I tried to open them, but couldn’t.
There was sound, but it seemed muffled and distant. I was being carried like a baby. Then a softness under my ass and back. I was lying on a bed.Ow,my head hurt like a motherfucker.
The bed shook and the room started to move. A car. I was in a car. Stretched out on the back seat.
I hauled and hauled with all my strength but I couldn’t get even one finger to move. So I listened, instead, and the sounds I was hearing gradually changed into words.
“—sorry,” I heard. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I swear, when all this is done, I’m going to get that bastard. I’m going to make him pay.”
I felt my body roll back against the seat. The car was climbing up what felt like a winding hill. Where was he taking me? Now that my mind was swimming up out of the blackness of sleep, things started to sink in. We’d done it! The plan had worked. Aedan was alive and so was I and now we could move on!
We slowed and then I felt myself roll awkwardly onto my side as the car jerked to a stop. I tried to turn back onto my back but my body still refused to respond. Some of the cocktail Heather had given me had worn off, but not all of it—I was still paralyzed. I wanted to tell Aedan I was alive. He was hurting so much and there was no need. I could grab and hug him and everything would be okay.
If I couldjust...move...something.
I heard him open his door and get out. And then there was a sound that was familiar and yet unplaceable to my drugged brain. A sort of metal scraping and the patter of something soft falling. Rhythmically, over and over again.
At last, he stopped and I heard the rear car door open. I could see only reddish daylight through my closed lids, but I could feel Aedan looking down at me. “I picked a beautiful spot,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Looking out over the water.”
Oh God. Oh Jesus, no. I wanted to throw up with fear. I wanted to scream. But my drugged body just lay there like a lifeless doll.
He leaned over me and wrapped me up in his arms and I felt myself being carried. There was the sensation of being lowered and then cold dampness was soaking through the back of my tank top and the smell of earth surrounded me.
MOVE!But no matter how hard I strained, my body didn’t even twitch.
I heard a rustle of clothing and the scrape of his sneakers as he knelt down. When he spoke, it didn’t sound like the Aedan I knew. He was stripped down, his soul bared; he was talking the way he talked when there was no one else to hear.
“The first time I saw you,” he said, “I thought you were an angel.”
Going by where his voice seemed to come from, he was kneeling right beside my grave...but it still sounded horribly far away. The hole must be deep. I was going to be deep down in the earth, with hundreds of pounds of soil on top of me.
“I thought you couldn’t be...because nobody would send someone to save a feckin’ waste of space like me. I thought I was long past saving. But you showed me—But then I couldn’t—“
He took a breath. Something warm and wet splashed onto my cheek.
“—I couldn’t save—God damn it, Sylvie!It was meant to beme!”More wet drops on my face. When he could speak again, he continued. “I promise I’ll take care of Alec. And I’ll find a way to get Rick. I’ll get that bastard, if it takes me twenty years.”
I heard him pick up the spade and stand up. “You were the sweetest girl I ever met,” he said. “And I will never, ever forget you.”
MOVE!I tried to open my eyes, but they weighed a thousand tons each.
There was awhumpand something heavy and powdery landed across my legs. A few bits bounced as far as my neck.
MOOOVE!But nothing happened.
And the earth kept falling.
59
AEDAN
I putthe spade down and looked out across the water. It really was a beautiful place. She’d be happy here.
Jesus, how the hell am I going to tell Alec?
I looked down at Sylvie’s grave. I’d thought that she’d have to do this for me—that’s why I put the spade in the back of the car. I never thought I’d be the one doing it for her.
I knew I had to finish. She was almost covered up with the first thin layer. I’d left her face until last. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing soil down onto it, the dark clods breaking across those lips.
