Page 90 of Saving the World and Other Bad Ideas (Grave Concerns 3)

“You’re just like me,” she said, staring up at me as if she could force me to realize it.

“Almost,” I admitted.

“You aren’t supposed to be here, and you’ve been wronged and hurt and suffered because of it. We are exactly the same,” she pressed.

I walked over and knelt beside her, ignoring Gran’s body, ignoring the splintered wood from Lucifer’s entrance. Those things didn’t matter. They were the past, andthatwas one thing Lilith had taught me, something I had to understand.

I set my hand on her cheek, letting go of the anger I had—at her, at my parents, at the world for not accepting or wanting me. “We’re different because I’m letting it go now. I’m not going to waste all my time being angry about what happened, because no one can change it.” I dug deep, trying to unravel all that pain inside myself as well as her. I had to release my own anger to free her. “Life does suck some of the time. Things happen we can’t control, and we get fucked over and we can’t do anything about it. Guess what? Too bad. I can wallow in it, or I can move on. I can let it destroy me, or I can keep going. I can decide the entire world is bad because of it, or I can look for something good.”

I thought about Kase, about Hunter and Grant and Troy and Gran and all the good things I’d found. They didn’t cancel out the bad, but they sure made it worth sticking around for.

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“I do, finally. Maybe everything happens for a reason, maybe it doesn’t, but I know nothing good happens if you stick your head in the sand and hide. You refused to move forward, and it stole so much from you. It destroyed you and hurt so many others. I refuse to make the same mistake.” I used my power, the edge inside me honed by something between the living and dead, something not quite mortal orimmortal, that place I existed which couldn’t be quantified.

And that was what it was… I was accepting that Iwasn’tlike anything else. Even now, even with my father watching, with me understanding what I came from, I finally sank into the acceptance that I didn’tneedto fit in. I didn’t need to be reaper or human or anything else. I didn’t need to be easily defined, digestible for other people to understand and categorize and accept for me to be okay withme.

She gasped, but I didn’t stop. I used that power to sever the connection between her and purgatory, the one that kept her trapped. Hunter had told me this wasn’t possible, but he meant it hadn’t been possible for anyone else.

Before me.

Lilith shimmered, losing the sharpness of her form.

Once that tether was fully cut, when she was adrift and free, she started to fade.

I didn’t move away, didn’t leave her as Adam had. Instead, I remained, my hand on her cheek as she faded.

Where she went…I had no idea. She was an echo, or so I’d been told, but if I’d learned one thing, it was that we only knew what we knew. Maybe freeing her would release her, would let her go wherever the spirits of immortals went.

When she was gone, when her image drifted away and the picture of Gran’s body, of Lucifer, disintegrated, I caught a glimpse for only a second.

Lilith stood there, in front of me, and beside her? Gran. The picture was just a flash, but the corners of Lilith’s lips were tipped up in a smile, one that reminded me of the woman I’d seen before Adam had killed her.

Even better, though, was seeing Gran’s withered face, her bright eyes. Despite it only being that tiny glimpse, I sure as hell saw pride in her expression.

It was gone as quickly as it happened, and the world rushed in on me again.

A racing sensation moved through the mist, returning to how the place should have been, the wrongness from Lilith gone. There was a lightness, an openness that took away the crushing heaviness from before. It was as if the poison from Lilith had slipped away when she had.

The reapers at the edge of the platform had left, except for one. I couldn’t tell them apart, but that didn’t stop me from knowing this one was my father.

I was going to respond—what I was going to say, I had no idea—but he moved, the shadows he was made of spreading out, surrounding me, consuming where the men lay, still unconscious, and the world around me shorted out, as if blinking from existence for a second.

When I opened my eyes, we were back, as if it had never happened at all, in the back room of Gran’s shop.

Is it really over?

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