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Iwantthat.
To disappear.
To be with Dahlia in that vast nothingness.
“We have to do something,” Lenore goes on. “I know how hard this is for you, but we have to do something about her…” she trails off, unable to finish her sentence. Unable to say the word “body.”
“There will be people looking for her,” she adds, with urgency in her voice now. “Friends, family, the school will notice she’s missing. We have to cover this up.”
I give my head a shake. It feels like the most energy I can spare. “She has no family.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure that wasn’t a lie—”
“She has no family,” I repeat, my words sharper now. I stare at her hard enough that she flinches and moves back. “That wasn’t a lie. You heard her yourself. Her parents were killed. By this, thisBellamy. There was no one else in her life. I knew Dahlia, I knew everything about her except that she was a witch. She wasn’t lying. She had no one.”
But, briefly, she had me.
Lenore presses her lips together for a moment, thinking. “Okay. I believe you. But I also know witches. Valtu, she was sent here to kill you. She wasn’t alone in this. I know how they work. She knew someone else in this city. She had a friend, another witch, a contact, I guarantee it. They’re going to sound the alarm when they find out she’s missing.”
“Maybe they won’t. Maybe they figure Dahlia disappeared like so many other people have been doing in this city.”
“Which is something else we need to look into,” Lenore says.
I know there are pressing things outside of this moment, but I honestly don’t care. Let Saara and Aleksi’s demons eat the whole city. Let everyone rot. What’s the point? What’s the point of saving people in a world that allows something like this to happen?
But you have to avenge her, a voice inside my head says, and I stare at the freckles across Dahlia’s nose.You have to make sure her death wasn’t for nothing.
And yet I’m the one who killed her. Me. I did this.
How do I get vengeance on myself?
“Maybe we should go to her apartment. I take it you know where that is?” Lenore asks.
Of course. Her apartment. I never stepped inside of it. Never saw her place. I don’t know why that didn’t struck me as odd, but now I realize she was trying to protect herself, hide her true self from me. Which means there might be things there that could be useful.
“Whatever is there, we will have to remove it,” Lenore says delicately, picking up on my thoughts. “We can make it look like she left on her own accord.”
I hate this. I hate how quickly everything has changed. I can’t even mourn her properly without having to cover our tracks and make it seem like I didn’t fucking murder her.
Because that’s what I am.
A murderer.
Not that it’s anything new. I’ve murdered countless souls in my past, and I’ll murder again. But this time it’s something unforgivable.
“Valtu,” Solon says, shutting the doors to the backyard and coming inside as he slips his phone in his pocket. “I hate to be the one who pulls you away from this and you know I always mean respect, but we have to decide what to do with Dahlia, and we have to decide now. Each moment we delay puts us all in direct danger. You don’t want your life here to end.”
I give him a look that says,why not?
He exhales heavily and I know he’s trying to do what’s best and what’s right. He knows what to do—vampires are skilled at hiding the dead—and he wants to be able to do it without me getting in the way.
I look back down at Dahlia, at the dried blood splattered on her face, my blood that I had tried in vain for her to take. I need to leave her. I need to say goodbye.
I don’t know how this time.
Solon comes over and puts his hands under Dahlia’s arms and lifts her up and out of my hands. The feeling of her body, dead or not, no longer pressed against mine makes me instantly bereft. Hollowed out into nothing. Without her I am just a void.
“Where are you taking her?” I ask, my voice barely audible, my throat raw, my fingers curling over nothing into fists.
