Inbetween

once. She took care of me when she should have hated me.

I sat down on the bed across from her and balled my fingers into fists. I hated this. Hated that she was resorting to something so ridiculous because of what I had done. What I had caused. That what I’d done had hurt her this badly.

Emma pulled her long blond hair over her shoulder and took a deep breath. Two of her fingers rested on top of the pointer. “Is there someone here?” she asked, eyes closed. “Please. Please talk to me if you’re here.”

Screw Balthazar and his threats. If I didn’t go corporeal, he’d never know.

I laid my fingers beside hers and moved the pointer to the word yes.

Chapter 11

Emma I froze, afraid to move my fingers. Afraid to breathe. My eyes stayed glued to the word under the wooden pointer.

Yes.

“Oh my God.” I jerked my hand away from the board and clutched it to my chest. My heart thumped until I could feel it in my palm like a pulse. I didn’t know what to do next. All I knew about Ouija boards was what I’d seen on lame YouTube videos, and that didn’t seem like much help to me now that someone—or something—was actually answering.

“Who are you?” I finally asked. When I realized my hands were still clasped to my chest, I dropped one down to the pointer, but it slid out from under my fingertips before I could touch it. “F,” I whispered, saying the letters out loud. “I. N.”

The pointer paused then slid around in a circle before coming back to N.

In that moment, the board was the only object that existed in the world. The mountains around my house could have come crashing down. The stars could have fallen from the sky. I don’t think I would have noticed any of it. This was one of those moments when everything changed. The kind of moment when reality becomes something else. When it didn’t move anymore, I looked around the room, expecting to find something. Finding nothing.

“Finn,” I breathed. “Your name is Finn?”

The pointer slid to yes and I sat up on my knees, my breaths rushing in and out of my lungs. That name…

“Say it again.”

I laughed at the shadow of a boy with green eyes and pressed my hands against his chest. “What?”

“My name. The way you say it…you say it like it matters. Like it still means something.”

I kissed the corner of his mouth and whispered, “Finn.”

I blinked the vision away. My heart thudded painfully in my chest. The green eyes, that voice… Oh God. I couldn’t catch my breath. It was him. He was the one at the school. In the forest. In my head.

My dreams. I stared at the board. Finn.

“Can I see you?” I bit my lip, not letting myself think about what I was really asking for. I just knew I wanted it. Everything inside me wanted it. “Like I saw you earlier tonight?”

Nothing happened. No sparks of magic. No phantom light transforming into the boy I’d seen with jungle- green eyes. The pointer didn’t even budge. Disappointment twisted in my chest. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be all there was. I needed answers. I needed to know why he was here. I needed way too much for this to be it.

That memory was still inside me. His lips, his hands, the way I felt like I was going to explode if he kept touching me. Finn. What the hell did this mean? Was it even real? Or did I just want it so badly that my screwed-up brain had created it all?

“Finn?” I called in a shaky voice, staring at the pointer, willing it to move. Willing it to prove I wasn’t as crazy as the doctors thought.

It didn’t.

So I was crazy, then. I squeezed my hands into fists so hard my nails left little crescent imprints in my palm, pushed myself off the bed, and stomped down the hall into the kitchen. Pills. I needed pills.

I flipped on the light and one of the bulbs popped and went out, turning the kitchen a shade dimmer. I grabbed the little orange pill bottle off the counter. I’d already taken one today, but clearly I needed more clarity. I needed to get this memory…no. This hallucination out of my head.

“Don’t take those,” the now-familiar voice said.

I squeezed the cap until my fingers went numb and turned around. He was there, standing in my kitchen like he belonged there. Like he’d always been there.

Finn looked at the bottle in my hands. “You’re not crazy, Emma. You don’t need those.”

The pill bottle clattered to the tile floor. I jumped back, heart thundering in my chest, lungs eating up all of the air around me until I felt dizzy. It all clicked together. The guy in my dreams, the guy who had saved my life twice…he was here. Standing in front of me. How was this even possible?

“What are you?” I closed my eyes and pictured the agonized look on his face just before he’d dissolved and disappeared into the night like a ghost.

“I’m not…alive.”

A breath shuddered out of me and I opened my eyes, half-expecting him to be gone. But he still stood by the gray granite counter looking uncertain. Looking like a dream. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m dead. I’m a soul.”

Dead. The word floated around in my head, not feeling real. Dead was what my dad was. Dead was a cold, rotting body in the ground. I looked at Finn. At the warm color of his lips. The worried look in his vibrant green eyes. I couldn’t make the word fit with him.

Finn took a step closer. I backed away, but he followed.

“I’m not lying,” he whispered.

I stared at his chest so I wouldn’t have to look at his face. It didn’t move. It. Didn’t. Move. The only breaths I could hear were my own. Fear started a slow, steady burn in my chest. My heart felt like it was in my throat, raw and achy. A few minutes ago, all I wanted was this. Now I didn’t know how to feel. God…I couldn’t…I couldn’t…

I took a deep breath and threw open the cabinets in front of me. Then I grabbed a mixing bowl and plopped it onto the counter along with my favorite muffin tin. I needed something to do with my hands. Something to do with my mind, because I felt very close to losing it.

“Say something,” Finn said behind me. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

I spun around, keeping my back pressed against the counter.

“I…” I bit my lip and exhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know where to start.”

He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, dragging them lower around his waist.

“How about you tell me what you want to know, and I’ll talk.”

Before I could form a question, another memory knocked the breath out of me and clouded my thoughts.

The sky looked cold. A dull pewter color that blended with the swaying silver wheat surrounding me.

Finn stepped over me, blocking the sky. He hooked his thumbs into his jeans and grinned down at me.

My stomach fluttered and my knees forgot to support me. I sagged against the counter. “I know you.

I want to know how I know you.”