RESTLESS SPIRITS ▷ ELLIE WILLIAMS

CHAPTER FIVE: EVERY CITY'S GOT A GRAVEYARD

Ellie was no stranger to grief. She knew how it ripped you open and left you to your most vulnerable self. The first time she felt it was after Riley died. At that point, Ellie had been too young to understand what she felt, too young to know what to do with it. So she kept it deep inside her heart, pushing the feelings away until the darkest hours of the night when she would soak her pillows with tears for a fallen friend.

When Tess was bitten, grief felt more like a punch than the quiet misery that gnawed at her heart. There was anger now; she knew enough of how unfair the world was to be furious with her inability to keep the people around her alive. Instead, she was angry at herself and the world she had no control over.

And then there was Joel. Joel was killed by the swing of Abby's brutal revenge. He had killed Abby's father to save Ellie from a dark demise, and even though he had lied to her for years about the truth of why he did it, she found herself remorseful after he was gone. With every bitter word she had said to him after learning the truth now left a sour taste on her tongue.

His death had been the hardest to take on. Guilt weighed on her mind, and anger seized her heart. She had fallen with her only net, having been Dina, who carried her through the beginning of her grief. Dina, who had stayed by Ellie's side through the tears and her anger. Dina, who had almost died at Abby's hands after their fight in Seattle. She had been there in the middle of the night when Ellie woke in the night screaming while the sound of a golf club striking bone rang in her ears. Now Ellie was someone else's net.

Marlowe's grief was a quiet type. It was filled with long silences and distant stares. Cold showers left her shaking, and Ellie was never sure if it was the chilly water or sobs that wracked her body. Lyla showed up every morning for the first few days with a hug and a smile that never reached her eyes and arrived in the evenings with two plates of whatever was served at dinner. Evelyn had dismissed Marlowe and Lyla, as well as the rest of their friend group, from their duties until Evelyn cleared them to return to work, which meant that Lyla was at Marlowe's house as often as she could be.

Lyla never pushed or shoved Marlowe into doing anything she didn't want to. Instead, she would help Ellie around the house, and they tried to include Marlowe in what they did to keep her from isolating herself and spiraling.

For two days, Lyla taught Ellie and Marlowe how to make bread. It ended in a flour fight that turned the kitchen into a mess. Marlowe had laughed for the first time in nearly a week since her brother's passing. Ellie didn't realize how much she had missed seeing her smile, lively and welcoming. Lyla had made a one-off comment about how she hoped the snow would clear up soon so they could ride again and patrols would be more accessible when they returned. Marlowe's smile had faltered, and she went quiet, receding into the depths of her mind. The three of them had cleaned in silence.

Almost a week after Seeley's death, Ellie lay on the couch in Marlowe's house. Night had fallen, the moon shining brightly above. The inside of the house was mostly dark except for the light Ellie kept on as she sketched mindlessly in her journal. Earlier that day, she had written a letter to Tommy explaining that her return would be delayed but promised she was safe and that something needed her attention before returning to Jackson. Evelyn had an outbound scout group take the note for her.

She hummed under her breath as her pencil scratched against the paper. The outline of Marlowe's shoulder appeared in her journal, the tarnished skin carved into the junction of her shoulder and neck. The nail marks gouged into her collarbone. Ellie tried to illustrate every detail she could remember from the brief seconds she was shown the scar in the Lookout.

There was a flicker of movement from the corner of her vision, and Ellie looked up to the hallway. Marlowe stood on the threshold between the living room and the hallway to the bedrooms. She wore a pair of brown checkered shorts and a cream-colored quarter-buttoned sweater that was a size or two too large for her. She undid the top two buttons, and the collar lay against her shoulders. Her copper waves tumbled loosely across her shoulders and down her back. The wool socks on her feet had made her approach completely silent. Grey eyes looked nearly black in the shadows.