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.
“Finn, come out of there,” Maeve sang. She bounced again, rocking the car. “Just give in to this and we’ll call it a day. She was going to die anyway. You’d just be doing your job.”
She was not going to die. I wouldn’t let her.
“Come on, Allison.” I leaned in close and watched her eyelids twitch, then crack open one at a time. Thank God. “I know you’re scared, but I need you to trust me.”
Her eyes darted back and forth, wide and afraid, before settling on me. “Who are you? Where’s my dad?”
When she leaned up to try to see in the front seat I moved in front of her to block her view. “He’s fine. Don’t worry about him right now,” I said, softly. “I need you to get up. See that window?” I pointed to the upside-down broken window and she nodded.
The car lurched again.
“You need to crawl through there. And you need to do it fast.”
She tried to sit up, then winced and fell back. “I can’t. It hurts.”
I plastered a smile on my face and had to force myself not to touch her, to brush the hair out of her face, to grab her arm and pull her the hell out of there. “Yes, you can. You’re tough. I can tell.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not. Really. I didn’t even make it through one week of softball before I sprained my ankle.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “I have a feeling you’re a lot tougher than you give yourself credit for. Now come on.” The car rocked and I tensed. “Get out of the car.”
She looked into my eyes for a long moment, then pushed herself up and inched toward the window. I crawled out first, coaxing her to follow.
The car shifted. Groaned. I heard more rocks break loose from the cliff to tumble over the edge.
“You’re making this unbearably complicated, Finn. Really, why not just pull her out of the car and get it over with?” Maeve taunted, a smile behind her words. “You’re already dead—what else could Balthazar possibly do? Oh…well I guess there is Hell. But other than that?”
Pushing Maeve’s laughter out of my head, I focused on Allison. “Come on, pretty girl,” I said, fear thrumming in my chest. “You can do this. You have to do this.”
The gash bleeding through her blue jeans snagged on the broken window and she sobbed.
“Don’t stop. I know it hurts. But you can’t stop.” We were so close. Another few feet and she’d be free. I kept my eyes on her, trying to figure out a way to distract her from the pain. “You know, one time I broke my leg,” I blurted out.
She sniffled and looked up at me.
“I’d climbed this big tree on my dad’s farm. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, so when the branch broke, I knew I was in trouble. I had to walk all the way home on that leg just to get there before it got dark.”
“Why didn’t you wait for somebody to look for you?”
“Coyotes. All I could think about was how I used to hear them howling at night. Our neighbor used to find his cattle torn to shreds.”
She scooted a little farther out. “Didn’t it hurt?”
The car groaned and tilted underneath us. Allison gripped the seat, her eyes wide.
“It hurt like hell, but it was a lot better than ending up like the cattle.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and wiggled the rest of the way through the window, into the pine needles and dirt on the side of the road. She crawled forward a few more feet and collapsed. Her cheek pressed against the wet pavement as she fought to catch her breath.
A loud crack split the silence, and the car lurched forward, its weight breaking the tall bone of a tree. Within seconds, it rolled off the side and into the chasm below, a chewed-up red spot swallowed by the dark.
Maeve’s scream ripped through the mist that had started to fall, and in it, I heard her cry for revenge. I’d worry about that later. For now, I looked down at Allison.
I watched her breaths make foggy shapes as they puffed erratically into the night. Her lashes blinked away the tears that were running across her cheeks. No. This wasn’t Allison anymore.
“Emma,” I whispered as a beam of headlights curled around the bend in the road. “You need to flag down the car that’s coming around the corner. You’re going to have to get up.”
“My leg…” She looked up, tears in her eyes. “Why can’t you do it? Why aren’t you helping me?”