Hellie was right. If she’d just woken up when Hellie came in that night, if she’d made it home sooner, if she hadn’t fallen asleep in the theater in the first place, if she’d told Len no, they were done. If she’d kept them in Vegas, they could be there right now, staring at all the pretty glass at that big hotel, smelling the perfume and the old-cigarette smell beneath it.
Hellie pushed at the back of Alex’s head, but Alex wasn’t fighting, she was crying, because she’d failed Hellie again and again and again.
“That’s right.” Hellie flipped her over and shoved a handful of rotting leaves into Alex’s mouth. “I choked on my own vomit lying next to you. But you blamed Len for that? I let Ariel fuck me. He put some kind of electric prod inside me. He thought it was funny the way I jumped when he fucked my ass. I did it for us. I made the sacrifices, but here you are with your new friends and your new clothes, pretending you loved me.” “I did love you,”
Alex tried to say. I love you still.
“You should have died, not me. I was the one who finished school. I was the one with a real family. You let me die and you stole the life that should have been mine.”
“I’m sorry. Hellie, please. I can fix it—”
Hellie hit her, a glancing blow, not enough to really hurt, just enough to shut her up.
Her body sitting atop Alex was warm. Too warm. Her hands had been warm when Alex held them. Her cheeks had been hot when Alex touched her face.
Even though she was just wearing a T-shirt.
Even though it was night in November in New Haven.
Alex reached beneath her collar for the string of salt pearls. Gone, they’d fallen off somewhere … No, the broken wire was still there, two pearls hanging on. She seized one and crushed it in her hand, hurling the dust into the moist air.
The thing on top of her shrank back, a sharp, high mewl escaping its lips.
Its eyes were black, not that Ocean Pacific blue Alex loved so much. Because this monster wasn’t Hellie at all. Because magic never did the kind thing.
There would be no prize at the end of all your suffering. There was no reward but survival. And dead was dead.
“That’s what I thought,” Alex said, spitting leaves and dirt from her mouth, staggering as she tried to push to her feet. How many times before she didn’t get back up?
“You left me,” Hellie said, and her voice was broken.
It didn’t matter that Alex knew it wasn’t really Hellie. Nothing could stop the hurt inside her, the regret. Those were real. But this time Alex could see something else in Hellie’s eyes, not just pain but something eager. Appetite.
Demons are nourished by our base emotions. Fed by lust or love or joy.
Or misery. Or shame.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Alex said. “And I’m just standing here filling you up.”
Hellie grinned, sweet and familiar. “You always taste good to me, Alex.”
“You’re not Hellie,” Alex snarled. Her arm shot out, and the little Gray entered her with a high, wailing scream on his lips. She tasted camphor, heard the clip-clop of horse hooves, smelled rose water—his mother wore it. She shoved the demon with both hands, but it didn’t stumble backward. It leapt onto the low wall that bordered the garden, body poised.
Alex’s mind was screaming. Angel-not-angel. Hellie-not-Hellie. But it looked like her, moved with her grace.
“You can’t just leave us,” the demon said with Hellie’s voice. “We’re your family.”
And they had been. Not just Hellie, but Len too. Betcha. They were all she had for such a long time. She’d wanted to scrape it all clean, leave nothing but a hollow, just like that bomb-blast hole at the old apartment.
She’d built something new and shiny right over that empty place.
“Why do you get the second chance?” Hellie demanded, stalking toward her. “The new life?”
Alex knew she should run, but she found herself trying to form an answer, some reason it had been her and not Hellie. It’s a puzzle. It’s a trap.
But it was also true. Hellie should have been the one to survive.
Hellie’s hand slid around her throat, squeezing. It was almost a caress.
“It should have been me,” she said. “I was the one who was meant to bounce back. I was supposed to leave you behind.”
“You’re right,” Alex gasped out, feeling fresh tears on her cheeks, the will to fight slipping away from her. “It should have been you.” Alex had never belonged in this life, every day a struggle, a new opportunity for failure, a war she couldn’t win. Hellie would have breezed through it all, beautiful and brave. “It should have been you,” she repeated, the words breaking on her sobs as her fingers closed over the last of her salt pearls. But it wasn’t.
“Life is cruel. Magic is real. And I’m not ready to die.”
She slammed the pearl into the demon’s forehead, feeling it explode beneath her palm. It was as if the thing’s skull gave way, crumpling in like wet sand, dissolving into a bloody crater. The demon shrieked, its skin hissing and bubbling.
Alex ran—down the stairs, into the street. The Hutch was closer, but she bolted for Il Bastone, letting the little Gray’s strength carry her. She needed the library. She needed to feel safe again.
She fumbled with her phone and called Mercy without breaking her stride. “Where are you?”
“Home. I have your bag. You—”
“Stay there. Don’t open the door to anyone who … I don’t know …
anyone who shouldn’t be alive.”
She hung up and sprinted across Elm. Even with the Gray’s strength, her legs were already shaking, her muscles exhausted from the ordeals of the last week.
