I wanted the credits to roll, the ending music to play, the little vignettes of my character finishing off all the loose ends from the game. I wanted to feel satisfaction. I wanted to feel joy. But instead, all I felt was finality. Vance was gone. He couldn’t hurt any of us, anymore.
I pushed out, hardening the dewdrop shells of the corpses with my own power. They gave, like rows of dominoes toppling over each other.
Behind me, Jack stumbled into the room. “Is it done?” he asked. He spotted Vance on the desk and stood, staring.
“It’s done,” I said.
We were still surrounded by corpses. If any of them were in view of the hospital night staff, they’d already be aware that something strange was happening. But no one had come to Vance’s office. Not yet.
We had to get out of here. I knew it. And yet, I couldn’t move—my body frozen as if under Vance’s control.
No one was compelling me to be still, no one but my own memories. Of laughing with him at that desk. Of the time he’d sat with me on his couch, put his arm around me, and told me he saw something special in me.
I froze now, the same way I’d frozen during what he did to me after that.
And then my knees gave out beneath me, and I fell to the floor, my whole body shaking, my chest heaving with sobs even though the tears could never come.
Jack locked the door behind him and put his hands on my shoulders. “April,” he said, “it’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay. Vance had taken so much, had killed so many. “I don’t know what okay is anymore,” I said.
Jack wrapped his arms around me.”I know,” he said. “Killing him, it makes you safe, but it doesn’t change what he did to you. To us.”
To us.
And yet we trust. And yet we trust.
Somehow good will be the final goal of ill.
Was it even possible to rise from the ashes of this?
“What do I do?” I asked. “What do I do now?” Tuxedo would already know what we’d done. Their takeover of the territory would no doubt be swift. They’d keep the blood flowing, and we’d earned ourselves sanctuary.
“You live,” Jack said. “You live in the way you want, despite him. That’s how you’re going to survive.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
“We’re going to build someplace safe,” Jack said. “I’m going to help you.”
I leaned back into Jack’s arms, and my frozen limbs began to melt. Like leaves turning toward the light of the sun, something in me was pivoting, twisting, growing toward a future warmer and brighter and of my choosing.
I stood, slowly, staring at Vance for the last and final time. Jack stood with me, his arms still holding me from behind. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
And though I’d never truly see the sunlight again, the night was over.
It was long past time to wake up.
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Acknowledgments
This book’s journey to publication was so long and tumultuous that it would be impossible for me to remember and thank everyone who helped it along its way by name. April’s story has had many different endings, several different settings, and many, many new drafts over the last decade.
The first draft was written when I was in grad school. Thanks to my peers in my workshop classes for their excellent feedback, and to my professors for putting up with the girl who wrote vampire novels at the height of the Twilight era. Special thanks to Dean Hughes for his encouragement of commercial fiction, and to Lance Larsen for his fine instruction despite it.
Over the years I also workshopped this novel in several critique groups. Thanks to all who read and gave feedback (even though I couldn’t possibly hope to name you individually here), and most especially to the Mistborn Llamas and the Seizure Ninjas, who had special influence on the book.
Special thanks to Brandon, Isaac, Bryce, Sandra, Drew, and Megan for their critiques and support of the novel, and to Eddie Schneider for his fine work getting the manuscript ready for submission.
Thanks as always to my brilliant cover designer, Melody Fender, who always knows what the book needs, and is patient with me as I come around to it.
Most of all, thanks to Kristina Kugler, who read drafts of this book across a full decade, and loved it every time. Thanks as always for your fantastic editing and your stalwart friendship. I love you fifty million billion.
And to my husband Drew, thanks, as always. You are the best.
Janci Patterson is the author of contemporary and science fiction young adult novels. Visit her online at www.jancipatterson.com.
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