by Tara Fuller
I sank down onto the carpet and pulled my knees up to my chest. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t take this away from him. Not this. I glanced down at my scythe, burning, throbbing, wanting the soul it came to take.
“Whoa! What the hell are you talking about, man?” Cash backed into the hall and Finn followed. He caught sight of me hunkered down like a coward in the hall and pressed his lips into a tight line.
“She’s going to take you,” Finn said looking at me. “She’s here. Now.”
“N-n-n-no, she’s not.” The color drained from Cash’s face, leaving it ash white as he combed his fingers through his damp hair. “She’s always here.” He spun around, searching. “Tell him, Anaya. Tell him what you told me. You said it wasn’t time yet.”
I swallowed and closed my eyes, feeling like another piece of the puzzle that was me and Cash had snapped into place.
“Damn it, Anaya, tell him! You promised me.” His chest started a steady rise and fall as he tried to catch his breath.
Finn narrowed his gaze at me. “You talked to him? You let him see you? What were you thinking?”
Finn groaned. “Balthazar will have your head for this.”
If only he knew the sick game Balthazar was playing. I was just another pawn. I nodded and smoothed my white dress over my knees as I stood. I couldn’t help but think it shouldn’t be so white, so pure. With all of the death I’d touched, I should have been cloaked in bloodred or, better yet, Easton’s darkness.
“Why won’t she let me see her?” Cash shouted. “Come on, Anaya. I thought we were past the hiding.”
“I’m not here to take him,” I said carefully, looking at Finn as I slid the blade from its holster at my side. Finn took a slow step back and turned his attention to the kitchen, where Cash’s father was scraping something that smelled burned off a frying pan.
I moved between them and stopped at the end of the hall. But I didn’t look at Cash. I didn’t look at
Finn. I couldn’t. Instead I spoke to the ceiling, hoping Finn would hear.
“Tell him…I’m sorry.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I heard the frying pan clatter to the floor and my eyes opened. I didn’t listen to Cash shouting behind me. Didn’t even flinch when he rushed right through me like I was nothing more than a wisp of wind. I followed him into the kitchen where he knelt over his unconscious father and beat on his chest.
He scrambled for his cell phone and uselessly called 911. All I could think about was the heat burning me from the inside out. Needing. Wanting. Clawing.
I closed my eyes and let the weight of the blade slice though the smoky kitchen air and sink into his father’s chest.
Chapter 11
Cash
“Stop looking at me like that,” I snapped at Finn and his sad eyes. I couldn’t take this. The waiting.
The not knowing. He may have been an absentee asshole most of my life, but that didn’t change the fact that he was my dad. And he was somewhere in this hospital, alive, dead, dying, afraid. I didn’t know. I shoved my fingers into my hair and pulled at the long spikes until my scalp throbbed. I tapped my foot to keep from kicking something. Destroying something.
“I just…” Finn averted his gaze to the scuffed linoleum floor and watched a nurse’s shoes scurry by.
I didn’t really see the nurse. I was too busy watching the rotten little shadow demon that had followed me here. It crawled in creepy little circles around me, filling up my nostrils with its disgusting scent. I finally managed to break my attention away from it to realize Finn hadn’t finished.
“You just what?”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up.” Hesitantly, he met my gaze. “She was there for—”
“For me. She was there for me,” I said. “You said it yourself.”
Finn watched an old man on a stretcher roll by. Eerily silent. Dead white. A shadow hovered at the foot of his bed, waiting. So…they didn’t spend all their time harassing just me, then.
Finn kept staring even after he’d been pushed out of sight. “I was wrong.”
“Stop saying that!”
Emma and her mom rushed down the hall toward us and I jerked my hands out of my hair and bit my tongue. My dad was not dead. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. I’d seen the man win impossible cases.
Survive the hell my mom had left him in for eleven years. Dad was built from steel. It was going to take more than a freaking heart attack to bring him down. And he wouldn’t leave me alone. Not like this.
“Cash?” Emma touched my shoulder and I shook my head, realizing from everyone’s worried expressions that they’d probably said my name more than once.
“He’s gonna be fine, Em,” I said, feeling my voice catch around the uncertain fine that fell out of my mouth.
Emma looked at Finn then back to me, nodding. “Right. He’s going to be fine.”
My gaze drifted down to the shadow circling Emma’s ankles. Flicking its dripping tongue out to get a taste of the denim that covered her calf. Without even thinking, I shoved her away and knelt down in front of it. Noah had grabbed one. If we were so much alike, wouldn’t I be able to do the same? And right now, choking one of these little bastards sounded too damn good to pass up. I flexed my fingers, watching it rise up within an inch of my hand, then reached out to grab it. Pain exploded across my hand like I’d dipped it into a flame and the shadow demon passed through my hand like smoke.
“Mother fu—” I stood up, wiping my burning hand on my jeans, and stomped on the thing. I stomped until I couldn’t breathe. Until I was sure I’d smashed it to bits tiny enough to be blown away by the sickly sweet smell coming through the hospital vents. I stomped until two hands wrapped around my shoulders and jerked me back.
