Inbetween

“Stop it.” Cash grabbed the remote from me and pointed it over his shoulder to turn it off.

“Stop what?” I grabbed my pillow and tucked it against my chest so he wouldn’t see me shaking. “It was a stupid idea. We’re done talking about it.”

His dark eyes burned into me. “Don’t do this.” He stared down at me, jaw clenched. “Don’t shut me out.”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say,” I said.

“It’s not that! I just—”

“You just what?”

Cash stopped and looked at me like he knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He was right. He shook his head and slipped off the bed the way I wanted to slip out of my skin. He was going to be able to walk out my door and leave all this behind. But I couldn’t. Not when it was my life. Not when it was going to be my death.

“It’s happening all over again, isn’t it?”

I felt like I was being analyzed under a microscope. Diagnosed all over again. I wanted to scream at him to stop looking at me like that. I squeezed the pillow tighter. “I’m fine. Just go home. Please.”

Cash sighed. “If you’re so fine, come with me to the bonfire.”

“You don’t need me there.”

“I do need you there.” He hesitated for a moment, then kicked the side of my bed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Who else will talk me out of making a complete ass of myself?”

This. This was why I loved Cash. Why he was the one stable thing in my life while the rest of the world spun out of control around me. He always knew what to say to ease the pressure, make me smile, make me forget why we were fighting in the first place.

“You’ll do that whether I’m there or not, and we both know it.”

Cash smiled, but I could tell he wasn’t ready to let the rest go. He was waiting for me to snap again.

I wanted to be mad at him for it, but if I was being honest, I was waiting for it, too.

“Besides,” I said. “You’ll ditch me as soon as you find somebody to take home.”

“I won’t.” He balanced an empty Dixie cup from my nightstand on top of my head like a little red top hat. “I’d never leave you alone. Promise.”

“You don’t have to babysit me. I’m not going to do something stupid.”

He knelt down in front of me. “I don’t want to babysit you. I want you to come have fun with me and forget about all of this crap for a little while.”

I slapped the cup off of my head. “Fine. I’ll meet you there.”

“Why don’t you just ride with me?”

He knew I’d bail if I didn’t go with him. Any other day, I wouldn’t have been caught dead at one of these stupid bonfires. Especially after what happened today. God, I really wanted to bail, but the look on his face made my chest feel tight. I couldn’t let him think I was shutting him out. Besides, I was still about a gazillion pictures short for the yearbook.

He lingered in front of my window, waiting.

I pulled at a thread on my shirt, already feeling the fear wind like vines around my throat, and said, “Pick me up at seven.”

Chapter 6

Finn I missed the feel of rain. It poured from the gray October sky in buckets, in such a hurry to get to the ground that it rushed right through me. If I were alive, I’d be drenched. Instead, I stood frustratingly dry, staring at the soft light coming from Emma’s window as the dimming sky turned everything around me into shadows.

When I was alone like this, it was too easy for my mind to wander into territory that made what was in front of me that much harder to deal with. I closed my eyes and gave in, letting images of Allison swirl around in my head. It was useless to try to stop the memories of her. They always won, no matter how hard I tried to block them out.

Allison leaned her head against my shoulder. “I wish I could have known you while we were both alive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Mama and Daddy would have loved you.” She laced her fingers through mine. “Daddy never liked my other boyfriends.”

I laughed and pressed a kiss into her hair. “I don’t want to hear about your other boyfriends.”

“Jealous?” I could hear the smile behind her words.

I pulled her into my lap and tucked her hair behind her ear. Our skin turned to sparks when it touched. I brushed my lips against hers and said, “Very.”

Allison kissed me back, then pulled away, her breath cool against my face. “Don’t ever leave me, Finn.” When I didn’t respond she frowned. “Say it. Say you won’t ever leave.”

“I won’t ever leave you.”

My chest ached with the memory and I cursed myself for letting it out. It only made being this close to Emma harder. I wanted to touch her like that again. I wanted to keep my promise. I wanted-“Why are you standing out here in the rain?”

I didn’t turn around. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Maeve’s brilliant red hair flowing like a halo around her head. Instead, I stared at Emma’s window, waiting for the right moment to go back in.

“She’s changing.” I folded my arms across my chest. After seventeen years of Maeve taunting and harassing me, and me not being able to do anything about it, I was exhausted. I was in no way, shape, or form in the mood for this.

“And?”

“And I’m giving her some privacy. I doubt she’d want me to see her without her clothes on. Some girls are funny that way.”

Maeve laughed, maybe to be cruel, maybe just to make fun of the idiot standing in the rain. Hell, maybe she just truly thought it was funny. Either way I couldn’t stand the sound of it. “What do you want from me?”

“Who said I want anything from you?” She tiptoed around me, lithe as a ballet dancer, fingers laced behind her back. I couldn’t help but notice the inky black veins inching their way up her pale neck, and the streak of gray weaving its way through her red hair. The darkness was eating her from the inside out.

“So you’re just here to torture me some more then?”

“I’m waiting you out.” Maeve stared though glittery hazel eyes at Emma’s window with an unsettling amount of hate and want. “I figure you’ll get called out eventually.”

“Don’t count on it.”

Maeve stood in front of me to get my attention and placed a hand on her hip. “Hey, shouldn’t you be writhing in pain somewhere right now?” She smiled. “Did you think Balthazar wouldn’t see your little stunt today at the school? That was clever going corporeal like that to save her. Clever, but stupid.”

“I wouldn’t have had to it if it weren’t for you.”

“Why not do it again?” she asked. “Go on. Go talk to her. Make her fall in love with you all over again. Think of how happy you could be!”

“Maeve…”

“To hell with that, think of how happy I’ll be when Balthazar turns you to dust for it.” She laughed.

“Or even better, how much she’ll despise you when she finds out what you did.”

I would have given anything in that moment to have the ability to annihilate a lost soul. To haul her off to Hell myself. But I didn’t. Unless it was a soul exiting a body, it was out of Balthazar’s jurisdiction, which meant I couldn’t do a damn thing about Maeve. To Balthazar, one lost soul wasn’t a good enough reason to bring down the Almighty’s wrath. All I could do was watch her try and try again, and hope to God I—or Easton and Anaya, if I was desperate—got there in time to stop her. And she knew it.