her fingers down the shredded walls, pausing to touch things that had belonged to Nathaniel.
“Anything you want should be yours,” I said, following her through the wreckage. Will had cleaned up so much of it already that the floors were mostly cleared.
Lauren nodded absently. “It’d be strange to take any of it, since it was his. Maybe one day I’ll be able to. It still doesn’t feel like he’s gone—it’s like he’ll come back any day because he’d miss all this old junk of his.”
I looked around the house, purposely avoiding her gaze. “And once Will puts the house back together, it’ll look like nothing even happened here.”
“He’s certainly on a roll, isn’t he?” She gave a small laugh that faded away sadly. “I should get going.”
I pulled her into a tight hug. “Come back soon,” I said. “Anytime, please. We’d love to see you.”
She smiled. “Of course. Let me know if Will needs any help cleaning up the place.”
I shrugged. “I think he’s on a mission to do it all by himself. I’m sorry he didn’t come down to see you.”
“It’s all right,” she said, her smile fading to a tight, pained line. Her lips quivered. “He’s hurting. It’s best to leave him be. He’ll come around when he’s ready.”
“I know.” What she said was true, but every second Will spent in his own world made my heart ache a little more. I walked Lauren outside. “I’m trying not to worry about him. I don’t want to worry about you either, okay?”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’ll be okay. It’ll just be hard for a while. We’ll all get through this.”
“Thank you, Lauren,” I said. “Call me soon, okay?”
She smiled. “I will. Check in with your grandmother, okay?” Then she climbed into her car and was gone.
For the next several days, Will and I said very little to each other. He had thrown himself fully into restoring Nathaniel’s house. I made sure he ate and slept, but between our brief exchanges of conversation was complete silence, and the loneliness was killing me. My phone was off and no one knew where I was. I didn’t know what to tell Nana and my friends about what had happened or where I’d been.
Kelaeno was dead, but that didn’t mean her prophecy had died with her. In my heart, I feared that it was coming true, bit by bit. For so long I had believed that the scariest thing in the world would be losing my soul, or Will, but now that I had been faced with nearly losing both in one night, I realized that I was more afraid of losing him.
I told Will once that I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to live. And here I was, the living dead, waiting for the inevitable. I felt like I was giving up already, and I couldn’t let myself think that. I had to survive this. I had to live. And locking myself inside this big house to rot was not living. It was existing. I wanted to feel alive again, and in order to do that, I needed my friends and family. I wanted a future. I wanted to get my life back.
29
I TOOK A DEEP BREATH BEFORE I RAISED MY HAND to knock on the door. Nana flung it open before I could knock a second time, so quickly, as if she’d been waiting by the door the entire time.
“Oh, my …” my grandmother murmured, touching her fingers to her mouth in surprise. “Ellie.”
“Hey, Nana,” I said with a weak smile. “I’m so sorry.”
She ushered me in through the door, soaking me with her radiance and relief at seeing me. “Come in, honey. It’s freezing out there. I’ll get you some hot tea.”
A few minutes later, I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea as Nana fixed me soup at the stove. “You don’t have to do that,” I said, watching her sadly. “I’m not hungry, really. I don’t want you to go through the trouble.” In truth, I was starving, but it felt so wrong to just show up back at her house and have her make me dinner. It made me feel even lower than I already did, and that was saying a lot.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “The least I can do after you’ve been gone for almost two weeks is make you a hot meal.”
“But you don’t owe me anything,” I assured her. “I really don’t deserve it.”
She removed the