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“Does it hurt?” she whispered.

“A little,” I said. “It’s hard to breathe. And I’m so freaking cold. I’m tired of being cold all the damn time.”

Anaya rested her hand on my wrist and I opened my eyes.

“Maybe I can help,” she said. “If you’ll let me.”

I swallowed and nodded. Anything. I was starting to think I’d do anything this girl asked me to. Even with Noah’s words ringing in my ears, I was helpless when it came to wanting her. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I looked down at her hand. Hell, what did I have to lose? I was on my way out anyway.

Anaya sat on her knees and leaned in close to me. I couldn’t help but notice her white dress bunched up around her thighs. I probably shouldn’t have been looking. Probably.

“Cash?”

I tore my eyes away and Anaya was grinning. “Huh?”

She laughed and her whole face softened, taking the serious edge away, leaving just a pretty girl with gold eyes staring back at me, making my heart work a little faster. She reached up to cup my cheek with her palm and I flinched. Her fingers spread out, consuming the right side of my face.

“Just breathe,” she whispered. I took a deep breath. Exhaled. Took another breath, focusing on the feel of her open palm against my cheek. That last breath stayed stuck in my lungs when the warmth began to flow. Slow. Steady. It poured from Anaya’s palm and fingertips. Straight sunshine, seeping into my pores, setting my skull on fire. I closed my eyes and placed my hand over hers to hold it in place. God…
Oh my God
, she was so warm. So right. The heat spread down the left side of my neck. My heart pounded like it had been frozen for so long, it’d forgotten it could pump this fast. I needed more. Couldn’t wait. Without thinking, I reached out and snaked an arm around Anaya’s waist and jerked her on top of my lap. She gasped and the sound forced my eyes open.

“Cash…”

I pulled her other hand up and placed it on the right side of my face. My skin instantly began to thaw. So good. I’d almost forgotten what being warm felt like. Her thighs set my hips on fire, the flames spreading all the way down to my toes.

Heat. Peace. Pain. I could barely breathe through it all.

“Please,” I said. “Please, don’t let go.”

She slid her palms down my neck until they rested over the pulse throbbing just under my skin. She shook her head. “I won’t.”

Anaya pressed her forehead to mine and our breaths clashed in the one inch of space between our mouths. It took everything in me not to kiss her. She’d made it clear she didn’t want me, but it didn’t stop me from wanting her. I shuddered, gripping her hips, not wanting to let go. Not ever wanting this moment to end. Slowly, every part of me warmed. The blood in my veins. The bones and skin that held me together. All of it blazed with Anaya’s essence.

“Thank you,” I whispered against her cheek.

Anaya nodded, causing my lips to brush against her face. “Just…try to sleep. You need it.”

I needed a lot of things in that moment. But having her molded to me like this, her heat filling up my insides, my hands on the swell of her hips…let’s just say sleep was pretty far down the list.

“Like this?” I asked.

Her thumbs rubbed up and down my throat, causing me to squeeze her tighter. “Yes. Like this.”

“Why does this feel…”

“Right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Anaya sighed and shook her head. Her braids created a tent around our faces. She smelled like the sea. She smelled…familiar. “I don’t know,” she said. “I…don’t know.”

Chapter 16

Anaya

“Rise and shine.”

Cash groaned, pushing his face back into the pillow, and I frowned. I was risking a lot being here today. Especially after last night. Cash falling asleep cocooned in my warmth, his hands touching places that hadn’t known another in a thousand years…it had been too much. Too close. But it had helped him. He had actually slept all night. I hoped today would add to that progress as well as give me the answers that Balthazar refused to give.

“Sleeping,” he grumbled into the cool pillowcase.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “You can sleep when you’re dead. Get up.”

“How about you crawl in here with me to keep me warm instead? Fair warning, though, I can’t be held responsible for what happens once you’ve entered my lair.”

I could see half of his grin against the pillow and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, wondering exactly what he would do if I took him up on his offer. I shouldn’t have been wondering things like that. Not when I would eventually end up trading him in for a ticket back to Tarik. I touched a fingertip to the back of his neck and watched him bow up off the bed as heat singed down his spine. He inhaled, and stilled as if he expected me to go on. I pulled my hand away.

“Come on.” I sat on the edge of his bed and the sheets began to warm. “I want to show you something. It will make you feel better.”

Cash rolled over and squinted up at me.

“Don’t you have souls to reap?”

“Not at the moment.” I yanked the blankets off him. “But that’s why we should hurry. My time is limited.”

Cash grumbled something under his breath and stumbled off to the shower. When he emerged, his hair was wet and spiky and he was wearing a green T-shirt that said
Kiss me. I’m pretending to be Irish.

He caught me reading it and grinned, scrubbing his fingers through his hair to shake the excess water out. “You wouldn’t be the first girl this shirt has worked on. But you could be the first dead one if you wanted.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go.”

A half hour later, I’d directed him to a small lake on the edge of town. Thankfully, we were alone. The water looked like a smooth glass mirror, reflecting the bright-green pine trees that bordered the rocky beach. The sky above us was bright blue and perfect, lending just the right amount of heat to the breeze sifting between the trees. Cash climbed out of his Bronco and approached me from behind, hands shoved in his pockets. Probably to keep them warm.

