Chapter 23
“Skye,” someone says. “We’re here.”
I blink my eyes open and realize everyone is already on their feet in the aisle, waiting on me.
Our trio of murderers, the bad ones I mean, are gone, probably herded out like cattle the second we stopped.
Hailey and Lila stay close to my seat, lingering like they are not quite sure where to put themselves now that the ride is over.
“Huh?” I push myself upright, rubbing sleep from my face. “I could’ve sworn we barely left those woods.”
“Yeah, well,” Nathaniel says, posted by the exit with a fistful of backpacks in one hand, “that’s the impression you get when you sleep through most of the journey.”
“Good for you, Little Grim,” Talon mutters. “Being the driver sucked ass.”
I glance at him and wince a little. The bags under his eyes are so deep they almost change the shape of his face.
“That bad?”
“Uh, we’re kind of on the police radar, so we had to take some weird-ass routes,” he says, like it should be obvious.
My brow lifts, and then I look at the girls, trying to catch whatever reaction I expect to find.
Fear. Disgust. Anything. They should have an aversion to criminals, especially ones who never pretended to be anything else from the moment they came for us.
Instead, there is nothing dramatic there at all.
Hailey even looks half-asleep as she watches me, her gaze unfocused until it sharpens all at once.
“Your neck marks are gone,” she says.
My hand moves to my throat on instinct.
“Ah, yeah,” I say, forcing my voice into something casual. “I healed especially quickly this time.”
I try not to let my smile turn awkward. Yes, the bruises are gone. So is most of the pain. So is that hollow, helpless feeling that was sitting in my chest like a weight. Somewhere along the ride back home, it happened.
I got my power back.
And Rhea and Pain were right. Once you truly connect with your inner world, the power comes back stronger than ever. It feels almost overflowing. I did not even have to concentrate for the healing to happen. It simply did.
I want to explain all of it to Hailey and Lila, like I mentioned earlier.
Just not here, not in the bus aisle, not when I am caught off guard like this.
Still, we are about to step into our base of operations, the place where the wraiths literally spawn, and it feels wrong to keep avoiding the conversation. I stand, clearing my throat.
“You’re probably exhausted, but after we show you to your rooms, would you mind if we talk? There are some things I want you two to know.”
They exchange a look before Hailey answers.
“Sure thing,” she says. “You shouldn’t even have to ask. We literally owe you our lives.”
“Just say what you need and we’ll do it,” Lila adds.
She nods vigorously, her eyes darting around like they cannot settle on anything for long.
She looks as distressed as she did back in the van, and I hate seeing it.
No one should have to carry that kind of stress, not ever.
Still, I know some things do not vanish in a couple of days. Some things take root and linger.
“Oh, don’t worry,” I say quickly. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
They nod, and soon enough, all of us meet Cassian and the killers outside.
The three of them look awful. We’ve fed and watered them just enough to keep them alive.
Cassian looks nearly as bad, though at least he’s had more to eat.
Nathaniel gave him something to help him stay functional while they searched for me, but it came with serious side effects.
During the ride back, he was even more absent than I was, which is saying something.
Right now, he’s a ghost of his usual self.
Nathaniel says he just needs rest, so I take him at his word.
The moment the familiar concrete crunches under my feet, relief floods my system.
The abandoned hospital. I didn’t realize how much I missed this place until I’m standing here again.
We follow the broken path inside, and after that, everything moves too fast to hold onto. I show the girls to their rooms, both in the same wing as mine, then I take a shower. When I’m done, I feel cleaner and steadier, even if exhaustion still clings to me after everything we’ve been through.
Then I go to Lila’s door and knock. When she opens it, I see Hailey is already inside.
“Hi,” I say. “Are you two free now?”
They let me in, and the moment I sit in the chair opposite the hospital bed, the words start spilling out. I tell them what I am and everything that’s happened to me. I tell them about Mark and what he did, about how I met Cassian, Nathaniel, and Talon, and about what is waiting here with us.
That last part is the real reason I asked to talk. It is the point I keep circling back to, because it is the one thing I cannot afford to leave unsaid.
When I’m done, I ask the only question that matters. Whether they truly want to stay here. I understand why it might feel like the safest option, especially after everything, but nobody actually knows what is going to happen with these wraiths.
