Unhinged

by Chani Lynn Feener

  “Well,” she tried to sound calm, but failed miserably. “Good timing.”

  “I should never have left you,” he hissed, standing to pace before her. “Ferris should never have left you. I gave him one job, one, and he couldn’t even do that right. I should—”

  “Hey,” she lifted a hand to his arm, stilling him. “It’s alright, Hadrian. He was worried about you, that’s all. You can’t be mad at him for that.”

  “I can if it means he left you in danger,” he responded stubbornly, but he sighed and ceased moving. “Thayer won’t try for your parents again. It was a tactic, much like the one with Syd at her party, to lure the two of us out. He knows it won’t work a second time, so he’ll abandon that ploy. Just in case, however, I’ll keep a Reaper on each of them. I won’t let anything happen to them, Spencer.”

  “I know that.” She gave him an easy smile, resting the mug on the end table. “What happened to Thayer?”

  “He left the second I got there,” Hadrian told her. “He failed at killing you so went to regroup, no doubt. He doesn’t want to fight me one on one, especially not when Ferris is there for backup. He might just be a Reaper, but he’s known us for an eternity. He knows which of Thayer’s buttons to push.”

  “So what now?” She dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t think I can do this for another nine months; put the people I care about at risk like this. He isn’t going away, is he? He’s not going to give up, and there’s nothing you can do to make him.”

  “I’ll make him.” He dropped back down next to her, wrapping an arm around her back and shifting so that she was nestled against his side. “I’ll find a way.”

  “He’s your brother,” she pointed out.

  “I’m stronger than him, more powerful,” he wasn’t being smug, just stating a truth. “I won’t let him hurt you, or anyone who matters to you. He just needs to see that you’re not doing it on purpose. That you don’t mean to hold the gates open. He’ll back off after that. Leave you in peace.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He’s my brother.” He rested his chin to the top of her head, and she inadvertently snuggled closer.

  This whole ordeal was a mess. How was she supposed to live her life pretending that there wasn’t always the chance of being attacked? Wasn’t there a saying about how no one could escape death?

  There had to be a way to close the gates and keep Micah at the same time. She wasn’t willing to be without him for the next nine months either.

  Hadrian began rubbing her arm in a soothing rhythm that caused her eyelids to lower.

  He was so warm around her, his heat encasing her in a protective bubble. She felt safe and right, despite all of the reasons she shouldn’t. He’d risked getting hit by a car to save her. Sure, there’s no way it would have killed him if it had crashed into him, but she guessed it would still hurt like hell. And he’d been so afraid for her afterwards…

  There was so much more to him than she’d expected. He wasn’t just the God of the Underworld, or the sarcastic rude guy she attended class with. He wasn’t cruel, or evil. He wasn’t the Devil.

  “Get your hands off my girlfriend,” Micah’s lowered voice skated across the air towards them.

  She snapped upright, pulling herself from Hadrian’s hold in the process. Her eyes widened when she saw the anger practically wafting off of Micah from where he stood in the doorway on the other side of the room.

  “Micah,” she stood, but didn’t go to him.

  He didn’t so much as spare her a glance.

  “Maybe if you were around more,” Hadrian got to his feet as well, “you’d actually have a right to call her that.”

  “Hadrian!” She gave him an incredulous look and then turned back to her boyfriend. “It’s not what it looks like. I almost got run over by a car.”

  That got his attention, and he frowned over at her, running his gaze quickly up and down her body. “Are you ok?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I—”

  “Good,” he cut her off. “Then he can go. Now.”

  Hadrian lifted a single brow. “Last time I checked, you don’t live here.”

  “I’m dead,” Micah spat. “I don’t live anywhere anymore.”

  “And if you want to change that someday, then you’ll smartly remember your place,” he countered. He was ramrod stiff, clearly struggling to contain himself.

  “I wasn’t the one just making the moves on someone else’s girlfriend, asshole.”

  “Micah!” She rushed over to him before either of them could move forward. Pressing her hands against his chest she backed him out into the foyer. “Stop, this is childish. Would you quit glaring at him like that? Cut it out.”

  “Funny how you’re not yelling at him right now,” Micah snapped back. The second he did he winced, finally dropping his gaze to hers apologetically. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just he was holding you like—”

  “You’re my boyfriend,” she reminded him. “Where have you been?”

  He ran a hand through his blond hair. “I lost track of time again. I’m really sorry, daisy. Can we just,” he sent a pointed look over her shoulder towards the god, “be alone? I missed you, and I want to know all about what’s been going on here.”

  She hesitated. Throwing Hadrian out after everything he’d just done for her felt wrong. But when she turned to face him, the glower on his face had anything she’d been about to say dying on her tongue.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” Hadrian told her coldly, then disappeared.

  They went upstairs and she told Micah everything that had happened. He listened intently, holding her when she got to the part about her dad almost getting killed.

  She tried not to dwell on the fact that his hugs had no substance, that the feel of his chest—while solid—beneath her ear held no temperature, no heartbeat. It was like hugging a dresser. Or a wall. Guilt swamped her at the comparison, but she couldn’t help but think it.

  It was Micah, but it wasn’t.

