The Beautiful and the Damned (21 page)

He gave her a hard look. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”

“Oh, I want to know. Believe me, I want to know. So, is that a yes? Do I have a death
wish or something? Did I try to commit
suicide
?”

“It was the soul inside you. He wants out.”

“
He?
Do you know who it is?”

“His name is Grifyth, but he likes to call himself Vincent now.”

Something twitched in the back of Cyn’s brain, and she tried to place it. “I know
that name,” she mumbled. “I know that name from somewhere. I know that name. . . .”

“He said a Shade crossover in Sleepy Hollow went wrong, and that’s when he found himself
inside you.”

Sleepy Hollow. Where my fucked-up memories include a bridge and a dead girl named
Abbey.
“How do you know all of this?”

“He told me.”

Cyn almost dropped her cup. “He
told
you?” Her voice rose. “When was this? And why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“It happened when you blacked out in the kitchen. And I’m telling you now.”

She glared at him. “So you’ve known all along who this soul inside of me is and that
he wants to escape so badly, he’s willing to get rid of me to do it, yet you figured
you’d just wait until now to tell me.”

He shrugged.

“Why does he want out?”

“Because no Echo has ever been able to withstand more than seven souls passing through
them. It’s too hard on the mortal body. You’ve had four souls inside you. He’s number
five.”

“
Seven?
And I’m already on number
five
?” Cyn started to pace. “What can we do? I don’t want him to just keep taking over
and making me try to hurt myself.”

He was quiet for a moment, and Cyn felt her desperation growing. Finally, he said,
“There is one thing I could try. But it involves going back to the last place he was
corporeal.”

Cyn bit her lip.
Go back to Sleepy Hollow? Where the cops might still be looking for me? I could end
up in jail. . . . Then again, if I don’t at least try, I’ll be stuck with him until
the next soul comes along. Or until he finally manages to finish the job. . . .

“What would you have to do?”

C
yn tried to take in what Thirteen was saying, but she couldn’t wrap her head around
it. “Okay, so wait, tell me again how this would work?”

He leaned forward. “I could force him out. Make him give up his space and move on
to the afterlife.”

“Have you ever done that before?”

“No.”

“So, what if it doesn’t work?”

“You end up right back where you are now.”

Except I could piss off this Vincent soul inside me. If he’s angry and wants out
now
, what happens when this doesn’t work and we’re stuck with each other? What will he
try to do then?

“I need to think about it,” Cyn heard herself saying. Her head was starting to hurt,
and she just wanted someplace quiet to think. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Heading upstairs, she grabbed some clean clothes from her suitcase. But she couldn’t
find a pair of socks. “I know I have, like, eight pairs in here,” Cyn muttered, searching
through the suitcase. She dug all the way to the bottom but stopped when her hand
hit something hard.

It was the knife she’d hidden in the back of the toilet, wrapped up in an old towel.

I forgot all about this.

As soon as she touched it, a flashback hit her.

Bloody handle. Bloody blade. There’s so much blood everywhere. Where did it come from?
Crying, moaning, pleading. No, it’s a whisper. A prayer. Have to hide the knife. Don’t
let anyone know you have it
—

Cyn jerked back and dropped the blade.
Not again. Please, not again.

The blood. The prayer. The tears . . .

It was Father Montgomery.

She was the one who’d killed Father Montgomery.

~  ~  ~

The whole time she was showering, Cyn tried to rationalize herself through the situation.
Did she
really
kill him? Was
the knife the murder weapon? And if so, why?
Why?

It just didn’t make any sense.

After the shower, Cyn hid the knife back in her suitcase and then quickly got dressed.
When she went downstairs, Thirteen was standing in front of her plants by the window.
He had a small cup in one hand and was watering the ficus tree. Her stomach somersaulted.

She had to tell him.

Cyn stepped forward, but he shifted to the side and she could see a phone next to
his ear.

“Yeah, thanks,” she heard him say. “Get back to me if anything comes up.”

After he gets Vincent out. I’ll tell him after he gets Vincent out of me. I can’t
afford any distractions right now, and telling him that I was the one who killed his
surrogate father is a big fucking distraction.

He snapped the phone shut and glanced back at her. Cyn awkwardly crossed and uncrossed
her arms. Trying to affect a casual stance. “Who was that?”

“The police investigating Father Montgomery’s murder.” He said it with a slight change
in his tone, and Cyn got the feeling that he wasn’t being completely truthful with
her.

“Do they, uh, have any leads?” She had to fight to keep her own voice steady. “Any
ideas who did it?”

“Nothing that they’re willing to talk about with me.” He moved over to the stove,
and Cyn realized then that something was cooking. “I think they’re under the impression
that I’d take matters into my own hands if I knew who did it. They’re not wrong.”

“Oh.” Cyn twisted her ring nervously.

The tantalizing smell of cheddar cheese, apples, and bacon filled the room, and Thirteen
flipped something up out of a frying pan and caught it in midair.

“How did he die?” she said suddenly. “I mean, I was there right afterward, and it
looked like his face was bruised. Was he beaten? Strangled?”

