Inbetween (Kissed by Death, #1) (12 page)

Chapter 15

Finn

“He’s doing this on purpose,” I said to Easton.

My brain was starting to feel like a patchwork quilt of death. Images of bodies stitched together in bloody little square-shaped memories were branded onto my retinas. Ever since the meeting, I’d barely had time to stop my head from spinning between reaps, let alone check on Emma as much as I’d like. I had a feeling that was the point, but was it punishment or a diversion? It felt like both.

It didn’t help that I couldn’t get last night with Emma out of my head. I didn’t
want
to get it out of my head. Talking to her until she fell asleep. Watching her crooked grin as she drifted off… She’d looked just like Allison in that moment. It had taken everything in me not to go corporeal and touch her.

Easton peered into the dark alley in front of us. His violet eyes swirled with death. A rat scurried between my legs before it disappeared into a knocked-over metal trash can. Deep in the shadows, someone was whimpering. “Of course he’s doing it on purpose,” he said, pulling his scythe out. “What did you do this time?”

I’d let her see me. Touch me. I’d told her everything. Well, almost everything. That I’d barely managed to keep myself from going corporeal was the only reason the flesh wasn’t being filleted from my body at this very moment.

Revealing myself to her was probably one of the worst decisions I’d made since pushing Allison through the portal, but it felt…amazing. Seeing her rattled and sleep-deprived in the kitchen this morning didn’t, though. If we were going to do this, I’d have to let her get her sleep. The thought stopped me.
Was
I going to keep doing this?

When Easton raised a brow, waiting, I finally just said, “The usual.”

“Well if it’s your
usual,
then you’re lucky a marathon of reaps is all he’s done.”

Easton slipped between the two crumbled brick buildings and I followed close behind. We were going to have to move fast. This kind of dark was a world all its own, where things crept and crawled and died in the night. The shadows were going to be hard to spot here.

Easton stopped a few feet from two ruined bodies, lying in bloody heaps on the pavement. The faces were black and blue and swollen beyond recognition, their limbs folded and bent into odd angles. They’d been beaten to death. I pressed the back of my wrist against my mouth and backed away a step.

Easton looked at me over his shoulder and raised a brow. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? Squeamish?”

“I just don’t see many like this.” I stepped up to get a better look and frowned. My reaps were generally people who still needed to grow up. Ones who were straddling a moral line. Not grown men part of a drug deal gone wrong. “They’re older. Way older than my usual reaps. Weird.”

Easton frowned and stepped into a dark puddle of blood that glistened in the green glow of the streetlamp. “That’s because they’re supposed to both be mine.”

I couldn’t hide my relief. “Thank God.”

But something was wrong. The pull was there again, burning and insistent. Forcing my feet toward the dead guy in the blue Windbreaker. “What’s going on?”

Easton looked at the dead man and back to me, his dark eyebrows drawn together like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “You have to take him.”

“What? But he’s not mine.”

He tipped his head back and groaned into the night. “Don’t you get it? Balthazar’s making good on his promise. Did you honestly think an unusually busy day at the office was going to be your only slap on the wrist?”

I shook my head almost mechanically, not wanting to believe it. No way did he know what I’d done last night. I hadn’t gone corporeal. I’d made sure of it.

“He warned you,” he said. “Now it’s time for you to get that glimpse he promised. And if we’re all wearing our
honesty hats
here, I think this might be just what you need. Maybe if you see what he’s threatening you with, you’ll stop being such a dumbass.”

My chest throbbed with something like fear, but it was nothing compared to the clawing need to take the soul in front of me. A hollow hiss crept out of the darkness. Against the brick, a shadow slithered up the wall and then vanished, camouflaged by the night.

“Come on.” Easton nudged my shoulder. “Just follow my lead.”

I stepped forward and slid my scythe from its holster. All I could see when I stared down into the man’s cracked-open face was flames. Searing, painful, nightmare-inducing flames. I didn’t want to do this. Son of a bitch I did
not
want to do this! Out of nowhere, a cold whisper circled my ear.

Get to work, Finn, or I might decide to make your stay more…permanent.