  After she’d finished explaining why it was Thayer was after her in the first place, they lay together quietly for a while.

  “He’s attacking our friends because you and I are holding open the gates to the Underworld?” he repeated, staring up at the ceiling.

  “In a nutshell.”

  “What if…we weren’t anymore? Would he leave you alone then?”

  “That’s what Hadrian says,” she told him. She was lying against his side, arm wrapped around his waist. Outside her window she saw the pink hues of the sun setting in the distance, momentarily reminding her of the Underworld.

  “Daisy…”

  Not liking the sound of his voice, she lifted herself up so that she could look at his face. He refused to meet her gaze, finding interest everywhere but her.

  “What if I went away for a while?” he continued. “What if I didn’t come back?”

  The world seemed to stop all around her and blood pounded in her ears. “What are you saying?”

  He shifted, forcing her to move over so that he could sit up. “I have my dad now,” he said. “I’m not alone anymore when you’re not around. If I stayed in the Underworld then the gate wouldn’t be opened anymore, and Thayer wouldn’t have any reason to mess with you.”

  “You want to leave me?” she sounded dead, empty.

  “Of course not,” he insisted, reaching to take her hands. His ended up going right through hers and he sighed. “I can’t even touch you for longer than five minutes. It would only be until the end of the deal. I’ll be alive after that, and we can go back to being normal. Right now, my being here, like this, isn’t helping anybody. I want to be with my dad and you want to be with our friends, and that’s fine,” he stopped her when she would have pulled away.

  “It’s ok to want to have a life again, Spencer. You can do that here, and I have the chance to be with my father, to get to know him again. He died when I was so young, there’s still so much that the tw
o of us need to learn about one another. I want him to know me, the man I’ve become, and it isn’t fair to you that I stay away so often. This way you wouldn’t have to worry about being here to see me, and I won’t have to be terrified the God of Death is going to get you.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She squeezed her eyes shut and silently prayed for it all to be a bad dream, but when she opened them again nothing had changed. Tears were streaming from her eyes, and a quick glance in his direction showed that his weren’t exactly dry, though he was holding it together better than she.

  Not surprising, considering he was the one suggesting this crazy idea.

  “That’s nine months away,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Her heart broke a little in her chest, and she dug her nails into the flesh of her palms. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You already have, baby.” He trailed the tip of his finger across her jaw, unable to really touch her. “I’m already dead.”

  A sob slipped past her lips. He wanted to leave her. He wanted to walk away. After everything they’d been through together… After everything she’d done…

  “It won’t be forever,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Nine months is a long time, it’ll feel like an eternity, but it won’t be. And then, I’ll come back alive again, and we can be together for the rest of our lives. Without Reapers or gods or the Underworld between us. I want you safe, Spencer, and this is the only way to do it.”

  A part of her knew he was right, had been secretly thinking the same thing for the past few weeks. She’d never admitted it, though, never would have. The thought of being without him was just too hard to bear.

  “I can’t live without you,” she cried, forcefully trying to wipe away the tears. More just came to take the place of the drops she managed to remove.

  Micah’s eyes were distraught, a stricken look turning every one of his features into the epitome of sorrow. He was clearly in just as much pain as she was. This was just as hard for him.

  Knowing that somehow, sickly, made it a little better.

  “Daisy,” he waited until she met his gaze. “You can’t live with me. Not like this. You think I want to be without you? The thought of it sickens me, but I’ve noticed how you’ve been lately. How happy.”

  She opened her mouth to argue—how could anyone be happy with a ghost boyfriend and an evil god after them?—but he cut her off.

  “You missed Syd and Quinn. The three of you used to be inseparable; I even had to tear you away from them sometimes. You spent these past six months pretending to be dead with me, making a tomb of this house. You aren’t dead though, Spencer. You’ve just let yourself become a ghost of the girl you used to be. I see her there inside you, behind your eyes, and as long as I’m here that’s where she’ll stay.”

  “Micah, don’t—”

  He stood before she could say any more, putting distance between them even as a tear fell to roll down his cheek. “I love you, daisy, and in nine months I’ll still love you. But I can’t come back here anymore. Not if it means risking your life. Not if it means risking you.”

  She reached for him, but he was gone before her feet had even touched the ground.

  * * *

  Wednesday and Thursday passed by in a blur. She refused to leave her room, hoping that Micah would change his mind, yet knowing that he wouldn’t.

  She knew him; he wasn’t a split decision kind of guy. Which meant that he’d been thinking about this for a while now. He wasn’t happy. If she were being honest, she wasn’t either.

  The past few nights in the Underworld she’d just stood on the balcony overlooking the river Lethe. Hadrian had remained with her silently each time, up until Ferris arrived to take her back home. She couldn’t even talk to him about it, not really.

  Friday morning when she woke up from her trip down there, she almost let out a scream when she opened her eyes to two faces hovering over hers.

  She scrambled back, slamming into the headboard in the process, and then glared at her two laughing friends. “What the hell?”

  “It’s Friday,” Syd said, as if that was explanation enough.

  “So?” Tenderly she reached back to feel what was no doubt going to be a massive lump in a few hours.

