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“Not him,” I whispered. “Just…not him.”

Emma pressed her lips together, wrapping her arms around her chest, and started to back away from me.

“Em, wait…”

“No, you don’t get to say sorry,” she said. “And if you’re more interested in being pissed at me than finding a way out of all of this, then be my guest. I’m done.”

She grabbed her bag from the floor and dug out a Tupperware container. Her fingers shook as she shoved it into my hands and backed away.

“You look like you haven’t been eating,” she whispered. “Just…you need to eat something.”

I stood still as stone, watching her disappear through the swinging metal cafeteria doors. I probably could have stopped her if I wanted. It wouldn’t have taken much with Emma. She was too good. Too forgiving and kind and…well, she was all of the things that I wasn’t. I glanced down at the container in my hands filled with some kind of homemade granola bars. The note attached to the top said, “Don’t worry, there’s chocolate in them, too!” I stared at Em’s trademark smiley face that she’d been leaving on her notes to me since the sixth grade, and my heart thudded almost painfully in my chest. I…was an asshole.

Damn it! Why did I have to run my mouth like that and make her cry?

I shoved the container in my bag, hiked it up over my shoulder, and shut my eyes against the fluorescent school lights. Against the regret swirling around in my head. When I opened them again, I spun around and slammed my fist into the set of blue lockers that lined the wall. I expected pain to explode in my hand, but…it didn’t. I didn’t feel anything. Blood began to trickle down my split knuckles and I turned my hand over to inspect it. What the hell? Finally, I gave up trying to figure it out. I wiped the blood on my jeans and headed for the only place I could think of to find some kind of answers.

I hadn’t been in a library since like ninth grade when I got detention for drawing big-boobed cartoon women in the backs of the entire R.L. Stine
Goosebumps
collection.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Chapter 4

Anaya

“I know you’re there.” Finn tied the laces on his tennis shoes, and a half grin carved a dimple into his cheek. “No use in hiding.”

He stood up as I stepped into sight, allowing him to see me. I hesitated a moment, not really knowing what to think of this new Finn. Gone were the plain jeans and gray T-shirt I’d seen him wear for at least the last ten years. Now he wore a pair of black running shorts and a sleeveless blue shirt. He looked ridiculously human. Placing my hands on my hips, I surveyed the sparse living room that Finn now called home. There weren’t any pictures hanging from the walls like I’d seen in most humans’ homes, just a picture of Emma on his nightstand. Then again, Finn hadn’t really been around long enough yet to capture any memories in frames. What he did have was life, pure and fragile, coursing through his veins, fueling his heart. It was evident in the golden glow of his skin and his flushed cheeks. The vibrant light in his eyes that I’d never seen in over seventy years of knowing him. I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. “How did you know? Aren’t you supposed to be human now?”

Finn chuckled and raked a hand through his hair. It was lighter now, a little longer. He linked his fingers and stretched his arms behind his back. “Guess I got to keep a few tricks. I must be lucky.”

“That or I’m losing my touch,” I grumbled, following him as he made his way out the front door and into the early morning sunlight. Dew coated the grass and the light breeze smelled fresh, like rain. I’d always loved mornings. How quiet and at peace the world the seemed. Finn took off at a jog and I picked up speed to stay in step with him.

“Wow,” I breathed. “You really have gone all human on me. You even jog now.”

Finn snorted and cut down a wooded path. The soles of his shoes pounded out a rhythm on the dirt trail, but I didn’t leave a single print. “I’m not trying to fit some kind of mold here, Anaya. It just helps.”

“With what?”

“He gave me a new body,” he said. A bead of sweat glistened on his forehead and his brows pinched together. “He didn’t give me a new mind. You don’t forget. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve seen…”

Finn pressed his lips together and his feet pounded against the trail a little harder, picking up speed. “I don’t want to remember. This helps.”

“Are you happy?”

Finn skidded to a stop in the middle of the trail and bent over, bracing his palms on his knees to catch his breath. My hand absently clutched my chest, wanting the burn that he was feeling. “Why did you do it, Anaya? Why didn’t you take him? I’ve tried again and again to wrap my mind around it…and I can’t. I can’t come up with one good reason why you’d deny him an afterlife.”

