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Chapter 5

Cash

The library was too quiet. I needed noise. Distraction. I felt like a walking target without either. Not that I was naive enough to think I could hide from the little bastards, but I didn’t want to make it easy for them, either. Me being in the same place twice in a matter of two days made me feel way too obvious. I kept my head down, ducking from book stack to book stack. The musty smell of pages that hadn’t been turned in a decade made my throat itch.

I stopped in the art section, just for a minute, and ran my fingers over the spines of a few of the colorful books collecting dust. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a stack of Jackson Pollock prints and pretend my world wasn’t falling to pieces around me. In the end, my need for answers won out. I didn’t even pluck one from the shelf. Instead I slipped down a slim, dark aisle that contained big, dusty, underused books on mythology, religion, and the supernatural. The people of Lone Pine obviously didn’t get much use out of this section. I could have grilled Finn some more, but honestly that idea sounded about as appealing as putting out a lit cigarette on my arm.

I grabbed a few books, leaving behind the ones I’d read the day before, let my backpack slip off of my shoulder, and sat in the floor. I didn’t know what I was looking for yesterday, and still didn’t. A handbook for how to deal with cheating death? A spell to ward off demons? It sounded so freaking stupid when I put the thoughts together like that, but I couldn’t sit around doing nothing, waiting for some dead guy to show up who might have answers.

I zipped my coat up to fight off the chill consuming me, despite the fact that it was at least eighty degrees in this sweatbox of books, flipped through the two mythology books, and found nothing.

Nothing real that applied to me, anyway. Then again, who was I to say what was real? Nothing felt real anymore. For all I knew, Zeus himself could have been laughing down at me right now, a vampire at his side as they plotted the zombie apocalypse.

I squinted into the last book and found a section on demons. A few sketches. A couple of eyewitness experiences. I froze and ran my finger over one of the drawings. It was one of them. A shadow demon.

Shadow demons are often associated with poltergeists. Not considered to be ghosts, these demons are generally described as black, shapeless, shadowlike entities that appear quickly out of the corner of your eye. Some people have reported the appearances of shadows like these hovering next to their bed while they sleep. These particular demons tend to feed off of emotions. Fear. Depression. Anger.

They-I rubbed my eyes and blinked when the letters started to melt together. They what? I looked down at the page again and the words blurred out of focus.

“Damn it.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting off the headache creeping up on me. A cold prickling pain spread across the inside of my chest, my skull, the walls of my throat. What was wrong with me? I leaned my head against the stack of books behind me and stared up through the towering shelves. One of the skylights was just an aisle over, so you could see the dust motes twirling through some of the stray rays of sunshine that made it over into my section. If only those rays would bring a little warmth my way. I was starting to wonder what it was going to take for me to shake this chill.

My phone started to buzz in my pocket and I flinched. I looked at the screen and sighed. Shit.

“Hey, Dad,” I said.

“Hey, Dad?” he seethed. “Where the hell are you? I know you’re not in class. Your principal just called me. Again.”

I let the back of my head thump against the shelf of books behind me. “I’m…at the library.”

“Don’t lie to me, Cash.”

“I’m not lying,” I said. “I really am at the library.”

“I don’t care if you’re in church talking to the pope. You are supposed to be in class.” Something slammed down against his desk on the other end and I flinched. “Richard’s son got accepted to

Harvard today. Harvard. And what is my son doing? Acting like a lunatic. Skipping school. Pissing away every opportunity to have a successful life that I give him.”

My jaw clenched until my teeth hurt. “Maybe you should adopt Richard’s son, then. You guys could swap since I’m so disappointing.”

Dad’s chair squeaked and he sighed. I could picture him leaned back in his leather chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he couldn’t endure another second of listening to me. “Trust me, Richard wouldn’t put up with your shit like I do. You’d be in a military academy by Monday. Hell, maybe that’s what I should have done a long time ago. Maybe I’m the failure here.”

“Look, Dad—”

“No, you look,” he said. “We had a deal. You broke it. I’m calling Dr. Farber.”