  “Homecoming is tonight,” Quinn piped in. Her dark brown hair was tied up in a ponytail that bobbed as she slid off the bed and over to the closet. “Students who don’t attend school today can’t go to the dance.”

  Right. The dance. In her depressed stupor she’d completely forgotten.

  “I’m not going,” she told them stubbornly, moving to plump up her pillow so she could cuddle back down under the covers. “Hey!” she yelled when it was torn from her hands and tossed across the room by Syd.

  “You’re going,” she and Quinn said simultaneously.

  “You have a dress and everything,” Quinn added. “The tickets have already been purchased, and we’ve been looking forward to this all month, and don’t say you haven’t as well, because we know you have.”

  “Your eyes did this whole light up thing when you told us about the dress Hadrian got you,” Syd informed her absently.

  “They did not,” Spencer grumbled.

  “Did too. Now, put this on,” Quinn tossed a pair of white skinny jeans and a purple blouse her way, “and let’s skedaddle.”

  “Your backpack is already in my car.” Syd stood and brushed herself off, as if she’d just accomplished a hard job. She sent a pointed look at her. “Well? Chop chop!”

  “Up, girly-girl,” Quinn chimed, tugging the comforter clean off the bed and dropping it in a heap on the floor. “We aren’t leaving without you, so you might as well do what we say cause you aren’t going to be alone either way.”

  “Seriously, guys,” she groaned. “I don’t want to go. Micah—”

  “Is a dick.” Syd glared when she was elbowed—again—in the side. “Well he is!”

  “He’s just looking out for her,” Quinn countered, then to Spencer, “He cares about you and he doesn’t want to see you get hurt. This is the only way to guarantee that Thayer will leave all of us alone until the end of the deal.”

  “Doesn’t make him any less of a dick,” Syd insisted, though a little lower this time.

  The corner of Spencer’s mouth turned up.

  “Oh my god!” Quinn exclaimed, thrusting a finger out at her. “Did you see that?!”

  “Ha ha,” she laughed, tossing her other pillow at her head. “Fine. I’ll go, but just because the thought of being trapped in this room with you two for the rest of the day is too excruciating to deal with.”

  “Good enough for me,” Syd said,

  “Me too,” Quinn agreed.

  Spencer changed out of her pajamas and followed them downstairs. Her parents were standing in the kitchen, and she grabbed a glass of orange juice while they stared at her.

  “I get it, I’m up,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  “I didn’t think they’d actually be able to do it,” her dad said, sending her friends an appreciative look.

  “Well then you don’t know Sydney very well, dear,” her mom joked. “I take it this means we won’t be expecting you for dinner tonight, Spencer? There’s the game and then the dance.”

  “They recruit you too?” Spencer chugged her juice and then turned for the door.

  “We needed to make sure we had reinforcements,” Quinn told her, then waved. “Bye Mr. and Mrs. Perry.”

  “Don’t worry,” Syd added. “We’ll take great care of her and make sure she has tons of fun tonight.”

  “Not too much fun, Sydney,” her dad said.

  Outside the air was cold and nipping, the leaves on the trees beginning to turn bright oranges and reds. They bounded over to Syd’s car, piling in and flipping the radio on.

  In the back seat, Spencer sighed when she spotted her backpack on the floor.

  “It’ll be great,” Quinn turned around to look at h
er. “Tonight is just what you need. A little school spirit from the game—of which you promised to cheer too, if you recall—and then the dance. Fine, totally normal, totally awesome night out with your besties.”

  “Crap,” she moaned. “My outfit.”

  “Got it!” Syd beamed back at her from the rearview mirror. “Stuffed it in the middle pocket of your backpack. Some of us actually still take cheerleading seriously.”

  Maybe they were right; maybe this was what she needed. Last year she would have been ecstatic for homecoming, and she had spent all of those hours the past few weeks learning the routine from Syd…

  Micah wanted her to live her life. Deep down, that’s what she really wanted too.

  Chapter 29:

  The school gym looked like a metallic monster had thrown up on it. Black and gold was everywhere, from the streamers draped above, and the carefully placed balloons strung by every table. A rainbow globe flashed all the primary colored lights around the room, and the DJ in the right corner already had a hip hop beat thrumming throughout.

  “Isn’t this great?” Syd squealed in Spencer’s ear, excitement dripping from her every pore. It was no wonder, seeing as how they’d won the game.

  The Willowbrooke Honey Badgers had come out forty-two to thirty, and Spencer hadn’t messed the routine up once during halftime with the cheerleaders. She’d been feeling normal all night, completely immersed back into her old life.

  For a horrible second she’d wondered if that’s why her friends had been able to move on so much easier than her. They’d been out doing the things they’d always done; the only difference had been the absence of Micah.

  They’d changed into their dresses at Syd’s house, and the white material felt just as good on as Spencer had imagined. She’d bought strappy gold sandals to go along with it, as opposed to the usual heels.

  They made their way over to one of the tables by the bleachers—Syd in her powder blue dress that wrapped around her neck, and Quinn in her strapless gold dress. Dropping their purses down onto the surface, they glanced around in unison.