My gaze drifted over her face, which was overcome with emotion. Her fingers coasted over my throat and she nodded. “You’re right. I do.”
My heart thudded in my chest and I wasn’t sure if the Almighty himself could have pried me away from her side in that moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the kid watching us and figured it was probably best if I didn’t kiss her senseless right there in the hall. It made me in that much more of a hurry to get this soul to where he needed to be, so we could be alone.
“I love you, too.” I gave her a quick kiss, then held my hand out to the kid waiting beside us and guided him through the silvery light to the afterlife. I was going to give him peace. A second chance.
And for the first time in my life, I finally felt something I don’t think I’d felt in a thousand years.
I felt complete.
Acknowledgments
First, a big thank-you to my editors Heather Howland and Kaleen Harding for helping me bring Cash and Anaya’s story to life. This book would not be what it is without either of you. And an extra hug and thank-you to Heather Howland for my beautiful cover and for being a source of support and inspiration. I am so thankful to have someone like you in my corner. Also big thanks and hugs to the entire Entangled Teen crew.
To my fabulous publicists Jaime Arnold and Heather Riccio, I’m pretty sure you ladies wear superhero capes. To Melissa West, Rachel Harris, Trisha Wolfe, Lisa Burstein, Mya Smith, and Kelly
Hashway. Thank you for your constant support. I don’t know what I would do without you!
Huge hugs and thanks to my incredible street team! Raizza Cinco, Ali Byars, Angela Copa, Lea
Krnjeta, Taherah Abbas, Iris Hernandez, Amy Fournier, Vi Nguyen, and Eileen, you girls rock!
To my amazing friends, Molly Mclean, Ashley Ward, Amber Bunnell, and Carolyn Lambeth. You girls are my rock! Thank you for keeping me sane.
And finally thank you to Jared and my beautiful boys, Colten and Caden. My world would not spin without you.
Go back to the beginning with Finn and Emma in the first book of the
Kissed by Death series…
Inbetween
“A captivating whirlwind of death, revenge, and true love.
I want a reaper of my own!!” - Jena from Shortie Says
Since the car crash that took her father’s life two years ago, Emma’s life has been a freaky—and unending—lesson in caution. Surviving “accidents” has taken priority over being a normal seventeen-year-old, so Emma spends her days taking pictures of life instead of living it. Falling in love with a boy was never part of the plan. Falling for a reaper who makes her chest ache and her head spin? Not an option.
It’s not easy being dead, especially for a reaper in love with a girl fate has put on his list not once, but twice. Finn’s fellow reapers give him hell about spending time with Emma, but Finn couldn’t let her die before, and he’s not about to let her die now. He will protect the girl he loves from the evil he accidentally unleashed, even if it means sacrificing the only thing he has left. His soul.
Prologue
Finn
Two Years Earlier
“Tell me again. How did you miss the mark?” I shoved my hands in my pockets and pressed my lips together to keep from grinning. “I swear, Anaya, this is the last time I follow one of you Heaven reapers anywhere.”
Anaya and I walked down a two-lane strip of asphalt that glistened with puddles of leftover rain.
Somewhere in the distance, a second round of clouds let out a hungry rumble. Anaya silently kept pace beside me, the gold band around her biceps glinting with each feather-soft footstep.
She turned her nose up into the air. “I never miss a mark.”
“Then would you mind explaining why I’m walking up a mountain to get to our reap? We could’ve just flashed there.”
She squinted at her surroundings, hesitating. I knew we were close, but it was way too fun messing with her to let this one go. “It’s okay to admit you’re losing your touch,” I said. “I’d be happy to take the lead on this one.”
Anaya held up her hand, ignoring me. “Do you hear that?”
I stopped, listening to the mangled wail of a horn in the distance. As if pulled in by the sound, a black blur, like a cloud of ink, whipped past us before disappearing around the bend.
Shadows. Scavengers from the outskirts of Hell. Souls that weren’t chosen to start again, had escaped their reaper, or hadn’t earned their way into Heaven, so they’d been left to decay and rot.
They were soulless beings that craved the scent of death. The taste of a soul.
I hated them. But I hated the memories they brought back even more.
Every shadow that blurred across my vision was a cold reminder of Allison, the love of my afterlife.
What I’d done to her. What I’d almost let her become. Her name tumbling around in my skull made my chest ache.
But I couldn’t change it. I’d never be able to change it. I’d pushed her into a world where we’d never be together again and nearly gotten myself banished to Hell in the process. The shadows would never let me forget it. After fifteen years of penance, Balthazar wasn’t likely to let me forget it either.
A sick feeling started to brew in my gut, so I shook it off and watched another black blur zip past us.
At least they always led us to our targets.
“See.” Anaya smiled and skipped ahead. “We’re here.”
Sure enough, around the last bend, a candy-apple-red Camaro lay upside down, crumpled like a discarded Coke can at the tree line. The horn blared, the sound careering off the rock wall and slamming back into the cliffside forest where it splintered into a thousand echoes between the branches. If I had to guess, the car had taken a similar journey. A ringlet of white smoke seeped from under the ruined hood and twirled up into the air.
“Looks like we have a winner.” Anaya pulled her pearl-handled scythe from the leather belt she wore around her white dress, and twirled it in her hand. The twelve-inch blade, with its efficient, palm-sized handle, gleamed like it had never been used.
I glanced down at my sad excuse for a scythe with its plain iron handle and dingy blade. Heaven’s reapers got all the perks. I may have been a slave to the Inbetween, but I was still a reaper, for God’s sake. We were supposed to be the stuff of nightmare and legend. You’d think they’d at least give me a decent scythe. “Hey, what do you think the chances are of me scoring one of those?”
“Keep dreaming, Finn.”
I stopped, leaving a few feet of distance between the car and me. Whoever was in there wasn’t ready for me. Not yet. A slow warmth, an ache, spread through my chest, and drove sparks through my veins. Not the impatient icy burn I would have expected from a reap at all.
That…was different.
Anaya strolled past me, the shimmery brown plaits that hung down to her waist swaying behind her.
“Look at the bright side,” she said. “At least they did away with those awful cloaks.”
She gripped the scythe and looked to the heavens. Her lips moved around the words to a prayer, one she’d never let me hear. Then, with a graceful sweeping motion, the blade of her scythe sliced through the car. She tugged once, twice, and yanked her glittery prize from the wreckage. Anaya shoved her scythe back into the leather belt at her hip and pulled the man to his feet. The shadows were on him in an instant, hissing and swirling like smoke around his legs and waist, just waiting for us to make a mistake. They were desperate. Hungry. Of course, their reaction wasn’t really a surprise. Balthazar had loaded the territories with reapers, cutting off their food supply—souls rarely slipped through the cracks anymore.