Luci FerBright watched him enter the shop, dressed all in black. The priest pulled at his starched white collar. The tightness across his throat causing obvious discomfort. There was a subtle unease about the man. She could almost hear his love-sick heart beating rapidly against his rib cage. “You should be used to that collar by now father.”

 

She wondered if this was the day when more of the truth would leak out. When he might put his vestments aside and declare his love for her. But no, she could see he was still pleading for redemption, resisting temptation.

 

Father Immanuel’s voice was somber with a hint of dusky regret as approached Luci at the counter. “This belonged to a parishioner who recently died,” he said.

 

When he glanced up, Luci locked eyes with him. Playful as ever, she held his attention with a flirty smile.

 

His hand shook with hesitation when he laid the ancient rosery on the glass surface. “This item has a troubled past,” he told her earnestly.

 

“Oh, yes, I feel it.” Luci said, brushing her long fingers across the holy item. A slight sizzle of light blossomed then dissipated. “This is imbued with a lifetime of secrets. I assume you want them lost?” She asked.

 

He nodded with solemn anticipation. Some confessions grow weary over time, hard to carry, exhausting to absolve the same misdeeds over-and-over. He felt as if he were handing them an undeserved get-out-of-jail-free card, rather than performing a holy service. It seemed as if the assigned acts of contrition or penance performed had no lasting effect.

 

The priest was tall with a brown complexion. He had lusciously thick dark hair and a widow's peak. His blue eyes all the brighter because of his dark skin. He flashed his perfect smile and Luci found herself staring at the dimple in his chin.

 

Immanuel was not a shy man, he delivered sermons with passionate zeal, as if possessed by a fervor of holy rapture. But when he visited the House of Forgotten Things, he was circumspect. He seemed to grapple with the idea of sin at such moments.

 

Luci could feel he was tormented by desire for her. “You know, we could make secrets together that would be far more interesting.” She did a sideways nod with her head to the stairway. Then smiled mischievously. Her living quarters was above the shop. She’d mentioned that before.

 

His eyes twinkled with interest, but he cast his gaze quickly down as if in prayer.

 

~ * ~

 

“If you continue to tease the poor man, he’s likely not to return,” Asmondea scolded Luci after the priest left. She was mistress to Luci’s Uncle Valentine. She understood lust better than anyone. Asmondea was also the shop’s bookkeeper.

 

Luci, still staring at the door, savored the scent of her unrequited love. A lingering proximity of desire quivered in her chest. “If only he could worship me with as much devotion.” 

 

“Every time he walks in the shop your center of gravity goes missing.” Asmondea said. “You are a sweet demon Luci, but he is a man of God. Why set your heart on such an impossibility?”

 

“Can’t you feel his allegiance faulter when he looks at me?” 

 

Asmondea lifted the rosery handing it to Luci, “You intentionally torment him with that low cut outfit,” she scolded. “I’ll file the paperwork; you take this to your uncle.”

 

“Oh Asmon, what are treasures for if not to flaunt.”

 

The silver pentagram hung on a fine chain between the mounds of her ample bosom. It was a lovely relic with filigree details etched along its surface. But of course, the pendant was not what Luci was referring to. It was just so well-positioned, dangling around her neck, and falling between her breasts where it glittered in beams of light filtering though the leaded glass in the clearstory windows. She knew exactly where to stand so it would catch the light on a sunny day. Luci’s pentagram became a focal point which many customers struggled not to stare at. Including Immanuel.

 

Luci FerBright, was fair-skinned. Her flesh so white the blue veins stood out starkly against her pallor. Her most striking feature was a cascade of auburn curls. Although her pale grey eyes were quite striking as well. She had the kind of beauty that turned men into besotted idiots. Drunk on her charms. Luci flirted with everyone, but desired only the one man who couldn’t love her back.

 

~ * ~

 

No one remembered when The House of Forgotten Things had first appeared at the corner of Delphinium and Sixth. The city grew and modernized around it. Glass towers and neon sprawl. The antique shop remained. Not stubbornly, but inevitably, like a liver spot on the skin of time.

 

Valentine Hades, owned the establishment which served a contingent of the population who had questionable merit. And unlike most pawn shops that paid customers for items surrendered, people who came to the House of Forgotten Things, paid them to assume ownership, and remove any memory of ever having seen it.

 

Except for the priest, and those like him, they didn’t pay. They carried other people’s sorrows and misdeeds… such relinquishments were of prime value to Hades, and he had a special place for them. Such tokens were like gifts, the spoils of corruption and regret.

