Azrael

Eight

Emeraude had got very little sleep the previous night, and she had not felt any better even after going for a late run, calling a friend to chat or binging her favourite TV show. She had only just started to fall asleep when her doorbell rang. Emeraude woke up with a start. Her head was spinning, and her watch said it was 3 am, as she squinted at it to check whether she was seeing right, the doorbell rang again. She sat up in surprise.

No one had ever rang her doorbell at this hour.

Very few people rang her doorbell at all.

It was still dark outside, but the relentless background noise of the Kespen nightlife she had become accustomed to was absent.

The doorbell rang again, persistent.

Emeraude wrapped a sheet around herself and hobbled to the hall to open the door. She stared straight into a pair of brown eyes, felt panic race through her body, and took a step back.

"Liz?"

"Good morning, Emeraude," she greeted. "Can I come in?"

Without waiting for an answer, Lisa closed the door behind her. She walked straight into the kitchen and regarded it with curiosity, before starting to rifle through the drawers.

"Where do you keep the coffee these days?"

Emeraude stood frozen, watching her. She felt the sheet slipping, and she pulled it tighter around herself.

"Stop!" she shouted, and then lowered her voice. "You can't just barge in here as if you own the place."

"I can't?" The other woman echoed, brows furrowed. She was holding a jug, which she placed on the counter. "I saved your life twice, last I checked. Also, there's no coffee here, is there?"

Emeraude shut her eyes and tried to speak sensibly. "You know I don't drink coffee."

Lisa sighed.

"We have a serious problem."

"You couldn't have called?"

"I tried to." Lisa shrugged.

"Fine. But can I at least get dressed first?"

Emeraude regretted the question the moment it came out of her mouth. But there was no suggestive comment about her not getting dressed, as she had expected. Only a firm nod and Lisa's eyes stayed on her own the entire time. It was then that he noticed how tired the other woman looked, her dark hair dishevelled and eyes rimmed with red, likely in the same clothes as yesterday and holding a worn notebook under her arm.

Back in her room, the first thing Emeraude did was reach for her phone. Twelve missed calls from Liz. She hadn't even realised that the number was still saved on her phone. She glimpsed outside her window, where Kespen was uncharacteristically calm, with no lights, not a sound, and for the first time in a long time, Emeraude felt alone.

She leaned against her closet door and took a deep breath. Something was going on, and her only viable option was the woman downstairs.

As Emeraude returned to the kitchen, she stopped when she heard voices drifting down the hallway as Lisa spoke to someone on the phone. They spoke in Russian, but after two years of being posted in Kespen, Emeraude had learned to pick up on simpler conversations.

"How much time do we have left?" asked Lisa.

"He could show up right now for all I know, the bastard is too unpredictable," she replied to whatever the other person had said. "Alright. Take care, Roman."

Emeraude took a deep breath and then walked back into the living room. Taking pity on Lisa's exhausted state, she dug out the pack of coffee that she had stashed in a cupboard, long forgotten from the days Lisa had stayed with her. She poured Lisa a cup of the stuff and set it before her. She picked it up and drank slowly without speaking.