Cold Kiss (24 page)

When he opens his mouth again, his voice is even rougher. “And my dad didn’t know that. He never would have thought of it, and she wasn’t going to ask. But
I
knew. And that meant that I could tell him. And even though he lied to her, she heard him say what she needed him to say before she died.”

That’s … horrible. Horrible and sad and not something I ever want to happen between me and someone I love. But it’s also not really what’s happening here.

“I’m so sorry.” I press my knee harder into his, and he gives me a tight smile. “But … if you really looked, and I’m guessing you at least tried, you know that I don’t secretly want you to go all superhero and do my dirty work for me, right?”

His smile is a little warmer now, but I think it would probably taste bittersweet if I pressed my mouth to his. “Yeah, I do. And I think that’s what’s really tough to swallow. Being helpless sort of sucks, Wren.”

The surprised snort that escapes makes us both laugh a little. “I get that, believe me.”

Gabriel glances at his watch. “It’s almost eleven twenty. You should probably start the show, you know?”

I do. I take a deep breath and get up off the couch, and when I turn around, Olivia is there.

“I only listened a little.” She shrugs, but then she crosses the room to put her arms around me. “Good luck seems like a crazy thing to say, so I’m just going to say do your thing, kid. I’m sorry you have to.”

I let her hold me for a second, my nose buried in her hair, but then I push away. I can’t waste time now. Gabriel squeezes my hand and kisses me, but I have to give him credit—after I go into his room, he disappears. He doesn’t ask to watch me as I whisper the words to get Danny to his feet, and he doesn’t watch as I lead him out of the apartment and down the street, his steps carefully measured as he walks beside me, his hand in mine.

This time is for me, to say good-bye to Danny. And I can’t help but be thankful that this docile, silent boy is the one beside me, because if I had to face the Danny I remember, the one I fell in love with, right now, I’m not sure I could do what I have to.

IT’S APRIL, AND IT’S RAINING, THE KIND OF gray, sliding, icy rain that won’t stop, until everything feels damp and clammy, even the curtains when I pull them shut against the slicked window.

Danny is warm. His soaked jacket is downstairs on the coatrack, and even though his hair is wet against the back of his neck, even though he has to rub his chilly hands together for a few minutes to get the blood pumping into them, when I run my hands up under his shirt, his back is warm. When I rest my cheek against his chest, nuzzling into the faded cotton, he’s warm. I want to wrap myself in him. And I’m going to. Right now, this minute, I know that.

My mom is at work, and Robin is at a weekend soccer camp upstate, and I don’t know where Danny’s mom thinks he is, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Saturday and it’s just noon, and no one is going to be looking for us for hours.

We haven’t talked about this, not in so many words. I’m not even sure Danny knows what I’m thinking. But we’ve been edging closer to it for weeks, months, and there aren’t a lot of boundaries left between us when we’re tangled up together anymore.

I want to erase them all, finally. I want … That’s as far as I think, really. I just
want
.

“Wren?”

My name is muffled, because I’m kissing him, but I’m also pulling him down onto the bed, unbuttoning the flannel he’s got over an old Weezer shirt. I’m about four steps ahead of him, and I need to let him catch up.

I drag in a shaky breath and kneel beside him on the bed, running my thumb over his cheekbone. I don’t know what he can see in my eyes, but he blinks and says, “Yeah?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“But I don’t, um, I don’t have—”

“I do.” The condoms Mom bought me—and God, I am
never
telling him that—are in my bedside drawer. “We’re all set.”

“Oh yeah?” He cocks an eyebrow, pulls me off balance and into his lap. “What if I say no? Ever think about that, Miss I’m All Set?”

“I really hope you’re kidding.” I kiss his collarbone, the smooth slope of his shoulder where it arches into his neck.

“I don’t think you have to worry,” he says, and the words tickle my ear as his tongue paints a light stripe against my cheek.

We don’t talk after that, not really. And it’s not perfect, I mean, there aren’t, like, rainbows and fireworks and sirens going off, but it’s perfect anyway. Because it’s Danny almost toppling over when he wrestles out of his jeans, and it’s Danny laughing into the skin of my belly when I hit my head on the wall hard enough that we both hear it crack. And it’s Danny who tangles our fingers together when we’re finally there, holding on tight, watching my face, and it’s Danny who lets me touch and explore and whisper and press smiling kisses into his hair and his cheek later, after.

I hope he remembers it the way I do. Or that he remembered it that way before I gave him memories he was never meant to have.

He’s quiet beside me in the dark cemetery, although he does trace his name on the stone that marks the head of his grave. I don’t know how much he understands about what’s going to happen, and I don’t want to tell him. The spell I cast when he was still lying on Gabriel’s bed was written to make him mobile, but not much more. He’s awake, but he’s not, not really—the boy I loved is buried somewhere in a body that looks familiar, but isn’t really the most important part of him.

