The first day after Mitchell's death, Annie was manic.
The second, enraged.
The third, she didn't move.
She felt fragile in a way she hadn't in a long time, as if she were newly deceased. She had the vaguely unnerving suspicion that if she tried to move, she would float away - dissolve into mist, into smoke. Disappear. She wasn't sure she wanted to go or not, which scared her. She had always known, from the first time she'd refused Death, that she could not leave her boys, and then, later, Nina. The idea of passing over was laughable, ridiculous. How could she traipse off into the wide unknown when they so obviously couldn't manage without her? Who would clean the spot behind the fridge? Who would call house meetings? And who, exactly, would make the tea?
Now she was beginning to realize how much she depended on them to quite literally keep her grounded.
She wanted to move, she didn't want to move. Mitchell loved her, he was incapable of love. She twisted back and forth between warring truths. And she was so, so tired.
George appeared to have taken up the role of Man of the House, but it was painfully like watching a little boy trying on his father's shoes, dwarfed in his jacket and tie. There were times when George could do it, and there were times when Nina had to lead him to bed after hours of him staring at the wall, unseeing, unresponsive. Like Annie.
Nina was the best of them all. How she managed, Annie couldn't say. She was going to make a wonderful mother; something in her had softened when Mitchell died. The hands that stroked George's back when he cried were gentle, the voice she used to ask if Annie needed anything was quiet, empathetic.
Sometimes Annie wondered if it was guilt that motivated her - it was, after all, Nina who had set the police on Mitchell's trail in the first place. She didn't blame Nina; any mother would have done it. But guilt could make murderers saints. Annie knew that. She knew that like she knew the sky was blue, that one and one make two. For try as she might, she could not reconcile the monster Mitchell became with the Mitchell who yelled about "The Real Hustle" time changing, the Mitchell who grinned at her over his mug of tea, the Mitchell who had stood at the end of the hallway, sweating and terrified, but there to rescue her - to rescue her - from purgatory itself.
There it was again. The sensation that whatever substance that was holding together was dissipating, shifting like tendrils of mist. Her fingers curled around the sheets, trying to imagine their texture, cool, smooth, tangible.
She could just let go. It was as easy as one, two…
"George," she said out loud. "Nina. The baby. George. Nina. The baby." She repeated this like a mantra, until the names lost and regained their meaning, until she was sure she was anchored again. She had almost let go, had almost abandoned her friends - she had never felt such fear in her entire life. She thought about rent-a-ghosting to wherever Nina was, but she was frightened that if she tried it would snap whatever tenuous connection she had to the physical plane and then she would be gone forever.
She wondered if Mitchell was gone forever.
What happened when a vampire died? Did they have souls? Did they go to heaven?
Was there a heaven?
No. No. There had to be. If something as awful the rooms existed, the waiting, the hallways, the men with sticks, then it stood to reason that something had to balance it out, something good and pure and right. But did Mitchell belong in such a place when he had slaughtered men, women, children? Did Annie?
She didn't know. She didn't know.
"Do you need anything?"
Nina was in the doorframe, a monument to exhaustion. Annie looked up at her from where she was curled on Mitchell's bed. She couldn't reply; her lips were glued together and her throat felt like dry leaves and dust. Nina waited, ever patient, but when it became apparent that Annie wasn't going to talk, she nodded, eyes shuttered, and turned to leave.
And suddenly, Annie knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if she let Nina go, she would not last the night.
"It doesn't smell like him anymore," she croaked, the first thing that popped into her head. Nina paused, hand resting on the doorknob.
"What?"
She heard her voice again, rusty from disuse. "The sheets. They don't smell like him anymore. I used to be able to…but it's gone." She blinked rapidly, sudden tears filling her eyes. If Nina hadn't come when she had, Annie would have been gone. "I'm sorry," she whispered, to Nina, to Mitchell, to herself.
Nina sat down next to her then, a hank of hair falling in her face.
"Oh, Annie," she murmured, and Annie cried like a child who has discovered that the world is not the place it was promised to be. She cried for Mitchell, who had so badly wanted to be good. She cried for George, who should have never have been shoved into this world to begin with. She cried for Nina, who carried a child and a household. And she cried for herself, for all she had lost and all she would lose. And with each cold tear that slipped down her cheek, she felt herself becoming real again -still fragile, still shaky, but no longer wavering between here and nowhere.
She ran out of tears faster than she thought she would, though Nina did not stop stroking her hair until her breathing had slowed. Achingly, painfully, she sat up and realized as she did that she could do so.
"Better?" Nina asked, and Annie nodded, surprised to find it true. Baby steps, she thought, eyes flicking to Nina's stomach. The baby was a girl; Nina had confirmed it with the doctor. A little girl.
Something within her solidified. She wasn't leaving, not anytime soon, anyway. There was a baby to think of, a baby with werewolves for parents and a whole nasty world out to get her. That baby was going to need someone in her corner when her parents transformed, and who better than Annie, who had defied Death and worse? That baby needed someone to teach her about silly things: clothes and boys and how to make a proper cup of tea. She needed a cool aunt to balance out her no-nonsense mother and her panicky father. She needed someone to gossip with, to giggle with, to remind her that no matter how awful the world was, there were Ninas and Georges and Sashas.
And Mitchells. She needed to know that there were Mitchells.
She imagined her soul as a rumpled sheet, and she took a moment to shake it out, settling it back in place, tucking in the corners and smoothing out the wrinkles. Then she looked at Nina, who had taken care of everyone, and grasped her hand.
"How about some tea?"