by Tara Fuller
Easton shifted in his seat, leaned close enough to whisper. “Not as sorry as you’ll be if you end up downstairs. You know your little fear of fire?”
I swallowed.
“They’ll use it against you. You won’t just burn. You’ll melt. Slowly. And when you’re nothing but a bubbling puddle of flesh and ash and blood, they’ll reanimate you so they can do it all over again.”
Easton’s whispers burned me. I scooted an inch away from him. From his heat.
He glanced down at the space between us and shook his head. “Do you even care what it would do to me to have to hand you over to them?” His bitter gaze held me hostage, searching for something. I wasn’t sure what. “Of course you don’t. All you’ll ever care about is making sure your precious human is safe.”
Easton stood up, knocking his chair over, but Scout caught it with the toe of his tennis shoe before it could hit the glass floor. “Are you two having another lovers’ spat?”
He spun the chair around and sank into it backward, grinning up at Easton. For a moment, I thought Easton might grind Scout and his shiny blond curls into dust, but he just grumbled something under his breath and stormed off, leaving me suffocating in the rotting stench of death and decay he’d left in his wake.
“There’s always so much more drama on your side of the border. Maybe I should ask for a transfer,” Scout said as he winked at a pretty reaper from an East Coast territory. “But then, the east has its perks, too.”
Scout looked the same as the day Easton had shown up to reap his soul. The same as the day he’d agreed to become one of us to buy his way out of Hell, forever frozen with the same tall athletic build, curly blond hair, and surfer boy tan skin that had gotten him girls when he was alive. And he was still using those looks to his advantage. Even in death.
We were all handpicked. Every one of us a soul that had crossed a moral line, just far enough to give Balthazar the leverage he needed to reel us in. I’d shot down at least three planes in my final hours. It may have been war, but to them, murder was murder.
I watched him undress the redheaded reaper with his eyes, trying not to feel annoyed. I’d known Scout for twenty years, and even in death he could only think about one thing. Though most of us weren’t far off in age from Scout’s nineteen years, when it came to girls, he seemed especially… enthusiastic. Balthazar told me once that younger souls were easier to transition. Better able to hold onto the power we were granted. I didn’t know. I just knew there was something sad in seeing so many young faces representing the thing people feared the most. Death.
I turned my attention back to Scout, who had gotten the reaper girl’s attention with a wide smile.
“Do you ever think about anything else?”
“Sometimes. Just not today.” He stood up and combed his fingers through his curls. “You mind if we talk about this later?”
I rolled my eyes and waved him off. “Just go.”
I sank back, vaguely aware that Anaya had taken the seat on the other side of me.
“Hey, what happened to you?” She looked over at me. “I got dispatched to one of your reaps. Why didn’t you take it?”
I watched Easton take a place alone on the far wall. Catching my eye, he dissolved into the shadow of a clock tower. “A complication.”
She followed my gaze to where Easton stood. “What’s his problem?”
“He says I’m a selfish bastard.”
Anaya patted my hand and smiled. “Oh, Finn… Honey, that’s because you are.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. At least the girl was honest. “Gee, thanks, Anaya.”
“I didn’t say that was a bad thing.” She stared off into the distance. “That’s what happens when you fall in love.”
I searched for a scrap of sunlight in the heavy clouds overhead. “Have you ever been a selfish bastard?”
Anaya sighed and traced the toe of her sandal along the glass floor. Stars followed her, leaving wispy trails of blue-gold streaks across the dark black sky. Just when I didn’t think she’d answer she said, “Yes. I loved someone once. I loved someone very much.”
The trumpets sounded, preventing me from asking her more, and Balthazar took the lectern at the top of the stairs, overlooking the sea of chairs we sat in. His snow-white robe was snug over his broad shoulders. His blond hair brushed against his neck. Everything about him seemed youthful and new, except his eyes. The corners were creased with age and held too many years to fathom. Before he spoke, his eyes connected with mine, a look of disappointment clouding his gaze. It was so much like the look my pop used to give me that I ached inside.
He finally looked away, surveying the crowd. “It seems some of you don’t remember the rules.” He locked his fingers together behind his back, and all I could hear was the sound of ghostly waves washing up, receding, then starting all over again. No one even went through the motion of breathing.
“It’s not difficult. There is no great secret to your afterlife. You collect the souls that pass for your assigned location.” His silvery eyes flickered over me, then away. “When you are called to reap, you do not ignore that call, nor do you come back empty-handed.”
The shocked whispers swirling around in the crowd grew louder and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
“You go unseen to the living. You do not touch the living. You do not associate with the living.”
Balthazar slapped his palms down onto the gold lectern. The clap rippled through the mist. “Do I make myself clear?”
Anaya pinched my side. Like I needed her to drive home his point. I was breaking every rule imaginable. Everyone’s time was being wasted because of me. I already knew this. And it didn’t change anything. It didn’t change the fact that Emma would be dead within a week if I did what they all wanted and walked away. But, okay. I could still do this. Balthazar didn’t actually follow us around —I’d just have to be more careful about never going corporeal. I’d gone two years without touching her, after all. Today was impulse. Today was reckless. I couldn’t let it happen again.
