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Chapter 17

Cash

Anaya’s eyes opened wide, so gold they cut right through the dusty dark around us. I couldn’t let go of her wrist. Couldn’t move. What the hell had just happened? One minute I’d been trying to decide if the feeling in my gut meant that I wanted to kiss the girl in front of me and the next I’m in…I looked around. A basement?

“What happened?” Anaya whispered.

I looked back at her. She looked fierce with her badass blade dangling from her grip. But she looked afraid, too.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” I hissed, the water dripping from my boxers creating a puddle beneath me. “What did you do?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said.

“How can you not know?”

A girl whimpered across the room and Anaya closed her eyes. She jerked her wrist out of my grip.

“Not now. We’ll worry about this after.”

“After what?”

Anaya rolled her eyes at me and turned around.

I looked over her shoulder at the pretty redheaded girl in the metal lawn chair behind her. Her hair hung in dirty strings around her face. A rag, I’m guessing that was probably used to wipe up the floor, was shoved in her mouth. Her hands and ankles were tied with a bright-orange rope. Another girl with pixie-cut blond hair who looked a few years older was tied up beside her, already lifeless. There was blood streaming down the girls’ wrists and fingertips, pooling under the chairs. Jesus…where was it all coming from?

I raked my fingers through my wet hair and stepped back, waiting for my bones to shake right out of my skin. “Holy hell, Anaya… What is this? W-we need to call the cops or something.”

“It’s too late for that,” she said.

Anaya ran her palm over the younger girl’s coppery hair and cupped her face in her hand as she knelt down in front of her. She ran her thumb over the dirt and mascara smudges. She whispered something to her I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was seemed to calm the girl, because in seconds she looked boneless, limp with relief. Anaya stepped back and pulled the blade above her head, her arms arched like wings. Every part of her lit up like a firefly.

“Whoa, what are you going to do with that?”

“What you wanted me to do to you,” she said softly, her voice like a warning, then swung. The blade sliced through air and flesh and blood. I couldn’t watch. Couldn’t listen to the sound of whatever she was doing—an awful ripping sound. I slapped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. When she went to work on the second girl I could still hear it, despite my efforts to block it all out. This was freaking crazy. I had to be hallucinating. Stuff like this just didn’t exist.

“Cash?” Warm fingers pulled one of my hands away from my ear. I cracked my eyes open and swallowed the fear in my throat. My belly felt full of it. Anaya stared back at me, her pretty lips tugged down in a frown.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said.

“I’m not.”

Anaya raised a brow and folded her arms across her chest. “Really?”

I cleared my throat and looked around Anaya at the girl standing behind her. She looked scared, with wide brown eyes, hollow freckled cheeks, and hair that curled around her chin like the tip of a flame. She looked all shimmery and red like a firework. The other girl kept her distance, her back pressed against the corner as she rubbed her hands up and down her tattooed arms.

“What are you gonna do with them?” I asked.

She smiled. “Take them home, of course.”

Anaya looked over her shoulder and dropped her hands down to her sides, gifting me with a view of her head to toe. The girl didn’t look like death. She looked like a freaking goddess. My fingers twitched at my side for a brush. I needed to paint her. I needed those eyes on my canvas. They wouldn’t seem real until I did.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Anaya asked. I blinked away the stupor and stood up.

“Are you going to get me back home?” I said, remembering my little trip with Noah. God, I hadn’t been ready for another trip like that. Even now my head was throbbing and bile burned the back of my throat. “Can you even get me back?”

Anaya glanced back at the shivering girls behind her. “I think so. Just take my hand. We have to take care of them first.”

I flexed my fingers in and out of a tight fist. She wanted me to touch her. Trust her. She was going to show me what happened to the souls that Noah didn’t get. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to see that now. I didn’t want to tarnish this image of Anaya in my head. And if what Noah said was true, the image wouldn’t just be tarnished. It would be decimated.

