At a loss, I just stared at her. Words. I still knew how to form words, right? It was like this chick sucked every ounce of sense right out of my brain.
“Why didn’t you just take me at the fire?” I whispered, knowing that if I could have this one question answered, maybe I could deal with the rest. But the not knowing was killing me. “Why put me through this?”
Anaya’s light dimmed and she frowned. “It wasn’t my choice.”
“Then whose choice was it?”
“Someone much more powerful than you and I combined.”
“Stop being so fucking vague, Anaya,” I growled. “Who? Your boss? God?”
She flinched at my tone, but I didn’t care. I was so sick and tired of all of this.
“Not God, but yes. I work for him,” she admitted.
“And why the hell would he want me to stay like this?”
“I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did. All I know is there must be something terribly special about your soul for you to attract his attention.”
She didn’t know? How the hell could she not know? If she didn’t, did anybody? Was I going to live the rest of my short life like this? Stalked. Terrified. Never knowing why. Or was the rug about to ripped out from under me? From now on, I’d wonder every second if the breath passing through my lips would be my last. My fingers started to shake along with the rest of me and I curled them into fists that I ground into the floor. My throat was closing up. I couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe.
“You need to calm down,” Anaya whispered, her warmth suddenly right there, forcing my throat open to let the air pass through. The prickling pain had flared back to life, but Anaya’s warmth seemed to keep it tolerable. She didn’t touch me, though she was close enough that her words cascaded like honey over my skin. “These shadows are drawn in by emotions that accompany death. Fear, anxiety, even anger. You need to learn some control. I can’t be here all the time to ward them off. Breathe, Cash. Just breathe.”
I took a couple of deep, calming breaths, and Anaya looked down at my trembling hands.
She gave me a sad smile and her fingers brushed my arm. “Much better.”
I shook off the overwhelming urge to touch her back. To close the space between us. No way should
I want that. What the hell was wrong with me? I glanced over her shoulder at a lone shadow demon weaving its way in and out of the books, its cold battling with her warmth. “You said the closer I get the more appealing I seem,” I said, brokenly. “Why? What do they want?”
She ran a fingertip along one of the books and left a trail of gold sparks in its wake. “They feed off of souls. Usually ones fresh from the body. If they think you’re close…”
I stared at her incredulously, tying to comprehend what she was telling me. They wanted to eat my soul? This wasn’t as bad as I thought. This was worse. Much, much worse. It was like someone had suddenly turned over an hourglass of invisible sand to count down to my inevitable death. And those things were waiting for the last bit of sand to run out. “So they’re hanging around, waiting on my ass to die so they can have a freaking dinner party. Please tell me you’re joking.”
“You’re not going to go through this alone,” she whispered. “I won’t let anything like that happen to you.”
I grabbed my bag off the floor and slung it across my shoulder. “No. You’re just going to wait for me to die.”
She pressed her soft pink lips together and the light in her eyes dimmed. We stared at each other, my lungs eating up the air between us.
“You know what?” I pointed a shaky finger at the girl, all five foot four of otherworldly perfection, standing in front of me. “Stay the hell away from me.”
The way she made me feel was too confusing. No good could come from wanting to have my hands on a chick who wasn’t even alive. I took off down the aisle but I could still hear her voice as I walked away.
“That’s not an option, Cash,” she shouted. “I’m sorry.”
What wasn’t an option? Her staying away, or me not dying? As I pushed out of the glass doors and stepped into the sun, I couldn’t help but think she meant both.
Chapter 6
Anaya
Cash gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles looked as white as paper. His jaw was clenched, anger radiating from him like steam. I sat in the passenger seat of his Bronco and stared at the road stretching between the towering mountains as daylight turned to dusk. When I let myself look at him, my eyes insisted on focusing on ridiculous things. Like the way his paint-splattered red T-shirt clung to his biceps. Or the flicker of silver that appeared on his tongue every time he licked his lips.
Yes. The road was definitely a safer view. Cash slammed his fist into the radio to shut it off and I flinched.
“You realize this is seriously creepy,” he finally said. “Stalking me like this.”
I shut my eyes, letting gravity take hold of me. When I opened them again, Cash was staring at me.
“You should watch the road.” I pointed to the windshield, anything to keep his eyes off of me. I had completely underestimated this boy. Even in a fit of rage, the way he looked at me made me feel stripped down to my insides. No one looked at me like that anymore.
Cash shook his head and returned his attention to the highway.
“Death is giving me safe driving tips,” he muttered. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“How do you do that?”
“What?”
“How do you know when I’m here? You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
Cash shrugged and kept his intense gaze focused on the road. “I don’t know. I…feel you, I guess.
Everything gets warm and smells like it does right after a thunderstorm,” he said. “You’ve never met anyone else who can do that? Sense you?”
I crossed my arms over my chest watching him. “Not in a thousand years.” Unless you counted
Finn, but Finn wasn’t exactly normal.
“Guess I’m just special then.”
I’d never seen Balthazar care about the fate of a human. Especially one like Cash. Yes, he was definitely special. I just didn’t know why yet.
“Where are you going?” I asked, watching all signs of civilization zip past us, only to be replaced by open highway and hills. Most humans were predictable, but I still couldn’t figure this one out.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Anywhere away from you would have been good. But I can see that’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t have to be so rude,” I said. “I’m just doing my job.”
“Bullshit.” Cash flipped on his headlights and passed a sign that said he was leaving Lone Pine city limits. “Your job is taking souls and I’m still here.”
“Are you forgetting you asked me for this?” I reined in the anger that simmered beneath my voice.
“How many times did you beg me to show myself? And now I’m here with answers, and all you can do is yell at me.”
Cash glanced at me from the corner of his eye and made a huffing sound.
“Don’t you have questions?”
He tapped on the steering wheel with his thumb as an oncoming car’s headlights splashed light over his features. “Can they hurt me? The shadows?”
“No.” Some of the tension melted away from his frame and the needle on the speedometer dropped a few numbers. I bit my lip to keep the guilt inside where it belonged. The truth was, I didn’t know. I didn’t know what Cash was and that meant I didn’t know what dangers our world held for him. I had never in a thousand years seen these shadows go after someone so aggressively, but he didn’t need to know that. “They feed off of souls. You’re still alive, so for the time being they should be nothing more than an annoyance. It’s when you die that you have to worry about them.”