“Ready?” Wesley asked me as I joined the guys in the foyer of our opulent house. They were all smartly dressed in dark suits, but I was too far gone to appreciate the image they cut.
I gave him a nod and followed them out to the backyard for Caleb to portal us to wherever the funeral was being held. It dimly occurred to me I didn’t even know what country our home was in. Then again... I no longer cared. I’d be gone soon enough.
The six of us congregated together in a circle, ready for Caleb to do his thing, and someone took my hand. Glancing down, I saw inked fingers gripping mine, and as the whoosh of magic flared around us, Austin squeezed my hand tightly, then released as we appeared on the grass outside a depressing-looking chapel.
“This isn’t right,” I muttered, staring up at the stained glass angel above the open doors. “Lucy would have hated to have her funeral in a church. She was a scientist; she wanted to be cryogenically frozen, not prayed over.”
“It’s what her parents wanted,” Vali told me, nudging the small of my back to coax me into motion, instead of standing there like one of the stone angels in the graveyard.
Heaving a sigh, I dragged my reluctant ass up the steps toward where I could see people taking their seats inside. “Makes sense, I guess,” I sighed. “Her adoptive parents are lovely people and yes, very religious. I’m still shocked they never changed Lucy’s name.”
“Lucifer?” Caleb smiled. “They couldn’t have. It suited her too much.”
“It did,” I agreed, making my way down the aisle but pulling up short when a five-foot-tall, weeping woman threw herself into my arms and sobbed into my chest.
“Kit,” she wailed, clutching me tight and leaving me no option but to pat her awkwardly on the back while she babbled totally incomprehensible words into my dress. A few feet behind her, Lucy’s adoptive father, Jerry, stood watching us and looking just totally lost.
He and Valda had been older when they’d taken Lucy on, and she’d really only ever spent holidays with them since starting boarding school with me, but they loved her like she was their own child. They’d been the best parents any foster kid could have hoped for, and I knew this would be devastating them.
Yet I couldn’t force myself to try and comfort Valda as she sobbed on me. I couldn’t summon up those empty words or platitudes that I knew she needed to hear so badly.
Thankfully, one of the guys sensed my dilemma and carefully peeled her off me to offer a box of tissues. Free, I took a few more shaking steps toward the front of the chapel. Toward the coffin, which sat there in the center of the open space surrounded by flowers and with its lid propped open.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered to myself, my fists clenched so tight that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see blood on my palms.
“You can, Vixen,” Cole murmured in my ear. “I know you can. You’re stronger than you think.”
My lips pursed, and I bit back my angry retort that he didn’t know what he was talking about. I wasn’t strong, I was just... lucky. Or unlucky, depending how you looked at it. Somehow I kept escaping with my life, while those around me suffered.
But right here, at my best friend’s funeral, I owed it to her to at least say goodbye.
Shaking Cole’s hand off my arm, I quickly closed the space between me and Lucy’s casket before I could change my mind again.
She looked so peaceful lying there. Like she was just asleep. The funeral home had done a good job of arranging her short hair to cover the evidence of her head wounds, and Valda had picked out a long-sleeved floral dress that Lucy would have made fake vomiting noises over had anyone suggested she wear it in life.
“Lucifer,” I whispered softly enough that no one without supernatural hearing could hear me. “You look ridiculous, babe. And in a church as well. I’m amazed your body made it inside without bursting into flames.” I paused, biting my lip. “Then again, there’s nothing of you left in there, is there?”
Reaching out a trembling hand, I lightly touched her cheek.
“I’m going to miss you so damn much, girl. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I fucking love you. And I promise you, I will get vengeance for your death. That bitch will pay for what she did to you, I swear it.” One last time, because I couldn’t help myself, I sent another pulse of my magic into her body, and when it returned to me, I imagined a small piece stayed with her. So a little bit of my essence would always be with my sister.
Sniffing hard and swallowing the heavy lump in my throat, I leaned down and kissed her forehead before turning and halfway running back out of the chapel. I’d said my goodbyes, and that was all I could handle.
As I came to a gasping stop some fifty yards into the graveyard, a gentle hand rested on my back, and I cringed away from it.
“Go back inside,” I told him, wrapping my arms around myself and staring into the distance. “I just want to be alone for a bit.”
“I’ll leave you alone,” Vali murmured in a soft voice. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll go over to that bench and wait until you’re ready.”
He didn’t linger to try and force a hug on me or demand I talk about my feelings; he just walked away and went to sit on the park bench at the top of the grassy hill overlooking the site where Lucy would be interred.
For a while I stayed where I was, kneeling on the wet grass and trying to pull myself together. I’d cried enough in past few days, and that wasn’t productive. Lucy didn’t need my tears and self-pity; she needed justice.
Wiping my face on the hem of my dress, I slowly picked my way between headstones up to where Vali sat waiting for me.
We sat there together, not speaking until the sounds of singing could be heard from the chapel, and I knew the service was almost over.
“That wasn’t what she would have wanted,” I said finally, looking towards the house of God where my best friend was being prayed over.
“I know,” he replied. “So does Elena. But it was important to Valda and Jerry, and she didn’t have the heart to tell them no. After all, funerals are for the living, not the dead, are they not?” I said nothing, and he let that thought hang in the air for a moment. “Did you say goodbye?” I gave a tight nod, not trusting my voice. “Well, then that’s all that matters.”
He reached down, taking my hand in his and linking our fingers together between us.
One of the best things about Vali and Cole, they didn’t waste words. I’d never met two people more comfortable with silence before, but it calmed me. Especially in a time like this.
“I can’t let this go,” I finally said, my voice hardening with resolve as weeping guests began pouring out of the chapel, following my other four guardians as they carried Lucy’s casket across the grass to her final resting place.
“We never thought you would,” Vali responded simply. Below us, the people who had come to mourn Lucy gathered around the hole, which had already been dug out of the ground in preparation. My guys placed her coffin down on the pulley system that would slowly lower her corpse into the ground and stepped back.
Vaguely I recognized a few of the people in attendance, standing there clutching flowers and getting ready to throw them on top of her casket. Kids from school, teachers, residents of Cascade Falls... Mostly though, they seemed to be Valda and Jerry’s friends, there to show their support for the older couple who had just lost their daughter.
It was the striking brunette stalking towards us that held my attention, though. Her hair was perfectly pinned into place, exactly the way it had been when I’d first met her, and her black dress was cut in a severe line across the neck.
“Elena,” Vali greeted her when she approached, and I stood to greet her with dread pooling in my stomach. It was my fault her girlfriend was dead. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Instead of the polite kiss that she gave her brother, when she turned to me, it was a sharp slap across the face that she delivered.