Chapter 14 The Present
The car ride back to the hospital is silent. So silent, in fact, it tells me Cassian’s mind is somewhere far away, and not in a good place. He’s clearly replaying whatever happened with that cop, and it shows.
We pull into our little patch of nowhere, and he kills the engine, staring into space like he’s stuck in some kind of trance. After a moment, he blinks and looks at me. Really looks at me—head to toe, like he’s seeing me for the first time all over again.
“Show me the object again,” he says at last.
I nod and reach into my coat pocket. My fingers find the cold metal, and I draw out the locket slowly, like it might bite. And honestly? It should. It deserves to. The thing practically hums with rot, even now.
Cassian takes it without a word, studying it with that strange detachment that might as well be his middle name right now. But he doesn’t open it.
“What is it?” he asks.
“A memento of her first kill,” I say. “The cops didn’t find it. It wasn’t in the basement with the rest of the sick stuff. I got lucky, I guess.”
“Mhm,” he murmurs. “So lucky that a cop saw you and triggered a full lockdown. So lucky that I almost got myself arrested just to drag you out.”
Ouch.
Not exactly the tone I was expecting. But fine. He just ran into someone from his past. That bite in his voice? It’s not really about me. I get it.
I don’t react. Don’t snap back, don’t thank him, don’t apologize. I don’t even mention that I didn’t end up needing his help, even though I could. I just wait. Like a calm, rational, well-adjusted adult.
Cassian exhales, just barely. “Let’s say your luck evened out.”
I almost smile. He has no idea what today meant for me. I didn’t just find the locket, I got to haunt Mark, too.
“Sure,” I say as he pockets the locket.
“You didn’t see anything else in the house?” he asks. “No wraith activity? No sign of that ghastly motherfucker?”
“Nothing,” I mutter.
“Weird,” he says. “I thought she might ambush us, especially on her own turf.”
“Maybe she wants to do it here,” I suggest. “Catch us off guard while we’re sitting in the car, just chatting?”
It’s meant as dark humor, something to cut the tension, but it hits too close, because he flinches.
“You’re right,” he says. “Let’s get inside. Looks like Nathaniel and Talon are already back.”
He gets out without waiting for a reply, slamming the door harder than necessary. Not out of anger, just overflowing with whatever emotion he hasn’t unpacked yet.
Grief. Anger. Shame?
What did that cop say again?
Cassian didn’t show up to his sister’s funeral. But her killer died exactly how she did. That’s his signature, isn’t it? He kills killers the way they killed their victims.
Twisted as he is, there’s still a person buried under all that righteous rot. Rehashing it must hurt more than he lets on.
I follow him across the cracked asphalt toward the old hospital entrance.
I’m dragging in plenty of dirt, no surprise.
My pants are still caked with mud, my hair half-dried into a chaotic halo of grave filth and ghost sweat.
And even though I was the one rolling around on the ground, Cassian doesn’t look much better.
His shirt’s torn at the sleeve where the cops grabbed him, and green smudges stain his clothes like he lost a few rounds with the lawn before they pinned him down.
We’re a match made in heaven. Or hell. Honestly, whichever one takes walk-ins at this point.
Inside, the others are already waiting.
“Well,” Talon says, his eyes dragging over the state of us both, “this looks promising. Were you two making out in a bog, or just fighting for dominance in some mud-based hierarchy?”
“Don’t start,” Cassian mutters, brushing past him.
Talon’s slouched in a folding chair, boots kicked up against the wall, arms behind his head like he’s on a beach instead of hiding from divine retribution.
Nathaniel’s pacing, tablet in hand, a permanent frown carved into his face.
His clothes are stained with dried blood, Laura Collins’, if I had to guess.
Whatever they’ve been up to, it wasn’t a spa day.
He looks up the moment we step into view, immediately taking in our appearance.
Without breaking stride, Cassian pulls the locket from his pocket and tosses it to him. Nathaniel catches it one-handed.
His expression tightens, not at the locket, but at Cassian’s demeanor. He clearly knows him well enough to sense something’s off.
It looks like he’s about to push, to ask what happened. But at the last second, he redirects that sharp energy toward me instead.
“What happened to you?”
I shrug. “Quick field trip. Courtesy of teleportation-slash-void-collapse. You know. The usual.”
His brows knit together, but before he can say anything, Talon sits up a little, interest sparking.
“You glitched again?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But it was more of a self-defense kind of glitch. Dropped me somewhere inconvenient and left me looking like I crawled out of a swamp.”
I don’t mention Mark. Intentionally.
