Quilla wipes a bead of sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a faint streak of gray ash across her skin. She keeps her thumb hovering over the volume button of her phone, the muffled thump-thump of the music still vibrating against her neck like a secondary heartbeat.
"It... it didn't show me anything," Quilla says, her voice hitching slightly before she firms it up. "It just felt like a massive migraine. High-pitched ringing and... I don't know, a weird craving for expensive scotch? It was just noise, Aunt Hel. That's why I turned the music up. I couldn't think."
She stares down at the scorched mark on the rug, her heart still hammering against her ribs. The image of that ring—the one her father refused to talk about—was burned into her retina, but she wasn't about to hand that over to a woman who treated souls like kitchen spills.
Hel narrows her eyes, the smoke from her cigarette curling around her head like a silver halo. She leans in closer, the scent of sandalwood and something ancient pressing into Quilla's space. She looks at Quilla's trembling hands, then at the gray ash.
"Scotch?" Hel repeats, her voice dripping with skepticism. "Mr. Henderson was a gin man. And he didn't have a 'high-pitched' bone in his body."
She lingers there for a long moment, the silence in the room stretching until the distant sound of a plane taking off from Heathrow fills the gap. Hel reaches out, her long, sharp nails clicking against the plastic of Quilla's headphones.
"You're a terrible liar, Quilla. You have your father's 'guilty twitch' in your left eye," Hel says softly. She pauses, then sighs, standing back up and smoothing out her silk kimono. "But... I suppose a Grade-4 spill can scramble the brains of a novice. If all you heard was noise, consider yourself lucky. Most people hear the truth, and the truth is usually much louder than that garbage you call music."
Hel turns on her heel, the hem of her robe snapping like a whip. "Finish the edges. When the floor is clear, take your bags up to the attic room. And Quilla?"
Quilla looks up, still clutching the scrub brush.
"If you start seeing things that aren't there... don't come crying to me. Just turn the music up." Hel walks out of the room, leaving Quilla alone with the black scorch mark and the secret of the Clarke ring. Hel clearly didn't fully buy the story, but for now, she was letting it slide—a hesitant truce in a house built on shadows.
* * *
The scrub brush slows to a rhythmic halt as Quilla stares at the black scorch mark on the rug. The vibration of the music in her ears triggers a memory she usually keeps locked behind a mental bulkhead—a memory from five years ago, back when the house in Hillingdon still felt like a home instead of a waiting room.
Flashback
The Night of the Shattered Glass
It was a Tuesday. Her mother, Seraphina Clarke Raven, had been sitting at the kitchen table, meticulously polishing a piece of silver that looked suspiciously like a heavy, double-edged coin.
"The family business isn't just about 'ending' things, Quilla," Seraphina had whispered, her eyes bright with a feverish intensity. "It's about the Accounting. Every life leaves a debt of energy. The Clarkes are the ones who make sure the universe doesn't go bankrupt."
The Clarkes weren't just reapers; they were the Custodians of the Balance. For generations, they had managed the "leakage" of the world. But that night, the balance broke. A sudden, violent gust of wind had shattered the kitchen windows inward, not outward.
Quilla remembered her father, usually so calm, screaming at Seraphina to "drop the coin." Instead, Seraphina had stood up, her Clarke signet ring—the one Quilla just saw in the slime—glowing with a terrifying, blinding violet light.
"I have to audit the source," her mother had said, her voice sounding like a thousand people speaking at once. Then, she was gone. No body, no struggle. Just a kitchen full of broken glass and a father who, from that moment on, traded his curiosity for a bottle and a stubborn refusal to ever say his wife's name again.
Whenever Quilla or Riven brought her up, their father's face would turn into a mask of stone.
"She chose the Work over us," he would say, his voice flat. "The Clarkes have been dying for the 'Balance' since the Middle Ages. I'm not letting it take my children, too."
He had tried to bury the legacy in suburban normalcy. He moved them to the most boring part of Hillingdon, sent them to standard schools, and forbade Aunt Hel from visiting. But the blood doesn't forget. Riven had started seeing the "shadows" when he turned seventeen, and now, it was Quilla's turn.
Back to the Present
The memory fades as the final notes of a distorted bass track thud in Quilla's ears. She looks down at her gloved hands.
Her father thinks he's protecting her by staying silent, but as she looks at the spot where the locket vanished, she realizes his silence has only left her defenseless. If her mother was "harvested" while doing the family Work, then Aunt Hel isn't just a "crazy rich"—she's the only person left who knows how to navigate the audit.
Quilla stands up, stripping off the yellow gloves. She doesn't feel like a guest anymore. She feels like a spy.