The dark basement around me that smelled like sweat and death, and the sound of heavy footsteps on the floorboards above our heads, told me I didn’t really have a choice. I took a deep breath and laced my fingers through Anaya’s smooth, delicate ones. Did she really touch death every day? Her hand didn’t feel that way. It felt warm and comforting, like she’d just pulled it out of a bucket of sunshine. It made me feel like I never wanted to let go.

I watched her slip her free hand into the open palm of the soul beside her. I guess she was a soul.

She had to be. Her body was still bound to that filthy chair. Dead. Still. Cold. Oddly enough she looked happy to leave it.

“This might be a little disorienting for you. Take a moment,” Anaya whispered to me.

“I don’t need a moment,” I said as I stared at the pale, limp girl in the chair. I felt like I wanted to puke. “Just get me out of here.”

Anaya shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The air popped like static electricity and a nauseatingly familiar pressure enveloped me. The world spun into a bright blur and I groaned. My insides tuned to ice while my skin felt like it was on fire.

Not again.

Just like before, it all stopped before my mind could process that everything had gone still around me. I opened my eyes and had to blink to make sure I was seeing correctly. It was like gray gauze had settled over my vision, but when I let go of Anaya’s hand and spun around, it was clear I wasn’t seeing things. That’s just what this place was—nothing. Anaya stepped into me, wrapping her fingers around my biceps, and I immediately began to thaw under her touch.

“Where are we?”

She nodded to a set of pewter gates just visible through the haze. “The Inbetween. I have to drop one off before we take mine home.”

“But I thought you said you only delivered to Heaven?”

She looked over her shoulder at the blond girl with the torn purple shirt and shook her head. “We’re a little shorthanded right now. I was called for both of them this time. She wasn’t on my list.”

I nodded and followed her through the gates while she spoke in soft reassuring tones to the girls.

Part of me wished I would have waited outside the gates, but the other part was morbidly curious about this place that didn’t really fit in the mold of the afterlife I’d grown up learning about. Not to mention Noah—I didn’t want to just listen to his warnings, I wanted to see for myself.

Anaya walked us just far enough through the gates to pass the girl off to what looked like another reaper. It was far enough. I clenched my fists, which were vibrating with energy. It was the souls. It had to be. There were so many, wandering aimlessly over the dull gray land. A boy maybe a year or two younger than me stumbled by us, mumbling to himself as if we didn’t exist. His eyes were nearly black, the whites barely visible. Dark veins that reminded me of Noah stretched up his arms and neck.

He stopped a few feet past us and twitched, then grabbed the sides of his head and began to moan.

My breath caught in my throat and I tripped over my own feet backing away. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

Anaya stepped to my side and didn’t waste any time tugging me away, back toward the gates. Once she’d shoved me though, she stepped in front of me, blocking me from the redhead’s view.

“I told you there was more than a Heaven and a Hell,” she said.

“What happens to them?”

“Some are reborn. Some go to Heaven,” she admitted, looking sad. “The rest decay before they get that chance. Those that do turn to shadows.”

I thought about the empty black pits that once were that kid’s eyes. There wasn’t anything there. He was empty. It was just like Noah said. He’d been telling me the truth.

“And this is where Finn took souls?” I pointed to the gates, shaking. “That’s what he did willingly for over seventy years? He dropped souls off so that they could…rot? Turn into shadow demons?”

“Why does it matter?” Anaya folded her arms across her chest, her brows pulled together in frustration.

“Why?” I exploded. “Because that asshole is sleeping with my best friend!”

Anaya’s eyes blazed, and for once I didn’t think it was desire. She stomped forward and stuck her finger into my chest. It practically sizzled against my skin.

“That asshole is the only reason Emma isn’t a shadow demon,” she seethed. “She was one of the doomed. She was wandering this wasteland, rotting, and he risked everything to save her, to give her the life she’s living now so that she wouldn’t transition into one of them.”

I fought to control my breathing. It was coming so fast and hard that it hurt. My head was spinning.

What was she saying? That Em… my Em was almost one of those things? How was that even possible?