I looked up at Emma, breathing hard, and realized Finn had two fistfuls of my T-shirt. Everyone was silent, looking at me like I was that crazy guy who stood on the corner of Fifth and Elm and threw sticks at people’s cars.
“There was…” I stared down at the floor where the shadow should have been. Nothing. Just some off-white waiting room tile with a questionable stain.
“Mr. Cooper?” a hesitant voice said from behind me. Finn squeezed my shoulders once and let me go. I turned, not ready to hear what Finn already knew.
“That’s me.”
The doctor’s dark brown hair was plastered to his head with sweat. His glasses kept slipping down his nose. I stared at the blue scrub cap that was protruding between his clenched fingers. I couldn’t look at his eyes when he told me this. It was too much. If I saw the truth in his eyes, I wouldn’t be able to pretend this wasn’t real.
“Is he…?”
“Your father had a massive heart attack. I don’t think we could have helped him even if he’d been here on a gurney when it happened. We did everything we could. I’m so sorry.”
I nodded. I felt…empty. Hollow. Where was the pain? My dad was dead. Gone. There should have been pain, right?
“We have grief counselors you could speak with,” the doctor said. I held up my hand, shaking my head mechanically, and he stopped.
“Cash?” Emma’s voice. It sounded muffled. Off.
Nothing. How was it possible to feel this much nothing?
“Cash, answer me.” Emma again.
“Stop it. Just give him some room. Let him breathe,” Finn said. Breathe? Was that even possible? I felt like I was suffocating.
“Cash!”
Something inside me snapped at the sound of Emma’s voice. It was the sound. That same rawness
I’d heard in her voice the day her dad had died. I’d never understood what that sound meant. But hearing it now, in this place, forced me to.
Everything came rushing into me all at once. The wall I’d built up around myself after Mom left, decimated. The wound that would forever replace my father, ripped wide open. And it…hurt. Oh, God did it hurt. Just a stinging at first. But before too long it was throbbing. Burning with things I should ha
ve said. Things I should have done. I shouldn’t have shut him out. I shouldn’t have been such a moody little prick to him all the time. I couldn’t even remember what the last thing I said to him was.
Shit! What did I say? What was it?
“It’s gonna be okay,” Emma whispered against my neck. “I promise.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head against her shoulder. I couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t stop shaking. “I said…we’re out of bread.”
“What?” Emma pulled back, her blue eyes full of questions. I stared over her shoulder at the wall and swallowed the lump in my throat.
“That was the last thing I said to him,” I said. “We’re out of bread.”
Emma opened her mouth but stopped when Finn crouched down beside us and stared at the blank spot on the wall with me.
“He won’t remember that,” he said. “He’ll remember the good parts. Where he went…the good parts are all that exist.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. He was someplace better. That should count for something, right?
“Um…Cash, sweetheart,” Emma’s mom, Rachel, stepped up behind me and touched my shoulder.
“Is there anyone we can call? Any family? Someone you could stay with?”
I shook my head. The only living family who still talked to us was Aunt Sara, and she lived in
Germany on a military base. No way was she making it back. No way was I moving there.
“What about your mom?” she asked, hesitantly. I shot her a look that could’ve cut through steel, and she winced. The mom I hadn’t spoken to since I was six? The mom who hadn’t even bothered to send a birthday card in eleven years? The mom who had made damn sure I’d never find her? Hell, I didn’t even have her phone number.
“He’s staying with us,” Emma spoke up. “He can stay in the guest room.”
“Emma, honey, I’d have to talk to Parker—”
Emma stood up and pinned her mom with the stare that had shut me up more than once. “He’s staying.”
Rachel looked at me like I was a dog in the pound about to be euthanized. “You’re right. Emma, take him home to grab some of his things. I’ll get the guest room set up for him.”
Funny how she talked to Emma like I wasn’t even there. I wondered if that’s how I looked. Vacant.
It’s how I felt. Like part of me had checked out. Gone south for the winter. Emma grabbed one of my arms, Finn grabbed the other, and they pulled me to my feet. But I didn’t want to be on my feet. I wanted to be on the floor with the shadows. In that empty moment…I wanted to let them have me. I watched one of them, a black silhouette of death, slither from one side of the hall to the other. Never stopping. Never taking the hollow holes that were its eyes off of me. Its shape changed as it moved.
Sprouting wings, tentacles, arms and legs. It melted into the dark shape of a man, reached its dripping hand out to me, and I felt my grip start to slip from Emma’s.
“Come, ” it hissed. That hiss melted through me, burrowing deep. Somewhere in the back of my mind, someone was saying, It would be so much easier just to go…
Emma jerked on my arm and forced me to look at her. “What is it?” she asked.
“They’re here for me.” I swallowed the broken sound down my throat and took a shaky step forward.
“Don’t even think about it,” she whispered, tightening her grip on me. “I’m not letting you go.”