I lifted my chin, not knowing what else to do. I couldn’t show weakness when I was guarding Balthazar’s secret. Not to him. Not to anyone. There was too much at stake for me here, whether I agreed with what I was doing or not. Balthazar would turn my dreams to vapor in the space of one of Finn’s fragile heartbeats if things didn’t go his way. If I’d learned anything in my thousand years in the service of the second in command to the Almighty, it was this. “You did it to Emma.”

Finn’s head snapped up and his eyes flared with anger. “That was different. You don’t even know Cash. What you did goes against everything we’ve ever learned. How the hell did you even get away with it?”

I hesitated, not knowing how much to reveal. Finn was a human now. Would Balthazar care if he knew? A gust of wind rustled the budding canopy of branches above us, bringing with it a burst of resolve.

“I did as I was told,” I said, feigning more confidence than I felt. “Maybe you’ve already forgotten, but that’s what we do, Finn. They command. We deliver.”

Finn leaned forward, curling his fingers around his knees, and narrowed his gaze on me. “That’s just it, though. You didn’t deliver this time.”

I raised a brow and ran my fingers over my blade out of habit. “Who said I’m finished with him?”

“He’s expired, isn’t he? That’s why the shadow demons are making his life hell,” Finn said, realization lighting his emerald eyes. “He’s so close they can smell it on him. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”

Hating the way Finn’s accusing glare made me feel, I turned away, listening to the world wake up around us. Birds chirped. In the distance the steady hum of the highway leaked through the trees. Shadows pooled in the corners of the forest, but a glow of sunshine lit the space where I stood. “This really isn’t your business anymore, you know.”

“He’s hurting. Hell, he’s more than hurting. The kid is losing it. He’s deteriorating, slowly and painfully, a little more every day.” He sighed and came to stand beside me. “The Anaya I knew never would have aided in something like this, let alone sit back and watch it happen. Do you have any idea what will happen to him when that body gives out? What those shadows will do to him after all of the pointless suffering?”

“Nothing!” Something inside of me snapped at the image of Cash ending up in the bellies of those creatures. “Nothing will happen to him, because I will be there. I’m going to take care of him. I have orders from Balthazar, Finn. Don’t question matters you know nothing about.”

His jaw tensed. “You know what I think? I think
you
don’t even know what Balthazar is up to. I think he’s got his claws in you so deep, you’re not even bothering to try to get away.”

I shook my head and my braids scattered over my shoulder blades, hopefully hiding how violently I was shaking. With guilt. And fear. And a thousand other emotions I had no right to feel. “He wouldn’t be doing this unless he had a good reason.” I had to believe that. I had to because this human was starting to make me feel things no human should. I closed my eyes, trying to find peace in the warmth that ran through me, but all I found was guilt.

Finn folded his arms over his chest, and something about his silence drew my gaze to his.

“Fix this, Anaya,” he pleaded. “I know what I’m asking of you. I know it seems impossible to give, but I have to try. I have to try because I put my happiness before so many others, and he’s on that list. It’s too late to make it up to the rest of them, but I have to believe I can make it up to him. He didn’t deserve what I did to him. Taking his body, using him to be with Emma…it was inexcusable, and I regret it every day. If I hadn’t crossed the line, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”

“Finn—”

“Let me finish.” He held his hand up. “I don’t know what Balthazar has on you, what he’s promising you, but you need to ask yourself something. Is it worth it? Is it worth losing the very things that make you worthy of that light you carry around inside of you?”

I slipped my arms around my waist and tried to calm the hollow throb of shame staining my insides. Finn was right. Balthazar may be pulling the strings here, but I made a choice. I made a choice to put my happiness before this human’s.

“He’s confused,” Finn continued. “If nothing else, he deserves some honesty. He deserves to know what’s going to happen at the end of this.”

I nodded and Finn’s hand ghosted through my fingers. “I kept so many things from Emma. I did so many things the wrong way. Don’t make my mistakes, Anaya. Trust me when I say they will haunt you for an eternity.”

