She laughed. Even Hermes laughed. “Then we shall take our leave as soon as you ask your last request.”
She caught me off guard because I hadn’t thought of anything to ask her… but then it came to me. “My friend,” I asked hoarsely. “She was on Nix’s island the last I heard. If you could… If you-”
She held up her hand and assured me, “We will deliver both of your friends. You should be free to mourn your dead. And your other friend will need you until she heals.”
“What about the rest of the girls? His house was filled with-”
She held up her hand to stop me. Her voice held the infinite sorrow that still racked my heart. “We will take care of all of them. We will make sure they all get home.”
“Thank you,” I said through another onslaught of tears. I turned to Hermes, “Was this everything you hoped for?”
Something darkly amused danced in his amber eyes. “And then some.”
I ignored the tones of foreboding, and told him sincerely, “Thank you, Hermes. We couldn’t have done this without you.”
His only response was a soft smile and a quick nod. In the next thirty seconds he flashed back and forth until Exie’s lifeless body lay in my living room and Sloane had been safely delivered.
Hermes moved to stand next to Delphi. Before she left, she gave me one last order. “Zeus asks that you care for your sister until he sends for her. Is this acceptable to you?” I nodded because I couldn’t speak. I was too happy. I was too overwhelmed. With a smile in her voice, she said, “I thought it would be.” She walked back over to me and for the briefest moment every one of her features was clearly discernable, but then they flickered into a hazy memory I couldn’t grasp onto. “I believe this is yours, Siren. I found it on my island.”
I took something from her hand and she moved back to stand with Hermes. He put his hand on her shoulder and they were gone. It wasn’t until they disappeared that I looked down and saw that she gave me the letter my mother had written me.
I took a deep breath and looked around my apartment. It was just us. It was just those that I cared about most in this world. It was just us without any threats hanging over our heads or dangers lurking around every corner.
We were free.
All of us were free.
Ryder turned me into his body and pressed his lips to my hair. “You are the bravest, smartest, most relentless girl I have ever known. I love you, Red.”
I cried harder because for most of my life I had felt like a coward. I had felt stupid and weak. That Ryder could say those things… feel those… that was beyond words. “I love you, too,” I promised him. “I’ll love you forever.”
His lips glanced over my ear, “And what a good forever it’s going to be.”
Then we turned to face Exie and Sloane and my mother and we properly mourned our friends and our past lives and those that had died before us.
We cried and grieved until we couldn’t anymore until our bodies were spent and our souls were cleansed.
After that, we began our new lives.
Free.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Six Months Later…
“Ivy!” My mom’s voice drifted through the closed door.
“Yeah?”
“Your cell is ringing!” She pushed my door open and poked her head in. “Do you want me to get it?”
I smiled at her. “Yes, please. It’s probably Ryder.”
I listened to her take the call as I finished primping in the mirror. Although, I used that term loosely. My jeans were of the artfully torn variety. They had holes in them from my thighs to knees. My Chucks were new, but hopefully would break in soon. My cable knit sweater was a little too big, a little too hipster and a little too teal. I loved it.
I’d piled my hair on top of my head in an elaborate messy bun and I’d just finished my make-up- a few swipes of mascara and a layer of colored Chapstick.
This was the new me. This was my style. Or at least my style for today.
Tomorrow I might go for an entirely different look.
Or naked.
The best part was that it was up to me. Nobody got a second opinion. Not even Ryder.
Not that he would try to give me one. He was just happy when I wore a smile.
“Honey, it’s Mallory Hunter.” My mom held out the phone to me. “She says she has good news.” She gave me a confused look, but I had no idea what the lawyer Smith hired to advocate my case once upon a time could possibly want.
I took the phone and held it to my ear. “Hello?” I asked carefully. Mallory was from a part of my life I chose not to remember these days. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted now, after all of this time.
“Hi, Ivy,” she greeted in her usual brisk tone. “How are you?”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror again and didn’t hate it or myself. “I’m okay,” I told her. And I meant it.
I was okay.
I was more than okay.
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She seemed to need to absorb my words and weigh their honesty. Finally, and softer, she said, “I’m glad to hear that.” I waited for her to get to the point. “Anyway, I’m calling because I have some good news for you.”
“Good news?”
“Yes, it’s about your trust. I’ve been working on it for a few months now, but I’m finally starting to make headway. There were some holdups because I can’t seem to find a death certificate. Apparently there isn’t one.”
“A death certificate?” The air had been sucked from my lungs.
“For a Mr. Nix,” she explained casually. “Your trust had been transferred into his care last year, but now that you’re eighteen you should have full rights to it. Apparently he died sometime over the summer, but nobody can prove that. I’ve had to use some creative lawyering.”
I let out a nervous chuckle. “Right. Creative lawyering.”
“Anyway, the money should be available to you in a few weeks. I just wanted to call and give you the good news.”
