by Tara Fuller
Scout took a deep breath and dissolved through the thick denim jacket of the redhead, who now had his tongue shoved halfway down his girlfriend’s throat. But that wasn’t the disturbing part. Scout didn’t come out the other side. He was…gone.
“No,” I whispered stumbling back against the wall, balancing myself on my heels before I went spilling through the brick wall. I clenched my jaw and focused. The shock of what was happening was making it hard to stay in one piece. “What did you do?”
The redhead backed away from the girl and cleared his throat before casting me a quick glance.
“Baby, why don’t you wait inside? I’ll be there in a minute, just want a quick smoke before we go.”
She smiled and nodded before heading inside, swaying her hips when the stream of music poured through the open door into the night air.
The redhead pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shivered as he lit one up. The red glow from the end of the stick lit up the dark shadow he stood in. After he’d taken a long drag, he threw his head back and groaned, blowing smoke out the side of a grin.
“I forgot how much I liked smoking,” he said. “The last kid didn’t smoke. I lucked out this time.”
He tapped his pocket where he’d shoved the pack, then strode over to me, smiling. “What do you think, Finn?”
I didn’t know what to say. This meant a lot of things, but the most important to me at the moment was that Maeve knew there was a way in, too. And if Maeve knew…son of a bitch! I gripped the back of my neck, trying to think.
“I pray to God that you weren’t stupid enough to tell Maeve about this.”
He frowned and took another puff of the cigarette. “I don’t get you, man. I’m standing here telling you I found a way in. A way to actually freeze from the cold, savor the sensation of a drink sliding down your gullet, feel the wind in your hair!” He ran his fingers through his short red spikes and frowned. “Well, not this kid. This kid doesn’t have the greatest hair for that. But that girl in there.”
Scout lifted his chin and laughed, smoke sliding past his lips with the sound. “I’m going to feel that, too.”
I wanted to puke. In that moment I wished more than ever that I still had that human function so that I could expel whatever it was that I was feeling. The whole thing was disgusting. “And the girl?
Or should I say ’girls,’ since it looks like you’ve been doing this a while. What do they think about it?”
“Trust me. They have a good time. It’s not like most of them know the guy they’re with any better than they’d know me. And the guys waking up next to a hot chick—you think they’re complaining?
Nope.” He made a popping sound to exaggerate his “nope,” then flicked his cigarette to the ground and rubbed his arms.
“I’m telling you man, the cold hurts, but I can’t get enough. It makes me feel alive.” He laughed and the sound felt stale, leaving a bad taste in my mouth, just like the cigarette smoke. “You want to try it? I’m sure we could find you someone, too.”
This was sick. And I was screwed. I couldn’t help but wonder where the hell the real Scout had gone, because this wasn’t him. “Balthazar is going to let you burn for this.”
“Whatever, man,” he said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been dreaming about this very thing for years. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it to be with Emma.”
“Not like this. This is wrong, Scout. These people don’t know you any more than they know what’s happening to them. It’s screwed up and you know it.”
“Bullshit. You are so full of—” I cut him off, watching his breaths come out in foggy puffs of white that looked like clouds wandering into unfamiliar darkness. “Tell me you didn’t show Maeve. Please, Scout, just give me that.”
His eyes, which strangely enough were Scout’s eyes, stared back at me as if I should’ve already known the answer. “She’s known for a week.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid! He knew what would happen. How could he… Something inside me broke in half, a dam breaking, flooding me with rage. “What the hell did you do? You knew what she’d try to use this for. You knew!” I pulled out my scythe and backed him into the bricks, not really sure what I was planning to do with it.
“I’m sorry! What do you want me to say? I thought if she could figure out how to use this maybe she’d give up on Emma.”
The sleet pelting the asphalt was the only sound to break the bitter silence that hung between us. It didn’t matter that he was sorry. It didn’t matter what he thought. It didn’t even matter that a lost soul like Maeve might not even be able to pull this off. I couldn’t take chances with Emma.
I backed away, losing my steam. “Good-bye, Scout.”
Chapter 23
Emma Cash fiddled with the radio until he found the station that would provide the sound for the movie while I leaned out the window and snapped a picture of three girls sitting in the back of a pickup, blankets wrapped around them like cocoons. As crazy as it sounded, I almost liked taking pictures for the yearbook now. I could control the orb problem now that I knew what was causing them, and when people weren’t posing and acting stupid, I realized it wasn’t all that different from landscape photography. My shots were getting better, that’s for sure.
I took a few more pictures of random things that I thought might make a neat collage, and after I’d gotten what I needed, pulled off my coat and tossed it in the backseat. “Can we turn this down?” I asked Cash, messing with the heater.
Cash batted my hand away. “Are you kidding? It’s effing cold in here.”
I rolled down my window a crack and sat back in my seat. “Maybe for you.”
“So, are you going to spill, or am I going to have to force it out of you?”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew what he wanted to hear, but I wasn’t a very good liar, so it didn’t leave me a lot of options.
A couple of seniors I knew walked by on their way to the concession stand and I grabbed my camera to snap a picture of them. On the big screen, a hot dog in a top hat danced, while popcorn boxes sang in the background. I couldn’t help but wonder where Finn was.
