes sparkling excitedly behind his glasses like sunlight off the ocean. I thought of our first errand together at thirteen, when he’d insisted on accompanying me and then almost gotten killed because of my jumps. And yet here he was, as excited to run mundane errands with me as ever, years later. And honestly, his enthusiasm was contagious.
Not that I could let him know that I wanted to go as much as he did. With a deep, dramatic sigh, I said, “Okay, I’ll go. Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” he agreed with a grin, pulling me out of the bar, both of us knowing full well that the chance of this taking only ten minutes was smaller than the chance of a werewolf ordering a salad.
We fell into step side-by-side as naturally as we always had. It was oddly comforting, the sense of normalcy that came with our walk. I’d left the bar with Milo for errands countless times before just like this. If I didn’t look at my own skin and the light it emitted, I could almost imagine nothing had changed.
Milo hadn’t changed, though. He nudged my shoulder as we emerged from a gap in reality onto a Neverland street, its cobblestones pink as bubblegum. Glittering gold and green buildings rose around us. “Come on, O Great and Valiant Errand Boy,” he teased with a wide smile. “Tell me you didn’t miss this.”
“I didn’t miss this,” I said flatly.
He nudged me harder. “Nice try. You’ve always been a terrible liar. It’s lucky you’ve got forever to practice. You’re gonna need it to have even a prayer of fooling me.”
I shrugged, failing to hide my smile. “Worth a shot.”
“Too bad you’re not a good shot either,” he said, ducking naturally to avoid the fist I immediately swung at his head.
“Neither are you,” I grumbled as he straightened up and fixed his wildly askew glasses.
“Don’t need to be, I can pull water out of a person,” he argued.
“One time.”
“I could probably do it again!” He squinted at me and wiggled his fingers, a blue sheen dancing across their webbed surface. “Keep going and I’ll do it to you.”
I raised a hand to my chest, giving him the best horrified face I could muster. “You would never!” With my other hand I pointed to the aggressively red house behind us. “Also, we’re here.”
Milo spun around immediately and smirked. “Yeah, just the kind of house I’d expect a rude vampire to have. I’ll show him not to stand up that poor girl!”
My heart skipped a beat. “You didn’t say her blind date was a vampire.”
He glanced sideways at me. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
It shouldn’t. It didn’t. “It doesn’t.” I thought of the vampire that had nearly killed me on our first errand and subsequently been banned by Henri. We didn’t get a lot of vampires after that. “Kind of poetic, though.”
Milo must have been thinking of the same encounter, because he simply nodded and made his way to the door. I followed, letting my hand fall to Sgrios’ handle out of habit. The garlic imbued in it might come in handy.
The vampire didn’t answer the door right away. Milo knocked again, louder. That’s when I saw something move in the shadows off to the side of the house—and I realized a second too late what was about to happen.
Just as I shouted for Milo to move, the vampire sprung out of the darkness and sunk his nails deep into Milo’s bare shoulders. Suddenly Milo’s shirtless chest looked very, very vulnerable. Over his shoulder, the vampire met my eyes.
I recognized him. I knew instantly that this was the very same vampire from years ago, which was a little too poetic for my taste. He dug his nails in deeper; they were as sharp as claws. Milo squeaked as blood bloomed from his skin. “I knew you would come,” the vampire hissed, red eyes glowing like embers. “I knew that stupid girl would send the bar’s errand boy if she got stood up. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.”
Though my heart fluttered nervously like a trapped butterfly, I found that I wasn’t as scared as I once might have been. I wasn’t thirteen anymore. I pulled Sgrios from my belt. “For a plan that took over five years to come up with, it’s not very good.”
“Or creative,” added Milo.
The vampire looked furious. “It doesn’t matter if it’s creative,” he snarled. “I’ll kill you both.”
“You can try,” I said. “You didn’t do so well the first time.”
The vampire grinned, his eyes glinting hungrily. “Well, your uncle isn’t here to save you now.” And then he buried his teeth deep into Milo’s neck.
Immediately, Milo’s face went blank, as if he was under hypnosis. Oh, not a chance. I wasn’t getting through all the murders and jumps and close calls I’d experienced in the last few months to see Milo die now. Not to mention that I was not a fan of the way the vampire had mentioned Henri with such disgust. I cursed and charged forward without a second thought.
In one surprisingly fluid motion, I ripped Milo from the vampire’s hold—a little inhuman strength can be a good thing, as it turns out—and stabbed Sgrios into the vampire’s ribs.
Milo coughed behind me, holding onto my arm for support as blood dripped onto the pavement, while I stared into the vampire’s dimming red eyes. He looked down at the smoke coming from the knife wound. “Yeah, there’s garlic in there, so enjoy your long recovery,” I said.