Chapter 12
Anaya
Every moment of my existence revolved around death, but I hadn’t been to a funeral in a thousand years. Now I remembered why I hated them so much. I closed my eyes and fought off the memory threatening to claim me. Tarik. My father. My mother clutching my hand as the sea blew wind and salt and hair into our eyes. The awful, hopeless feeling flowing through me, knowing they were never coming back. Knowing the two most important men in my life now belonged to the sea.
Each of the cold graves surrounding me represented a soul gone from this earth. A lifetime of kisses, laughter, and love now just dust and bones and memories. That’s what Cash’s father was now.
To this earth, he was just another memory.
I lingered on the outskirts of the crowd of quivering bodies all cloaked in black. I kept my eyes on the stone fixture that was Cash, praying with everything in me that I didn’t get called away now. The only parts of him that moved were his hair and the ends of his burgundy scarf, tossed around by the wind. His steady brown gaze was focused with a desperate intensity on the closed casket being lowered into the ground. A slightly off-key woman in the corner of the bright blue tent sang a haunting hymn that echoed across the cemetery. The hollow sound moved through the headstones like smoke, leaving an imprint of sadness wherever it went. Cash’s dark brows drew together as if he thought he could force the tears to stay inside. He didn’t look right like this. All buttoned and ironed without one of those ridiculous T-shirts. He looked…broken.
A memory sparked. I tried to fight it off, but it rushed back anyway. Something about seeing Cash like this, drowning in loss, dredged up memories of my own. Suddenly, I saw Tarik standing on the dock that day. His dark hair whipping in the wind. Hiding his eyes. I still remembered the warmth of his palm as he cupped my face and rubbed a stray tear from my cheek. The salty taste of the sea, dry on my lips. The way his hair sifted through my fingers like silk when I reached up to push it out of his eyes.
“Anaya…there is no need for tears,” he whispered into my hair. Every part of me lit up. Burned out of control knowing he was touching me like this where everyone could see. “I’ll return. It’s only three days, love.”
I gripped his shirt in my fist and breathed him in. He smelled like fish, but I didn’t care. It almost smelled nice next to the basket of warm bread I was balancing on my hip.
“It always feels like a lifetime,” I said.
He laughed and kissed my forehead despite the disapproving look my father gave him as he hauled a basket full of supplies onto the boat.
“My Anaya…” He smiled. Warm. Beautiful. The way I’d always remember him after that. “We should be happy your father gave me this job.”
“You hate this job.”
Tarik sighed and tugged on one of my braids. “No. I only hate smelling of fish guts when you always smell of dreams.”
“I love you,” I whispered. “Even when you smell like fish guts.”
Tarik’s lips tipped up into that cocky grin that left my knees weak and wobbly every time. He gripped my chin and brought his lips to mine. Kissed me once. Soft. Reassuring.
“And I love you.” He kissed me once more and then he was waving to me from the ship deck.
Sending me kisses to be carried by the wind. Then he was just a dot on the bright-orange horizon. And then he was gone. Forever.
I blinked away the memory and looked down at my empty arms, half expecting to see a basket of bread there. The crowds began to thin as people retreated back to their vehicles. All that remained was
Cash, with Emma and Finn acting as beams of support at his sides. Emma wiped away a tear and Cash pulled away from the iron grip she had on his arm.
“I want to be alone,” he said.
Emma and Finn exchanged a glance and Emma touched the sleeve of Cash’s jacket, unsure. “Are you sure? I can stay—”
“I’m sure, Em.” His voice cracked and pain began to chip away at the protective layer around my heart. “Please. Just let me be alone with him. I’ll come straight to your house after.”
Emma placed a soft kiss on his cheek and then reached for Finn’s hand before disappearing over the hill. A few excruciating moments later, Cash looked in my direction.
“Are you planning on talking to me or are you here on a haunting gig?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped out from under the blue tent. “Wouldn’t want to interrupt a side job you’ve got going.”
I stepped into the light, allowing him to see me, my hands linked behind my back to mask the way they trembled. Would he
hate me for this? He should. I’d caused this unbearable pain he was feeling. I wanted so badly to take it away.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, hating how inadequate it felt.
“Was it your call or Balthazar’s?”
I bit my lip and looked away. “Balthazar’s. I didn’t have a choice.”
He nodded almost mechanically, but I could see a flare of heat in his gaze.
“You reap for Heaven, right?” He came to stand beside me, staring off into the distance, his gaze avoiding the big blue tent and what was buried beneath it.
“Yes.”
He nodded and shut his eyes. “And that’s where you took him?”
“Yes,” I said. “I took him home. He’s happy there. I promise you that.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked and he shook his head. “See, that’s the problem. I’m kind of having a hard time knowing whose promises to believe these days.”
Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed his hand, not expecting it when he laced his fingers through mine to keep it in place. “You can believe mine. Always.”
Cash squeezed my hand as if he were testing something, and blue sparks twined around our wrists.
This time I didn’t pull away and neither did he. Right or wrong, I needed this contact as much as he did.
“God, you feel warm,” he whispered, letting his arm fall against mine so that our skin was fused together along our shoulders, fingertips, and everywhere in between. The heat beneath my skin blazed, reaching out to warm the boy beside me.