Page 100 of The Hangman's Rope

“Like a finger?” I asked.

“Worse,” Hangman said.

“That’s good,” I said simply.

He cuddled me close and I asked, “Is he dead now?” He hung limp above us except for these fine tremors that racked his body.

“Probably, but we like to give it a while yet, until he stops moving completely,” Grim said starkly.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?” Hangman asked.

“For keeping me, and countless other women safe from this monster. For trusting me enough to allow me to be here. For laying the nightmares to rest… for everything. Loving me, giving me peace… just all of it.”

He kissed my temple and I slouched down, tucking myself against his chest and under his chin.

“Thank you for being trustworthy,” Grim said.

I looked to Reaper who was silent and staring up at the man whohadto be dead by now.

He looked at me, dragging his eyes away from the morbid sight and asked, “Does this make us even?”

I couldn’t even begin to understand him… but then again, I didn’t really feel like I had to.

“Yes,” I said and he nodded.

“Good,” he said simply, and he turned back to the dangling man. “I thought you were dead. If I thought for one second you were alive, I would never.”

…and it clicked.

Dead was dead. Looking up at Cal’s swinging body, face deep purple but the color draining fast I think I understood. There was nothing there. Not one spark, nothing… he was dead. Whatever made himhimwas gone and it really didn’t matter what happened to the rotten shell he’d inhabited.

I swallowed hard, and wondered if whatever that thing was that animated us, and made us smile, and feel, and love, and grieve, and move through this life as best we all could… well… I wondered if it had passed to whatever Hell he believed in, or if there really was any sort of existence at all after this.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Now, we get him down, and you ride on back up to the front with Hangman while Reaper and I take care of the rest,” Grim said.

I nodded and leaned into Hangman, a tiredness washing over me after another wave of relief as some burden that I’d carried since the lot of them had victimized me, lifted from my spirit and followed whatever Cal’s essence was out into the ether.

“I’m tired,” I confessed, and Hangman rubbed my back through the thin cotton of my gown.

“I bet, Sweetpea. I’m tired, too. Let’s get you home.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hangman…

I didn’t like it, but I’d let it happen. I didn’t know if I was going to regret that decision or not. I was worried. Scared even, that Lorelai would wake in the morning and the horrors would catch up to her in the light of day and that I would lose her…

It was a very real fear as I crept forward lowering that fuckstick’s dead body to the ground. Reap caught him up in a fireman’s carry and nodded to me as Grim unhooked and coiled the rope, stowing it on the back of the lift.

“You two get on home,” Grim said. “We’ll take care of the rest.”

“What will you do with him?” Lore asked.

“Bury him over in the Horowitz plot – there was just a burial there this week, ground’s still soft. Easy digging.”

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