 

What was given was not destroyed—only removed from the world’s memory. The most dangerous memento mori were placed among venerable wicked relics in the locked back room. Valentine, of course, remembered everything. That was his curse to bear.

 

People brought what they didn’t want to live with anymore—old letters, wedding rings, oaths bound to tarnished trinkets and broken promises. Toys once loved by dead children or pets. Heirlooms from abusive parents. Clothes worn on during a tragic event. Medals of honor and badges undeserved. Even weapons used in murder. Each item, heavy with sin and sorrow. They came seeking absolution from guilt, and the nightmares that would not let them rest.

 

Hades rarely greeted customers. He remained in the upper chambers, accompanied only by his three-legged hellhound Banjo, and the occasional drifting strains of an old vinyl record. Usually something smoldering and slow, like Chet Baker. Tenderly was playing softly on his stereo when Luci entered his office.

 

It was a dimly lit space filled with sweet tobacco smoke. The room was cluttered with recent acquisitions; items he would burn clean of memory then store in his archives.

 

“The priest brought another item,” she told her uncle.

 

Hades stroked his hellhound who growled affectionately. “The priest’s burden is heavy.”

 

Luci held out her palm, the beads and cross spilling into his open hand.

 

“Another rosery, darker than the last,” He noted.

 

“Well, considering the neighborhood, I imagine the weight of those confessions would be hard to carry on his own. Poor darling.”

 

“You’d like to give him something better to forget, wouldn’t you my little demon?”

 

She smiled. “He’s close, I can feel his resolve slipping. I do love him you know. It doesn’t need to be a painful fall from grace, I could help him forget it even happened.”

 

Hades chuckled. “I have no doubt. But for now, I will take that darkness. All those whispered transgressions and tales of folly too unspeakable for the sacrosanct of his quiet confessional—and wipe his memory of them all. I will give him the blessing his god is unwilling to grant.”

 

“Forgetting is certainly better than forgiveness.” Luci agreed.

 

~ * ~

 

Luci got to the counter just as the bell over the door chimed and a young woman sporting a Pixi-cut that was dyed bright blue stepped inside. This girl was exactly the sort who thought heartbreak made her interesting. Was Luci’s first thought.

 

“How may I help you, I’m Luci, ready to unburden you of things best forgotten.”

 

“Oh, hi,” she said, a little surprised by the cheerful sales pitch. “I’m Shiloh,” she said with a crooked smirk.

 

Luci could smell the grief on her like smoke from a fire that hadn’t fully gone out.

 

Shiloh’s gaze scanned the shelves nervously looking for distraction.

 

Luci admired the girl’s spunky style. The nose ring, the miniskirt and combat boots, her tattoos. As Shiloh wandered around, her fingers brushing over objects on the counter and shelves, as if touching would give them more meaning.

 

“Looking to forget something?” Luci finally asked.

 

The girl stepped forward. “Yeah. Someone… actually.”

 

Of course. Someone. Almost always. Luci gently slid the ledger from beneath the counter and opened it with a practiced flick. Her fingers hovered over the crimson silk ribbon that marked today’s page.

 

“You’re in the right place,” she said. “We specialize in heartbreak.”

 

The girl leaned against the counter with deliberate casualness, trying not to stare too hard. But Luci was used to being stared at. It was one of the side effects of working in a place imbued with magic.

 

“Do you always talk like you’re in a movie?” the girl asked.

 

Luci laughed and shook her curls. “Sometimes I talk like I’m in a poem.”

 

It landed, just like she knew it would. The girl brightened, a small involuntary laugh escaped, dissolving the somber mood. Luci counted on her quick comebacks and clever one-liners. It was one of her talents—finding the tender spot beneath the armor.

 

“So how does this work?” the girl asked.

 

Luci tapped on the violet file folder. Her voice was gentle, even, like she was explaining how to light a lantern in the wind. “You surrender a token. Something physical, linked to the memory. A gift, a letter, a lock of hair.”

 

The girl’s nose wrinkled. “I have her lighter,” she said. “She kept losing it, so I carried it around for her.”

 

“Perfect,” Luci murmured, already writing. “Fire is sticky. It holds onto things.”

 

She pushed the form forward with one ink-stained finger. “You’ll need to sign and date. This line says you understand the memory won’t return. You can’t trace it, can’t resurrect it, even if you wanted to. You’ll only know there’s something you once forgot. When you see her, it will feel like Deja-vu.”

 

The girl held the pen but didn’t move. “I won’t remember her at all?”

 

Luci met her eyes. “No memory, sometimes there is a lingering doubt that you’ve seen her somewhere before. They will feel… familiar.”

