Blurred kbd-2

by Tara Fuller

  “I’d be crying, too, if I listened to crappy music like that,” I said into her hair. She half sobbed and laughed, then slapped my arm. I squeezed her tighter, feeling more like me than I’d felt in weeks.

  “I thought you were dead.” She sounded muffled against my shoulder, holding on like she was afraid I would disappear again if she let go. I pulled away and wiped the tears off her cheeks with my thumbs.

  “I’m okay. That’s all that matters.”

  She got quiet and her eyes searched my face. She reached out and touched my cheek, then grabbed my hand and stared at the faint shimmer breaking through the pores of my skin.

  “What happened?” A tear leaked down her cheek. “Are you…”

  “Not exactly.” She looked like she was going to pass out, so I pushed her down into the chair and sat on my knees in front of her. “I’m sort of both now, Em. Alive and dead. And I work for your boyfriend’s old boss now.”

  She slapped her hand over her mouth, then pulled it away long enough to whisper, “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

  “No, it’s not. This is what was supposed to happen to me.”

  She shook her head, lip trembling. “You don’t believe in ‘supposed to.’”

  I held her hand until she looked me in the eye. “I know it might not seem ideal to you. Hell, it probably seems like a nightmare, but it’s not. I’m happy. I have a heartbeat.” I pressed her hand to my chest to let her feel it. “I’ve got breath in my lungs. I have this moment with you, and the chance to have more. And I’m in lov—” I stopped, feeling weird telling her about it. Her brows pulled together and she looked over my shoulder to where Anaya peeked through the little window in the door, then disappeared again.

  “Anaya?” She turned her attention back to me. “You’re in love with Anaya?”

  I glanced over my shoulder and couldn’t hold back the dopey smile. I laughed and scratched the back of my head. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  Emma just stared at me for a minute, then laughed and hugged me. “Oh my God…you love a girl.

  Cash Cooper loves one, singular, girl. And a reaper girl!”

  “Hey, she’s not a reaper anymore,” I said, grinning like an idiot. “She’s sort of my guardian now.

  It’s her job to watch out for me. We’re a team.”

  I didn’t tell her Anaya wasn’t the first girl I ever loved, because it didn’t matter now. We were all right where we were supposed to be. It finally felt like all the pieces were in place. For the first time since all this started, I felt like I could really, truly be happy for her the way she deserved.

  “So…things can go back to normal now?” She sounded too hopeful. I couldn’t let her have that kind of hope. I wrapped my hands around hers and stared at our fingers. “You’re back, right?”

  “For now,” I said softly, as if the tone of my voice would soften the blow. “I’m not really alive anymore, Em. My body isn’t going to age. And I have this job now…”

  She swallowed and her eyes watered. She looked away from me like she was trying to study the collage portrait of this year’s senior class on the wall. It didn’t take long to find the image of me and

  Em, my arm slung around her shoulder as we both grinned like idiots. It had been taken before all of this had even begun, and it felt like a lifetime ago. “What does that mean? You’re leaving?”

  “Not yet, but I don’t want you to get used to this,” I said. “I’ll still be around when I can, but it won’t be like before. I’m going to be busy. I’ve got responsibilities now. But you’ve got Finn. And he is a good guy. Like, a seriously good guy. You won’t ever be alone.”

  She sniffled. “I know that. But you’re my best friend. I don’t want to say good-bye to you.”

  I nudged her chin with my hand. “Hey, it won’t be a good-bye. It’ll never be a good-bye for us.

  Okay?”

  Emma nodded and sighed. “You realize prom is next week? It’s going to blow if you’re not there.”

  I sat back on my heels and an image of Anaya in a hot prom dress, pressed up against me in all the right places as we danced, flashed behind my lids.

  I cleared my throat and smiled. “I’ll be there. Besides, who’s going to spike the punch if I don’t go?”

  After I explained everything to her and let her grill me, I promised I’d see her again and made my way back out into the hall. Anaya was sitting in the middle of the hall with the kid. They’d found the deck of playing cards that had been in my backpack for like a year.

