With Jace’s abrupt departure, grief flooded me, settling into place like sand sinking through water, anchoring me to the ground where I stood. Tears flooded my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks, burning my skin through the deep winter chill. My chest tightened unbearably, and I hugged myself to ease a numbing cold originating from within me, rather than from the January freeze.
Dr. Carver put one arm around my mother and fell in line behind my father, guiding her toward the house with Owen padding at his side, Dan bringing up the rear. I watched the door close behind them, but couldn’t make myself follow.
Instead, I backed away from the main house, my head shaking slowly in denial. The sharp points of several holly leaves pricked my bare back, and distantly I realized I’d reached the side of the guesthouse. I sank to my knees, the grass bitterly cold on my naked legs, the holly catching in my hair.
The cold soaked into me as great, hiccuping sobs shook my entire body. I gasped for breath that seemed to freeze in my throat, to numb my lungs. My thoughts took no form. There was only a massive, horrible storm of pain and sorrow, slamming into me over and over again with an almost physical force. Grief threatened to drown me, and I made no effort to stop it.
“Faythe…” I looked up slowly to see Dr. Carver through my own tear-soaked lashes. “Are you ready to go inside?”
“Not yet.” I sniffed. “I need just one more minute.” A minute to get myself together. To exorcise the worst of the tears, so I could rally my family instead of making them cry harder.
“Well then, let’s at least get you dressed before you freeze.” The doc knelt to grab my clothes from the ground where I’d dropped them when I Shifted, then hauled me up by both arms. He was right. Tears had formed little ice crystals on my eyelashes, and if I stayed out much longer they’d freeze right there on my face.
I stepped gratefully into my underwear and jeans, but my shirt and bra were ruined, so I could only put my arms through the sleeves and cross them over my chest to hold the material closed. Then Carver put a comforting arm around my waist and I let him lead me back across the yard and inside the main house.
At first, the heat was a blessing. It took the worst of my chill bumps and eased my chattering teeth, though it didn’t even touch the trembling that had set into my limbs. But as my body began to recover from the cold, a large part of me wished I could remain frozen. Numb. Because the ache in my chest was unlike anything I’d ever suffered. It was like something gnawing me alive from the inside out, leaving a dark, empty cavity where my heart had once been.
It was unbearable, and every time I tried to rise above it, to bring reality into focus and concentrate on what lay ahead, I found myself sucked back into that mire of grief, from which I simply could not rise.
And the truth was that I didn’t really want to. Not yet.
Because that would mean it was true. It had really happened.
But it couldn’t have. Not to Ethan. If any of my parents’ children should have lived forever, it would be Ethan. He was fearless. And in the end, that was the problem. He’d sent Jace and Kaci to safety while he’d stayed behind to keep the enemies at bay.
He had to know his chances of survival were slim, but he did it anyway.
Ethan, why did you have to play the hero? But the truth, though Ethan might not even have known it, was that for once, he wasn’t playing.
In the hall, Dr. Carver paused at Kaci’s room, where she still lay unconscious on the bed. Then he stopped us by the open bathroom door and waited while I washed Ethan’s blood from my hands and rinsed my face. When I was done, his hand closed around mine and I squeezed it, thankful that he was there. I’d rather have been comforted by Marc, but his absence was just one more entry on a long list of things that were currently irrevocably fucked up in my life at that moment.When I had myself under control, we continued down the hall to the living room, where everyone else had gathered, and my father passed us on the way out. He walked stiffly down the hall and into his room. Seconds later, water ran in his bathroom, but over that, I heard him crying. Not the gentle, quiet tears he’d shed in the woods. Great, trembling sobs. Angry sobs, that spoke of imminent action and grim consequences.
Dr. Carver stopped in the doorway. “I have to go check on Kaci,” he whispered. “Then I need to see what I can do for Jace’s arm.”
I nodded and he squeezed me one more time, then let me go.
In the living room, Ethan lay on the sofa, his head hidden from sight by the armrest. Someone had tucked his arm in at his side, and my mother sat on her knees in front of the couch, one hand stroking Ethan’s hair back from his face. What little blood still dripped from his neck soaked into the cushion, then the front of her apron.
