Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabriel
I start to worry once the sun sinks toward the horizon.
Darcy tends to lose track of time when she’s working on her flowers with Frank, but not like this. She’s usually back after lunch, a new arrangement held in her arms like a newborn, a smile on her face and dirt on her cheeks.
But she’s not here, and I don’t know where she could be.
Tater Tot whines and paces through my kitchen, his ears low. We make a fine pair, the both of us. Wandering around my apartment like two useless assholes, waiting for Darcy to come back.
“You miss her, too, huh?”
Tater Tot gives me an unamused look, snorting once through his nose.
“Fine. You miss her more.” I glance at the clock above the stove, then the window. “We could go over to Frank’s. See if she needs help carting her flowers home. She probably got caught up making too many.”
Tater Tot prowls closer, nudging my hand with his wet nose, eager. I laugh and pet him roughly between the ears.
“Yeah, all right. Let’s go.”
I grab the leash and my jacket, and we set off for the flower shop, the sun melting quickly beneath the tree line. The front window of Frank’s Flowers glows from the other end of the street. I expect to see her there, laughing with those damned lilies in her hands, but that’s not what I find.
Tater Tot goes still as soon as the bell above the door jingles. He whines, low and troubled. It echoes in the near-empty space.
All of the flowers that were sitting on the counter are gone. There’s nothing in the massive buckets that hang along the back wall, either. The small walk-in fridge is empty, and Frank is—
Frank is wiping down the counter, his chin tucked to his chest. He didn’t look up when the door opened, and he doesn’t look up when it snicks quietly shut behind us.
I unclip Tater Tot from his leash, and he immediately starts inspecting the floor by the worktable, his tail in a straight line.
“Frank?” His silence is making me uneasy. So is the state of the shop. I’ve never seen it so empty. So void of color. “What’s going on?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he asks one of his own. “Did you know?”
Tater Tot is whining in earnest now, his paw nudging at the bottom corner of the door. It rattles in the frame, and he gives me a baleful look, but I drag my attention back to Frank with a frown.
Something’s wrong. The flowers and the—
There are tiny pinpricks of magic floating through the air, like dust motes in a sunbeam. Everything feels electric. Tense.
Wrong.
“Did I know, what?” I reply, distracted.
Frank chuckles and shakes his head. “I should have listened to you. That first night.”
His words are bitten out between clenched teeth. Angry. They slip and slide over one another, wrapped in pain. I study his face and the way his trembling hands are moving dried leaves and flowers off the table. The empty bins.
“What happened to your flowers, Frank?”
He shakes his head. “You told me. You said she was different than she seemed. And I called you stupid.” He laughs again. “You were right.”
“Frank—”
“Do you know what she is?”
I feel myself freeze. Muscles, locking in place.
What she is. I consider the pieces spread in front of me.
The ring on his finger he never takes off.
The dead peonies he can’t seem to let go of.
Shattered glass and an empty shop. His fury and his fear, tangled up until it looks a hell of a lot like grief.
Do you know what she is?
Frank knows the truth. I don’t know how, but—
Frank knows she’s a Reaper.
“She takes,” he hisses, his mouth pressed in a line. He shakes his head. “She takes it all away.”
All of Darcy’s worst fears about herself, spoken aloud. Everything I flung at her, when she first came into town. Dread pools in my gut.
“Where is she now, Frank? Where is Darcy?”
“She’s gone.” He tosses his trash bin to the side. “She left.”
“How long ago? Where?”
But Frank is somewhere else, oblivious to my questions—to my panic. His eyes are far away, his fingers plucking at the dried stem of a dead peony.
“I asked her not to,” he says, more to himself than me. “I begged her to let them stay. I did everything I could, but it wasn’t enough.”
I frown. Frank is buried too deep in his own anguish. And Darcy is out there somewhere alone, her magic uncontained and—
“I’ll come back, okay? I’ll come back and I’ll help you with the flowers.”
Frank doesn’t respond. He hunches over his worktable, giving me his back. I want to stay and figure this out. I want to soothe and protect and calm. But I’m being torn in two different directions. Instinct and obligation.
“I’ll come back, Frank,” I say again.
Then I grab for the door, and I go to find Darcy.
Tater Tot bounds down the street as soon as I wedge the door open, his leash forgotten.
Magic thickens as we get closer to the town house, the air is practically sparking with it.
