“If you don’t want to do this, you could always go along with Balthazar’s plan,” she said. “Working for Balthazar may not seem like an ideal eternity, but it’s better than what’s on the other side.”
“Don’t feed him that bullshit,” Finn spoke up. He sneered at her from across the room, his eyes haunted. “Don’t delude him into believing this life is anything more than a prison sentence. A nightmare. He’ll just hate you for it later.”
“Stay out of this, Finn!”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, leaning my forehead against the doorframe. “Why the sudden urgency? You were fine with turning me over to your boss just a few days ago.” I pushed away from the door, anger sending energy I didn’t know I had into each of my limbs. I clenched my fists, betrayal thick in my throat. She still wasn’t telling me everything. Even after all we’d been through together.
“I thought Tarik was in Heaven. And my family.” Anaya’s voice shook with the force of her words.
Words that were about to decimate me. “He promised to allow me to cross if I protected you and delivered you when the time came.”
My heart shuddered and throbbed and tore to pieces in my chest. I took a deep breath and winced when my lungs swelled with pain. “It was all bullshit, then?”
Anaya looked up, pain flashing across her face. “No!”
“But you weren’t going to hesitate,” I said. “Before you knew I had his soul…”
She was going to throw me to the wolves to get what she wanted. She didn’t give a damn about me.
All she cared about was some poor bastard who had been dead and buried for a thousand years. And I wasn’t him. I didn’t
Anaya rushed forward. “Cash, wait. You don’t understand—”
I backed out of the room and grabbed my shoes. I shoved them on. Didn’t even bother to tie them.
“Get away from me,” I muttered.
Anaya touched my shoulder and I jerked away. “Stay away from me, Anaya.” My words broke apart when I looked at her. I’d let her in. Let her see all of me. And this is what she gave me in return. I couldn’t even swallow through the pain. “Whatever this was…it was just a lie.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She sounded panicked as she followed me out the door and into the sun. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he wanted you for in the beginning. If there was another way, I swear—”
I climbed into my Bronco and shut the door to block out her words. No. I didn’t want to hear her. I couldn’t. Not now. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and cranked the ignition until the engine roared to life under the hood. I wasn’t sure how fast my Bronco could go, but I hoped it was fast enough to outrun death.
Chapter 26
He hated me.
He had to after everything I’d done. Everything I’d asked of him. But I didn’t know another way.
And I couldn’t stand lying to him another minute. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I looked out over
Cash’s backyard from the roof of his house. A few lights inside glowed with life, casting shadows across the clean concrete slab where Emma’s house used to sit before the fire that had changed everything. The billowing clouds overhead looked like smoke as they rumbled and spat out little droplets of rain. The music vibrating Cash’s studio walls cut off and I sat up when the door creaked open. Cash stepped out into the rain, not even bothering to shield himself. It pelted his scalp and within seconds his black hair was dripping over his forehead. His blue T-shirt turned to paint against his skin. I had to squeeze my eyes shut when the memory of Tarik kissing me in the rain swept over me.
“Are you going to stay up there all night?” he finally said. When I opened my eyes he looked so tired, worn down. I scooted to the edge of the roof and let my legs dangle over the sides.
“I didn’t think you wanted me to come in.”
“I don’t.” He pushed the wet hair out of his face. “But that’s probably not going to stop you, now is it?”
He didn’t say anything else. Just walked back into his studio and left the door open so the light could be swallowed up by the night. Another clap of thunder shook the house and a bright purple streak of lightning cracked the sky in half, illuminating a few shadow demons creeping around the walls of the studio. I stared at the open door. He was angry. But he wouldn’t have left that door open if he didn’t feel anything for me anymore. Some part of him still cared. Still wanted this. I hopped off the roof and headed for the studio.
When I got inside, Cash was peeling off his soaked T-shirt. He tossed it into the corner of the room and glanced up at me, shivering. His arms glittered with gold paint.
“You’re cold,” I said.
“No shit, Sherlock.” He shook his head and sat on the bar stool in front of a canvas. “So, Dr.
Kevorkian. You here to finish the job yourself? I bet that blade of yours would do the trick.”
Something inside me cracked at the sound of his voice. So bitter. Angry. It didn’t sound anything like the boy leaving whispers in the hollow of my neck. If I still had the ability to cry, I knew tears would have been streaming down my cheeks. Instead the pain all stayed locked up inside.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice shattering. Just like the rest of me. “I know you don’t believe me, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if you weren’t Tarik—”
“I am
I flinched as each one of his words struck me like a slap in the face.
“I know you’re not!” I shook, balling up the sides of my dress in my fists. “I don’t want you to be.
And I’ll find another way if that’s what you want. Just please…
“What happens to you, Anaya?”
“What do you mean?”
Cash stared at his canvas, at the half-painted portrait of a sad girl with golden eyes. He was painting me.
“I mean what happens to you if you don’t follow through for him?” he said. “What happens if you do this? If you let me cross the gates without his permission?”
I swallowed, trying to force that annoying ache down my throat. It wouldn’t budge.
“Anaya?”
“I’ll be banished,” I said. “To Hell.”
Cash placed his hands on his knees and closed his eyes. He was shaking from the inside out.
“Well, that option’s out.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” I took a hesitant step forward. “I’d do it. I’d do it for you.”
“For me…or for Tarik?” Cash said, so quiet I almost didn’t hear.
He might as well have slapped me in the face. How could he think that? I had told him I’d go to Hell for him! Didn’t that mean anything? Had I loved Tarik? Yes. But the connection I felt now was to this boy. This boy who was so wonderfully different and right for me that being in the room with him tilted my world off-balance. “How could you even ask me that?” I whispered.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “Whatever I do, I belong to someone else.”
I just looked at him.
“If I go along with this, I’ll belong to this Balthazar guy. If I don’t, then I belong to the shadow demons just like Noah.” He stopped and took a deep breath, turned around to face me. His eyes branded every part of me. “And everywhere in between, it feels like I belong to you.”
“Cash…”
He stood up and stepped into me. My shimmer sparked off his skin. His breath fanned across my face. Sweet. Heated, despite how cold the rest of him was.
“I really want to hate you,” he whispered and reached up to brush a braid off my shoulder. When the braid turned to vapor between his fingers, his jaw clenched. He focused on his fingers and the braid became solid in his
