[DAY THREE…]

  Serene

  Sweat. Blood. Sand. Lamp oil. Damp wood. Thumping voices. Cold lips. Stiff fingers. Nervous shiver. Earnest eyes.

  Serene awoke from yet another dream—the same one she'd been having for days.

  Ratcatcher had meant nothing to her. She'd barely had one proper conversation with the man, and based on what she had learned of him, he was far too timid for her taste. In either case, he was dead now, which meant that he didn't matter anymore. Sentimentality for the dead was a frivolous luxury Serene could not afford.

  So why couldn't she forget his face?

  Why did she keep dreaming about that kiss?

  The kiss.

  The kiss.

  It had made her feel nothing, empty, just like every other kiss she'd ever had. Catalogued alongside the hundreds of men and women she had sampled across two lives, it was somewhere near the bottom third.

  It was nothing. Dust. Of no consequence whatsoever.

  "Good morning, princess," came a voice that was making itself altogether too familiar.

  "Please go away," Serene groaned, refusing to wake, an arm thrown over her eyes to block out stabbing sunlight. Her sheets clung to her with cold sweat, making her feel trapped.

  "Go away?" the man asked incredulously. "You think I want to be here? You're the one who put me here, remember? You're the fucked-up whore whose guilty conscience conjured me up."

  "It's too early for this."

  "Actually, it's a bit past noon, but nice try."

  "Shut up."

  "Lalalalalalalalalala—"

  Serene shot stick-straight, wrestling with the sheets, growling: "Oh my god, stop acting like a five-year-old!"

  Ratcatcher sat at the end of her bed, one leg drawn up to his chest and the other dangling over the side. "Then you should stop imagining me that way." His voice was chirpy, but the laughter that followed dripped with mocking venom.

  "Fuck off."

  "Delighted to see you too, princess. And might I say, what a lovely sight it is. The pallor of your complexion really brings out the dark circles under your eyes." He put his fingers to his mouth and exploded them out in a chef's kiss.

  He looked the way she remembered him; thin and unassuming, wearing drab, baggy clothing. His hair, hanging limp and unattractive, almost covered the bloody ruin that made up half his face. Almost, but not quite.

  Serene elected to ignore him, getting up to wash her face and upper body from the water basin using a relatively clean rag, before picking out some comfortable clothing to drape over herself, pulled at random out of the mess that was her wardrobe. Ratcatcher chattered away, stalking her back and forth across the apartment as she continued to ignore him.

  Her mother popped in for a bit, a knife protruding from her ribs, to sling insults and accusations. She was equally disregarded, and eventually vanished on her own.

  Ratcatcher proved to be a more stubborn apparition, there with a mocking smile every time she turned around.

  The visions weren't exactly a new development. She wasn't sure if they were brought on by too many substances in her bloodstream, or too few, or both at once, or some form of insanity wholly her own.

  Not that it mattered, because she knew just the thing to drive the ghosts away. Boulder wouldn't start sending in customers until later on in the afternoon, meaning she had plenty of time to get sauced until then.

  She sat down at the low table in the middle of the space to light up her pipe, but found to her horror that the little metal tin was completely scraped clean of the precious powder.

  "Fuck…" Serene muttered, tossing the tin aside to clatter hollowly across the floor, and dipped her head forward to let it rest against the cold tabletop for a moment.

  "Ooh, bad luck," Ratcatcher laughed, crouching just beside her and staring intently into the side of her face with one eye, the other socket an empty hole of withered tissue, black blood, and protruding bone. "I suppose some dastardly type must have snuck in during the night and smoked up all your drugs, huh? Guess you'd better resort to Plan B."

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Serene slid down on all fours and began rooting around beneath the table, poking at the various bottles of spirits that stood or lay overturned under there. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. She produced one with a splash of cheap vodka left at the bottom, and she drank it in one draught, letting out a noxious burp as her stomach protested being fed an exclusively alcoholic breakfast.

  "Yep, there we go," Ratcatcher said. "Just suck it aaaall down. That'll make you feel better."

  The little bit of vodka would barely even get her buzzed, let alone drunk enough to smother her worries, so she kept looking. Nothing, except a few pitiful drops of rum that she teased out of the very final bottle. The terrible realization was slowly dawning on her, however, that she was going to need to leave her apartment to get more.

  The prospect of handling the world outside the four walls surrounding her seemed an unconquerable endeavor, but what choice did she have? In a daze, fingers trembling, she stuffed a wad of cash in her pocket, shuffled to the door, slipped into some shoes and set on her Illusory mask of beauty before taking a deep breath and stepping out.

  The stairs to the ground floor were interminable. Ratcatcher slid down the railing, laughing at her, jaw on the ruined side of his face gaping unnaturally.

  Boulder the Builder was loitering near the entryway, big man propped against the wall by one muscled shoulder while peeling an orange with clumsy, fat thumbs, getting juice all over his hands. The grin he gave her in greeting was somewhat incredulous.

