novelraw Chapter 96: A High Note
Chapter 96: A High Note
They hit the next strip of commercial buildings without ceremony. It was a line of four very popular stores, a patchwork of half-torn vinyl signs and hand-lettered CLOSEDs that had given up trying to look official. The Hummer idled while Lachlan took a slow loop, eyes on glass and rooflines, the engine’s bass hum steady in Sera’s ribs.
Zubair marked the storefront he wanted with a tilt of his chin. "Hardware annex," he said. "Odds and ends. Might have what the main didn’t."
Sera followed his line, then let her gaze slide to the unit next door: a cheerful mashup of scents-and-lotions chained to a discount home store. Pastel window clings promised semi-annual bliss. The creature inside her perked up like a dog hearing a can opener.
"You three can go there. I’m going to that one," she said, pointing at the store that she could practically smell while still in the Hummer.
Alexei made a face that was ninety percent amusement, ten percent unimpressed. "Oh yes. Essential tactical soap. I seemed to have missed seeing that on any of the lists. My bad."
Elias didn’t smile, but his eyes flickered, which was the same thing for him.
Zubair shook his head once. "No," he grunted, "We need to stick together. It’s not safe for you to go off on your own."
"It’s not like I am going to be very far," Sera pointed out, with a shake of her own head. She wasn’t going to back down on this. The creature inside of her wouldn’t let her back down on it. "How about this, if I see anyone, I’ll scream before I kill them, yeah?"
Zubair hesitated for just a moment, looking at the other guys before nodding once. His voice was even but sharp as he narrowed his eyes at her. "If you see anyone—alive or dead—you scream. I don’t care which."
"I’ll make it loud," she promised, hand already on the door handle.
She stepped out into the cold, boots crunching on salt-crusted pavement, and walked toward the shop. The door opened with a muted squeak.
The first store of pink and blue was nothing short of a wall of scent. Warm vanilla sugar rolling over crisp balsam, cut through by something sharp and fruity. The creature inside her inhaled like it was standing at the edge of a feast.
Her eyes swept the aisles. Halloween candle holders shaped like grinning pumpkins. Christmas display stands with silver branches twined in fake snow. Rows of three-wick candles in glass jars, soap pumps dressed up in seasonal prints, bath bombs wrapped like candy.
The creature lunged at all of it.
She made a quick circuit; her mental list rewriting itself as she walked.
Candles had utility: light, heat, morale. Blankets were a given. The home store next door would have storage bins, throw rugs to cut into draft-stoppers, cheap curtain rods to help seal windows tight. The lotion? Useless—until it wasn’t, when cracked hands split under winter and every touch hurt. She could justify almost anything if she tilted her head the right way.
The creature lunged toward a display of frosted lilac candles. Sera caught its want like a tug in her chest and blew out a breath. "I wish I had one of those space superpowers," she grumbled, picking up a jar to sniff in spite of herself. "I could just—"
The candle vanished.
Her hand hovered in the air, suddenly light. She blinked once, twice, then looked down at her empty palm like it might apologize. "No way it’s that easy," she breathed.
"Candle," Sera said experimentally, not daring to breath too hard just in case she was just dreaming.
The jar popped back into her hand exactly as it was... the cool glass, the reassuring weight. The exact same scent.
She almost laughed aloud, the sound punching out of her chest and catching before it could become noise.
"I really need to be careful what I wish for," she muttered, looking around the room as if expecting someone to see what she had done. Somewhere, not in the room, but not exactly in her head either, she thought she heard a voice, warm and wry say to her ’I owe you one.’
The creature did not wait for philosophical framing. It flung its enthusiasm out like confetti. It knew that there were no more limits to what it could and could not have, and she was more than ready for it.
Sera strolled with purpose to the back store room, surprised that it spanned the entire length of both the scent store and the home store.
It was like a maze of cardboard and wire shelving, all the behind-the-scenes pretty stores keep hidden: boxes labeled by scent and season, crates of throw pillows vacuum-bagged into puffy bricks, a rainbow of bathrobes in plastic sleeves. Sera lifted her hand, fingers splayed.
"Mine," she said, and felt the space inside her open like a mouth.
The haul folded into nothing with a soft feeling like cool water over skin.
And Sera wasn’t picky about what she took. She figured that if her space had a limit, she would learn it soon enough.
The housewares came first: blankets and quilts and those ridiculous shag throws that shed like cats. Pillows, way too many of them, rugs in all sorts of textures and colors. Curtain rods. A warehouse stack of cheap blackout curtains that would be worth their weight when temperatures fell harder. A row of knockoff weighted blankets that would calm frayed nerves in the hours before dawn. Into the space they slipped, compact and obedient.
On and on she went, walking down the middle aisle of the back over stock, flicking her finger this way and that.
Every candle her creature had yipped at. The decorations, the soaps, shampoos, lotions, scrubs. Whatever was in the store went into her space, and she didn’t care. She even snagged wick trimmers and ugly brass snuffers that looked like Victorian props. "Tools are tools," she told a box of flannel sheets and took those too.
Clothes? It wasn’t even a thought. Thermal socks. Fuzzy socks. Socks that were so soft that she wanted to put them on right now and never take them off. A handful of thick robes she pretended were for guests they wouldn’t have. A line of men’s crewnecks that would quietly vanish into Lachlan’s drawer the way clothes do when people stop pretending they don’t live together.
The specialty coffees glinted from a lower shelf. "Yes," she hissed aloud before pulling them into her space. It didn’t matter; whole beans, ground, a ridiculous holiday blend with cinnamon and orange peel the creature sniffed and approved. Biscotti, cranberry shortbread tins, chocolate truffles in gold foil. All chocolate is good chocolate; the creature sang it like a rule. She took Hershey’s bars from a dump bin by the door on principle—pinch chocolate—and slid a dozen cocoa tins into her space with the solemnity of a ritual.
Moving down further, she swept in all the practical stuff: storage bins, oven mitts, rolls of shelf liner to keep crates from skating, a tangle of bungee cords, all the cast-iron pans inside the store. If it was there, it was hers now. And she wasn’t giving any of it back.
When she was done, the stockroom echoed. She let the door slap behind her and stepped onto the sales floor that now looked like a minimalist art installation titled AFTER. The creature thrummed in satisfied loops, like a kid vibrating after a sugar-high.
Today might have started as shit, but it definitely ended on a high note.