I was so stunned that I couldn’t speak for a full minute. “Thank you,” I finally said. I had completely forgotten about my trust. Or at least given up on it. I had never expected to see that money and that had been okay with me.
Even though it was a trust set up for me by my father, by a man I had come to learn was good and funny and sometimes sweet, I had assumed that money had dissolved into Nix’s wealth and was forever out of my reach. This was a pleasant surprise.
“I’m sorry if this has come as a surprise,” she said patiently. “I was under the impression you were still in contact with Smith Porter.”
“I am. Well, kind of.”
“Right. Well, I’ll be in touch in a week or so to get the details of the account you’d like to use. I just wanted to share the good news.”
I felt a sudden surge of gratitude for this woman who had been working behind the scenes in my life for so long. This was our first victory, but it was the only one I needed from her now. Everything else had been taken care of. “Thank you, Mallory. Thank you for not giving up on it.”
She let out a low laugh. “Well, it’s quite a bit of money, Ivy. I didn’t think it… prudent to give up on it.”
I smiled at her dry tone. “I appreciate it. Thank you again.”
“I’ll call you next week, Ivy.” With that she hung up.
My mom watched me with wide eyes, “So? What was that about?”
I laughed again, this felt so weird. “My trust,” I told her. “That was the lawyer Smith hired to help me before. I guess she’s been working on getting me the money Max left me.”
“Really?” Her eyes brightened with excitement. She reached out and pulled me into a hug. “That solves your college stress.”
I hugged her back. “And your rent stress.”
I felt her sigh as it rumbled through her chest. “You’re not using your money on me. I am excited about starting this new job. Really.”
I pulled back so sh
e could see my narrowed eyes.
Her hand swatted my shoulder playfully. “You’re such a brat! I am excited. I’ve never done anything like this before. It will be good for me.” When I continued to stare at her skeptically, she finished in a humbled tone. “Honestly, Ivy, I think it will help me grow as a human. I could use some of that.”
I softened immediately and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. “I think you’re growing as a human just fine.”
Her eyes filled with tears, as they usually did when we were nice to each other. “Ryder’s waiting on you. Wear a coat.”
“Yes, mother.”
“And say goodbye to your sister before you go!”
“Like she would let me leave without saying goodbye.”
We smiled at each other and made our way to the living room. Things with my mom had improved beyond anything I had expected or hoped for over the last six months.
Without the weight of the Greek world and Nix’s constant pressure, my mother had become a completely different person… or maybe she’d become the person she truly was meant to be.
It hadn’t been easy. We’d shed a lot of tears over the last few months. She put herself in counseling as soon as we got home and between her therapist and me, she was slowly working through a lifetime of suffering.
There had been a lot of grief, a lot of toxicity and an impossible amount of self-worth issues. She blamed herself for so much. And she’d seen more than her fair share of despicable things.
I had gone to her therapist a few times too. I had a lot of guilt from Exie’s death and there had been times when I thought I would shatter from grief and residual trauma. Sometimes the weight of what I went through was crushing; sometimes it threatened to rip me into a million, unfixable pieces. But when I compared my eighteen years to my mother’s forty-plus… I couldn’t imagine how much baggage she carried.
We were both on our way to healthy, but there was a lot of work left to do.
Our relationship had been our top priority though and her relationship with Honor. It had started the day we came back home. After we’d dealt with Exie’s body and Sloane had gone home to her mother, Ava had gone to bed. Ryder had stayed with me while I opened the letter.
I wasn’t prepared for the thick pages that she’d written for me. I wasn’t prepared to see her guilt spilled on page after page, words mingled with her tears, her pretty handwriting scrawled with shaking hands and a well of regret and disappointment with herself.
She’d filled pages with two sentences written over and over and over. They were written for every day that I had been born. The paper had changed over the years and the older pages were yellowed and sometimes torn.
But for each day I had been alive, she’d written simply, “I’m so sorry. I love you.”
When Nix came for her, she knew she would die. She had hurriedly stuffed the pages into an envelope, her words ending in the middle of her sentence. The last line had said, “I’m so...”
When I showed her the letters the next day, after she’d slept over twenty-four hours, she finished it.
She had pulled me into a hug, maybe the first real hug she’d ever given me and said, “Sorry. I love you,” over and over and over… until I had said them back. Until the words I confessed to her were true.
Since then we’d spent every day trying to be the mother and daughter we had never been before.
We had been given a second chance. Neither of us was going to take that for granted.
Now, as I prepared to go off to college, she’d found a job at a bank and hoped to take control of her life for the very first time.
And for the very first time in my life, I was proud of her.
I found Honor lounging on the couch, flipping through channels listlessly. She looked up at us as we came into the room and grinned. She wore baggy sweats and her hair had been piled on top of her head in what could only be described as a knot, but she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
“Don’t leave me!” she whined dramatically.
“I would invite you to come, but…” I waved at her and laughed.
“Hey! I thought we didn’t care about our appearance anymore.” She pushed up into sitting and pulled her knees to her chest.