Wheezing, he looked up at me with wide eyes, something like fear blossoming in his gaze. “You’re different. More powerful. I didn’t see it before.” His words were a whisper.
“That is unfortunate,” I agreed, twisting Sgrios a little more than I needed to as I pulled it out. The vampire moaned. “Maybe it’s best if we just stop meeting like this, don’t you think?”
He looked at me in surprise, clutching a pale hand to the smoking wound. “You’re not…going to kill me?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve had enough killing for a long, long time. But stay the hell away from my bar, dude, or I might change my mind.” He nodded frantically and scurried away around the back of his house like a fleeing cockroach. I sighed. “Ten minutes, huh?”
Milo laughed, still holding onto my arm with one hand and wincing as he felt the bite marks on his neck with the other. “Ten minutes. Told you.”
I laughed too and started to say Come on, let’s get out of here, only I didn’t get a chance, because suddenly the smell of garlic from Sgrios made me sneeze.
And yeah, you guessed it: we found ourselves in the dark forests. Because while the Ancient One moving on and Faith dying and all that has made me more stable overall, it hasn’t made me completely stable. I just don’t think my atoms are wired that way. I still jump sometimes when I’m away from Griffin’s Edge—and every time so far has been to the dark forests.
Milo finally let go of my arm, slowly turning in a circle to look at the dark, twisted trees. “Oh, this is fun,” he said. “It’s nice to see you haven’t changed. Still dragging me to horrifying deadly places.”
“I seem to recall you inviting me on this errand,” I said, already searching for a gap in the fabric around us to travel back to the bar. “You knew the risks.”
He made a noncommittal grunting noise as he watched me search. I wasn’t finding anything. I turned around to tell Milo that we should try somewhere else—only to see that a thick vine with teeth was wrapping itself around his waist. He looked down at the same time I did. “Not again!” he said in exasperation.
And then he was gone, pulled back into the trees towards wherever the source of the vine was. The darkness swallowed him up completely, and even as I charged after him—letting out a string of colorful curses as I did—I already couldn’t tell where he’d been taken. The roars and whispers of the forest made it impossible to tell where his calls were coming from.
Don’t panic, Ian. I’d just defeated the same vampire who’d nearly killed me five years ago. I was different now. I’d survived so much. I could do this.
I closed my eyes.
I pictured Milo sunbathing by the pool. I pictured him fighting Faith to save my life. I pictured him sitting beside me in Henri’s office as Henri sternly told us off for painting the bar’s bathrooms glow-in-the-dark orange.
And it was just like in the fog. I could see a silver thread leading me to him, winding through the trees, thin but unbreakable. I ran after it.
I could hear him shouting now—only it sounded like someone else was shouting too? A burst of flames exploded in the trees ahead. I ran faster, unsure if I should be more or less worried.
Less. The answer was less. I shoved my way through a thorny patch of brambles into a small clearing. Milo was back on his feet, flecks of blood around his waist where the teeth of the vine had sunk in. Brown, dehydrated leaves sprinkled the ground, scattered around a shriveled vine that looked like it hadn’t had water in years. Probably because that water was in a puddle at Milo’s feet, which he looked very pleased with as he wiggled his toes.
The vine, though, led to a large gaping hole in the center of the clearing, one that had teeth around its edge and several other vines protruding from within, like multiple tongues. Well, it used to. The hole sat still and dark, the other vines slowly smoldering and collapsing into ash as flames danced along their length.
Flames from Asher’s flamethrower. He sat up on a tree branch, legs dangling, flamethrower over his shoulder. With a grin, he jumped down from the branch to join us. “Add that to the tally,” he said.
“I can’t, because there is no tally,” I said.
“You might not be keeping one, but I am,” he said, smirking.
“Okay, well, you didn’t even save my life that time!” I argued. “You saved Milo’s. I was fine!”
Asher shrugged. “Still counts.”
“It does not,” I insisted.
Milo sent water spraying with a stomp in the puddle. “Arguably, I saved myself,” he said. “Asher just prevented the same problem from happening again, immediately, with another vine.”
“Sounds like saving to me,” said Asher.
I rolled my eyes and found us a tear in reality to come back to the bar. Just in time, too, because Asher was starting to suggest shadow travel, and I plan never to do that again.
Anyway, all this to say that some things have stayed the same, and some things have changed for the better. I’m just grateful to have my friends to help with everything. They’re the reason I survived at all, and they’re the reason I’ll continue to survive. Even for eternity.
I’ve said it before: I didn’t want immortality. I saw Henri’s struggles. I saw how heavy his memories weighed on him. But I can shoulder that burden if it means saving everyone else.
