**This story takes place DIRECTLY after my first story: Alone. It is heavy-handed and I have rated this story M. Trigger warning: heavy talks of suicide, depression, and the struggle to keep fighting. Please take this into account when reading. Also rated M for under-aged sex and talks of abortion. Reader beware.**

Chapter 1

Grace

The only descriptor for the constant emptiness that I now felt was numb. Nothing affected me anymore. I went through the motions; eating, drinking, showering, but I didn't feel any of it. It had been two weeks, three days, and sixteen hours since we found Emery dead on the floor of my parent's kitchen. It had been two weeks, three days and sixteen hours since my entire world came crashing down around me and the only thing I knew how to do was to keep breathing.

Serra was worse off. She had virtually disappeared from me. If she went to school, she skipped classes and drove off by herself, not coming home until late into the night, usually finding her way into my bedroom to lie next to me in bed. I pretended to ignore the hour, usually turning and opening my arms to my sister's hug. We hadn't cried since we had discovered her, both feeling like we had no more tears to shed.

My sister Serendipity and I had experienced our share of death. Our mother had been killed when I was ten and Serra was five, our father had been murdered by a demon while we watched, only two weeks, six days, and twenty hours ago, and now, our pseudo-mother had been taken from us as well. We had literally no one left.

I always imagined that I would grow up to be something other than a hunter, but now that I was twenty, living with my sister in our parents' house, struggling simply to put food on the table, I knew that this was probably as far as I would ever make it. A waitress with a set of very deadly skills, trained from infancy to destroy anything that might go bump in the night. My sister was in much the same boat: a fifteen-year-old high schooler with no dreams, no goals. We just hoped to live to see the holidays.

Not that they would mean anything this year. It's not like we had anyone to celebrate with.

I glanced at the clock, waiting for Serra to walk into my bedroom, just as she had so many times before, but it was close to two in the morning. If she were coming home tonight, she would have already.

I tried my best to ignore the feeling of loneliness that tried to creep up my throat. I knew that I didn't have any tears to shed, so I did my best to close my eyes and push the emptiness away. I had a double shift tomorrow and if I didn't want to lose my job on top of everything else, I would have to be able to hold it together.