by Tara Fuller
He laughed and it suddenly felt like old times with Scout. When we’d sit in his garage and try to figure out a way to live like humans even though we were anything but. “Besides, it helps to pass the time in between my reaps. We don’t get as much action down here as you guys do up north.” When I didn’t respond, Scout set the engine part on the couch, and rested his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it held all of life’s answers. “I thought you hated me now,” he said more to the floor than to me.
“I don’t hate you. You just…” I stopped searching for the right thing to say. “You just screwed up, okay? You screwed up, and with Emma, I can’t afford those kinds of screwups.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to say I get it. I’m not even going to say it’s okay, because it’s not. But I’ll get over it.”
“She got hurt, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, she got hurt.”
We both froze when his uncle stumbled into the garage and climbed into his truck, cursing as his foot slipped out from under him twice before he could make it in.
“He still drinking?” I asked.
Scout nodded. “Stupid old drunk. I’m doing the community a favor keeping him off the streets.”
The old man cranked the ignition and when all that resulted was a clicking sound, he erupted. A stream of obscenities bounced off his tongue so fast you could barely keep track. Scout looked tired as he watched his uncle dig under the hood and come out looking white.
“You’re in here, aren’t you?” the old man called, his eyes searching the garage, but only finding a floating brigade of dust particles illuminated by the sunshine spilling in through the one window that wasn’t covered with plastic.
“Oh, I’m here all right,” Scout grumbled and kicked an empty can across the room.
The old man jumped back two feet with a gasp. The can hit the toe of his shoe. “Damn it, Scout!
Stop with these games! I’m getting too old for this crap. I can’t believe your mama hasn’t come to drag your ass back to the afterlife yet.” He continued to mutter to himself as he let himself back into the house then slammed the door, knocking an old can of nails off his workbench and onto the floor.
Scout picked up the engine part and tossed it into a pile of junk in the corner of the room.
“Wouldn’t he just shit a brick if he knew I was the one to drag her ass to the afterlife?”
“You took your own mother?” I said. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
“It’s not like I planned it. I was just covering for one of Heaven’s reapers that day and her hourglass ran out of sand.” He shrugged. “At least we got to say a proper good-bye that way. It wasn’t a big deal.”
I pressed my lips together into a hard line, trying not to torture myself with not knowing who had taken Mom and Pop. And Henry. It was too much to think about.
“Why did you stay?” I finally asked. It was the question I’d always wanted to ask him. The one I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer to.
“What do you mean?”
“After Balthazar hired you on. You requested this territory. Why in God’s name would you want to be in this place? Watching the people you knew die again and again.”
He smiled and looked out at a memory that I couldn’t see. A stream of sunlight spilled across the dusty space illuminating the pain beneath his smile. Pain that looked way too familiar for my liking.
“A girl, of course. Why the hell else would I stay here?”
“A girl? You put yourself through this kind of hell for a girl?” I asked, a little disbelief seeping out with my voice. Scout had never seemed like the romantic type.
He raised a brow. “Like you’re one to talk.”
“So what happened? Where is she now?”
He crossed the room and fiddled with something on his uncle’s workbench. If I knew Scout, he was just trying to hide his emotions from me. I let him.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Last time I checked in she was married, had two kids.” He glanced back at me and shrugged. “It has been twenty years, Finn.”
“Did she ever see you?”
“No. I didn’t want her to.” His voice turned gruff. “I stuck around for a few months after the funeral. To be honest I didn’t really know where else to go when I wasn’t rubbing elbows with the dead.” He chuckled, but it sounded bitter. “After I watched her cry herself to sleep every night for three months, listened to her talk to me in the dark while everyone else in the world was sleeping…I couldn’t take any more, so I left her alone.”
“She talked to you?”
He turned to face me. His eyes grim, years of pain finally being set free. “Of course she did. She could feel me. Even if they can’t see you, Finn…they know. They always know. Just like on some level, Emma knew way before you ever made a physical appearance.”
Scout took a step closer and knelt down in front of me.
“They can’t move on while we’re still around. You know that, right? Emma won’t ever move on as long as you’re there. Just like Sophie wouldn’t have if I hadn’t left when I did.” He finally plopped down onto the dusty concrete beneath us, looking whitewashed, exhausted. “Just because we’re stuck like this doesn’t mean they should be. They deserve more than that.”
“How did you let her go? How were you okay with her having a life with someone else?” I asked.
Scout rolled his eyes as he wrote a message to his uncle in the dust with his fingertip. I’m watching you. “You think I’m okay with it? No, man. I’m not okay with it. Watching her chase after kids that are half him, half her. Seeing her curl up next to him in bed at night, watching him touch her in all of the places that only I used to know.” He ground his teeth together and closed his eyes. “No…I’m not okay with it.”
He opened them again and sat back on his elbows, nodding to the message in the sand. “But I keep busy. And she loves him. Knowing that she was able to love somebody again, that she found some kind of happiness. Knowing I was strong enough to give that to her. It makes it easier.”
I stared at my empty hands. Hands that had held Emma a little more than forty-eight hours ago without feeling her. Hands that would never hold her again once this was finished. This had to work.
