My heart is going to explode.

I can’t do this. I just went through this with my sister. Regret upon regret. Missed opportunities. Bad decisions. Grief.

How many more people will have to die before I learn how to live? He was right. I’m a walking catastrophe.

I fumble in my pocket for my phone. First thing I do is dial Barrons’ cell. The call doesn’t go through. I press IYCGM. Call doesn’t go through. I hit IYD and hold my breath, watching Barrons intently. The call doesn’t go through.

Like the man himself, all lines are down.

I begin to shake. I don’t know why, but the fact that the cell phones don’t work convinces me more than anything else that he’s beyond my reach.

I flip my head down, scrape my hair forward, and, although it takes me a few tries to get the angle right, I take a shot of my nape. Sure enough, two tattoos. Barrons’ brand is a dragon with a Z in the center that shimmers with faint iridescence.

To the left of his tattoo is a black circle crammed with strange symbols I don’t recognize. It seems Ryodan was telling the truth. If the tattoo was put there by the LM, it explains a lot: Why Barrons so heavily warded the basement where he dragged me back from being Pri-ya, how the LM found me at the abbey once the wards had been painted over, how he found me again at the house Dani and I squatted in, and how he’d tracked me to my parents’ in Ashford.

I pull out the small dirk I lifted from BB&B.

My hand trembles.

I could end my pain. I could curl up and bleed out next to him. It’d be over so quickly. Maybe I’d get another chance some other time, some other place. Maybe he and I would be reincarnated like in that movie, What Dreams May Come, that Alina and I hated so much because the kids and husband died, then the wife committed suicide.

I love that movie now. I get it, the whole idea of willingly going to hell for someone. Living there, insane if you have to, because you’d rather be insane with them than endure life without them.