Inbetween (Kissed by Death, #1) (18 page)

Chapter 24

Finn

Maeve. I may not have been able to see her, but I could feel the wintry chill trickling down my spine. The whisper of nearness that another soul left across my skin. I made my way through the menagerie of cars, letting the soft pull in my veins guide me. To my right, I heard a shrill peal of laughter echo across the lot. I catapulted over a car, heading in the direction of the sound, then stopped. The chill faded and the pull tugged me in the opposite direction. I spun around, shaking my head, trying to clear it. To get some focus.

“Maeve!” I rounded another car and started across the lot. “I know you’re out there.” But the pull faded again, and then pulsed with life, tugging me in the opposite direction. What the hell? I rolled my shoulders and gritted my teeth.
Get it together, Finn
. I stopped, looking for anything—the hint of a red shimmer, a spark of silver—anything to tell me which way to turn. There were too many people here. Too many ways for her to bait me. Realization hit me.

She’s trying to bait me.

I spun around, slid over the hood of a yellow Volkswagen. I had to get back to Emma—

“Looking for someone?”

I froze at the sound of Maeve’s voice. She stood on the roof of an old pickup that once upon a time had probably been red. Now it was mottled with rust and made creaking sounds every time the kids inside moved.

“There are so many options here. So many ways to die, don’t you think?” She tapped her finger on her chin, calling attention to the black veins standing out on her throat. A dull silver color was strangling the lively red from her hair one strand at a time.

“Don’t do something stupid just to prove a point,” I said.

Maeve glared at me. Her black pupils ate up the green that had once been around them. “And what point is that? That I have wasted the past seventeen years of my existence for something that should have been mine in the first place? Well, no more waiting, Finn. I’m taking what’s mine tonight.”

What
? Her words tumbled around inside my head before clicking into place. She didn’t want just anyone’s body, she wanted…Emma’s?

She twitched as the right side of her face morphed into a screaming shadow before returning to pale-colored skin again. She grabbed the sides of her face and an agonized scream exploded from her throat. She was about to turn. I slipped my scythe out of its holster and climbed onto the hood. “You’re not taking anything.”

Maeve straightened her back and laughed, the shadow flickering over her features. Before I could blink, she leapt over me, what was left of her red shimmer blurring across the dead black sky. I spun around, looking up, down, left, right, until the stars in the sky blurred together. Where could she have gone? What was she—

An ice-cold hand wrapped around my ankle and jerked me off the hood of the pickup. I landed on my back. Swirled into nothing resembling a man. I focused on pulling myself back together, and when I did, Maeve was standing over me, red hair blowing around her pale freckled face. Rage had consumed her to the point she was shaking. I glanced at her hand. It was wrapped around a blade.
My
blade. My scythe. It looked so awkward in her white fist. Mine felt so incredibly empty without it.

“Maeve…” I held my hand up and tried to ease up. “Don’t do—”

She swung out. The blade sliced through my thigh, and all that existed was pain. I clutched at my thigh and groaned. Black oozed from between my fingers, glittering like stars in the night.

“Oh, does that hurt? Poor little reaper. Maybe you should have picked someone else’s life to ruin. I could be happy right now! I could be alive. I could be in love. I didn’t get the chance to have
any
of that my first life. And you made sure I’d never have it again. You call me a bad person, Finn? What about you? You walk around like there’s a halo on your goddamned head, but you’re just as bad as me and we both know it.”

“Her time was up!” I shouted, panic and anger fighting for a place in my chest. I clutched my head to stop everything from spinning. “You could have had another chance!”

“Once my name was called, it was over for me, too. There
was
no second chance for me. There never is, but you didn’t stop to find that out before you ruined my life, did you? But now…now, I’m taking my chance. If I can get into her body, there is no way in hell I’ll let you take it from me again.”

I opened my mouth, but stopped, processing her words.
Take
it from her? Scout said a possession would only last a few hours. This didn’t make sense…unless she’d found a way to make it permanent. No. She couldn’t have. I had to believe that. “That’s not even possible. Just…think about this. Think about—”

“I’m done thinking about it!” A shadow slithered over her face and she sobbed. The black veins in her neck pulsed with darkness. “Look what you did to me!”

She swung my scythe again and I grabbed her wrist. Twisted her until she landed on top of me. The blade clattered to the ground. She screamed and turned to a vapor in my grasp.

“Maeve!” I shouted, grabbing my scythe and shoving it into my holster. I vaulted to my feet, and my vision blurred out of focus. The anger was burning me up. Turning my insides to ash. “You want the truth?” I spun around and stumbled. “I don’t regret it. I’m not sorry. You didn’t deserve that body. And there is no way in Hell I’d let you have it now!”

