Anaya turned around, tucking the soul behind her, and swung out her scythe. The shadows shrank back before dissolving into an oily spot on the pavement. She scowled and shoved her scythe back in its holster. “Vermin.”
Vermin. I’d almost doomed Allison to be vermin. I couldn’t look away from the dark spot on the pavement.
“Emma?” The soul babbled, rubbing his head. His eyes swam dizzily in his skull as he tried to regain his bearings. “Emma. You have to help Emma. Have you called an ambulance?”
I closed my eyes, trying to block him out. I didn’t want to know her name.
“It’s going to be fine, sir. She’s going to a very…nice place. Don’t worry.” Anaya looked up at me, her odd golden eyes begging me to back up her lie.
I couldn’t give him what he needed. What he needed was to hear that his daughter was going to live a long, happy life. All I offered was death. I wouldn’t lie to him. The fact that I was about to take his little girl to the Inbetween was bad enough.
If she ever decided she was ready, that is. I glanced back at the car, waiting for the icy pull to kick in. Something still didn’t feel right about this.
“Dad!” a girl’s broken voice cried from the inside the crumpled car.
“Help her!” the man cried, trying to scrabble toward the car. Anaya easily held his shimmering form back. “For the love of God, she’s only fifteen years old. You should have helped her first.”
Now the pull kicked in. Except, this pull was dizzying and familiar in an unfamiliar way. And getting stronger by the second. My head spun with the force of it. Something was wrong here. Nothing about this felt like a standard reap. But I’d swear I felt this before. Once…
Memories pulsed through my mind in blinding flashes as I inched toward the vehicle. Soft-as-satin lips, warm whispers against my neck, smiles like the sun… The pull intensified, like a pounding in my chest, and my knees buckled. I knelt down to the broken window. Something like hope surged through me, followed by a cold rush of fear. I could only think of one other time that it had felt like this. Back when I’d peeled the soul from a frail, bloody body, packed in snow. The day that had changed me forever.
No. It couldn’t be her. Not again, and not like this. Blond hair lay matted with blood against the girl’s cheek. I reached through the window and traced the path of a tear that had fallen from her closed eyelids, my fingers scattering like mist. Her skin was petal-soft, deadly cold. A warm spot pooled in my hand where we touched, then traveled up my arm, down my neck where the heat exploded in my chest. Connection throbbed beneath my ribs. Certainty pounded in my temples.
Allison…
I jerked my hand back and scrambled away from the car. It was her. After all these years… it was her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Anaya sounded annoyed.
“Dad?” the girl whimpered again, weaker this time. Or maybe that was the gray, gauzy feeling that was suffocating me. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of wondering if I’d done the right thing, and this is what I find? A girl halfway to death, clutching a bloody backpack? No. No. No! I shut my eyes and focused, touching my scythe to be certain. It wasn’t there. No burning pull. No clawing need to take her soul. She could still be okay. Unless-“Finn?” Anaya crouched down in front of me. “I don’t know what is going on with you, but if you are incapable of handling this, I will.”
I blinked until Anaya’s blurry face slowly came into focus. I bolted upright. “Is she yours? Are you here for both of them? Because it’s not me.” A cold, throbbing panic took up residency in my chest.
When she just stared at me, confused, I snapped. “Answer the damn question, Anaya!”
Realization slowly replaced the confusion in her eyes. Anaya shook her head and stared up through the spiky treetops where a crow swam across the turbulent lavender sky. “It’s her.”
It wasn’t even a question. I couldn’t hide this. Couldn’t shove the secret into the dark safety of my pocket and walk away. Anaya knew.
She glanced back at the car, and then her gaze settled on me. “Walk away,” she said, her voice just a whisper of breath. “If you have any sense left in you, you’ll walk away from this and forget it happened, Finn. Don’t screw this up. You’ve worked too hard to go back now.”
I still had some sense. I must have, because part of me knew she was right. That I should walk away right now before this went any further. I blinked at the car, trying so hard to ignore the pull tugging me to her, warm and urgent like the need to breathe. The pull telling me I was here for a reason, even if that reason wasn’t to take her soul. I didn’t admit that to Anaya, though. Instead, I nodded, not trusting the words tumbling around in my mouth.
Anaya wrapped her fingers around her charge’s hand and smiled at him. The air behind her rippled like a silk curtain, then erupted with light. His eyes went wide as he glanced at Anaya, then to me.
“I’m…I’m…” He stopped when Anaya patted the back of his hand, the word dead hanging among us.
“Yes,” she said.
“And my daughter?” His shimmer dimmed as he watched the car teeter ineptly on the cliff’s sharp drop-off.
“I’ll take care of her,” I said. “I swear.”
I swallowed, realizing I meant it. What were the odds that I’d find her again like this? What were the odds that out of all of the places in the world she could have been reborn, she’d end up in
California? I’d reaped this territory for years, and she’d been right under my nose. There had to be a reason.
Anaya shot me a sharp look, but didn’t get a chance to follow through with her usual rant. Glittery tendrils of light reached out and wrapped around her and the soul in tow. A gust of balmy air exploded from the porthole, blowing Anaya’s braids in every direction. It fluffed her white skirt until she looked like she was floating on a cotton mushroom top, then spun them around until they were just a swirl of blinding color.
When they were gone, the wind died, and the light dimmed and dissolved into the murky blue twilight.
Something cracked.
The tree that held the wreckage in place swayed. I looked up. A brilliant flash of red bounced on a branch, as if begging it to snap.
Maeve.
The soul whose second chance I’d stolen fifteen years ago when I pushed Allison through the portal in her place.
And all at once, I realized what fate wanted me to do.
“Don’t!” I scrambled for the car. It wobbled on the one tire that hadn’t gone flat, threatening to go over any second and take the girl inside with it.
“I knew following you around would eventually pay off.” Her voice echoed through the treetops, followed by a mocking laugh. “I realize this is bittersweet, so I’ll let you say a quick good-bye before
I kill her and ruin your sad excuse for an existence.”
I wriggled through the window, closed my eyes, and gave into gravity. Cells connected. The air sizzled. I flexed my fingers, only a breath away from being fully corporeal.
No.
I stopped myself, fighting the urge to slip my arms around Allison’s limp frame, and pictured
Balthazar, the second in command to the Almighty, ruler of reapers. He’d feel me go corporeal and would know I’d found her again. I punched the ceiling and let my skin scatter like sparks against the gray felt. I couldn’t afford that kind of hell right now.
She groaned and something like relief flooded me. Yes, definitely still alive. But not for long. The tree swayed again, this time allowing a little of the car to slip through its hold. I glanced out the window and watched a few rocks spring loose from the cliff and roll to the bottom.