Balthazar’s voice sent a shiver racing down my spine. Closing my eyes, I swung out and listened to the whistle of metal fly through the air before it plunged into the man’s soft flesh. Easton and I yanked at the same time and the souls came up, side by side, with dazed looks on their faces.

They looked gray, no shimmer, not an ounce of light left in them. The one with shaggy black hair swallowed and looked behind them at the shells of their former selves. “Holy sh—”

Easton laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Trust me, friend. There’s nothing holy about where you’re going. And just a tip.” He leaned in close and balanced his arm on the soul’s shoulder. “Don’t say
holy
down there. They don’t like it.”

“Down there?” The soul backed away from Easton until he was standing in a pile of empty flesh. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, please. Tell me you’re brighter than that.” Easton pointed to the silent guy in the blue Windbreaker. “Look. Your buddy over here already has it all figured out. Don’t ya, big guy?”

He nodded, staring blankly at the blood-splattered pavement. “Hell.” He looked up at his friend. “We’re going to Hell, Caleb.”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Easton smiled. “We have a winner.”

At the sound of his words, a loud
crack
split the pavement, and screams echoed from the pit. A black, oil-like substance bubbled up from the crevice and started a slow and steady swirl, picking up screams and tossing them into the night. I stepped back and clenched my jaw. I’d seen the freak show that was Easton’s departure for the underworld lots of times, but this time it was different.

This time they expected me to go with him.

“Anybody feel like a swim?” Easton slid his scythe back into his belt. Before either of them could say a word, he had the dark-haired guy by the arm. Easton gave me a two-finger salute and stepped off the ledge and into the black vortex of screams, dragging the flailing soul named Caleb behind him.

My soul tried to back away but I grabbed him by the wrist and shook my head. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be.”

I didn’t think after that. I just wanted to get this god-awful night over with. I wanted to get back to Emma and make sure I hadn’t driven her off the deep end. Squeezing his wrist, I stepped off into the darkness.

Hitting the ground sent a shock wave of heat up through the soles of my feet. Ash fluttered down out of the sky like dirty snow, and barbed wire stretched down the path on either side of us, held up by intricate iron fence posts that were topped with skulls. The sharp metal thorns dripped with something red. Up ahead, an enormous structure of jagged ash-covered stone erupted from the ground, the entrance blocked by two flaming gates.

When Easton stopped just short of the gates to talk to someone cloaked in black, I turned in a slow circle, not wanting to see, but needing to. An island of misfit playground equipment sat solemnly on the other side of the fence. I couldn’t stop staring at one of the rusted swing sets. It looked just like the one Henry and I used to play on after church on Sundays when we were little. One of the swings glided back and forth with no one in it. Next to it, a merry-go-round with chipped red and yellow paint turned slowly. A boy laughed. I wiped the ash out of my eyes and moved closer to the fence.

“Finn!” the voice squealed. “Push me higher!”

A young boy stood on the other side of the fence, the right side of his face charred. Embers glowed through the hollow hole in his cheek, exposing a row of little white teeth. On the good side of his face, one bright-green eye peered back at me.

“Henry?” I whispered. My little brother shouldn’t be here. Couldn’t be.

“You’re going to burn, Finn,” he said. The embers sparked a flame at the bottom of his blue button-down shirt and sped their way up the right side of Henry’s chest, but he didn’t cry. He watched me until the orange flames swallowed him.

“Henry!” I gripped the barbed fence, but strong hands pulled me back.

“What are you doing?” Easton spun me around to face him. I swallowed and looked past him at the two souls we’d reaped looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “Who’s Henry?”

“My brother. He…” I glanced over my shoulder, but nothing was there anymore. Only rock and ash and the sound of a girl screaming like her guts were being ripped out.

“They’re using your memories,” Easton let me go. “Suck it up and get back to work.”

All of this and we weren’t even inside the gates of Hell. I blinked up at the sky, trying to shake away the image of Henry burning as I trudged back to the souls.

“Let’s go,” Easton said. The flaming gates swung open and I barreled through into the darkness. Heat seared my skin. Memories burned the inside of my skull. I blinked away the drop of sweat that trickled down into my eye.