I sat up. “The shrink?”

“Don’t start with me. You’re going.”

“But Dad—”

“Get to class.”

I opened my mouth, but he hung up on me before I could get the words out. I stared at my phone for a minute, boiling, anger turning all of those cold prickles of pain into flames. I did not need this shit right now. I didn’t need him telling me what a disappointment I was. He didn’t care if I had a good life —he wanted a trophy, another damn accomplishment to hang on his wall. But if I did happen to make anything out of my life, I’d be damned if he got credit for it. I didn’t need his approval any more than

I needed him. What I needed was someone who could actually help me get my life back.

“Damn it!” I threw my phone across the aisle. I wanted to hit something. I wanted something to hurt as badly as I did. Where was the numbness when I needed it? I balled up all of the anger and hurt inside and tried to force it out of my body on an exhale. It didn’t work. Why did I think it would?

Nothing worked out anymore.

I shivered under my coat as goose bumps rose along the back of my neck, unable to shake the feeling that someone was here. Watching me. An almost painful current spread through my fingers, the strange buzz throbbing in each fingertip, and I flexed my hand trying to get it out.

I sat up, heart pounding, searching for shadows and not finding any. My eyes caught the flicker of a gray coat disappearing around the end of the book stack and I jumped up, clutching the book in my hand.

“Hello?” I made my way down the aisle, listening. It was him. The kid I’d seen in the hall that day.

It had to be. He’d seen the shadows. Hell, he hadn’t just seen them, he’d seemed… amused by them.

These books didn’t have the answers I wanted. He did. “Come on man, I just want to talk.”

No answer. When I got to the end of the aisle, I stopped and looked around, completely alone. Was I seeing things? Was this even real? I knew my insides were broken, failing a little more each and every day. I could feel it, the echo of death, tainting every breath of oxygen I took. What I didn’t want to accept was that my mind might be going, too. I pressed the cool cover of the book in my hand against my forehead and cursed.

“You’re not going to find any answers in those,” a girl’s voice split the silence. “And last time I checked, you had to open them to read the words inside.”

“Maybe I’m trying to read by osmosis,” I replied, dropping the book to my side. I turned around, expecting to see a fellow student giving me crap, but froze when my gaze fell on the unfamiliar girl in front of me.

“Hi,” she said. She leaned with her back against the stacks, holding my cell phone, just a few feet away. Her gold eyes glinted as they looked at me. She looked like a shined-up pearl next to the dusty old books.

Finally, she tossed my cell phone to me and I dropped the book to catch it with both hands. I had to let the words roam around in my mouth for a minute before I could get them out.

“Do I know you?”

“Sort of.” She shrugged. “I know you.”

I squinted at the pretty, unfamiliar girl in front of me. Long brown braids tumbled over her shoulders, and her skin looked like honey against the bright-white straps of her dress. The laces of her gold sandals wrapped around her calves. Though I wasn’t sure if you could call her sandals gold. Not next to those eyes. Those eyes were a color all their own. They didn’t even look real. Neither did the faint glow that bathed her from head to toe.

A warm sensation swept over me and a shiver exploded across my skin. I looked around, but there weren’t any shadows. Hadn’t been for a while.

My heart stuttered in my chest before seeming to stop all together. It was…her. Her eyes. Those were the same eyes I’d seen at the fire. And that same warmth that settled over me like a blanket of safety any time she came around. It had to be her. Normal girls didn’t look like that.

“It’s you.” It was stupid, but I didn’t really know what else to say. Seriously, how often do you meet a dead girl?

“‘You’ works,” she said. “But you could also call me Anaya if you want to.” She sat down against the stack, motioning for me to do the same, and wrapped her arms around her legs. She rested her chin on her knees and looked me over.

“Anaya?” The memory came flooding back. Finn had mentioned an Anaya. Hesitantly, I crossed over to where my bag sat on the floor and sank down across from her.

“What…what are you?” I stopped and inhaled as big a breath as my lungs could hold. They ached and protested before forcing me to cough it all back up.

