When they retreated to the Tighe house, a group of people waited for them—Mr. and Mrs. Tighe. Zoey’s father. Grayson, leg bandaged and some of the color returned to his face. Both his hair and his glasses sat endearingly askew.
And then there was Mrs. Althouse. She rose from the armchair draped with Zoey’s favorite afghan and turned to face them.
Though the twin prospects of her father’s embrace and Grayson’s kiss in her hair were so comforting that Zoey nearly ran to them, she instead inhaled long and slow, and focused her attention on Pamela Althouse alone.
She didn’t really know the woman, had hardly spent any time with her except for a few fleeting moments. But her pale, drawn face held so much of Marion in it—dark hair, sad gray eyes, a gentle expressiveness to her mouth—that Zoey’s gut twisted painfully.
Val squeezed her hand. Zoey had volunteered to begin the tale, but she knew Val’s signal for what it was: Do you need me to go first?
Zoey drew a breath and steeled herself for a task she’d never thought she’d have to undertake: Ma’am, I’m sorry, but your daughter is dead.
Honestly, she wasn’t sure if this woman would survive it.
But Mrs. Althouse spoke first. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice firm at its center and shivering at the edges. “I know you tried.”
Astonished, Zoey’s mouth dropped open. Beside her, Val jerked as if struck.
Then Zoey glanced past Mrs. Althouse to Grayson. He sat on the couch with his leg propped up on the tufted leather ottoman. Her father stood behind him, his hand on Grayson’s shoulder, and gave her one slow nod, his dark eyes bright with love.
And Zoey knew that the gratitude she felt toward them in that moment could not ever be properly described.
“It’s okay,” Mrs. Althouse said once more, her mouth trembling, and opened her arms to them. It was a gesture of welcome and an offer of solace—but also, Zoey thought, a plea for help.
Zoey hesitated approximately .47 seconds before running awkwardly into Mrs. Althouse’s arms. She shared some qualities of Marion’s—her soothing solidness, the scent of vanilla lotion, fine black hair lumpy with tangles.
Zoey felt Val hesitate beside them, and Zoey wondered just how much her father and Grayson had revealed.
She also wondered, a reluctant ache in her chest, how many genuine hugs a girl like Valerie Mortimer had received in her strange, solitary life of servitude and lies.
She set her jaw and glanced back at Val. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come here.”
Val shook her head. “I don’t— I can’t—” She stepped back, sank unsteadily onto a nearby chair. The look on her face reminded Zoey of a lost child. “Not yet.”
Zoey turned back into Mrs. Althouse’s arms, hiding her face in that Marion-esque hair. If Val wasn’t ready, that was fine. That was, maybe, as it should be.
In the meantime, Zoey would relish any and all hugs she could get for herself.
“It’s all right,” breathed Mrs. Althouse, with such tenderness that, suddenly, Zoey could hardly stand to exist inside her own skin. “It’s all right now. I think we’ll be all right.”
Zoey squeezed her eyes shut and wished fiercely that this would turn out to be true.
No one particularly wanted to go home, so they didn’t.
Mr. Tighe made up the guest room for Mrs. Althouse, and then, on the couch in Mrs. Tighe’s study, set up a pallet of what looked like every blanket in the house for Val. But after five minutes of being in there alone, Val came to find Zoey, dragging her quilt behind her.
Zoey was in Grayson’s bed, waiting for him to come upstairs. He had insisted on cleaning up the kitchen before turning in, otherwise the crusty layers of casserole on their late-night dinner plates would fester and haunt him, snickering in the kitchen while he lay awake staring at the ceiling.
The adorable little freak.
“Come here,” Zoey told Val, patting the mattress and scooting over to make room. “Don’t worry about cooties. Grayson washes his sheets like twice a week.”
Val slipped under the covers and lay there, unmoving, like the human-size lightning rod that she was. “Seems wasteful.”
“But also extremely sanitary.” Zoey propped her head up on her elbow to watch Val. “You can unclench and lie in the bed like a normal person, you know.”
Val’s mouth worked, like she was either trying to decide what to say or attempting to hold back tears. “Do you think he’ll come back? Do you think he’ll get us?”
The questions didn’t surprise Zoey. She’d been wondering the same things, too frightened to say them aloud.
She inspected Val’s stoic face—the perfect straight line of her nose, the sharp curve of her jaw. Mrs. Althouse had convinced her to bathe, to wash her hair and scrub the black stains off her skin, and then she’d helped Val bandage the handprint scars on her belly and gathered her damp golden hair into a loose braid.
The expression on Val’s face as Mrs. Althouse so gently cared for her, like an abused pet that could hardly believe its luck, had lodged in Zoey’s ribs like a thorn.
Finally, Mrs. Althouse had instructed Chief Harlow to take Val’s ruined nightgown and, on his way to the police station to check on the apprehended Hand of Light survivors, please burn the damn thing so Val never had to look at it again.
