I don’t think I can look her in the eyes.
Not without feeling as if I should be doing something more. Anything that will help break this curse and keep her from dying.
Gavin won’t survive it.
“She’s ready,” Lukah says a moment later, pulling the door open and stepping aside for us to enter.
I take in a deep breath, tucking away each and every emotion I’m feeling into their coordinated boxes in my heart. There’s no time to feel… to think… only to be here, for her. For Gavin.
Chrissa runs into Jaxen’s arms the moment we cross the threshold. “Where have you been?” she asks, her singsong voice as high and as happy as ever.
“Going crazy! How about you?” he asks, ruffling his hands through her hair.
She shoves his hand off, laughing, and then quiets the moment Evangeline steps around the corner.
It’s as if ice has settled over the room. Like a frozen tundra we’ll have to cross in order to see Gavin and Cassie again.
Jezi takes the first step toward her, her hands ringing together in front of her and her eyes filled with misted sadness.
“I must be frank with you all,” Evangeline says, her face as firmly held together as always. Never giving too much away. Never showing too many emotions. “She doesn’t have much time left.”
Jezi makes a choking sound. Finds her voice somehow. “But there has to be another way. You survived it.”
Evangeline’s face never moves. “There’s no other way. Not unless one of them dies or makes a deal with a demon, and we all know that is just as awful as death. If not worse.”
“And Gavin?” Jaxen asks, holding tighter to my hand.
Evangeline raises her eyebrows, and then steps aside.
Jezi looks back to Jaxen, and I let go of his hand. “She needs you for this,” I say to his mind, urging him forward.
“I need you,” he replies.
“I’m right behind you.”
He glances back at Jezi, and then they walk together down the hall, with Weldon and me following behind.
“That was nice of you,” Weldon says to my mind.
“I have my moments.”
I suck in a gasp when Jaxen and Jezi clear the doorway, allowing us to see in. Cassie looks nothing like the bright, starry-eyed redhead I remember. Her grayish skin is shrink-wrapped around her bones. Her eyes are stuck somewhere on the ceiling. Even her hair has dulled in color.
Gavin’s holding her hand, staring down at her as we crowd around the bed. He doesn’t take his eyes away from her, and it feels like my heart has been thrown into a shredder. Like my brain’s being stepped on by a giant.
You don’t believe things until you actually see them for yourself. Don’t truly understand pain until you’re staring right at it, watching it happen in front of you.
“She’s been like this since she collapsed last night,” Gavin says, his voice raw and dark. “I can’t… I can’t get her to look at me.”
Jaxen makes his way to Gavin and grips his shoulder tight, his eyes swimming in tears.
Jezi takes Cassie’s hand in hers. “Evangeline said she’s comfortable.”
Gavin blinks as if what she said made no sense. “Comfortable?”
Jezi bites her lip as tears slip down her cheeks.
“We’re going to keep trying, brother. As soon as Mack gives the word, we’ll be getting rid of the Exanimator, and then Mourdyn. Once he’s gone, she’ll be okay.”
Gavin stiffens. Pulls his gaze away from Cassie. “Okay? She’s dying, Jaxen. Look at her!”
I feel like the world is pressing in on all of us. Like light has been sucked out of the room. I should say something, but what can I say?
Gavin looks up at us through red-rimmed eyes. “I went to Mack. Begged for him to let us start our mission to prevent this from happening, and do you know what he had the nerve to tell me?”
His eyes land on me, and I feel like I’m being shot with blame.
“He said I can survive this. That I can still be a good hunter, even without my powers. He said his duties lie with you and making sure you have everything you need when the time comes for you to face the Exanimator.”
“Gavin, I—”
His voice rises. “You what, Faye? You’re going to make this right? You’re going to break this curse? Even if you went down there, then what?”
“Don’t blame her!” Jaxen say, letting go of Gavin’s shoulder.
“I’m not,” Gavin corrects him, his sorrowful gaze slicing through all our hearts. “She didn’t put this curse on the family. She didn’t tell me to love Cassie when I should have been more like you. I’m killing her. Against her will, no less.”