Anaya looked at me and rolled her eyes as if she could read my thoughts. I ignored her and hunched down farther in my seat.
“On a lighter note,” Balthazar said. “I notice some of you are not keeping up with the current time period. I know to some of you who have been around for centuries, this may seem silly, but you are better able to transport your souls if they cooperate. They cooperate when they feel comfortable, and they feel comfortable with what they know. It only takes a second to envision a new look.”
He frowned at a reaper wearing brown pantaloons, a white ruffled top, and a black hooded cloak.
“Darius, you terrify even me. Do your homework.” Smiling, he clapped his hands. “All right, everyone. Back to work. The dead won’t collect themselves.”
I looked at Anaya at the same time she looked at me. She wore a simple white sundress with a brown leather belt that carried her scythe. Gold gladiator sandals laced up her slender calves. They matched the gold band that wrapped around her biceps like a serpent.
“When was the last time you changed your style?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Some looks are timeless. Besides, I have an image of purity to uphold, Finn. We can’t all run around looking like we just got off a shift at the Gap.”
I looked down at my jeans, charcoal gray T-shirt, and canvas tennis shoes. I didn’t need a mirror to know my hair was the same as the day I bit the dust: buzzed short around the back and sides, military style. The top had grown out on the trip overseas so that it curled just enough to remind me of the way I used to keep it as a kid. I ran my fingers through my hair and thought about it. “What’s the Gap?”
Anaya stilled, a nervous smile on her face that she directed over my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.
“Anaya, lovely as always,” Balthazar said. “Be a dear and give me a moment alone with Finn.”
Anaya gave me a tight, worried smile
then scurried away. She didn’t make it far. A burst of white light consumed her with a gasp. The breeze around my ankles turned to fog, moved by Balthazar’s force. The air crackled and hummed with a dangerous energy. In a flash, the other reapers were pulled away by the hungry fingers of death. I would’ve given anything for that hand to grab me in that moment.
Balthazar had Easton by the back of the neck and shoved him into the seat beside me. Easton’s jaw clenched.
“Is there something either of you would like to tell me?”
I tried to catch Easton’s gaze but he looked away. “No,” I finally said.
Balthazar snapped his fingers and pain sizzled through my insides. I groaned, gripping the sides of my chair. Easton grunted and lifted his chin.
“Did you touch her?” He glared at me. “I’m not an idiot, Finn. I felt you go corporeal, and I know you’ve been following her.”
I chewed on the lifeless flesh on the inside of my cheek. Damn it…how much did he already know?
When I didn’t answer, Balthazar cursed under his breath.
“Has seventeen years of punishment not been enough to make you see reason?” he asked. “I give you reminders daily. What else do I have to do?”
“It was an accident.”
The electricity drained from my limbs and I sagged into my seat. Balthazar turned away, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Make me understand,” he said. “Make me understand, because if you can’t, then I am going to have to punish you. Do you understand what that will mean?”
I could’ve lied, but he would have found out. It was better to tell the truth this time. Balthazar made an impatient sound in the back of his throat.
“She’ll die if I leave her alone,” I said. “Maeve knows how I feel about her. She’ll just keep torturing Emma until, one of these days, the ’accidents’ she causes kills her. I can’t let that happen. I don’t see how you can let that happen.”
“The problem with Maeve is no one’s fault but your own. You know I have no jurisdiction over lost souls or those bound for the Shadow Land. You sealed Emma’s fate the moment you pushed Allison through that porthole.”
My body shuddered with the memory.
I slipped my fingers around Allison’s trembling shoulders. Everyone was distracted. Even Balthazar had turned his attention to the last soul in line. It would have to be now. My chest screamed and ached with what I was about to do.
“Please forgive me for this, pretty girl.”
I looked up at him, hopeless. “So I should just watch it happen?”
Balthazar’s bottomless eyes looked me over. “I don’t expect you to watch it happen. I can give you a transfer. But that’s all I can offer you.”
I closed my eyes and scrubbed my palms over my face. “No. I can stay away from her.”
“Can you?” He raised a brow.
I pulled my hands away and stared at the ground. No. But I could be more careful. “Yes. Just don’t send me away.”
Balthazar studied me from a long moment. “She is not the girl from the Inbetween anymore. The girl you snuck into the shadows with. The girl you were willing to spite me and all of the Inbetween to save.” He looked at me until I was forced to meet his gaze. “She’s not Allison anymore.”
“I know.” I had to force the words out.
“I’m only going to say this once.” Balthazar turned his eyes to a shadow in the distance that twisted and moved like a living thing. It looked like a willow tree caught up in a storm, but there was no way to tell. “There will be order among my flock. If you decide to disrupt that order again there will be consequences. I’m sure Easton could give you a glimpse of what those might be if I’m not being clear here.”
Easton’s shoulders tensed under his coat.
Balthazar leaned down until his icy whisper found my ear. “Do you need a glimpse, Finn?”
I shook my head. “You’re clear.”
