“We need to stop for coffee,” Wrath announces from the backseat of the hearse about an hour later. Winter and I are in the front seats, and he’s lounging in the back. Wrath normally doesn’t take his corporeal form outside the house, preferring to stick with his stuffed animal body, but the tinted windows in the hearse have him feeling somewhat relaxed.

  “We had coffee at the house. You had coffee at the house,” I argue.

  “Coffee you pay for is just better. Everyone knows that.”

  Winter snorts, then hides it with a cough as she passes another car on the highway. I glance her way, but she’s studiously avoiding my eyes.

  “Coffee that I pay for, you mean.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You don’t have a job, but you’re fine with spending my money. This is your kitchen appliance addiction all over again.”

  “How do you have money? Are you just like independently wealthy or something?”

  “Sort of, but not like you’re thinking. My parents registered an account in my name when I was young. Uncle Doom is the administrator over it. There’s enough money there for basic necessities—”

  “--like lemon squeezers,” Wrath interrupts.

  I eye him in the rear view mirror. “Things like grocery orders and the occassional splurge item. But there’s never just like…millions of dollars in the account. It always fills up just enough to keep us afloat.”

  “And you get groceries delivered to the house, right?”

  “Yeah, they drop them off at the gate. They won’t come to the door anymore since Wrath started messing with them. Most of the delivery drivers barely even come down the street anymore. I’m lucky Rlyft will pick me up when I need.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Winter says simply. “You don’t like to leave the house as it is. I can’t imagine you going to buy groceries.”

  I shudder at the idea. Roaming the grocery store feels like walking through unfavored terrain, where every step could lead me into a random encounter with a towner who thinks Morecroft Manor has eaten my soul and left me a husk who will kidnap their children.

  No lie, that’s actually something I’ve been told before. Ironic, because it was while there was a soulless Mary Kay salesperson going door to door trading makeup for firstborns. It was actually surprising how much prettier the Mourningwood neighborhood got after she passed through.

  “There’s a Hollow Roast in the food court,” I point out to Winter quietly. I had actually wanted to park near the tentacle entrance closest to Maulie’s, but it if we were going to start with coffee, it made more sense to park near the front as it seems we always did.

  “Do you always give in to him?” she asks me quietly. Wrath, for the moment doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

  I shrug easily. “He’s not wrong. Coffee you pay for always tastes good. Maybe it’s the fact that someone else is making it for you, I don’t know.”

  We arrive shortly to the Hollowmouth and Winter parks near the back of the lot, where there is enough room for her hearse. Wrath discorporated, and I sling the backpack with my Wrath doll peaking through the back. We head into the mall and step into line at the Hollow Roast.

  The coffee shop is open, with a black roof area over its dining area, creating a different vibe from the rest of the food court, which has giant skylights several stories above. By contrast, Hollow Roast is a single story structure tucked into a corner, build like a witch’s hat with a wide brim.

  Inside the cafe, the baristas work energetically, but each of them has a dour expression on their face, as though it’s their least favorite thing in the world. And who knows, maybe it is.

  “Welcome to the Hollow Roast. What can we brew for you today?”

  “Hey,” I offer, stepping up to the counter. “How are you doing?” It’s an automatic question, nonsense words that I don’t care to hear the answer to, but you’re supposed to ask to meet the criteria of a normal conversation. I scan the menu, gesturing for Winter to order her drink, which she does in rapid fire, but the barista seems to keep up with her. Satisfied, she steps back.

  My order is easy enough. “Vanilla latte, two extra shots of espresso. And…” I look to see what Wrath is going to want. He never breaks the illusion when we’re in a situation like this, speaking even though he knows no one else can hear him. This way he can be mad at me later if I get him the wrong thing.

  Wrath likes to create his own drama.

  Wrath and Winter get their drinks first, and then I spend an absurd amount of time waiting for my own. Finally the barista who took my order brings my drink over, sliding it across the counter and meeting my eyes. “I don’t think I love my girlfriend.”

  “Uhm, what?” He hears my question and hears “oh, please, tell me more,” because he keeps going on.

  “We’ve been together for six months, but I’m pretty sure she gave me chthonic gonorrhea. It burns when I think about the underworld.”

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  “Maybe don’t… think about the underworld, man?” I offer awkwardly. I left Wrath in my bag and Winter’s at the table keeping him company. No one’s around to rescue me from the encounter.

  The barista doesn’t react, but he holds onto my cup of coffee for a moment too long, never breaking eye contact. The moment he does, he looks away from me, and something in his posture changes entirely.

  What in the Broken Hells was that about? I dwell on the encounter all the way back to the table, but don’t say anything when I walk up to the other two. Winter appears to be on her phone, talking out loud as though to a friend, though I can see her lock screen. A moment later I hear Wrath’s response.

  “Why would that have anything to do with it?” A moment later, the second cup, clear and icy, drains about an inch of liquid. No one picks up the cup or moves it any way. Winter watches with a curious smile.

  “Oh, you’re talking about his coffee habit,” I explain, taking a seat. “Yeah. It’s funnier when someone at another table is watching. They think it’s a magic trick.”

  “It’s my treat,” Wrath says, wounded.

  “And you like messing with the mortals.”

  “And I deserve to mess with the mortals,” he corrects.