Wait.

Touching my fingers to my forehead, I stopped. I was sweating. “How…?”

“Once you cross through the gates, you’re flesh. It doesn’t matter what you are. Alive. Dead. Something else. They want you to be able to feel the pain.”

“I-I don’t understand,” I stammered. “This…it’s impossible.”

“Don’t say that,” Easton said. “They’ll just take it as a challenge.”

He jerked his chin to motion for me to follow, so I did, letting the flames at my back drive me forward. It was dark in the cave and things hissed and growled from the corners.

We came to another set of smaller gates and Easton rapped his scythe on the bars. “Special delivery!”

When the soul beside him started to cry, Easton rolled his eyes. “Seriously, man? Did you honestly think a drug dealer and a rapist would end up anywhere else? You really should consider the occupational hazards that go along with a career before you commit yourself.”

Easton brushed the ash off his jacket like he was talking about the guy’s 401(k). I didn’t know how he could be so calm in a place like this.

Out of the corner of my eye, a girl with soft blond hair bled into my vision. I gritted my teeth and turned my head. Emma stared back at me with empty pits for eyes. Black spider-webbed veins popped up from her pale white skin.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “You still love me, don’t you, Finn?”

A sick feeling churned in my stomach.

“You did this to me,” she sobbed. “Look at me. Look at me!”

It’s not real. It’s not real.

The gates creaked and swung open. Two hooded figures stepped out and sized up the souls in tow. Long, curved, dark claws poked out of their draping sleeves. Red eyes glowed from the empty black spaces where faces should have been.

Easton shoved his soul at one of them and nodded for me to do the same. I couldn’t shove him like that. Instead, I patted him on the back and gave him a gentle push. He squeezed his eyes shut and said, “Shit…just tell me when it’s all over.”

The demon under the cloak laughed and clutched him around the throat. “That’s the best part.
It’s never going to be over.”

Chapter 16

Emma

I stopped pacing to check the clock for the hundredth time. Checked the lock on the door. Made sure there was nothing in my room that could possibly impale or crush me at a moment’s notice. Where the hell was Finn? He said he was here to protect me, but I hadn’t seen him since the kitchen incident this morning. Cash was still giving me space, so I’d spent the whole day alone. Terrified. How was I supposed to deal with knowing some evil soul wanted to hurt me? What if he didn’t show up in time when something happened again?

He may have promised Dad he’d keep me safe, but Finn couldn’t be around 24-7. I couldn’t just sit around waiting to be a victim now that I knew what was going on. I had to figure out how to protect myself. But how was I supposed to fight something I couldn’t see coming?

I grabbed my laptop. There had to be a way to fight this on my own. Or at the very least, a way to help protect myself until help arrived. I didn’t really know where to start, so I Googled
how to ward off an evil spirit
and cringed at the thought of anyone looking at my history. That thought alone was enough for me to turn on my private browsing. I clicked on the first site that looked halfway legitimate and read an article called “Eighteen Ways to Rid Your Home of Evil Spirits.”

It said you could do things like hang horseshoes above your doors and burn candles. I shook my head. Yeah, I’m sure Mom would go for me hanging horseshoes all over our house. I read on about psychic mediums and exorcists. These might have been one of the better options, but Mom would have me committed for sure if she found out I had someone over trying to cleanse our home of unwanted spirits. There had to be something. I scrolled down and stopped.

Smudge your
home
with sage. Open all of the windows in your home and light a bundle of dried sage. Sage is thought to clear away negative energy and spirits. Catch the ashes with a plate held underneath the bundle and walk around your home to cleanse it with the smoke.

That one seemed easy enough. Something we kept in the kitchen and it wouldn’t get me committed. Most of the rest seemed flat-out ridiculous. But really, what didn’t at this point? I clicked on another site, reading incantation chants and prayers, saving them to study later. A few were short enough to memorize on the spot, so I did. Cash would have said this was stupid. Mom would have said it was crazy. But it was all I had. It was all I knew how to do.

Cash poked his head through my window and I slammed my laptop shut. “Is your mom in bed yet?”

