At his wake the night before, his casket had been open. His body had looked so cold, not like Gideon at all, but a statue carved in his image. I’d stood there a long time, trying to find some trace of him. Then I’d slipped an envelope in beside him, next to the pillow that cushioned his head. Within it, I’d folded the piece of paper with his name on it. Gideon David Belmonte. One soul.
“I kept this safe,” I told him. “But you should probably take it with you.”
Tink stood beside me at the cemetery, crying silently. I wasn’t crying. I hadn’t cried since the second I’d felt him leave. If I started crying now, I doubted I’d ever be able to stop.
When the casket was lowered, I looked at the open ground that surrounded it, the neatly tended grass. He had died human, I thought. The Beneath hadn’t been able to claim him. He belonged to the earth now, to the soil and everything that was bright and growing.
I spent the following days in a numb fog, walking and speaking, eating when I was reminded to. My sleep was dark and dreamless. My Knowing seemed to have been shut off. For a time I sensed nothing from anyone, and then when I did it was only noise on the periphery, like static or the distant buzzing of bees. I wondered, vaguely, if that should alarm me, that maybe the power was gone for good, that my frequencies had been permanently disconnected and all my perceptions would remain just out of hearing; but I couldn’t work up the effort to care.
Leon did what he could to comfort me. In spite of who Gideon had been, in spite of what he’d done—he knew that Gideon had been important to me. At night he’d leave his apartment and come lie beside me as I fell asleep, not kissing or touching, just there. He was usually gone by the time I awoke, but sometimes I’d open my eyes to find his head on the pillow near me, his breathing even. Then I’d take his hand and feel his fingers curl around mine, and just stay, watching him sleep.
Tink had officially joined the Guardians—who were once again being led by Mr. Alvarez—though she would still be in training with Camille. “I figure, since I survived literal hell on earth, a few Harrowers shouldn’t scare me,” she told me one night, sitting beside me on my porch steps while the thick heat rose around us, July steadily slipping into August. Above us, the stars were blinking through the glow of the city, and not a single one was red.
“We never did come up with a costume for you,” I said, smiling faintly.
“I don’t need a costume.”
“You could borrow one of Mom’s hoodies.”
“Did you miss the part where I just said I don’t need a costume?”
“If you say so.”
She smiled back at me—then bit her lip, looking down at her feet. “It’s going to be really weird, going back to school.”
Without Gideon, she meant. I’d been trying not to think about that. I just nodded, resting my arms on my knees, and watched the insects gather around the porch light. School was a month away, and I was measuring time in days. Seven days since the warm afternoon at the cemetery, since Gideon had been lowered into the earth in that bright casket covered in roses.
Eight.
Twelve.
Then, two weeks after Gideon’s funeral, Mom told me we had a visit to make. If I wanted to.
My father had flown in that morning.
“If you’re not ready, if you want to wait, we’ll wait,” she said.
We were in the kitchen, where the early sunlight crisscrossed the table. I didn’t respond at first. Before, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d wanted to know my father, even when I’d known it wasn’t possible—that the person he’d been was locked away, and whatever emotions he had were unable to reach the surface. But now he was awake and unsealed, and I felt like I was the sleepwalker.
“How long is he staying?” I asked.
“A few weeks, for now. He’ll be taking some time to figure things out.”
According to Esther, I assumed; I knew Mom hadn’t spoken to my father yet, either. Esther was continuing her efforts to get Mom to succeed her as leader of the Kin. The decision to evacuate the Kin had saved lives, Esther claimed—and when Mom had replied that anyone would’ve made the decision, Esther just said the point was not what anyone would have done, but what Mom actually did.
I glanced up at Mom. “You’re not going to dump Mickey, are you?”
She snorted, and then set about eating her own pancakes until she saw that I was frowning. “Oh, that was a serious question?” She sighed, stretching backward in her chair. It took a moment before she began speaking. “I’ll always love Adrian. I told you that. But I’m a different person than I was back then. And even unsealed, so is Adrian. Mickey is the man I want to be with. That hasn’t changed.”
“But you’re going to go see him, too, right?”
“When you’re ready.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Three days later, we met my father in the St. Croix house. Esther had greeted us at the door and walked with us up the stairs, reminding us that my father was still adjusting, and the process would be ongoing for some time yet. But she was clearly thrilled. She looked happier—and healthier—than I’d ever seen her, and before she turned to let us enter the room, she actually hugged me.
In the study, my father was standing near a bookshelf. Physically, he appeared much the same as the last time I’d seen him. He wore a charcoal business suit, and his curly brown hair was still unmarked by gray. When he turned to face us, I could see the gold of his eyes, and the bend where he’d once broken his nose. But his face was no longer expressionless, his gaze no longer blank. He looked nervous. He was frowning a little, and he kept moving his hands. He stuck them in his pockets and then withdrew them. The smile he gave us wavered slightly. He didn’t speak.
My mother entered the room first. She didn’t hesitate. She just strode right up to him.
“Lucy,” he said.
She pulled him into her arms, and then stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. She was crying, but she was smiling through her tears. “I’ve missed you, kid,” she told him.
I hung back, suddenly shy, now that it was real, now that it was really him.
But it was too late. If I were going to flee, I should’ve done it earlier—before Mom and I had gotten into the car that morning, before we’d arrived at the house and walked up those long flights of stairs. He’d already seen me.
I stepped into the room slowly, concentrating on the sound of my footsteps, keeping my gaze on the room around me. I drew in a deep breath and then lifted my gaze to my father. He was looking back down at me.
Knowing came to me then. Vibrant and shining, not the static I’d been sensing—everything open and clear. I could see through those long years he’d spent sleeping, to the laughing boy he’d been. That boy was still there, though he’d long since grown into this somber, sad-eyed man. He lingered at the edge of my father’s memories, in stray impressions I caught now—lying in the grass as a thunderstorm rolled overhead, watching the sky spark and crash; grinning beneath the sunlight, waving to someone beyond my view. And there was the flicker of something else. Something quiet, understated. The sense that while I was Knowing him, he was Knowing me, too. That was his gift, as well, I recalled. The Nav cards Esther had given me had once belonged to him. Inverted Crescent. The card we shared.