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Chapter 3

Cash

I pushed through the swinging metal doors with my shoulder, and noise exploded around me. A hundred voices fought for space in the cramped fluorescent-lit cafeteria. I pressed my earbuds in a little deeper and cranked the volume up on my iPod a few notches. A girl named Jennifer nudged my arm and winked as she strolled by with her lunch tray. Bottle-blond curls dangled just above her waist, swaying with her hips, as she walked away with a silent invitation to follow. I waited for that familiar part of me to kick in. The part of me that usually would have had me turning around to get one more look at her painted-on skinny jeans. The same part of me that would’ve had her in the back of my Bronco by Friday. When it didn’t come, I shrugged my bag up over my shoulder and walked on past. Jennifer was background noise with the rest of it. Nothing meant what it used to. Especially girls. I was starting to think whatever part of me that allowed me to live a normal life had died in that fire.

I spotted Emma and Finn across the room and stopped cold. They looked like two puzzle pieces that fit together. The way they moved around each other, always touching, never allowing more than a breath of air to separate them. I wasn’t ready for this. To face her. To face
them
. But I couldn’t do this by myself, and he was the only one who could help me.

I wasn’t a rocket scientist, but I could connect the dots. And they were leading me to Finn. He had to have answers. And he was damn well going to give them to me. He’d stolen the most important person in my life. Deluded her into thinking she was in love with him. Filling in the blanks for me was the least this bastard could do.

Breaking this fucked-up voodoo love spell he had on her would have to come later.

Fueled by determination, I started toward the table and noticed that Emma was upset. She had on that blue sweater I gave her for Christmas last year. I always liked how it brought out the almost sapphire hue in her eyes. And now, those eyes looked tired, her lashes dark and wet. Had she been crying? Emma looked up, catching sight of me across the room, and her face lit up. I sort of hated myself for missing her in that moment. If I really meant what her eyes said I meant, she wouldn’t have kept all of this from me. Left me in the dark. Because now that dark was eating me alive from the inside out.

When I got to the table I tossed my bag down on the bench, and as much as I hated to, sat down next to Finn so I could face Emma. He had her hand wrapped up in his like a present. I noticed his fingers squeeze hers as I sat down, and I ground my teeth.

“Hey,” Emma said, brokenly. She
had
been crying. Shit. And I’d really had my heart set on being mad for at least a month.

“Hey,” I said.

“You’re back.”

“Yeah, well, it’s go to school or see a shrink.” I fiddled with my earbuds. I hated small talk. Especially when there was something this big between us. “I’m trying the school thing.”

“I tried calling you.”

I looked up, and she brushed the curtain of blond hair out of her face. “Yeah, I know.”

Finn shot me a killing look and sat back in his seat, letting Emma’s fingers fall out of his. “Stop punishing her.” He pinned me with that freaky-ass green gaze of his. He didn’t look like his perky self. He had dark circles under his eyes and his T-shirt looked like he’d slept in the thing. He looked like crap. I would’ve told him so myself, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have room to talk.

“She lied to me.” I folded my arms across my chest and shuddered when a ghostly shadow slithered down the white brick wall and under the table. I could feel it curling around my ankles. Filling my lungs with ice. I coughed into my fist, needing the ice out.

Stay cool. It won’t hurt you. It won’t hurt you.

“I didn’t lie!” Emma looked up at me, eyes glistening with hurt.

“You kept it from me,” I whispered across the table. “Same difference.”

Emma folded her arms onto the table and leaned closer, her blue sweater balled up in her fists. “Would you have believed me?”

“I—” I stopped. I wouldn’t have. Before all this…no way would I have believed her if she’d told me she was dating a freaking reaper. A dead guy. And that he’d magically come back to life to be with her. Hell, I probably would have driven her back to Brookhaven Psychiatric Hospital myself. I took a deep breath and said, “No. I wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Then why are you avoiding me?” she asked. “I know there’s something wrong. Why won’t you tell me? Why won’t you let me help you?”

I kicked at the thing crawling around my feet and gritted my teeth. My pulse raced. I tried to swallow the lump of fear that was lodged in my throat, but it wouldn’t budge.

