Chapter 18
18
C rash was gone again. Robert and I were tossed upside down, his fingers skeletal once more.
I tried to reach for Crash with my magic, but I couldn’t find him.
I did find Corb, hovering by the doorway. “You’d better not make me regret this,” I muttered. I threw a line of my power back toward Corb, snagged him around the waist, and jerked him through the door. There was a second screech of fury that I felt down the line that made me laugh.
“Nobody gets to torment my friends,” I yelled back. Even Corb.
“One day, you and I will meet again,” the secretary said. “I promise you that.”
There was one last tumble, and we were flung out of the space we’d existed in for…how long had it been? Hours. Hours and hours. Days. It felt like we’d been gone for a very, very long time.
Then I was flat on my back, and there were voices all around us.
“How long will it take them?” Louis asked.
“No time for us,” Bramble answered. “They will be there as long as they need to be, but for us it will be nothing more than a blink.”
There was the sound of a body being flung to the ground. “You bitch, Marge!” Damian snarled. “You set Bree up from the beginning!”
“Don’t hurt them!” Suzy cried out. “Please, don’t hurt them!”
“Of course she set her up, for me.” Bramble’s voice was calm. “It’s why I healed the two of them immediately. The other I could not.”
Two of them.
Me and who? Kinkly or Corb? Kinkly. I knew it in my heart.
I kept my eyes closed, taking stock of the situation. Bramble had healed me—I knew that much. Kinkly lay on my chest and I felt her breathing. That answered that question. Corb was well and truly dead.
Or so I thought.
“She can’t see me,” Corb said quietly. “I think I’m a ghost, Bree. You brought me back as a ghost.”
Seemed to be something about me and my exes being unable to let me go. Or maybe I couldn’t let them go? No, I wasn’t going to think about that.
“We should just take what we need,” Louis said. “You have the siren’s cave.”
My belly tightened. They’d taken what they needed from Corb then? That’s why he was dead- dead , and not just almost dead like I’d been?
Bramble’s sigh was heavy. “Yes, his body will suffice. Louis, you need to back up. Your death magic is too heavy, and I have to be close to her when she wakes up.”
“You witches and your superstitions.” I could hear the sneer in Louis’ voice. “Fine, I will give you space to work.”
There was a crack like thunder and then a bubble of silence surrounded me. The shuffle of cloth, the smell of a perfume that tickled at my memories.
“Listen to me,” I heard Bramble say. “You need to fight for all you’re worth. I know you’re awake. Damian is almost through the bonds I put on him, as are your friends. Fight, Bree. Fight Louis and use your connection to the dead. You are stronger than him.”
“Why?” I whispered, shock rolling through me. I’d suspected but here it was in truth.
“I’ve always been on your side,” she said. “I need you to trust me in this.”
She withdrew and I stayed put. Where was Gran? She’d been here, hadn’t she?
Under my one hand was Robert’s finger bone. I clutched it a little tighter. We’d escaped, but at what cost? Another life, and where was Crash? Not here.
There was a shout in the distance that had a distinct burble to it. We’d killed the galloo. Had that freed Feish, Penny, Eric…and all of my other friends?
Seconds had passed on this side of life and death. Hours and hours had passed in hell.
I gripped Robert’s finger bone. Kinkly stirred on my chest.
“Ready?” I breathed out.
“Ready,” she whispered back.
I wish I could say the body I’d had in hell had followed me back to the living. But no, I had no such luck. Kinkly either.
I tried to spring up, spin, and face Louis and Bramble.
I kind of rolled to the side, wobbled on my hands and knees, and managed only a couple of drunken-like steps.
“Robert,” I said, and just like that he was there, standing next to me.
“Friend. Fight.”
“Yup, we’re in for a good one.” I reached for the black blade. Nancy had been placed in my hand before I’d been sent to hell and he was still there.
“That was a wild ride, hey girly?” Nancy said. “You got us out. I had my doubts, but—”
“Shut up, we’re in another fight!” I said as Louis clapped his hands and the earth around us heaved.
“Girly, you need to ease off on the fighting, it’ll get you killed!” He cackled at his own stupid joke. I barely noticed him, focused instead on what was in front of me.
Zombies shot up faster than I managed to get off the ground. I slashed at the one closest to us and it fell back, but it didn’t go all the way down.
“Head shots, head shots!” Kinkly yelled from above. “Oh! I see Feish! She’s almost here!”
I looked across the heads of the zombies as Bramble grabbed Louis’s arm and dragged him back toward the river and their boat. Her eyes met mine and she gave me a nod.
I didn’t know what it meant.
I didn’t understand her. She wasn’t playing both sides. She was straight up helping me. But why, and how did it benefit her?
A zombie grabbed me. I kicked out, but Robert was already there, tearing it off me, pulling its arms off and then using the arms as weapons against the other zombies. Yuck.