Still, I won’t lie, I’ve thought about it a lot in the last few weeks, as I think about the future.
I was scared at first. Mermaids live a long time, but not forever. I won’t always have Milo. It’s a daunting thought, the looming possibility of someday being alone for eternity.
It was Asher who saved me from spiraling. He’s been spending his time mostly at the bar, with occasional ventures to the dark forests—but not to Oasis. He says he’s fine with never going back there again. He sleeps at Griffin’s Edge, in my old room. I took Henri’s. And hey, it turns out he’s not half-bad at bartending or accounting. So he’s pretty helpful to have around.
But shortly after we returned, when I was struggling with the weight of forever, he came to Henri’s office—my office, now, though I haven’t changed it much. He perched on the arm of the chair across from mine and was silent for several minutes, staring at his gloved hands. I almost asked what he was doing, but I thought better of it. Asher would speak when he was ready.
And he did. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “I’d like to stay here and help you run Griffin’s Edge.”
Whatever I was expecting, that wasn’t it. I laughed. “You are.”
He raised his dark eyes to meet mine. “No, I mean forever. Or forever until you decide to move on somewhere else. And then I’d follow you there too, for forever. Like…forever, forever.”
I looked at him in surprise, the weight of his words sinking in. He meant eternity. The endless, looming amount of time I suddenly had before me. But he wouldn’t still be here…would he?
My surprised glance turned to squinting. I’d never really paid it much notice since it was so different than the auras I usually saw, but he did have one. Instead of a glow, it was more of a shadow, a shifting dark edge that seemed to absorb energy rather than exude it. Thin, like an outline made with a black marker, but strong. And more importantly: endless. I knew that energy; Henri had it, and now I carried it with me. I remembered noticing Asher’s void-like aura when we’d first met, knowing that it meant he was more dangerous than he looked; I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about it after that. Other priorities, I guess.
I felt like screaming with joy and crying with relief all at once. I settled for grinning. “You…you’re immortal.”
He was staring at his hands again, wringing them nervously. I’d never seen him look so nervous. “Yeah. I never wanted to be. Until you were.” He cleared his throat. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Maybe the only, besides my sister. You fought for me. You’re still fighting for me. And I understand if you don’t want to make that promise now, but I mean it now. That I want to spend forever here, with you.”
And he was afraid I wouldn’t want him to! “Of course I want you here,” I said quietly. “It’d make eternity a lot less terrifying.” I paused as he raised his head to look at me, smiling, his dark eyes shining. “Besides, how would I keep my ego in check if not for you constantly reminding me of how many times you’ve saved my life?”
“It is a lot,” he agreed. “And we wouldn’t want you developing an inflated sense of self-importance.”
“Obviously,” I said, grinning.
So, yeah. That’s where I’m at. It’s nice to know that some things are the same: Milo’s schemes and support, Henri’s influences at the bar, hell, even my jumps. But it’s nice, too, the things that have changed: new guests like the harbingers, Asher running Griffin’s Edge with me, an eternity that doesn’t seem so daunting anymore.
I hung up a portrait of Uncle Henri over the door, next to Lucille’s. I like it. It feels like they’re both watching over this place now. I say hello to them every morning.
I have some ideas in mind for expansion, too. (And no, not Milo’s waterslides). Because I’m trying to get the word out to more and more beings, human and inhuman alike. Everyone is welcome here, and I want them to come. I want this to be a home, for everyone, forever.
It’s working. Word spreads fast when you tell it to drunk humans and dwarves. I’ve started seeing some new faces around here. Take yesterday—this group that I’ve never seen before came in. An eclectic mix: a dark-haired human who looked utterly in love with some kind of water spirit; a man and a woman a little older than me who looked human, except she had glowing eyes and he had a powerful silver aura unlike any I’d seen before; and a cat. We don’t get a lot of pets, and I thought about turning them away, but those cat’s eyes were so intelligent that I knew it was no ordinary cat, and I figured, hey, we don’t have a strict no-pets policy, and besides, it’ll still be cleaner than a manticore.
It made me happy to see a group like that, even if I had to pull Asher away from a very intense glaring contest with the dark-haired guy when he brought them their drinks, and even if the water spirit gave Milo an unfortunate new idea for a bridge over a pool out back. Because it means that the word is getting out, and that the boundaries between species are continuing to weaken and break.
And that’s all I really want. That’s what this entire bar is about. That, and really, really good specialty cocktails. You’re welcome.
Hey, if you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to stop by and see for yourself. After all, a lot of interesting things happen here, and they’re only getting more interesting. Griffin’s Edge isn’t going anywhere, and you’re always welcome, no matter who, or what, you are. You just have to find us.
And if you do, Asher and I will be happy to serve you at the bar at the edge of reality.