“You can’t help me, Em.” I sucked in a painfully deep breath that stretched my lungs and turned to Finn. “You, on the other hand…”

Finn sat up and his brows furrowed together. “What do you mean?”

Stealing a quick glance around the crowded cafeteria to make sure no one was close enough to hear, I leaned across the table and lowered my voice.

“You need to tell me what the fuck is going on,” I whispered. “I’ve got these…
things
following me. I know I’m not crazy. This shit is real. And it all started the night of that fire, so in my eyes, it all comes back to you, dead boy.”

Finn sat back, shaking his head as his gaze darted back and forth between Emma and me. “What exactly do you mean by
things
?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know what they are?” I pushed my fingers through my hair and blew out a breath. He was going to make me explain it. Say it out loud so we all could hear just how batshit crazy I sounded. “They look like shadows. At least that’s the best way I can describe them. But they’re not shadows. It’s like they’re alive or something. They never leave me alone. Day, night, sleeping, awake, they
never
fucking leave me alone.”

“Shadow demons,” Finn breathed, sitting back and lacing his fingers over the back of his neck. “Shit.”

“Excuse me?” I raised a brow at the word demons. He had to be kidding. Please let this guy be kidding.

Finn clenched his jaw and his eyes drifted to Emma.

“W-why would shadow demons be following Cash?” Emma’s face turned white. “I though they only came around when someone dies?”

“Someone want to tell me what exactly a shadow demon is?” I asked. “You can leave out the visuals. I think I’ve got that at least.”

“When I was a reaper,” Finn lowered his voice, “I took souls to the Inbetween where they got the chance to be reborn or earn their way into Heaven. The problem is, the life span of a soul is only about ten years. As time passes, they decay. Lose themselves and the humanity that lives inside. They can’t exist in limbo like that forever. If they’re not reborn, or don’t manage to earn their way upstairs within those ten years, they turn into what you’re seeing. Shadow demons. They’re souls that are damned to roam the Earth, hungry and wanting for eternity. They feed off of souls, usually ones fresh from the body. You see them at reaps a lot, hunting for scraps.”

“Why would they be following me?” I asked. “I’m not dead.”

“I don’t know why they’re here. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. And I sure as hell don’t know how to get rid of them.” Finn rubbed his temples like he was getting a headache. “I need to talk to Easton. He’d know more about this.”

“So, talk to him,” I shouted, slamming my fist down onto the table. “Today. Hell, right now.”

“It’s not that easy,” Finn whispered. “I can’t just call him up. It’s not like they gave me a cell phone to the afterlife. I’m alive now. I’m not connected anymore.”

I stared at the table. “So, what? I’m just supposed to go on with these things following me around? I can’t do that. I can’t live like this!”

“He visits me sometimes,” Finn said, hesitantly. “But it’s been a while.”

“Great,” I muttered. “I’ll just clear my calendar then.”

I leaned over and pressed my forehead against the cool tabletop, trying to calm my breathing and the sharp pain developing in my chest. Emma’s fingers slipped over my folded arms and as much as I wanted to push her away I didn’t. After a week of nothing but fear and pain, it felt too good. I missed her.

“You did almost die at the fire,” Emma offered. “Maybe it has something to do with that. Maybe they’re just curious and they’ll go away once they realize they can’t get anything from you.”

I listened to Emma’s glossed-over, hopeful theory, but lifted my head to keep my eyes on Finn. He twisted the cap to his water, keeping suspiciously silent on the subject.

“Finn?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Like I said, I need to talk to Easton or Anaya. They’d know more about this.”

“No theories, huh?” I arched a brow, studying his pinched, guilty expression. “Nothing to add?”

He pushed away from the table, his features shifting from guilty to pissed. “Look, I said I’d try to find out. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

He knew. He knew more than what he was saying and he had the nerve to sit there and lie. Not just to me, but to Emma.

“Screw you, Finn,” I said, refusing to acknowledge the way Emma’s mouth dropped open at my words. Finn’s didn’t. He looked like he was expecting it. The shadow under the table hissed and that was the last straw.