Balthazar clamped his big palm onto my shoulder, squeezing until I turned to smoke that drifted between his fingers. “Good. Next time there won’t be a warning. Next time we’ll be having this conversation in Hell.”
My lungs lay dead and still in my chest as I watched him walk away. His threats wound around me like barbed wire, poking and prodding me, making me terrified to move. I looked at Easton. It wasn’t fair that I’d dragged him into this. I understood that. It didn’t mean I knew what to say.
He leaned up and gripped the metal chair in front of him, staring at the space between his arms rather than at me. “Are you going to stop now?”
I opened my mouth wanting to tell him yes, but the words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t that simple. Not with Emma. “She saved me when I didn’t think there was anything in me worth saving. I can’t just stand by and watch her crumble. She’s broken, Easton.”
Easton glared at me. “She’s broken because of you. You broke her when you played with fate and sent her here. You broke her when you should have left her alone two years ago. She could’ve died and gone to Heaven if you hadn’t gotten her out of that car.”
I closed my eyes and ground my teeth together until pain bloomed like sunlight. He was right. And I didn’t want to hear how right he was. I’d ruined everything for her because I was selfish. Because I couldn’t stand the thought of an eternity without her. Because I didn’t want her to move on when I couldn’t go with her. Even if I did have the chance to know her again, she would never forgive me for what I’d done.
I felt sick.
“And you’re going to keep breaking her until there is nothing left to break if you don’t figure out a way to let her go.”
I looked away. She made me feel alive again. She made me feel things that should have stayed buried with my body at the bottom of the ocean. God…I’d been dead for so long, I didn’t know how to give that up. “What if I can’t?”
Easton grunted and clutched his scythe, which glowed red between his fingers. Just before he let himself be pulled away by the call of the damned, he whispered, “Then I think you better get used to the idea of Hell.”
Chapter 5
Emma I shut my blinds and let my eyes adjust to the dimness of my room, then flipped on my camera. I felt so unfocused. Rattled even. And by a stupid boy, no less. One I could have sworn I’d seen before, but when I tried to pin down the memory in my head, it floated just out of my grasp like a dream. The way he looked at me, though… It was like he knew me. Like he wanted to consume me. And the way that look sent shivers down my spine made me want to let him.
I shook my head to discard the cute guy’s face from my mind and focused on the digital camera in my hands. It didn’t matter how he looked at me. Once he found out I was the crazy chick who had spent half of junior year in a mental institution, he wouldn’t look at me like that again. And even if he did…it didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. I was stupid for even thinking about it.
My phone buzzed beside me and I jumped, dropping the camera on the bed. I stared at the screen, not wanting to answer it, but sighed and picked it up anyway.
“Hey, Mom.” I put it on speaker and set the cell phone in my lap.
“I just got off the phone with your principal. Are you okay?” She sounded frantic. “You should have waited for me to pick you up.”
“You’re thirty minutes away. Besides, I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not even hurt. Promise.”
She sighed and the sound of two car doors slamming shut sounded in the background.
“I’m coming home,” she said. “I can have someone else cover the open house.”
“Why?” I picked up my camera and turned it over in my hands. “So you can watch me do my homework? I can do that without you here.”
She sighed. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes!”
“Okay…I’ll be home right after the open house then. Don’t leave the house until I get home. Got it?”
“Yes. Got it.”
“Love you.”
I told her I loved her, too, then leaned back against my pillows and clicked through the pictures I’d taken at last week’s pep rally until the images blurred together. The boy’s green eyes stayed superimposed on the backs of my lids, offering a glimpse each time I had to blink.
My bedroom window slid open and a gust of cool air swirled into the room. Cash. He must have heard already. Crap.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have calculus this hour?” I asked, refocusing on the camera.
He ignored my question and turned on the lamp by my bed. “Are you okay?”
I closed my eyes. “How did you find out?”
“Are you kidding? I got three texts before I even got to school. Not to mention the mess they’re still dealing with out front.”
I considered watering down the truth. If I told him everything, he was just going to worry. But if I didn’t tell him, he would just find out from the gossip queens at school, and then he’d be pissed. He was a pain in the ass when he was pissed.
I let my head thump against the bed frame and stared at the ceiling. “The sign fell while I was standing under it. Somebody knocked me out of the way before it landed. End of story. It’s not a big deal.”
He leaned on my desk, his brows pulled together. “Don’t tell me it’s not a big deal. You could have died.”
Like I needed him to remind me. We both knew this wasn’t the first time I’d had a close call like this. And whether he wanted to admit or not, we both knew it wouldn’t be the last. Thinking about all of the times I’d only been a second ahead or behind being the victim of a major “accident” made me want to swathe myself in Bubble Wrap and never leave my room. “I’m fine.”
Cash folded his arms across his chest. I could hear the worry in his quiet sigh, could feel his eyes on me, looking for scratches, bruises, anything that might drive me over the edge. “Do you need to go to the hospital? Just to make sure—”
“The paramedics already checked me out at school. I have a scratch on my knee, that’s it.” I looked over at him. “How did you get out?”