Chapter Fifteen
The Hollywood Forever Cemetery was, thankfully, mostly empty.
Katherine ran into a few people as she wandered the paths—groups of friends, drunk, laughing, holding picnic baskets and blankets and each other’s hands.
There must have been a Halloween showing, Katherine realized, thinking of the movie screenings that were held every weekend in the famed graveyard.
She tried to imagine that version of this night—one where her hands would have been buried in the grass instead of covered in blood, one where the only horror was on the screen—but she couldn’t manage it.
She knew she shouldn’t be here. She’d been given an order, and Sylvia would expect her to carry it out immediately. But when she’d gotten in her car to leave Sunspot, she hadn’t been able to make herself drive back to Hollywood and Highland. Hadn’t been able to make herself drive anywhere but here.
It was a waste of time. There was nothing left of Lily to bury.
Nothing except the string of beads that now sat like an anvil in Katherine’s pocket, the one useless thing she’d managed to take before she’d made that awful choice.
A string of beads that Lily only had for a day. That was the sole memorial she’d get.
Katherine walked for almost an hour before she found a spot to stop.
There was nothing exceptionally special about it—just another in a long line of tombstones, the last one dated almost a hundred years earlier.
But there was a large willow tree surrounded by flowers, and the bright moon of the night sky lit it all in a pearlescent white.
Katherine didn’t know if this was a place Lily would have liked. She barely knew anything about her. But it felt right.
That was all she had to offer. A guess, in place of hopes, dreams, a future.
Katherine bent down and dug her fingers into the dirt.
Lily should have a tombstone. A funeral. Mourners. Instead, she got this. A secret grave without a body to bury, with no one present but the person who’d failed to protect her from a fate she was promised she wouldn’t meet.
The hole could’ve been the work of seconds with a spell, but Katherine took her time doing it by hand instead, working until she had a square, as neat as she could get it, about half a foot into the ground. As much like the grave Lily deserved as she could make it.
Katherine brushed the dirt off her hands, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the string of beads.
She thought back to the way the sun had played across Lily’s face when she’d picked them out of the Beetle’s cupholder, the way she’d held them close that whole night, even after falling into a restless sleep.
Katherine had been so happy to see Lily with them—that physical representation of one of the few times in Katherine’s life where she’d felt normal.
Normal was something girls like her and Lily didn’t have the luxury of being.
Katherine wiped away a tear as she put the beads in the hole, then scooped the dirt back over top.
She stood, searching the flowers until she found a cluster of cornflower-blue blooms that reminded her of the color of Lily’s eyes.
She laid them over the dirt, beautiful and bright against the night, and then she sat back on her heels and rested her head in her hands.
Her knees ached. Her back burned. And her mind, it raced. Raced with things she’d missed. With thoughts of how to undo what couldn’t be undone. Minutes passed, then hours, and then the first bits of pink and blue started to peek over the horizon.
The world kept turning.
And Katherine’s job was never done. She pushed herself up, her joints popping, then wiped dirt off her jeans.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, checking the time—almost seven AM.
If she were a better person, she would’ve been at Hollywood and Highland already, cleaning the scene, making sure that this disaster didn’t spiral into something even worse. But she wasn’t. She was here.
She gave herself a minute to say goodbye.
And then she forced herself to leave.