What the fuck?
“It’s my fault for reading into things,” she said. “I always do that. Ialwaysthink things are way more serious than they are.”
What was she talking about? How much more serious could you get thandeath?
“Especially when…” she said, hiccupping between those quiet little sobs. “After…”
She trailed off, and I let her. But I also passed up the entrance to her apartment complex.
Helena didn’t say anything, the sobs turning into snuffles.
I kept driving, at war with myself over what to say, the heart I didn’t have in flames. But why all the internal strife when I’d already decided what I was—or rather wasn’t—going to do?
“Where are we going?” she asked at last. “Since I’m not dead, I have work tomorrow—and a big afternoon storytime. Families are still on vacation, and it’s going to be packed. I have to get up early to get more glue sticks, too, for the craft.”
I stayed quiet.
“Or do I have it wrong?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Maybe… maybe you’re tired, too.”
Tired. Iwastired. Until I met her.
“Before,” Helena said after several beats, “when Cedric came to the library. You used your scythe on him. You could do that againand this would all be over. I know Cleo will cover the storytime—she knows how to work the popcorn machine, and I just saw my parents and my entire extended family, so that helps with timing.”
This conversation—if you could call it that—kept delivering one more painful blow after another, each more brutal than the last. The worst part? Well, one of the worst parts. She thought these things about me not because of me, though my actions hadn’t fucking helped. She thought them because of others. How they’d treated her. Those people who shriveled in her light. All those assholes she’d dated, making herself small for their comfort in the process.
How many of them had used her?
I wanted to kill them. All of them.
And what did it say about me that Ididwant to try to get some names out of her?
Probably a reaction to examine. Later.
“I don’t deliver death,” I reminded her. Maybe my murderous self, too.
“You don’t save people, either,” she said, “but here we are.”
Ouch. Deserved… but ouch.
Spotting what I’d been hunting for, the entrance to an open cemetery, I turned off the main road and onto its drive.
“That what youwantme to do?” I challenged.
Helena got quiet again, her face turned toward her window as we passed stone markers, gravestones, aboveground tombs, and sepulchers.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
“I want to show you something.”
“In a graveyard,” she replied, her voice deadpan—like she didn’t really care about the answer. Like she figured she’d inadvertently given me an idea, and that Ihaddecided to scythe her.
“This place is ancient,” she said. “They haven’t buried anyone here in years.”
“I know.”
“You couldn’t pick somewhere they’re more likely to find my bodybeforeI turn into a moldy crouton?”
“I’m not scything you, Helena!”