“I just feel lost,” I finally said, letting the camera hang from my chest. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie. I felt lost in the impossible, in the way I was starting to feel about Finn. There was a silent tug-of-war ripping me apart inside. One side telling me to do what was sane, the other pulling me over the edge of reason where nothing made sense. “I feel like I’m coasting on fumes and I don’t know where I’m going to land and it terrifies me.”
“I think everybody feels that way sometimes.” Cash stared out his window. He drew the outline of a woman’s profile on the fogged-up glass with his fingertip.
“What happens when you always feel like that?” I asked. “What happens when you finally run out of gas?”
He sighed and leaned his head back on his seat to look at me. “Then you realize that I’m right behind you with a can of fuel and you stop worrying so damn much.”
I smiled and we both laughed a little. Cash turned down the heater and slid on his jacket as the movie started. It opened with a desolate street and a lone man walking through a city empty of living things. It didn’t take long for the dead to rise, though. Rotting and starving, they filled the alleys, consumed every hollow space, like cattle called to feed. Cash yelled at the screen, calling the man an
“effing idiot” when he got himself cornered in an alleyway. I sighed. Whoever came up with this grotesque concept of living dead had obviously never met a soul.
“I’m back,” Finn said behind me. “Get rid of him. We need to talk. Now.”
Something in the tone of his voice made my chest constrict. I knew it wasn’t fair that I was sending him out into the cold so I could have a conversation with a nonexistent person, but hopefully whatever Finn had to say wouldn’t take long. “Cash, could you get me a Coke from the concession stand?”
“You have two feet last time
I checked.”
“Yes, and I’ll kick your ass with one of them if you don’t get over yourself and be a gentleman.”
Cash frowned. “What’s a gentleman?”
I forced a laugh, needing him to leave. “Please.”
“Fine.” He nodded and grabbed my purse out of the floor to dig for my wallet. “But you’re buying.”
“Deal.” When he was gone, I spun around in my seat. Finn looked upset and, for the first time since we’d met, disheveled. Was that even possible for a soul? “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s happened. And I’m not sure…I don’t know how to handle it. But I don’t want you freaking out on me. I’m going to figure it out.” He braced his palms on the seat and stared at the floorboards like he was trying to calm himself. “I’m going to figure it out,” he whispered to himself again.
“Just say it,” I said, forcing the tremble out of my voice. “I can handle it.” It’s nothing I hadn’t been through before. Two years of this…was there really anything he could say that could surprise me?
“Emma, look at me.” He leaned close enough that I was enveloped in the warm scent of Finn, trapped in my own personal summer while the rest of the world battled the cold outside. I stared into his green eyes, churning with emotion. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to keep you safe. There’s no sense in you worrying about something that you can’t do anything about.”
“But that’s just it. I can do something. I stopped her, Finn.” I grabbed the back of the seat. “At the house. I used a chant, and she left.”
Finn shook his head and looked away. “Emma…”
“No, I’m serious. I’m more than capable of—”
“She left because of me,” he said, softly. “The sage, the chant… They’re just as useless as the Ouija board. None of it works.”
My vision blurred as my gaze drifted to the window. Cash was making his way through the row of cars, a Coke in each hand. The colored lights from the movie screen reflected off the shiny black leather on his jacket, making him shimmer like Finn.
It hadn’t worked. Oh my God…it hadn’t worked.
“Just calm down. Breathe,” Finn whispered into my ear.
I closed my eyes, took a breath, and nodded.
Finn stiffened, peering out the back window into the night. “Emma…” he started, never taking his eyes off of whatever he saw out the window. “Stay in the car.”
A gust of wind ruffled my hair and before I could say anything, Finn was gone. He was gone, and Maeve could be anywhere. I braced myself on the dashboard. My breaths were coming in too fast, making me dizzy. I fumbled with the glove compartment and popped it open. Cash used to keep a utility knife in here.
Cash swung open the door, and I crammed the napkins and papers back into the compartment and slammed it shut. I felt stupid for even looking. A knife wasn’t going to stop Maeve. And the sage, the chants…none of that had worked. I didn’t have anything to defend myself. I felt like I was bobbing in open water, waiting for a shark to finish me off.
Cash shoved a cup into my hand and nodded at the glove compartment. “What were you doing?”
I grabbed both drinks as he shivered and shook like a wet dog once he was in the safety of the truck.
“N-nothing. Just looking for a napkin.”
He grabbed his drink and looked me over. “You’re being weird tonight. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” I took a sip of the Coke, letting the caffeine race through my system and chase away the violent, unraveling feeling inside me. Peering into the night and not finding a trace of Finn, I couldn’t stop shaking. She was here. She was here and Finn was out there trying to stop her.
Cash set his popcorn on the seat between us and stared at me.
I couldn’t look at him. All I could think about was Finn. What had he seen out there? Where had he gone? What if he couldn’t stop her?
“Em…”
I shook my head, knowing that if I didn’t get out of that truck within the next ten seconds, I was going to lose it in front of him. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Be right back.”
