Ember X (Death Collectors)

Epilogue

I wake up to a bright sunny day, shining through my bedroom window. My cheek is resting on an open book, and my sweaty skin sticks to the pages. I stayed up all last night reading through pages about Angels and death, searching for answers and a way to bring an Angel of Death back to Earth.

I climb out of bed and get dressed in a ratty T-shirt and some cutoffs. The house is as quiet as a cemetery, but it’s not the comforting kind. My mom is in a drug treatment facility trying to recover from her addiction and when she gets back I have to decide how to ask her about Grandma and the necklace without putting stress on her.

Raven is on vacation with her mom, who got released from the same facility my mom’s at the day after the Reapers tried to destroy us. Ian spends most of his time locked away in the attic. His muse disappeared for a little while, and when I asked Ian about it, he told me it was none of my business. But I heard her—or him—sneak in last night.

My life is lonely, but I prefer it that way for the moment. Being around people hurts just as bad, if not worse, now that I know what I am—know that my insanity can wear on them.

I try not to think too much about Asher. It’s too painful and it hurts in every part of my body that I may never see him again. When I’m lying in my bed late at night, the memories of what happened there pull at my mind; when he rocked inside me, touched me, kissed me, made me feel alive even when death consumed me.

I wander to the computer and click it on. I’ve been working on trying to track down the author of the book Raven has. His name is August Millard, unless it’s his pen name. I found an email address for a writer with the same name, but if it’s not the same guy, he’ll probably think I’m nuts. Or maybe he’ll think I’m crazy either way; perhaps he’s a writer of words, not a believer of them.

I check my inbox, but it’s empty so I sink into the couch and flip through the channels, searching through the news, looking for headlines about a body being found. But the news isn’t on until later, so I shut the TV off and clean the house to distract myself. I turn up “Holding onto You” by Story of the Year and block everything out. I scrub every room downstairs and then move upstairs.

After I’m finished, I drag the garbage can out to the curb, and then I stand there taking in the neighborhood. The sun is setting behind the mountains and the sky is splashed with hues of pinks and oranges. Leaves flutter from the trees and scatter across the grass. Across the street, Ms. Courtney is rearranging her sprinklers and she glances up as she drags the hose across her yard. I politely wave and her gaze darts down at the lawn, like I don’t exist. She’s afraid of me still, just like everyone else in the town is because Laden and Mackenzie are still considered missing persons, but I know they’re dead.

My eyes stray down the street to a two-story house with unmaintained grass and a For Sale sign in the yard. Every time I look at the house, I feel a pull toward it—toward him. Sometimes, I think about asking him to come back. It’s out of sheer insanity—I know that, and that’s what helps me keep my lips sealed. However, if I knew how to bring Asher back, I would. I tried a few times, murmuring to the wind for him to come to me. “Asher, where are you?” I whisper. “I need you. I miss you.” I think I might be in love with you. The last one is just a thought and I never dare utter it aloud.

“Hey, stranger.” Raven’s brother, Todd, walks down the driveway and picks up the newspaper. He’s wearing an old blue T-shirt with holes in it, plaid pajama bottoms, and his blue hair is sticking up like he just woke up. “Thinking about buying a house?”

“Huh?” I collect the mail from the mailbox and step up onto the sidewalk.

He smiles, ruffling his hair into place as he reaches the edge of the driveway. “I saw you staring at that For Sale sign like you were about ready to rip it out of the lawn.”

I align the envelopes against the palm of my hand and walk to the edge of the lawn that separates our houses. “Do you know anything about where he went?”

He shakes his head and glances at Cameron’s vacant house. “I’m not sure. But it’s weird, right? How he moved in and then a few weeks later the house went up for sale.”

I shrug. “You know how it is. A lot of people can’t take Hollows Grove, like your sister.”

“Yeah, she seems worse about it now with the,” he makes a line across his neck, “with the scar on her neck. She’s taking that one hard.”

“She just needs to give it time to heal,” I say, but deep down I know it will never fully heal. After everything settled down, Raven started to remember things she did—horrible things that she won’t always share with me.

He taps the newspaper in his hand and nods his head at a car on the street. “You think they’re ever going to give up, whatever it is they’re looking for?”

I turn around and give the cops in the patrol car a small wave. They pretend not see me and eat their lunch.

“I don’t think so,” I say, turning back around to face Todd.

“But why are they so fixated on our neighborhood?”

“I’m not sure… maybe they think someone here knows where Mackenzie is.”

“Her family seems really determined to find her,” he remarks, holding up the newspaper and there’s a picture of Mackenzie’s face on the front page under the headline: Have You Seen Our Daughter?

