Ink & Sigil (Ink & Sigil, #1)

by Kevin Hearne

Live long enough and people from your past will echo, calling back to you years after they have left you behind.

After all, there is nothing so deadly, so ultimately terminal, as being alive.

I can’t tell you how empty you feel after your love has walked the world with you and then gone home to sleep forever. It’s not the emptiness of youth, of never having loved; that’s different. That’s the sort of thing where you know you’re missing something but you’re not sure what it is, when you listen to love songs and think it must be fine but you don’t fully know what they’re on about. Naw, it’s more like suddenly losing a tooth and you feel the absence keenly, a hole in your body that used to be filled, except it’s much bigger than that. It’s an empty room, an empty chair, a pillow next to yours that doesn’t bear the soft round impression of the dear head who dreamt so many dreams by your side. It is an emptiness like no other, because even if it is filled with some other thing later on, it’s a final subtraction that no addition will mend.

These aren’t solutions to the emptiness. They are merely harnesses, safety lines tethering you to the cliff face as your bollocks dangle over the abyss.

I expected one of two things when I got to my flat: It would either be a bloody shambles, or it would be incredibly clean and tidy except for one glaring thing out of place, like a screaming goat shitting on my couch.