Page 1 of To the Grave

Chapter 1

Daisy

August…

Chapter 2

Daisy

September…

Chapter 3

Daisy

Light stabbed the darkness behind my eyelids and I sat up with a start, looking around the bedroom I shared with Wolf and Otis. I’d been dreaming of Jace, dreaming that we were alone under the falls, our bodies wrapped around each other in the water. His eyes had burned into mine.

I see you.

Now I was awake, the very last thing I wanted to be.

The last thing I always wanted to be since Jace had died.

But I wasn’t alone. Otis sat on the edge of the bed, his blond hair falling forward over his face. It was always a relief to look at Otis. He didn’t look at me with the same worry that shadowed Wolf’s eyes. I knew it didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, but I was glad not to be faced with it.

“What’s happening?” I asked. It was super early, the sky dark beyond the open curtains, billowing in the chilly October morning. “Why is the window open?”

“It’s time to get up, doll.” He leaned in to kiss me quickly on the mouth, then pulled back the covers. “I thought the fresh air would help.”

I couldn’t feel the cool air of the room through the sweats — Jace’s — I wore 24/7 around the house, which was kind of the point of the sweats. I didn’t want to feel anything, because on those rare occasions when I did, I thought I might die from the pain.

I lay back down and turned onto my side. “I don’t want to get up,” I said, closing my eyes. “Let me sleep.”

A jolt of surprise tore through me when Otis pulled the covers back again. “No can do, doll.”

I sat up with a frustrated sigh. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You’re getting up, that’s what. Wolf is downstairs making your smoothie. Then you’re going to the gym.”

“Why is Wolf making me a smoothie? I’m going… what?”

I was definitely confused. After my initial determination to make Jace’s murderer — or murderers — pay, I’d fallen into a depression so deep and dark it felt like floating alone through space.

I slept until noon-ish, after which I got up, stumbled down to the kitchen, scarfed a danish or donut or bagel or something else I wouldn’t have eaten six months earlier, and drank a big glass of water.

Then I walked to the cemetery at the top of the cliff behind the house and visited Jace, sometimes for more than an hour, lying next to his grave on the increasingly dead wild grass. I talked to him about all kinds of things, reminding him of funny things he and the Beasts had done with Blake when they were kids, telling him how he’d seemed to me back then.

Beautiful and dangerous and untouchable.

I told him about my mom and wondered about her relationship with Mac. Did Jace think they’d been in love? Did he remember her from when he was a kid living at the Blades compound?

My conversations with him were long and meandering and I was sure anyone who overheard them would have thought I was insane. He was dead but still as real to me as he’d been when his warm body had lain next to mine.

Wolf and Otis gave me space to visit Jace alone. I wondered if they visited him too but didn’t want to ask. Talking to Jace was one thing. Talking about him was something else. I just… couldn’t. I thought if I started talking about him I might scream and never stop.

So I talked to him instead.

After my daily visits to the cemetery, I parked my ass on the couch where I spent my days eating and sleeping, bingeing bad TV and watching Wolf and Otis play video games until it was dark, at which point I went to bed, slept like the dead, and woke up to start the whole thing all over again.

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