Un-Erased

Lilah · Chapter 5 of 21 · 13-minute read

I stood frozen in the doorway of Gate 1, staring at Emry.

My best friend.

My dead best friend.

Alive. Laughing. Sitting cross-legged at a reading table, her prosthetic angled casually beneath her like it had never mattered—like nothing in the world was wrong.

The air seemed to thin around me, my vision narrowing to just her—the copper-brown skin I knew as well as my own, the wiry black curls tucked carelessly behind one ear, the way she leaned slightly forward when she was engrossed in a text. I struggled for air. As if someone had laid a plank across my chest and begun the quiet ritual of crushing confessions from witches.

Seven months. It had been seven months since I’d watched her die. Seven months of moving through grief like wading through wet concrete. Seven months of empty spaces where her laughter should have been.

And now, here she was.

Alive as if, well, as if the reality I remembered had never happened.

My knees buckled. I swayed forward before I caught myself, breath trembling, my pulse thrashing so hard I thought I might be sick. A cold sweat prickled along my neck, chased instantly by a burst of heat, like my body couldn’t decide whether to faint or flee.

This had to be a trick. Some illusion cooked up by The Book of Heroes, or a lingering echo from the protection spell. A mirage. A trap. Some remnant of magical backlash bleeding through the walls of reality. That had to be it.

Because if it wasn’t…

If it wasn’t, then the grief I’d been dragging like a broken limb for the past seven months—the late-night sobs, the endless dreams where I could almost hear her laugh—had been for nothing. Or worse, for someone who hadn’t died at all.

But she had. I’d seen it. I’d felt her die. I’d stood by that pool and watched the soul tear free from her body. I knew what death felt like.

So what the hell was I looking at?

I clutched the back of a chair at the closest table for support, my knuckles white. The memory of that night at Dru’s house sliced through me with terrible clarity: the celebratory gathering by the pool, Emry confiding in me about the magical attacks she’d been experiencing—someone or something trying to pull her soul from her body. Raven had marked protective sigils on her skin. Then Samantha’s then-boyfriend had knocked Emry into the pool, washing away those protective marks. Raven had pulled her out, and for a moment, everything seemed fine—until it wasn’t. I remembered her eyes going wide, her hand reaching for mine, finding nothing but air as her soul was ripped away.

The last words on her lips: “The angel!”

The door to Gate 2 sealed behind us with a heavy thud, and Raven stepped out at my back. In my peripheral vision, he brushed dust from his sleeves, a habitual gesture, and I felt him go still as he registered my posture. He followed my gaze⁠—

Then gasped.

“Emry?”

His voice cracked on her name, raw and disbelieving. Before I could move, he was past me, bolting for the table where she sat.

Emry turned at the sound of his voice, her expression startled. Raven reached her in an instant, lifting her into the air and spinning her around in a wide, joyful arc. Her prosthetic leg—the result of a teenage accident—caught awkwardly on his hip, and she slapped playfully at his shoulders as he set her back down, flustered but grinning. If Emry was blushing, it didn’t show—but the way her fingers gripped the edge of the table behind her said enough.

“Careful,” she laughed, adjusting her stance. “I’m not as solid as I look.”

“Sorry,” Raven said, his voice still raw. “I just… I didn’t think…”

He looked transported, suspended between disbelief and ecstasy. I understood. After Emry died, I’d withdrawn from everyone for weeks. I’d stopped answering texts, calls, even knocks at my door. When I finally emerged, I was hollow—functioning, but barely. I’d thrown myself into my work in the library because it was the only place I could still feel her presence. That, and without her powerhouse work ethic, we were drastically understaffed. Gate 1 had felt heavier without her, like the library itself was mourning. I hadn’t realized until now how strongly I’d felt her absence in this room.

But Raven—Raven had mourned differently. Quietly. But just as deeply. Even though he swore that they were nothing more than the best of friends. He’d spent more hours in the research rooms, working himself to exhaustion or helping Veronica on some of her assignments. We’d both been wreckage after her death, but wreckage that had slowly, painfully begun to draw together. I’d lost Charlie, and he’d lost Emry. In our grief, we’d found each other.

Emry quickly covered the moment with a wink. “Still as dramatic as ever.” There was a confidence in her voice I didn’t recognize—a casual authority I’d never heard from my Emry, who had always been brilliant but self-effacing. Her posture was straighter, her voice a touch lower than I remembered. Less breathy, more self-possessed. It wasn’t just her words. It was the ease with which she stood in this space, like she owned it.

Guilt and wonder tangled in my chest as I watched the exchange. I was thrilled to see her again—achingly, desperately thrilled—but the intimacy of Raven’s joy cut deeper than I wanted to admit. The library itself seemed brighter with her in it, as if the lamps had grown stronger or the windows clearer. The oppressive quiet that had fallen over the Special Collections Library in recent months had lifted, replaced by something that felt almost like hope.

Here. In this reality. Not in mine where Emry was no more, and Raven and I rubbed our emotional wounds together.