An engine started behind me and roared to life. I turned on my heel and squinted into the headlights that engulfed me. There wasn’t anyone inside.
How…

The car leaped into action, accelerating, and I stumbled back. I barely had time to think. I focused on making myself solid, lunging for the young blond girl carrying a box of popcorn in the car’s path, but spilled right through her. I flexed my fingers and they scattered like stars. I couldn’t keep it together. Couldn’t touch her…

I took a deep breath and shouted, “Move!” She spun around in time to see the car and horror registered across her face. She stumbled back out of the way, falling into the gravel.

Across the lot another engine roared to life. I staggered through the cars. The groaning sounds of the undead on the screen filled my ears. The thought of Emma being in this parking lot while Maeve was going on a rampage made my head spin and my legs pump a little faster. The car revved, churning a cloud of dust into the air, and rolled forward. I ground to a halt in front of the car, expected it to fly through me like everything else, but it stopped, the bumper an inch from touching my chest.

I bent over and grabbed my knees, dizzy. The hole in my thigh oozed and ran down my leg. I couldn’t stay like this. I felt… I closed my eyes and focused, but no matter how hard I tried I could feel myself losing it. Energy was leaking out of me, leaving me wispy and weak. I’d never been this drained. I limped over to Cash’s Bronco, slid through the metal and into the seat. “Get Cash to take—”

My lips froze around the words. Emma was gone.

I grabbed the door handle, hoping to catch Cash’s attention, but my fingers slid right through it. Trembling, I reached out and tried to knock the bag out of his hands. Nothing. She’d drained me. Something hot swept through my chest. Panic. Terror. She’d planned this. Set me up to fail so she could get to Emma. I slid back through the door of the Bronco and looked across the crowded lot. Maeve was out there. So was Emma. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Chapter 25

Emma

“Finn?” I whispered as soon as I pushed through the swinging door to the bathroom. The silence that answered me stung like lemon juice in an open wound. I braced my hands on chipped tile counter. Where could he possibly have gone?

Something dark like a shadow flashed behind me in the mirror, then disappeared.

“Finn?” I whispered. He didn’t answer. Nobody did. I walked over and grabbed the door handle, but the big metal door wouldn’t budge. A thread of fear seeped into my abdomen, tying into knots. The lights flickered and buzzed. Cold slithered over my skin and I shuddered.

I wasn’t alone.

I spun around and pressed my back against the cold metal, lifted my camera, and snapped a picture of the open air in front of me. A dark-colored orb, nothing like Finn’s, filled the far corner of the room.

Something hit the door behind me and I screamed. It sounded like a battering ram and had enough force to make my bones rattle. Shaking, I located the one window in the room, the only way out. My only chance.

I ran for the window, my body bracing for the pain that was going to come with barreling through a glass window. Something hard slammed into me and I flew back across the room. My back slammed into the wall and I choked the breath back into my lungs. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the ache in my back, and snapped another picture to see how close she was. Before I could get the display to show, the strap around my neck snapped and the camera flew out of my hands, smashing into the wall beside me.

Behind me the grimy bathroom stalls shuddered with what sounded like thunder. One of the stall doors flew open, slamming into the wall, knocking over a trash can. Toilet paper unraveled into a pile on the floor, then slowly rose and began to swirl around me. A cyclone of filth.

“Stop!” I screamed, running for the door again. I beat on it until my fists turned red and throbbed. “Let me out! Somebody let me out!” Fear ripped the words out of me like razor blades.

One by one, the stall doors flew off their hinges and into the big wall-length mirror above the sinks. Glass shattered and flew through the room like shrapnel. Finn was right—she wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted. But he was wrong about her wanting to hurt me.

She wanted me
dead
.

The tissue fell into limp heaps and the lights flickered again. I squeezed my hands into fists. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not in a filthy theater bathroom.

The lights dimmed, then flared back to life. When the last stall door flew off its hinges, I didn’t see it coming. Pain burst like darkness behind my eyelids and I crumpled to the floor. My hand reached for something, anything, to grab onto. Blood trickled into my eye and I managed to swipe it away with the back of my wrist. “Please don’t do this…”

The lights stopped flickering and the room went silent and still. Could she be listening to me? Trembling, I pushed myself up. “I’m not going to pretend to know anything about what happens after you die, but I do believe there is something better out there. I have to believe it. Just like I have to believe there’s something like that out there for you. Maybe Finn can help you find it?”

