Chapter 28

T wo days, twelve memorials, and one mental breakdown later…

The sunburnt feeling wouldn't go away no matter how much moisturizer I slathered on my flawless skin. The itch was killing me. Slowly. Painfully. No matter how I scratched, it persisted until I wanted to claw it off. I might have, my skin, I mean, if I hadn't been certain it would grow back before my eyes, leaving me with yet more tangible proof my life as I had known it was over.

"I thought I might find you out here." Josie joined me in the grass beneath the burning tree, which was now warded by Kierce, much to Moore's sadness. Though she had perked up when I confided there was a second god tree we had yet to locate that was all hers if she found it first. "I finalized the order."

"Thanks." I would have squeezed her hand but moving hurt. "Everyone should have a grave marker."

Little, who Dis Pater had cremated either through intent or neglect, had been scooped into a sandwich bag before the 514 arrived to process the scene. I had sprinkled her remains into the Wilmington River, which flowed past Bonaventure, per Farah's request.

Farah, who had decided to stay with Alyse a while longer while she mourned Little, and herself.

I still owed Audrey a visit with her best friend, but Farah wasn't ready to see her. Her grief was too fresh.

"You did better by her than she deserved, Mary."

Moonlight bathed the roots of the tree, which had turned bone-white overnight. "Little was a kid."

"They were all kids, and now they're all dead."

Carter told us, after the fire marshal finished her investigation, that Little hadn't just burned down the house where she had lived with Ian and the others. She trapped them inside before striking the match.

Eleven kids, most of them nameless on paper, had perished between the blaze and the drownings.

Josie dedicated a tree in her orchard in remembrance, a sunny plot where they could rest in peace.

Their plaque would arrive with Little's marker, which Alyse had agreed to keep in her family mausoleum. Two shining reminders of my failures.

"Not Audrey." I clung to that small mercy. "She's alive."

"She might wish otherwise." Josie stretched out her legs. "She shot Harrow." She snorted. "Twice."

"She would never have hurt him on purpose." I wasn't sure I had the right to defend her either, but I had a mouthful of excuses locked and loaded for her. "She was terrified when a literal death god appeared in front of her, and she fired at him. His light was blinding. She had no idea the bullets went through him."

"That's what Harrow gets for leaving a weapon lying around for a kid to find. Gun safety wouldn't have been an issue if he hadn't hidden her at his house in the first place. God. What a tool."

The old urge to protest rose within me before the weight of his recent actions submerged it again. It was a good thing too. I already felt like enough of a sucker without championing him as well. "Badb?"

"She's prying the rhinestones out of that cat collar she stole."

"Of course she is."

Badb, who, according to Kierce, didn't speak in words. Let alone with a Yorkshire accent.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She reached for my hand then dropped hers. "Any of it?"

"No." I shook my head. "I need more time to process…everything."

Like who had guided me through summoning Dis Pater if not the crow?

"Let me know if you change your mind." She tipped her head back. "I should get going."

"Are you sure I can't talk you into staying?"

"Yes." Her gaze slid to the shop and then up to our apartments. "I need more time to process too."

"And you're sure you should spend it with Carter?"

Apparently, the redcap owned a fully restored Victorian in the historic district with a teeny-tiny garden. I couldn't tell if the neglected plant, a single oakleaf hydrangea, had guilted Josie into coming back to save it from its black-thumbed owner or if Josie hoped to use exposure therapy to catapult herself from temporary roomie to girlfriend status with Carter.

"You should be thanking me for allowing your birdfriend to stay at my place while I'm gone."

Armie had tainted her home, stolen her sense of safety, and she couldn't bear to stay there yet. I got it. I really did. I just hated she wasn't a flight of stairs away from me anymore. I needed my sister. Now more than ever. But what was best for Josie came first. Always.

"Thank you for letting Kierce crash at your place."

As if speaking his name had summoned him from the ether, Kierce materialized at my elbow.

"I should go." She blew me a kiss off her palm. "See you love birds at work tomorrow."

The three of us had a lot of catching up to do on the work we let slide during our Marypocalypse.

"I heard what you did there." I pointed a finger at her. "I expect to see you at dinner five nights a week."

"Four," she called out as Carter rolled in to pick up her new roomie.

As the canopy above us ignited, Kierce leaned against the tree's trunk, studying my profile.

His halo gleamed, a hematite aura behind his head, and his eyes contained infinite worlds.

"Frankie." The velvet glide of his voice caressed my senses. "You didn't tell her."

"That I'm dead?"

I hadn't had a pulse in forty-eight hours.

Dis Pater told me if I cared so damn much about it to manifest myself one.

Dis Pater was kind of a dick.

My first clue? Him roasting me like a whole hog on a spit at the train shed to see if he was right about me not being an initiate or an acolyte. Lucky for me, he wasn't wrong. I don't think he cared either way.

"You're not dead."

As evidenced by the fact I was still alive-ish, one of my parents was—or had been—a god.

Either a death god conceived me or my divine parent had knocked up a necromancer.

I didn't want to know. I didn't care. I had no interest in finding one or both of them.

Especially if identifying my divine parent came with obligations like Kierce and Ankou shouldered for their gods. Besides, one of the promises us Marys made one another was we would never search out our birth parents.

"Dis Pater claimed I was already dying." I wet my lips, which made them split. "That children born from a mortal union with a death god are terminal. Do you believe that? Do you think I would have died soon?"

That bright light I saw in the culvert? I think…it was me. This new me. Emerging. Or trying to anyway.

"Your blood had already turned, and your powers were fluctuating."

As it happened, neither the fruit, nor the leaf had been to blame for my glitter plasma. It was all me.

"That's not an answer."

"Had your soul been mortal, you would have become like Ankou—like me—when you died." His rueful smile hurt. "But your soul was never mortal. Only in death could you ascend to what you were meant to be."

Too bad I had no idea what that was. "Do you think Ankou knew the truth?"

"Why would he feed you divine fruit if he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt you would rise?"

"That's what worries me."

Ankou had wanted me dead. No doubt about it. But he never gave a reason. And that bothered me.

A throat cleared behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Leonard Collins standing in the road.

"Hey." I twisted to face him. "How are things?"

With Harrow greasing the wheels from his hospital bed, Audrey had elected to return to foster care. Just not to the Houwaards. She also reenrolled in high school. I wished her the best on both fronts.

"Good." He smoothed a hand down his shirt. "I just wanted to say thanks. Again. For everything."

"I'm glad I could help." I smiled at him, which hurt, but I meant it. "I'm glad Audrey is safe."

"I heard about your problem while I was canvassing the graveyards for information."

I had so many problems just now that I sat there, flipping through them, trying to figure out which one he meant.

"Your business? It's been slow? After the ghost-eater case?"

Sweeping his arm out behind him, he drew my attention to more than a dozen spirits lined up outside of my office. A few I recognized from Bonaventure. A couple I had never met. "What is this?"

"I told them how you saved my granddaughter." He drew a circle in the air with his finger, indicating the halo of dark fire burning behind my head. "And now that you're…"

"…dead?" I suggested, tempering my bitterness. "No longer among the living?"

"Yes," he gusted out with relief I hadn't made him say it out loud. "They see you as one of them."

"One of them who can still provide a valuable service?" My stomach dropped into my toes. "Or can I?"

"It's as they say." Kierce stood and helped me to my feet. "There's only one way to find out."

Hand in hand, his touch the only certain thing in this new world, we crossed the road to greet my clients.