I could have put the zombies down, I knew it. But all the death magic that I’d used to help get us out of hell had drained me to the point of exhaustion. I had nothing left to fight with other than the knife and Robert.
So I kept them at bay, stumbling, missing strikes, getting bitten, but holding them back. I just had to do it for long enough , I kept telling myself.
And then my friends were there. Dr. Mori was one of the first to arrive. He raised his hands and clapped them together. “Sleep, my friends. Sleep.”
The zombies collapsed as his voice echoed around us, his magic touching that part of them that kept them alive.
“Bree,” he turned to me next. “Your magic is very weak right now.”
“Used a lot of it.” I was on my knees, breathing hard. I tucked Nancy back into the sheath on my thigh. “I think…I used a lot of it to keep us together while we were in hell.”
Dr. Mori gave a slow nod. “I believe that. It would have put a time limit on you.”
I touched my neck, but the time piece was gone. “That…makes sense. But I can barely feel my connection to it.”
“I think you are even more drained than you know.” He frowned and crouched next to me. Robert mimicked him, still holding the zombie arms. “But it will come back. It’ll just take time. Rest.”
Penny and Feish reached me next. Feish all but flinging herself into my arms. I caught her around the middle as she sobbed. “We all got caught! Like gilken fish, too stupid to live!”
I didn’t know what a gilken fish was, Nancy had mentioned them in hell too, but I didn’t need to. “No, the galloo were terrible!” I said. “You couldn’t have—”
“It wasn’t the galloo,” Penny lowered herself next to me. “It was Bramble who snatched us. We let her in through the front door. She made herself look like you. And then she turned into a cat!”
I reached over and took Penny’s hand. “You couldn’t have known.”
Sarge trotted up next, the garrache , Winnifred, by his side. She was in her wolf form, massive and intimidating, her teeth bared. “Where is the battle?”
I slumped where I sat. “The battle is over, Winnifred, I’m sorry.”
“Pity, I would like to find something to fight.”
The reality of the situation was slowly seeping through my heart, into the core of my bones. I’d gone all the way to hell for Crash, fought through challenges I’d never believed I could face down, and still I’d failed. He wasn’t here.
“Did anyone see Crash?” I asked Kinkly as she fluttered down and landed gently on my shoulder, her fingers gripping the edge of my ear.
“We saved our friends, Bree. We saved them,” she said. “I know that Crash isn’t here, not the way you thought, but we saved them.”
I lifted my head as I heard Eric gasp. “Suzy?” He whispered her name, and everyone turned. “Am I seeing things? Are you really here?”
Suzy laughed, but her laughter was full of tears and love and so much emotion. “Eric, I told you we would be together, no matter what.” She ran to him, and he caught her up in his arms, smiles, and words spilling out of them both as they clung to one another.
She cupped his face and kissed him all over. “I missed you so much. I just knew I had to keep fighting to find a way back to you. I knew that it would happen.”
“My brave, smart, beautiful woman.” He pulled his glasses off, and she wiped his eyes for him. “I never doubted you, not for a minute. I never stopped believing that you would come back to me.”
The echo of their words cut through me. I never doubted in Crash. Nor had he doubted in me. And yet we weren’t together, even after going to hell for him.
“How did Suzy get here?” Penny asked. “How did this happen? It’s wonderful, but I just don’t understand!”
Corb crouched beside me. “It’s a story, that’s for sure. I don’t look all that good in it, I can tell you that much.”
Shocking.
“A story that I will tell you all,” Suzy said, her arms around Eric’s middle. “I am just…overflowing with happiness. To be here, with all of you, but Eric, most of all to be back in your arms.”
A story Corb had said. A love story with a happy ending. My heart squeezed harder, knowing that my love story was not going to be like theirs.
Sarge was crouched by Corb’s body. “I’ll take him, burying him out deep, out in the ocean the way he wanted.” I made my way to Sarge’s side.
There weren’t enough words for this moment. He’d loved Corb once. They’d been lovers and best friends. I put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good friend, Sarge. Better than he deserved most days.”
“Ouch,” Corb said. “I’m here you know.”
“No one else can see or hear you, other than me and Damian,” I pointed out and Sarge looked up at me.
“Corb…is he still around?”
I nodded. “Still salty too, thinks we should all talk well of him, just because he’s dead.”
Sarge snorted, and wiped a hand over his face, ridding himself of the tears. “Sounds like him.”
Corb smiled. “He was a better friend than I deserved.”
Sarge looked around. “But I don’t see Crash…”
I squeezed a hand on his shoulder a little more. “Some things aren’t meant to be, Sarge. You know that. Kinkly is right, my friends are safe, and I did take Crash out of hell. His spirit must have gone on to wherever fae spirits go.”
Dr. Mori looked my way, as if he was going to speak and then closed his mouth.
“We all need a rest,” Feish said. “And food, lots of food.”
I nodded, my smile wobbling under the rush of emotions, pain, love, happiness and grief all tangling up inside my chest. “I know it. Let’s go home.”