Inbetween

“W-what’s happening?” I stuttered, unable to move. The light was swirling, pulling me in like a whirlpool. And Balthazar’s intense gaze drove me further against my will. The porthole flickered and moved until a thousand rainbow colors melded into a light so bright it burned.

“Balthazar?” I dug my heels into the ground, only to find there was no ground to save me. I was so close I could feel its heat on my face. Easton’s hand rested on my shoulder to guide me forward. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Don’t forget what you’ve agreed to, Finn,” Balthazar said as I stepped into the portal. “I’ll see you at the end of your mortal life to collect.”

Chapter 38

Emma I should be dead. It was I could think. It was all I could feel. I didn’t remember everything from the fire, but I remembered enough. The re-stitched side of my neck pulsed with pain and I reached up to brush my fingers over it. I’d almost lost everything because of Maeve. My mother. My best friend.

My life. There were too many things in this world I wanted to do now, and I wasn’t going to give any of it up without a fight.

I tried to recall the fire, two days and what felt like a hundred oxygen treatments ago, but smoke clouded my memories, making them fuzzy and weak. I did remember Finn. I would always remember Finn. Something ached in my chest at the thought that I might never see him again.

The steady beep of a monitor pulsed behind Cash’s head, and the smell of antiseptic and sickness hung in the air like a fine mist. When he made a groaning sound in the back of his throat, I raked my fingers through his hair and adjusted his blanket. His pierced eyebrow twitched.

“Stop messing with me. I’m fine,” he grumbled. His words had the sort of slip and swirl that only really good pain meds could provide. I leaned back and smiled when he opened his eyes. Muddy brown. The soft spaces underneath dark and bruised. Those telltale signs were all the proof I needed to know he hadn’t been sleeping. He turned over onto his side and stared past me. His gaze tracked something behind me I couldn’t see. “Are they letting me out yet?”

“Not yet,” I rasped, and covered my mouth to cough. “I think your dad’s trying to work something out, though. They said something about wanting to keep you one more night for observation.”

Cash’s eyes drifted over me like he was taking inventory. “You sound awful.” He sounded almost as bad as I did, but he sounded guilty, too. And he shouldn’t have. Not after what Finn and I did to him.

After what he’d done for me. For Mom.

“I’m getting better.” I held up a duffel bag. “I brought you some clothes and a magazine.”

“Thanks.” He nodded. “I’m getting tired of these nurses staring at my ass.”

“Since when are you tired of anyone staring at your ass?”

Cash rewarded me with half of a grin. “Touche.”

The light from a pair of headlights in the parking lot collided with the blinds and sent shadows swimming across the wall. Cash flinched and closed his eyes. I could practically feel the fear radiating from him. I touched his leg and he flinched again.

“Hey…what’s wrong?” The words felt so inadequate I wanted to be sick. I squeezed his leg through the blanket. “Cash?”

“They’re everywhere,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Them.”

I followed his gaze to the walls around us. I didn’t see anything but pasty white walls and medical equipment, but whatever Cash could see was making him terrified enough for the both of us.

“What are they?” I asked, softly.

Cash grabbed my hand and stared at our intertwined fingers. “I believe you.”

“What?”

“Everything.” His fingers fell out of my hand and he turned away. “I believe everything.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed my eyes. Focused on the blood rushing through my veins and the air in my lungs. I needed Finn. He’d know what to say. He’d know what was happening with Cash. He’d be able to make everything all right with just a look, a touch, a whisper in my ear. But I hadn’t seen him since the fire. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again after what he did for us. Alone, I just felt useless and terrified of the world lurking around me that I couldn’t see.

“Emma,” my mom said from the doorway. “The police want to ask you a few more questions.”

“In a minute,” I said over my shoulder.

She nodded. “I’ll wait in the hall.”

“Cash, it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to go back to the way it was. I promise.”

“That’s crap and you know it.” He wouldn’t look at me and I wanted to make him. I wanted him to make me believe my own lie.

“It’s not—” Cash looked at me and the words stuck to the insides of my mouth.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he said. “In a world that makes sense, we shouldn’t have made it out of that fire, Em.”

I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. I didn’t want to lie to him anymore. “You don’t know that.”

“We shouldn’t be alive.” Cash’s eyes darted across the ceiling. He clutched the covers and hunkered down into the sheets. “We should be dead…and they know it.”

I touched his leg. Anybody else would have thought he was crazy. But I knew better. My best friend had risked his life to save mine and now something was wrong. Something had gone inconceivably wrong in that house and I didn’t know how to help him. How to take it all away.

“I have to go talk to the cops, but I’ll be back later. Promise.”

Cash didn’t look at me. Just nodded into the pillow and closed his eyes.

When I stepped into the fluorescent-lit hall, my chest twisted. Two detectives wearing suits were speaking to my mom in hushed voices and writing in their annoying little notepads. They both looked up when I walked in. The one with salt-and-pepper hair smiled and stuck out his hand.

“Hi, Emma. I’m Detective Monroe. You mind if we ask you a few questions about the fire?”

I tugged on a strand of hair coming loose from my ponytail. “I already told the cops everything when I woke up yesterday.”

He nodded and looked at his partner. “Right, but you were still in pretty bad shape then. Thought you might remember some more now.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. This was such a waste of time. I followed Detective Monroe into the waiting room and sat down in a faded dove-blue chair.

“So, the intruder,” he started. “What exactly do you remember about them?”

“Red hair. Sort of hazel-colored eyes.” I wrapped my arms around myself and looked away. Just thinking about Maeve made me sick.

“Okay. You said she was a woman, right?”

I nodded.

“How old?”

“A little younger than me, I think.” At one time, anyway.

He scribbled in his pad then tapped on his knee with his pencil. “So, not the same person who attacked you at the theater? Correct?”

I finally met his gaze. “What?”

He flipped through his notepad. “You said that was a man who attacked you there. But this was a woman?”

“Umm…” I tucked my hair behind me ear. “Yeah. That’s correct.”

“That’s pretty odd, don’t you think?”