“I’m ready,” she breathed. Her heart slamming against her throat.
Mr. Tod led the family toward a room with long, heavy curtains, hazy light, and a polished wooden casket, which sat, lid closed, against the far wall. Uncle Pix stopped Mr. Tod in the hallway, mumbling something about a list of people who had access to Holly’s remains, but Hailey never broke stride and in fact quickened her pace. The casket was so close. She had but to open it, and then she could see—they all would see.
One of the brothers shouted, “Wait!”
Hailey threw open the lid and staggered back.
A charred, skeletal head wearing Holly’s hair gaped at her. The rest was pieces.
Hailey saw the ceiling and the dim light fixtures spin above her before she hit the floor. Fin fell beside her, cradling her next to him.
“That’s not Holly,” she managed, the room swinging like a pendulum under her.
On the night before the burial, there was a gathering at the pub. Nobody called it a wake.
Someone sang a sad, slow tune in old Irish, which Hailey understood perfectly even if she didn’t know what the words meant. The song ended, and hush dropped like a heavy curtain over the Hullachan.
Holly was dead.
The church held a Requiem Mass the next day. Every seat was filled.
Hailey sat down, blinked once, and it was over.
The next thing she knew, she was standing over Holly’s open grave.
Numb.
Squatting down, she wrapped her fingers around some loose Earth, red clay she squeezed into crumbles against her palm. She buried her sister at 2pm on a windy Sunday. She dropped a fistful of dirt onto the casket.
And just like that, Holly was gone.
Cobon waited for the last human to leave the cemetery before he revealed himself to Asher.
“Lovely service, wouldn’t you agree?”
Strolling with his hands clasped leisurely behind his back, he approached Asher, who stood unmoving in the shade of a giant oak, facing Holly’s grave.
“I especially liked that bit about perpetual light,” he continued, taking his place at his brother’s side. “Though,” he said, rocking back on his heels then forward again, “I doubt that even the temporary light of this wretched planet could ever findallof her pieces…”
Asher said nothing.
Cobon pressed his lips together. “Well, not in that mausoleum anyway.” He leaned closer to Asher. “Too many cracks and crevices.”
Asher remained lost in his own thoughts, uninterrupted and quite obviously unamused.
“In fact, I think some of her is still stuck in my fingernails.” He scraped a bit of dried blood from his thumb and flicked it away.
When Asher still took no notice of him, Cobon dropped his hands and impatiently quickened his cadence.
“Magnificent soul, though—pity I had to shred it, what a waste.”
He looked for a moment with Asher at Holly’s fresh grave.
“Simply exquisite that one, even my wicked humans thought so. Oh, they were happy enough to ravage her, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to kill her—I had to wait hours for her to bleed out.” He shook his head in short, minute bursts and muttered almost angrily, “Lucky I found a black widow to ensnare the girl—chop her foot off. Otherwise, those two buffoons would’ve failed to even get her into the car.”
Asher was unaware of a third human involved in this scheme, and he tried not to show it…tried hard not to show a sudden, intense concern for his girl, but Cobon might’ve sensed it. Asher’s jaw had tightened, ever so slightly.
But still he said nothing, and Cobon spoke even faster.
