Seven a.m. sunshine doused the dusty living room through the sheer white curtains that covered the window. I crept across the room and stopped at Finn’s bedroom door. I pressed my palms on the doorframe and leaned in to listen to the voices on the other side.
“I don’t have another choice,” Anaya whispered. “You have to help me convince him.”
Finn laughed. “You honestly think he’d listen to me?”
“Yes.”
Footsteps caused the floorboards to groan. “You’re delusional if you believe that,” Finn said.
“Besides, this is beyond screwed up, Anaya. He has rights.”
“According to Balthazar, those rights have been removed,” she hissed. “Look. I realize this is unfair but it’s the better of two horrible options.”
Uncomfortable silence spread throughout the bedroom until it made its way around the doorframe, where it wrapped around me like a tourniquet. Strangling me. What options?
“You have no idea what they would do to him down there,” she whispered. “I’ve seen it.”
She’d seen what? Did this have to do with Noah? I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and stepped around the doorframe. Anaya spun around and her gold eyes turned into big flaming saucers. Finn barely glanced at me before his gaze found his sneakers.
“You’ve seen what?” I said. “What’s going on?”
Anaya stepped forward, blending in with the sunshine around her, making her look almost human.
“Cash…” She closed her mouth like she didn’t know where to go from here.
“Tell him,” Finn said, his gaze trained on Anaya. “Tell him what you want me to do.”
She never broke her gaze from mine. Almost as if she were hoping I’d pull the answers out of her without her having to say the words.
“Tell me what?” I stepped forward, shaking. Shaking so hard I could feel my bones rattling together.
“No more secrets. Just tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I need you to let him help you die,” she said.
“What?”
“Kill you,” Finn snapped. “She wants me to kill you.”
I looked to Anaya, wanting her to tell me he was lying. She didn’t.
“It’s the only way I can save you.” She stepped forward. “I don’t want to watch you suffer anymore.
I can’t.”
My feet took a step away from her without my brain telling them to.
“Tell him the rest, Anaya,” Finn said. He folded his arms across the black T-shirt stretched over his chest.
She glared at Finn, then looked back to me. “If we do this now, we can assure I’m the one to collect you and not the shadows. And I can save you this way, Cash. I can get you to where you were meant to go. If we do this, I can get you across the gates before he finds out. He can’t touch you once you’re there. Neither of them can.”
Her words were floating around in my head like balloons without the strings attached. I shook my head, hoping they’d fall into place and make some kind of sense. She wanted me to give up. Die.
“They?” My heart pounded and I rubbed my palm over my chest. “Do you mean Noah?”
Anaya and Finn exchanged a confused glance. “Noah? Is he the one who’s been telling you things?
Is he how you know what you are?”
Don’t tell them. They’ll destroy you just as quickly as they would me if they ever caught me.
Noah’s voice echoed in my mind like poison. I pushed it out. Anaya didn’t want to hurt me. She cared about me. Or maybe she just cared about some dead guy I used to be. Either way, I trusted her.
“He’s like me,” I admitted. “He’s a shadow walker. He said I couldn’t trust you. That if I went with you I’d be responsible for turning souls into shadow demons.”
Cautiously, Anaya stepped toward me. “Cash, listen to me. He is dangerous. He’s been feeding you lies.”
“Why would he do that?” I said. “You said it yourself, I’m too valuable to be tossed aside as meat.
What could he want me for?”
“He’s been enslaved to Umbria for Almighty knows how long,” she said, solemnly. I watched a braid fall across her face and she gently pushed it away. “He’s recruiting you.”
“I know.” I stumbled back against the doorframe feeling weak and hating every second of it. “He helps souls escape. He gives them peace.”
“Peace?” Anaya scoffed. “He delivers them to shadow demons in Umbria to be eaten! Open your eyes. See him for what he is. Maybe he was a good soul once. One with a heart and a conscience, but not anymore. He’s a puppet. He’s a puppet that’s been sent to bring you in.”
I braced my palms on my knees and breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. The room was starting to spin around me. Noah lied to me. He was going to use me just like this Balthazar guy wanted to.
“You can either be at peace with working for Balthazar, or go through with my plan to get you through the gates. If you refuse both of these options, then the shadow demons will collect you. And what they use you for will be far worse. I promise you that.”
This was a nightmare. I rubbed my cold palms over my face trying to scrub away the dumb look I could feel settled there.
“If you don’t want to do this, you could always go along with Balthazar’s plan,” she said. “Working for Balthazar may not seem like an ideal eternity, but it’s better than what’s on the other side.”
“Don’t feed him that bullshit,” Finn spoke up. He sneered at her from across the room, his eyes haunted. “Don’t delude him into believing this life is anything more than a prison sentence. A nightmare. He’ll just hate you for it later.”
“Stay out of this, Finn!”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, leaning my forehead against the doorframe. “Why the sudden urgency? You were fine with turning me over to your boss just a few days ago.” I pushed away from the door, anger sending energy I didn’t know I had into each of my limbs. I clenched my fists, betrayal thick in my throat. She still wasn’t telling me everything. Even after all we’d been through together.
“I thought Tarik was in Heaven. And my family.” Anaya’s voice shook with the force of her words.
Words that were about to decimate me. “He promised to allow me to cross if I protected you and delivered you when the time came.”
My heart shuddered and throbbed and tore to pieces in my chest. I took a deep breath and winced when my lungs swelled with pain. “It was all bullshit, then?”
Anaya looked up, pain flashing across her face. “No!”
“But you weren’t going to hesitate,” I said. “Before you knew I had his soul…”
She was going to throw me to the wolves to get what she wanted. She didn’t give a damn about me.
All she cared about was some poor bastard who had been dead and buried for a thousand years. And I wasn’t him. I didn’t want to be him.
Anaya rushed forward. “Cash, wait. You don’t understand—”
I backed out of the room and grabbed my shoes. I shoved them on. Didn’t even bother to tie them.
“Get away from me,” I muttered.
Anaya touched my shoulder and I jerked away. “Stay away from me, Anaya.” My words broke apart when I looked at her. I’d let her in. Let her see all of me. And this is what she gave me in return. I couldn’t even swallow through the pain. “Whatever this was…it was just a lie.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She sounded panicked as she followed me out the door and into the sun. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he wanted you for in the beginning. If there was another way, I swear—”