“You really wanna watch them slit my fucking throat?” Ryder bit.
“No,” Liam snapped back. “But if it’s…”
“If this is about you seeing me for the last time, remember me like this.”
Liam’s mouth twisted. His eyes hardened and his jaw flexed.
He dragged his mouth across Liam’s cheek. “C’mon,” he purred, “don’t fight with me.” He was sore, but it didn’t matter. He was exhausted and more awake than he’d ever been. “Don’t fight with me,” he whispered again, pressing a kiss against Liam’s mouth.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He ignored it. Liam’s phone buzzed next. He ignored it.
Liam kissed him slowly, his tongue ring dragging across Ryder’s bottom lip.
A shrill caw erupted outside the window.
Suddenly, all Ryder wanted was more time. More of this. He gripped Liam’s waist. More of everything.
Another screech. The sound of wings flapping and claws against glass.
Ryder kissed Liam hard and rubbed his thumb across Liam’s cheek, hoping the quivering in his chest hadn’t crept to his limbs yet.
“You don’t have to go,” Liam said weakly.
Three hard knocks rapped the front door.
Ryder slid out of bed and got dressed. He grabbed the reaver off his altar and slid it over his index finger. His room was the same, except not. Watermarks of Liam stained the bathroom, the shower, the wall by the dresser, the floor, his bed. He hesitated in the doorway and steadied his breathing.
“I’ve loved you the whole time,” Liam said. “Now. Then. I’ve been looking back since the beginning. You know that, right?”
Ryder glanced over his shoulder. Liam sat on the edge of the bed, clutching one of Ryder’s small amethyst geodes in his palm. His pupils expanded, turning his eyes inky black. Percy trailed him to the door.
“Ryder.” Liam’s voice was pleading and soft. His bare feet padded on the wood floors.
Ryder didn’t have the heart to look at him.
“If you don’t…” Liam choked on the rest of what he wanted to say and skipped it. “You better haunt me, asshole. You understand that, Ry? You come back and you haunt me.”
A small smile curved Ryder’s lips.
He closed the front door behind him and brushed past Jordan toward the stairs.
JORDAN STAYED QUIET for most of the drive.
Finally, she asked, “Were you guys up all night, or—”
“Yes. Almost. He fell asleep at four.”
They were stopped at a red light. Jordan cocked her head and raised a pierced brow. “Remember that one time you caught Thalia and I in the laundry room?”
“On the dryer, yeah,” Ryder quipped. “I also remember you threatening to throw my laptop out the window if I told Dad.”
Jordan made a pssshhhh noise that turned into laughter on the end. It fizzled out. The light turned green. Everything was still again. Ryder focused on the places he still felt Liam, the sore spots under his clothes that he would take into the afterlife, and hopefully bring back to this one.
“I thought the ceremony happened at night,” Ryder said.
“It does.” Jordan nodded. “Time warps when we altar life and death. When you die, you’ll come back and it’ll probably be late—ten, maybe eleven.”
The thought of being dead for that long turned Ryder’s stomach. “Where does it take place?”
“The woods.”
“People hike out there during the day.” Ryder furrowed his brow and his jaw slackened.
“Not where we’re going,” Jordan assured him.
They took the curvy road to the coastal side of the woods and turned down the two-lane highway that cut through the trees. He glimpsed the giant bottom of elder trees out of the window and followed the mossy blanket draped across the forest floor, decorated in an assortment of pale autumn flowers. A dirt road to the left flashed by. He remembered driving down it the night before in Liam’s car.
The further they drove, the larger the trees became. Ryder caught sight of a dangling sign on a branch—a sphere with a wolf’s jaws painted on it, red as blood. Jordan turned the wheel, and the truck rumbled down a rocky, overgrown path.
Percy napped in Ryder’s lap, purring softly.
Ryder’s heart was beating fast in his chest. He wouldn’t be surprised if Jordan could hear it.
The road turned from dirt, to grass, to dirt again. The trees were close enough to the window that leaves scraped the glass.
“Where are we…?” They bounced over the last of the rocky path and joined a row of other vehicles parked in front of a tall, wrought iron gate. He recognized his father’s Jeep, but the other two cars were new to him. “A cemetery?”
“Sort of,” Jordan said.
The iron gate reached at least ten feet, curved at the top to meet jagged spires and thick arrow-points. It matched the fence that surrounded a fairly large plot of land. The canopy folded over them, as if the trees had leaned together to umbrella the hidden Wolfe cemetery. Beyond the gates, headstones in different shapes and sizes littered the grounds.
“Did you bring your reaver?” Jordan asked.
Ryder nodded.
“I told Dad I gave it to you, so—” She shrugged. “You can wear it if you want.”
He slipped it on and watched Jordan do the same. Her reaver was longer than his, thinner and feminine. Where his resembled a claw, hers was a bird-like talon. Percy hopped off Ryder’s lap when he opened the door, and bounded off into the cemetery. Chatter came from the alchemists inside the gates, but their voices hushed as Jordan and Ryder approached.
“Will it hurt?” Ryder asked under his breath.
“For a moment,” Jordan said.
“How bad?”
“It’s hard to describe. Death is different for everyone.”
“Was it bad for you?”
“I was eleven,” Jordan said plainly. “But I was ready, I had to be. I can’t remember the extent of the pain, only that it was present.” River landed heavily on Jordan’s shoulder and she stumbled, hissing at him to be careful. “You have to welcome it.”
Ryder pushed one side of the gate open. It creaked and howled, clanking loudly behind them when it shut. Headstones weren’t the only things scattered throughout the cemetery. Two mausoleums stood close together where the alchemists and his mother stood, watching him expectantly.
Ellen stood out in a sea of black, swathed in a rich orange dress. She clutched a dark bundle in her hands and offered a lopsided smile to Ryder. He hadn’t realized he’d stopped walking until Jordan pressed her hand on his lower back and gave a gentle push.