Hunter's Edge

Chapter Twenty

I don't even know who I am right now

Sleeping pills weren't going to help. By the time the sun set, Angel knew that much. There was no way she'd sleep tonight, even though after last night, she desperately needed some rest.

She might as well be hyped up on speed, her entire body flooded with tension. The past twenty-four hours had been an emotional roller coaster, swinging from a sense of purpose devoted towards some unknown goal, to anger, to rage, to grief.

It had hit a plateau around sunrise and she'd catnapped for a while, the grief dulling to a muted roar. After a short nap, she'd spent the day at Jake's house, cleaning it, getting it ready for some prospective buyers. Getting through the day had taken every last bit of will she possessed and if she hadn't been so desperately ready to be done with the chore of selling Jake's house, she wouldn't have bothered.

Come dinnertime, she'd finally finished. All day long, she'd been desperate to escape. Once she had the chance, she realized she couldn't go home.

It would be worse there. It was going to be bad, no matter what. But trapped inside the house, certain she was losing her mind, it would be worse.

So instead of going home, she did the one thing she thought might help. She went to Kel—or rather to his grave, hoping she could find some measure of peace there.

For whatever reason, as the sun set and night came on, the emotional roller coaster started and the grief that had choked her all day bloomed into guilt and self-disgust before morphing into fury. A blind fury that had no target.

The empty coffin buried below the dirt seemed an odd place to seek comfort. But Angel had spent many, many evenings sitting at the graveside and talking to a man who had been dead for years.

Tonight, though, even that bit of comfort was denied her. She stood by the grave, staring at the headstone with her hands shoved into her pockets and had to fight the urge to scream.

Scream at what?

At fate? At God? She'd done both of those in the past but neither fate nor God seemed to be her target. Angel couldn't even put her finger on it. She was a mess of worry, fear and anger and trying to make sense of that tangle was impossible.

She was slipping, she realized.

Once more slipping into a deep, dark place where nothing made sense and nothing seemed real.

The relative tedium of the past year was gone. Once more Angel felt like she was fighting something from the outside, something that didn't belong in her head but was there nonetheless.

It wasn't as bad as it had been after Kel had first died. She could think, still focus, still maintain a fairly normal facade that kept people from intruding with well-meaning worry.

"But for how much longer?" she muttered. Pulling a hand from her pocket, she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and then cupped her hand over the back of her neck, rotating her head in an attempt to ease the tension knotted there.

Slowly, she tugged the prescription bottle from her pocket that she had grabbed before she left the house. It was the antidepressant the doctor had prescribed for her. Would medicine for depression help her recognize reality? Help her figure out what she felt instead of focusing on all the alien emotions that threatened to swamp her?

Disgusted, she tucked the bottle back into her pocket and then crouched by Kel's grave. With a shaky sigh, she smoothed a hand down the carpet of grass. "I'm a mess, Kel, you know that? I've been like this ever since you left, but it's getting bad again. I don't even know who I am right now."