“Stop!” I screamed, running for the door again. I beat on it until my fists turned red and throbbed.
“Let me out! Somebody let me out!” Fear ripped the words out of me like razor blades.
One by one, the stall doors flew off their hinges and into the big wall-length mirror above the sinks.
Glass shattered and flew through the room like shrapnel. Finn was right—she wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted. But he was wrong about her wanting to hurt me.
She wanted me dead.
The tissue fell into limp heaps and the lights flickered again. I squeezed my hands into fists. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not in a filthy theater bathroom.
The lights dimmed, then flared back to life. When the last stall door flew off its hinges, I didn’t see it coming. Pain burst like darkness behind my eyelids and I crumpled to the floor. My hand reached for something, anything, to grab onto. Blood trickled into my eye and I managed to swipe it away with the back of my wrist. “Please don’t do this…”
The lights stopped flickering and the room went silent and still. Could she be listening to me?
Trembling, I pushed myself up. “I’m not going to pretend to know anything about what happens after you die, but I do believe there is something better out there. I have to believe it. Just like I have to believe there’s something like that out there for you. Maybe Finn can help you find it?”
Nothing happened. I let out a shaky breath and tried not to cry. She’d heard me. Listened, even. Finn was wrong. I could still do something-A long shard of glass dragged itself across the tile floor, the scraping sound enough to make me feel sick to my stomach. One by one, the larger pieces of broken mirror rose into the air. Something dark flashed in the surfaces. The glass sliced through the air and I screamed, pressing myself against the floor to avoid being hit. Pain pulsed, burning hot from my neck to my shoulder. A piece had gotten to me. I could feel it lodged in my neck.
Silence spread through the room, thick like darkness, and then…the lights flickered again. I started to climb to my knees, but something knocked me back. My head hit the floor and the room spun in circles above me. This was it. She was going to win. I couldn’t do anything about it.
And then I felt it—the icy sensation I’d associated with Maeve, slithering over my skin like it was looking for a way in. Something heavy and cold pressed me into the floor, pushing the breath out of my lungs. Frantic, my soul pushed back, clinging to my skin as it forced her away. This wouldn’t be my end. I was not losing my life to some crazed poltergeist bitch.
“Help! Somebody help!” I screamed until my throat felt raw. “Cash! Finn?” Someone, please find me, I pleaded silently as I crawled to the door, one hand clutching the wound on my neck. Sticky liquid seeped between my fingers, churning my stomach. I didn’t have to look to know it was blood.
The way the room was spinning and turning dark around the edges was enough to tell me that.
The window blew out like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. I tried to crawl away but white-hot pain bit into my calf, the fiery sensation of metal grating against bone. I closed my eyes, praying for anything that would make the pain stop. Make it go away, I prayed through the pounding in my head.
Steady as a drum, it pounded louder, louder, louder, until a final burst drowned the sound out with shouts and screams.
“Emma. Oh my God, Emma, what happened?” Cash’s breath was warm on my face, his hands replacing mine around the wound on my neck.
I screamed. The sound choked off into a strange gurgle as he slid the piece of broken mirror out of my skin. Everything was blurry even behind my closed lids, a gray catacomb of never-ending fuzziness pulling me deeper into an ocean of forgetting. I fought it, concentrating on the feel of Cash’s fingers on my face. I needed to talk. I needed air. I needed…
“Finn,” I whispered, and then everything went black.
Chapter 26
Emma
“Don’t you dare die, Em.” Cash’s voice sounded like he’d been wrapped in cotton. “I mean it. I’ll follow you to the grave and kick your ghostly ass if you don’t stay with me.”
My eyes rolled around behind my eyelids. I couldn’t open them. Couldn’t make my lips move to tell him not to worry.
“Sir, we’re going to need you to back up,” a woman’s voice said. I felt pressure against my neck. So much pressure. A prick in my wrist. A plastic mask around my mouth. Then warm, familiar fingers laced through mine. Cash.
“He really cares about you,” a girl said.
I blinked, confused by the fact that I was suddenly sitting on a bench next to the drive-in concession stands with a girl I didn’t know. In front of us, the back of the ambulance was a flurry of action. I had never seen a pair of hands move so fast as the paramedic worked at bandaging my neck. Cash rocked back and forth, staring at our linked fingers. My body looked pale and empty on the gurney.
“I’m dead,” I breathed. I looked up and had to blink away the golden spot that bloomed across my vision before the girl came into focus.
She smoothed her white dress over her legs. “You’re not dead.”
“Then what is this?”
She cocked her head to the side, inspecting me with golden eyes. I watched her thumb rub the pearl handle at her side. “You’re close,” she said. “But I think you’re going to be fine.”
“Th-then why are you here? What do you want?” The back of the ambulance started to spin. I gripped the sides of my head and stared at my lifeless body.
“We’re losing her!” Monitors started to wail. A choked sound seeped from Cash’s throat.
“Okay, I don’t have much time,” the girl said. “Come here.”
I jerked away from her touch. “Why?”
She sighed. “Because I’ve been given permission to show you something that I think you need to see. The only reason I can show you now is because you’re straddling the line. After they finish with you”—she nodded to the paramedic—“I lose my chance.”
Hesitantly, I nodded.
“Trust me. You’ll thank me later.” She smiled and raised her palm to my forehead, pausing just before making contact. “Oh, and Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell Finn he owes me.”
She pressed her palm to my forehead, and I was engulfed in light.
…
The shock of cold was too much. It burned through me until it was something else altogether. Cold like this wasn’t just a temperature. It was pain. Throbbing. Cutting. Consuming. I tried to gasp for air, but nothing came in. Nothing got out. Ice laced with the blood in my veins. My legs felt like slabs of concrete.
A hand touched my cheek. Peace flooded through those fingertips like warm honey. Numbing me.
Calling my name.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a rough voice said. The hand was jerked away. I felt lost without it. Cold. “You don’t touch them. Ever.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I don’t know what’s going on with you today. Just do your job. Got it?”
The voices stopped and the snow crunched beside my face. The warmth moved away. And then… pain. Darkness. Everywhere. I screamed inside my head but I couldn’t feel the sound on my lips.
Couldn’t find the light with my eyes. Something sharp sliced through me. Splintered me in two. And then I was weightless. Blissfully numb.
I opened my eyes and blinked at the shadow of a boy who stood in front of me. His green eyes swept over me thoughtfully, like he was waiting for me to break. Or at least realize what was happening. I glanced behind me at the body lying in the snow. Her lips were blue. A red halo of blood stained the snow around her blond head of hair.