Emry rested a hand lightly on Raven’s arm as she steadied herself. The gesture was small, natural. Familiar.

Too familiar.

Since Emry’s death, Raven and I had been drawing closer. We had some sort of emotional intimacy between us, but it had never been matched physically. That had felt just beyond reach, no matter how much time we spent on assignments or even assignments that forced us close enough to share the air we breathed. But I’d come to think of Raven as mine, with or without the physical component. He was a wanted man, and I was sure he wanted me, too, but we were taking it slowly, determined not to mess up our friendship with rashness. We’d both lost so much in our lives that we could take the torture of caution over any risk of losing the gravity that held us to the earth. With Raven, there’d been space—emotional, maybe more—and now that space felt… borrowed.

As if I’d been keeping it warm for her return.

The thought felt selfish, petty. Ashamed, I pushed it down. If this was real—if Emry was somehow alive in this reality—how could I resent that miracle? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

Raven shifted under Emry’s touch, visibly uncertain, and I saw it: he wanted to cherish this moment. He wanted to give space to the miracle, to his closest friend’s return, even if it might be temporary. Even if it wasn’t quite right.

And I got it. I wanted to do the same.

But it still stung.

And—whether it’s fair or not—I assumed it’s something that would correct itself in time. Like everything else in these shifting realities.

I forced myself forward, legs unsteady, stomach still lurching, and joined them between the table and the circulation desk. The clock on the wall read 4:30, with a big red dot marking closing time for the library. Even the placard underneath showed the hours, but not the hours as I knew them. This library opened at 8:30 in the morning and closed at 4:30, weekdays only.

So few hours. How odd.

Normally, in the reality that was mine, we’d have the vault rooms to ourselves after hours, with Dru occasionally working late in her office. It wasn’t uncommon, especially when scholars were visiting or it was the week before final exams for the students, that we kept Gate 1 open until nearly midnight to give our visitors a chance to finish their research papers. But in this reality, it seemed things were different.

But why? So far, everyone had seemed happier than I remembered, except for Dru, but she’d had a toothache that persisted across realities, with minor variations. It was good to hear laughter here again.

“Is Silla still busy authenticating the spell book?” Emry asked, glancing toward the vaults. Her gaze slid over to me, casual and warm—as if we’d spoken minutes ago, not months.

“Silla?” I echoed, the unfamiliar name catching in my throat. “You mean Dru?”

Emry nodded like it was obvious. “Yeah. She hates the full name. Everyone just calls her Silla now, right?”

Raven met my eyes for a heartbeat. Good. We were thinking the same thing without giving it voice.

That’s not normal.

Emry never called her that. No one did. No one. Dru would have shut that down immediately—she was particular about her name, her titles, her dignity. Even after years of friendship, she maintained certain formalities. It was Dru to her closest friends, Drusilla to others, and anything from Professor to Dr. Saint A to others. But never Silla.

The library itself seemed to bend around us, the familiar layout now subtly wrong. Was the circulation desk always that wide? Had the central reading tables always been arranged in that pattern? The air carried the usual scent of old books and furniture polish, but underneath was something new—a faint hint of jasmine that I’d never noticed before.

“We were actually wondering about The Book of Heroes,” Raven said, recovering faster than I could. “Do you know where it is?”

“Oh, that,” Emry said, waving a dismissive hand. “Charlie was supposed to store it—said it needed to be locked up until you could authenticate it.” She looked to Raven again, expectant.

Raven frowned. “Right.” Still, he couldn’t stop staring at her, as if she might vanish if he looked away.

I studied Emry more carefully. She moved with more authority, spoke with more confidence. Her outfit was sharper, more professional than the easy cardigans and soft pants she used to favor. She didn’t just work here. She commanded here. This wasn’t the Emry I’d known—it was the version she never got the chance to become.

“We really need to talk to you,” I added, struggling to keep my voice steady. “Privately.”

Emry raised an eyebrow. “Sure!” She turned toward the others in the room. “But let me just clear out the late-stayers first.”

She glided across the room—efficient, authoritative—and gently ushered the other three people toward the doors. I watched, fascinated by how differently she interacted with them compared to our timeline.

“Library’s closing, folks. You know the rules here. Time to head out,” she announced, her tone friendly but firm.

“Already?” The blonde woman—who I realized with a jolt was Samantha, though everyone here seemed to call her “Sammi”—gathered her papers with a good-natured sigh. “I was just getting to the good part.”

“You can pick up where you left off tomorrow,” Emry replied.

Jakin Crutchfield—or “Dr. Crutchfield” as I’d heard Emry address him—collected his leather-bound notebook with a warm smile. Nothing like the sardonic smirk I was used to seeing. “Same time Thursday for the research collaboration?” he asked Emry.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” None of the wariness my Emry would have shown toward my Jakin.

Godfrey, the religious studies student, simply nodded respectfully as he passed. “Thanks for the help with the manuscript translation,” he said to Emry.

