Page 51 of Wolfsbane Hall #1

San Francisco Streets

She hated how much dying in Dean’s arms meant to her. She hated how much it meant to her that she knew he was her Specter—the one she loved. The one she beat at chess and read to.

She hated how much he meant to her.

Celestine nestled her head into his shoulder as he held her limp body on the steep street. She tilted her chin up to see his beautiful and awful as she fell into the depths of death.

“What’s wrong?” It was sweet how concerned his eyes were.

Her breaths were short and weak, and she found it incredibly difficult for her even to open her mouth to respond. Her surroundings were blurring together, and it was getting increasingly hard to remember where she was and what was happening.

Her eyes were drooping shut, and the process of trying to keep them open was arduous. “All I ever wanted was for the Specter to be proud of me.”

“I am proud, Celine. You’re the best player Wolfsbane Hall has ever had.”

Her eyes glazed and filled with more tears. “All I’ve ever wanted was to be loved and have someone mourn me…to be with me when I die. That all seems so foolish now.”

Dean’s eyebrows lowered, and darkness pooled into the edges of his eyes. “I don’t understand. Why are you not better? You solved the riddle. You saved everyone. You shouldn’tbe dying.”

It was a plea, forged from heartbreak.

“I was always dying.” Her breaths rattled. “Will you hold me?” The request came out more as a whimper than words.

Dean pulled her closer into his chest, cradling and cuddling her like it was the last time he would ever touch her. “Celine, I have you,” he breathed into her hair. “You’re not alone. Never alone.”

He had promised her she wouldn’t die alone. He’d promised her that he would grieve her death.

She finally believed that might be true.

“At least I got one of my wishes—” Celestine’s body went limp, and darkness stole her consciousness.

And her heart played its last beat, never to start up again.

“No, you’re not supposed to die. The curse wasn’t supposed to affect you, too.” The words were only formed from torment. He rocked back and forth with her in his arms.

His voice was far away, like at the end of a long tunnel, and she didn’t understand if she was experiencing this moment as a ghost or still in her body.

“No!” It was a wail. “I won’t let you die.”

He sobbed, distraught, pulling her into his arms and walking her back into the house.

And then there was nothing.

An empty blackness, and she couldn’t have told anyone what happened next because she was dead. Truly and fully.

Her heart had failed her.

Sunday, November 12, 1939

Celestine’s Bedroom

Death felt much like living. It felt like her cotton sheets, comfortable bed, and goose feather pillows. But death also felt like magic humming through her blood.

Celestine jolted awake, sitting upright like a vampire in a coffin. She swallowed and patted her chest and then her legs. She was flesh. She was alive… Sort of.

Because a vampire wasn’t far off from what Celestine had become. A decaying scream crawled out of her throat. The hand she held before her eyes was slightly translucent.

She let out another scream, rolled her legs to the edge of the bed, and swung them onto the floor. A deep numbness settled over her body. And she no longer understood how to feel.

It was too much.

Betrayal.

Death.

Dying.

Resurrecting.

Immortality.

All too much, and she didn’t know what to do. She was so confused. She’d never imagined she would be immortal. It wasn’t even in the universe of possibilities for her.

So, how did one respond to it?

She didn’t know.

But she knew one thing. She meant it when she had said she never wanted to see the Ashbrooks again. They had done too much. They were monsters in human flesh.

But did they even have human flesh? She didn’t know .

So she packed. Celestine Sinclair wasn’t staying.

She couldn’t look Dean in the face. After what he’d done, what they had all done, she couldn’t look any of them in the face.

Before, she was far too afraid to make it on her own.

Too scared to leave Wolfsbane Hall, too afraid to abandon her home and her Specter. Or be abandoned by him for leaving.

But she didn’t care anymore.

She’d been manipulated far too much and pushed too far.

Celestine was ready to die alone. Ready to leave the men in her rearview mirror.

Being immortal didn’t change that.

She’d choose herself.

No one else would.

But just as she was about to leave, Dean appeared in front of her, his ghostly form hardening into flesh.

Celestine sucked in a breath, something inside of her cracking. She didn’t want to see him. She just wanted to leave. She was formed from a glass sculpture and was splintering into a thousand small pieces.

He had shattered her.

Celestine didn’t even know who she was anymore. She didn’t know who she would be without him. He’d become her everything, and in many ways, he shaped her personality, and she was done.

She wanted freedom and to discover who she was without him.

But he was still her greatest weakness. So she dropped her bags and ran to him, jumping into his arms and placing a passionate kiss on his lips.

The kiss said everything she couldn’t say aloud.

It begged him to love her and force her to stay.

It punched him and kicked him for betraying her.

It clawed at his back and yelled at him.

It whispered secrets in his ears and told him how much it meant to her that he had held her in her last moments.

However, it also revealed to him how much she despised him.

Celestine wanted the moment to last forever. She never wanted to pull away, but she forced herself to, because she would never leave him if she didn’t.

And he didn’t deserve for her to stay.

Her lips left him, and she sucked in one last deep breath, breathing in his scent for one last time.

Oranges and masculinity.

Then she stepped back and said, “Don’t come after me.” She twisted out of his grasp and picked up her bags.

“The world of immortals is a dangerous place,” he said in his dark, liquor tones.

“No more dangerous than you are.”

With that, Celestine pushed open the grand double doors of Wolfsbane Hall once more and finally walked out into the sunlight. She closed her eyes for a moment and basked in the warmth. Basked in her freedom.

Without a glance back, she started down the steep hill and toward her future.

She had finally chosen herself.