  Anaya smiled up at me, gathering the cards and putting them away. The kid actually looked…happy.

  I decided right then and there it was impossible not to be happy around Anaya. Heaven hadn’t given

  Anaya her light—she’d been born with it. She’d died with it. And now she infected any soul that she touched with it. She was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. She stood up and grabbed my hand.

  “Everything okay?”

  I smiled and brushed a tendril of dark hair out of her face, tucked it behind her ear. “Perfect. Well… it’ll be perfect if you say you’ll go to prom with me next week.”

  Anaya rolled her eyes and tugged me down the hall.

  “Oh, come on,” I groaned. “Give me one last reckless night as a teenager, then it’s serious shadow walker time, I swear. You could wear a hot dress and I can wear a tuxedo T-shirt. We can pretend to be humans and spike the punch and dirty dance all over the gym. If Balthazar throws a hissy fit, I’ll tell him I was scoping out a soul.”

  Anaya laughed and pulled me down to kiss my jaw. Heat much more powerful than the kind running though my veins throbbed in all the right places. “Now, how could I say no to that?”

  “That’s just it. You can’t.” I grinned. “You love me too much.”

  My gaze drifted over her face, which was overcome with emotion. Her fingers coasted over my throat and she nodded. “You’re right. I do.”

  My heart thudded in my chest and I wasn’t sure if the Almighty himself could have pried me away from her side in that moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the kid watching us and figured it was probably best if I didn’t kiss her senseless right there in the hall. It made me in that much more of a hurry to get this soul to where he needed to be, so we could be alone.

  “I love you, too.” I gave her a quick kiss, then held my hand out to the kid waiting beside us and guided him through the silvery light to the afterlife. I was going to give him peace. A second chance.

  And for the first time in my life, I finally felt something I don’t think I’d felt in a thousand years.

  I felt complete.

  Acknowledgments

  First, a big thank-you to my editors Heather Howland and Kaleen Harding for helping me bring Cash and Anaya’s story to life. This book would not be what it is without either of you. And an extra hug and thank-you to Heather Howland for my beautiful cover and for being a source of support and inspiration. I am so thankful to have someone like you in my corner. Also big thanks and hugs to the entire Entangled Teen crew.

  To my fabulous publicists Jaime Arnold and Heather Riccio, I’m pretty sure you ladies wear superhero capes. To Melissa West, Rachel Harris, Trisha Wolfe, Lisa Burstein, Mya Smith, and Kelly

  Hashway. Thank you for your constant support. I don’t know what I would do without you!

  Huge hugs and thanks to my incredible street team! Raizza Cinco, Ali Byars, Angela Copa, Lea

  Krnjeta, Taherah Abbas, Iris Hernandez, Amy Fournier, Vi Nguyen, and Eileen, you girls rock!

  To my amazing friends, Molly Mclean, Ashley Ward, Amber Bunnell, and Carolyn Lambeth. You girls are my rock! Thank you for keeping me sane.

  And finally thank you to Jared and my beautiful boys, Colten and Caden. My world would not spin without you.

  Go back to the beginning with Finn and Emma in the first book of the

  Kissed by Death series…

  Inbetween

  “A captivating whirlwind of
death, revenge, and true love.

  I want a reaper of my own!!” - Jena from Shortie Says

  Since the car crash that took her father’s life two years ago, Emma’s life has been a freaky—and unending—lesson in caution. Surviving “accidents” has taken priority over being a normal seventeen-year-old, so Emma spends her days taking pictures of life instead of living it. Falling in love with a boy was never part of the plan. Falling for a reaper who makes her chest ache and her head spin? Not an option.

  It’s not easy being dead, especially for a reaper in love with a girl fate has put on his list not once, but twice. Finn’s fellow reapers give him hell about spending time with Emma, but Finn couldn’t let her die before, and he’s not about to let her die now. He will protect the girl he loves from the evil he accidentally unleashed, even if it means sacrificing the only thing he has left. His soul.