It makes it difficult to move—to breathe—like static before a lightning storm.
Or the pull of the tide before the crush of a wave.
I’ve never felt anything like it. Raw power, spilling in every direction.
I have to stop at her crooked gate and bend my neck against the press of it, the magnitude dizzying.
Every step feels like I’m slogging through cement.
By the time I get to her front door, sweat is running in rivulets down the side of my face.
I grip the threshold and pull myself through with a grunt.
Somewhere inside, Tater Tot barks. Panicked. Just once. “Darcy?” I call.
The hallway is dark. The flowers that filled this space a few days ago are dead, nothing but black, dried husks. Shadows cling to everything, like sheets over furniture in a long-abandoned home. They whisper over one another. Curl around my ankles as I move up the stairs.
The dog barks again, and I push forward.
I let my wings unfold from my body, using their power to cut through the dense fog.
I reach for my sword and more shadows recede, allowing me up the stairs and down the hall.
I can hear Tater Tot’s low whine through the cracked door at the very end, the rush and roar of magic as it reacts to my presence in the house.
I expect a fight. A confrontation. For her magic to force me out. I brace myself as I nudge open her bedroom door, my hand flexing on my sword, but there is nothing but stillness here. An eerie quiet.
And in the middle of the room, lies Darcy, curled on her side with her knees to her chest, one arm extended out, her palm up.
Her dark hair is fanned around her, hiding her face, her shoulders hitched high to protect herself.
Tater Tot circles her prone form, his teeth bared at the shadows that linger at the edge of the room. But none approach.
I drop my sword. It clatters against the floor.
“Darcy,” I breathe.
Tired eyes blink open, and she stares at me blearily. Her brown eyes are shadowed, a fraction of their usual brightness. I have no idea how long she’s been like this, trapped in a cyclone of her own power.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Her voice is husky and worn. Exhausted.
“I am, though.” I ease closer, moving slowly, aware that her magic is barely respecting the crude circle she’s drawn around herself. “I’m right here with you, and I’m not going to leave.”
Her eyes flutter shut. “I can’t stop it,” she whispers. “I can’t make it go away.”
She looks so frail like this. So impossibly small. “That’s okay. You don’t need to make anything go away.”
“I want it to.” Her mouth turns down in a frown and she sniffles. “I’ve taken so many things from so many people. Frank—” She chokes on a watery sob. “I don’t want it anymore.”
The door rattles on its hinges. Somewhere downstairs, a low howl spirals through the floorboards. Darcy shivers, her hands flex, and something shatters in the depths of the house.
The butterfly. And the tornado.
A tear slips out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t hold on to it anymore.”
“You don’t need to,” I whisper. I gently touch her elbow, cautious, then drag my fingers down the length of her forearm. I uncurl her fingers one by one, then press my palm to hers. She holds on to me like a lifeline, her eyes so damn sad I can barely breathe around it.
“Give it to me,” I whisper.
A little line appears between her brows. She hasn’t moved an inch besides her hand in mine. “What?”
“Give it to me,” I say again. Urgency is making me impatient. I don’t how much longer she can do this to herself before the magic overpowers her. “You said you can’t hold on to it, so give it to me instead. Let me carry it for a while.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Says who?” Beneath us, the hardwood starts to shake. I squeeze her hand. “C’mon, Darcy. Let me in. Let me help.”
Her lower lip trembles. “I don’t—I don’t know how.”
I gently rearrange us until I’m in the middle of her threadbare rug. I unfold her body with careful hands, lifting until she’s draped over me with her knees at my hips. I curl my body around hers, protective. “I can show you. You just need to trust me. Can you do that?”
She traces a shaky line across my jaw with her fingertips. “I can try.”
“Good. That’s all you need to do. Try.”
I’ve never done this before, but I’ve seen other Guardians do it. The transfer of power between two immortal beings, magic slipping from one to the next like a conduit. Like fairy lights on a string.
I scoop her closer with my hand against the small of her back. “Where does it feel like your magic is coming from?”
“It feels like—” She flinches, and I soothe her with a slow stroke down the length of her spine. “It feels like there’s a locked door in the center of me. But that door has been rattling for such a long time, and I never let it out and—”
I stop her with a hush, digging my knuckles between her shoulder blades. Everything in the room rises two inches, then falls with a clatter.
She drops her forehead against mine, her chest heaving. “The door is gone. I can’t stop it.”