Because I was done torturing her. I was done torturing us both. Scout was right. She deserved more than me. More than I could give her.
The inside of my chest fractured, tore, and ached. Now that I’d come to terms with the decision, I felt hollow. For twenty-seven years, she had consumed every thought. My heart. My soul. She was my purpose. And now…who the hell was I supposed to be if I wasn’t this? Was there even anything left inside me if I wasn’t loving her? In that moment, it didn’t feel like it.
Scout cocked his head to the side, watching me. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“But you said—” He didn’t let me finish, making an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Screw what I said. I am the most miserable creature in existence. Emma’s different and we both know it.”
She was. And staring into Scout’s empty eyes, I saw my future. He was strong, cut from steel…and facing an eternity of loneliness. Scout was giving me an out that I would’ve taken forty-eight hours ago, but I refused to do this to her anymore. I was going to take care of Maeve once and for all, and then I’d do what Easton and Anaya had always wanted me to do.
Walk away.
“I think,” I said slowly. “If you can find time to stop screwing around with the living, you can help me.”
He sat up, smiling, and rubbed his hands together. “You need my incredibly talented and genius-like mind, of course. Where do we start?”
I blinked. “That easy?”
“Well, I do sort of owe you. What are we doing?”
“We need to find a way to get rid of Maeve. And I mean for good.”
Emotions unfolded across his face. Shock dissolved into contemplation. “You mean—”
“Gone. Whatever that means. I couldn’t care less. But preferably Hell if we can get Easton on board. I don’t know, though. We’re not on the best terms right now.”
Scout stood up and started pacing, the wheels in his head that had already achieved the impossible beginning to spin. “Don’t worry about Easton.”
I nodded, glad I didn’t have to ask.
“It’s possible. I’ve thought about it before, but it would mean going to extremes, and unless you could get her right where you wanted her, it would never work,” he explained, setting me up for disappointment, if I had to guess. There was no way Maeve would ever trust either of us enough to get her to play along.
“How?”
Scout leaned against the door and looked me over, then shrugged as if it were obvious. “We have to kill her.”
I rolled my eyes. “She’s already dead, boy genius.”
“Not when she’s in a host body, she’s not.”
Disbelief rippled through me as each of his words sunk in. He was right. But that also meant-“But you’d have to kill the host for that to work, and even then, there’s no way to guarantee she wouldn’t get away.”
“Not if there were a soul there to guide the original one back into its body and another to take her to Hell,” he countered with a smile. “And I’m guessing with all of the nasty tricks Maeve’s been up to, Easton would be the one sent to collect. We’d just be speeding the process up a bit.”
He had no idea just how willing Easton would be to take Maeve out of this picture. Because if Maeve was no longer a threat, there would be no reason for me to be with Emma anymore. And as much as it hurt, I was finally ready to make that compromise.
Hope surged through me. God, this could happen. This could actually work. And he was right. With everything Maeve had done, she’d sealed her fate. There would be no white light waiting for her when she exited the body. No Inbetween, no Heaven. The only thing waiting for her was a one-way ticket to Hell and Easton’s smiling face to take her there. And when he came for someone, he never left empty-handed.
Scout interrupted my thoughts. “It would take two of us for sure.”
“Us?”
“I’m bored as hell. You don’t think I’d let you go it alone, do you? Besides, you need me.” He went to dig in the junk pile, retrieving the unknown car part, then put it back where it belonged under the hood.
“Finn.”
We both looked up at the sound of Easton’s voice. I gritted my teeth. “I haven’t been out long enough to screw up.”
Scout punched me in the arm. “Way to piss off the missing piece to our puzzle.”
Easton ignored Scout. “That’s not what this is about.”
I studied the panicked look in his violet eyes and shot up. “What’s happened?”
“It’s…it’s Emma.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You followed her?”
He groaned and shoved his scythe in its holster. “Fine. Yes. I watched her and Cash sit in her room like awkward little kids while you were in Hell. I’m not as big of an asshole as you think.”
I raised a brow.
“Something bad’s going to happen,” he said. “I just came from there. It’s Maeve. She’s there, and there’s no talking her down this time.”
I didn’t need to hear anymore. Fear pierced my chest. Throbbed in my ribs. I looked at Easton and he nodded. In a flash I was gone.
Chapter 35
Emma Two days.
It had been two whole days since Finn had kissed the breath out of me and started to tell me he loved me. That kiss…that moment…it had been earth-shattering. Reckless. Perfect. How could he stay away that long after what happened between us?
I pulled the milk out of the fridge and set it on the counter next to the flour, sugar, and bag of chocolate chips. After crossing that line, feeling him touch me, he was all I could think about. All I could dream about. Without him…I felt like I was in the dark. Like I couldn’t see what was coming, and I hated it. What if something happened to him? He’d touched me and he wasn’t supposed to. What did they do to souls who broke the rules?
I stared at the ingredients in front of me, not really seeing them. Seeing Finn’s face instead. Why did I let him touch me? Why did I touch him back? If he was okay, he would have come back by now.
