Inbetween

I looked at Anaya at the same time she looked at me. She wore a simple white sundress with a brown leather belt that carried her scythe. Gold gladiator sandals laced up her slender calves. They matched the gold band that wrapped around her biceps like a serpent.

“When was the last time you changed your style?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Some looks are timeless. Besides, I have an image of purity to uphold, Finn. We can’t all run around looking like we just got off a shift at the Gap.”

I looked down at my jeans, charcoal gray T-shirt, and canvas tennis shoes. I didn’t need a mirror to know my hair was the same as the day I bit the dust: buzzed short around the back and sides, military style. The top had grown out on the trip overseas so that it curled just enough to remind me of the way I used to keep it as a kid. I ran my fingers through my hair and thought about it. “What’s the Gap?”

Anaya stilled, a nervous smile on her face that she directed over my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

“Anaya, lovely as always,” Balthazar said. “Be a dear and give me a moment alone with Finn.”

Anaya gave me a tight, worried smile then scurried away. She didn’t make it far. A burst of white light consumed her with a gasp. The breeze around my ankles turned to fog, moved by Balthazar’s force. The air crackled and hummed with a dangerous energy. In a flash, the other reapers were pulled away by the hungry fingers of death. I would’ve given anything for that hand to grab me in that moment.

Balthazar had Easton by the back of the neck and shoved him into the seat beside me. Easton’s jaw clenched.

“Is there something either of you would like to tell me?”

I tried to catch Easton’s gaze but he looked away. “No,” I finally said.

Balthazar snapped his fingers and pain sizzled through my insides. I groaned, gripping the sides of my chair. Easton grunted and lifted his chin.

“Did you touch her?” He glared at me. “I’m not an idiot, Finn. I felt you go corporeal, and I know you’ve been following her.”

I chewed on the lifeless flesh on the inside of my cheek. Damn it…how much did he already know?

When I didn’t answer, Balthazar cursed under his breath.

“Has seventeen years of punishment not been enough to make you see reason?” he asked. “I give you reminders daily. What else do I have to do?”

“It was an accident.”

The electricity drained from my limbs and I sagged into my seat. Balthazar turned away, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Make me understand,” he said. “Make me understand, because if you can’t, then I am going to have to punish you. Do you understand what that will mean?”

I could’ve lied, but he would have found out. It was better to tell the truth this time. Balthazar made an impatient sound in the back of his throat.

“She’ll die if I leave her alone,” I said. “Maeve knows how I feel about her. She’ll just keep torturing Emma until, one of these days, the ’accidents’ she causes kills her. I can’t let that happen. I don’t see how you can let that happen.”

“The problem with Maeve is no one’s fault but your own. You know I have no jurisdiction over lost souls or those bound for the Shadow Land. You sealed Emma’s fate the moment you pushed Allison through that porthole.”

My body shuddered with the memory.

I slipped my fingers around Allison’s trembling shoulders. Everyone was distracted. Even Balthazar had turned his attention to the last soul in line. It would have to be now. My chest screamed and ached with what I was about to do.

“Please forgive me for this, pretty girl.”

I looked up at him, hopeless. “So I should just watch it happen?”

Balthazar’s bottomless eyes looked me over. “I don’t expect you to watch it happen. I can give you a transfer. But that’s all I can offer you.”

I closed my eyes and scrubbed my palms over my face. “No. I can stay away from her.”

“Can you?” He raised a brow.

I pulled my hands away and stared at the ground. No. But I could be more careful. “Yes. Just don’t send me away.”

Balthazar studied me from a long moment. “She is not the girl from the Inbetween anymore. The girl you snuck into the shadows with. The girl you were willing to spite me and all of the Inbetween to save.” He looked at me until I was forced to meet his gaze. “She’s not Allison anymore.”

“I know.” I had to force the words out.

“I’m only going to say this once.” Balthazar turned his eyes to a shadow in the distance that twisted and moved like a living thing. It looked like a willow tree caught up in a storm, but there was no way to tell. “There will be order among my flock. If you decide to disrupt that order again there will be consequences. I’m sure Easton could give you a glimpse of what those might be if I’m not being clear here.”

Easton’s shoulders tensed under his coat.

Balthazar leaned down until his icy whisper found my ear. “Do you need a glimpse, Finn?”

I shook my head. “You’re clear.”

Balthazar clamped his big palm onto my shoulder, squeezing until I turned to smoke that drifted between his fingers. “Good. Next time there won’t be a warning. Next time we’ll be having this conversation in Hell.”

My lungs lay dead and still in my chest as I watched him walk away. His threats wound around me like barbed wire, poking and prodding me, making me terrified to move. I looked at Easton. It wasn’t fair that I’d dragged him into this. I understood that. It didn’t mean I knew what to say.

He leaned up and gripped the metal chair in front of him, staring at the space between his arms rather than at me. “Are you going to stop now?”

I opened my mouth wanting to tell him yes, but the words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t that simple. Not with Emma. “She saved me when I didn’t think there was anything in me worth saving. I can’t just stand by and watch her crumble. She’s broken, Easton.”

Easton glared at me. “She’s broken because of you. You broke her when you played with fate and sent her here. You broke her when you should have left her alone two years ago. She could’ve died and gone to Heaven if you hadn’t gotten her out of that car.”

I closed my eyes and ground my teeth together until pain bloomed like sunlight. He was right. And I didn’t want to hear how right he was. I’d ruined everything for her because I was selfish. Because I couldn’t stand the thought of an eternity without her. Because I didn’t want her to move on when I couldn’t go with her. Even if I did have the chance to know her again, she would never forgive me for what I’d done.

I felt sick.

“And you’re going to keep breaking her until there is nothing left to break if you don’t figure out a way to let her go.”

I looked away. She made me feel alive again. She made me feel things that should have stayed buried with my body at the bottom of the ocean. God…I’d been dead for so long, I didn’t know how to give that up. “What if I can’t?”

Easton grunted and clutched his scythe, which glowed red between his fingers. Just before he let himself be pulled away by the call of the damned, he whispered, “Then I think you better get used to the idea of Hell.”

Chapter 5

Emma I shut my blinds and let my eyes adjust to the dimness of my room, then flipped on my camera. I felt so unfocused. Rattled even. And by a stupid boy, no less. One I could have sworn I’d seen before, but when I tried to pin down the memory in my head, it floated just out of my grasp like a dream. The way he looked at me, though… It was like he knew me. Like he wanted to consume me. And the way that look sent shivers down my