Death Collectors: Ember Part 25

"Hey, I think I got something over here," she shouts, with her gun poised in front of her.

A lanky officer, with a bald head, hurries over to the hole. He beams the light down in it and I wait for him to announce he found the body.

"It's just a hole," he calls out. "It's probably some high school prank or new fad, like that grave that was dug up a few weeks ago."

Cameron.

Officer McKinley stops us and s.h.i.+nes the light in our eyes. "You two know anything about this?"

Raven and I shake our heads innocently. "Nope."

He zones in on me. "Are you sure that's true?"

I wonder if he's a real cop, or the same kind as Detective Crammer. "Yep, it's true."

He shakes his head, unbelieving. "Well, I'm still going to have to take you in for some questioning. We have to make sure your story adds up."

We head across the gra.s.s toward the gates as the rest of the cops keep searching for Mackenzie's body. Although, I have a feeling her body may be gone forever. But who took it is the mystery.

Cameron? Or Asher?

Raven and I climb into the back of the cop car, each on our separate side, divided by lies, secrets, and distrust. As the policeman drives with his lights flas.h.i.+ng, I watch the cemetery disappear from my view, feeling the trail of death follow me.

Epilogue.

I wake up to a bright sunny day, s.h.i.+ning through my bedroom window. My cheek is resting on an open book, and my sweaty skin sticks to the pages. I stayed up all last night reading through pages about angels and death, searching for answers and a way to bring an Angel of Death back to earth.

I climb out of bed and get dressed in a ratty T-s.h.i.+rt and some cutoffs. The house is as quiet as a cemetery. My mom is in a drug treatment facility trying to recover from her addiction and when she gets back I have to decide how to ask her about Grandma and the necklace without putting stress on her.

Raven is on vacation with her mom, who got released from the same facility my mom's at the day after the Reapers tried to destroy us. And Ian spends most of his time locked away in the attic. His muse disappeared for a little while, and when I asked Ian about it, he told me it was none of my business. But I heard her-or him-sneak in last night.

My life is lonely, but I prefer it that way for the moment. Being around people hurts just as bad, if not worse, now that I know what I am-know that my insanity can wear on them.

I wander to the computer and click it on. I've been working on trying to track down the author of the book Raven has. His name is August Millard, unless it's his pen name. I found an email address for a writer with the same name, but if it's not the same guy, he'll probably think I'm nuts. Or maybe he'll think I'm crazy either way; perhaps he's a writer of words, not a believer of them.

I check my inbox, but it's empty.

What if I told you I could take away every ounce of pain you have and would ever feel?" I could make all that sadness go away." So I sink into the couch and flip through the channels, searching through the news, looking for headlines about a body being found. But the news isn't on until later, so I shut the TV off. I clean the house to distract myself. I turn up "Holding onto You," by Story of the Year and block everything out. I scrub every room downstairs and then move upstairs.

After I'm finished, I drag the garbage can out to the curb. The sun is setting behind the mountains and the sky is splashed with neon pink and orange. Leaves flutter down and from across the street, Ms. Courtenay is rearranging her sprinklers.

She glances up as she drags the hose across her yard. I politely wave and her gaze darts down at the lawn, like I don't exist. She's afraid of me still, just like everyone else in the town is. Laden and Mackenzie are still considered missing persons, but I know they're dead.

My eyes travel down the street to a two-story house with unmaintained gra.s.s and a For Sale sign in the yard. I have no idea what happened to Cameron's parents, or if they were really his parents. But every time I look at the house, I feel a pull toward it-toward him. Sometimes, I think about asking him to come back. It's out of sheer insanity-I know that, and that's what helps me keep my lips closed.

However, if I knew how to bring Asher back I would. I tried a few times, murmuring to the wind for him to come to me. "Asher, where are you," I whisper.

The wind is my only answer.

"Hey stranger." Todd, Raven's brother, walks down the driveway and picks up the newspaper. He's wearing ratty jeans, a black T-s.h.i.+rt with holes in it, and his blue hair is sticking up like he just woke up. "Thinking about buying a house?"

"Huh?" I collect the mail from the mailbox.

He smiles. "I saw you staring at that For Sale sign like you were about ready to rip it out of the lawn."

I align the envelopes against the palm of my hand as I walk to the edge of the thin strip of lawn that separates our houses. "Do you know anything about where they went?"

He shakes his head and glances at Cameron's vacant house, with dust in the windows and a dried lawn out in front. "I'm not sure. But it's weird, right? How they moved in and then a few weeks later the house went up for sale."

I shrug. "You know how it is. A lot of people can't take Hollows Grove. Like your sister."

"Yeah, she seems worse about it now with the," he makes a line across his neck, "with the scar on her neck. She's taking that one hard."

"She just needs to give it time to heal," I say, but deep down I know it will never fully heal. After everything settled down, Raven started to remember things she did-horrible things that she won't always share with me.

He wraps the newspaper in his hand and nods his head at a car on the street. "You think they're ever going to give up whatever it is they're looking for?"

I turn around and give the cops in the patrol car a small wave. They pretend not see me and eat their lunch.

"I don't think so," I say.

"But why are they so fixated on our neighborhood?"