She cocked her head to the side, studying me, as if she were trying to decide what to say. “I’m a reaper,” she finally admitted. “You should be familiar with that term by now.”

I swallowed, pressing back until the shelf dug into my back. “Like Finn.”

She simply nodded, so eerily calm, it made my skin crawl. How could she be so calm? I felt like my brain was about to explode, questions filling up my head so fast they pressed against my skull. “Are you here to take me?”

Anaya stood up, but she wouldn’t look at me. Instead she focused those amazing starlit eyes on the floor. “No. Not yet.”

“Yet? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She said it like there would be a later.

“I’m here to watch over you, Cash,” she said, exasperated. “No need to look at me like I’m some kind of villain. I think we both know there are things much worse than me out there to fear.”

“You mean them.” I pushed myself up to stand, nodding to the book. “The shadow demons?”

Anaya raised a brow and walked a circle around the books I’d discarded on the floor. “Maybe those books had some answers after all.”

“I had to look somewhere. It’s not like anybody else will give me answers.” I tried to concentrate on breathing. It was hard not to feel dizzy in the presence of her warmth. It made part of me long for her to come closer. The other, more sane, part of me screamed for her to stay the hell away. “Why are these things following me? What do they want?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but I imagine it has something to do with the fact that you’re in an expired body,” she said.

“Expired?”

“You’re not dead, but you’re not exactly alive right now, either. You’re balancing on this tightrope between life and death, a side effect of putting you back in your body at the fire. These shadows are attracted to the scent of death and the emotions that accompany it. The closer you get to death, the more appealing you seem. It’s the only reason I can come up with. I’ve never seen them go after one of the living this way.”

Thoughts spun around in my head fast enough to make me dizzy, or maybe that was just the fact that

I was breathing too fast. I grabbed the shelf beside me for support and felt my brows pull together.

“Wait a second…what do you mean the closer I get to death?”

At that moment the pain in my chest spread and burned through me. I pushed against the spot with my fingers. No. That was from the fire. Right? I just needed my inhaler.

A sad look passed over Anaya’s face as she watched me collapse on the inside. “You’re dying, Cash.

Can’t you feel it?”

My fingers hovered over my heart, feeling it pound against my ribs with fear. She was lying. She had to be. I mean, yeah, I knew I was fucked up, but dying? I wasn’t even eighteen yet. I hadn’t even graduated. I couldn’t be dying. I retreated until my back slammed into the stacks, knocking a few books onto the floor.

“You’re lying,” I whispered, wishing it were true.

“I’m not.” She took a step closer. “I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

I forced my gaze to meet hers and swallowed. God, she was pretty. I should have realized that somebody that pretty was dangerous. She was like a freaking walking Venus flytrap. “Why? Why am I dying now? They released me from the hospital. I could go back—”

“It won’t matter.” She cut me off. “You were meant to die in that fire,” she admitted. “You were on my list. I was supposed to take you and I didn’t. I let you stay.”

“What do you mean you let me stay?” I asked. “Like you saved me?”

Anaya laughed, bitterly, and pushed herself away from the book stack. “Saving you would have been taking you to Heaven where you belonged. No, Cash. I didn’t save you. I think we both know that.”

I barked out a laugh. “Heaven? Me? Now I know you’re full of shit.”

Anaya tossed a tired expression my way and stepped into a dusty stripe of sunlight. If it was possible, she looked even more beautiful. Wait…beautiful? I shook my head, hoping the thought would bounce right out of my ears. She was Death. A walking nightmare. No way did that word belong anywhere near this girl.

“The second I pushed you back into that body, it began to expire,” she said. “It won’t last. It will deteriorate. This is just a waiting game now.”

Deteriorating? As much as I wanted to deny it, I knew it was true, because it’s exactly how I felt inside. I was dying. Fuck. I didn’t want to die. Not yet. I wanted to go to art school. I wanted to get away from my dad and prove him wrong. And Em… Damn it, I couldn’t leave Em.

