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Chapter Seventeen

Beryl

Okay, Beryl. Time to start being more proactive. Time to find out if you actually have a personality.

Back at the cult, I’d felt so much more interesting than everyone else around me. All the people floating around with dreamy smiles and a total willingness to just do what was expected of them. In there, I’d felt confident and self-assured, maybe even a little bit smug that I was duping them all.

After two weeks out here in the real world, it seemed like all my confidence had melted away. Suddenly, I felt like the blandest person ever. Like I’d never even developed a personality. Like I was just beige.

I admired Greid so much. He thought he was a total mess, and in some ways, he was a bit of an adorable mess, but he was brimming with personality. He was funny and interesting and just as cute when he was grumpy in the mornings as he was all lazy and content at night while smoking and eating and watching TV.

He had such a cool business, and I had spent every day for the last two weeks growing more and more dejected as I trawled through job listings on the computer in his workshop. He’d had to teach me how to use it, but after that I’d done my best to stay quiet and out of his way.

Which was hard. When I was feeling particularly frustrated by the endless lists of previous experience requirements and “essential” skills, I’d abandon the computer and wander over to see what he was doing. He never seemed to mind, always shyly showing me and getting embarrassed when I gushed over how gorgeous the pieces were.

He looked adorable in the big magnifying lenses he wore while doing intricate metalwork. He usually whipped them off self-consciously when I spun around in the desk chair, but sometimes he forgot and would look up and blink at me owlishly, his yellow eyes comically large on his face.

I loved spending all day with him, even when we weren’t talking and were doing our own thing. I was trying not to let my fruitless job search get to me. One morning a couple of days after our outing, I’d forced myself to walk to the coffee shop alone while Greid was still asleep, happy to be able to treat him with the little cash I had. I’d made the same trip every morning since, and each time it got a little easier and more enjoyable. I was somewhat friendly with the baristas in there now, and they didn’t seem to suspect in the slightest that I’d recently been in a cult that worshipped their kind as magical sex wizards.

Not that I would ever offer that information to anyone.

Greid and I had settled into a routine, and honestly, I felt closer to him than I ever had to anyone else, with the exception of my aunt. We spent pretty much all our time together, and he was much more relaxed around me now than he had been at the beginning. Last weekend, we’d gone out again for the day, this time to a small park—not the big one right next to the cult’s hill. We’d eaten tacos from a street vendor on a bench under a big tree that was shedding all its golden-brown leaves. Then he’d taken me to the space museum, and we’d gone into the planetarium to watch a showing on astronomy. Because it had been fairly empty and we’d sat right at the back, Greid had sneakily lit a joint and relaxed into his reclined seat, looking half asleep by the end of it.

I was pretty sure he was still asleep right now as I padded down the stairs and headed for the front door. I smiled as I pulled on my new boots. Greid had given them to me a while back, along with a new coat and a SIM card for his old phone. My instinct had been to refuse the gifts, but he’d looked so worried I wouldn’t like them that I just couldn’t bring myself to. I’d given him a big smile and said I’d pay him back for them, which had made him shake his head frantically and mumble something I hadn’t been able to catch.

Grabbing my key, I smiled again. After I’d started going to the coffee shop every morning, Greid had given me the spare key and made a little keychain just for me. It was tiny strands of metal intricately twisted together to form a B, with little stones wound throughout. I’d been desperate to hug him when he’d handed it to me with a shy expression, but I still didn’t know if he’d be comfortable with that.

After pulling on my warm coat, I slipped out of the house and quietly closed the front door behind me. The two old demiurgus across the street who seemed to live permanently on their stoop—with cigars permanently in their mouths—waved at me, so I waved cheerfully back.

By the time I reached Deep Brew, my cheeks felt flushed from the cold. It was definitely getting chillier, and the blast of warm, coffee-scented air hit me as I stepped inside.

I’d finally managed to break my cult sleeping pattern, and now I happily indulged in staying in bed past eight-thirty. It wasn’t like Greid got up any earlier than that. And it meant my morning visits to the coffee shop were always post-rush hour, so the queue was never too big.

“Hi, Beryl,” one of the usual morning baristas, Pidni, said with a smile when I finally reached the counter. “Usual?”

“Hi, Pidni. Yes, please.”

“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said as he tapped on the screen. “Did you recently move into the area? You’ve been coming in every morning for a while now, and I know I would’ve remembered such a pretty human getting coffee every morning. We don’t get all that many humans in here.”

I chuckled uncomfortably, then paused when I realised what he’d said. Wait… was he flirting with me?

I stared at him. He was handsome, sure. He looked younger than Greid. There were lots of earrings in his ears, and his long, pink-tinted black hair was always tied back into an artfully messy bun.

But… no. I wasn’t so sure I liked him flirting with me when I’d given absolutely no indication that I was interested in him that way. Which was maybe a little unfair—I mean, wasn’t that how people started relationships? But in my few sexual encounters with other cult members, I’d always instigated it. I’d liked being in control of the interactions.

I liked being in control of everything. Maybe that was why I was feeling a little lost out here in my new life. Everything was new and different for me, but I was surrounded by people who’d been living this way their whole lives. It felt like I’d joined a race late and was desperately trying to catch up with everyone else on the planet.

Realising Pidni was waiting for me to answer, I cleared my throat. “Uh…”

As I looked at him, I suddenly thought of Greid. My chest tightened, and my stomach went all warm and fluttery. With Greid, I felt in control. Not like I could control him, but he was always so generous with me, letting me decide what we had for dinner and what we watched and giving me free rein of his house—minus that mysterious closet I had still somehow managed not to peek into.

He was giving me little hints of control over my own life. Giving me a safe space to navigate all the new things I was experiencing, without ever making me feel stupid or small for being so clueless about things that were second-nature to him. Like how to use a computer or a phone, which he’d also taught me so I could call my aunt’s office number and let her know I was doing okay.

Greid was… Greid was amazing. And as I stood looking at Pidni, I realised with perfect clarity that if I was going to flirt with anyone—demiurgus or human—it was not going to be with this guy.

“Yep, recently moved here,” I said, my tone a touch cooler than normal. Pidni seemed to pick up on it, because he nodded and ducked his head as he put my order through without another word.