  Prologue

  Finn

  Two Years Earlier

  “Tell me again. How did you miss the mark?” I shoved my hands in my pockets and pressed my lips together to keep from grinning. “I swear, Anaya, this is the last time I follow one of you Heaven reapers anywhere.”

  Anaya and I walked down a two-lane strip of asphalt that glistened with puddles of leftover rain.

  Somewhere in the distance, a second round of clouds let out a hungry rumble. Anaya silently kept pace beside me, the gold band around her biceps glinting with each feather-soft footstep.

  She turned her nose up into the air. “I never miss a mark.”

  “Then would you mind explaining why I’m walking up a mountain to get to our reap? We could’ve just flashed there.”

  She squinted at her surroundings, hesitating. I knew we were close, but it was way too fun messing with her to let this one go. “It’s okay to admit you’re losing your touch,” I said. “I’d be happy to take the lead on this one.”

  Anaya held up her hand, ignoring me. “Do you hear that?”

  I stopped, listening to the mangled wail of a horn in the distance. As if pulled in by the sound, a black blur, like a cloud of ink, whipped past us before disappearing around the bend.

  Shadows. Scavengers from the outskirts of Hell. Souls that weren’t chosen to start again, had escaped their reaper, or hadn’t earned their way into Heaven, so they’d been left to decay and rot.

  They were soulless beings that craved the scent of death. The taste of a soul.

  I hated them. But I hated the memories they brought back even more.

  Every shadow that blurred across my vision was a cold reminder of Allison, the love of my afterlife.

  What I’d done to her. What I’d almost let her become. Her name tumbling around in my skull made my chest ache.

  But I couldn’t change it. I’d never be able to change it. I’d pushed her into a world where we’d never be together again and nearly gotten myself banished to Hell in the process. The shadows would never let me forget it. After fifteen years of penance, Balthazar wasn’t likely to let me forget it either.

  A sick feeling started to brew in my gut, so I shook it off and watched another black blur zip past us.

  At least they always led us to our targets.

  “See.” Anaya smiled and skipped ahead. “We’re here.”

  Sure enough, around the last bend, a candy-apple-red Camaro lay upside down, crumpled like a discarded Coke can at the tree line. The horn blared, the sound careering off the rock wall and slamming back into the cliffside forest where it splintered into a thousand echoes between the branches. If I had to guess, the car had taken a similar journey. A ringlet of white smoke seeped from under the ruined hood and twirled up into the air.

  “Looks like we have a winner.” Anaya pulled her pearl-handled scythe from the leather belt she wore around her white dress, and twirled it in her hand. The twelve-inch blade, with its efficient, palm-sized handle, gleamed like it had never been used.

  I glanced down at my sad excuse for a scythe with its plain iron handle and dingy blade. Heaven’s reapers got all the perks. I may have been a slave to the Inbetween, but I was still a reaper, for God’s sake. We were supposed to be the stuff of nightmare and legend. You’d think they’d at least give me a decent scythe. “Hey, what do you think the chances are of me scoring one of those?”

  “Keep dreaming, Finn.”

  I stopped, leaving a few feet of distance between the car and me. Whoever was in there wasn’t ready for me. Not yet. A slow warmth, an ache, spread through my chest, and drove sparks through my veins. Not the impatient icy burn I would have expected from a reap at all.

  That…was different.

  Anaya strolled past me, the shimmery brown plaits that hung down to her waist swaying behind her.

  “Look at the bright side,” she said. “At least they did away with those awful cloaks.”

  She gripped the scythe and looked to the heavens. Her lips moved around the words to a prayer, one she’d never let me hear. Then, with a graceful sweeping motion, the blade of her scythe sliced through the car. She tugged once, twice, and yanked her glittery prize from the wreckage. Anaya shoved her scythe back into the leather belt at her hip and pulled the man to his feet. The shadows were on him in an instant, hissing and swirling like smoke around his legs and waist, just waiting for us to make a mistake. They were desperate. Hungry. Of course, their reaction wasn’t really a surprise. Balthazar had loaded the territories with reapers, cutting off their food supply—souls rarely slipped through the cracks anymore.

