Go home.
“That’s a good idea, Terry Ann,” I said, as I walked away from her toward the front door. Home. Home was the house I shared with Gram a year ago.
There was nothing to be afraid of there now, was there?
Hemlock wasn’t here to haunt me any longer.
I walked through the front entrance and stood motionless outside on the sidewalk. A strong breeze swept through the street, fluttering the flap of the store’s awning, and stirring up the strong salty scent of the Atlantic Ocean that lay less than a block away. My body shivered with the cool air; it might be October but the feel of winter was in the air, and somewhere mixed in was the underlying aroma of popcorn.
That was a strange thing to smell.
I pulled up the collar to my shirt and tugged it tighter around me to ward off the chill. I looked around slowly, my gaze glancing over the street that was once all familiar, but now seemed so strange and different. The blue of the sky was the deepest I’d ever seen, even the weeds that grew up out of the cracks in the sidewalk where greener than I could ever remember green being.
My shoes thudded quietly over the sidewalk as I moved down the street. When I reached the corner, I noticed up ahead the tops of the carnival tents that were set up in the vacant lot down the avenue the same time last year.
I wondered if it was the same carnival.
Maybe I’d go back tonight and have another little sit down with that fortuneteller. She was the first one to tell me I had no soul.
When I reached Addy’s house, the small blue porch light flickered on and off like a flame. I slid my hand behind the mailbox hanging next to the door and slipped the extra key out from where we always hid it. And once again, when I opened the door and stepped in, the floor groaned and creaked welcoming me home.
I slipped my feet out of my shoes and slowly walked down the hallway, trailing a finger over the wall I always had the best conversations with Addy through.
I finally understood why she wasn’t the most encouraging and loving grandmother in the world. But she did save me, she tried to get me away from Hemlock and Mary, and for that I will always be grateful.
I flicked on the kitchen light and listened to the sounds of the ocean that drifted in through the thin glass panels of the windows. I opened the back door and looked through the screen, watching the waves roll onto the sand along the shore. The cool breeze tingled the small hairs at the back of my neck and images of Mathias filled my mind. My fingers curled into fists and my heart ached. I slammed the door closed, rattling the screen, and walked through the rest of the house where everything reminded me of how alone I was in this world.
The sun streamed in through each window, and the scent of vanilla suddenly rolled through every room.
Something loud thudded against the wall.
“What the hell?” I yelped, pressing myself into the opposite wall. “H-hello?” I called out, banging on the wall to Addy’s side of the house.
I grabbed a frying pan off the stove just in case there were squatters living somewhere in the house. I mean, the house was empty for the last year, anybody could have just—
“Addy isn’t home,” a deep voice rumbled behind me.
I screamed and spun around. The frying pan fumbled out of my fingers and clattered to the floor.
“Mathias?” My knees buckled, and hit the floor hard. “Mathias?” Tears blurred my eyes making it hard to see.
He stepped out of the corner, out of the shadows. His bright blue eyes darting from my face, to my neck, to my chest and down the rest of my body, which was sprawled out across the floor.
His smile was breathtaking. “You’re even more beautiful upside than you were in Ravenswood,” he said, his voice no louder than a soft breath.
“You’re here,” I said, scrambling to climb up to my feet.
He didn’t give me time to stand; he lunged forward and crouched down, kneeling in front of me. “I’m here.”
“Where’s—When—What—” I quickly glanced around the room, struggling to figure out which question to ask first out of the thousands of questions that raced through my brain.
“You. You saved everyone.”
“But I was supposed to be destroyed along with Hemlock, that was the only way that I could think to open the book in front of him—”
“The world is different now, Raine. Humans live alongside the gods, like they were never apart from them.”
“But, what about—”
