I smiled. It felt like the necks of broken beer bottles were twisting in my chest and arms where I was touching her, and someone was holding a cigarette to every square inch of my skin. Did I really used to wonder what it would feel like to be burned like this?
Tiffani saw me smiling. She didn’t roll her eyes, but I knew she wanted to.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Inside.”
“Yeah.”
She started crying. “You shouldn’t be here. You were supposed to be there. Safe. Happy. Why are you here?”
“You know why.” The words grated across my throat, just barely enough air to force them out of my mouth, but I knew she heard them.
She didn’t say anything else for a really long time. I tried to keep track of how many cells we’d passed, but I couldn’t focus on that. Putting one foot in front of the other was all I could handle. It was too dark to see far ahead, but I thought we were making progress.
After a while, Tiff said, “Can’t get out. Not with me.”
But I was pretty sure I could.
“If—” I choked on a wave of acid vomit, but managed not to throw up on her. “He sent me after you. If He sent me, it’s possible.”
Tough
When I got home, I laid Scout down on the couch, sat on the coffee table, and waited for Harper. I could hear her upstairs, breathing. Her heart wasn’t beating right. It wouldn’t keep a rhythm. Maybe because it was broken. Or maybe because she was blacked out.
The sun came up, but the darkness stayed. It looked like the eclipse I’d seen when I was in kindergarten, with a weird half-light like someone had poured blood over the surface of the sun. I waited for the weird light to go away, but it didn’t, even when the sun was full up.
That’s it? The question I had asked Sissy in the last dream I would ever have.
Yep, that was it.
Harper’s feet hit heavy in the upstairs hallway, like she was still drunk and trying to stay upright. She made it to the bathroom without falling down.
That’d been me not that long ago. Three days ago? Four? It felt like a million years.
The toilet flushed and then the shower came on. The shower shut off. I could hear Harper drying herself off and getting dressed. Then she went back down the hall to her room. Her mattress springs creaked. A few minutes later, she started sobbing.
It was late afternoon by the time Harper got back out of bed. She stopped off at the bathroom again, then started downstairs. I hadn’t moved off the coffee table all day. When I heard Harper on the stairs, I put Scout’s hands together on her stomach and brushed some hair off her face.
Then I stood up and got out of the way so Harper could see.
Harper stopped halfway down the stairs. She sat down, hard.
“She’s asleep.”
I didn’t bother trying to argue. Harper knew.
“Dammit, Tough, Scout is asleep.”
I went over to the stairs and started up. Harper met me on the second step. Threw her arms around my shoulders and buried her face in my neck. Her body bucked with the sobs.
“Tough,” Harper said. It almost sounded like she was asking me a question. Asking me to fix it, asking me why, what happened, what do we do now, how could me and her still be alive with everyone we loved dead? “She was my baby sister, Tough.”
I squeezed her tighter. I was crying, too.
“I should’ve protected her. I should’ve got her out of this fucking town.”
I shook my head, but Harper kept talking about all the things she should’ve done. I let her run herself out. After a while, she stopped talking and just cried.
When she was done with the worst of it, she let go of me, went to the coffee table, and sat facing her sister’s body.
It occurred to me that I’d sat in that spot plenty of times before—Mom, Dad, Sissy, Ryder, Colt—and waited for someone to tell me what to do next. The thing you eventually figure out is nobody knows what to do next.
Harper bowed her head and folded her hands.
I couldn’t watch this. It didn’t feel right going upstairs like I still lived here, though, so I went into the kitchen.
“Oh, God, I don’t want to be a part of this.” Harper’s broken whisper made it all the way to where I was standing.
I went to the window and pressed my forehead to the glass, staring out at our junky little backyard. Hearing His name didn’t knock me on my ass anymore, but it sure as hell still tore my soul up.
It’ll get easier, Tiffani had said.
Yeah, well, it’s not right now, so don’t say it.
You think you’re cold now?
Well, now I was. All the way through.
I hoped whatever Scout had traded for the crow magic wasn’t eternal. She’d fucked up on Earth, been on her way to becoming just as shitty as me, but I hoped she hadn’t got all the way there before she died.
The linoleum in the hallway crackled under Harper’s feet. She stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“All I ever wanted was to marry Jax and live happily ever after. I just wanted to be left alone so we could be happy.”
I didn’t think I could look at her, so I didn’t turn around.
“If we’d had to live here forever and he’d had to work for the Council for the rest of his life and I had to let Logan drink off me until I was too old and gross for him, I would’ve been okay with that as long as me and Jax could’ve been together. I would’ve
