The hard part was yet to come.
“You’re thinking about all of them too, aren’t you?” I heard the soft sound of Scott’s voice at my shoulder. I could feel his presence behind me, staring at the grave in solemn stillness. “The ones we’ve watched slip away before us.”
“It’s been a deadly year,” I said. “I was thinking about the body count since I left my house.” I didn’t turn. “You remember. Your aunt and uncle were in there.”
“I don’t blame you for that, you know,” he said quickly. A little too quickly.
“Sure you don’t,” I said, voice flat. “What about Kat?”
“Like I said before, that was all Clary, and you settled his hash, so ...”
I glanced back at him. “You don’t really think Clary deserved to die over that, do you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of people who haven’t deserved to die since we started this thing, but they’re dead just the same. Guys like Sovereign don’t seem to care about ‘deserve,’ so why should I waste a lot of time thinking about it?”
I inclined my head as I looked back on the open grave. A backhoe in the distance started up, and I knew that he’d be heading this way, coming over here to start filling the graves that were lying open in front of me, the gaping holes in the earth that should still have been full, grass growing atop them. “Sovereign,” I said quietly. “I’ve never even met the man and I hate him.”
“Kinda gives you all the more reason to stick a thumb in his eye when you get a chance, huh?” Scott wasn’t exactly smiling when I turned to him, but there was a grim satisfaction in the way he said it.
“Let’s hope we get the chance,” I said, tugging on the skirt I was wearing. It was black and fell below the knee, totally uncharacteristic of me and not something I’d wear anywhere but to a funeral. “I don’t want to think that anyone’s died in vain.”
“There’s definitely a Wrath of Khan line to be quoted here,” he said as I fell in next to him, walking back toward where his car waited. “These guys ... they may actually have bought us a chance. Maybe.”
“I love how equivocal you are about that.”
“We’ve got the might of the meta world against us,” Scott said with a shrug. “I think a strong ‘maybe’ is a hell of a lot more chance than we had last week. I’ll take it.”
I nodded as we walked along. Birds chirped in the trees as a soft breeze rustled the boughs. I hated them for their cheery disposition. “It’s all we’re gonna get, I know that much. One shot. After that, it’s all bound to come raining down on us.”
Scott gave me a bitter smile. “Straight to the end, huh? At least it’ll be over with.”
“I was kind of hoping to drag it on a little longer,” I said. “Got a few things I’d like to do before I check out of this life.” I stopped at the door to his car and looked back over the sunny graveyard. “I’m not ready to end up in a place like this. Not yet.”
Scott smiled. “Too young to die, huh?”
I felt any trace of emotion frost over, like the ground in winter. “Too many people left to send before me.”
Chapter 33
My mother’s helicopter touched down on the helipad that I’d stood on what felt like a thousand times. She slid the door to the Black Hawk open and was the first to get out, Reed, Karthik and Kurt a few steps behind her. Kurt walked with a little bit of a limp, as if he’d had his knees taken out from beneath him. I couldn’t recall him walking like that when he left, so I nodded to him as my mother approached me. The day was a little more overcast. It would have been better funeral weather.
“Oh, him?” My mother dipped her head in Kurt’s direction. “He slipped getting out of the van when we were going in to the Omega safehouse. He’s fine.”
I nodded to her as the rotors began to spin down on the helicopter. It was loud out on the helipad, loud enough that I was content to wait until things had quieted slightly before I spoke again. I didn’t get a chance to say anything else before Reed stepped up, enfolding me in his arms in a tight hug that I reciprocated.
When he pulled away, he said with a ragged breath filled with emotion, “I hope you kept yourself far out of the way of that craziness, but I know you didn’t.”
I gave him a tight smile, but there was no joy in it. “I didn’t have anyone else to delegate to taking back the dorms. It was me or nobody.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be possible for you to let it be nobody, huh?”