Black Spring

“Yes, and don’t you think you should take that as a hint to run as fast as you can away from here?” I said. “You saw what happened to Chloe. That could have just as easily been you. Why can’t you appreciate that?”

“I do,” he said, and he did appear sincere. “I know it could have been me. But it’s because it wasn’t me, because I saw it happen, that I need to warn everyone else. I don’t want anyone else to witness that.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said, and walked to the door of the storage area.

Jack started to follow me. I held up one hand, using my power to keep him in place.

“No, you stay here for now,” I said. “Until I figure out what to do with you.”

“You can’t do that,” he said angrily. “You have no right to keep me here.”

“I have every right,” I said. “I have people to protect, too. And I don’t need curiosity seekers hanging around the house getting eaten up by the bad things that come looking for me.”

I shut the door and put a spell around it to keep it sealed. Then I released the hold on Jack. A second later he was pounding on the door, yelling for me to let him out.

8

“He’d better not keep that up all night, or Daharan will come down here and gag him,” I said to myself.

I felt a little twinge of sick worry in my stomach as I slowly climbed the steps. Where was Daharan? If he had been at home, as he always was, the shifter wouldn’t have been able to kill Chloe or Stock. He might have even been able to capture the creature. We could be on our way to confront its master right this minute.

Instead I had a slaughtered friend in my storage room, and a trio of dogs turned to a duo. I didn’t feel safe in my own house, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I pushed open the kitchen door slowly. Nathaniel stood by the refrigerator. Jude was directly opposite him, leaning against the counter. Both of them looked helpless. Beezle perched next to the coffeemaker, his eyes sad. I couldn’t see Samiel.

I moved around Jude and found Samiel collapsed on the ground, his arms around his knees, his face buried in his arms. I waved the rest of them out of the room. They went, looking relieved. I approached Samiel cautiously. I didn’t know what he would think, or say. I didn’t know if he would blame me.

He looked up as I crouched down beside him. His beautiful green eyes were red with grief, and his face was wet with tears.

“Samiel,” I said.

I thought I knew. I thought I understood. But I didn’t.

“Understood what?” I said, confused. I’d expected him to rail at me, to shout at me, to hold me responsible for Chloe’s death.

I thought I understood what you felt when Gabriel died. I was sad and grieving, too. But it’s not like this. I didn’t know it was like having your heart and your lungs ripped out.

“Yes, that’s what it’s like,” I said, and there I was again, in that memory that looped forever, the memory that never left me even when I wanted it to.

Hot blood and cold snow and dead eyes, eyes that loved me once and were gone now.

I took a deep shuddering breath, drawing myself back to the present. I could drown there in that memory still, under the water of my grief.

“That’s what it’s like,” I repeated. “But you keep breathing. Your heart keeps beating. And you live.”

I don’t know if I want to live with this.

“You have to,” I said. “Where she has gone you cannot follow.”

But you can. You went into the land of the dead. You took Evangeline’s soul out and returned it to Lucifer. You could do that for Chloe.

I shook my head at him. “You know that what I did was unnatural, and only because I was forced to. Once something is dead, it should stay dead. That’s the natural order of things. Anyway, you didn’t see Evangeline when I brought her back.”

My many-greats-grandmother had been forced to pay a price to the universe for defying death. When she had returned to her body, both her eyes and her arm had been missing. And I honestly wasn’t sure that her brains were all there, either. Of course, it was hard to tell with Evangeline. She had been somewhat unhinged to begin with.

I don’t care what she looks like. I just want her back.

“I know,” I said, touching my chest with my hand, the place where my heart was always bruised, never completely whole. “I know. But I saw Gabriel in the land of the dead before I returned here from that place Puck sent me. And I didn’t bring him back. I didn’t bring him back because it isn’t right. He’s dead; Chloe’s dead. Our burden is to live, to go on without them.”