She sighed and took a step back. “Never mind.”
“Where are we now? Hell? Not really sure how it could get any worse than the last place.”
Anaya looked at me, considering, then held her hand out into the air and closed her eyes. The white mist around us clung to her fingertips like puppet strings, just waiting for her to tell it where to go. A small smile lifted her lips as she smoothed her hand through the air like she was wiping a window clean. The fog parted, clouds scattering at her command. I couldn’t catch my breath when I saw it. A pair of enormous gold gates the color of Anaya’s eyes glowed against the ice-blue sky. Three big lavender-tinged moons bobbed around a collection of bright-white clouds. A lulling hum vibrated through the air, sounding far away. She looked back at me and the smile fell from her lips.
“You need to close your eyes and look away when I take her in,” she said, reaching out behind her to grab the dead girl’s hand. The girl didn’t hesitate. Just bit her bottom lip and clutched on to Anaya like she’d never let go.
“What?” I scrambled to get to my feet. “Why?”
“My eyes look like this for a reason,” she whispered. “That place…it wasn’t meant for the living to see. The purity of that place will burn you…blind you.”
“Is my…” I cleared my throat and stared at the gates. “My dad’s in there. Isn’t he?”
Anaya looked away and nodded.
“I want to see him.” I stepped forward.
“No.” Anaya pressed her open palm against my chest to stop me, and my eyes gravitated to the warm spot pooling beneath my shirt where her fingers lay. I had to take a deep breath to stop my heart from pounding so hard she’d be able to feel it.
I looked up at her, needing her to understand. “You owe me this. You could have warned me. Let me say good-bye…and you didn’t.”
“You can’t pass those gates to get to the ones you love any more than I can.” She pulled her hand away. “We don’t get the luxury of good-byes, Cash. It’s part of death. Accept it.”
The hurt in her voice told me we weren’t just talking about my dad anymore. Who did Anaya have behind those gates? She walked away like she was dismissing me…like this didn’t matter. I was getting so sick of her walking away from me every time I got close, every time things got hard that my blood boiled. I balled my hands into fists at my sides. “Don’t walk away from me, Anaya!”
She didn’t turn around. Just walked hand in hand with the soul in tow, her braids swinging behind her.
“Turn around,” she said. “And this time don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The gates parted and light exploded from the gleaming space between them. I threw my arm over my eyes and turned away as the most perfect heat caressed my back. I felt dizzy. Not right. I sank down onto my knees, feeling like somebody had wrapped my brain in cotton. I don’t know how long I sat like that. Time didn’t seem to matter anymore. But after what seemed like an eternity, warm fingers whispered across my skin. Through my hair. Anaya’s voice was soft in my ears, but I still couldn’t open my eyes.
“Cash.”
I reached out in front of me, trying to grab hold of something familiar.
“You’re home,” she said.
Something jolted me out of it. The cotton freed from around my thoughts. Rocks ground into my back and I sat up, looking around the empty beach. My clothes sat beside me and afternoon sunlight glinted off the lake water.
“Anaya,” I said, voice cracking, not sounding anything like me. “Ana—” I stopped myself. I didn’t have to say her name. The emptiness around me, the cold engulfing me—it was all I needed to feel to know that she was gone.
Chapter 18
Cash
The room was spinning. Or maybe it was just my head. I blinked away a few of the purple spots that dotted my vision and squinted at the chicken scratch Mr. Reynolds had scrawled across the chalkboard. He was saying something about…the Magna Carta? I didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t even care. I was starting to lose count of the sleepless nights. One night of sleep with Anaya was not going to make up for the rest. Especially when she’d proceeded to drag my ass all over the afterlife.
It had been two days and I still hadn’t fully recovered. Last night had been yet another night of tossing and turning, listing to the hisses echo across my room in the dark. After a certain point, could you even call it insomnia anymore? Could a person die from a lack of sleep? It sure as hell felt like it.
It felt like my insides were turning black like a banana you’ve left out on the counter too long. It felt like those little shadow bastards were killing me without even touching me. Like they were just waiting for that last puff of life to leave me.
I was waiting for it, too.
A wad of paper hit my shoulder and I flinched. I picked it up, fighting the urge to fling it back at someone, but stopped when I saw it was Finn. His eyebrows were all scrunched together. It’s how he looked when he was worried about Em, which was pretty much all of the time. I definitely didn’t need the guy looking at me like that. Especially after Anaya told me about him saving Em.
He lifted his hand and motioned to the paper. I unfolded it and laid it in my lap, so Mr. Reynolds wouldn’t get a bug up his ass about us passing notes. To be completely honest, I didn’t want anyone seeing me read his note. What were we, fifth-grade girls, for Christ’s sake? I unfolded it and searched for a part that wasn’t marked out.
You look like you need to talk
We can talk if you want after school.
We’ve seen each other in our underwear, so I think I’m allowed to say this now. You look like crap.
Finn
I rolled my eyes. Nice. Very astute of you, Finn . A wave of dizziness swept over me. Consuming me. Swallowing my vision for a few seconds before spewing it back up all tilted and off-balance.
Every passing second it felt as if the life were draining out of me, or rather like it was being siphoned out of me. I felt something wet under my nose and swiped the back of my wrist over my face. It came back red. I stared at the crimson smear on my hand for a few seconds. I was so used to having paint on my hands, it took a few seconds to register that it was blood. Like the real kind. Not the make-believe kind I splattered across my canvases. This was real. It was happening. I was dying.
I pushed out of my seat, swearing under my breath. The blood had dripped all over me.
“Something wrong, Cash?” Mr. Reynolds stopped, looking me up and down, his eyes going wide with alarm. I could only imagine how I looked right now.
“Um… Just a nosebleed, I think.” I held my palm over my face. “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Of course.” He tossed me the hall-pass key and I clutched it like a lifeline.
By the time I got to the bathroom I was freezing. Not the kind of chill that came with January—the kind that turns you to ice from the inside out instead of the other way around. But at least my nose had stopped bleeding. I filled my palms with water and doused my face. Watched the red water swirling in little circles around the silver drain before washing clear and disappearing into darkness. I half expected a shadow to crawl up through the hole. When one didn’t, I waited for Anaya’s face to show up in the reflection over my shoulder. I forced myself to ignore the little pulse of disappointment that throbbed in my chest when she didn’t.
I looked at my pale reflection in the mirror and pushed the dripping black hair that was falling over my forehead back out of my face. Finn was right. I looked like shit. How much longer was this going to last? What was going to happen to me when it was over?