I wanted to say I didn’t mean it, but I couldn’t make the words leave my throat.
Griff gave me an odd look. “Yes, he is. I’m going after him.”
“Griff. No—” It would kill him. The Den would devour him. He was so innocent that the depravity would feast on him like a starving man dropped in a bathtub of ice cream.
“I’m not a mine yet. I’ll do it if I want.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to lose you. If you go in, you won’t ever come out.”
He leaned against me. “You came out.”
“How did you die this time? Was it the Clarks?”
His shoulders stiffened, then he set down the lemon sherbet and leaned against the grotesque’s bulky stone legs.
“No. You’d be proud. I took my father’s form. I . . .” His face paled, turning gray in the moonlight. “I killed the Clarks. I don’t envy Justice anymore. I don’t think I’ll envy anyone ever again.”
“If the Clark’s didn’t kill you, then . . .?”
“Then who?” He gave me his old smile. “I didn’t want to come back home right away. I needed some time . . .” He shrugged. “I decided to walk along this old road in the woods. I was still in my father’s form, just thinking. Some drunk in a big truck came speeding around a blind curve. His headlights struck me. I froze like an animal. His truck hit me dead-on. He got out, swearing, drinking from a bottle. He stumbled onto the road, screamed when he saw me lying there, and unloaded his rifle on me. Then I died.” Griff smiled. “The only funny part is, no one’s going to believe a drunk killed the Jersey Devil on some backroad in the woods.”
“None of it’s funny,” I said.
“You only think that because you lost your sense of humor.”
“You think?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Definitely.” He was so earnest I almost smiled. “What were you lockpicking?”
“A monster trapped underground. It’s hungry.”
Griff let out a long whistle. “A monster like me?”
I shook my head.
“Like you?”
“No.”
“What does it do?”
“It devours.”
Griff put his chin on his fist, considering. He was a perfect replica of Rodin’s The Thinker. “Are you scared?”
“Terrified.”
He nodded. “Do you think Justice is scared?”
I thought about it for a moment, looking at the grotesque snarling over us. “I think . . . yes. If he still loves, then he’s scared. But if he doesn’t love anymore, if he’s stone, then no, I don’t think he’s scared.”
Griff tapped the grotesque’s clawed foot. “Then I don’t know what I hope. That he’s stone or that he’s scared.”
I closed my eyes. I hoped he was still scared. But for all I knew, months had already passed.
Griff reached over and took my hand.
“What?” I asked.