His head hangs lower, and I feel my body draining off all hope until I’m left feeling so empty I fear I might float away.
He looks back at her, his eyebrows creased together in heartache. “I know what I need to do.”
“No.” It’s Weldon who speaks this time.
“I can’t let her die because of me,” Gavin says, looking up at us with such longing for us to understand. For us to have some form of words that can fix this.
“And you also can’t let her live knowing you made a deal that will make you end up like Dad,” Jaxen says, taking the floor. “What kind of life will that be for Cassie? Without magic? Without you?”
“It would be a life where Cassie still existed because without her, there is no me. Without her, I’m nothing.”
My shoulders won’t stop shaking, and my hands won’t stop clenching as Jaxen’s gaze lands on the side of my face. Heat pulses behind my eyes and my skin as a fresh batch of tears threaten to spill. We’re all standing in this pit of sadness, of desperation, like quicksand. All reaching at the sides for a vine of hope to pull on, but there aren’t any for us to grab.
Gloom shrouds the room around us in an inky veil we can’t escape. Loss is crimped into the features of all of my friends I have come to know as family. It weighs heavy on all of us, like cinder blocks laid against our chest, slowing our heartbeats. It replaces the oxygen with a staleness of death.
I can still recall when Cassie first introduced me to the world of witchcraft, and it makes my stomach seize up in knots. This is the hard part—when your mind rewinds every moment you experience with a person who’s slipping fast. When your heart pumps out everything you felt with that person, only it’s stained with a shade of grief you fear will never be erased.
She was my friend when no one else wanted to be. She spoke the truth. Encouraged me to pursue Jaxen even when Jezi didn’t agree. She was like the big sister to everyone, who always had a joke to spare.
And now she’s lying here, lost to us as Evangeline does her best to revive her with herbal remedies and magic.
I don’t think any of us have ever felt this hopeless. This lost as we stand around her bed and pray for a miracle.
Gavin grabs Cassie’s hand again and rests his forehead on them, his back shuddering as he cries. Jaxen slides a chair next to him and holds him.
He won’t go through this alone. Neither will Cassie, because, no matter what, we have each other’s backs.
Until our last breath.
IT RAINS ON THE DAY of Cassie’s death.
It doesn’t take but two days for the curse to claim Cassie’s body. For everything we had together to come crumbling down around us like a rotted city. It was a phone call no one ever wants to receive, but it came at three in the morning. The moment it did, my entire body seized up right alongside of Jaxen. It’s like my brain and my lungs and my heart had a secret meeting and all decided not to work for me anymore. We were paralyzed as Evangeline delivered the news on the screen next to our bed, and I wanted to tell her to stop. To lie to us instead. To go back and fix this because Cassie surely couldn’t be dead.
She just can’t be.
She’s strong and smart and pure. She’s whole and good and friendly.
And Gavin loves her with a blinding passion only a rare few
ever experience. He loves her to the very depth of his soul, and he wouldn’t let this happen. He wouldn’t… he wouldn’t survive this.
But she didn’t spare us with any lies. She asked us to be strong. To be there for Gavin the way he’d need us to be. When her face vanishes on the screen, I grab my pillow and scream and scream into it until my vocal chords are raw. Until I can’t see through the blurry haze blinding my eyes.
Until Jaxen tucks his head in my lap and unleashes his own set of tears.
You’d think after experiencing so much death, you’d become accustomed to the hollow feeling left behind in your soul. The gut-wrenching sickness that makes you want to scream into the sky. But it never gets easier.
And, when morning comes, we all stand around her coffin as rain soaks our clothes until they’re plastered to our skin. Until our bones are rattling as Seamus gives a parting speech that I don’t think any of us truly hear. Not through the deafening heartache pounding in our ears.
