I knew what I was, but the one person I wanted to talk to about it, I couldn’t. The one person who made sense of everything was gone.
Lucifer came up to me, and when he spoke with his normal voice, without the horror I’d heard in that room, it felt disingenuous. “I may not have always gotten along with Gran, but I respected her. I can’t say that about many people.”
“Don’t you talk about her,” I snapped, not caring that I was speaking to Lucifer, that he could do anything he wanted to me. “This is all your fault. You think I haven’t figured it out? You wanted me here, you knew what I was and you put that reaper there to draw that out of me. You did it all just so whoever was behind it would target me, right? You used me as bait, and she paid the price for your stupid plan.”
Lucifer didn’t deny any of it. How could he? I was right, and he didn’t regret any of it. The asshole was an ‘all’s well that ends well’ sort of egomaniac.
“She died protecting you. She would have been happy for that to be her ending.”
I turned away from her to face him, to find him dressed in all black other than a red rose pinned to his jacket like some funeral wear. “She shouldn’t have died at all! Don’t you get that? She wasn’t supposed to die.” I planted my hands on his chest and shoved, wanting to hurt him, to hurt something if it would just make me feel a little better.
Maybe if I did that, some of the pain inside me would dissolve.
He didn’t move, as solid as ever. “Yes, I used you, because I had to. I needed to know who was behind this before it was too late.”
“Don’t you talk to me about the greater good.”
“Why do you think Gran was here? She came to hell because she knew what needed to be done. She did nothing without knowing the consequences, but still she came. She made the choice to save you because you are the only person who can stop Lilith. Gran was a fate, able to see how choices fit together, and she decided that your life was worth more than hers.”
“Well, she was wrong,” I whispered, crossing my arms and turning my back on Lucifer.
“I’ve never known Gran to be wrong before. Do you know what she told me the first time we met? She was a child then, an outcast from her people because of her gifts. She came up to me—I could travel to Earth back then—and she knew what I was. Her eyes turned white and she said, ‘You will give up what you need for what you think you want.’ I should have heeded that warning, but I didn’t, and she was right. Thousands of years later, I lost the thing that mattered more to me than anything else just as she said I would.”
“If you’re expecting sympathy for your little sob story, you’re going to be waiting forever.”
“No. My point is that Gran knew nearly everything. She sacrificed herself to put you where you needed to be, and you lack the luxury of falling apart, Ms. Harlin. You do not get to mourn or pity yourself or lament your place.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. “Fuck you and your daughter and this whole fucking place!”
“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 with nothing.
“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 was clearly stronger 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’d been there. 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