  Anaya turned around, tucking the soul behind her, and swung out her scythe. The shadows shrank back before dissolving into an oily spot on the pavement. She scowled and shoved her scythe back in its holster. “Vermin.”

  Vermin. I’d almost doomed Allison to be vermin. I couldn’t look away from the dark spot on the pavement.

  “Emma?” The soul babbled, rubbing his head. His eyes swam dizzily in his skull as he tried to regain his bearings. “Emma. You have to help Emma. Have you called an ambulance?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to block him out. I didn’t want to know her name.

  “It’s going to be fine, sir. She’s going to a very…nice place. Don’t worry.” Anaya looked up at me, her odd golden eyes begging me to back up her lie.

  I couldn’t give him what he needed. What he needed was to hear that his daughter was going to live a long, happy life. All I offered was death. I wouldn’t lie to him. The fact that I was about to take his little girl to the Inbetween was bad enough.

  If she ever decided she was ready, that is. I glanced back at the car, waiting for the icy pull to kick in. Something still didn’t feel right about this.

  “Dad!” a girl’s broken voice cried from the inside the crumpled car.

  “Help her!” the man cried, trying to scrabble toward the car. Anaya easily held his shimmering form back. “For the love of God, she’s only fifteen years old. You should have helped her first.”

  Now the pull kicked in. Except, this pull was dizzying and familiar in an unfamiliar way. And getting stronger by the second. My head spun with the force of it. Something was wrong here. Nothing about this felt like a standard reap. But I’d swear I felt this before. Once…

  Memories pulsed through my mind in blinding flashes as I inched toward the vehicle. Soft-as-satin lips, warm whispers against my neck, smiles like the sun… The pull intensified, like a pounding in my chest, and my knees buckled. I knelt down to the broken window. Something like hope surged through me, followed by a cold rush of fear. I could only think of one other time that it had felt like this. Back when I’d peeled the soul from a frail, bloody body, packed in snow. The day that had changed me forever.

  No. It couldn’t be her. Not again, and not like this. Blond hair lay matted with blood against the girl’s cheek. I reached through the window and traced the path of a tear that had fallen from her closed eyelids, my fingers scattering like mist. Her skin was petal-soft, deadly cold. A warm spot pooled in my hand where we touched, then traveled up my arm, down
my neck where the heat exploded in my chest. Connection throbbed beneath my ribs. Certainty pounded in my temples.

  Allison…

  I jerked my hand back and scrambled away from the car. It was her. After all these years… it was her.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Anaya sounded annoyed.

  “Dad?” the girl whimpered again, weaker this time. Or maybe that was the gray, gauzy feeling that was suffocating me. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of wondering if I’d done the right thing, and this is what I find? A girl halfway to death, clutching a bloody backpack? No. No. No! I shut my eyes and focused, touching my scythe to be certain. It wasn’t there. No burning pull. No clawing need to take her soul. She could still be okay. Unless-“Finn?” Anaya crouched down in front of me. “I don’t know what is going on with you, but if you are incapable of handling this, I will.”

  I blinked until Anaya’s blurry face slowly came into focus. I bolted upright. “Is she yours? Are you here for both of them? Because it’s not me.” A cold, throbbing panic took up residency in my chest.

  When she just stared at me, confused, I snapped. “Answer the damn question, Anaya!”

  Realization slowly replaced the confusion in her eyes. Anaya shook her head and stared up through the spiky treetops where a crow swam across the turbulent lavender sky. “It’s her.”

  It wasn’t even a question. I couldn’t hide this. Couldn’t shove the secret into the dark safety of my pocket and walk away. Anaya knew.

  She glanced back at the car, and then her gaze settled on me. “Walk away,” she said, her voice just a whisper of breath. “If you have any sense left in you, you’ll walk away from this and forget it happened, Finn. Don’t screw this up. You’ve worked too hard to go back now.”