Chapter 45
Xander
(Present Day)
IN KENDYLL’S MIND, IT HAD only been a few months since that day. She didn’t realize that an entire year had actually passed. I’d spent that whole year focusing on two things: numbing myself and storing up as much energy as I could by any means possible.
I’d spent the past year high on everything—human and demonic drugs, sex, goading my friends into fighting with me, and putting my best rockstar persona front and center.
I took a page out of Kendyll’s book, running from the truth, because the minute the high wore off, the minute I stood still, I saw her again.
I saw her bloody, lifeless body on that pavement.
I saw her spirit waver with the threat of leaving forever. I broke over and over and over again.
But avoiding the memory wasn’t my biggest reason for doing everything I’d done in the past year.
Unlike Incubi who fed off of sex, I merely stole that energy from my victims like a sponge, soaking in all the energy they had to give.
There was no pleasure involved for me, despite my acting the contrary.
There was only a goal to bring Kendyll back.
I scared and terrorized people as usual, but for the first time ever, I didn’t keep that power for myself.
Everything I absorbed, I funneled into Kendyll’s soul.
I showered her in every bit of power I stole so that when her soul stirred fully awake, she could function as though she were still alive.
She would have enough of my energy to do whatever she wanted—interact with objects or ghosts as she’d done in life, envision the world around her to make sense with whatever picture her soul painted, and remain conscious for full days instead of for small increments.
When I’d felt her readiness to return to the world as a ghost, I’d released her soul and followed it to Mountview. I wasn’t surprised that was where her soul thought it needed to go; I’d even banked on that being the case.
It didn’t matter that Bethelma and the TV network weren’t waiting on Kendyll to finish a job there since the show had been cancelled after her passing. Her coworkers weren’t expecting her. Alex had moved on to a new position in the network, and he probably rarely thought about Kendyll these days.
It didn’t matter that I’d bought the haunted hospital from Bethelma when she went bankrupt after her credibility came crashing down without the real Ghost Speaker. Kendyll had been focused on her upcoming work at Mountview, and even in death, she was determined to follow through on the job.
Part of me hoped that she would remember and understand that she was a spirit so that we could be together without that secret between us, but the other half of me hadn’t wanted her to recall such a horrific moment.
A moment when I’d failed her.
A moment when I’d broken the most important promise—to be there, to not let anything happen to her.
When I’d mustered up the courage to show myself at Mountview, I wasn’t sure which way the pendulum would swing. My heart fractured all over again when it turned out that she didn’t remember dying.
At the start, I let her believe she was alive, because I didn’t want to risk her becoming a malicious spirit if her soul wasn’t ready for that knowledge, but eventually, I knew better.
I knew she could handle the truth. It was me who couldn’t handle it, and I was just drawing out the inevitable.
I was drawing out her suffering in an afterlife she hadn’t agreed to, an afterlife that I’d picked for her by taking the choice away from her soul.
Doing so had put her in danger yet again.
When Riddle captured her and I saw her soul’s connection to me manifest while I panicked on the other side of his barrier, I knew what he was trying to do.
That white wisp, which funneled between my chest and the floor beneath my feet, could only have been my binding to Kendyll’s soul.
He was trying to break my connection with her to steal for himself, and he had all the power from his army of ghosts to do it.
I’d nearly lost her again. But thankfully, Coldin showed up in time.
I got to hold onto her a little longer. I got to see her exist in this time and world for a little bit more. Yet watching her move about and go on with life, unaware of what happened, unaware of our last interaction and words, was akin to swallowing nails every single day.
But it wasn’t as painful as what was coming.
Kendyll’s watery eyes widened, and she slowly looked at me, clutching each side of her now visibly bloody head with trembling hands. “I-I forgot. How could I forget? I’m so sorry! I’m so—”
“Kendyll,” I soothed, reaching out to hold her upper arms. “You did nothing wrong, Kendyll. You know this happens with ghosts sometimes. You didn’t do anything wrong, baby.”
Catsper meowed and rubbed his phantom cheek soothingly under Kendyll’s chin. He drifted through the air to her fatal wound, which now appeared with Kendyll’s remembrance of it. The cat rubbed his body along the blood to try to make it go away.
Kendyll shook her head wildly. “I didn’t even ask what happened between that day and arriving at Mountview.
My mind just filled in the blanks between that day and showing up at the hospital to work.
” She let out a broken, pitiful laugh. “All this time, I-I thought you didn’t come.
I thought you left me alone that day. How could I forget that you were coming?
You were there. How—” Her teary eyes met mine.
“I-I thought something else saved me from the fall.”
My grip on her arms tightened, and my jaw worked.