With that, Finn turned and jogged away. I didn’t follow. Instead, I closed my eyes and searched for that pull to Cash. Maybe I couldn’t stop Balthazar or the things he’d already put into motion, but Finn was right. Cash deserved answers. What he didn’t deserve was blind fear, eating away the last of his moments on this earth. Maybe Balthazar would have had a problem with me spilling what I knew to an ordinary human, but Cash was something else. If he were ordinary, Balthazar wouldn’t want him. I thought about his expired body, his soul inside, pulsing to be set free. No human should have survived more than a couple of days like that, yet Cash was still alive.

No. He was no ordinary human. If he were, he’d be dead.

Chapter 5

Cash

The library was too quiet. I needed noise. Distraction. I felt like a walking target without either. Not that I was naive enough to think I could hide from the little bastards, but I didn’t want to make it easy for them, either. Me being in the same place twice in a matter of two days made me feel way too obvious. I kept my head down, ducking from book stack to book stack. The musty smell of pages that hadn’t been turned in a decade made my throat itch.

I stopped in the art section, just for a minute, and ran my fingers over the spines of a few of the colorful books collecting dust. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a stack of Jackson Pollock prints and pretend my world wasn’t falling to pieces around me. In the end, my need for answers won out. I didn’t even pluck one from the shelf. Instead I slipped down a slim, dark aisle that contained big, dusty, underused books on mythology, religion, and the supernatural. The people of Lone Pine obviously didn’t get much use out of this section. I could have grilled Finn some more, but honestly that idea sounded about as appealing as putting out a lit cigarette on my arm.

I grabbed a few books, leaving behind the ones I’d read the day before, let my backpack slip off of my shoulder, and sat in the floor. I didn’t know what I was looking for yesterday, and still didn’t. A handbook for how to deal with cheating death? A spell to ward off demons? It sounded so freaking stupid when I put the thoughts together like that, but I couldn’t sit around doing nothing, waiting for some dead guy to show up who
might
have answers.

I zipped my coat up to fight off the chill consuming me, despite the fact that it was at least eighty degrees in this sweatbox of books, flipped through the two mythology books, and found nothing. Nothing real that applied to me, anyway. Then again, who was I to say what was real? Nothing
felt
real anymore. For all I knew, Zeus himself could have been laughing down at me right now, a vampire at his side as they plotted the zombie apocalypse.

I squinted into the last book and found a section on demons. A few sketches. A couple of eyewitness experiences. I froze and ran my finger over one of the drawings. It was one of them. A shadow demon.

Shadow demons are often associated with poltergeists. Not considered to be ghosts, these demons are generally described as black, shapeless, shadowlike entities that appear quickly out of the corner of your eye. Some people have reported the appearances of shadows like these hovering next to their bed while they sleep. These particular demons tend to feed off of emotions. Fear. Depression. Anger. They—

I rubbed my eyes and blinked when the letters started to melt together. They what? I looked down at the page again and the words blurred out of focus.

“Damn it.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting off the headache creeping up on me. A cold prickling pain spread across the inside of my chest, my skull, the walls of my throat. What was wrong with me? I leaned my head against the stack of books behind me and stared up through the towering shelves. One of the skylights was just an aisle over, so you could see the dust motes twirling through some of the stray rays of sunshine that made it over into my section. If only those rays would bring a little warmth my way. I was starting to wonder what it was going to take for me to shake this chill.

My phone started to buzz in my pocket and I flinched. I looked at the screen and sighed. Shit.

“Hey, Dad,” I said.

“Hey, Dad?” he seethed. “Where the hell are you? I know you’re not in class. Your principal just called me. Again.”

I let the back of my head thump against the shelf of books behind me. “I’m…at the library.”

“Don’t lie to me, Cash.”

“I’m not lying,” I said. “I really am at the library.”

“I don’t care if you’re in church talking to the pope. You are supposed to be in class.” Something slammed down against his desk on the other end and I flinched. “Richard’s son got accepted to Harvard today.
Harvard.
And what is my son doing? Acting like a lunatic. Skipping school. Pissing away
every
opportunity to have a successful life that I give him.”

My jaw clenched until my teeth hurt. “Maybe you should adopt Richard’s son, then. You guys could swap since I’m so disappointing.”

