Convoke

Chapter 36

The next day, Tom decided to test how far the village would go to shun him out of the place he had lived all his life. First, he stopped by the butchers where Gren worked with his mother.

He was their first customer of the day. They widened their eyes and hurried into the back room. Tom waited for ten minutes before realising that they weren't coming back to serve him, and it stung. Gren was Cal's neighbour, and someone he had hung out with enough to consider him a friend. "Hello?" he called out. The silence knotted his insides.

He sighed and moved onto the charity shop next door. The door was quickly locked. The worker stood on the other side of the glass, shaking her head with pursed lips.

Tom sighed again and moved on.

The next shop, nor the next café, treated him with kindness. Tom wondered how Ezra had dealt with it, and how he wasn't bitter, and cruel, and hateful towards a world that loathed him simply for existing.

Tom paused outside the library, looking up at its arched entryway. His heart wildly thumped. He was sweating under his jacket, and almost ready to turn and run, until Haisley spotted him loitering by the steps. She opened the door slowly and pulled her glasses up to sit among her greying roots.

The dread in her green eyes was like a punch to the gut. "Please don't ban me," Tom whispered.

"I'm sorry," she said, failing to meet his eyes.

"You're not, you can't be," Tom said bluntly. "I've done nothing wrong."

"To love a demon . . . you must be troubled." She tightened her quivering lip. "I have to stop leaving the keys out for you."

Tom blinked back tears and swallowed hard. He nodded, staring at his feet. "Shame on you," he muttered before she hurried back inside, leaving Tom to stand alone, numb.

Ezra was on soul stripper duties. Cal was with Harper. His other friends hadn't returned his calls, and his parents were busy fixing a blocked toilet in the pub. His sister was the only person he could turn to, but even she couldn't truly be trusted with his problems.

He heard the faint hum of the angel's choir from the library. Even that didn't lighten his heart as he turned and dragged himself to the country road. He wanted to scream and yell, to defend himself and fight, to be emotional and show how much he was hurting. But that was what they wanted, so they had an excuse to shun him out for good.

For a while, he sat on the fence and watched farmer Joel's sheep, hoping Ezra would appear to comfort him. But the longer he sat, the worse he felt. Overthinking ate away at him until he truly felt empty to his core.

In the pub, locals stared as if he couldn't see them. They muttered as if he couldn't hear them. They talked about him with ill intension as if he didn't have feelings of his own.

"What the fuck are you all looking at?" Tom snapped. He paused by the bar to glare around. "If you have a problem with me, say it."

Everyone diverted their attention to their pints. "Cowards," Declan muttered, patting his son on the shoulder. "Where's Ez?"

Tom shrugged and pushed past him. Neasa was sitting on the couch with a mug in her hand, and her gaze on the TV. She paused her show when he tried to get to his bedroom unnoticed.

"Wait!" she called out, stopping his bedroom door from slamming. "Tom . . . "

"What?" he asked coldly, not wanting her to weigh his low mood down any further.

"Are you okay?"

"What do you think?" He tried to shut the door again. She didn't let him.

"Talk to me."