I want to hurt Garret, Damien, Toby, and Lukah as they lower her coffin into the ground, surrounded by flowers and different incense that’s supposed to help send her spirit to rest. Want to push them off and pull her back up. Throw open the coffin and work a spell that will bring her back to all of us. And, I think I might be doing it. I see myself doing it, and it scares me because I can’t tell reality from pain. Can’t tell if my feet are cemented or running. All I feel is the overwhelming need to kill. To pound my fist again and again into the earth until it finally opens just enough so I can find Mourdyn and rip his head clean off his shoulders. Until I can find death and kill him myself because I hate him.
I hate how he takes and takes and takes from us.
My eyes shift away from the coffin the minute I can no longer see it. The second the earth swallows it whole. Jaxen stands so firm next to Gavin, trying to be the best rock he can be. Melancholy has painted his face in a pale shade of white.
“She’s at peace now,” Evangeline says when most of her pack and a few Elites who knew Cassie start to leave. When only our little group is left staring at the freshly covered mound of dirt inside the hallowed grounds of the graveyard near the statues of the Divine.
Evangeline’s words strike Gavin like an arrow through the heart. For the first time in days, he looks up. Looks at her in a mixture of bitterness and rage. Of guilt and anguish. Then his face forms into a frown as his fists ball at his sides. As his lips peel back over his teeth and he lets out the most heart-wrenching, earsplitting sound of agony I think I’ve ever heard. He’s gasping for air. Pulling at Jaxen’s arms and clothes as a manic wildness fills his eyes. He doubles over, trying to hold himself together as his entire world shatters around him. Around us.
I can only stare. Can only hold my hand over my mouth to hold in my own screams as his tears rip through my soul. My shoulders buckle as I try to hang onto my reserve. As I try to keep from breaking in half and crumbling to a thousand pieces at the base of her burial spot.
Jezi looks away, her eyes swollen and draining as fast as the clouds above us. Chrissa holds onto Evangeline tighter, staring at Gavin with such innocent sadness. Weldon’s throat bobs up and down, holding back his tears as he watches through red-rimmed eyes. I pray this pain will subside. That we can find our way out of this never-ending circle of loss.
But the waves keep coming. Keep knocking us back down every time we find our footing.
Jaxen grabs Gavin and holds him together as Gavin falls to his knees. As his tears finally find their outlet, pouring into Cassie’s grave. And I want to hug Jaxen. Hold him together as he keeps Gavin from digging his way back to Cassie’s coffin.
Things will never be the same now. Even if we win the war, our group will forever be changed. The sky won’t be as bright as it used to. Possibilities won’t feel as full as they once did because little pieces of our heart have been shaved off and buried along with all who have lost their lives. With my mother, Jonathon, and Cassie. With Sterling’s wife Ava, Sarabeth, Joanna, and Arianna. With all the many Night Watchmen who fought against the Darkyns to spare another day for the rest of the Coven.
To spare another day for me.
I hold my hand over my forearm, whispering the spell I wrote weeks ago, and welcome the sharp pain searing up my arm as Cassie’s name is added to the list of those I will avenge. When I pull my jacket back, the skin is pink around her freshly added name, and memories sneak down the hill of my cheek and onto the contour of my lips.
Gavin lets out a shuddering cry, and I reflexively bend down to him and Jaxen, taking Gavin’s hand in mine and pulling it against my heart. I’m begging my bones to stay steady. To allow me to get out what I need to say as every nerve threatens to come unglued.
“We can get through this together, Gavin. I promise.”
I think I say this out loud, but I’m not so sure because my lips feel numb and my mind has expired. My body seizes up in cramps as my knees knock together and a fresh batch of tears fall into my moving mouth. I can’t hear what I’m saying to him. Everything is jumbling together as he makes these sad, whimpering sounds with his hands buried beneath the soil. As he lets go of Jaxen and lays against the ground, holding onto her final resting place with hard, rasping breaths.
Weldon pulls me to stand. Tells me to give them some time to mourn as a family as he walks me away from the grave, toward the city where I don’t want to go.