Dad’s chair squeaked and he sighed. I could picture him leaned back in his leather chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he couldn’t endure another second of listening to me. “Trust me, Richard wouldn’t put up with your shit like I do. You’d be in a military academy by Monday. Hell, maybe that’s what I should have done a long time ago. Maybe I’m the failure here.”

“Look, Dad—”

“No, you look,” he said. “We had a deal. You broke it. I’m calling Dr. Farber.”

I sat up. “The shrink?”

“Don’t start with me. You’re going.”

“But Dad—”

“Get to class.”

I opened my mouth, but he hung up on me before I could get the words out. I stared at my phone for a minute, boiling, anger turning all of those cold prickles of pain into flames. I did not need this shit right now. I didn’t need him telling me what a disappointment I was. He didn’t care if I had a good life—he wanted a trophy, another damn accomplishment to hang on his wall. But if I did happen to make anything out of my life, I’d be damned if he got credit for it. I didn’t need his approval any more than I needed him. What I needed was someone who could actually help me get my life back.

“Damn it!” I threw my phone across the aisle. I wanted to hit something. I wanted something to hurt as badly as I did. Where was the numbness when I needed it? I balled up all of the anger and hurt inside and tried to force it out of my body on an exhale. It didn’t work. Why did I think it would? Nothing worked out anymore.

I shivered under my coat as goose bumps rose along the back of my neck, unable to shake the feeling that someone was here. Watching me. An almost painful current spread through my fingers, the strange buzz throbbing in each fingertip, and I flexed my hand trying to get it out.

I sat up, heart pounding, searching for shadows and not finding any. My eyes caught the flicker of a gray coat disappearing around the end of the book stack and I jumped up, clutching the book in my hand.

“Hello?” I made my way down the aisle, listening. It was him. The kid I’d seen in the hall that day. It had to be. He’d seen the shadows. Hell, he hadn’t just seen them, he’d seemed…
amused
by them. These books didn’t have the answers I wanted. He did. “Come on man, I just want to talk.”

No answer. When I got to the end of the aisle, I stopped and looked around, completely alone. Was I seeing things? Was this even real? I knew my insides were broken, failing a little more each and every day. I could feel it, the echo of death, tainting every breath of oxygen I took. What I didn’t want to accept was that my mind might be going, too. I pressed the cool cover of the book in my hand against my forehead and cursed.

“You’re not going to find any answers in those,” a girl’s voice split the silence. “And last time I checked, you had to open them to read the words inside.”

“Maybe I’m trying to read by osmosis,” I replied, dropping
the book to my side. I turned around, expecting to see a fellow student giving me crap, but froze when my gaze fell on the unfamiliar girl in front of me.

“Hi,” she said. She leaned with her back against the stacks, holding my cell phone, just a few feet away. Her gold eyes glinted as they looked at me. She looked like a shined-up pearl next to the dusty old books.

Finally, she tossed my cell phone to me and I dropped the book to catch it with both hands. I had to let the words roam around in my mouth for a minute before I could get them out.

“Do I know you?”

“Sort of.” She shrugged. “I know you.”

I squinted at the pretty, unfamiliar girl in front of me. Long brown braids tumbled over her shoulders, and her skin looked like honey against the bright-white straps of her dress. The laces of her gold sandals wrapped around her calves. Though I wasn’t sure if you could call her sandals gold. Not next to those eyes. Those eyes were a color all their own. They didn’t even look real. Neither did the faint glow that bathed her from head to toe.

A warm sensation swept over me and a shiver exploded across my skin. I looked around, but there weren’t any shadows. Hadn’t been for a while.

My heart stuttered in my chest before seeming to stop all together. It was…her. Her eyes. Those were the same eyes I’d seen at the fire. And that same warmth that settled over me like a blanket of safety any time
she
came around. It had to be her. Normal girls didn’t look like that.

“It’s you.” It was stupid, but I didn’t really know what else to say. Seriously, how often do you meet a dead girl?

“‘You’ works,” she said. “But you could also call me Anaya if you want to.” She sat down against the stack, motioning for me to do the same, and wrapped her arms around her legs. She rested her chin on her knees and looked me over.

“Anaya?” The memory came flooding back. Finn had mentioned an Anaya. Hesitantly, I crossed over to where my bag sat on the floor and sank down across from her.