 

Shiloh waited. That pause mattered. Then she asked, “What if I see her, and fall for her again?”

 

Luci leaned a little closer, lowered her voice. “That’s where the enhanced erasure comes in. It severs the attraction, not just the memory. Magnetic pull, gone forever. Your heart won’t stir. If she approaches you, there will be no allure what-so-ever. It’s the non-engagement clause.

​

The girl signed. “Do you ever go out?” she asked then. “Like, after work?”

 

Luci blinked. There it was—sweet, clumsy, inevitable. The crush.

 

“I’m flattered,” she said, because she was. “But no. You wouldn’t like me after midnight.”

 

“Werewolf?”

 

“Nothing so elegant. I just get honest. And I don’t like being anyone’s rebound.”

 

That earned another laugh. The kind that tried not to sound embarrassed.

 

Shiloh placed the lighter on the counter. It radiated warm intent. Luci didn’t touch it immediately. Objects like that still had breath in them. You could feel it—like a pulse behind the metal, alive with potential.

 

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

 

Luci smiled faintly. “Today? It’s Luci. With an ‘i.’”

 

“That your real name?”

 

“No. But the other one is forgotten.”

 

She took the lighter, gently, like it was as fragile as Shiloh’s emotions.

 

The girl hesitated at the door, one foot already out. “I might come back,” she said.

 

“You’re welcome to.”

 

“Not to forget,” she added. “Maybe to remember something better.” She stared at Luci like she might be the cure to her sadness.

 

Luci gave her a gentle smile, and an evasive answer. “Just don’t fall in love, darling. The paperwork is dreadful.”

 

And then the girl was gone. Yet Shiloh’s need left an imprint on Luci who was cursed with hypermnesia. Total recall pulled strongest when desire and anguish had a purpose.

​

 Humm, that girl is a little witchy. Lucy held the lighter a little longer than necessary. It was heavy with want.

 

She whispered the girl’s name—Shiloh—and felt it slip from her, a silk ribbon through water.

 

~ * ~

 

The door had barely clicked shut behind Shiloh when a slow, deliberate clap sounded from the far hallway.

 

Belial was leaning against the doorframe, one shoulder pressed into the wood, a crooked smirk carved into his face. His eyes like cold silver shards, dripped disdain as he watched her.

 

He wasn’t tall, but he was built with dense muscle, his tight black tee-shirt stretched greedily over his chest, his arms exposed. Belial’s skin was a canvas of infernal devotion, covered in ink that shimmered faintly under the shop’s low lighting. But the tattoos were not still.

 

Across his biceps, flames licked upward toward his collarbone, writhing with a heatless hunger. Coiling his forearm, a skeleton serpent wrapped around a heart of thorns. Near the hollow of his throat, a tiny red devil with a leering grin gave Luci a wink.

 

Her eyes widened and a chill ran up her back. Luci was devious but not evil. Belial in contrast was rotten in his core, but charismatic as hell. He could charm most any women. But he didn’t fool Luci.

 

“You really do flirt with every poor soul who wanders in here, don’t you?” he drawled. “What’s the endgame, Luci? Are you planning to sleep with this one too?”

 

His voice always carried an undercurrent of threat. He toyed with a razor-sharp blade idly spinning it on his fingertip as he undressing her with his stare. Luci didn’t respond right away. She tucked the lighter into the velvet-lined case behind the counter, slow and deliberate.

 

“First of all,” she said evenly, “I’m not interested in Shiloh. Second,” her smile sweet but thin, “it’s none of your business who I sleep with. I’m not yours to toy with.”

 

That should have been enough. But Belial never let things lie.

 

He stepped forward, dropping the sarcasm. His voice sultry and smooth. Approaching with his signature move, honey, and venom. His hand landed low on her hip like it belonged there. He drew her in, “Don’t be like that darlin,” he murmured. “You like it when

I—”

 

Luci moved before he finished. With fluid grace, she slipped from his grasp—yielding, pivoting for a better angle of attack. Her palm met the back of his bald head with a satisfying smack. Not hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to get the better of him.

 

But he took her clever move as an insult. Belial’s eyes flared. His temper ignited like a match striking dry paper. He seized her wrist, grip bruising. “That’s how you want to play it?” his voice burning with rage. He grabbed her wrist, dragging her toward the basement door. “I think we have some business to attend to.”

 

Suddenly her uncle’s three-legged hellhound came flying down the stairs, sinking its long fangs onto Belials ankle. Growling and twisting its jaws deeper, as Belial streaked in pain. Belial released his grasp on Luci’s wrist. Then tried to kick the animal loose.