Thirteen cast her a quick glance. “Stabbed.”

Oh, God.
Her stomach completely sank to the floor.

She reached up to tug on the back of her wig, and he saw her.

“No need for that. Your wig came off when you were sleeping on the couch. Secret’s
out: You’re a ginger.”

“I don’t want to advertise that fact, so let’s keep it under wraps, okay?”

She glanced at the table, and it took her a second to realize an empty plate was sitting
there. He brought the pan over and slid a golden brown grilled cheese onto it. Tender
apple wedges peeked out of its crispy edges, melted cheddar oozed from the sides,
and the bacon was the exact shade of burnt she liked.

“Eat,” he said, holding the plate up to her. She almost wavered.

But then everything came crashing back to her. “What are you
doing
?” Cyn asked.

“Making you food. I thought you might be hungry. Something wrong with that?”

“Yes, there’s something wrong with that.”

She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him doing something nice when she was
purposely hiding something terrible from him just so she could use him. “I didn’t
ask
you to make me food. I didn’t ask you to—”

“Calm down. It’s just a damn sandwich.”

“I can’t have you making me grilled cheese!” Cyn exploded. Turning her back on the
sandwich, she went over to the kitchen door. “I want to go back to Sleepy Hollow.
Now.
I want this thing done and over with.”

~  ~  ~

Before they could go, Cyn had to say good-bye to her plants. Avian waited as she whispered
something to each one of them.

“Where did you learn that?” he asked when they were finally on their way out of the
house.

“Learn what?”

“What you just said. It was a Gaelic blessing of growth and peace.”

Cyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Ever since I was young, I’ve had this special bond with
plants. The words are just things that I see in my head.”

“It probably came from one of your souls. Maybe someone was a botanist. Or a witch.”

She climbed on the motorcycle behind him but sat too far back.

“I know you don’t want to touch my wings, but you’re going to have to sit closer than
that,” Avian said. “I don’t want to have to stop to pick you up if you fall off.”

“
Me
not want to touch your wings? I thought
you
didn’t want me to touch your wings. I thought it was an etiquette thing. I was just
trying to be nice.”

“Stop trying to be nice and just move closer, okay?”

She scooted forward a couple of inches and wrapped her arms around him as he made
a quick call to a guy named Joe. Joe owed him one. Avian had helped his sister and
her boyfriend find a safe place to live. Which wasn’t easy to do since they were both
Orthos demons who needed dank water and lots of moss.

They made good time on the road to New York, and four hours later Avian pulled into
the driveway of the address Joe had given him and turned off his bike. Cyn stayed
quiet.

Joe came out of the house a couple of minutes later, wearing a scowl and an oversize
coat. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me do this,” he said. “This is definitely
illegal.”

“Yeah, well, we’re also going to need to find a car,” Avian replied. “Can’t fit all
of us on my bike.” He tapped the headlight.

“A car?” Cyn perked up. “I can get us a car.”

Avian turned around to glance at her, and the excited look in her eyes was the same
one Shelley always had when she used to talk about stealing cars. It was like seeing
a ghost. And while that usually didn’t do anything for him, this time it made him
feel like his head was screwed on wrong.

“We can use his,” Avian said with a harsher tone than he intended. He jerked his head
at Joe.
“Right?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. It’s in the carport. I’ll get the keys.”

He returned a minute later with the keys and an orange toolbox. They followed him
around the side of the house, and Avian didn’t miss Cyn’s snort of disgust when a
battered brown sedan came into view.

“Where do we go now?” Joe asked as they crammed into the front bench seat alongside
him.

“The cemetery,” Avian replied.

C
yn grew more and more anxious the closer they got to the cemetery. They were going
to pass the house where she and Hunter had lived after high school graduation.
Where Hunter died
 . . .

She couldn’t look when it finally came into view. And long after it was blocks behind
them, she could have
sworn
she still heard police sirens.

Curved wrought-iron gates marked with an elaborate
S
on top of one and an
H
on top of the other greeted them when they pulled up to the sprawling Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery. The gates were padlocked shut, but a low stone border with a section of
trees and bushes cleared back was obviously used as a way to get around them.

Thirteen led the way into the cemetery, and Cyn and Joe followed. But Cyn kept stopping
to look over her shoulder. It felt like someone else was behind them.

Finally, Thirteen stopped and turned around too. “If you’re going to keep following
us, then you might as well help us. Where did the crossover happen?”

Cyn and Joe both stared into the darkness.

“Who are you talking to?” Cyn said.

Thirteen snapped his fingers, and suddenly her vision blurred and then returned. Everything
around her became sharper and more defined. Like she’d been wearing the wrong glasses
but now had the right prescription. “I’m talking to
him
.”

He pointed at a mausoleum to their left. Or more accurately, to the young guy leaning
against the mausoleum. He had white-blond hair and the greenest eyes Cyn had ever
seen.

“Whoa, man,” Joe said. “Where did
you
come from?” Then he mumbled, “I don’t like ghosts.”