I think about stopping him. About turning back and mourning right alongside of Jaxen, Evangeline, Jezi, and Gavin, but, then again, I am the outsider. The one who could have prevented this if only I had stopped Clara and Bael while I was down there. If only I had found the machine, woken Mourdyn, and killed him before any more of this got out of hand.
I don’t deserve to mourn with them.
“SIT. DRINK.”
Weldon pulls a bar stool out inside a small bar hidden behind a Wiccan shop just past the correctional facility. The place is quiet and the air holds an empty feeling to it. Darkyn masks line the walls with small, bronze plaques inscribed with dates underneath them. I can’t pull my eyes from them. From the hollow eyes and the long beaks. From the memories that swarm my brain.
“We started hanging them the day those blasted heathens decided to show their faces.”
I spin around in my seat to find a man behind the bar, leaning forward on his elbows. He points to the masks with his scarred chin. “Those local to this bar bring in the masks of every Darkyn they kill. It’s homage to all the brethren we’ve lost.”
“I’d like to add a few masks myself,” Weldon says, looking at them over his shoulder.
“Name’s Terry. What can I get you?” the bartender asks. His hair is peppered with silver and black strands kept clean and short to his head. His face is a facet of scars in every color and thickness. Like claws had swiped again and again at his face, digging at his death. He notices me looking and says, “Werewolves got a hold of me back when I used to hunt. Took my sight in this eye.” He points to his right eye. “And my partner as well. Goddess rest her soul.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, looking away from him. Thoughts knocking into one another like a round of bumper cars.
“I’ll have a double scotch. Hold the rocks, and a—” Weldon stops and looks at me. I think he might say something smart. Something antagonizing, but then he looks closely at me, running a hand up the back of his neck. “Just get her the same.”
I blow out a breath. There’s a heavy silence between us as the bartender turns and pulls the glasses out to make our drinks. As gloom and retribution sets in like a dark fog around the edges of our minds.
“When I lost Claire, I thought I was going to die.”
I bite the inside of my cheek as Weldon scoots his chair closer to me, opening himself up as the bartender slides our drinks in front of us and walks away. Weldon’s eyes focus on a distant spot into another time I can’t see.
“I think I was past insane. Past the point of ever returning to normalcy. I drank mys
elf stupid. Buried myself in torture by trying to find ways into the Underground where I wouldn’t be sensed. Ways that would bring me closer to Claire so I could rescue her. It was foolish of me. Foolish to cling to hope like that because I knew I wouldn’t find her. The same way Mack couldn’t find me, and I couldn’t find him.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, taking a small sip of the scotch. Fire lights through my insides.
He pulls his drink closer to him and settles in. “When a deal is made with a demon… especially with Bael, there’s no going back. There’s no second chance. Even if I stood five feet in front of her, I wouldn’t be able to see her. Those who are kept in the Underground by deals are ghosts. It’s part of the torture. You aren’t spoken to. You aren’t heard. You’re just alone. That’s part of the punishment… meant to drive you insane.”
My mouth falls open as my heart shatters. I reach for his hand, huddling close to him.
“But I’m here, right?” he says, offering a small, sad smile. His voice clotted with emotion. “Even with knowing this. With knowing what she could be going through, I’m still moving. I’m still functioning and fighting my way back to her.” He takes in a tight, bracing breath, and then releases it. “Gavin will survive this… he just won’t be the same Gavin.”
“Are any of us the same?” I ask, my voice sounding so distant.
He downs the rest of his glass and holds his finger up to the bartender for another. “I suppose not, mouse. That’s the trouble with being a Night Watchmen.”
“What?”
“The probability of death is imminent. It’s just the when and the where we wait for.”
I have to look away from him. Have to down the rest of my glass, nearly gagging from the awful burn tearing through my esophagus.
The bartender sets another down in front of Weldon and turns back to wiping glasses. Heat has settled into my limbs and fogged up my brain. I look out the window of the bar, watching the wind blowing papers through the empty streets. Watching the rain batter against the ground in large drops.