Nothing happened. I let out a shaky breath and tried not to cry. She’d heard me. Listened, even. Finn was wrong. I could still do something—

A long shard of glass dragged itself across the tile floor, the scraping sound enough to make me feel sick to my stomach. One by one, the larger pieces of broken mirror rose into the air. Something dark flashed in the surfaces. The glass sliced through the air and I screamed, pressing myself against the floor to avoid being hit. Pain pulsed, burning hot from my neck to my shoulder. A piece had gotten to me. I could feel it lodged in my neck.

Silence spread through the room, thick like darkness, and then…the lights flickered again. I started to climb to my knees, but something knocked me back. My head hit the floor and the room spun in circles above me. This was it. She was going to win. I couldn’t do anything about it.

And then I felt it—the icy sensation I’d associated with Maeve, slithering over my skin like it was looking for a way in. Something heavy and cold pressed me into the floor, pushing the breath out of my lungs. Frantic, my soul pushed back, clinging to my skin as it forced her away. This wouldn’t be my end. I was not losing my life to some crazed poltergeist bitch.

“Help! Somebody help!” I screamed until my throat felt raw. “Cash! Finn?”
Someone, please find me,
I pleaded silently as I crawled to the door, one hand clutching the wound on my neck. Sticky liquid seeped between my fingers, churning my stomach. I didn’t have to look to know it was blood. The way the room was spinning and turning dark around the edges was enough to tell me that.

The window blew out like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. I tried to crawl away but white-hot pain bit into my calf, the fiery sensation of metal grating against bone. I closed my eyes, praying for anything that would make the pain stop.
Make it go away,
I prayed through the pounding in my head. Steady as a drum, it pounded louder, louder, louder, until a final burst drowned the sound out with shouts and screams.

“Emma. Oh my God, Emma, what happened?” Cash’s breath was warm on my face, his hands replacing mine around the wound on my neck.

I screamed. The sound choked off into a strange gurgle as he slid the piece of broken mirror out of my skin. Everything was blurry even behind my closed lids, a gray catacomb of never-ending fuzziness pulling me deeper into an ocean of forgetting. I fought it, concentrating on the feel of Cash’s fingers on my face. I needed to talk. I needed air. I needed…

“Finn,” I whispered, and then everything went black.

Chapter 26

Emma

“Don’t you dare die, Em.” Cash’s voice sounded like he’d been wrapped in cotton. “I mean it. I’ll follow you to the grave and kick your ghostly ass if you don’t stay with me.”

My eyes rolled around behind my eyelids. I couldn’t open them. Couldn’t make my lips move to tell him not to worry.

“Sir, we’re going to need you to back up,” a woman’s voice said. I felt pressure against my neck. So much pressure. A prick in my wrist. A plastic mask around my mouth. Then warm, familiar fingers laced through mine. Cash.

“He really cares about you,” a girl said.

I blinked, confused by the fact that I was suddenly sitting on a bench next to the drive-in concession stands with a girl I didn’t know. In front of us, the back of the ambulance was a flurry of action. I had never seen a pair of hands move so fast as the paramedic worked at bandaging my neck. Cash rocked back and forth, staring at our linked fingers. My body looked pale and empty on the gurney.

“I’m dead,” I breathed. I looked up and had to blink away the golden spot that bloomed across my vision before the girl came into focus.

She smoothed her white dress over her legs. “You’re not dead.”

“Then what is this?”

She cocked her head to the side, inspecting me with golden eyes. I watched her thumb rub the pearl handle at her side. “You’re close,” she said. “But I think you’re going to be fine.”

“Th-then why are you here? What do you want?” The back of the ambulance started to spin. I gripped the sides of my head and stared at my lifeless body.

“We’re losing her!” Monitors started to wail. A choked sound seeped from Cash’s throat.

“Okay, I don’t have much time,” the girl said. “Come here.”

I jerked away from her touch. “Why?”

She sighed. “Because I’ve been given permission to show you something that I think you need to see. The only reason I can show you now is because you’re straddling the line. After they finish with you”—she nodded to the paramedic—“I lose my chance.”

Hesitantly, I nodded.

“Trust me. You’ll thank me later.” She smiled and raised her palm to my forehead, pausing just before making contact. “Oh, and Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Finn he owes me.”

She pressed her palm to my forehead, and I was engulfed in light.

…

The shock of cold was too much. It burned through me until it was something else altogether. Cold like this wasn’t just a temperature. It was pain. Throbbing. Cutting. Consuming. I tried to gasp for air, but nothing came in. Nothing got out. Ice laced with the blood in my veins. My legs felt like slabs of concrete.

