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“So you will allow Gran’s sacrifice to be in vain? You’ll let Gran throw away her life for nothing because of your own short-sided stubbornness?”
I shook my head, trying to see Gran past the tears in my eyes, trying to spot the woman I’d relied on so much inside that corpse. Her spirit, like all immortals, was gone, snatched away, and it left me withnothing.
“Death is always in vain,” I whispered before leaving. Lucifer could go to hell—or stay there, in this case—because I was out.
I’d followed this damn mystery. I’d done what I was supposed to, and what did I have to show for it? Lilith wasclearlystronger than I was. She’d killed Gran—the only family I had—and if Gran couldn’t stand up to her, what chance did I have?
I reached my room again, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to sleep for…well, ever. Or at least until the world ended and I didn’t have to care about anything anymore.
I lay on the bed, curling in on myself as if I deflated. How had I not realized how much Gran had meant to me? She was the only person in my life who had always been there. As it turned out, even when I was just a baby, she’dbeenthere. She was the only good constant thing, and now she was gone.
Something tugged at my senses, an all-too-familiar sensation that made me want to cry. I was so sick of everything wanting a piece of me, of everything wanting something from me.
“Go away,” I whispered to the room, to the thing that watched me. When it didn’t, I opened my eyes. The darkness, the same one I’d seen in my dreams, the one that had chased Lilith away when she’d been a shadow in my dreams stood in the room as if waiting on me.
And, for the first time, I realized exactly what it was.
A reaper.
It stared back at me, still as if trying to get me to understand something.
That felt like my whole life. The universe trying to tell me shit without coming right out and saying it. I was forever trying to keep up, trying to decode it.
Even so, the reaper stared.
I didn’t sit up, even as I snapped, “What do you want from me?”
Just as last time, it didn’t respond.
I pushed myself upright, wishing I had that other power again, that I could blast this reaper as I had the last. When I couldn’t seem to do that, I went with trying to use my sharp words to disintegrate it. “If you want something from me, how about you actuallydosomething? Say something. Stop being so goddamned cryptic!”
Even as I screamed, it didn’t move. It tilted its head, the only sign it heard me at all.
I leaned forward, bent over and carded my fingers into my hair, frustration eating away at me. “All I want is to get to see Gran again. I did what everyone wanted me to and I still lost, and now I don’t even have someone to help me figure out what to do. I can only take so much…”
The reaper came closer, doing that same thing it had before, as if leaning down to look into my eyes for a moment before it disappeared.
Great. Alone again.
As quickly as it happened, the reaper was back and beside him?
Gran…
Or, not exactly. I could see through her—a spirit? I’d never seen any type of immortal spirit.
Not that it mattered. I went forward and tried to touch her, tried to wrap my arms around her, but I passed right through her.
It made me despair again. So close, but always out of reach from what I wanted.
“Well, I didn’t figure I’d see this place again.”
I could have cried at the sound of her voice.Oh wait, I was…“I’m so sorry—”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Oh, you hush. I don’t have much time, but if I expected you to be sorry, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Why did you? I’m not ready to be on my own.”
“Of course you are. You were where I was headed my whole, very very very long life. You think I didn’t know? That I didn’t see this? Of course I did.”