That Danny, the one who used to chase me down the street, threatening to tickle me if I didn’t kiss him again, who used to piggyback me up and down the science hall after school as we left the building, who used to sing snatches of songs to me on the phone when we were both home in bed at night, he’s been gone for a long time. He’s the one I’m never really going to be okay with losing, but at least now I know that isn’t up to me.

At five minutes to midnight, I arrange him on the grave, laying him down gently, and he doesn’t protest. He watches me, his eyes dark and blank, and blinks a little when I bend over to kiss him and a tear falls on his cheek.

“I need you to close your eyes now, and listen to my voice.” I press the words against his cold mouth, and I can’t believe my voice is steady. My heart is beating so hard and fast it’s a little frightening, but nothing’s changed otherwise—I can still feel the power coiled taut and ready inside me.

I trim a lock of his hair and he doesn’t move. I squeeze his hand before I draw my athame across it, and he still doesn’t flinch. The blood is as cold and sluggish as he is, gleaming nearly black in the moonlight. I smear it onto a picture of him, one of my favorites, and press his hair into it before I check my watch.

One minute left.

I kneel at his feet and lay the picture between his calves on the patch of earth where I’ve pulled the grass away. One handful of dirt and the picture is covered, Danny’s huge grin and laughing eyes obscured. I swallow thickly and start to chant, the blade poised in my right hand and my power cresting high and eager in my chest.

I don’t realize how hard I’m crying until I open my eyes as wind shudders over the ground, a flapping sheet of it, and the candle flickers out.

Danny is gone.

I’m not sure how long I lie there, my face, muddy with tears now, pressed to the cold dirt. I feel hollow inside, scooped dry by the time I sit up. Despite that, I know what’s different now, what I didn’t realize the last time I was here, chanting under the moon.

My power is still where I put it, neatly rolled into a ball and balanced at my center. Before, it raged through me like a flood, washing into every nerve, every vein, completely unchecked.

Now, I can decide when to use it, if I use it.

It’s a cold comfort, but I’ll take it for now. I’m shaky when I stand up, and I put everything away in my bag, except for the picture of Danny, which I hold up and light. I let it burn down to my fingers, and then I say good-bye and let go as the ashes flutter to Danny’s grave.

What I feel most, as I pick my way through the headstones toward the gate, is alone. I think it’s what I was scared of when Danny died, or one of the things, anyway. It’s just as cold a feeling as I imagined.

Except when I walk through the gates, hitching my backpack more securely over my shoulder and wiping away the last tears with the back of one dirty hand, I see Gabriel. He’s across the street, leaning against a mailbox, a paper cup from the mini-mart in one hand. He doesn’t wave, he doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t walk toward me.

He waits.

And I think that this is what I would like love to be. Leaving room for each other, knowing that not every step is going to be side by side.

Giving more than taking. Waiting. Trusting.

I cross the street and reach for his hand. He lets me take it, squeezing my fingers briefly.

“Walk me home?” I ask him.

He hands me the cup, hot sweet tea, offers to take my bag. I let him, watching as the weight of it pulls down his shoulder.

And then we walk together in the moonlight, hand in hand, until I’m home.

MANY THANKS TO THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP ME sane, and love me even when I’m not. Lee, for all kinds of excellent cheerleading and general awesomeness; Donna, for making me laugh and letting me talk through scenes with her; Jilli and Bev, for reading and shaking their pom-poms, and helping with incantations; ita, for listening to me whine and distracting me with Winchesters; Maureen, for believing I could do this, and encouraging me all the way; and Erica, for getting it and loving it and making it a thousand times better.

AMY GARVEY
is a former editor who now works on the other side of the desk as an author. She grew up reading everything she could get her hands on, watching too much TV, and wishing she was Samantha Stephens from
Bewitched.
(She still wishes that, actually.) COLD KISS is her first novel for young adults, but she’s always writing something (when she’s not obsessively discussing TV’s
Supernatural
with her friends online and thinking about cupcakes). She lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with her family. You can read Amy’s blog at www.amygarveywrites.blogspot.com and follow her on Twitter @amygarvey.

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MY ZOMBIE, SUCH AS HE IS, ISN’T GEORGE Romero’s, as you probably figured out. He’s closer to the kind of zombie you might create with Haitian vodou magic, a corpse reanimated and then controlled by a sorcerer. That said, with a few minor exceptions, almost everything in this book is straight out of my imagination. I took liberties with the geography of the town where I went to high school, and made up a bunch of stuff out of whole cloth because in fiction, that’s allowed, for which I’m grateful. Resemblances to any people living, dead, or undead are only a coincidence, except for the Brobecks’ song “Visitation of the Ghost,” which I adore.