Page 187 of The Spider & the Storm

“You ready?”

I blinked my tired eyes toward the house. The small iron sconce hanging beside the heavy wooden door, casting a halo of misty light within the layer of fog. What a dreary, rainy night it was. How fitting.

“No.” The word was released with a sigh. “I feel like, the second I walk through that door, life will resume the way it was before, and everything will be the same. But it'snotthe same. Nothing will ever be the same again.”

It probably sounded like nonsense, but not for me. The last time I'd suffered tremendous loss, my life had perfectly reflected the way I felt inside. After our parents died, everything Luke and I had known was turned onto its bloody, misshapen head. It had been chaotic and messy. But now, my brother was dead. He'd been dead for two months, but for me, the wound was fresh and oozing. It hadn't been given the chance yet to scab over and likely wouldn't for quite some time. Yet I still had a job to do, a girlfriend to love, and a cemetery and all its inhabitants to care for. I had a life to live, and it couldn't come to a screeching halt despite the piercing ache throbbing, dull and deep, in my chest. I couldn't let that happen, but how the hell was I supposed to push forward in a world my brother no longer called home?

“I don't think it's supposed to be the same,” Stormy replied, her voice gentle. “Honestly, I think, sometimes, we're supposed to experience pain in order to make us change.”

I gnawed on my lip, keeping my eyes fixated on that ring of light, blurred at the edges. “I just wish it didn't hurt so fucking bad.”

Her palm covered mine. I didn't take her hand or wrap my fingers around hers, but feeling her touch was enough to help me breathe.

“I know. But if itdidn'thurt, could you say you ever loved him at all?”

As if the question were a bullet, piercing my brain and soul, I threw my head back against the seat and exhaled through the crushing pain against my heart. “What the hell is the point of loving anything then if the road always ends like this? Why would anyonechoosethis?”

It wasn't meant for her, nor was it meant to hurt her. But the moment the words left my mouth, I felt the guilt from saying them at all. I pressed my eyes shut and shook my head, muttering a stupid apology, but her fingers lay over my lips, halting my voice from saying anything else.

“You know, I thought the same thing for a long time,” she said. “Why give myself to another man if the possibility of being hurt again was there? Why give myself permission to love if it eventually, in one way or another, leads to pain? And, yeah, it is a choice we make to open ourselves up like that, but I think we make it because, ultimately, that's what living is all about.”

I snorted at the irony of these words being spoken by a woman in black, shrouded in shadows and adorned in more silver than a werewolf hunter. “What? Love?” I asked, sounding a little more condescending than I'd intended.

“Everythingis better with love, Charlie,” she replied, curling her fingers around mine. “It can survive anything, andwhere there is love, nothing is empty … not even death.” She sniffed a gentle, quiet, humorless laugh and turned her head, and while I couldn't make out her eyes well in the darkness, I knew she was surveying the hallowed ground surrounding us. “When you really think about it, places like this wouldn't even exist without it. What would be the point?”

“Forhistory,” I forced from my lips and tightening throat.

She turned back to me and tipped her head. “But who gives a fuck about history without theloveto keep it alive?”

The light from the sconce flickered, tugging my attention toward it once again. A plummeting sense of grief and sorrow collided with the tiniest bit of hope and desperation as I waited for it to flicker again, but moments passed and nothing. I was being stupid, looking to a light bulb for signs and reassurance, but there was a pull there.Something.

“I love you,” Stormy said despite all my naysaying, her fingers pulsing around mine before letting go.

Those words touched my heart with the promise of the worst heartbreak of my life if she were to die before me, yet I found every bit of salvation within them, and my soul longed to curl up beneath the shelter that only she could provide.

But I had something to do first.

“I love you too,” I replied with resignation.

“Even if it might kill you one day?” she asked teasingly, lifting her hand to cup my cheek.

“Well, by your logic, that's the best kind of love there is,” I said, my tone matching hers.

She hummed a small, contemplative sound as her thumb stroked my flesh. Then, she yawned and pulled away to unbuckle her seat belt.

“I'm gonna lie down,” she told me, opening the car door. “You coming with me?”

“I will,” I promised. “But I think I'm going to sit out here for a few more minutes first.”

She paused in climbing out of the car to glance at me, as if she might protest my need to be alone. But then she whispered, “Okay. Whatever you need to do. But I'll be there when you're ready.”

I nodded my appreciation, but said nothing else as she climbed out of the car and closed the door behind her. I watched as she walked up to the house, keys hanging from her hand. She unlocked the door and glanced over her shoulder at the car for only a brief second before disappearing inside. A light in the living room illuminated the lattice-framed window, a call beckoning me to come home, and I would. But there was a letter in my lap, and though I wouldn't read it yet, I knew the author was somewhere out there, and he'd been trying to grab my attention for a while now.

It hadn't occurred to me initially. At first, I thought those little signs and mementos had been left by a stalker, and then, when it was apparent that I was being watched by a more supernatural entity, I assumed it was Tommy coming to torment me in his afterlife. But the only thing that hadn't made sense in that was, why now? Why had he suddenly, after five years, decided now would be a good time to start haunting me?

The answer was, he hadn't, and I'd put that together nearly immediately after learning when exactly Luke had died.

I opened the car door and stepped outside, letter in hand. I held it up to the night sky before clutching it to my chest and looked from one side to the other, half expecting to see that cigarette-smoking, hooded man who'd been bold enough to visit me weeks ago.

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