The first one was hard enough to beat. She was not predictable, and even though I was her main target, she still showed she could hurt regular humans too.
The girls stare at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Hailey is the first to speak. She shifts and sits on the edge of the bed.
“Skye,” she says slowly, “you just told us you’re… dead.”
I swallow. “I told you I was dead. Now I’m… an in-between kind of being.”
“And that there are… wraiths,” she continues. “In this building.”
“Yes.”
“And that those three men. Your boyfriends.” Her gaze flicks toward the door, toward the corridor. “Are murderers.”
I nod again. “Yes.”
She exhales through her nose. It almost sounds like a laugh. “Okay. Cool. Great. Thanks for the honesty.”
Lila’s knee is bouncing so hard the mattress trembles. She’s sitting closer to the headboard, like she wants distance from the door, from the hallway, from the whole world. “Are they going to kill us?” she blurts.
“No,” I say immediately. “They’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“They only kill murderers.” I lean forward in the chair until my elbows rest on my knees. “They’re… bad on paper. But I actually think they’re doing good.”
“Okay,” she says.
Just that.
“And you came to help us because other dead girls, the ones our captors killed, threatened you into it,” Hailey adds, her voice trailing off at the end like she can’t believe she’s saying any of this out loud.
“Yes,” I admit. “Although, in hindsight, I would have done it without the threats.”
Both of them fall silent. I sit and wait for them to say something. When it becomes clear they will not, I clap my hands to pull their attention back to me.
“So, what do you choose to do now that you know all that?” I ask. “You are free to stay if that is what you want, but I cannot guarantee your safety.”
Hell, I cannot guarantee my own safety. I cannot guarantee anything at this point. Even with my powers back, I will not underestimate the threat waiting in the dark.
“This burden is mine alone to carry,” I add. “I know that going back home to your families may seem scary, but—“
“No,” Hailey interrupts, shaking her head. “Do not tell us to leave. Please.”
“We do not care about those wraiths, or whatever,” Lila adds. “We just want to stay here for a while.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“I used to be scared of ghosts back in the day,” Hailey says. “But now I know it is not the ghosts that are truly scary.”
“It is men,” Lila says.
I purse my lips and nod. I do not know if I would compare the twelve wraiths to ghosts, but I suppose it does not matter to them. And I am not their jailer. They have already spent enough time in one prison, stripped of their free will, for me to take their choices away again.
“I trust you, then,” I say. “If you want to stay here, be our guests.”
And so there are two more humans who know Grim Reapers exist, two more souls I have connected with during my time on the mortal plane.
I show them around the hospital for a while after that. I make a clear distinction between the bottom floor and the basement, where we are going to hold all three murderers, and I tell them not to ever go down there.
After that, I leave them alone, hoping they will not live to regret their choice to stay.
I hope I will not regret it either.
The next order of business is talking with my men. Just like the talk with the girls, it cannot wait. I have too much to relay, and I cannot shake the feeling that my time is about to get cut short.
That fear needles at me even more when I return to my room for a jacket and catch sight of dark figures beyond the window.
Rhea and her girls are waiting in the nearby woods, keeping watch for the moment we finally kill the ones whose deaths they have been promised.
The ones I promised I would kill for them.
I grab the jacket and hurry back to the hospital’s main area. Instead of taking the stairs like a regular human, I slip through the floors and drift down from the ceiling, arriving just as Nathaniel stands at the kitchenette, cooking something that makes the stove hiss.
The second he catches movement in the corner of his eye, he drops everything and yanks a gun from behind his waistband.
“Jesus Christ.” I lift my arms as he aims at me. “I know we play three living men and one dead girl, but come on.”
Nathaniel does not lower the weapon. His knuckles blanch around the grip, his breath caught somewhere between shock and disbelief while the stove continues to spit and hiss behind him.
“Skye?” he says at last. “When the hell did you… I thought you were the wraith.”
“Not today,” I say, easing down until my boots meet the tiles. “Although that is probably the most flattering thing anyone’s said to me lately.”
He finally drops the gun, like his muscles have only just remembered how.
“When the hell did you get your power back?”