CHAPTER 35

The Grigori were pulled shrieking from the earth, their voices inhuman with fury, their screams full of pain. I watched, stunned, as the flickering shadows lengthened, seeming to cling to the rays of the sun. My ears ached; my skin prickled with gooseflesh, my muscles so tense they threatened to cramp. Then, the Grigori were gone, their howls fading along with their misshapen black bodies, as the sun brightened.

The silence after so much noise was overwhelming. I sat on the ground stunned as everything I’d said and done rushed in; the scents and sights, the words and the feelings, the temptations I’d accepted and rejected, bombarded me.

I waited for Jimmy to touch me, to whisper that everything was all right, that I’d had to do all that I’d done. Instead, he stepped around me and went to the fairy.

“You okay?” He touched her shoulder, took her into his arms as she cried.

I was so shocked I just stared at the two of them, blinking in the sudden sunlight—the storm had disappeared as if it had never even been—expecting the scene before me to fade, a hallucination, a vision, anything but the truth, except it didn’t.

Neither did the one behind them, a scene that would haunt me for the rest of my days.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Sawyer’s dead.”

I didn’t want to touch him, wasn’t sure what I’d see. But I couldn’t leave him hanging there like some kind of sacrifice.

“Jesus,” I muttered, and dragged myself to my feet as all that had happened became clear.

Sawyer had been the sacrifice that allowed me to command the demons. He’d been wrong. He wasn’t too damned to be innocent. Perhaps he was just damned enough. At any rate, his death had allowed me to send the Grigori and, from the welcome silence in my brain, Satan back to Tartarus.

Because the only way Sawyer could die was if he wanted to and therefore he’d given his life freely. A sacrifice.

Jimmy and Summer didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t offer to help. I had to stop looking at them, or I might do something I’d regret.

I stumbled across the dusty ground. Sawyer’s head hung limp. The gaping hole in his chest had not healed; the blood that washed over his tattooed skin had just begun to dry.

His heart lay at his feet where I’d dropped it when the magic took me. A strange thought trickled through my numb brain. What if I put it back?

I was a sorcerer. I could command a storm, control lightning. I could raise a ghost. Hell, I’d just sent demons back to hell. Maybe if I combined every power I had, I could raise him like I’d killed her.

Bending, I scooped up the gory organ. Dirt and grass and dust clung to it. I didn’t bother to wash them away. If I could raise Sawyer from the dead, a little grit wouldn’t hurt him.

I pressed the heart back into his chest; the squishing sound nearly undid me. Someone was whimpering and so I crooned, “Shh. Shh,” as if talking to a frightened child. But I was just talking to myself.

My hand shook. My fingers were as cold as ice atop a lake, his skin the chill water beneath. I patted his chest, uncertain what to do next. Call the storm? Cast a spell? I couldn’t remember how to do one and didn’t know how to do the other.

I was in shock; I knew that, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from touching his face, calling his name. Then I was slapping him, begging him, and at last Jimmy came.

“Lizzy.” He grabbed one arm, Summer the other. I flipped my hands upward, but only Summer flew away. Jimmy was unaffected, the fairy dust spell still intact.

“Take it off,” Jimmy ordered Summer, his voice low and flat. He was angry, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Sh-she’ll hurt you.”

“Do it,” he said. “Now.”

Strange, but he sounded mad. At her.

“Hit me,” Jimmy whispered into my hair. “It might help. It usually does.”

I reached for Sawyer again, and this time when Jimmy took my arm I punched him. My fist met his rock-hard gut, and then I was crying, even though I never cried. There was no point. But again, I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

The crying didn’t last, but the buzzing sense of unreality did. I kept expecting Sawyer to lift his head and demand to be released; then he’d annoy me, piss off Jimmy, scare Summer, and everything would be back the way it should be.

But, regardless of what I’d just accomplished, nothing was ever going to be as it should be again. I knew that.

I stared over Jimmy’s shoulder as he patted my back, stiffly, as if he didn’t want to hold me, to help me, but he didn’t have much choice.