“Self-defense,” Nathaniel repeats, voice low.
“A cop had her at gunpoint,” Cassian says before I can answer. “The Candy Maker’s place is crawling with cops. They reopened her case.”
Nathaniel’s brow rises. “This morning?”
“Looks like it,” Cassian replies.
“That’s quite the coincidence.”
“Yeah, tell us about it,” I mutter.
Nathaniel inhales slowly, running his tongue over his piercing like he’s tasting the thought. It takes him maybe two seconds to put it all together, what took Cassian and me ten minutes, he gets instantly.
“We need to get to the car impound,” he says. “Clear the evidence.”
No one argues.
“The guy running security there owes me a favor,” Talon says, already getting to his feet. “I’ll ask him to make the car disappear. Permanently.”
“Good,” Nathaniel says. “Do it now. No loose ends.”
Talon cracks his neck and heads for the door, but pauses in the doorway, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Want me to take Little Grim with me?” he asks, voice laced with innuendo. He’s talking to me, not Nathaniel. “You know. For safety.”
Safety has double meaning here.
I blink, caught off guard. Not sure how I feel about that. And honestly? I’m not in the mood for another Talon moment. Between him, Cassian, and the wraith, I need a break from being emotionally devoured, or devoured at all.
“No,” Nathaniel answers before I can. “If the wraith comes for anyone, it’ll be her. If it kills you, we’ll manage. If it kills Skye, we’re screwed.”
“Damn, man. Just say you don’t care if I die,” Talon says with a laugh.
“You don’t care either,” Nathaniel shoots back, not even looking up.
Talon just shrugs and walks out.
It leaves a sour twist in my gut. I know Nathaniel’s right, the wraith is probably after me, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch Talon go.
If I still had Pain, I’d send him to watch over Talon. Just to be sure. Just to have something out there with him.
But I can’t anymore.
Pain’s gone.
And I don’t mean the emotional kind. I mean the raven.
Unfortunately.
“He’ll be back in thirty minutes,” Nathaniel says, catching the way my eyes linger on the door. “That gives us enough time to prepare for the summoning. He’ll be here to fight her with us.”
“If the summoning works,” Cassian mutters from across the room.
“If it works,” Nathaniel echoes.
But something in my expression must still be off, because his voice softens. He glances down at the dried blood on his shirt, like he’s only just remembered it’s there.
“He knows how to handle himself,” he says. “He’s not as reckless as he wants people to think.”
I’m not sure why he acts like that. It’s not like I care about Talon.
…At least, I don’t think I do.
Nathaniel turns back to the tablet. “I’ll start etching the binding sigils. Cassian, get the salt and chalk ready.”
Cassian grunts a “yeah,” already moving. He pulls a worn duffel bag from one of the kitchenette cabinets and unzips it. Inside are tools—chalk, bones, a jar of black salt.
I watch as they get to work, drawing symbols onto the floor.
The shapes look familiar. Almost identical to the ones I saw in that blood-soaked basement, the night they bound me in place.
Except these have extra rings, added layers, like they’re meant for something stronger than a Grim Reaper. Or just more unstable.
“Will the binding work on her?” I ask.
Nathaniel doesn’t look up. His strokes are precise, borderline obsessive, his mouth set in a tight line.
“We don’t know,” he says. “But it’s the best shot we’ve got.”
Cassian spreads the salt in slow, even arcs. “If the binding fails, we’ll just kill her the old-fashioned way.”
“Because that worked so well last time,” I mutter. “But hey, if the binding holds, maybe we stab her a few dozen times for good measure. Belt and suspenders, right? What do you think, Cassian? Feel like letting off some steam?”
Cassian doesn’t answer, but the corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s fighting a smile.
“Sure, why the fuck not,” he says at last, exhaling the words like a sigh. “Got too much of it anyway.”
Like Nathaniel said earlier, it takes about thirty minutes to finish the setup.
That includes drawing a vial of my blood—yeah, turns out I can bleed now—and completing the last of the markings.
They work in silence, moving with a meticulous rhythm that still surprises me.
For two murderers who couldn’t be more different, they function like a well-oiled, dangerous little unit.
Talon returns just as Nathaniel finishes the final sigil, crouched low to inscribe a delicate mark at the center of the outermost ring.
The door swings open without warning, and there he is, striding in like he owns the place. Leather jacket slung over one shoulder, wind-tousled hair, and that signature smirk already in place.
“Car’s gone,” he says, tossing the jacket onto the nearest chair. “Dissolved into some bureaucratic black hole. We’re ghosts again.”