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Sleep hasn't been my friend for a long while, nor have dreams. They're always crowded with things I should and shouldn't have done, and could have done better.

Dawn paints the skies purple and pink when I stand in front of the grotesque remains that Yaroslava once called her home. What's left of her house in Blakfait is nothing but charred ruins, weeds overtaking the last of the walls. Whatever she once held dear to her heart is gone. Just like her own dreams.

I wanted to be a doctor, she said. It's maddening how she sees people through, how she saw me through. She lies about her haunted past, yet she easily tells if someone else's past is haunted. If you know how to cure one's pain, you know where it comes from. But what if you aren't allowed to say where it comes from? What if all you're allowed to show is perfection?

How do you know whether a person you defend in court is lying? I asked Father once.

He looked me in the eye for a moment, then took off his glasses, and looked for a moment longer. Everybody lies, Mir. There are no innocent people, he said. It's a question based purely on one's perspective. Just choose the lie that suits you.

And there, in that answer, was my father. Who could find liabilities and accusations and vindications anywhere--a war, a weapon, and a fatal wound. After all, he was the best of the best. Laws aren't written for the best, they're written by them. And if you can't write your own laws, you aren't good enough, he said.

I look at Yaroslava's house again, pushing the shrubs aside and approaching the broken front steps. The grass rustles but lets me wade through. No other sounds around, the town is yet asleep.

The earth is soft, nobody has stepped here in years, and I don't know why I drove here either. I just couldn't stay at my apartment, couldn't look in Fire Girl's eyes tonight and feel nothing. I can't tell when she lies and speaks the truth anymore.

I never wanted to be a lawyer.

And what did you want?

Turning the camera in my hands, I focus its lens on a bush's offshoot protruding through the scorched window frame, and take a picture. Then I stare at the red raspberries caught in the shot, my mind blank. Why don't you show someone your photos? Nilam asked a few years ago. They're good. You could be a photographer.

They reveal too much of myself, I told him. They make me vulnerable, imperfect.

But they keep my mind quiet. Such a rare state. It's never been quiet around my family. Why? Then I realized. When I was around my family, there were too many laws and rules.

Don't cry.

Don't complain.

Don't ask for help, and never show any weaknesses.

Someone was always watching, always waiting for me to misstep, to tell me I'd done not good enough. Not as good as my father would have done. It's easier to feel nothing at all than feel worthless.

Adélard admitted once it was unnerving, this stillness in my features, my emotionless face and my smile that never reached my eyes. You look like a dead man, macabre and silent, were Ady's exact words. But Adélard didn't know that my mind was never silent. All my emotions buried deep down fought a battle with no end, whirled in a storm.

What if I fail?

What if I disappoint everyone?

What if?

What if...

And my photos, they somehow captured those thoughts in one moment, preserved the battling parts of me. Now, this picture of a bush looks imperfect, not me.

"Yaroslava loved raspberry varenye when I knew her, her mom used to cook it."

I freeze midbreath. Pain lances my side, and it feels like my sigil's scar carves itself in my skin all over again, responding to the magic awakening in my blood.

"Varenye, not jam," he continues, his voice seems to come from every direction. "Berries cooked with sugar."

"How long have you been watching me?" I ask, ordering my expression to stay unfazed as I turn around, but skittish panic slithers down my spine anyway.

"I'm always watching, Mir. How else am I to occupy the eternity?"

The street nearby is still empty. Though when another surge of magic and pain balls my right hand in a fist, a human shadow slowly gathers before me, nothing but smoke billowing out of nowhere.

"Her heart," he says, a hint of sadness in his tone. I know it's a sham, demons can't experience sadness, they experience no emotions but barely mimic what they see. "That's what makes Yaroslava special, isn't it? Not her wits, not her strength, but her heart. She never expects people to be someone they are not, yet she opens her heart and lets you in no matter how broken you are."

"And how do you know? You betrayed her, left her alone when she considered you her friend. And then you killed her."

"Or so you say." A laugh rasps, bouncing off the remains of the house walls. "It's your truth against mine. And as you said, she considered me her friend, not you."

I probably should get in my car and drive away now, but that's not the way you escape a demon. Besides, I want to hear what he has to say. Surreptitiously, I slip my hand into my pocket, fumbling for the vial of the elixir I use to suppress my powers. "I thought you and I were friends once, too."

The smoke thickens. An angry glint of his eyes on his face appears first, then come the shoulders and torso and arms, and finally the legs. As though taunting, he wears a gray suit today, just like mine. The morning breeze doesn't reach his hair, and he looks disturbingly motionless, like a picture.

"We were friends," he nods, his every word another dull ache in my body. "Until you picked a wrong side."

I know he can't touch me. Yet. Immortal or not, demons still can't enter the realm of the living at their own will. They need something--someone--to invite them. Someone whose magical presence is strong enough to flip the balance and slice the border between Life and Death. My magic is strong enough, but I'm doing my best to suppress it.

I chuckle in response. "You're pathetic, friend. Yaroslava will never believe you again. And she'll help me destroy you. You've already lost." A smile spreads across my lips as I pull the elixir out of my pocket. "You're alone."

"And whose fault is that!"

Before I manage to bring the elixir to my lips and subdue my sigil's powers trying to awaken and take over me, he attacks. I choke on my breath when another knot of pain almost knocks me unconscious. In a blink of an eye, his body becomes less murky and more corporeal, stepping through an invisible curtain. Less of a ghost, more of a human.

We both tumble to the ground, rolling into the thorny bushes, our arms and legs tangled with the force of a fight. My vial gleams in the sun, falling out of my palm and vanishing in the grass. He reaches out to close his hands around my neck. I punch him hard in his chest, throwing him off me.

"Do you remember how you got your flawless lips scarred?" he hisses, lashing out at me again. "You already wanted to fight me once."

My heart drumming against my ribs, I dodge his next kick and grab him by his jacket collar, just like my father used to grab me. Then the air enfolding us starts to hum and buzz with energy. An inimical grin dances in the corners of his mouth as roots shoot out from beneath the ground, immobilizing me.

Demons are the creatures of Death, yet they can bend the laws of nature, can control Life, what an irony. If only I knew it the day we first fought. He needed a mere swish of air to cut my lower lip deep enough to scar it. Without a single touch.

The curse--and the blessing--of magic, though, is that the nature of broken laws works both ways. Tearing free, I concentrate on the magic fully awake under my skin now. I send it outward. It tugs at his bloodless heart, squeezing the power out of him. Pity, it won't kill him.

He screams, and the roots holding me retreat.

Before he can strike again, I duck sideways, snatching the shimmering elixir waiting patiently in the grass, and drain the vial in one gulp. Mint cold liquid flows down my throat, and my mind screams, too, for a second, rioting against the agony.

Everything abruptly goes quiet. My magic falls asleep.

The demon is gone, not a shadow. My muscles relax in relief, no aching. I know he's still here, still hears me, still hates me--but for my realm of the living, he's an invisible ghost once again. I'm safe.

"You lose," I whisper, lying on my back among the grass and wildflowers, panting and staring up at the peaceful morning skies above me. "I win."

The magic in my veins has dozed off, only to stir alive something else in my chest. Something I assumed I'd never find there, something I'd never allowed myself to look for until I met Yaroslava.

Hope.

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