“I am so, so fucking sorry, Kendyll. I am so sorry for not getting there in time. I promised that nothing would happen to you, and I … You have no idea how badly I wanted to save you. How badly I wanted to rewind time to arrive a few minutes earlier or stop you from going there at all.”
But I hadn’t arrived a few seconds earlier.
I couldn’t rewind time.
I hadn’t saved her.
“I wanted to save you,” I choked, staring down into her eyes. “I wanted a life with you. But all I did was give myself a little more time.”
“Time,” she murmured with a quivering lip. “We have more of that, don’t we? I’m—I’m your ghost, after all.”
Thunder clapped in the distance, and my black heart fissured with it. Cold drops of rain speckled my outstretched arms and head. It chilled me to the bone, and I truly hoped it would. I needed the cold to numb me to see this through.
I stared into Kendyll’s eyes and saw everything.
A scared little girl who wanted a family, only to be betrayed by them.
A girl who had to seek comfort in dark places, because those living in the light rejected her.
A girl who ran her entire life on broken, exhausted legs.
A woman who just wanted to be free.
Free of Mountview, free of her past, free of any more suffering.
Instead of granting her that, I’d thrown her right back in with the wolves.
I’d kept her by my side, a prisoner bound by my shackles.
I’d put her in harm’s way by keeping her spirit here, drawing out her torment, because even as a ghost, she still carried all the pain of her life.
It didn’t matter why I’d done it. I could tell myself it was because I loved her and couldn’t stand living this life without her in it, even if it was as a ghost. The point was I’d prevented her from moving on to somewhere she could be free of it all.
I would right that wrong today.
I smiled down at her as the rain grew heavy.
My dark hair clung to my face, and my clothes stuck to my body.
Kendyll remained dry as the rain couldn’t reach her spectral form.
I held my hand out for Catsper, and with a final prodding at Kendyll’s cheek with his nose, the ghost cat came to perch on my shoulder, mewling quietly.
“It’s okay, Ghost,” I whispered while raising two fingers. I moved them quickly in a series of patterns, though it felt as though the limb moved through quicksand. “You’ve worked so fucking hard. I’m so … so proud of you. You can rest now, baby. It’s okay.”
A glowing strand appeared between us, connecting the center of her chest to mine. With it, her eyes fluttered disorientedly as the fog of being between here and the next place for her soul began to cloud her mind.
“Rest?” she asked blearily, an unfocused stare on that thread of light between us. She hummed a confused sort of sound. “Rest. That … sounds nice.”
My eyes burned as I nodded with her. I placed my free hand on the back of her head and leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead, and I stayed there, fighting the tangle of emotions working their way to the surface.
“I love you,” I whispered against her forehead. “I’m going to give you that happy ending you wanted now.”
She took an unsteady breath and pulled back slightly to look at me with muddied, transparent eyes. “Will you be waiting here for me when I’m done resting?”
I’d always fucking wait for her, even while knowing there was no coming back. So with my smile still in place, I nodded. “Always, Qīn’ài de.”
Even through her growing delirious state of a soul on the brink of moving on, she managed to smile at me and held out one slender finger. “Pinky promise?”
The tightness in my throat snapped as I stared at her outstretched finger. My eyes flooded with hot tears, and I just hoped she couldn’t tell them apart from the falling rain. I slowly wound my pinky around hers and met her eyes one more time.
One final time.
“I pinky promise,” I choked out around a grin.
A single tear slid down her cheek. “I love you, Mr. Monster.”
“And I love you, Ghost.”
With a quick swipe down of my raised fingers, the strand between us fizzled.
Having lost the energy gained from our connection, her form went completely transparent.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and a peaceful smile lifted her lips.
Slowly, the light of her form faded, her pinky still wrapped around mine.
Even when the air in front of me stood empty, I didn’t drop my outstretched hand, which began to shake.
Even when Catsper drifted to that outstretched arm and searched the air for Kendyll with broken whimpers, I stood frozen, splintering into a thousand pieces on the inside.
I collapsed to my knees in the rain before her grave and let the tears fall.
Harper appeared beside me and sank to the muddy grass with her arms wrapped around my back, and Iyla did the same on my other side.
I wailed out as Serenity placed a hand on my back and crouched against me.
Perseus dropped to his knees in front of me, his own eyes red with the threat of tears.
He grabbed my tear-stained face and pulled it into his chest where he held me.
I screamed and cried against him, clinging to his shirt as though it could change something, as though it could bring her back.
But there was no bringing her back.
Kendyll was gone.
She might’ve gone to a peaceful place or faded all together in the ultimate form of rest or even decided to start anew as a reborn soul.
Whatever she chose, I was glad. It would be her choice when so many had been taken from her in life.
It would be what she wanted, and despite how painful it was, that was what I ultimately wanted, too.