  At the table next to us, a little girl who can’t be more than five or six looks up at the harried woman slumped across from her. “Stevie’s mom is a better mom than you are. She thinks it’s adorable how hard you have to try.”

  The girl’s mother, apparently, reels back in her seat and stares wide eyed at her daughter, who sips at her milkshake. Her swinging legs off the side of the chair are carefree, and every time one of them collides with her mother’s legs, she doesn’t even apologize, just giggles quietly to herself.

  Two tables away, an elderly man with a full head of silver hair looks to the man with him, bald and miserable and says brightly, “Maybe if you weren’t such a little bitch your hair wouldn’t have fallen out.”

  I look across the cafe as weird, awful truths are shared by one part of a conversation, and the bewildered reaction of the other side. It almost looks like a spreading cloud, noticeable by the look of shock as it catches one ring, then the next. Out in the food court proper, I see movement stop, expressions go blank, and then the inevitable shock. Soon it spreads across the entire area and then seems to dissipate, or maybe travel further into the mall.

  “What was that?” Winter asks, having heard our neighbors.

  “I don’t know,” I admit, my words slow as I watch everyone affected by the… whatever that was, go back to normal as though the tiny conversations of apparent truth are forgotten or ignored. “But one thing I know is that it’s not a raging poltergeist…”

  ***

  Ghastly lets us into the store again, and again I block him at the door. I also take the keys out of his hand. “I just want to make sure you’re safe.” Ho doesn’t like it but doesn’t fight me, and the minute we lock the gate and start into the store, I see the slicked backed hair man appear at Ghastly’s side and they start conversing. It seems a boring conversation between two people and doesn’t set off any warning bells so I stop paying attention after a moment.

  “What are we looking for?” Winter asks.

  Wrath appears at our sides in a tiny poof of brimstone. I know he does it for the attention, and his eyes flash in delight when Winter jumps slightly. She meets my eyes a moment later and smirks. Does he realize how well she plays him already? I can’t tell if he does, and he’s going with it, or if he’s completely oblivious.

  He’s a billion years old, or close enough. But at the same time he’s pathological in his need for attention. Which one wins?

  I have time to dwell on these things, because no matter where we go around the store, nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens.

  “I thought you promised poltergeists.”

  “I thought you promised CinnaSin buns.” Wrath attempts.

  “You don’t need baked goods right now.”

  He gives me a wounded look and then just as quickly shrugs it off. We each go our separate ways, checking the merchandise, moving displays slightly. Walking away and then walking back to see if anything changes. Wrath goes into the stock room, and all he does is accidentally knock over a bunch of plastic fish tanks filled with tiny bodies and squid monsters. I head back to help him arrange the boxes back on the shelf.

  Even out the back door to the landing dock where packages are received, nothing happens. We switch after awhile, each taking a turn in the next person’s section. But none of us see anything.

  “Maybe it’s not actually haunted,” Wrath mutters. “I knew everyone was just being dramatic.”

  “You were at the meet and greet,” Winter argues back, placing her hands on her hips. “You saw it just as much as I did. That wasn’t drama.”

  “Wrath thinks everything we do is dramatic.”

  “You are,” the demon gushes dramatically.

  I make a “see?” gesture towards him, looking at Winter.

  “We’ve been here almost two hours. I’m getting bored,” Wrath says.

  “I’m getting hungry,” Winter agrees.

  We sigh, and head for the front gate. What we find is a little odd.

  There are people in the concourse, but none of them are moving. I unlock the gate, we step outside, and lock it back up. Ghastly and the manager are gone, which is no surprise, but everyone else acting like mannequins is a new mall feature that I’m not sure how to process.

  We walk slowly and carefully back along the concourse towards the food court. Everyone is awake, everyone seems alert and calm, but no one is actually moving. They’re standing in place with casual expressions. Not even entirely blank ones. Just like they’re all lost in a moment of absent thought.

  We pass a dozen. Then two. And by the time we make it back to the food court, it’s been at least nine or ten dozen. The mall is picking up as the day progresses, but everyone in the tentacles is paused.

  Again, strange.

  Winter and I share a look. Wrath decorporalizes back into his doll the moment we headed for the door so he’s not reacting, not even as a whispered voice in my ear.

  Everything seems normal at the food court, and it takes a minute to decide. “I might go to Panda Distress,” Winter theorizes. I’m considering Sbargh’s because I love a good slice of terrible pizza.

  “Let me guess, you want CinnaSins still?” I ask the stuffed animal, now being carried by Winter without complaint.

  Wrath’s voice is disembodied but definitely annoyed. “Obviously.”

  “Well it’s not in the food court so you should have said something before we got here.”

  “We’ll pick you up something on the way out. And you can eat in the car.”

  Wrath mutters under his breath.

  I head up to the Sbargh’s counter where the employee is currently engaged with the last person’s order. Unlike the people in the concourse, there’s still conversation and active movement going on here. He scoops up a slice of pizza and sets it down on the tray along with a beverage before sliding it across to the customer without a word. There’s a moment or two of pause before he comes back to the register without looking at me directly at all.

  “Welcome to Sbargh’s,” he says in a deep rasp, which seems to be a common feature of the pizza chain staff. He looks up until he meets my eyes. There are no pupils in his sockets, only clear unpolished white. “Your guardian is afraid of you.”

  At my back, I can feel the demon stiffen even in his toy form and that’s how I know the pronouncement is true.