Page 39 of The Darkest Night

“You do the chicken dance?” Mae said dully.

Violet bit her lip.

“I mean we fly!” Miles snapped.

The driver stared at them in the rearview mirror. Mae waited until he was looking at the road again.

“Like, out in plain sight?!” she hissed out the corner of her mouth.

“We can shield our presence to an extent with an illusion,” Violet explained reluctantly. “So people don’t pay any attention to us.”

The cab driver’s eyes rounded.

“Like an invisibility cloak,” Miles added.

The driver’s foot slipped off the accelerator. They jerked forward against their seatbelts. Brimstone growled in the footwell.

It took twenty minutes to get from Flushing to South Ridgewood, the cab keeping above the speed limit and taking the corners without slowing down. By the time they got out of the car, Miles and Millie were slightly green.

They parted ways outside the gates of the Jewish cemetery, Mae joining the queue of mourners heading for the chapel. Brimstone sat by Violet’s feet and watched her leave with a forlorn expression.

“She’ll be back soon.”

Brimstone whined softly.

Chapter 19

Muted voices rosearound Mae as she exited the building with the rest of the congregation an hour later. Rose’s family walked on ahead, her father and mother shaking with silent sobs while her elder brother Stuart draped his arms around their shoulders, his own eyes raw from crying.

Rose’s sister-in-law trailed behind them, her young son at her side.

“When is Aunt Rose coming?” the little boy asked his mother brightly as he skipped along the path. “I miss her!”

Mae clenched her jaw. Rose had doted on her nephew from the moment he was born. She could guess how crushed the little boy would be once he realized he wouldn’t be seeing his favorite aunt ever again.

Stuart’s wife gently hushed their son, her face drawn.

Mae’s chest tightened when she spotted the plain wooden casket being carried to the graveside where Rose would be laid to rest. Except there was no body inside it to bury.

How she’d stopped herself from screaming out in denial and rage when she’d seen the coffin, Mae didn’t know. Everything that had happened that night on the rooftop of the surgical block had played inside her head over and over again as she’d listened to the eulogy, her light mood from that morning a thing of the past and her subconscious seemingly determined to torture her for failing her friend.

Now that she was aware of the power she wielded and her pitiful lack of control over it, Mae knew she couldn’t allow herself to give in to her anger. Not when doing so might hurt the people around her.

She’d spoken to Rose’s parents briefly before the ceremony, her heart heavy with grief and guilt. The fact that she couldn’t tell them the truth about what had happened to their daughter ate at her, an insidious darkness that choked her insides. Rose’s mother had brightened briefly when she’d seen Mae, only for sorrow to overwhelm her all over again when she realized Mae had survived the attack on Grandview when her own daughter hadn’t. Mae had hugged the older woman tightly to her chest as her knees folded, the familiar scent of jasmine drifting from her skin reminding her of her best friend.

The rabbi’s voice drifted gently over them once they gathered around the freshly dug grave. It was a beautiful, clear day, the kind Rose loved. Mae raised her face to the sky, sunlight warming her skin as she listened to the prayers being read out. Tears blurred her vision. She let them fall, the trickles cooling her hot cheeks.

The conviction that had been growing inside her since the day she woke up and realized Rose wasn’t at her side crystallized into a cold certainty.

I will find him. I swear to you on this false grave. I will find the devil who killed you and rip his heart from his chest.

The sound of dirt hitting the casket echoed in Mae’s ears as the funeral drew to a close. She clenched her fist around the handful of earth she was given before gently letting go, the dust spiraling down onto the empty coffin with a finality that made her breath lodge in her throat.

She moved aside for the next mourner, her steps heavy.

The hairs rose on the back of her neck as she joined the rest of the congregation where they huddled on the other side of the grave. Mae turned and saw a flash of movement to the north. Her heart stuttered. She caught a glimpse of blonde hair in the shadows under the tree line, some hundred feet up the incline.

Rose!

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