Chapter 17
Anaya’s eyes opened wide, so gold they cut right through the dusty dark around us. I couldn’t let go of her wrist. Couldn’t move. What the
“What happened?” Anaya whispered.
I looked back at her. She looked fierce with her badass blade dangling from her grip. But she looked afraid, too.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” I hissed, the water dripping from my boxers creating a puddle beneath me. “What did you do?”
“I…I don’t know,” she said.
“How can you not know?”
A girl whimpered across the room and Anaya closed her eyes. She jerked her wrist out of my grip.
“Not now. We’ll worry about this after.”
“After what?”
Anaya rolled her eyes at me and turned around.
I looked over her shoulder at the pretty redheaded girl in the metal lawn chair behind her. Her hair hung in dirty strings around her face. A rag, I’m guessing that was probably used to wipe up the floor, was shoved in her mouth. Her hands and ankles were tied with a bright-orange rope. Another girl with pixie-cut blond hair who looked a few years older was tied up beside her, already lifeless. There was blood streaming down the girls’ wrists and fingertips, pooling under the chairs. Jesus…where was it all coming from?
I raked my fingers through my wet hair and stepped back, waiting for my bones to shake right out of my skin. “Holy hell, Anaya… What is this? W-we need to call the cops or something.”
“It’s too late for that,” she said.
Anaya ran her palm over the younger girl’s coppery hair and cupped her face in her hand as she knelt down in front of her. She ran her thumb over the dirt and mascara smudges. She whispered something to her I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was seemed to calm the girl, because in seconds she looked boneless, limp with relief. Anaya stepped back and pulled the blade above her head, her arms arched like wings. Every part of her lit up like a firefly.
“Whoa, what are you going to do with
“What you wanted me to do to you,” she said softly, her voice like a warning, then swung. The blade sliced through air and flesh and blood. I couldn’t watch. Couldn’t listen to the sound of whatever she was doing—an awful ripping sound. I slapped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. When she went to work on the second girl I could still hear it, despite my efforts to block it all out. This was freaking crazy. I had to be hallucinating. Stuff like this just didn’t exist.
“Cash?” Warm fingers pulled one of my hands away from my ear. I cracked my eyes open and swallowed the fear in my throat. My belly felt full of it. Anaya stared back at me, her pretty lips tugged down in a frown.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said.
“I’m not.”
Anaya raised a brow and folded her arms across her chest. “Really?”
I cleared my throat and looked around Anaya at the girl standing behind her. She looked scared, with wide brown eyes, hollow freckled cheeks, and hair that curled around her chin like the tip of a flame. She looked all shimmery and red like a firework. The other girl kept her distance, her back pressed against the corner as she rubbed her hands up and down her tattooed arms.
“What are you gonna do with them?” I asked.
She smiled. “Take them home, of course.”
Anaya looked over her shoulder and dropped her hands down to her sides, gifting me with a view of her head to toe. The girl didn’t look like death. She looked like a freaking goddess. My fingers twitched at my side for a brush. I needed to paint her. I needed those eyes on my canvas. They wouldn’t seem real until I did.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Anaya asked. I blinked away the stupor and stood up.
“Are you going to get me back home?” I said, remembering my little trip with Noah. God, I hadn’t been ready for another trip like that. Even now my head was throbbing and bile burned the back of my throat. “
Anaya glanced back at the shivering girls behind her. “I think so. Just take my hand. We have to take care of them first.”
I flexed my fingers in and out of a tight fist. She wanted me to touch her. Trust her. She was going to show me what happened to the souls that Noah didn’t get. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to see that now. I didn’t want to tarnish this image of Anaya in my head. And if what Noah said was true, the image wouldn’t just be tarnished. It would be decimated.
The dark basement around me that smelled like sweat and death, and the sound of heavy footsteps on the floorboards above our heads, told me I didn’t really have a choice. I took a deep breath and laced my fingers through Anaya’s smooth, delicate ones. Did she really touch death every day? Her hand didn’t feel that way. It felt warm and comforting, like she’d just pulled it out of a bucket of sunshine. It made me feel like I never wanted to let go.
I watched her slip her free hand into the open palm of the soul beside her. I guess she was a soul.
She had to be. Her body was still bound to that filthy chair. Dead. Still. Cold. Oddly enough she looked happy to leave it.
“This might be a little disorienting for you. Take a moment,” Anaya whispered to me.
“I don’t need a moment,” I said as I stared at the pale, limp girl in the chair. I felt like I wanted to puke. “Just get me out of here.”
Anaya shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The air popped like static electricity and a nauseatingly familiar pressure enveloped me. The world spun into a bright blur and I groaned. My insides tuned to ice while my skin felt like it was on fire.
Just like before, it all stopped before my mind could process that everything had gone still around me. I opened my eyes and had to blink to make sure I was seeing correctly. It was like gray gauze had settled over my vision, but when I let go of Anaya’s hand and spun around, it was clear I wasn’t seeing things. That’s just what this place was—nothing. Anaya stepped into me, wrapping her fingers around my biceps, and I immediately began to thaw under her touch.
“Where are we?”
She nodded to a set of pewter gates just visible through the haze. “The Inbetween. I have to drop one off before we take mine home.”
“But I thought you said you only delivered to Heaven?”
She looked over her shoulder at the blond girl with the torn purple shirt and shook her head. “We’re a little shorthanded right now. I was called for both of them this time. She wasn’t on my list.”
I nodded and followed her through the gates while she spoke in soft reassuring tones to the girls.
Part of me wished I would have waited outside the gates, but the other part was morbidly curious about this place that didn’t really fit in the mold of the afterlife I’d grown up learning about. Not to mention Noah—I didn’t want to just listen to his warnings, I wanted to see for myself.
Anaya walked us just far enough through the gates to pass the girl off to what looked like another reaper. It was far enough. I clenched my fists, which were vibrating with energy. It was the souls. It had to be. There were so many, wandering aimlessly over the dull gray land. A boy maybe a year or two younger than me stumbled by us, mumbling to himself as if we didn’t exist. His eyes were nearly black, the whites barely visible. Dark veins that reminded me of Noah stretched up his arms and neck.
He stopped a few feet past us and twitched, then grabbed the sides of his head and began to moan.