I smiled at her. “We care. Just enough to not look like a complete slob.”
She threw a pillow at my face and stuck her tongue out at me. “Fine, I didn’t want to go with you anyway.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Do you really want to go with me?”
She wrinkled her cute nose. “No,” she huffed. “Mom and I have an exciting night planned. You and Ryder are boring in comparison.”
My mom walked into the room with a huge bowl of popcorn in her arms and an industrial-sized box of Milk Duds tucked under her elbow.
I couldn’t help but smile. “Dinner?”
She looked at my sister, “She’s a growing girl. We need to hit all of the food groups.”
“All of them?”
She smiled sheepishly, “Well, the important ones.”
Honor had melted into our lives seamlessly. I didn’t know what I would have done without that little girl. She didn’t hold a grudge against my mom or the Greek life. So when things got awkward and difficult between my mom and me, she had been there to smooth things over and bring us back to our new normal.
She was as beautiful and charming as ever. And Smith had been working with her via her new cell phone to use her other powers to supersede her annoying Siren ones. Whatever Smith told her had been working. She started middle school in the fall and had friends- real friends. Normal friends. She was gorgeous, funny and sweet and somehow managed to stay out of trouble.
So basically, she was everything I wasn’t.
I loved her for it.
“Well, you girls enjoy your movie night,” I told them.
“Real Housewives,” Honor clarified. “Orange County.”
“Oh, god,” I groaned.
“What? They’re crazier than I ever was.” My mom plopped onto the couch next to Honor and both of them dug into the popcorn and turned their attention to the TV.
I smiled and watched them for a minute. I had lived my entire life without believing I could have this, a family, a family that loved each other. I hadn’t even thought it was possible. And yet here we were.
We weren’t perfect. And we had a long way to go. But we had each other and I was learning that made everything easier.
My mom waved a hand over her shoulder, “Go, Ivy! We’ll be here when you get back.” She looked back at me with twinkling eyes. “Actually, could you wake us up when you get home? Last time I had Honor’s foot in my face the whole night. I’d like to avoid that if I can.”
Honor proceeded to shove her foot in my mom’s nose and knocked some popcorn on the floor. Both of them giggled uncontrollably.
“Absolutely,” I laughed too. “Nobody wants to sleep with that smelly thing.”
She threw popcorn at me while I grabbed my purse and ducked out the door.
I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked to the elevator and took it to the lobby. I sucked in a sharp breath when I stepped outside into the frigid January evening air. Two feet of snow lined the sidewalk as I carefully picked my way over ice covered sidewalks and across the street to my favorite place of all time.
Delice.
The best coffee shop in the world.
I hunched my shoulders and hurried inside. I rubbed my hands together as I glanced around, searching for my friends.
I’d forgotten a coat, but it was toasty in here and I was glad I didn’t have to mess with it.
“The Ginga Ninja!” Phoenix’s voice boomed through the quiet coffee shop.
My constant smile widened until it stretched from ear to ear. I squeezed between tables until I reached the back of the room where he sat with Sloane and Ryder. I waved at them happily until Ryder pulled me down next to him.
He handed me a large Caramel Macchiato and I fell in love with h
im all over again.
“Hey,” he murmured, nuzzling my ear with his nose.
“Hey.”
“You owe me for that drink.”
A warm flush trickled through my body and I squirmed in my seat.
“Oh, stop you two!” Sloane groaned. “I cannot take a whole night of you two groping each other!”
Ryder pulled back and chuckled in his smoky voice. “Fine,” he conceded. “We’ll save the groping for later.”
“That’s all I ask.” She gave me a sideways glance and tried not to laugh.
More warmth flooded my chest. Sloane’s smiles were few and far between these days. It was good to see her happy and teasing.
She’d had a really rough time since getting back. Unlike Ava, Thalia wasn’t interested in getting professional help. She’d turned to alcohol to take away her guilt and pain. Sloane had so much of her own sorrow and regret to deal with that her home life had only been a catalyst to more hurt.
Thankfully, we were starting our freshman year of college in another week. We were coming in second semester, since both of us had to finish our senior year of high school first. But we were going to room together and I couldn’t be more excited.
We were also going to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where Phoenix and Ryder had been enrolled since August.
The bad news was that I had decided to make something of my life and so I had at least six years of school in my future. I wanted to be a psychologist. I wanted to help teens recover from sexual and physical abuse. I knew I had a lot to offer, but it would take me so long to get there. Ugh.
The good news was that the band didn’t have to break up. Ryder got to continue his dream of becoming a rock star and I got to stand by his side the whole time.
“When are you ladies moving?” Phoenix asked around a huge bite of scone.
“Next weekend,” I told him.
He swallowed and gulped some strawberry smoothie before asking, “You’re on campus?”
“Yes,” Sloane answered.
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
Sloane turned to me with her dark eyebrows raised. There was some light in her pretty brown eyes, but not enough. I couldn’t get her out of her mom’s house soon enough.