Chapter 24
Finn Maeve. I may not have been able to see her, but I could feel the wintry chill trickling down my spine.
The whisper of nearness that another soul left across my skin. I made my way through the menagerie of cars, letting the soft pull in my veins guide me. To my right, I heard a shrill peal of laughter echo across the lot. I catapulted over a car, heading in the direction of the sound, then stopped. The chill faded and the pull tugged me in the opposite direction. I spun around, shaking my head, trying to clear it. To get some focus.
“Maeve!” I rounded another car and started across the lot. “I know you’re out there.” But the pull faded again, and then pulsed with life, tugging me in the opposite direction. What the hell? I rolled my shoulders and gritted my teeth. Get it together, Finn. I stopped, looking for anything—the hint of a red shimmer, a spark of silver—anything to tell me which way to turn. There were too many people here.
Too many ways for her to bait me. Realization hit me.
She’s trying to bait me.
I spun around, slid over the hood of a yellow Volkswagen. I had to get back to Emma-“Looking for someone?”
I froze at the sound of Maeve’s voice. She stood on the roof of an old pickup that once upon a time had probably been red. Now it was mottled with rust and made creaking sounds every time the kids inside moved.
“There are so many options here. So many ways to die, don’t you think?” She tapped her finger on her chin, calling attention to the black veins standing out on her throat. A dull silver color was strangling the lively red from her hair one strand at a time.
“Don’t do something stupid just to prove a point,” I said.
Maeve glared at me. Her black pupils ate up the green that had once been around them. “And what point is that? That I have wasted the past seventeen years of my existence for something that should have been mine in the first place? Well, no more waiting, Finn. I’m taking what’s mine tonight.”
What? Her words tumbled around inside my head before clicking into place. She didn’t want just anyone’s body, she wanted…Emma’s?
She twitched as the right side of her face morphed into a screaming shadow before returning to pale-colored skin again. She grabbed the sides of her face and an agonized scream exploded from her throat. She was about to turn. I slipped my scythe out of its holster and climbed onto the hood.
“You’re not taking anything.”
Maeve straightened her back and laughed, the shadow flickering over her features. Before I could blink, she leapt over me, what was left of her red shimmer blurring across the dead black sky. I spun around, looking up, down, left, right, until the stars in the sky blurred together. Where could she have gone? What was she-An ice-cold hand wrapped around my ankle and jerked me off the hood of the pickup. I landed on my back. Swirled into nothing resembling a man. I focused on pulling myself back together, and when I did, Maeve was standing over me, red hair blowing around her pale freckled face. Rage had consumed her to the point she was shaking. I glanced at her hand. It was wrapped around a blade. My blade. My scythe. It looked so awkward in her white fist. Mine felt so incredibly empty without it.
“Maeve…” I held my hand up and tried to ease up. “Don’t do—” She swung out. The blade sliced through my thigh, and all that existed was pain. I clutched at my thigh and groaned. Black oozed from between my fingers, glittering like stars in the night.
“Oh, does that hurt? Poor little reaper. Maybe you should have picked someone else’s life to ruin. I could be happy right now! I could be alive. I could be in love. I didn’t get the chance to have any of that my first life. And you made sure I’d never have it again. You call me a bad person, Finn? What about you? You walk around like there’s a halo on your goddamned head, but you’re just as bad as me and we both know it.”
“Her time was up!” I
shouted, panic and anger fighting for a place in my chest. I clutched my head to stop everything from spinning. “You could have had another chance!”
“Once my name was called, it was over for me, too. There was no second chance for me. There never is, but you didn’t stop to find that out before you ruined my life, did you? But now…now, I’m taking my chance. If I can get into her body, there is no way in hell I’ll let you take it from me again.”
I opened my mouth, but stopped, processing her words. Take it from her? Scout said a possession would only last a few hours. This didn’t make sense…unless she’d found a way to make it permanent.
No. She couldn’t have. I had to believe that. “That’s not even possible. Just…think about this. Think about—”
“I’m done thinking about it!” A shadow slithered over her face and she sobbed. The black veins in her neck pulsed with darkness. “Look what you did to me!”
She swung my scythe again and I grabbed her wrist. Twisted her until she landed on top of me. The blade clattered to the ground. She screamed and turned to a vapor in my grasp.
“Maeve!” I shouted, grabbing my scythe and shoving it into my holster. I vaulted to my feet, and my vision blurred out of focus. The anger was burning me up. Turning my insides to ash. “You want the truth?” I spun around and stumbled. “I don’t regret it. I’m not sorry. You didn’t deserve that body.
And there is no way in Hell I’d let you have it now!”
An engine started behind me and roared to life. I turned on my heel and squinted into the headlights that engulfed me. There wasn’t anyone inside. How…
The car leaped into action, accelerating, and I stumbled back. I barely had time to think. I focused on making myself solid, lunging for the young blond girl carrying a box of popcorn in the car’s path, but spilled right through her. I flexed my fingers and they scattered like stars. I couldn’t keep it together. Couldn’t touch her…
I took a deep breath and shouted, “Move!” She spun around in time to see the car and horror registered across her face. She stumbled back out of the way, falling into the gravel.