Suddenly, a familiar man walks out of Cameron’s old house and heads down the path. He has a pointy nose and a scrawny body and something about the way he moves is bringing up a memory.

I watch him distractedly, trying to figure out where I’ve seen him before. “Yeah, well maybe they should start looking closer at her family.” It clicks who the man is. Cameron’s uncle, Gregory—the one that was digging up the grave for him the night I first saw Cameron.

“Ember,” Todd says. “Are you okay?”

I force my eyes off Gregory and change the topic. “So when will Raven be coming back?”

He backs down the driveway toward the front porch. “Didn’t she call you?” he asks and I shake my head. “Oh… well, she got back late last night. I thought she went over to your house when she got here.”

“No… I haven’t seen her since she left...” It’s like a jigsaw puzzle coming together: Raven is Ian’s muse. And I don’t like it because it means Raven was spending a lot of private time with Ian while she was possessed by the Reapers.

“Well, don’t take it too personally. She’s been acting like a total mental case, mom says, drawing weird pictures of hourglasses and having conversations with herself,” he says when he reaches the steps.

“Is she home right now?” I start to head toward their front door.

He shakes his head and I stop and back up toward my house. “Nah, she went out shopping or something,” he says.

Without saying goodbye, I sprint into my house and up to the attic door. I hammer my fist on it, but Ian doesn’t answer, so I shove the door open and burst into his studio. “Ian, are you in here?”

The lights are on and System of a Down’s “Lonely Day” is playing from the stereo on the floor. Canvas and sketches cover the walls, paint stains the wood floor, and the oval window is covered by a black sheet. It smells like sage and something stronger… something I’ve smelt many times in Ian’s studio.

“Dammit.” I pick up the burning joint, squish the tip against the edge of the windowsill, and throw it in a cup of water on a stool. I turn to leave but notice a large canvas in the corner, covered with another black sheet and I tug it off, letting it float to the floor.

It’s a picture of Raven lying in the middle of a snowy field, wearing a black cape over her head. Blood drips from her mouth and the corners of her eyes. Grasped in her hand is an empty hourglass and underneath her body is a red X. On the bottom corner of the drawing, bleeding in red, it says: Alyssa, please forgive me.

“What the f*ck is this? She’s not… No, she couldn’t be…” Shaking my head, I run down the hall and to Ian’s room. I bang on the door. “Ian, open up the door. I know you’re in there!” I hammer my fist harder against the door. “I can smell the smoke coming through the door.” I jiggle the knob and rattle the door. “Ian, open up the door. You’re worrying me.”

I dash back to my room and grab a bobby pin from my dresser, before heading back to Ian’s room. I crouch down in front of the shut door and work the pin until I hear the lock click. Standing up, I push the door open and smoke instantly engulfs my face. I cough and then let out a frustrated sigh at Ian sprawled on the bed, wearing pajama bottoms and a ratty T-shirt, and there’s a photo clutched in his hand.

Fanning the smoke from my face, I pad over to his bed. Without even looking at it, I know it’s a photo of Alyssa. Even with his eyes shut, his torture and guilt is written all over his face and Cameron’s words reply in my mind: What if I told you I could take away every ounce of pain you have and would ever feel?

I take the photo from Ian’s hand and flip it over. Death made me do it, Alyssa, and I’m sorry. But now I have to move on to the next Angel.

The next Angel? He can’t be talking about… No, Ian didn’t kill her. It’s not possible. I struggle not to rip the photo into pieces and set it down on the dresser, and then I give Ian a soft shake. “Wake up, Ian. We need to talk.”

But he’s passed out, stoned out of his mind, so I give up and run back to my room to get my phone. I need to talk to Raven and find out if she’s still here, or if the Reapers have gotten a hold of her again. But when I enter my room, something feels off, like the air is unbalanced.

Everything looks normal, except for my window is open and a black feather is ruffled on my bed. I pick it up and my gaze lands on the wall across from me, where the ink of a fresh poem is drying.

In separate fields of black feathers, the birds fly.

Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul.

They connect in the middle, but are separated by a thin line of ash.

It’s what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart.

They can never truly be together as light and dark.

Unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark.

It’s the poem that I read on Cameron’s wall, but three extra lines have been added.

Or if the other dares to fly across the line and steal the other’s light

And force them to cross over the line and join the darkness of life.

I’m not gone, princess. I will come back for you until you give in.

—Cameron

I blink as the ink bleeds down the wall, then back away from it and fall on my bed with the faint echo of Cameron’s laugh filling up my unstable head.

It’s starting again—the games, the tricks, the battle for me to surrender. And, like everything in life, I’m not sure how it will all end. Or when my sanity will fly away into the sky, just like a raven.