“Lucy,” I moaned, taking three stumbling steps across the room to where she was, then I collapsed to my knees like my strings had just been cut. With a shaking hand, I reached out and rolled her over to face me, trying not to cringe at her ice-cold, waxy skin.
“Lucifer? You can’t be...” I trailed off as a sob ripped through my body. For a long moment, I just clutched her to me. The raw ache inside made an unsealable wound where Lucy belonged—my best friend, my partner-in-crime—my sister. The tears wouldn’t fall, even though the primal scream inside me didn’t seem to have an end. I pressed my face against her purple hair. I needed Lucy to be alive. I’d fought to keep her that way, pushed, pulled—dammit. She would never give up on me; I would be damned if I’d give up on her.
Sniffing back tears and trying to calm my breathing, I sat back on my heels and laid trembling hands on Lucy’s chest. Surely if Bridget could keep her blood pumping for several days after death, I could restart her heart. Couldn’t I?
“Come on, come on, come on,” I begged my magic to do it’s thing, mentally grabbing it with both hands and trying to force it down into Lucy’s body. At first it seemed to be working, transferring through my hands and into my best friend, but all it did was circulate her body uselessly and then return to me feeling confused.
Over and over I tried the same thing, despite already having seen it wasn’t working. Sometimes, it just wasn’t that easy to admit defeat.
How long I knelt there, trying to force my magic to heal the girl who had been there for me my entire life—my oldest friend and closest companion since as long as I could remember—I had no idea. At some stage, I exhausted myself and just lay there on the cold stone floor beside her, sobbing and cursing that poisonous bitch that had birthed me.
I didn’t hear Caleb arrive, and when he smoothed the hair away from my face with frozen fingers, his words weren’t reaching my ears. His blue, frostbitten lips were moving, sure, but all I could hear was a dull whooshing noise.
Maybe I was dying too? Maybe Bridget’s spell had worked after all and this was just how a Ban Dia died. That would certainly explain why I couldn’t heal Lucy...
My limbs were numb, and I couldn’t have moved even if I’d tried to as Caleb collected me up in his arms and carried me out of that horrific place. My eyes drifted closed somewhere along the tunnel we had come in through, and I put no effort into opening them again.
What was the point?
Jonathan was dead. Lucy was dead. And River... probably wished he was dead right now.
Everything I touched turned to shit.
27
For the next few days, my five remaining guardians took turns staying with me. My body was so severely depleted of magic that I needed the skin-to-skin recharge, but I was only just on this side of catatonic.
So for however long it took, they rotated time with me, just lying there in my giant purple bed and hugging me. I wished I could say it made everything better, that it made me feel safe and loved and that I realized there was more left to live for.
I wished I could say that. But I couldn’t. Instead, all their presence did was remind me how many other people stood to lose their lives because of me. Had we not already come close with Wes? We still had no idea who had blown up Seamus’s house. Hell, we hadn’t even tried to find out; we’d been so focused on Bridget.
Every time one of the guys slipped into the bed with me, enclosing me in strong arms and whispering words of love in my ear, it made me even more certain that I would eventually be their downfall.
“Vixen?” Cole crouched in front of me, stroking my hair back behind my ear. Someone was still wrapped around me from behind, maybe Vali? I’d lost track. “Lucy’s funeral is today. We thought you might want to go.”
I blinked my gritty eyes back at him a couple of times, letting his words sink in to my foggy brain. I’d run out of tears days ago and had just been staring at the wall when I wasn’t sleeping.
“Regina?” Vali murmured in my ear, confirming my guess. “Do you want to shower and dress? I think it would be good for you to go.”
Cole cleared his throat and shot his brother a sharp look over my head. “If you want to. You don’t have to go if you’re not feeling up to it.”
Do I want to go? Am I really ready to face the sight of Lucy in a fucking coffin?
Then again, what good did denial do me? She was dead. Hiding in my bedroom and refusing to pay my respects wasn’t going to bring her back.
No, the least I could do was take a fucking shower and put on a black dress. Lucy was my best friend, my sister. To not attend her final send off would be just a fucking slap after I had let her be killed.
With a small nod, I tried to push myself up, only to be immediately lifted into Cole’s strong arms and carried into my adjoining bathroom.
“Cole, I’m not disabled,” I grumbled, my voice husky from disuse. “I can handle showering alone.”
The big man paused, having just turned on my shower to warm up the water.
“Huh, I never realized how much I missed your voice, Vixen. Even when you are being a grump.” His lips pulled up on one side in a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Not even close.
I glared at him, not totally sure why I was being such a bitch when all he was doing was helping me. “I have this handled, Cole. Just tell me how much time I have to get ready, and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
His jaw clenched, but he gave me a tight nod and opened the bathroom door to leave. “You’ve got about forty-five minutes. Yell if you need anything, and we will hear you, okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I assured him, but I really needed to reassure myself. Because I was far from fine. The least I could do, for Lucy’s sake, was to fake it. She deserved that much from me.
Then maybe I could find my backbone and do what I should have done a long, long time ago... walk away.
I showered as quick as my stiff muscles would allow, then roughly blasted my hair dry with the swanky hairdryer one of the boys had equipped my bathroom with. After it was dry enough, I took my time to carefully apply some make up. Lucy would be horrified if I turned up to her funeral looking like a sack of shit, even if that was how I felt.
No, for her I made sure to take my time, winging my eyeliner and applying a soft pink lipstick. She’d have given me a high five for the finished product if she were still here.
Back out in my bedroom, a new black dress lay out on the bed with its tags still attached. Nice of someone to have thought of that, considering none of the black dresses I currently owned would have been anywhere near appropriate for a funeral.
Biting my lip to keep my emotions in check, I slipped into some fresh underwear and then stepped into the dress, tugging the zipper up myself and not bothering to look in the mirror. Chances were, Vali had bought it for me, and he had a real knack for getting my sizes spot on.
The garment was comfortable, a soft fabric that clung to my upper arms and chest, then flared out from the waist into a full skirt that fell to my knees. Reaching behind me, I yanked the tags off, then sat on the edge of the bed to roll stockings onto my legs and stuff my feet into the pair of simple, black patent leather Louboutin pumps that had been left out.
Placing my hand on the door handle, I took a moment to gather what little strength I had left inside me. Lucy’s adoptive parents would be there, and they didn’t need to see me in a blubbering mess. Neither did Elena or Finn, Lucy’s lovers.
At some point after getting back from the fight with my mother, Wesley had told me that they’d found Elena. Apparently Bridget had been holding her too, but when Bridget didn’t return and her guards disappeared, Elena’d been able to escape.
Vali and Cole had to be relieved to know that Elena was okay. No one had seen Finn for a while, but from what I knew of his relationship with the girls, that wasn’t unusual for him. I did hope he would make it to Lucy’s funeral, though.