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“You brought me what I asked for,” Macha said to me, giving Jeff a cursory glance. “He does not seem so imposing.”
“He’s the one who killed your initiate.”
She stepped closer to him, and he quivered, shifting away. Macha laughed, and it made my skin crawl.
“Oh, no no, little man. You don’t get to bow and scrape now. You don’t get to flinch and tremble. You made your little dirt bed, and now you will lay in it. You are mine now.”
“Wh-what is this?” he begged me.
“Divine intervention.”
I dropped the bat on the ground and turned away as Macha descended. Jeff screamed, a high-pitched sound like a rabbit in a trap, and then the scream died in a wet gurgle.
When I looked back, Macha and Jeff were gone, and the only sign they’d ever been there at all was the smell of hay and the spray of fresh blood across the inside of the car’s hood.
Chapter Forty-Four
Nothing happened.
It was as if Jeff had never existed. With the exception of the explosives they discovered inside the Crown Vic, and the others that were found wired to the stage, that is.
Everything was quietly removed in the dead of night by the Las Vegas P.D. bomb squad. The press, even those who were staying at the hotel, never caught wind of the story.
The next day the public addresses were made, Imelda did the whole song and dance of how we, the clerics, were the earthly hands of god, and how everything we did was for the people. It all sounded cheap and hollow to me.
I didn’t fight with anyone at breakfast, so there was no reason for Sunny to chase after Sawyer. It meant they were both sitting right beside me for the speeches, in the row farthest from the stage.
The bombs might be gone, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
The speeches ended in a round of applause, rather than the sound of an explosion. When everyone started filing out, I stayed in my seat, staring up at the stage.
Nothing happened.
Cade stayed next to me as Prescott and Sunny got up, drifting apart from each other to speak to other people they knew. Sawyer tailed my sister, wanting to soak in the last minutes of the convention while they lasted. The last time Prescott and Sunny had been side by side he’d put his hands on her and snuffed out the glow inside that made her Sunny.
Part of me hated him for it.
It wouldn’t happen now, not like that, and he had done it to ease her suffering. Nothing about what Prescott had done in that alternate version of today was bad or wrong, and yet I hated him. The ember of my bitterness burned in my chest. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to let it go. He was death, and could sense death’s presence like I could sense rain. Had he known what was going to happen to Sunny? Had he kept quiet, even though he knew it would destroy me?
“You’re still being weird, you know,” Cade observed.
I yearned for him in a way I didn’t know possible. The previous night, when I hadn’t gone to the hospital, I had waited in my room for him until dawn. I had hoped in ways that defied reason that he would know how badly I wanted him to come and would show up without an explanation of why, simply because he knew it was what I needed.
He never came.
I had never risked myself, so he had no reason to be mad at me for it. The fire my brush with death had lit inside him never sparked. So he played it safe, and our chance was gone.
I’d fallen asleep waiting for him and woken up as alone as ever.
The crew had moved in to disassemble the stage now that the public-facing part of the convention was over. I tried not to picture the collapsing scaffolding and how it had pinned so many in its metal husk, including Sunny.
It was over. That future was dead.
Taking a risk, I reached over and took Cade’s hand, squeezing it firmly. “I’m okay.”
He didn’t immediately recoil and instead traced his thumb over my knuckles, moving with such slow, practiced gestures I felt
sure he remembered what had happened between us.
