The Beautiful and the Damned

by Jessica Verday

  Caspian raised an eyebrow at her. “You noticed his pants?”

  “Well, he’s . . . uh, he’s wearing them now.” She gave him a weak smile. “So it sort of just jogged my memory. And you have to admit, it’s pretty weird for a nurse’s aide to be wearing leather pants.”

  “I was looking for a psychic who was supposed to be there,” Thirteen said.

  Caspian bent down to whisper in Abbey’s ear, but Cyn could hear what he was saying. “I can get some leather pants.”

  Abbey blushed and shook her head. “Trust me,” she whispered back. “You don’t need them.”

  They shared another look, but Thirteen interrupted them. “So, you’re telling me five Revenants were here? To take care of one Shade crossover? That’s a lot of firepower.”

  “They were supposed to be taking care of Vincent, too,” Caspian replied.

  “Yeah, well, they didn’t. Because he ended up in her.” He pointed over at Cyn.

  Abbey inhaled sharply. “How did that happen?”

  “Apparently, I’m an Echo,” Cyn said. “Which means I’m a conduit for souls of the dead, and it just so happened that he was one of the dead. Lucky me.”

  “We need to find out exactly where the Shade crossing happened. The last place that Vincent was corporeal,” Thirteen said. “So we can remove him.”

  “It happened at the river,” Abbey replied. “We can take you there.”

  Thirteen stepped to the side. “After you.”

  Abbey and Caspian led them down the hill and across the grounds, moving with the easy confidence of two people who were familiar with every inch of the cemetery. They walked hand in hand, and Cyn followed behind. But eventually, Abbey started falling back until she and Cyn were walking next to each other.

  “Hey, how’s Ben?” Cyn asked. “I haven’t seen him since graduation.”

  “He’s good. He and Kristen are together now, actually. She opened a bath-and-body shop downtown called Abbey’s Hollow. They stop by here a lot. It’s nice to still have the chance to see them, you know?” She laughed. “Even if they can’t see me.”

  “You and Caspian just . . . stay here, then?”

  “We live here. There’s a cottage on the far side of the cemetery. I wish you could see it. It’s amazing. Right out of a fairy tale.”

  “Fairy tales were never my thing,” Cyn said. “Judging by the looks flying between you and Caspian, though, it’s definitely your thing.”

  “It’s weird.” Abbey paused for a moment. “I almost feel like I was born for this. Born to be the caretaker of this cemetery and to be with Caspian. Did you ever have a feeling that you were just meant to do something?”

  Cyn looked down. “No.”

  “If you ever do get that feeling, grab on to it and don’t let go. No matter what anyone says. It’s worth it.” They walked in silence for a while longer until Abbey said, “So, what’s the deal with him?” She gestured over her shoulder at Thirteen. “He’s ridiculously good looking, but wow. Intense.”

  “And arrogant and annoying and thinks he’s right about everything.” Cyn shook her head. “You don’t know the half of it. He’s not even really all that good looking. He’s freakishly tall, and he only wears black. And a motorcycle? He drives a motorcycle, by the way. A rusty, old junk bucket. But it’s vintage. Supposedly.”

  “Mmmmhmm . . .” Abbey glanced down at the ground, trying to hide her grin. “Sounds like fun.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it fun. I’d call it—”

  “It happened there,” Caspian suddenly said, pointing at the edge of the river.

  Cyn came to a stop. She remembered it now. This was the place where Vincent had tried to take her hostage.

  Abbey leaned in and gave Cyn a hug. “Come back and see us anytime. Good luck with everything. ” She glanced over at Thirteen. “And good luck with him, too. Something tells me you’re going to need it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  As Abbey and Caspian headed back to the cemetery, Cyn’s stomach tightened into knots. It was pitch black, and she could only see a couple of feet in front of her. She started pacing back and forth. God, I need a cigarette.

  “So, what now?” she said. “Is it going to be like a séance? I’ve done those before.”