I glance down at Cameron's house, at a short frail person with a pointy nose, standing near the mailbox. "I'm not sure... maybe they think someone here knows where Mackenzie is."

"Her family seems really determined to find her," he remarks, holding up the newspaper. There is a picture of Mackenzie's face on the front page under the headline: Have You Seen Our Daughter?

I watch the man at Cameron's distractedly, trying to figure out where I've seen him before. "Yeah, well maybe they should start looking closer at her family." It clicks. That's Cameron's uncle, Gregory-the one that was digging up the grave for him the night I first saw Cameron.

"Ember," Todd says. "Are you okay?"

I quickly force my eyes off Gregory and change the topic. "So when will Raven be coming back?"

He backs down the driveway toward the front porch. "Didn't she call you?" he asks and I shake my head. "Oh... well, she got back late last night. I thought she went over to your house when she got here."

"No... I haven't seen her since she left..." It's like a jigsaw puzzle coming together: Raven is Ian's muse. And I don't like it because it means Raven was spending a lot of private time with Ian while she was possessed by the Reapers.

"Well, don't take it too personally. She's been acting like a total mental case, mom says, drawing weird pictures of hourgla.s.ses and having conversations with herself."

"Is she home right now?" I hurry for their front door.

He shakes his head. "Nah, she went out shopping our something."

Without saying goodbye, I sprint into my house and up to the attic door. I hammer my fist on it, but Ian doesn't answer, so I shove the door open. "Ian, are you in here?"

The lights are on and System of a Down's "Lonely Day" is playing from the speakers of the surround sound. Canvas and sketches cover the walls, paint dyes the wood floor, and the oval window is covered by a sheet. It smells like sage and something stronger... something I've smelt many times in Ian's studio.

"Dammit." I pick up the b.u.t.t, squish the tip against the edge of the windowsill, and throw it in a cup of water balanced on a stool. I turn to leave but notice a large canvas in the corner, covered with a black sheet. I tug it off, letting it float to the floor.

It's a picture of Raven. She's lying in the middle of a snowy field, wearing a black cape over her head. Blood drips from her mouth and the corners of her eyes. Grasped in her hand is an empty hourgla.s.s and underneath her body is a bright red X. On the bottom corner of the drawing, bleeding in red, it says: Alyssa, please forgive me.

"What the f.u.c.k is this? She's not... No, she couldn't be..." Shaking my head, I walk swiftly to Ian's room and bang on the door. "Ian, open up the door. I know you're in there!" I bang louder. "I can smell the smoke coming through the door."

I jiggle the k.n.o.b and rattle the door. "Ian, open up the door. You're worrying me."

I run back into my room and grab a bobby pin. I crouch down in front of Ian's door and work the pin until I hear it click. I push the door open and smoke blows in my face. I cough and then let out a frustrated sigh. Ian is sprawled on the bed, in his pajama bottoms and a ratty T-s.h.i.+rt, clutching a photo.

Fanning the smoke from my face, I pad over to his bed. Without even looking, I know it's a photo of Alyssa. Even with his eyes shut, his torture and guilt is written all over his face.

Cameron's words reply in my mind: What if I told you I could take away every ounce of pain you have and would ever feel?

I take the photo from his hand and flip it over. Death made me do it, Alyssa, and I'm sorry. But now I have to move onto the next angel.

The next angel? He can't be talking about... No, Ian could not have killed her. I struggle not to rip the photo into pieces. Setting it down on the dresser, I give Ian a soft shake. "Wake up, Ian. We need to talk."

But he's pa.s.sed out, stoned out of his mind. I run back to my room to get my phone. I need to talk to Raven and find out if she's still here, or if the Reapers have gotten a hold of her again. But when I enter my room, something feels off, like the air is unbalanced.

The window is open and a black feather is ruffled on my bed. I pick it up and my gaze lands on the wall, where the ink of a fresh poem is drying.

In separate fields of black feathers, the birds fly.

Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul.

They connect in the middle, but are separated by a thin line of ash.

It's what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart.

They can never truly be together as light and dark.

Unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark.

It's the poem that I read on Cameron's wall, but three extra lines have been added.

Or if the other dares to fly across the line and steals the other's light And force them to cross over the line and join the darkness of life.

I'm not gone, princess. I will come back for you until you give in.

-Cameron.

I blink as the ink bleeds down the wall. I back away from it and fall on my bed with the faint echo of Cameron's laugh filling up my unstable head.

It's starting again-the games, the tricks, the battle for me to surrender. And, like everything in life, I'm not sure how it will all end. Or when my sanity will fly away into the sky, just like a raven.

Jessica Sorensen lives with her husband and three kids in the snowy mountains of Wyoming, where she spends most of her time reading, writing, and hanging out with her family.

Other books by Jessica Sorensen:.

The Fallen Star (Fallen Star Series, Book 1).

The Underworld (Fallen Star Series, Book 2).

The Vision (Fallen Star Series, Book 3).

The Promise (Fallen Star Series, Book 4) Darkness Falls (Darkness Falls Series, Book 1).

Darkness Breaks (Darkness Falls Series, Book 2).

Connect with me online:.

http://jessicasorensensblog.blogspot.com/.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Sorensen/165335743524509.

https://twitter.com/#!/jessFallenStar.