Shadow Unit 15 Read Free Page B

you turn widdershins through the spiral and find your place in the inner ring of mourners. Her family. Her circle. And you.
    You're cold. Everything sounds far away, unimportant. The shroud isn't finished, but it's wrapped around her body, small and motley with the embroideries of wheels and constellations, a map of Ash's own meaning and what she wanted to set down to mark her life.
    There should be more. There shouldn't be an inch of beige left unmarked, and the wrongness of that latches hold surely as Connor's hand and scrapes at the edges of emptiness, the unreality.
    This shouldn't be happening.
    Then there's a soft press just over your left shoulder, a wisp of honey and sandalwood teasing through the air, and the batting over your senses peels away—the moisture in the air, the cool bluegrass under your bare feet, Connor's hand holding yours tight and the brilliant blue sky and oh, deep in the center of your chest, it hurts and claws up your throat in a horrible jagged sob, the first you've cried since that first denying scream over the telephone
    a car crash
    the other driver killed immediately, Ash airlifted out with a massive head injury, unable to breathe unassisted
    She had been coming to your house.
    Work had been the absolute shits. Even knowing that you were walking straight into a universal PMS zone didn't make it any easier to handle. When Sam and Tyrone had laughed just as you'd gone around the corner—it probably hadn't been about you but fuck it made you want to turn around and demand to know what was so fucking funny and even a run through the trail and splitting wood to refill the wall of split logs didn't take the tension out of your shoulders, didn't dull the need to start a fight.
    You had complained to Ash as much as your nondisclosure agreement would allow, and your best friend, your heart-sister, said, "Take a shower, use the salt scrub, we're going to unblock your cramped-up energy and then we can watch any Jane Austen movie you want."
    "I love you," you'd said, not knowing it was the last time. "And your crystal-hugging bodywork."
    When she wasn't there a half hour later, you assumed she'd decided to pick up something to eat.
    After an hour, you sent her a text.
    The phone rang ten minutes later.
     
    *
     
    You can't stop crying now. Connor and Sandra have their arms around you, and you can't stop, she's gone, because she was coming to your house because you couldn't even stop sulking long enough to make the drive from Purcellville to Leesburg to make good on your weekend plans, she's dead
    because of you
    They get you back to the car somehow, and you try to take slow breaths that don't hitch, and when your sinuses clear, you smell honey and sandalwood again, and wonder if you're going crazy.
    Sandra takes you home to the big house surrounded by deep Virginia woods. She tucks you into bed as if you were sick and reads Sense and Sensibility to you until the pills take hold and you fall asleep.
    You dream of Ash teaching you to dance the strathspey in this house. You dream of the first day you met at your new school. You are both fourteen, and you never want to wake up.
    But you do.
    Ashton, VA
    Hell is beautiful in the spring.
    Dice bumps the driver's-side door closed with his hip and balances a grocery sack and a cardboard box on one hand and double-checks the lock. Actually two boxes: one destined to stay at the door for Leon and his partner after the mandatory search is done, the other to go upstairs, not down, up to the activity room, where Eddie and a guard will wait.
    They might play chess, with Eddie able to move his pieces himself. Dyson's read up on sports scores, but Eddie may have already seen them himself on the television, and he'll listen.
    Leon takes the boxes of kolache with thanks, you shouldn't have, I could never eat two boxes by myself and a big laugh before they go do the usual search. Leon doesn't ask the question again, and then Dyson Cieslewicz heads in a new direction from