“Point taken,” I said to the sky, then looked back to Justin.
His pain was too familiar. I didn’t like it. It was almost as if it were leaking out of him and crawling across the beach to find a way into me.
“Tell her now,” I finally said. “You won’t get another chance. So do it now.”
I’d at least give the kid that. It wasn’t much, but maybe it would give him some peace. Peace wasn’t really in my job description, so I wasn’t sure if I was doing him a favor or hurting him more.
He didn’t look back at me. Just nodded and started to reach out to touch her but stopped, close enough for a breeze to hum between his fingertips and her hair. “I’m sorry, Brenna,” he said. “I’m sorry I never told you I liked you when we were kids. I’m sorry I never told you I loved you when we were more than kids.”
He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders tense, his back all shuddering bones and ashen skin.
“I’m sorry I invited Brett to come tonight. That was stupid. If I hadn’t invited him, maybe I would have been brave enough to kiss you. I wouldn’t have been able to stop kissing you. I wouldn’t have gone into the water. You wouldn’t be sitting here looking at me like I’m something that’s going to give you nightmares for the rest of your life.”
I stared into the clear, warm night, listening to the words bleed from his lips. Trying to shake how uncomfortable they made me feel. I might have told Allison how I felt in our very last moment together, but it didn’t do any good. Now she was another girl. Another girl who didn’t remember me.
She didn’t know how I felt. She was never going to know.
Whether I liked it or not, Justin’s words had started something inside me. The steady sting of longing burned its way through me like a fuse. Before I could stop it, the pain inside me exploded to life. I’d never get to tell Emma these things. And I wanted to. I didn’t realize until this moment how badly I wanted to tell her I was sorry. Sorry for choosing this life for her when she could have had something so much better. She could’ve had what she always deserved—Heaven. Somewhere in the distance, sirens started to wail. Brenna cried harder until she gave in and lay across Justin’s cold chest.
“Please don’t be gone,” she cried. “Not yet.”
Justin made a choked sound and I closed my eyes as if I could block it all out. A few shadows slithered up from the rocks, drawn in by the scent of desperation and death. I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his arm to pull him up.
“Time to go.”
His eyes turned into burning blue orbs. His hands shook in front of him. “Where?” He looked back at Brenna again. “Where are you taking me?”
God I hated this part. There was no explanation that would make him feel better. Not one that didn’t include a lie. One by one, faces flashed behind my closed lids. Faces with black holes for eyes, and darkness flowing through their veins where blood used to be. Allison’s face, dark and desperate, was the last one to appear. It lingered for an unbearable moment before I blinked it away.
That wouldn’t happen to this kid. He’d move on. He’d be saved for something better. Once I swallowed the lie, I took him by the arm and stepped into the twilight that swirled in front of us. I needed to get this over with. This kid, his words, they started fires inside me I didn’t know how to put out.
I was so damn tired of burning.
“Hey man,” he said, panicked. “You didn’t answer me. Where are we going? Heaven? Hell?”
I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “Somewhere in between.”
Chapter 9
Emma I barreled into my bedroom and pulled the plastic shopping bag out of my jacket. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. My head wouldn’t stop spinning. He’d disappeared. Vanished like smoke swept away by a gust of wind. What did that mean? What the hell was he?
Besides a guy who had saved my life twice now.
This couldn’t wait another minute. Whatever—whoever? —was doing this was going to ruin my life. I refused to let it.
I tore into the bag and slid the purple and black Ouija board box out onto my bed, then paused to smooth the blanket around it. Like it mattered. If anybody found out I was doing this, I’d have a whole new bed to worry about at Brookhaven, complete with a roommate on so many downers she looked asleep even when she awake.
My cell phone rang and I jumped. I squeezed my hand into a fist to stop the shaking before I answered it.
“Where the hell did you go?” Cash slurred on the other line.
“I…I came home,” I said. “I parked the Bronco in your driveway. Sorry I took off.”
“I don’t care about the Bronco. Are you okay?” he asked. A girl laughed in the background and he shushed her. “You don’t sound okay.”
“I’m fine.” I tried not to look at the board in front of me. “I just don’t feel good.”
“I’m coming over.” He pulled away sounding muffled. “Hey Tinley, I need to go home.”
“No!” I gripped the phone tighter. “Don’t. Mom’s home, and she’s still up. I’ll just see you tomorrow.”
He grunted something I couldn’t hear, then finally said, “Fine. But call me tomorrow.”
“Hey,” I said before he could hang up. “Don’t drive home, okay?”
Cash laughed. “Yes, Mother.”
I pressed the end button and dropped the phone.
I could do this. I had to do this. Nervous energy coursed though me. Consuming me. I ripped the lid off the box and set the board on my bed. It didn’t look like anything to be afraid of. It was just a board.
I touched the letters and sat the pointer gingerly on top.
Chapter 10
Finn I pressed my palms against the brick wall outside Emma’s room and tried to muster up the courage to do what I’d decided to do back on the beach. If only a wall was all that separated us. Sometimes it felt more like an ocean of lava. Especially when there were things inside me, ripping me apart, needing to be let free. And damn it, I wanted to let it all free. I wanted to walk in there and tell her things that had been locked up in me for the last two years.
I leaned my forehead against the brick. No. I couldn’t think like that. Thoughts like that were going to get me in trouble. Again.
The energy of another reaper sparked against my skin. I spun around. Along the side of the house, a glow sliced through the shadows. Anaya. A streak of moonlight caught her hair and tangled with her braids, making them shine.
I half expected her to blow around the house with the force of an atom bomb, ready to rip into me for being here. But she didn’t. She wasn’t even watching me. She was watching…Cash.
He waved to the car that had just dropped him off and stumbled around the house, tripping through the shadows. Anaya’s eyes followed him, almost longingly, until he climbed through his bedroom window and closed the blinds.
I stepped out of the shadows. “Anaya?”
She jerked her gaze from Cash’s window and blinked, as if she was waking up from a dream.
“What?”
“Everything okay?” I asked hesitantly, watching the way her eyes flitted to Cash’s house again.
“Y-yes.” She sounded flustered. “Why wouldn’t it be? I was just…”
I waited, hoping with everything in me that I was wrong about what I’d just seen.
She scowled at me. “Don’t give me that look, Finn. You’re the one lurking around the human girl’s house in the middle of the night.”