Chapter 12 · The Deep Door Opens for Her

Elise sits up on the stone slab like she's been asleep for ten minutes, not three years.

Her hair's longer. That's the first stupid thing I notice. It falls past her shoulders now, dark and tangled, and she brushes it back with one hand like it's annoying her. The movement is so familiar it makes my chest hurt.

"Mara." Her voice sounds the same. Tired. A little annoyed. The way she used to say my name when I'd wake her up too early on a Saturday. "You shouldn't have brought him here."

Kieran goes still beside me. His hand's still on my wrist where the blood's drying, and I feel his pulse jump under my fingers.

"Elise," I say, and my voice cracks. "You're—"

"Alive? Sort of." She swings her legs off the slab. She's wearing the same clothes she had on the night she died. The white shirt with the coffee stain on the collar. Jeans with the ripped knee.

I remember because I ID'd the body.

I threw up in the morgue bathroom after and couldn't stop shaking for an hour.

She looks at Kieran, and her expression goes cold. "You brought the shard.