Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

whom you could help, the same way you did Ricky—”

The words burst out of me. “Why can’t you help them?”

“Because you bring the two worlds together,” Haiden said, “in a way that I can’t. You are one of them—the lost—in a way that I will never be. Trust me, Sasha, I’ve gone over this in my head. I try to understand it all over again every time you and I go through this, life after life after life—”

“I have to go,” I said suddenly. “This is way too weird.”

“Sasha, I would never force you to do anything. If you come with me, it will be of your own free will.”

“I have to go.”

He didn’t reach out for me or stop me or follow me. I strode away from him, beneath the palms, down the curve of driveway, then ran the rest of the way home.

11

In the blur of days that passed I read up on Hades ... on Haiden. Except the patient, gentle, blue-eyed teacher I knew didn’t square up with the fearsome god of the myths. He seemed best known for the story involving Persephone, the young maiden he fell in love with and took to the Underworld. When she begged him to return to her own world, he let her go—except first, he gave her a pomegranate. She ate half of it, including the six seeds that would forever bind her to the Underworld—and to Hades—for six months of every year.

I remembered reaching for the bowl of fruit on the table, and the way Haiden had snapped, “Don’t!”

I remembered the softness of his voice and the sadness in his eyes when he said, “I’ve made mistakes in the past. If you come with me, it will be of your own free will.”

12

My friend Ashley and I went up to Malibu that weekend after I visited Josh. Ashley’s father had a house on the beach, and Ashley thought I needed some time in the sun. “You’re starting to look really pale,” she complained.

At dinner Ashley’s father talked about the movie he was making and bickered with Ashley’s mother about computer games. Afterward Ashley and I watched a couple of DVDs and drank wine and talked late into the night. When I made my way up the stairs and down the hall to one of the guest bedrooms, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. There was a piercing ache in my chest, as if someone had run a blade through it.

The only person who could make that ache go away was Haiden, and yet I had been avoiding the abandoned white house on Bel Air Road and trying not to think of him at all.

God of the Underworld. For crying out loud.

Why couldn’t I have fallen for some nice normal boy at my school? Every so often I’d catch myself touching my lips, tracing their outline, remembering Haiden’s kiss. But I didn’t want to deal with lost people, dead people. I didn’t want to sit at some guy’s side in the Underworld. I wanted what other people had, or what I believed other people had, even if I didn’t know any of them. I wanted happy and normal.

I didn’t want to be Persephone. What had happened to her, anyway, that Haiden had to come looking for me? Maybe she had moved on. Maybe the myth wasn’t accurate—it was a myth, after all. Or maybe she was a kind of metaphor for other girls—girls like me—who maybe had some Persephone in them. “Life after life after life,” Haiden had said. Maybe there were a bunch of us Persephones, trailing down through the ages, and every so often Haiden had to come find us.

I changed into my pajamas and threw open the French doors so I could listen to the ocean while I slept. I went out on the balcony. The water glimmered a midnight blue, waves spilling along the private beach.

Someone was walking through the sand.

At first I thought it was Ashley’s father, but the figure was too tall and slender. Then my heart kicked and I thought— Haiden. But it wasn’t him either.

The figure moved into the glow of the security lights. I saw the longish, tousled brown hair, and the shimmer of his body, the way the light seemed to sift right through him.

“Josh!” I yelled. “Josh!”

He paused, and for a moment I thought he heard me and was going to look in my direction. But no. He was simply standing there, the light falling over him, the half-moon high overhead, the waves sliding to his feet and sliding away again.

He wasn’t leaving any footprints in the sand.

I ran out of the guest room. I clambered down the stairs. I spent a few moments trying to find the door that opened onto the beach. And then I was outside, the salt spray in my face, screaming, “Josh!”

He turned to look at me.

“Don’t be dead.” I was half sobbing. “Please don’t be dead.”

He smiled.

And I felt it, that deep sense of knowing that came from inside me but also somewhere beyond me. It felt as cold and ancient as the stars. It moved through my body and I felt my arm lift. I was pointing out into the water. “That way,” I said. I tasted salt on my lips, from the ocean but also my own tears. “That way.” Josh smiled again. His lips moved—I think he said thank you —and he turned away from me and started gliding into the water. His form dissolved into the waves and he was gone.

I fell to my knees in the sand.

I don’t remember returning to the guest room, but at some point I must have. I must have crawled into bed and fallen asleep. Because bright light streamed into my room and Ashley’s voice was in my ear: “Sasha, Sasha, wake up! You have to wake up!”

“Go away,” I muttered. I didn’t want the day to start, because I knew what it would bring me: the news that Josh was dead.

“Josh is awake,” Ashley said. “He’s out of his coma and asking for you!”

13

Three days later I went back to the little white house. I left Paloma at home.

I called out Haiden’s name. No answer.

But the door was unlocked and opened easily.

I walked down the hall to the sunken living room where my lessons had taken place. I listened to the sound of my breath and the rap of my footsteps and the faint strains of birdsong filtering in from outside.

The table was still in the middle of the room.

The bowl of fruit was still on it.

I knew I was alone ... and yet I could feel Haiden’s presence. He was somewhere close. He was waiting to see what I would do, why I had come here.

I wanted to tell him about Josh. I wanted to describe the warm glow of love in my chest when I saw him, awake and alive, sitting up in the hospital bed and poking at the remains of his lunch.

“Sasha,” he said when he saw me. “I’m back!”

“You’re back.” I was laughing.

And I wanted to tell Haiden what Josh had said to me, after we’d cycled through our first rounds of conversation, talking about everything and nothing. Then a pause settled over us, and Josh looked at me with his calm, level gaze that was familiar and strange at the same time.

“Do you know what it’s like to be lost?” he said to me.

“Everybody gets lost.”