Zoey had also bathed, also at Mrs. Althouse’s insistence, and at Grayson’s tender behest.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he’d told her, gathering a stack of clean towels from the linen closet, “you look completely badass. Total warrior queen. But even warriors take care of themselves when they have the time.” Then he’d handed her the towels and kissed her nose.
So Zoey had obeyed, scrubbing herself raw under scalding hot water. She’d picked obsessively at the grime beneath her nails until the water had run cold, and then she’d sat on the side of the tub and sobbed, only coming out when Mrs. Althouse knocked on the door and announced quietly that Grayson had just pulled a casserole out of the oven.
As she’d dressed in a set of Grayson’s old pinstriped pajamas, it had occurred to Zoey that Mrs. Althouse was hovering over them, making sure they ate and bathed, because she had no one left to mother. After that she’d had to sit on the toilet and hug herself for a good five minutes before finding the strength to head downstairs.
“Maybe he’ll come back,” she told Val, not sure what to think or for how long bad dreams would vex her sleep. “Maybe he won’t. Maybe it’ll be years, or decades. But I don’t think so. At least not here, not near us.”
Val still stared at the ceiling. “Why don’t you think so?”
Zoey felt suddenly so tired that the only option left to her was the familiar slip into humor. “Because I think we probably scared the ever-living shit out of him.”
She was rewarded with a soft laugh from Val, and a slight relaxing of her own shoulders.
Then Val said, after a moment, “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
Taking a shaky breath, Val turned to face her. “I need to be close to someone. I need to be held.” She paused, blinking rapidly. “But I don’t think I deserve it. I’m not sure that I—” She closed her eyes, her hands clutching the hem of her quilt. “I feel like I’m going to float away if I don’t touch someone. But I can’t stand the thought of asking you.”
Zoey watched Val struggle in silence, waiting for her pocket-Thora to protest: You feel sorry for my killer? Really, Zo?!
But instead, her pocket-Thora whispered, sad and ghostly: She’s suffered enough, and she will continue to.
So Zoey nestled close to Val, slipping her arms around her. “We fought a monster together,” she said quietly. “I haven’t forgiven you yet, and I don’t know that I will. But I can hold you for a while. You deserve that much. And so do I, frankly.” She inhaled, exhaled. “I deserve to move on.”
At first Val lay stiff and startled, hardly breathing.
Then, with a soft, wounded sound, she melted into Zoey’s embrace. She touched their foreheads together—a salute. A promise.
A thank-you.
Zoey awoke again, later, when Grayson tiptoed inside the room.
She opened her eyes and saw him holding a finger to his lips. “Pillow,” he mouthed, gingerly selecting one from the bed.
Zoey slid out from Val’s arms and followed him downstairs. They didn’t speak until they’d curled up on the sofa, beneath the afghan that had christened their first and only lovemaking.
“I don’t want to leave her alone for too long,” Zoey announced, once she’d had just about enough of the grandfather clock’s incessant ticking. Her fingers itched for her bat, which lay beside Grayson’s bed upstairs.
Just in case.
“You could have stayed up there,” Grayson said reasonably.
“Yes, but I needed a cuddle.”
“Val was cuddling you.”
“A boy cuddle.”
Grayson nodded. “I am an excellent cuddler.”
Tucking her legs beneath her, Zoey snuggled against his lanky frame. “Did you bake more cookies?”
“Not yet.” He shifted to look at her, his expression eager. “Do you want me to?”
“Oh my God. No. I mean, yes, but later.”
He subsided, reluctantly, and then blew out a slow breath.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Grayson’s breathing came slow and even.
Then Zoey thumped her fist lightly against her thigh, making him jump.
“I want to figure out better ways to hunt monsters,” she declared. “There has to be a way that doesn’t kill off more girls like Marion.”
“You’d be an excellent teacher.”
Zoey glanced at him. “If I opened a school would you be the housekeeper to my headmaster?”
“What kind of school, exactly?”
“One that teaches extraordinary girls how to use power like we did, and root out evil, and destroy the shit out of it.”
“That sounds incredible,” Grayson said.
“Wonderful. You’re hired.”
“But wait. As housekeeper, could I wear an apron of my choosing?”
“No,” said Zoey, grinning. “One of mine. On occasion I might let Val choose.”
He let out a beleaguered sigh. “So will you open this school here, or far away?”
“Kingshead, maybe.”
“Ah.”
“Val’s going to stay there, look after the farm. It’s way too big a house for one girl to live in. Or even, like, fifty girls.”
Grayson appeared to be deep in thought. “Would your students be required to wear uniforms?”
Zoey answered at once: “Yes. Wizard robes.”