“What…what are you?” I stopped and inhaled as big a breath as my lungs could hold. They ached and protested before forcing me to cough it all back up.

She cocked her head to the side, studying me, as if she were trying to decide what to say. “I’m a reaper,” she finally admitted. “You should be familiar with that term by now.”

I swallowed, pressing back until the shelf dug into my back. “Like Finn.”

She simply nodded, so eerily calm, it made my skin crawl. How could she be so calm? I felt like my brain was about to explode, questions filling up my head so fast they pressed against my skull. “Are you here to take me?”

Anaya stood up, but she wouldn’t look at me. Instead she focused those amazing starlit eyes on the floor. “No. Not yet.”

“Yet? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She said it like there would be a later.

“I’m here to watch over you, Cash,” she said, exasperated. “No need to look at me like I’m some kind of villain. I think we both know there are things much worse than me out there to fear.”

“You mean them.” I pushed myself up to stand, nodding to the book. “The shadow demons?”

Anaya raised a brow and walked a circle around the books I’d discarded on the floor. “Maybe those books had some answers after all.”

“I had to look somewhere. It’s not like anybody else will give me answers.” I tried to concentrate on breathing. It was hard not to feel dizzy in the presence of her warmth. It made part of me long for her to come closer. The other, more sane, part of me screamed for her to stay the hell away. “Why are these things following me? What do they want?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but I imagine it has something to do with the fact that you’re in an expired body,” she said.

“Expired?”

“You’re not dead, but you’re not exactly alive right now, either. You’re balancing on this tightrope between life and death, a side effect of putting you back in your body at the fire. These shadows are attracted to the scent of death and the emotions that accompany it. The closer you get to death, the more appealing you seem. It’s the only reason I can come up with. I’ve never seen them go after one of the living this way.”

Thoughts spun around in my head fast enough to make me dizzy, or maybe that was just the fact that I was breathing too fast. I grabbed the shelf beside me for support and felt my brows pull together. “Wait a second…what do you mean
the closer I get to death
?”

At that moment the pain in my chest spread and burned through me. I pushed against the spot with my fingers. No. That was from the fire. Right? I just needed my inhaler.

A sad look passed over Anaya’s face as she watched me collapse on the inside. “You’re dying, Cash. Can’t you feel it?”

My fingers hovered over my heart, feeling it pound against my ribs with fear. She was lying. She had to be. I mean, yeah, I knew I was fucked up, but
dying
? I wasn’t even eighteen yet. I hadn’t even graduated. I couldn’t be dying. I retreated until my back slammed into the stacks, knocking a few books onto the floor.

“You’re lying,” I whispered, wishing it were true.

“I’m not.” She took a step closer. “I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

I forced my gaze to meet hers and swallowed. God, she was pretty. I should have realized that somebody that pretty was dangerous. She was like a freaking walking Venus flytrap. “Why? Why am I dying now? They released me from the hospital. I could go back—”

“It won’t matter.” She cut me off. “You were meant to die in that fire,” she admitted. “You were on my list. I was supposed to take you and I didn’t. I let you stay.”

“What do you mean you let me stay?” I asked. “Like you saved me?”

Anaya laughed, bitterly, and pushed herself away from the book stack. “Saving you would have been taking you to Heaven where you belonged. No, Cash. I didn’t save you. I think we both know that.”

I barked out a laugh. “Heaven? Me? Now I know you’re full of shit.”

Anaya tossed a tired expression my way and stepped into a dusty stripe of sunlight. If it was possible, she looked even more beautiful. Wait…beautiful? I shook my head, hoping the thought would bounce right out of my ears. She was Death. A walking nightmare. No way did that word belong anywhere near this girl.

“The second I pushed you back into that body, it began to expire,” she said. “It won’t last. It
will
deteriorate. This is just a waiting game now.”

Deteriorating? As much as I wanted to deny it, I knew it was true, because it’s exactly how I felt inside. I was dying. Fuck. I didn’t want to die. Not yet. I wanted to go to art school. I wanted to get away from my dad and prove him wrong. And Em… Damn it, I couldn’t leave Em.

Her molten eyes slipped over me, filled with something dark. Guilt, maybe? Pity? Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. She finally straightened her back and looked away. “I’m sorry.”