Relief washed over me as I glanced at the clock again. It was after nine and she was still on her date. I wondered if she was going to come home at all. I pushed the thought of her with anybody who wasn’t Dad out of my head, nodded, and waved him in.

“Good.” He grinned, tossed a duffel bag through my window, and crawled in after it.

I stared at the bag. “What happened?”

He plopped down onto my bed and dug a DVD out. “Nothing.”

“An overnight bag doesn’t mean
nothing
.”

He shrugged and fiddled with the DVD case. “Captain Asshat lost a case. I don’t feel like dealing with his crap tonight. That’s all.”

That was all he needed to say. It was all he’d needed to say for the last eleven years. By this point, my room belonged to Cash almost as much as it belonged to me. I sighed and slid his bag under my bed so Mom wouldn’t see it if she came in.

“You’re not taking my good pillow again.” I yanked my pillow out from under Cash’s head and loaded the DVD player. With everything that had happened the night before, I didn’t think I’d be able to watch most of it, but it was still nice to have the distraction and Cash right where I needed him. I lay down next to him and stuffed my pillow behind my head.

The movie started and cheesy cop lines and eighties hair lit up the screen, but I couldn’t concentrate on it. All I could think about was Finn.

“You ready to tell me what’s wrong?” Cash elbowed me in the side. “You’ve had thirteen and a half hours of space to mull it over. Not that I’ve been counting.”

I shook my head. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. Maybe this was something that would always have to be just for me. I didn’t want to ruin the time I spent with Cash trying to convince him of things even I didn’t understand.

“I do have a present for you, though.” I reached over Cash and pulled a little green photo album out of my nightstand drawer. I dropped it in his lap and smiled when he picked it up and started to flip through the pictures. “I printed them today. I can’t use most of them for the yearbook, so you get to keep them. All the blackmail your evil little heart could desire.”

“Are these from the bonfire?”

All of them except the picture of Finn. “Yep.”

“Will I be disappointed?” he asked.

“I doubt it.”

“You…” Cash stopped to laugh at a picture. “Are beyond awesome. You know that, right?”

I shrugged.

“Seriously. You have a future as a card-carrying member of the paparazzi.”

The word “future” dimmed my mood, but I didn’t let it show on my face. Ever since Dad died, I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. That fate would get me, too. And now that Finn had confirmed there was a psychotic ghost out there intent on making my life a living hell, I had to wonder what kind of future was in store for me.

Cash flipped through a few pictures, chuckling, then raised his brows and turned the album around to show me the picture of him and Tinley kissing.

“What?” I asked. “You said you wanted entertainment. Just think of the blackmail opportunities.”

Cash grinned and slid the picture out of its sleeve. He folded it up and shoved it in his back pocket. “Nice try, but that one’s going straight to the incinerator.”

“Don’t you want to keep it so you have something to show the grandkids? I can print you an eight-by-ten if you want.”

Cash shook his head. “Nah, I give this one another week. Maybe two.”

I studied the side of Cash’s face as he flipped through the pictures, stopping at every other one to laugh to himself. Everyone thought he was perfect. Nobody knew what I knew. He was damaged, just like me. Maybe not in the same way, but when he was a sad little six-year-old on my front porch, something inside him broke. I wondered if he’d ever find a girl who could fix it.

“When are you going to stop doing this?” I asked.

“Doing what?” Cash squinted at a picture.

“Treating girls like they’re disposable,” I said. “You know they’re not all like—”

His eyes snapped up, a flash of anger flared behind them, before he managed to cover it up. “Like Mom?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

He blew out a sigh and shook his head, dropping the album onto my comforter. “I know. Look at my dad, though,” he said, staring at the ceiling, clasping his hands over his stomach. “He’s miserable. He’s been miserable for eleven years because of a
woman
. He’s probably going to be miserable for the rest of his life. What have I ever seen that would make me want that?”

“It’s not always like that.”

He laughed at me. “How would you know? As far as I know, you’ve never even kissed a guy.”

I winced and put some space between us. I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me on purpose, but reminding me about how I’d been stuck in a mental institution while he was screwing half of the girls in Lone Pine didn’t make it sting any less.