My gaze was drawn to Sawyer’s tattoos. They no longer sparkled and danced; they were just ink, growing darker as his skin began to pale.

I inched out of Jimmy’s arms, and he breathed a sigh of relief. But when I reached again for Sawyer, Jimmy snatched my wrist before I could touch him.

“Take your hand off me before I break every finger you’ve got.” I met his eyes, and he lifted his arms, palms face out as he surrendered.

I moved closer to Sawyer’s body and rubbed my thumb, then my fingers, then my whole hand against the wolf on his biceps. I didn’t see a single shimmer, didn’t feel a breath of air, nor a hint of the phantom chill. I began to panic, frantically patting the tiger, the tarantula, the crocodile. None of them worked. Why would they? The power lay in Sawyer, not the ink.

There had to be a way to fix this. Maybe a spell. Hey—

“The key.”

That had been the mission all along. Find the key, send the Grigori back to hell. The spells in that book were ancient and obviously very powerful. There had to be something in there about raising the dead.

My clothes appeared in front of me, clutched in Jimmy’s hand. I’d forgotten I was naked. I had to be pretty out of it to forget that.

Yanking them on, I glanced at Summer, who hovered a few feet away chewing her nails, eyes on Jimmy. For an instant I felt sorry for her. If I’d seen this future, would I have agreed to anything to make it go away? I had no idea.

I hurried toward the porch, then walked up the steps to the place where I’d last seen the key.

It wasn’t there.

I turned right, then left, then all the way around. “You saw her with the book, didn’t you?”

Jimmy joined me, gaze becoming as frantic as mine. “What the fuck!”

“The Phoenix was reading it.”

“Then she put it down right there.” Jimmy pointed to the same place I’d expected to find the thing.

The three of us began to hunt all over the porch, in the bushes, the grass, everywhere. Once that was done, by unspoken consensus we went inside and searched the house, top to bottom. I touched everything, tried to see something, got a whole lot of nothing.

“This sucks!” I clenched my hands, frustrated, furious, and thunder rumbled in the west. I wanted to kill someone. My gaze moved to Summer, and Jimmy stepped between us.

“Not yet,” he said.

Summer’s eyes widened and, if possible, her already pale skin got paler. She’d never believed that Jimmy would kill her if he had to—she certainly wouldn’t kill him—but I think she was starting to catch a clue.

“Why not?” I asked.

“She did it for me,” Jimmy said softly.

“She’s a traitor. You know I can’t let her live.”

“You let me live.”

“You seriously think it’s the same thing? She knew what she was doing. She chose to sell her soul.”

“For me,” he repeated.

“And that excuses it? How many people died because she listened to Satan whispering? If the Phoenix had never been raised, Sawyer might still be alive.” Someone else would probably be dead, but I wasn’t exactly rational at the moment.

“So you’re going to punish Summer because she knows what love means?”

“No, I’m going to kill her because she’s a whiny, traitorous bitch. And just what in hell does ‘love mean’?”

“It means you’ll do anything, even die, even sell your soul, for someone else.”

“And you’re saying I wouldn’t?”

Jimmy threw up his hands. “You were going to kill me!”

“You told me to.”

“It had to be done.”

“Hey, I chose you because I loved you,” I said.

“You loved him too, obviously.”

“Lucky him.” My voice broke. Why were we arguing? Because it felt good. It felt like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

“Summer would do anything for me,” Jimmy continued. “You’d do anything for the world.”

“Which is why I’m the leader of the light and she’s not.” I took a deep breath. “You do realize that I managed to send the Grigori and their leader back to Tartarus? This wasn’t a total loss.”

“Unfortunately, someone stole the Key of Solomon, which contains the directions for letting them right back out again.”

I frowned. “First they have to kill me.”

“They can get in line,” Jimmy muttered.

I knew he was just blowing off steam, but still—

I turned toward the door; so did Jimmy. One glance outside and we froze.

Sawyer was gone.