I sat on my bed in the dark. The laptop screen glared back at me as I trolled WebMD and Wikipedia.
There were a lot of half-ass guesses to what was wrong with me, but none of them were right. There wasn’t one article on what to do when you’re living in an expired body. My gut told me the answer to that was to give up. There was no cure. No solution. Just a question mark on the door that would open to the afterlife. Which afterlife I was going to was just another thing I didn’t know.
I slammed the laptop shut and leaned back into my pillows. The house was too quiet. Too vacant.
No Dad snoring. No muffled sounds of
And the hissing.
I tensed and sat up, my eyes searching the dark. It was useless to even try to see them this way. The dark was their camouflage. My fingers twitched on the comforter, wanting to flip the light on, but I was afraid of what I’d see. How many were here this time? The hissing was getting closer. Louder.
Goose bumps rose across my arms. Calm. Anaya said I had to stay calm. Get control. I inhaled a deep breath and let it sit in my chest, burning my lungs. It was too cold. I finally coughed and let it out.
Another hiss echoed through the dark.
“Screw this.” I leaned over to flip on the lamp.
Light exploded across the dark, but the shadows were quick to snuff it out. My hand flinched back as one slithered up onto the nightstand.
“Youuuu commmeeee.”
I looked up at the large shadow standing at the end of my bed. It was a big black shadow of a man twice my size. It cocked its head to the side and held out a hand. Black smoke like fingers curled toward me, beckoning me to follow.
Fear closed off my throat. Where was Anaya? God, please let her come back. Now. Like right freaking now.
“What do you want?”
“Youuuuuu,” the shadow man hissed. Something dark and sludge-like dripped from the cavern of his mouth, and I jerked my legs up before it could land on my shin.
“Look,” I said, gripping the comforter. “I’m not who you want. If you had any idea how much
Jagermeister I’ve drunk in the last three years, then you’d know there’s no way I could ever taste good.”
“Come!” It shouted. That sound sent panic ripping through my chest. It was a deep growling sound that wasn’t human or animal. I needed to get out of there, but I was cornered by a wall of hungry darkness on every side. Adrenaline surged through my veins, or maybe it was something else, something that made me believe I was capable of doing what I decided to do next. My eyes scanned the room. Jeans on the floor. Keys on the dresser by the door. I could do this. Pain ripped through my chest as I dragged in a breath of air, then two. Holding the last one in, I reached out and grabbed the shadow demon between me and the exit by the throat. Sparks flew and a blue stream of vapor seeped out of my veins, latching onto the demon, binding it to my wrist. It hissed, setting off a symphony of growls all around as I slid off the bed, taking it with me. A second shadow broke away from the rest and snapped at me. I grabbed it with my left hand. I felt dizzy. Electric. The sensation almost enough to numb the burning sting developing over every inch of bare flesh that the shadow demons touched.
When I got near the door, I released them both along with the breath I’d been holding. And damn if the pain lighting up my world didn’t choose that moment to explode across the surface of my skin. I ignored it. If I didn’t, there would be so much more to follow. Instead, I grabbed my jeans off the floor and keys off the nightstand and darted out the door.
By the time I made it to Finn’s, I had finally stopped shaking. I turned the ignition off and sat in the
Bronco, staring up at his crappy little garage apartment. One window glowed with light despite it being two in the morning.
“Please don’t let Emma be in there.” I climbed out of the truck.
Wind parted the darkness and every time a gust of it touched me, I flinched. Where the hell was
Noah the freaking shadow whisperer? For someone who claimed to want to be my friend, he wasn’t very concerned with me becoming a meal. I couldn’t get Anaya’s words out of my head. She said she’d seen it. Shadow walkers delivering souls to the underworld. Straight into the hands of the things
I was running from. Is that what Noah was doing with the souls he
He had to be different.
I looked up at the stars peeking through the wispy gray clouds in the sky and prayed that whoever it was that Anaya worked for up there heard me. I pounded up the steps to Finn’s apartment and pounded even harder on the door. It took him a minute, but when he answered he didn’t look surprised. He just looked…tired.
“Can I stay here?” I asked. “I would have gone to Emma’s, but I don’t want to lead these things over there. And…I don’t really know where else to go.”
He looked me up and down and stepped to the side for me to enter.
“Are they here now?” he asked once I was inside. I shivered and rubbed my arms.
“Not yet.”
“You’re going to have to get your emotions under control if you want to keep them at bay.” He closed the door and locked it.
“Easier said than done.”
Finn flipped on a small table lamp.
“They thrive on the emotions you’re putting out,” he said. “Fear. Anger. Depression. It attracts them like moths to a flame. That’s how they always got to reaps before we could. They could smell the dying before I ever got the call.”
“Well, I must smell like a freaking buffet then.”
Finn laughed at that.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and looked around the pint-size apartment. A burgundy sofa that had survived some kind of garage sale hell and a dinged-up coffee table sat in the middle of the living room. Two mismatched bar stools were pushed up against the little kitchen bar. But it was neat and clean. The only things out of place were Finn’s black-and-white Converse tennis shoes he’d kicked off on the way to the bedroom.
“It’s a rat hole. I know.” He plopped down onto the sofa and ran a hand over the cushion. “I’m saving up to get something better after graduation.”
“Hey, looks fine to me.” I sat down beside him and checked the room one more time. At least he was going to make it to graduation. “It can’t be easy starting from scratch.”
He laughed and leaned his head back. “You have no idea. It all just sounds like a fairy tale at first.
But nobody tells you what happens after ‘they lived happily ever after.’”
“Do you regret it?” I studied his face, trying to see what Emma loved so much. “Do you wish things had just stayed the same? I mean, it’s got to be easier being dead than all this.”
Part of me really believed that. Life didn’t seem very easy any more. Not that it ever really had. But when you started blurring the lines between life and death, things got…complicated. I was never very good with complicated.
“No.” Finn shook his head. “And trust me. The way things were before, being separated from her like that… I’ll take this and more any day of the week.”
I leaned up and placed my palms on the coffee table to try to stop shaking. “Well, she loves you,” I said, shivering. “I’ve never seen her love anyone the way she loves you.”
Finn smiled at that. He grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and tossed it over to me. I wrapped it around myself to try to lock in what little heat I had left.
“What about Anaya?” he said. “Don’t tell me there’s not something there. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I’ve known Anaya for a very long time. She makes a point not to look at anyone like that.”
I shook my head and stared at the carpet. “She doesn’t love me. She thinks I’m somebody else. And to be honest I don’t think I have the energy to be some guy she’s been chasing for a thousand years.”
“Wait…somebody else?” Finn sat up with interest. “Do you mean she knew you in a past life?”