My mind wouldn’t stop. It was out of control, thinking about what could have happened to Finn, not to mention the fact that a soul could even possess a body like that. Could Maeve do it, too?
I grabbed the phone off of the wall and called Cash, needing to hear someone’s voice. Needing to not be alone right now. If I was alone, my thoughts were going to eat me alive.
It rang and rang. When it went to voice mail I hung up. Crap. He was probably still freaked out about our “kiss.” I slid down the kitchen wall, careful not to mess with my stitches, and buried my face in my hands, trying to make sense of the screwed-up mess that my life had become. It felt like a tangled, silver web I couldn’t escape, and the fact that Maeve was still out there was the spider coming to finish me off.
“Emma, I’m home!”
I jerked, startled, when Mom stumbled into the kitchen laughing, Parker on her heels. A gust of cold air swirled into the house, stirring the edge of Mom’s red dress, as he closed the front door shut behind him.
“Hey. You’re home early.” It was only eight, far earlier than they typically came home, but I wasn’t complaining. At least I wouldn’t be alone. I hopped up, wincing when I tweaked the stitches in my neck and leg a bit too far, and headed for the refrigerator. “Did you guys get a chance to eat? I can make something if you want.”
“We had dinner,” Mom practically purred. She grabbed Parker’s shirt and hauled him closer, kissing him like she wanted to taste his tonsils, then broke away and ran her fingers through his hair.
“I think we’re more interested in dessert.”
My mouth fell open. “Mom, gross!”
Parker held her at arm’s length, his eyes wide. “Okay, sweetheart. I think you had a little too much wine.” He smoothed a hand down her arm and gave me an apologetic smile. “Looks like I should have cut her off earlier.”
You think? I wanted to ask, but I forced myself to focus on the ingredients on the counter. Milk, flour, sugar, chocolate chips. For the first time, I wasn’t sure baking would occupy my mind enough to calm down.
“How are you doing, by the way?” Parker continued. “I want you to know we’re not going to stop until we catch that guy. Everyone in the department is putting in their time on this one. We’ll catch him soon, Emma. I promise.”
Mom snorted and muttered something under her breath, and both Parker and I frowned. I’d seen Mom tipsy before, but never rude like this. Parker helped Mom slide onto a barstool and kept his hand on her shoulder to keep her from tumbling off the side. She leaned into his chest and nuzzled into his neck, breathing deeply.
“Um,” I began, not quite sure what to say. “I was going to bed anyway, so you two have fun.”
Abandoning my cookie ingredients, I fled to my room. Watching Mom date was one thing. Seeing her shove her tongue down some guy’s throat was another. I’d never even seen her act like that with Dad.
Not in front of me anyway, thank God.
I heard the static and hiss of radio followed by a dispatcher’s voice out in the living room. A few seconds later, Parker said something about having to leave for work. I sagged against the door in relief. At least I wouldn’t have to hear their fun through the wall.
Safe in the confines of my room, I crawled into bed and buried my nose in the bedspread. I breathed in the last of Finn’s scent as if I could hold it in me forever. “Please come back,” I whispered into the blankets.
Mom opened my door, a lazy smile spread across her face. I peeled myself away from my memories of Finn and sat up, knowing I was probably going to be forced to listen to her gush over Parker. Her arm slid up the doorframe and she sagged against the doorway, sighing.
“I almost forgot what that was like.”
I rolled my eyes. “I really don’t want to hear this.”
She stepped in and shut the door behind her, then pressed her back against it. “You know, I almost bailed on my plans for you so I could take that man to bed. He was delicious.”
“Mom…” I carefully slid off the bed, my stomach twisting into uncomfortable knots. I wished she’d just pass out already and stop acting like a lovesick college girl. “Maybe you should go to bed.
Come on. I’ll help you.”
She threw back her head and laughed, dancing past me. “Oh, Emma. This is going to be more fun than I thought.”
She twirled some kind of tool in her hand. Just the sight of her holding a simple screwdriver was cause for concern. Mom plus tools equaled broken things; lots and lots of broken things.
“What are you doing?”
One by one, she jammed the screwdriver into the screws beside the lock on my window and twisted until they were half way up, then wacked the screws to bend them over. “There. I don’t think you’ll be unlocking that window any time soon.”
I gaped at her. “Have you lost your mind? Mom, seriously, I think you’ve had too much to drink.”
Mom sauntered back to the door and tossed the screwdriver across the room. “What a sad, sorry excuse for a girl you are,” she said. “You should be thanking me for putting you out of your misery.
Pining away for a boy you can’t have, not willing to trust anyone but your best friend and mother.
Really, I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried.” She gave me a wicked grin. “Time to hand over that body, Emma.”
The fear that been building in my chest exploded and I stumbled back, catching myself on the edge of my bed. My stitched leg slammed into my mattress. Her eyes. Tonight, they were hazel green with flecks of gold. Nothing like the jewel-tone blue eyes that had watched me grow up for the past seventeen years. She’d done what Finn had done to Cash. Maeve was in there, and Mom… Oh my God. “What did you do to her?”