Her molten eyes slipped over me, filled with something dark. Guilt, maybe? Pity? Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. She finally straightened her back and looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” I balked. “You tell me I’m dying and that’s all you can say?”

“Look, I know this isn’t fair to you,” she said. “And I’m not cruel. I’m just doing my job, following orders. If I’d had any idea that this would happen…” She shut her eyes and shook her head, causing a few silky braids to tumble over her shoulder. “I’m going to try to make this whole thing as easy as possible on you. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. You deserve that much.”

At a loss, I just stared at her. Words. I still knew how to form words, right? It was like this chick sucked every ounce of sense right out of my brain.

“Why didn’t you just take me at the fire?” I whispered, knowing that if I could have this one question answered, maybe I could deal with the rest. But the not knowing was killing me. “Why put me through this?”

Anaya’s light dimmed and she frowned. “It wasn’t my choice.”

“Then whose choice was it?”

“Someone much more powerful than you and I combined.”

“Stop being so fucking vague, Anaya,” I growled. “Who? Your boss? God?”

She flinched at my tone, but I didn’t care. I was so sick and tired of all of this.

“Not God, but yes. I work for him,” she admitted.

“And why the hell would he want me to stay like this?”

“I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did. All I know is there must be something terribly special about your soul for you to attract his attention.”

She didn’t know? How the hell could she not know? If she didn’t, did anybody? Was I going to live the rest of my short life like this? Stalked. Terrified. Never knowing why. Or was the rug about to ripped out from under me? From now on, I’d wonder every second if the breath passing through my lips would be my last. My fingers started to shake along with the rest of me and I curled them into fists that I ground into the floor. My throat was closing up. I couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe.

“You need to calm down,” Anaya whispered, her warmth suddenly right there, forcing my throat open to let the air pass through. The prickling pain had flared back to life, but Anaya’s warmth seemed to keep it tolerable. She didn’t touch me, though she was close enough that her words cascaded like honey over my skin. “These shadows are drawn in by emotions that accompany death. Fear, anxiety, even anger. You need to learn some control. I can’t be here all the time to ward them off. Breathe, Cash. Just breathe.”

I took a couple of deep, calming breaths, and Anaya looked down at my trembling hands.

She gave me a sad smile and her fingers brushed my arm. “Much better.”

I shook off the overwhelming urge to touch her back. To close the space between us. No way should

I want that. What the hell was wrong with me? I glanced over her shoulder at a lone shadow demon weaving its way in and out of the books, its cold battling with her warmth. “You said the closer I get the more appealing I seem,” I said, brokenly. “Why? What do they want?”

She ran a fingertip along one of the books and left a trail of gold sparks in its wake. “They feed off of souls. Usually ones fresh from the body. If they think you’re close…”

I stared at her incredulously, tying to comprehend what she was telling me. They wanted to eat my soul? This wasn’t as bad as I thought. This was worse. Much, much worse. It was like someone had suddenly turned over an hourglass of invisible sand to count down to my inevitable death. And those things were waiting for the last bit of sand to run out. “So they’re hanging around, waiting on my ass to die so they can have a freaking dinner party. Please tell me you’re joking.”

“You’re not going to go through this alone,” she whispered. “I won’t let anything like that happen to you.”

I grabbed my bag off the floor and slung it across my shoulder. “No. You’re just going to wait for me to die.”

She pressed her soft pink lips together and the light in her eyes dimmed. We stared at each other, my lungs eating up the air between us.

“You know what?” I pointed a shaky finger at the girl, all five foot four of otherworldly perfection, standing in front of me. “Stay the hell away from me.”

The way she made me feel was too confusing. No good could come from wanting to have my hands on a chick who wasn’t even alive. I took off down the aisle but I could still hear her voice as I walked away.

“That’s not an option, Cash,” she shouted. “I’m sorry.”

What wasn’t an option? Her staying away, or me not dying? As I pushed out of the glass doors and stepped into the sun, I couldn’t help but think she meant both.