She thought that would elicit a laugh, but instead Grayson smiled wistfully at her. “We would be working pretty closely together, as housekeeper and headmaster. I’m not sure I could . . .” He looked away, his eyes suddenly bright, and laughed ruefully. “I’m sorry, Zo. I swore I wouldn’t . . . Jesus.”
Zoey’s heartbeat thundered in her ears. She eyed the Tighe family’s movie collection and spotted a familiar cover. “I’m sorry to tell you,” she began, reaching desperately for a subject change, “that I don’t think I’ll be able to watch Alien again for a really, really long time.”
“Zoey—”
“Much to my dismay, my love for Ellen Ripley has its limits. No more xenomorphs for me. I declare a xenomorph moratorium. A xenotorium.”
“Zo.” Grayson gathered her hands in his own, kissed them tenderly. “I don’t know if my heart could take being near you like that and not being with you.”
Zoey looked at him—his clean, square jaw, the fall of dark hair over his forehead. She tried to think of something to say, but all her words seemed inadequate.
He swallowed, hard, his gaze flitting across her face, and then he looked away. “You know, right after you broke up with me, I was mad at you.”
Her stomach dropped. “Mad at me?”
“I couldn’t understand why you didn’t want to have sex. Everyone wants to have sex.”
The words knocked Zoey’s breath out of her lungs. “Not everyone,” she managed.
“I know.” He pressed her hands gently with his fingers. “I know that now. Anyway, I was angry, and confused, jealous. Basically I was an ass. I thought maybe there was someone else. I thought I’d done something wrong, or that it hadn’t been good for you—”
She released a frustrated breath. “I told you before, that has nothing to do with it.”
“I even thought for a while that maybe I should just stop seeing you. Completely. Even as friends.”
Zoey closed her eyes. “God.”
“But I couldn’t stand that, Zo. I tried for, I think, a day, and that was that. And then, over the past few weeks, with all of this going on . . . And then you left me on that boat, with no idea where you were going or what was about to happen . . .” A piece of his voice broke off and shattered. “Fuck, Zoey.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
Zoey stared up at him, rapt. “Language,” she chided.
His smile was soft upon her face. “I realized on that boat that I’d rather live a lifetime without sex if it meant spending even one more day with you.”
Zoey couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing.
Grayson pulled slightly away, frowning. “Well. That’s not the reaction I was expecting.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just—” Zoey was doing that slightly alarming thing where she was laughing and basically crying at the same time. She wiped her eyes. “That was such a declaration. And so, like, final. A lifetime without sex, Grayson? There’s no need to punish yourself for me.”
“I don’t even know if I want sex.”
Now Zoey was the one to pull back. “Okay, but you told me you did want sex.”
“I mean . . .” Grayson blew out a sharp breath. “I haven’t slept with anyone since you.” He paused, eyes dancing. Gently, he added, “I could have, mind you—”
Zoey rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course, naturally.”
“But I didn’t want to. Not if it wasn’t you.”
“Grayson.” Zoey shook her head, recentering herself. “I don’t want you to become someone you’re not, even for me.”
“And I don’t want you to become someone you’re not for me.”
“Okay, so . . . Where does that leave us?”
“Maybe it leaves us here: we’re seventeen.”
Zoey raised an eyebrow. “An astute observation.”
“Maybe we just . . . try it. If you want,” he added hastily. “If you’re not interested, then tell me to shut up and get over myself, and I will.”
“Try it?”
“A relationship. You and me.” He looked hesitantly up at her. “If you want.”
A light, fizzy feeling bubbled up from Zoey’s toes to her cheeks. “Grayson, I’m serious when I tell you that I may never want to have sex again.”
“And I may never want it again! Who knows? But you.” Now he cupped her face in his palms, reverent. “You, I want. However I can have you, Harlow.”
Tears welled in her eyes. You, I want. “And if I never want to have sex again? And you decide that you do?”
“Then maybe it won’t work out. But, God, Zoey, don’t you want to try?”
His earnestness tore at her, and then remade her into a whole, shining creature that dared to embrace this moment—and not laugh, or run away, or spike it with barbs.
“Maybe,” she said slowly, “I’ll find out that I want to have sex with you. On occasion.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Or maybe you won’t. And that’s okay.”
“Maybe I’ll transform overnight into a sex fiend.”
“Maybe I’ll decide to take a vow of abstinence.”
Zoey’s laugh came out faint and shuddering. She blinked, and tears fell onto Grayson’s stroking fingers. “Maybe you’ll go off to college and forget about me.”
“Maybe we’ll just be a plain old slayer-school housekeeper-and-headmaster,” he said, his eyes so soft that Zoey had to close her own. “Best friends and colleagues. Nothing more.”
She nuzzled her nose against his chin, whispering, “Maybe this is a stupid high school fling.”
“Maybe,” said Grayson, brushing his lips across her cheeks, “we’ll grow old together.”
Maybe, Zoey thought, as she opened her mouth to Grayson’s kiss, has lots of potential.