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As Tanner and Mack move out of view into the parking lot where they can access the rear entrance of the building, I try the front door.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not locked. It swings open gently, without a creak, and allows me to pad quietly inside. Pressing myself against the wall just inside the entrance, I strain my ears. There’s a clattering sound in the kitchen. Voices are being raised.

Kole. That’s Kole.

As I watch from my hiding place, the doors to the kitchen swing violently open and Pete stumbles through them. With force, his back meets the edge of the bar, and he yelps.

Kole is towering in front of him. He grabs a chunk of Pete’s hair in his fist, and stares down into his pale, terrified face. “You drugged me, you handed me over to the League, and then you stole my bar right from under me,” he hollers. “The least you can do is share your supply.”

Pete is wincing. He scratches at Kole’s fingers, trying to pry them away from his scalp.

I glance at the door that leads to the hallway past Kole’s office. A shadow moves across it. Tanner and Mack are watching too.

“All right,” Pete croaks. “All right, I’ll share.”

Kole releases his grip and stands back. He’s breathing heavily and his pupils are twitching strangely. The veins on the side of his neck pulse. He extends his hand and flexes his fingers.

Pete turns and begins to fumble beneath the bar. He pulls out a small wooden box. When he opens it, he takes out a vial. “I found this in your office. It’s all I have left. The demons cleared me out of the rest.”

“You’re selling to demons?” Kole spits, his eyes transfixed on the bottle.

Shrugging, Pete says, “A vamp’s got to do what a vamp’s got to do.”

Kole unscrews the top of the vial.

Pete’s tongue darts out to moisten his lips. “Want to share?” he asks. “For old time’s sake?”

Kole ignores him. He’s about to raise the vial to his mouth when a gust of wind blasts through the bar, knocking it to the floor.

The glass breaks, and the blood spills out.

Kole roars, but Pete has already dropped to the floor and is licking it from the sticky, dirt encrusted floorboards. Kole grabs him by the neck and hurls him across the room.

Mack throws another blast of air at him. It knocks him onto his ass and, before he can get up, Tanner has hurled himself at Kole’s chest and is dropping Rev’s potion into his mouth.

Kole throws Tanner off, sending him smashing into the side of the bar. By the time Tanner rights himself, Kole is staggering to his feet. Like a drunk giant, he falls into a nearby chair and hangs his head in his hands. “What the fuck am I doing?” he mutters. When he looks up, his eyes are black pools filled with thick, inky tears. “How do I make it stop?”

23

MACK

We leave Pete unconscious in the bar and help Kole back to Rev’s. Getting him up the stairs to the apartment is a feat in itself. Six-foot-seven, and floppy from Rev’s drugs, it’s like moving a tree or a mountain.

When we stumble in the door, Sam and the others are waiting for us. We deposit Kole on the couch and give him coffee to counteract the potion. Tanner opens the freezer, takes out a bag of peas, and holds it to the bruise which is forming on the side of his head.

Standing at the stove, refilling the kettle, Rev’s shoulders are shaking. I put my hand on her back and she turns to me with watery eyes. “I hate seeing you all like this,” she whispers. “So broken. So sad.” She squeezes my arm and looks deep into my face. “You need to let go of Nova. You need to say goodbye to her, properly, or you’ll never survive this, Mack.”

“We—”

Rev cuts me off, walking to the middle of the room and looking at each of us in turn. “I know you’re praying Nova will come back. I know you still want to hope Kole was right, and that she’ll walk back into your lives and make all this go away.” She waves at the window and the hazy red sky it frames. “I want that too, but you can’t live in limbo. You can’t exist like this, and she wouldn’t want you to.” Rev folds her arms and hugs her own waist. “So, please, the five of you, do something. Hold a ceremony. Honor your love for her. Talk about her. Then let her go.”

Silence descends. Nico looks confused, like he has no clue who Nova is or what we’re talking about. Sarah sniffs and wipes her cheeks.

“She’s right.” Kole is the first to speak. His eyes still strangely wide, he manages to stand and leans on the arm of the couch. “We’re broken, and Nova wouldn’t want that for us.” He sighs a sigh so deep it makes me shudder, and unfastens his hair from its tie. “I don’t know if I got it wrong. I want to believe that if we hang on just a little longer, she’ll come back. But what if it’s longer? What if it’s a year? Five years? Twenty years? What if, when she does return, there’s nothing for her to return to because we’ve destroyed ourselves.” He swallows hard and smooths his hand over his long dark beard. “She survived so much, and she never broke. So, we need to survive this for her.”

It’s probably the most Kole has ever said, and the effort of it makes him sit down again. He picks up his coffee mug and stares into it but doesn’t drink. “We should go to the falls today,” he says. “We should honor her like we did when we gave her our rings and pledged our lives to her.”

Tanner sits down next to him and puts his arm around Kole’s shoulders. He looks up at me and raises his eyebrows. Luther and Sam are looking at me too. Snow growls. Not a growl of anger, but a growl of pain and anguish.