I grabbed my bag and pulled my legs out from under the table. I had to get away from that…thing. I had to get away from the look in Finn’s eyes. Maybe he wasn’t saying the words but that look said everything I needed to know. I wasn’t going to be okay. There was no end to my nightmare in sight.

I didn’t look back as I let my legs carry me out of the cafeteria as fast as they could without running.

“Cash, wait!” Emma called out from behind me.

I stopped and exhaled, listening to her footsteps echo down the empty hall. She touched my shoulder and I spun around.

“What?”

She pulled her hand back, looking hurt. “You’ve been out of the hospital a week. You don’t answer my calls or texts. You don’t answer the door when I come over. Are you going to be mad at me forever?”

I looked her over, this girl who was as close to me as anyone was ever going to get. I wanted to stay mad at her. I didn’t want to hug and make up yet. I didn’t want to say everything was fine, because it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure if it ever would be again. “I don’t know. Are you going to keep screwing the corpse?”

Emma took a wide step back and her breath caught in her throat. Most of the time that sound, that little intake of air, was as close as she’d let herself get to crying in public. That little sound was all I needed to hear to know that I’d hurt her.

“H-he’s not a corpse. He’s a-a—”

Shit.
Without thinking I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into me, pressing her face into my chest. Breathing in the warm, familiar scent of her hair. Her bag fell off her shoulder into the floor. She felt stiff, but didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to miss her. I just wanted to be pissed off and say mean things that I didn’t really mean. Couldn’t she give me that? After all of this, wasn’t I allowed to be mad? When Emma relaxed into my hold, I squeezed her tighter against me and sighed. As much as I hated it, this was so much easier than staying mad.

“I’m sorry,” I said into her hair. “I’m just pissed, Em. I don’t want any of this. You might have chosen it, but I didn’t.”

Emma wiped her eyes on my favorite
Blink if you want me
T-shirt and pulled away. “You think I chose all this?”

“Yeah. I think you did. You chose to love a dead guy, didn’t you?”

She glared at me. “You can’t help who you love, just like
you
apparently can’t help being a jerk.”

I stared at my reflection in her watery blue eyes. Let my gaze trace the same path that my brush would’ve on a canvas. The soft curve of her cheek, the smooth white column of her neck. She was wrong. You could choose. I could’ve loved this girl if I’d let myself. Anybody who got as close to Emma as I had would know it’s harder
not
to love her than to just give in. But I always knew she could do better than me. Better than somebody who was even more broken inside than her. Instead, she found
him
. A freaking corpse. She gave her heart to someone who didn’t even have one.

“What?” She looked like she wanted to crawl out from under the way I was looking at her.

“Nothing,” I said. “Look, I have somewhere I need to be.”

I messed with the strap of my backpack so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes when I lied to her. I may have lied to a lot of people in my life, but Em was never one of them. It made me feel like shit having to do it now.

“So this is it?” she asked. “You’re just going to throw away our friendship over something I can’t control?”

I rolled my eyes, hating every second of this. I didn’t want to fight with her. I just wanted to get away from her, the way she was looking at me, like I was some broken thing she needed to fix.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “Maybe I just need some space to deal with this. Besides, you’ve got Finn now. It’s not like you need me hanging around all the time anymore.”

Her eyes narrowed as if she couldn’t quite believe what I was saying. “Are you pissed at me because you think this is my fault, or because I’m with Finn?”

I didn’t even flinch. I just said it. “Both.”

Emma shook her head and took a few more steps back, palms raised. “You…you’re unbelievable. You of all people I thought would be happy for me.”

“Happy for you?” I narrowed my gaze on her and closed the space between us. “I’ll be happy when you wake the hell up. You’re not supposed to be with him, Em!”

“Then who am I supposed to be with?” Emma shouted.

Me
. We stared each other down, chests heaving, and everything in me was screaming to say it. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to say it, because saying it meant acknowledging I’d pissed away something that could have been everything. I didn’t want to say it because I felt like someone was putting my heart in a vise grip and I didn’t know why. Was I jealous? Did I want her? Or did I just want my best friend back? There were too many lines blurring for me here. Finally I grabbed control of the emotions ripping me apart inside and exhaled.