A hand touched my cheek. Peace flooded through those fingertips like warm honey. Numbing me. Calling my name.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a rough voice said. The hand was jerked away. I felt lost without it. Cold. “You don’t touch them. Ever.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I don’t know what’s going on with you today. Just do your job. Got it?”

The voices stopped and the snow crunched beside my face. The warmth moved away. And then…pain. Darkness. Everywhere. I screamed inside my head but I couldn’t feel the sound on my lips. Couldn’t find the light with my eyes. Something sharp sliced through me. Splintered me in two. And then I was weightless. Blissfully numb.

I opened my eyes and blinked at the shadow of a boy who stood in front of me. His green eyes swept over me thoughtfully, like he was waiting for me to break. Or at least realize what was happening. I glanced behind me at the body lying in the snow. Her lips were blue. A red halo of blood stained the snow around her blond head of hair.

She was me.

“I-I’m dead.” I stumbled back, feeling afraid and hopeless, but two hands caught my shoulders.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “I’m going to take you somewhere now. Somewhere safe. Away from this.”

I turned around in his arms and nodded against his chest. This was what was supposed to happen when you died. Just like Mama said. I shouldn’t be afraid anymore. The nothingness was something to be afraid of. Not this. I looked around, waiting for my tunnel of bright white light. The one they talked about in church. “W-where’s the light?”

The boy cleared his throat and put a little distance between us. “Actually, you’re going somewhere else.”

“Where am I going?”

“The Inbetween.”

I gaped. “The what?”

The boy grimaced and stared up at the dull, dimming sky. “The Inbetween. It’s a sorting ground for souls. This is where you go until they see you’re fit for another chance.”

“Another chance? Like reincarnation?”

“Among other options, yes. When and if they think it’s right, you’ll get the chance to go somewhere else.”

I looked out at the blue Chevy half-submerged in the icy river, then down to the lifeless body of Zach Murray. I was supposed to ride home with my sister, but I made her cover for me so I could ride with Zach. I didn’t know he’d been drinking till we were on the road.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” the boy said. “Not of me. Not of this place.”

I nodded again and placed my hand in his. His touch felt cool now. Comforting. He pulled us forward until the world blurred around me, turning everything gray and dull. I blinked when I saw the gates. They loomed before us like pewter-colored shadows, surrounded by mist. I squeezed the boy’s hand, needing that contact more than anything in that moment. To my surprise, he squeezed back.

“Don’t you want to know my name?” I asked.

He stopped when we reached the gates and gave a two-finger wave to a man in a gray robe. He slid me a sideways glance that looked perplexed. “Do you want me to know your name?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t.”

He grinned and looked down at his shoes. “Well, now I think you better tell me, or I’ll have to nickname you Smart Ass.”

I smiled. “It’s Allison.”

He nodded and greeted the man unlocking the gates. The big silver bars eased open and we slipped inside.

“Aren’t you going to tell me yours?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know anyone else here.”

The boy looked at me, sadness creasing the corners of his eyes. “Trust me, Allison. After today, you won’t want to know me.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Are you going to tell me your name or not?”

He waited for the guard to back away and finally said, “Finn. My name’s Finn.”

I slipped my hand into Finn’s and forced him to shake on it. Daddy always said it was polite to shake someone’s hand when they gave you their name. Finn stared at our entwined fingers, brows drawn together like he didn’t know what to think. Our flesh glimmered and glowed. It took my breath away.

“You’re an angel, aren’t you?” I marveled.

Finn pulled his hand out of mine and shook his head. “Not even close.”

He nodded to the guard who was watching us warily and backed out of the gates. I wrapped my fingers around the bars after they closed. “Are you coming back?”

He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and looked around like someone might be listening. “I’m here every day. It’s my job.”

My chest fluttered where my heart used to be. “So, if I wait here tomorrow, I’ll see you again?”

Finn wrapped his fingers around the bars above mine. “Why would you want to see me again after I brought you here?”

“I could use a friend up here,” I whispered, though really, I didn’t know why I needed to see him again. Something inside me just…knew. And the emptiness in those haunting green eyes said that he needed it, too.

Finn rested his forehead against the bars. “I’m not supposed to. It’s against the rules for me to even be talking to you like this.”

I opened my mouth, not entirely sure what was about to come out, when a voice parted the shadows. Finn stepped away from the gate. From me. He raked his fingers through his hair and nodded at a pretty girl in a white dress who looked like she was waiting for him. Of course there was someone else. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it. The fluttering feeling sank, and I slipped back from the gate and into the mist. Into death. “Good-bye, Finn.”