Their interactions were easy, familiar—the comfortable rhythms of people who worked together regularly. A found family. In our reality, these people barely tolerated each other. Samantha had been wary of Jakin after their brief fling. Godfrey kept to himself except to bombard me with questions about biblical sources we carried. Emry had never been in charge, just a research associate Dru had named our scholar-in-residence to help Emry pay for grad school.

I’d never seen them all like this—warm, collegial, passionate about books and scholarship rather than magical power plays or, in Jakin’s case, finding the right bad girl to sacrifice to his god. It stirred something in me—envy, maybe. Or longing for what might have been. Or maybe just grief for knowing what could have been possible in another reality.

Emry knew the security codes for the end-of-day protocol and even overrode the backup security panel to lock the back study rooms. I’d never seen her use the staff override before—not even when she worked here part-time. That code was supposed to be reserved for archivists and vault keepers, like Raven and me.

Once the space was quiet again, Emry stepped over to a nearby secure drawer behind the circulation desk.

“I’ll check if Charlie left The Book of Heroes in the usual lockbox.”

She waved a keycard over the panel.

It beeped and accepted her credentials.

My stomach lurched. “You have staff-level access?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

Emry shrugged, unconcerned. “I’ve been part of the core team for six months, right?” She glanced over her shoulder at me and laughed easily. “Where’ve you been, girl?”

Ohhhhh, not where I’ve been, but where you’ve been, Emry.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I walked to the library’s interactive display wall, needing a moment to process. A photo slideshow of library events cycled slowly through the screen. I paused when one image caught my eye.

Us. Me, Raven, and Emry. On the library steps like it was just another ordinary afternoon. All three were laughing—Emry in the middle, Raven’s head tilted toward hers, me reaching to swat a leaf from Emry’s shoulder.

It was familiar. But wrong.

I couldn’t place it. Not the moment, not the party, not the way my arm was looped around Emry’s waist.

Behind me, Raven muttered, “That jacket… in denim? I’d never wear that.” His voice was flat, unsettled.

I felt the unease coil tighter in my chest. At least I wasn’t losing my mind alone.

The outfits were wrong. Emry’s prosthetic leg was bare in the photo. She never used to do that in public, always preferring to keep it covered. And the date stamp in the corner was from two months after Emry’s supposed death.

I swiped to the next photo. Another one I didn’t recognize. A library fundraiser where Emry stood at a podium, confidently addressing a crowd.

I swiped again. A Halloween party. The three of us in coordinated costumes. Raven as a white-winged angel with a too-serious expression, me in a glittered red dress and devil horns, mid-laugh, and Emry between us in a witch’s hat cocked just slightly sideways, holding up a broom like she’d just hexed the punch.

We looked happy. I looked whole.

I stared at the screen until my vision blurred, trying to will some echo of that night back into my mind. Something tactile. A song that was playing. The feeling of cheap glitter on my collarbone.

But there was nothing.

Only the photo.

Only proof that a memory existed—in some version of me but not in this version.

None of these events had happened. Not in my reality. Not with Emry.

But here, they had. Here, she hadn’t died seven months ago. Here, her life had continued, intersecting with mine and Raven’s in ways I couldn’t remember.

My pulse raced against my ribs. What did it mean that the past itself was different? That these moments existed in photographs but not in my memory?

I turned back to see Raven examining a different display—a staff directory. His expression was carefully neutral, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.

Across the room, Emry had moved from the lockbox, which was open and empty, to a computer terminal. Her fingers flew over the keys. We needed to talk to her—to understand what was happening, to figure out if this reality was permanent or another shifting shadow.

“I—Emry,” I said slowly, crossing back to her. “We need to talk. Seriously. Something’s going on.”

Emry turned to me, all softness gone from her face. She raised a single finger to her lips, the gesture sharp and urgent.

“Not here.” Her voice dropped to a barely audible level. Her parted lips didn’t even move. “They’re listening. Watching.”

I stiffened, suddenly aware of the security cameras mounted high on the walls. Had they always been angled that way? Had there always been so many? Dru had had one or two in Gate 1 and the back rooms, but this was overkill.

Raven’s expression tightened. His hand instinctively moved to the small of my back. For all our growing closeness, it was a touch he rarely initiated. My skin warmed at the contact despite the chill of apprehension spreading through me.

Emry’s eyes darted around the room, her earlier confidence replaced by something that looked like—fear? Paranoia? Justified caution?

“Let’s call it a day, shall we? Silla will be leaving soon, so we’ll let her finish locking up for the night.”

Emry’s voice was louder, brighter, than normal, even for this reality. Her smile was wider, too, but empathically, I could tell she was guarded.

“What do you mean, they’re listening?” I whispered back, fighting the urge to look up at the cameras. “Who’s ‘they’?”

Instead of answering, Emry quickly finished logging out of the system. She gathered her bag from under the desk—another unfamiliar item. The leather satchel looked expensive and well-used even though I’d never heard of the brand.

“Not here,” she repeated, her tone leaving no room for argument. She leaned in closer, her breath warm against my ear as she pecked me on the cheek. “Let’s go back to our house.”

Raven and I both froze.

At the same moment, we mouthed the same word:

“Our?”

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