  Joe sat his orange toolbox on the ground and started digging around in it.

  “It’s not like a séance,” Thirteen said. “But you can sit down. It won’t take much longer.”

  He sat down too, closing his eyes. A look of concentration came over his face, and the burn marks on his arms started rising to the surface. His horns started growing too.

  “Hey,” Cyn said. She glanced over at Joe. He was pulling out some long-ass needles and a bunch of little glass bottles from the toolbox. A set of white jumper paddles were next. “What are those for? What are you going to do to me?”

  Thirteen opened his eyes. They were red. “I’m going to restart the count.”

  Comprehension suddenly dawned on her. “That means you have to end it first. Right?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Which means . . . you have to kill me.”

  “And bring you back,” Thirteen said. “That’s why I brought Joe. He’s an EMT.”

  Cyn gave him a doubtful look.

  “It’s the only way.”

  So I’m going to die. But if I don’t do it, I’ll end up dying anyway. After the seventh soul has passed through me. Or after Vincent finally succeeds in getting rid of me.

  Joe tested the paddles and then nodded at Avian. “All clear. We’re good to go.”

  Thirteen stood up and walked over to Cyn. His hair was loose around his face, and he was dressed in black leather pants and a long black duster. He would have looked like an average biker if it wasn’t for the fully grown horns, red eyes, and scars covering his arms. It was only slightly terrifying to look at him as he stood over top of her.

  “Ready?”

  Cyn closed her eyes. This is it. You can do it. This is going to work, and everything will be fine. Once Vincent’s gone, you’ll be back to normal. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m ready.”

  She opened her eyes again and he leaned over her, both hands outstretched.

  “Wait!”

  He pulled back. “What’s wrong?”

  Cyn glanced over at Joe. “Can you give us a minute? We need to speak in private.”

  Joe let out an aggravated sigh. “Seriously? Do you have any idea how late it is? I have to work tomorrow, and I need to—”

  “Joe!” Thirteen growled.

  “Fine, fine. I’ll be right over here.” He moved a couple of feet away and turned his back to them.

  Cyn looked up at Thirteen. He deserves to know what you did to Father Montgomery. And if you don’t come out on the other side of this, then at least he can have some peace.

  “I want you to know . . .” Her mouth went dry, and she had to try again. “I want you to know that in case this doesn’t work, I—I really like your wings. They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” She closed her eyes again and then opened them. “No. That’s not—”

  Her voice died off, and he leaned closer. “What?” she heard him say.

  But it sounded like he was far away, not right beside her. Darkness blurred the edges of her vision sharp and fast, and Cyn realized she was losing herself again. Vincent wanted out, and he wanted out now.

  I have to tell him. What if I don’t get another chance?

  Cyn cleared her throat. She was losing sound again. And were her eyes open or closed? It was too dark to tell.

  All she knew was that right before Avian pressed his hands to her chest and filled her with a thousand volts of electricity, she finally got the chance to say, “I was the one who killed Father Montgomery, Avian.” She didn’t know why she called him by the name Father Montgomery had used, but it felt right. “I’m sorry.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  As Avian pressed his hands to Cyn’s heart and pre
pared to shock it into cardiac arrest, she whispered her confession about Father Montgomery. And the demon side of him slipped.

  All the hellfires of rage and hatred and pure damnation boiled over and poured straight out of him in a jolt of electricity so strong that it leapt from his hands and seared the flesh from her bones. A blue-white spark arced between them and popped loudly. She convulsed violently beneath him, and he was thrown backward.

  Avian flew through the air and landed hard about twenty feet away. His left arm was twisted at an impossible angle, and he could tell right away that it was out of the socket. Sitting up, he used the ground as leverage to push it back in and ignored the screaming pain inside his head.

  One bone-crunching sound later, his arm was good as new again.

  “Joe,” he called. “Is she okay? Is she back yet?”