 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Valentine Hade’s raspy voice spoke with authority.

 

Belial froze. And Luci sighed in relief.

 

Valentine, having emerged from the shadows, with perfect timing, motioned for Banjo to release Belial.

 

His deep-set eyes burned like the last embers in a dying fire. His silver-streaked hair matched his immaculate suit. The smell of scorched dreams surrounded him.

 

“Don’t you have souls to barter or promises to twist?” Valentine’s tone was mild, but it had gravity. “I didn’t hire you to torment my best asset. I suggest you return to your pit and get back to the darker side of this business—where you belong.”

 

Belial held Luci’s gaze for one breath longer, then moved away.

 

“If you bother my niece again there will be consequences,” Valentine said in a pleasant tone and a smile, as if he relished the opportunity to punish the demon.

 

Without another word, Belial turned and descended the basement stairs, his bloody footsteps echoing with regret.

 

Valentine didn’t speak again. He simply looked to Luci, a flicker of warning in his eyes.

 

“This just came in,” she told her uncle, and handed him the lighter from Shiloh. “Lost love, and heartbreak.”

 

He nodded, and left her to her thoughts.

 

Luci stood alone in the silence, flexing her wrist.

 

~ * ~

 

The next morning Luci and Asmondea were setting up the shop and chatting. The day was foggy but not raining. Such days tended to bring broken hearts to their door.

 

Asmondea set a tray at the counter and handed Luci a porcelain cup. While sipping a lovely Darjeeling tea and eating biscuits, Luci glanced out the window and noticed someone emerge from the fog—walking with determination toward the shop.

 

The bell above the door gave a tinkle as Father Immanuel stepped inside. A shadow of gloom casting agony on his soul. Luci set down her tea cup, and smiled at him. Asmondea, stepped aside and busied herself with the polishing of a copper relic.

 

The priest’s expression was hollowed-out with grief. His clerical collar askew, his eyes sunken with lack of sleep. “I’ve been trying,” he said without greeting. “For months, I’ve tried to wrestle this... this feeling into something righteous. To reason with it, to pray it away. But I cannot.”

 

Luci stepped around the counter and took his hand tenderly, sensing the gravity of his dilemma. “What do you feel, Immanuel?”

 

He laughed bitterly. “Desire. Guilt. Longing. I’m unraveling. I’m losing my faith, Luci. I see you when I close my eyes. I dream of you. Not as a woman of sinful reproach, but as something sacrosanct, a beacon. Bright, and full of promise. And that frightens me more than any devil ever could.”

 

She moved closer, her voice low and honeyed. “No one has to know.”

 

He shook his head. “But I would know. I’d carry that secret in my bones.”

 

Her gaze lingered on him, soft and searching. “Then let it be a burden you choose.”

 

He told her about a dream—of her on a stairway calling to him, unbuttoning her blouse as incense filled the air and the stained-glass windows glowed brighter than the sun. He said the dream left him trembling, aroused and longing for her.

 

Luci turned back to the counter and whispered something to Asmondea. Then she led him up to her room.

 

More than an hour passed. When they came down, Immanuel wore his fall from grace with utter confusion. He seemed a bit overwhelmed with pleasure and grief in equal measures. He was flushed, and awkward. Asmondea was waiting by the counter, a thin ledger open before her.

 

“What’s this?” Immanuel asked.

 

Luci plucked a handkerchief from his coat pocket, “do you mind?” She asked, and whipped her forehead with it.

 

“Not at all, keep it.”

 

She guided his hand to the pen. “Trust me.”

 

He signed.

 

Luci leaned in, kissed him gently on the cheek. “Wait here just a moment.”

 

She ascended the stairs; the handkerchief held lovingly in her fingers. Upstairs, Valentine Hades reclined on a green velvet couch. She handed him the cloth.

 

“I want him to forget what happened today,” she said.

 

Valentine’s fingers curled around the fabric like smoke. “Done.”

 

Downstairs, Immanuel stood near the shelf of first edition books of poetry, his expression slack, confused.

 

He turned to her. “Oh—Luci, there you are, I can’t remember why I came. Wasn’t I just here yesterday?”

 

She smiled warmly, not missing a beat. “Yes, you were here. I guess you missed me,” she said coyly. Then seeing his furrowed brow, she smiled sweet. I hope you know you’re welcome anytime. You don’t need a specific reason to stop by.”

 

She watched him leave with a flutter of unease in his step, but his soul was lighter, his burden gone.

​