Emma was good. No, screw that. She was better than good. She was a saint compared to me. So how in the hell did she ever even end up in this place? What kind of fucked-up system was this? I didn’t have to time to grill Anaya any further. She glared at me once more before latching onto my wrist and the soul patiently waiting on us. Without warning the world fell out from under me. Light exploded around us and reality went spinning off into space. When it was over Anaya released me and I collapsed to my knees.

“Damn it, Anaya!” I groaned just before I gripped my knees and heaved, watching my breakfast empty onto the crystal clear floor under my feet. As quickly as it landed it turned to vapor and seeped into a midnight-blue sky, turning to sparks once it hit the night. I watched in awe as my breath fogged over the glass-like surface. My stomach rolled again with the impossibility of what was happening.

Anaya rested a hand on my shoulder and sighed.

“I told you—”

I glared up at her and shook her hand off. “Really? You want to give me an ‘I told you so’ now?”

She sighed and took a step back. “Never mind.”

“Where are we now? Hell? Not really sure how it could get any worse than the last place.”

Anaya looked at me, considering, then held her hand out into the air and closed her eyes. The white mist around us clung to her fingertips like puppet strings, just waiting for her to tell it where to go. A small smile lifted her lips as she smoothed her hand through the air like she was wiping a window clean. The fog parted, clouds scattering at her command. I couldn’t catch my breath when I saw it. A pair of enormous gold gates the color of Anaya’s eyes glowed against the ice-blue sky. Three big lavender-tinged moons bobbed around a collection of bright-white clouds. A lulling hum vibrated through the air, sounding far away. She looked back at me and the smile fell from her lips.

“You need to close your eyes and look away when I take her in,” she said, reaching out behind her to grab the dead girl’s hand. The girl didn’t hesitate. Just bit her bottom lip and clutched on to Anaya like she’d never let go.

“What?” I scrambled to get to my feet. “Why?”

“My eyes look like this for a reason,” she whispered. “That place…it wasn’t meant for the living to see. The purity of that place will burn you…blind you.”

“Is my…” I cleared my throat and stared at the gates. “My dad’s in there. Isn’t he?”

Anaya looked away and nodded.

“I want to see him.” I stepped forward.

“No.” Anaya pressed her open palm against my chest to stop me, and my eyes gravitated to the warm spot pooling beneath my shirt where her fingers lay. I had to take a deep breath to stop my heart from pounding so hard she’d be able to feel it.

I looked up at her, needing her to understand. “You owe me this. You could have warned me. Let me say good-bye…and you didn’t.”

“You can’t pass those gates to get to the ones you love any more than I can.” She pulled her hand away. “We don’t get the luxury of good-byes, Cash. It’s part of death. Accept it.”

The hurt in her voice told me we weren’t just talking about my dad anymore. Who did Anaya have behind those gates? She walked away like she was dismissing me…like this didn’t matter. I was getting so sick of her walking away from me every time I got close, every time things got hard that my blood boiled. I balled my hands into fists at my sides. “Don’t walk away from me, Anaya!”

She didn’t turn around. Just walked hand in hand with the soul in tow, her braids swinging behind her.

“Turn around,” she said. “And this time don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The gates parted and light exploded from the gleaming space between them. I threw my arm over my eyes and turned away as the most perfect heat caressed my back. I felt dizzy. Not right. I sank down onto my knees, feeling like somebody had wrapped my brain in cotton. I don’t know how long I sat like that. Time didn’t seem to matter anymore. But after what seemed like an eternity, warm fingers whispered across my skin. Through my hair. Anaya’s voice was soft in my ears, but I still couldn’t open my eyes.

“Cash.”

I reached out in front of me, trying to grab hold of something familiar.

“You’re home,” she said.

Something jolted me out of it. The cotton freed from around my thoughts. Rocks ground into my back and I sat up, looking around the empty beach. My clothes sat beside me and afternoon sunlight glinted off the lake water.

“Anaya,” I said, voice cracking, not sounding anything like me. “Ana—” I stopped myself. I didn’t have to say her name. The emptiness around me, the cold engulfing me—it was all I needed to feel to know that she was gone.