Previously on Saving Grace: “Haven’t you taken a look in the mirror lately, dear?” The woman whispered in her ear, standing beside her as the room spun like a top, faster and faster as she fell forward, running through the crowd that reached forward to grab her arm, her shirt, her hair, clawing at her as the woman cackled. “Run, little bird. Run.”

She stumbled back, racing out of the door, but the voices still followed. She could still feel the woman’s breath in her ear as she ran down the stairs, out to the street, but Connor was gone. Grace braced herself against the street-lamp, catching Alex’s gaze as he walked down the stairs behind the blonde-haired woman who stalked towards her, but stopped at the edge of the pool of light.

“Alex, I’m sorry,” Grace called out to him, voice pleading for him to forgive her, to help her. Connor was gone. She had no one left but him. “Please, you’re my friend. I need you!”

He looked away from her, back to the woman who stood with her arms clasped behind her back.

“Did you really think that would work?” She smirked, reaching out one hand as Alex walked toward her, straight into the hand that tightened around his neck. “He’s mine now. You’re too late, Grace.”

“No!” She screamed, running toward him, but as the woman’s hand tightened, he shattered.

It was as if a plate had been tossed to the ground as pieces of Alex crashed into the concrete of the sidewalk, crumbling as Grace stumbled backward, eyes wide and filled with tears. Gone. Alex was gone. He was just dust in the wind. The woman stalked towards her, heels crunching over fragments of him. With a snap of her fingers, the campus dissolved around them, leaving behind the cold street that Grace ran down, towards a bridge.

“Did you really think you could save him?” The woman’s voice echoed around her as Grace found herself with no where else to go. On one side of the bridge, the woman waited, shrouded by darkness; on the other, a chasm into an endless abyss. There was no where left to run. “You are hopeless.”

“Y-You killed him!” Words betrayed her as she stumbled backward on the road, growing ever closer to the chasm on the other side. “He was one of my best friends and you killed him!”

“Ha. You actually think that anyone here is your friend?” She laughed, eyes glinting as she took yet another step toward her, closing the gap between them. “You hate yourself. You always have.”

“You don’t know me!”

“I know everything about you, Grace Lynn Crowe.” She was standing in front of her now, grinning from ear to ear, “and I know this will end where we began, on this bridge, when you jump.”

She was standing on the edge to the chasm. Grace could feel her heart leap into her throat as her hands shook. Staring down into the darkness behind her, she couldn’t discern any bottom from the mouth of the pit that gaped open below.

“It would be easy, little bird. All you have to do is step off the edge.”

It would be a long fall. She could almost hear the water breaking against phantom rocks at some unseen bottom where her body would break in two before she would be washed away like a forgotten grocery bag.

Swept away into the night.

“You could end this. That’s what you wanted. All you have to do is jump.”

She would disappear.

“Just jump.”

The fire would be extinguished.

“Jump!”

Piper would be gone for good.

“What are you waiting for, girl? Get it over with already, it’s your fate.”

She turned back to face the creature who stood behind her, no longer a woman but a a skeleton with gnarled skin pulled across like parchment paper, clothed by tattered rags as it reached out to her.

“No.”

“What?”

She held her head high, eyes staring into the empty sockets of Death. “You heard me.” She stood her ground, but her hands were held out before her, palms facing outward. “I won’t jump.” She had made her decision. She had never been alone.

“Then die!”

Bony hands pushed her off the edge, her mouth open in a scream that was stolen from her by the wind. No, no, she didn’t want to die. She couldn’t just die…not like this!

Not again.

The water was rushing up to meet her, the rocks looming below as the waves crashed against them and she closed her eyes, praying to whatever higher force would listen to her pleas.

She wanted to live.