  Joe was bent over Cyn, frantically working on her. He stabbed her with a needle from a bottle marked ATROPINE and then switched to another bottle marked EPINEPHRINE. “It’s too much,” he yelled back. “It was too much! Too many volts.”

  He tried the paddles, but they didn’t work either, so he started manual compressions on her chest, counting the rhythm out loud and stopping to give her breaths. He did this again and again, but Avian realized that it was taking too long. Too much time had passed.

  She wasn’t going to make it back.

  Joe gave up after the tenth try. His eyes were red, and he rubbed a hand across his face. “You said you had this under control. That this would work. It didn’t work! She’s fucking dead! Do you realize what you just made me do?” He stared listlessly at the medical supplies littering the ground around them. “What did I do?” he said softly.

  Avian didn’t notice that his wings had come unbound as he stood up and made his way over to Cyn. He knew that she didn’t kill Father Montgomery. Just like he knew she didn’t kill Hunter. The damn demon inside him had taken advantage of the fact that she thought she was a murderer, and now he was the one who had to make it right.

  Crouching down on one knee, he gathered her limp body and put his ear to her chest. Her lips were blue. A streak of blood dribbled out of her left ear. Breathe, damn it. Breathe!

  But she was gone.

  Placing a hand on Cyn’s forehead, he threw out five hundred years of promises to himself and tapped into the other side. As much as it was a struggle to hold the demon side at bay, the angel side didn’t do him any good, so he’d never had any use for it.

  Now it was time to see if it was good for something.

  Memories of Cyn and Hunter laughing at an old movie, smiling as they cooked breakfast together, and running through a sprinkler late at night, blasted through him. Then they were lying in the back of an old pickup truck. Looking up at the stars. And when Cyn looked over at him, he almost thought for a minute that she was seeing him instead of Hunter.

  He would have given anything to keep that look of happiness on her face.

  Then Vincent surfaced. Cyn’s face twisted as his features took over hers. A viscous tarlike substance creeped over the edges of the picture, but then it was suddenly pulled back. Vincent’s face stretched into a parody of itself, and he silently screamed. The memory started to swirl like it was being sucked down a drain, the last vestiges of black trying to hold on tightly around the edges, clawing for that last little bit that he didn’t want to give up, but it didn’t work. He was pushed out. Pushed on. And he slowly disappeared.

  The memories changed one last time. Flashes of a gardener tending to her rows of plants, an earth witch gathering herbs by the light of a full moon, and a professor teaching his class the intricacies of F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were the souls who had lived through Cyn.

  And then Shelley’s face came into view. Grinning as she slid behind the wheel of a car she’d just charmed someone out of. Crying while she read a sad book. Contemplating the best way to organize her closet. . . .

  The sound of Cyn inhaling deeply pulled Avian back to the present. And when she took a couple of short, jerky breaths and looked up at him with wide green eyes, he knew then that a part of Shelley would always be inside her.

  Because Shelley had been one of the souls to pass through her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Avian’s phone rang in his jacket pocket while he was still looking down at Cyn, and when he moved to answer it she saw his wings.

  They weren’t black anymore. They were snowy white.

  “What happened?” she asked. But other than giving them a brief glance, he didn’t have time to answer. Moving farther away, he took his call.

  “Hey, Mint. You got good news for me?” There was a pause, then he said, “Yeah. It worked. We’re here now, so I guess we’ll see how it goes. Thanks. I owe you one.”

  All Cyn could do was stare at his wings. In the dark, they were especially vivid. With his horns now gone, and the burn marks covered, Avian looked like one of those fallen angels they liked to plaster all over romance-book covers.

  He scowled when he turned back around and caught her staring. “Sorry,” Cyn said. But she wasn’t really.

  Avian took his jacket off and folded his wings in before carefully putting the jacket back on. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “These are going to stick out.”

  “Hair dye,” Cyn offered. “Black hair dye should work.”

  “Great. Like I need one more thing on my to-do list.”

  For some reason, that struck her as absurdly funny, and Cyn laughed at him.