Cash got quiet, probably realizing what he’d said. He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Em, I’m sorry. That was a chickenshit thing for me to say.”

“It’s fine.” I bit my lip, thinking about the board last night. And Finn. Seriously, what guy would want to date me? I was a walking freak show. The only guy who had ever looked at me like I was something more than crazy or a friend was dead. “I know I’m screwed up.”

“It’s not fine,” he said. “You just wait. You’re going to get a clean slate when we go to college next year. Guys will be beating down your dorm door. I’ll have to kick all of their asses of course, but at least the opportunity will be there.”

My bedroom door swung open and Cash jumped up. Mom stood in the doorway, dark circles framing her blue eyes. “What’s going on in here? You know you are not allowed to have boys in here after nine.”

I sat up and sighed. “He’s not
a boy
. He’s Cash.”

“Boys?” Cash raised a brow. “Do you even talk to any besides me? Bet she had to brush the dust off that rule.”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”

Mom sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose like she was fending off a headache. “Go home, Cash. You are more than welcome to come back during visiting hours, but if I catch you in here again this late, I’m having a conversation with your father.”

Cash looked out the window toward his house. “I…I guess I’ll see ya tomorrow, Em.”

I nodded, trying not to smile. That was code for,
I’ll wait outside until your mom goes to bed before I sneak back in and get us both grounded.

“Sorry,” I said once I was alone with Mom. “We were just watching a movie. It’s not a big deal.”

Mom leaned against the doorframe looking exhausted and every bit her age. Without her usual caffeine buzz, it was easier to read her. She was worried. And mad. “Honey, you’re not nine anymore. You can’t be with that boy all hours of the night. What would the neighbors say if they saw him crawling though your window in the middle of the night?”

I sighed and began braiding a strand of hair that hung over my shoulder. “He
is
the neighbors, Mom.”

She threw her hands up in the air
.
“I’m not in the mood for this tonight. I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow.”

“You’ve got an early meeting or you’ve got another date?”

The words came out more bitter than I’d expected, but there it was. She stared out into the empty hall. It seemed so much emptier without Dad here. Everything felt emptier. I just wished she wasn’t in such a hurry to fill that emptiness with someone else.

“It’s been two years,” she said softly. “I can’t be alone forever just because you want me to be.”

“That’s not what I want.”

She turned around, her eyes glistening. “Then what
do
you want? Because I’m trying to find a way to be happy. I don’t understand why you can’t try to find that, too.”

I stared at the floor. “I do want you to be happy. I just…I miss him.”

She sighed, and a few seconds later I felt her palm smoothing the hair over the back of my head. She kissed my forehead. “I miss him, too, but he’s not coming back. It’s awful and it’s not fair, and there’s nothing I can do to fix that. You’re not going to be happy until you can learn to let go. Until you stop wishing you’d died along with him.”

Sometimes the truth was a lot harder to hear than a lie. And hearing the truth from my mom was like pouring lemon juice on an open wound. When I didn’t say anything else, she stood up, shaking her head. “Good night, Emma.”

“’Night, Mom.”

She shut off my light and darkness swallowed the room. I curled into a ball on my side to compress the pain in my chest. I lay there thinking about Dad. Thinking about Finn, and praying with everything in me that he’d come back. I lay there hurting until Cash crawled in beside me.

“You want me to sleep on the floor in case she comes back?”

“No.”

His arm brushed mine and it felt like ice. I scooted over to make room and felt him slip under the comforter.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“What?”

“You did the Ouija board thing, didn’t you?”

I pressed my face into my pillow. “Why?”

He chuckled and his shoulder blades knocked into mine. “Because the box is sticking out from under your bed, Einstein.”

I cringed. “Yeah. I tried it.”

“Well,” he turned over on his side to look at me but I kept my face buried in the cool safety of my pillow. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Nothing happened.”

Cash didn’t say anything. He snuggled down into the blankets and pressed his back against mine. I soaked in his heat and fought off sleep. I would have given anything not to dream, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I could already feel it pulling me under.