Chapters (52)
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Epilogue
- An excerpt from Halfway to the Grave
- An excerpt from One Foot in the Grave
- An excerpt from At Grave’s End
- An excerpt from Destined for an Early Grave
- An excerpt from This Side of the Grave
- An excerpt from One Grave at a Time
- About the Author
- By Jeaniene Frost
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
I liked the new name better. It signified the changing direction in my life. The Red Reaper was, for all intents and purposes, no more. At least for a good, long while. Vampire and ghoul society believed Bones and I had disappeared because I was overwrought with grief, and he was royally pissed at his co-ruler. Only a handful of people knew that neither scenario was correct.
Most of those people were gathered on the rocky Nova Scotia shoreline about a quarter mile from where our boat was anchored. We hadn’t had a chance to say a proper goodbye before, especially with some of them being halfway around the world while events were going down in Detroit and Chicago. It worked out that it had been a couple weeks since then. Now, Spade no longer tried to beat Mencheres and Bones on sight.
He did still glare at them, though, and his arm looked to be permanently welded to Denise’s side. He didn’t even let her go when she hugged me after Bones and I climbed out of our dinghy.
“For the thousandth time, I’m fine,” Denise chided him, squeezing his hand. Then she gave me a lopsided smile. “Though I never want to do that again. It wasn’t really painful, but do you know I could still see for a few seconds before I passed out? If I’d have had a stomach attached, I would’ve puked for sure.”
I’d always be grateful—and amazed—by what she’d done. That she could joke about it now showed how deep her bravery ran.
As for Katie, we were teaching her normal speech instead of her militia-styled jargon, among the many other ways we tried to decondition Madigan’s training. It would take a while, and I was fine with that. She laughed for the first time yesterday when my mother had swatted Tate, then Bones with a freshly caught grouper after the two men had been squabbling over the best way to prepare it. The five of us in the same vessel had made my mom mutter “We’re going to need a bigger boat” more than once, but she was as happy as I’d ever seen her.
If I’d never thought to be a mother, she’d really never thought to be a grandmother, and she seemed to make it her mission to make up for the parenting mistakes she’d made with me by lavishing love on Katie.
“She’s my second chance,” she’d said, looking at me with remorse in her blue eyes.
I understood the silent apology, and I accepted it. Everyone deserved a second chance sometimes.