Excerpt: After the First Death

Seph finished sprinkling sugar over her cereal and then she pulled open the cutlery drawer in the island in order to grab a spoon. But on this bleary anniversary something else caught her eye: in the last slot of the cutlery organizer lay a knife, the knife she’d bought on Medusa’s command. So sharp and silver. She took a firm grip on the handle and pulled it out of the drawer. If it had dulled over the past year, Seph couldn’t tell. It was still just as threatening as it had been that first afternoon when she’d brought it home and so carefully unwrapped it, when she’d examined it so thoroughly and thought what if . . .

What if . . .

With the grip of the knife in her right hand she lay the blade flat across her left wrist. What if. And what would happen. And what would it feel like. In her mind’s eye she saw one of her demons licking its veined lips. She hesitated; turned the angle of the knife--

“Down the road, not across the track.” Leika was standing beside the couch she had slept in, arms crossed casually across her chest. “Otherwise they’ll bring you back.”

Startled, Seph tossed the knife back into the drawer and slammed it closed with her hip. “Good morning.”