  "Bit early for you to be up and about, isn't it?" he asked, waving her over.

  "It's past noon," Serene replied, stepping close to him.

  He laughed. "Yeah, that's what I mean."

  Ratcatcher took a position right behind the man, pointing to the side of the Builder's blocky, stupid mug. "Isn't this sweet? He knows you so well."

  Serene fought the urge to glance in his direction.

  Boulder groped around the back of her with one huge hand and pulled her in by her ass, forcing a few slobbery kisses on her that tasted cloyingly sweet before telling her not to fuck about too long outside. She agreed and left out into the street, grumbling under her breath over the fact that he had gotten sticky orange pulp on her skirt.

  The light outside burned, and everything seemed too bright, too much, people coming this way and that in the bumpy street, snatches of unnamed faces glimpsed for fractions of a second before sliding past. Too many, too close. She walked fast, the comedown hitting her harder with every minute as her head began pounding and her knees turned soft and her hands shook so bad she had to close them into fists. Her tongue was suddenly too big for her mouth, dry like a sand-covered carcass.

  She went to the nearest smoke lounge, just two streets down, immediately getting some relief once she got down the side street stairs and entered the cool, shaded basement, folk laid out on cushions with low tables holding pipes and hookahs.

  The owner, Ty—a Trader in an unseasonably thick sweater—was reclined in an old padded chair behind a counter just inside the door, idling through a broadsheet over a pair of dirty glasses.

  "Hello, Serene," he said without looking up. "How much?"

  "The usual."

  "You look pasty. Maybe you ought to stick around for a while, have a hit to get you regular before you go?"

  "Yeah. That might be best."

  Still without looking up, Ty rested the newspaper in his lap to free up a hand while he reached under the counter and tossed up a small paper packet. Serene smacked all the money she had brought into his upturned palm, and waited while he counted it out.

  "You're a bit light," he observed disinterestedly.

  "Oh." Serene did not like the idea of having to go all the way back to the apartment for more—not one bit. "Well…"

  "Don't sweat it. I'll open a tab for you."

  Serene breathed a hard, shaky breath of relief out through her nose. "Okay. Thanks."

  Ratcatcher sat crouched on the counter at the very edge of her vision, eye glittering in the murk.

  Serene reached for the packet of opium powder, but fell short when Ty finally looked up and said: "Hold on. Didn't you say you were friends with that Sam Darling who won the tournament the other day?"

  "Yeah," Sreene said, hand hovering. She couldn't remember ever telling him that. "I mean, sort of. Why?"

  Ty folded his broadsheet and held up the page he was on, pointing. "Did you hear about this? Apparently she's dead."

  "What," Serene replied flatly, hand dropping to her side; so caught off-guard that her mask shattered. The shards trickled down her front and vanished. "She's dead?"

  Ty shrugged. "That's what the paper says."

  Serene ripped the thing from him, read over the article he had indicated. The title read: 'BREAKING! BUTCHER OF DROWNPORT CLAIMS MORE VICTIMS—NEW INFORMATION ON BRUTAL DARKSIDE SPREE!'

  "What the fuck…?" she whispered, then looked up at the Trader, shaking the newspaper at him. "Who is this person?"

  Ty removed his glasses and rubbed them on his sweater to clean them, only managing to smear the grease around a bit. "That's what they're calling the Misfortune these days. You know, Brimstone's pet killer."

  "He killed her?"

  "Guess so. Apparently he had some sort of fit and started killing folk down at the pits right after that tournament ended. Must’ve lost a lot of money or something. You were there, weren't you? Don't you know this stuff already?"

  "I did hear about some kind of commotion, but I didn't look into it. I'll be honest, the last few days have been a bit of a blur."

  "That's putting it mildly," Ratcatcher said, chuckling.

  Ty held up his glasses, grimaced at the still-dirty lenses, but eventually shrugged and put them back on anyway. "Well, I guess he made off with your friend there, kidnapped her, and now word is he went and carved her up." He took the newspaper back and began leafing through it once more; one leg folded over the other, foot wiggling. "Now, I'm not the biggest fan of our great leader—far from it, in fact—but this Butcher guy makes Brimstone seem downright friendly by comparison. Someone ought to put that creep down. Don't think the lord's disavowed him as of yet, though, so we might be waiting on that a while."

  Serene stood in silence while she processed the information, trying and failing to reassert her illusory mask.

  She wasn't sure why she cared to begin with. Sam Darling was a chance acquaintance, nothing more. She'd gotten soft lately. Way too soft. She couldn't afford to care. Not about anything.

  But she'd already picked up enough ghosts, and she certainly didn't need one more. It was crowded enough in her head already.

  "Tyler," Serene said, surprising herself with how calm she sounded, "tell me everything you know about the Butcher of Drownport."