Inbetween

That wouldn’t happen to this kid. He’d move on. He’d be saved for something better. Once I swallowed the lie, I took him by the arm and stepped into the twilight that swirled in front of us. I needed to get this over with. This kid, his words, they started fires inside me I didn’t know how to put out.

I was so damn tired of burning.

“Hey man,” he said, panicked. “You didn’t answer me. Where are we going? Heaven? Hell?”

I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “Somewhere in between.”

Chapter 9

Emma I barreled into my bedroom and pulled the plastic shopping bag out of my jacket. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. My head wouldn’t stop spinning. He’d disappeared. Vanished like smoke swept away by a gust of wind. What did that mean? What the hell was he?

Besides a guy who had saved my life twice now.

This couldn’t wait another minute. Whatever—whoever? —was doing this was going to ruin my life. I refused to let it.

I tore into the bag and slid the purple and black Ouija board box out onto my bed, then paused to smooth the blanket around it. Like it mattered. If anybody found out I was doing this, I’d have a whole new bed to worry about at Brookhaven, complete with a roommate on so many downers she looked asleep even when she awake.

My cell phone rang and I jumped. I squeezed my hand into a fist to stop the shaking before I answered it.

“Where the hell did you go?” Cash slurred on the other line.

“I…I came home,” I said. “I parked the Bronco in your driveway. Sorry I took off.”

“I don’t care about the Bronco. Are you okay?” he asked. A girl laughed in the background and he shushed her. “You don’t sound okay.”

“I’m fine.” I tried not to look at the board in front of me. “I just don’t feel good.”

“I’m coming over.” He pulled away sounding muffled. “Hey Tinley, I need to go home.”

“No!” I gripped the phone tighter. “Don’t. Mom’s home, and she’s still up. I’ll just see you tomorrow.”

He grunted something I couldn’t hear, then finally said, “Fine. But call me tomorrow.”

“Hey,” I said before he could hang up. “Don’t drive home, okay?”

Cash laughed. “Yes, Mother.”

I pressed the end button and dropped the phone.

I could do this. I had to do this. Nervous energy coursed though me. Consuming me. I ripped the lid off the box and set the board on my bed. It didn’t look like anything to be afraid of. It was just a board.

I touched the letters and sat the pointer gingerly on top.

Chapter 10

Finn I pressed my palms against the brick wall outside Emma’s room and tried to muster up the courage to do what I’d decided to do back on the beach. If only a wall was all that separated us. Sometimes it felt more like an ocean of lava. Especially when there were things inside me, ripping me apart, needing to be let free. And damn it, I wanted to let it all free. I wanted to walk in there and tell her things that had been locked up in me for the last two years.

I leaned my forehead against the brick. No. I couldn’t think like that. Thoughts like that were going to get me in trouble. Again.

The energy of another reaper sparked against my skin. I spun around. Along the side of the house, a glow sliced through the shadows. Anaya. A streak of moonlight caught her hair and tangled with her braids, making them shine.

I half expected her to blow around the house with the force of an atom bomb, ready to rip into me for being here. But she didn’t. She wasn’t even watching me. She was watching…Cash.

He waved to the car that had just dropped him off and stumbled around the house, tripping through the shadows. Anaya’s eyes followed him, almost longingly, until he climbed through his bedroom window and closed the blinds.

I stepped out of the shadows. “Anaya?”

She jerked her gaze from Cash’s window and blinked, as if she was waking up from a dream.

“What?”

“Everything okay?” I asked hesitantly, watching the way her eyes flitted to Cash’s house again.

“Y-yes.” She sounded flustered. “Why wouldn’t it be? I was just…”

I waited, hoping with everything in me that I was wrong about what I’d just seen.

She scowled at me. “Don’t give me that look, Finn. You’re the one lurking around the human girl’s house in the middle of the night.”

“I’d hardly call it lurking.”

“Then what are you doing here?” She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not stupid. You’re up to something.”

I glanced back at Emma’s house. At the flickering glow from the candles in her window. “I’m trying to remind myself why it’s a bad idea to go in there and talk to her. Why it’s a bad idea to go in there and do more than talk to her.”

“I’m not going to stand here and lecture you. I’m not Easton, and you don’t need a babysitter. You already know why it’s a bad idea.”

I knew it was a bad idea. But now that I’d gotten a taste of what touching and talking to Emma felt like, I didn’t know how much longer I could do this. Stay away from her. Pretend everything inside me wasn’t burning with the need for her to really know me. I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of my decision warm all of the hollow places inside. When I opened my eyes again, Anaya was shaking her head.

“You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

“Probably, but you were never here.” I said. “And if you were never here, then I didn’t see you looking at Cash like you wanted to doodle his name in your diary.”

“I wasn’t—” I raised a brow and she stopped. She looked over her shoulder at Cash’s house and bit her lip. “His name is Cash?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I don’t have to tell you why it’s a bad idea. Right?”

Anaya glanced down to the scythe beginning to glitter and glow in her leather belt. She wrapped her fingers around it and nodded. “Right.”

“Anaya? Tell me you’ll watch out for her. If something ever happens…if I’m ever not there and you are, just don’t leave her alone.”

Her lips lifted into a small smile. “You know I will.”

“Thank you.”

I waited for the burst of light to consume Anaya and deposit her on the other side before I sprinted across the yard. Emma had seen me in the woods. Talked to me like I was real. Maybe I could make this work. She didn’t have to know everything. Just enough. I stopped myself a breath away from her bedroom wall.

It’s now or never, Finn.

I exhaled and slipped through the cold brick until the warmth of Emma’s room surrounded me. I don’t know what I’d been expecting to find, but Emma huddled over a little plastic board on her bed wasn’t it. And the hope in her eyes… It was hope that she wasn’t crazy. Hope that the little board in front of her could prove it. She deserved so much more than this. She was so much more than this. She was determined and loyal and beautiful and everything I wanted to be. She took care of the people around her. She took care of me