  “Is that amusing?” Avian asked.

  Cyn grinned. “Actually, I find everything amusing right now. I feel good. Really good. I can’t believe it actually worked. Vincent’s gone!” She stood up and looked around. Everything felt different.

  Then she noticed that Joe’s orange toolbox and medical supplies were gone. “Hey, where’d Joe go?”

  Avian glanced around too. “Guess he took off. Things weren’t looking too good at first.”

  Cyn opened her mouth to ask what happened but then shook her head. “You know what? I don’t want to know. It’s all good now. And even if I’m not totally fixed, if another soul comes along, at least it’s not Vincent.”

  They started heading back through the cemetery, and Cyn couldn’t believe how good she felt. Happy. Which was something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not even the realization that if Joe was gone then their ride was gone too could dampen her mood. They could always walk back to pick up Avian’s motorcycle.

  When the cemetery gates came into view, Cyn finally brought up the car situation. “You know that if Joe’s gone, we don’t have a ride, right?” she said. “I mean, we can walk. It’s no big deal, but I—”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem,” Avian said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can get a ride with him.”

  Avian pointed beyond the gates, and Cyn looked to see what he was pointing to. A white car was sitting there, with a guy standing by the front of the hood.

  The guy took a step toward them, and Cyn’s heart stopped for the second time.

  “Hunter?”

  ~ ~ ~

  For a dead guy, Hunter Vasquez looked pretty good.

  As she stood staring at him, Cyn wondered if this was all a trick and she was dead too. If she’d never really woken up after Avian stopped her heart.

  “Can you see him?” she finally said. “Avian, can you see a guy standing over there? Is he . . . alive? Or dead?”

  Avian took a minute to answer. “That’s something you should ask him.”

  Cyn frowned, but Hunter started moving toward her. “Cyn!” he called out. “Cyn!”

  “Keep it down!” Cyn started walking to him. “Don’t you have any respect for a cemetery?”

  Hunter pulled back and waited for her to come the rest of the way. As soon as she got close enough to the car, she could see a bouquet of red roses sitting on the passenger seat. “Either this is the most cliché afterlife dream ever, or this shit is really happening,” she
muttered.

  Crossing her arms, she stopped just short of him. “What. The. Fuck. Is. This.”

  “I know this is confusing, but I—”

  “You were dead, Hunter. I saw it with my own eyes. I killed you!”

  Hunter shook his head and held out his hands in a pleading gesture. “I know you think that, and I’m sorry. I never thought it would go this far.”

  “What would go this far? Were you playing some kind of sick frat-boy prank on me?”

  Avian came up behind Cyn and stopped beside her. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, you didn’t kill your boyfriend.”

  Cyn whirled around to face him. “Oh, yeah, you think? Did you have something to do with this too? Is this all one big joke? Who the hell are you to—”

  “I’m the guy who realized you didn’t kill him when I read your memories and didn’t see it there. The only memory you had was of waking up next to him. So I made a call to a friend in Louisiana, Mint, and he looked into it. He’s the one who gave me the dirt on Hunter’s brother, by the way.”

  “So, what, you were, like, working some case or something? Playing detective?” Cyn spat.

  “No. I was trying to help someone.” Avian moved closer and held her gaze. “You.”

  Looking up at him made Cyn suddenly remember what it was like to be right up against his chest, and the back of her neck grew warm. She readjusted her wig. “What happened, then? Why did I wake up in bed covered in blood?”

  Avian looked pointedly over at Hunter.

  “There are these . . . people that I know,” Hunter said slowly. “Actually, my brother knew them, and he helped me get some work with them.”

  Cyn’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh my God, Hunter. Was it the vamps?”

  “You know about them?” Hunter’s face was filled with surprise.

  “Yeah. Your fucking brother stalked me and then kidnapped me because he thought I was the one responsible for your murder.” She laughed harshly. “Or so-called murder. He said he was working with some vampires that were going to turn him.”