Owen sat on the floor, tail curled around himself, with his furry chin resting on Ethan’s thigh. His eyes were closed, and if not for the occasional mournful whine coming from deep within his throat, I might have thought he was asleep.
I curled up in an armchair, glad I’d washed the blood from my hands. The couch was already stained, but I had the absurd thought that if I smeared blood on the white chair, everything would be worse somehow. That blood on satin would make it somehow more real. More gruesome.
Make Ethan more dead.
As I watched my mother, wondering what I should do to help her, my heart throbbed with every painful beat. With that suffocating grief. A never-ending ache I knew would soon morph into a rage unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
But for now, it was only bitter sorrow.
A door opened down the hall and my father was back, dressed in clean cotton pajama bottoms and his favorite blue robe.
“Karen.” His voice was rough, like he was speaking through shards of glass. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Karen, you have to get up.”
But she refused. She didn’t even look at him, so my dad picked her up and carried her just like he’d carried Ethan. He put her in a chair opposite the couch and waved me over to sit with her. When I stood, wondering if it was even possible to comfort a woman who’s just lost one of her children, my father crossed the room to sit in a chair in the far corner, where he leaned forward and buried his head in his hands.
“Mom?” I approached slowly, and she went stiff when I put one hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She looked at me then, and I had to close my mouth to stifle a gasp. She was covered in Ethan’s blood. Smeared in it, like she’d hugged him. As soon as I thought it, I knew that’s exactly what had happened. I had to get her out of those bloody clothes. My father acting distant and morose was unsettling. But it was even worse to watch my mother’s quiet anguish.
My father was the front man. The obvious authority. But my mother was the steel backbone of my family, and without her standing tall and strong, we would all start to bend and wither.
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Come on, Mom.” I took her arm, and she let me help her up. Then she surprised me—and frankly scared the shit out of me—by clinging to me. Her arms went around my neck and her head found my shoulder, instantly damp with her tears. Her weight went almost limp in my arms and all I could do was hold her tight while she cried, each sob shuddering through both of us.
When the tears slowed, I squeezed her and gently loosened my grip until she was supporting her own weight. Then I stepped back and met her eyes as she wiped her face with both hands, streaking Ethan’s blood with her own tears.
Her eyes were red, her face swollen and splotchy, and her usually perfect makeup was now a distant memory.
“How ‘bout some hot tea?”
“Of course.” She stood straighter and squared her shoulders. Her head kind of twitched, as if she wanted to glance back at Ethan but had stopped herself at the last moment. “What kind would you like?”
“No, I was going to make you some tea.”
“Don’t be silly, Faythe. You’ve never made a pot of tea in your life, and I’m not going to be your first-brew guinea pig. I’ll make it.” Her eyes wandered down to my shirt, where blood from her clothes had soaked into mine. “But first, I want you to change clothes. I can’t stand the sight of any more blood today.”
That made two of us. “Mom…” I didn’t know how to tell her without triggering more tears. “You, too.” I glanced pointedly at the front of her ruined cashmere sweater, and her gaze followed mine.
Her face paled. “Oh.” She turned and walked not quite steadily into the hall.
Owen followed, hopefully going to Shift and dress. Which left me alone with my dad. And with Ethan, of course.
My father stood at the living room window now, staring out at the sunrise just then lightening the front yard, a short, clear glass in his hand, empty but for a few drops of goldish liquid. I knew from the scent that it was Scotch. The good stuff he kept locked in his bottom desk drawer. But now the bottle sat on an occasional table against the wall, its lid off, its contents flavoring the very air.
My dad didn’t seem to realize everyone else had gone. I crossed the room toward him, achingly conscious of my stained clothing, of Ethan’s scent all over me. “Dad?”
“Hmm?”
But I hadn’t thought the rest of it through, and had no idea what to say. Finally I decided to look forward, because my memories had nothing to offer but heartache. “Do we have a plan?”