Not when I didn’t know where Emma and I stood. I had to make her understand. I couldn’t just leave things this way.
Easton slapped me on the back. “Smells like home.”
I looked around. Flashes of shimmering light punched holes into the dark. Reapers. At least twenty of them. “Why are they here?”
“Too many,” Easton said. “Body count’s going to be over a hundred.”
He pointed over my shoulder. Flames stretched so high into the darkness, they could have touched the stars. A massive hunk of metal burned, bordered by fir trees and flames. Jet fuel fumes ate away at the fresh air. A charred wing jutted up from the wreckage, branded by a blue and red airline logo. A plane. A plane full of burning people. My body heaved. God, I wished I still had the ability to throw up. I took a step back and stumbled right into the heat of a memory.
Heat licked at my neck. Something stung near my elbow. I punched at the controls of the airplane.
Just a little farther…
“Finn?”
Smoke choked me. Something hot scorched the back of my neck, my shoulder. “Son of a bitch!” I slapped at the flames crawling down my sleeve. The plane shuddered just before-“Hey.” Easton knelt beside me, his brows drawn together, as he snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Snap out of it.”
He stood and held a hand out to me. I looked at it like it was a snake ready to strike. Groaning, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me up.
“Look, I know this is hard,” he said. One of Heaven’s reapers, a boy with blinding white hair and alabaster skin, walked past us with his arm around the trembling soul of a woman in a flower print dress. “You can do this. You’ve had to do it before, and as long as these stupid humans keep trying to fly, you’re going to have to do it again. So I need you to take this.”
Easton slowly pulled the scythe from my holster and folded my fingers around it. I felt numb. I couldn’t even feel the blade in my fist. I didn’t want to feel it. I wanted to run away from this.
“Hey.” Easton snapped his fingers again, bringing me back. “Stay with me.”
I nodded and swallowed. “Okay.”
Easton smiled. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” Not even close to okay, but the lie didn’t taste too bad in my mouth. It was better than admitting I was terrified to someone who faced Hell on a daily basis. Easton nodded, looked me over once, and turned away. “Hey, Easton?”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder.
“Are you still pissed at me?” I asked, wanting him to say no.
He rolled his eyes and twirled his scythe between his fingers like a baton. “Nah.” He paused, considering. “But for the record, I do still think you’re a dumbass.”
“Fair enough.” I didn’t think he heard. He was already gone, tearing the soul from some poor bastard’s chest.
I closed my eyes and put one foot in front of the other until the heat consumed me. I opened my eyes. Flames licked out, teased my chest, the toes of my shoes. Someone stepped up beside me.
“I’ve already had to take three kids,” Anaya said. She chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“I try not to think about it.”
“Then that’s what you need to do here.”
I glanced back to the plane. “I know.”
“You’re welcome, by the way,” she said. “Things will be so much easier now with all of the secrets out of the way.”
“You’re welcome?” I glared at her. “Do you understand how pissed off she is at me right now?”
“She’ll get over it. Trust me.” Anaya held out her hand to me. It was so small and slender compared to mine, her skin just a shade darker. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll do this together.”
I stared at the silver shimmer that swirled like smoke where our palms connected, and took a deep breath. I didn’t need it, but I wanted it. If after seventy years I couldn’t forget the feel of my flesh melting from my bones, I didn’t think I’d ever escape those memories. I squeezed Anaya’s hand and stepped into the flames.
Chapter 30
Emma Cash walked into my room holding a mug of hot chocolate. I could smell it from here, sweet and rich, mixing with the cool scent of peppermint.
“How you holding up?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, setting down the book I’d been reading. “You don’t have to keep checking on me, you know. I’m a big girl.”
“Hey, you’re lucky I don’t set up a cot and move in after what happened the last time I left you alone.” He was trying to joke, but he wasn’t pulling it off. I knew he was serious. That he felt responsible. And I hated myself for making him feel that way.
I cured my fingers around his arm. “It’s not your fault.”
He shook his head. “You were upset. I shouldn’t have just let you run off like that. If I’d come after you sooner, that guy wouldn’t have had the chance…”
My throat closed up. More lies. I’d had to tell him the same thing I’d told the cops. That some guy on drugs had attacked me in that bathroom and gotten out through the window. If I’d told them the truth, that it had been Maeve, I’d be in Brookhaven right now. I was getting so tired of the lies. Tired of Finn’s. Tired of my own.
Cash sighed and set the steaming cup down on my nightstand. “I thought it might feel good on your throat.”
“Thank you. That was really sweet.” I smiled. “You get bonus points for that one.”
He stretched out across my bed while I took a drink. “Bonus points?” He raised a brow. “Can I use them now?”
I slapped his leg with my book. “Gross. The hot chocolate’s not worth that.”
He flashed me a lopsided grin and winked. “Hey, don’t knock it till you try it.” His words didn’t quite match the worry written all over his face. The dark circles under his eyes. The way his hair stuck up in every direction like he’d run his hands through it a hundred times.
“Enough. What’s up? What do you want?”
Cash propped himself up on his elbow and squinted at me, like he was trying to unravel all of my secrets. I hated it when he did that, because he usually could. “Who’s Finn?”
Heart thudding, I asked, “Who?”
“Don’t give me that crap. You said his name right before…” A guilty look flashed across his face as he messed with one of my pillows. He cleared his throat. “Right before you passed out at the theater.”
“He’s…no one,” I said, my hot chocolate suddenly leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
Cash sat up, brows pulled together. “Seriously? I tell you everything. I tell you shit you probably don’t even want to know about, and you’re going to hold out on me now? Come on, Em. Are you dating the guy? If you are, I want to meet him. Does he go to our school?”
“You can’t. He’s…” I paused searching for the right thing to say. “He’s out of reach. He’s always out of reach.”
“So does that translate into it’s a long-distance thing?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. An extremely long-distance thing.” He was dead. I was alive.
Long distance was an understatement.
“How did you meet him?”
I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to lie to him anymore. And I didn’t want to talk about Finn.
Not yet. There was still too much anger and hurt there. Yes, he’d given me this life. Kept me safe. But at what cost? I didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry. Love him or hate him. I couldn’t balance all of the feelings inside of me and it was making me nuts.
When I didn’t answer, Cash went on, “Please don’t tell me you met him on the Internet. Have you even met the guy in person? They never look like their pictures. He could have a mullet. He could have a third nipple or something—”