“Are you questioning me?” he growled.
I stuttered and took a step back, shaking my head. “N-no. Of course not.”
“Then I can trust you to handle this?”
I closed my eyes and images flashed behind my lids. This wasn’t right. On any level. But did I really have a choice? I opened my eyes and let them focus on Balthazar. The power rippled out around him like an electrical current.
“Anaya?” he said. “Do I need to have someone else deal with this?”
I rested my palm over my scythe when its heat began to wage a war with the cold surrounding me.
“No,” I said. “I can handle it.”
It wasn’t often that I found myself searching for Easton. That probably explained the look on his face when he melted up from the black cloud base beneath him to find me calling his name. He twirled his scythe between his fingers like it was a six-shooter and shoved it back into the black holster at his side as he walked over, grinning.
“You rang?”
“Yes,” I said. “I need your help.” Easton’s violet eyes widened when I gripped his duster and pulled him under the shelter of a shadow.
“Oh, God,” he groaned. “What did you do now?”
“Why do you automatically jump to the conclusion that I did something?”
“Because you either dragged me in here to make out, or you screwed up again and you need me to get you out of it.” He raised a brow at me and folded his arms across his chest. “Something tells me it’s the latter.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out, so I closed it again, trying to come up with a way to make this sound less bad than it actually was. When I realized there wasn’t a way to explain it like that, I sighed. I tucked a braid behind my ear and averted my gaze. “Well, it certainly isn’t the first one.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Easton said. “So what is it this time?”
“He touched me, Easton. Touched me.”
“The human?” I nodded and Easton cursed under his breath and stalked away before coming back, eyes blazing. “I told you this would happen. Did you not learn anything from Finn’s mistakes?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose! He touched me when I was in soul form, like it didn’t mean anything for him. He just laid his fingers on me and…forced me into corporeality. Do you have any idea how this is even possible?”
“Maybe.” Easton grabbed the back of his neck and looked around. “I’ve heard of something like this.”
“I’m not in the mood for a guessing game, Easton.”
“Well, I’m not in the mood to get caught in the middle of the shitstorm you’ve just created, Anaya,” he hissed.
Easton started to pace and I bit my lip to keep from snapping back. The serpent tattoo that covered the right side of his neck flashed, seeming angrier every second that he ignored his call. Black smoke rolled up from his scythe into the air around us. He was vibrating with the need to go. But he didn’t.
“You don’t have to…” I started, but he held his hand up.
“A shadow walker,” he said, his violet eyes cutting through the curtain of smoke between us. “It’s the only way he could’ve forced you into corporeality like that. That’s one of the reasons the guys upstairs and down go nuts if they get a whiff of one coming into existence.”
I blinked at him, watching the golden glow from my eyes clash with the black smoke dueling for dominance in the small space between us. Dark and light. There didn’t seem to be an in-between anymore since Finn was gone.
“A shadow walker?” I blinked at him, confused. Shadow walkers were rare. So rare, in fact, that I’d never seen one.
“A soul caught between life and death. Straddling the line,” he said. “Think about it, Anaya. It makes sense. He was dead and you brought him back. This…” He stopped pacing and shook his head.
“This is a real possibility.”
“But Finn…he brought Emma back. She’s fine. I see her practically every day and she’s not dodging shadow demons at every turn. How could Cash be one?”
Easton looked me over thoughtfully. “A shadow walker is born from a very old soul. One that’s been around a whole hell of a lot longer than Emma. Any idea how many times the Cash kid’s soul has been cycled through?”
I rolled my eyes. “How would I know that?”
“Can’t you tell?” Easton smoothed his palm over his blade as if to soothe it. “I can practically taste it. Stale. Bitter. You know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t have much time with him. I didn’t even let him exit the body.”
I pressed my lips together to hold the secrets in when a group of reapers walked by. One stopped and peered into the shadows, his golden eyes amused. Darius. Almighty, if there was one person I didn’t want to run into, it was him. There had been many who had tried to win my heart in the last thousand years, but Darius was the one who didn’t know when to quit. Easton must have sensed my body tensing from head to toe. He wrapped a heated arm around my waist and pulled me against him.
“Gotta problem?” He narrowed his gaze at Darius.
Darius’s jealous stare burned into me for a few seconds, his jaw clenched, setting his face into angry angles. He finally relaxed and shook his head, raking his fingers through his white-blond hair. “Come find me when you’re done slumming it, Anaya. I have a feeling you’ll be left wanting a little more when you’re done with that one.” He walked away laughing and I squeezed Easton’s arm to keep him in place.
I let Easton’s arm singe me a minute more until I was sure we were alone, then pushed him away.
“He’s not worth it.”
Easton’s face twisted into a scowl. “I should shove my scythe up his ass.”
I waved him off, and then curled my fingers back into a fist when bright sparks flew from them and landed on Easton’s black coat. “What should I do? Do you think this is why Balthazar has an interest in him?”
“It would definitely make sense,” Easton said. “They are the only beings in existence that have the power to track down and capture the souls that are quick enough to escape their bodies before we can get to them. Both sides have been using them for years to poach the souls lost between worlds. The shadows could use him for anything from a food source to a recruiter. And as for Balthazar, he could have him bringing in lost souls in spades. Before they have a chance to transition into shadow or cause the kind of damage Maeve did when she tried to steal Emma’s body. If not for that, I could see him wanting him just to keep him out of the underworld’s hands. It still doesn’t explain why he’s having you keep him alive, though. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“He could be testing him,” he said. “You and I both know there is no way a normal soul would have lasted this long in an expired body. They would have succumbed in hours. But this kid…”
He wasn’t just lasting. He was setting some kind of record. I looked away to avoid Easton’s gaze.
Balthazar wasn’t having me keep him alive as some kind of reward. He just wanted me to keep him out of the competition’s hands while he tested his little theory. After his needless torture was over, he wanted him for himself.
Easton brushed off the sparks that were burrowing little holes into the arm of his duster. The threads burned black and red, like a bed of coals that had been raked over, before weaving together and repairing themselves before my eyes. “Just keep an eye on him for now. I’ll see what I can find out on my end. But if that’s what this is…” Easton’s gazed latched onto mine, pulling my fears out like a siphon and dumping them on the floor between us for the world to see. “If that’s what he is, this is only going to get worse.”