“All death is peaceful,” I said, my eyes drawn back to the Death card. “It’s the whole leading-up-to-it part that sucks.”
“You… have a point,” he said.
I reached for the basket of painted stones, pulling one at random. This one had a pink rose design.Stop and smell me,the white script said.
“What else do you know?” I asked.
It had been a few hours since we’d discovered Sophie's body—since the raven had taken her soul. Even through all of my denial and babbling and pretending, deep down I knew she was gone. But still I hadn't really allowed myself tofeelher absence or think about what it might mean tomorrow or the next day and the day after that when I pulled our two mugs out of the dish drainer and realized that from here on out, I'd only ever need one.
I sat there thinking about it now, tryingnotto think about the fact that I was thinking about it, my fingers wrapped so tightly around the rose stone that the tips had turned white, but still I didn’t cry. Didn’t gasp. Didn’t break down until Detective Alvarez looked at me once again and said, “They took some of her hair. Several of her braids appear to have been crudely cut with a knife.”
It was so gruesome, so horrid, even more so than the death itself because this somehow felt more personal, more intimate. But through the fresh tears that fell, all I could do was laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed, because in that moment, where all things had stopped making sense, the picture that came to my mind was of an evil man walking around the Bay with the handful of glittering, rainbow light.
Alvarez rose from the table. I was still laughing when he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll know more after the autopsy and the lab reports, Miss Desario. I’ll keep you posted.”
Forcing myself to pull it together before he decided to call the psych ward, I nodded, forcing out a thank you. “We didn't know who else to call.”
“You did the right thing,” he said, then asked to speak with Ronan privately in the living room.
I counted sixty clicks from the fox clock until Ronan returned. One minute that felt like a day.
He told me that the medical examiner had arrived and they were getting ready to transport Sophie’s body to the morgue. Alvarez wanted to know if I needed a moment to say goodbye.
I shook my head. I didn’t want my last memory of Sophie to be them zipping her up in a body bag. “I… have to clean the floor.”
“You sure?”
I nodded once, and that was the end of it. Ronan went back into the living room to deal with the transport.
It was the kindest thing he'd ever done for me.
I stayed alone in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor while they strapped my best friend to a gurney, and carried her out our front door for the last time. I tried not to dwell on it, remembering instead the sound of her laugh, her all-knowing smirk, the glittery tattoos of the sea that had danced across her chest less than twenty-four hours ago.
By the time Ronan came back into the kitchen, the house was silent. Everyone else had left.
Ronan held out his hand and helped me up off the floor.
When I looked into his eyes, I gasped.
For the first time since I’d known him, my demon—my rock, my shelter in the storm—was terrified.
“Gray,” he said urgently. “You need to pack.”
Fourteen
Gray
I stripped off my yellow rubber gloves and followed Ronan down the hall to the bedrooms, averting my eyes from Sophie's closed door.
Ronan found a duffel bag and a beat-up old backpack in my closet and tossed them both onto the bed.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A safe house Asher set up.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s Asher?” The only friends Ronan had ever mentioned to me were Darius and Detective Alvarez, and even then, the wordfriendsfelt like a stretch.
Ignoring me, he rummaged through my dresser drawers, pulling out clothes and shoving everything into the bags, stuffing them to capacity.
