I’m still laughing as the smoldering building comes down around me.
EPILOGUE
The coffin blends in with the cool gray sky. Raindrops glimmer from its steel-colored surface, and drizzle blurs the air above it, making a hazy rainbow that looks out of place in the sea of crumbling gravestones. The air is thick with the smell of dead flowers.
There’s no crowd gathered around the coffin, no mourning family or teary-eyed friends. The only person in attendance is an ancient woman in a wheelchair. Her eyes are unfocused, and a blanket covers her shriveled legs, but she sits upright, spine ramrod-straight. Her face looks like a melting candle. Skin drips from her bones, pulling her cheeks so low that the blood-red insides of her eyelids roll open.
There’s no priest. There wouldn’t be, for a suicide, but the woman clenches a rosary anyway. She moves the beads between gnarled fingers. Half her mouth twists in a frozen snarl. The other half moves quietly, whispering.
Wind weaves between the gravestones, lifting the edge of the woman’s blanket and rustling tufts of dandelion-fuzz hair. It carries her voice through the trees.
“. . . diablo . . . diablo . . .”
The sound of wood clicking against wood follows a moment later. If the woman notices the wind, she doesn’t show it. She stares straight ahead. It’s unclear how well she sees through those milky eyes. Unclear whether she notices anyone standing in the trees just a few feet from her. She doesn’t look away from the coffin.
A cicada crawls up the side of the glossy gray wood, wings twitching. The woman’s eyes fix on the insect, and the half of her mouth that’s been whispering—the good half—twists, so that both sides of her lips match. Her face crumples, eyes disappearing in a mess of wrinkles, and she tries to stand. Her legs shake. She stumbles forward, one hand grasping for the side of the wheelchair.
“Diablo!” she screams. She’s crying now, shoulders shaking and fat tears running down her cheeks. She throws the rosary beads at the coffin. “Diablo!”
She crosses herself and then drops back into the wheelchair, head turned like she can’t stand to look at the coffin any longer. She braces her hands against the chair’s wheels, but they’re stuck in the mud and it takes her a few tries to get them rolling. I watch her weave down the path. And then she’s gone.
The cicada leaps from the side of the coffin and lands on a tree a few feet away, wings trembling. I shoo it away.
I step out from behind my tree and make my way around the gravestones, mud squelching beneath my shoes.
The gravedigger looks up as I approach. His jumpsuit is already smudged with mud, grass shavings clinging to his thick-soled boots. He swipes a bandana across his forehead and then jabs his thumb at a button beside the coffin. A grinding noise fills the air as the great gray box sinks into the ground.
He jerks his chin at the coffin. “Such a shame when they’re young like that,” he says, shaking his head. He presses the bandana to his mouth.
“Shame,” I agree, sweeping my long, dark hair over one shoulder. Wind whips at my dress, sending it flapping against the backs of my legs. My umbrella hasn’t done much good. It’s barely raining, but my black tights are already damp from the knees down.
“You gotta be cold,” the gravedigger says, jabbing a shovel into the mound of dirt beside the coffin. Grunting, he drops it into the hole. “You ought to head inside. Nothing more to see out here.”
“I don’t really get cold.” I kneel, careful to keep the edge of my dress from falling in the mud. The rosary beads look like bright red berries against the grass and dirt. I scoop them up, and the wood clicks together softly.
“You knew her, then?” The gravedigger squints, reading the name etched into the tombstone. “This . . . Sofia Flores?”
I stand, slipping the beads into my pocket. They’re still wet, and they soak through the thin fabric of my dress, chilling the skin at my hip.
“I knew her well. I hope she’s at peace now.” The corner of my lip twitches. “She was a very sick girl.”
The gravedigger gives me a look and then goes back to shoveling dirt onto Sofia’s coffin, muttering something under his breath about crazy teenage girls. I smile at his back, lips pulled too tightly over my teeth. And then I turn and walk away, shaking off the cicada that has landed on my shoe.
It’s chilly out, but I can feel heat building inside me. It licks my skin, growing hotter with each step I take, yearning for a new sinner to play with. There’s always a new sinner, another sick girl with a secret waiting for me to show her who she really is.
I just have to find her.
Acknowledgments
I’ve been writing the Merciless books for a long time, now, and I’m so lucky to have a truly brilliant team behind me making sure they end as strongly as they began. Thanks, again, to my wonderful Alloy family—specifically Hayley Wagreich, Josh Bank, and Sara Shandler. You are brilliant humans.
Thanks times about a million to my team at Razorbill. I couldn’t have written this book without Jessica Almon to help me get it started and Jessica Harriton to help me bring it home. As always, I owe Casey McIntyre for about a million tiny things, from making sure I have coffee at events, to endless hours booking travel, to pre-panel pep talks. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And, of course, Ben Schrank, Elora Sullivan, Felicity Vallence, Maria Fazio, and the rest of Razorbill’s sales, marketing, and publicity team. I’m continually blown away by how hard you work to help people find my books.
In addition to the people named here, there are so many others working behind the scenes to make this book happen. I am grateful to all of you. I couldn’t have done it without your support.
And finally, thanks to my fabulous, supportive family and friends. I’m consistently blown away by all of you.
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