Cold Kiss

the phone when we were both home in bed at night, he’s been gone for a long time. He’s the one I’m never really going to be okay with losing, but at least now I know that isn’t up to me.
    At five minutes to midnight, I arrange him on the grave, laying him down gently, and he doesn’t protest. He watches me, his eyes dark and blank, and blinks a little when I bend over to kiss him and a tear falls on his cheek.
    “I need you to close your eyes now, and listen to my voice.” I press the words against his cold mouth, and I can’t believe my voice is steady. My heart is beating so hard and fast it’s a little frightening, but nothing’s changed otherwise—I can still feel the power coiled taut and ready inside me.
    I trim a lock of his hair and he doesn’t move. I squeeze his hand before I draw my athame across it, and he still doesn’t flinch. The blood is as cold and sluggish as he is, gleaming nearly black in the moonlight. I smear it onto a picture of him, one of my favorites, and press his hair into it before I check my watch.
    One minute left.
    I kneel at his feet and lay the picture between his calves on the patch of earth where I’ve pulled the grass away. One handful of dirt and the picture is covered, Danny’s huge grin and laughing eyes obscured. I swallow thickly and start to chant, the blade poised in my right hand and my power cresting high and eager in my chest.
    Tonight I call Death to embrace this boy
    Tonight I seek peace for him
    From ash he emerged, and to ash he returns.
    Spirits bright
    Spirits dark
    Spirits undecided and in between
    Witness my invocation.
    To Death you return, Danny.
    Peace awaits you.
    Life has no hold on you anymore.
    By candlelight
    By starlight
    By moonlight growing stronger
    I command this to be.
    With this symbol of Danny
    With his blood
    I command this to be.
    Find Death, Danny.
    Find peace.
    Find Death, Danny.
    Find peace.
    I don’t realize how hard I’m crying until I open my eyes as wind shudders over the ground, a flapping sheet of it, and the candle flickers out.
    Danny is gone.
    I’m not sure how long I lie there, my face, muddy with tears now, pressed to the cold dirt. I feel hollow inside, scooped dry by the time I sit up. Despite that, I know what’s different now, what I didn’t realize the last time I was here, chanting under the moon.
    My power is still where I put it, neatly rolled into a ball and balanced at my center. Before, it raged through me like a flood, washing into every nerve, every vein, completely unchecked.
    Now, I can decide when to use it, if I use it.
    It’s a cold comfort, but I’ll take it for now. I’m shaky when I stand up, and I put everything away in my bag, except for the picture of Danny, which I hold up and light. I let it burn down to my fingers, and then I say good-bye and let go as the ashes flutter to Danny’s grave.
    What I feel most, as I pick my way through the headstones toward the gate, is alone. I think it’s what I was scared of when Danny died, or one of the things, anyway. It’s just as cold a feeling as I imagined.
    Except when I walk through the gates, hitching my backpack more securely over my shoulder and wiping away the last tears with the back of one dirty hand, I see Gabriel. He’s across the street, leaning against a mailbox, a paper cup from the mini-mart in one hand. He doesn’t wave, he doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t walk toward me.
    He waits.
    And I think that this is what I would like love to be. Leaving room for each other, knowing that not every step is going to be side by side.
    Giving more than taking. Waiting. Trusting.
    I cross the street and reach for his hand. He lets me take it, squeezing my fingers briefly.
    “Walk me home?” I ask him.
    He hands me the cup, hot sweet tea, offers to take my bag. I let him, watching as the weight of it pulls down his shoulder.
    And then we walk together in the moonlight, hand in hand, until I’m home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    MANY THANKS TO THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP ME sane, and love me even when I’m not. Lee, for all kinds of excellent cheerleading and general awesomeness; Donna, for making me laugh and letting me talk through scenes with her; Jilli and Bev, for reading and shaking their pom-poms, and helping with incantations; ita, for listening to me whine and distracting me with Winchesters; Maureen, for believing I could do this, and encouraging me all the way; and Erica, for getting it and loving it and making it a thousand times