“Remains of the one who danced you into love are in the ground, Yi-yi. That’s why you don’t want me to eat the bones. Do what you came for. I will hunt only the tasty night moths.” Smirking, he added, “And I will kill as you do—with love.” He surged from my lap in a suspiciously graceful leap, given the heft of his body, and bounded into the darkness beyond the graves.
I rolled my eyes as he vanished. I’d been trained to kill at the age of nine. Before then I’d killed without training. Shortly after I rescued Shazam from Planet X, he asked how my killing was different from the killing I’d forbidden him to do, aside from me wasting food by not eating my prey. I told him that when I killed, it wasn’t with the hatred that once blazed in my heart, but with love for the world I was trying to protect. I did it only when necessary, as quickly and mercifully as possible. Killing with violence in your heart, or worse, a complete dearth of emotion, made you a killer, plain and simple. Killing because it had to be done, because there was no other way and it was the right thing to do, made you a necessary weapon.
Do what you came here for. I wasn’t sure what that was. Nothing of Dancer remained in this macabre memorial to the dead behind Arlington Abbey. I found that a terrible thought—that his essence might be trapped in a box buried beneath the dirt. When I die, cremate me and cast me to the stars.
Still, I pushed to my feet, skirted a bank of low hedges and wide planters, and moved to stand at the foot of his grave.
Time slid away; it was four months ago and I was kissing Dancer’s cold lips and closing the lid of his casket.
God, I missed him.
We’d played with the innocence and impunity of kids who believed themselves immortal (at least I had), conquering video games, watching movies, dreaming together about what our futures might hold, gorging on ice cream and candy and sodas, racing out into the night in search of adventure.
I smiled faintly. We’d found plenty. We’d plunged into life with similar enthusiasm and devil-may-care bravado. Caring, thoughtful, and brilliant, he’d been one of only two people I’ve ever met that I thought was as smart, possibly smarter, than me.
We’d grown up, become lovers.
Dancer Elias Garrick, never the sidekick, always the hero.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared down. I’m not a woman who often looks back. I measure actions by results, and peering into the past rarely yields any. Reflecting on something that hurts you only prolongs your pain, and when death is involved, the pain is often compounded by a relentless sense of guilt that attacks the moment you start to heal, as if duration of grief somehow proves the depth of your love for the person you lost.
If that were true, I’d have to grieve Dancer forever.
Born with a flawed heart, he’d lived fearlessly. The unfairly penalized muscle in his chest had given out on him before he’d turned eighteen, while I was sleeping next to him in bed. I’d woken after a night of lovemaking to find him forever gone.
I’d melted down. It got ugly. My friends got me through it.
Guilt had definitely led me here, but not spawned by lack of grief. A sheer abundance of it made me do something stupid last night.
I tried to erase my pain in another man’s bed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
It hadn’t worked. The first man I’d had sex with taught me how beautiful it was.
The second man had shown me how ugly it could be.
“I miss you,” I whispered to his grave, and waited.
Shortly after he died, he spoke to me twice. I’d felt his presence, as if he was standing right there behind me, sunshine on my shoulders, reaching through the slipstream to comfort and counsel me.
A few weeks ago, however, I’d become aware that intangible warmth was gone—vanished while I slept—and I knew in my gut he’d moved on. Somehow he’d managed to linger in the ether to make sure I was all right and when he was satisfied, he’d raced off for the next grand adventure.
As he should have.
As we all should when it’s our time.
That thought didn’t make me feel any better. Thoughts rarely do. The heart has its own mind, measures its own time, and if it consults with the brain, doesn’t always heed the advice. My brain was screaming—stop hurting already. To a deaf audience.
I’d never fully grasped the meaning of the word “forever” before. I’d lost my mom long before she died. It wasn’t the same. I’d grieved her while she’d still been living.
But the idea that I would never see Dancer again was more than I could stand. All I had left of him were memories and we’d not had time to make nearly enough.
My gaze drifted to the headstone east of his marker. JO BRENNAN. We’d laid another of my friends to rest beside him. I smiled faintly, remembering her breaking into my dungeon cell to save me. We hadn’t always gotten along but she’d been a genuine, good constant in my life and didn’t deserve to die the way she did.
ALINA MCKENNA LANE. Mac’s sister was buried beside her. There’d been so much death in my life.
“All the more reason to live,” came the deep, exotically accented growl from behind me. I could hear traces of many languages in it, a consensus of none.
I bristled. Not many people can sneak up on me without my preternatural senses kicking into high alert. Ryodan defies the odds in countless, irritating ways. “Stay out of my head.”
“I wasn’t in it. Didn’t need to be. When humans stand at graves, they brood.” He was beside me then, in that sudden, silent, eerie way of his.
Humans, he’d said. Whatever Ryodan was, he wasn’t one of those and he’d stopped making any effort to conceal it from me. Whether urbane, sophisticated man or black-skinned, fanged beast, he was all the supers I was, plus an awe-inspiring, aggravating assortment of others. When I was young, I’d felt like Sarah from the movie Labyrinth, dashing around Dublin having grand adventures. Ryodan was Jareth, my Goblin King. I’d defied him at every turn, defining myself in opposition to him. I’d studied him, incorporating his ideologies and tactics into my own. Silverside I’d functioned by the code: WWRD? I’d never tell him that.
I turned and scowled up at him. Beautiful, cool, aloof man. Two things always happen to me whenever he shows up. I get an instant jolt of happiness, as if every cell in my body wakes up and is glad to see him. It pisses me off because my brain rarely agrees. Ryodan and I are enthusiastic foes, wary friends. I tell him things I don’t tell anyone else, and that offends me, too.
The second thing baffles me. I often feel like crying. I’ve wept on his flawless, crisp shirts more times than I care to remember.
“Because I understand,” he murmured, staring down at me with those glittering silver eyes. “And I can take it. I wasn’t sure about the happiness, though. Nice of you to clear that up.”
“What part of ‘stay out of my head’ didn’t you understand?”
“Your face, Dani. Everything you feel is on it. I rarely need to delve deeper.”