“So, what are we doing out here at the butt-crack of dawn?”

“We’re going to try something to make you feel a little better.”

I rubbed my arms and stuck a toe into the water. After a few moments, steam started to roll off the surface. Cash peeked over my shoulder and blew out a breath. “You’re doing that?”

I nodded and kicked my sandals off, then stepped into the water, wading out until it lapped up around my waist. The bottom of my white dress floated up so that it felt like I was sitting on a cloud. Little green and orange fish rippled around me, curiously inspecting my fingertips hovering on the surface. I smiled and smoothed my hand in a circle around me and they scattered. When I looked up, Cash was standing on the beach, mouth half-open, looking uncertain. A shadow swirled up the base of a tree behind him, but I don’t think he noticed. He was too focused on me, the look in his eyes tearing down the walls I’d worked decades to build up around my heart.

“Are you coming in?” I waded out a few steps deeper and leaned my head back to dip my braids in the now-warm water. Cash made a stuttering sound that I assumed was supposed to be words, then started yanking at his clothes. First his T-shirt. Then his jeans and shoes. My breath caught in my throat and I looked away, feeling warmer than usual. Once he was down to his boxers, he stepped into the water and swam out to meet me.

He shuddered out a breath. Steam rolled off the water that splashed up against his well-defined chest. He dunked his head under the lake water and popped back up with a laugh. He smoothed his hair back as water streamed down his face. Seeing him like this, laughing and alive, started the unraveling in my stomach all over again. I fisted the sides of my dress in my hands to keep them from doing something I’d just regret later.

“It’s so warm!” He swam close enough so that we were only inches apart. Steam rose up between us. “How did you do that?”

I shrugged and treaded water. “I thought of it last night. I always wondered how far the heat could go if I let it.”

Cash’s gaze lingered on my face and he swallowed. “Pretty far I guess.”

“I always loved the water when I was alive,” I said, my mind wandering back to dangerous memories of days spent on the edge of the sea.

“Oh yeah?” Cash grinned. “Where did you live?”

I let myself sink a few inches so that the water coated my lips, then pushed myself back up. “Egypt. Near the sea. Our home was so close, the sound of the waves breaking onto the shore used to put me to sleep at night.”

“Lucky,” Cash said. “The only thing I ever remember putting me to sleep when I was a kid was Mom and Dad arguing. Then after she was gone it was just quiet all the time. The quiet almost made me miss the arguing.”

My chest ached thinking about him small and alone at night. “I’m sorry.”

Cash floated on his back while his arms made lazy circles in the water as if he hadn’t heard me. “I always wanted to live by the ocean. I’ve never lived anywhere but here, but when I went to the beach with Em a few times, it always felt like home. I never wanted to leave.”

Ignoring the way our legs brushed together, I tipped my head back to stare into the sky, wondering how long it would take for me to get called away from this. I didn’t want it to end. But I knew it had to. Which reminded me that we were here for more than just this.

“Do you feel better?” I asked.

Cash smiled. “Yeah. I finally feel…warm.”

“Good.” I held one of my hands out and he just looked at it, confused. “I want to try something. Touch my hand.” It was risky giving him free rein over me like this, but if he were really a shadow walker, I had to know. I couldn’t have his fate ending up like the boy on the cliff who saw no other way out. That wouldn’t be Cash.

“Okay…” He reached his hand up and I exhaled, letting go of my skin, embracing my elemental form. My shimmer exploded across the water’s surface so that it looked as if we were surrounded by a thousand floating stars. Cash raised a brow and I nodded for him to go on. Slowly, he placed his hand against mine. Palm to palm. Blue sparks ignited between our wet fingers and a current swept though me with a jolt. In an instant, every part of me was thrust into being whole again. I blinked away the dizzy sensation sweeping over me. I was corporeal. And all from his touch. Cash laced his fingers through mine and squeezed.

“Whoa…what was that?”

I stared at our entwined hands, the blue shimmer keeping them linked. It looked like a ribbon swirling through our fingers, binding us at the wrist. “It was you,” I whispered.

Cash exhaled a shaky breath and pulled me into him by my hand. Inside me, alarms were sounding. Too close. Don’t let him get too close. With his other hand, his fingers danced down my side before curling around my waist to hold me in place. Before I could stop myself, I arched into his touch and closed my eyes.

“Why do I always feel like I’ve got fireworks going off inside me when I have you this close?” he whispered.

I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to say anything in that moment. Not when I couldn’t think through the heat and want building up inside me with each careful stroke of his fingers against my hip. Tilting my mouth up to his was all it would take to give in to what the rest of me wanted. As if he could read my thoughts, Cash pushed the wet braids back off my shoulder and slid his fingers under my chin.

“Anaya…you’re shaking.”

I bit my lip and kept my eyes shut. If I opened them…I’d give in. And then I would never forgive myself. “I know.”

“Look at me,” he whispered. “Please.”

How did he have this power over me? Why did he have to be so wonderful and funny and familiar? His thumb brushed a droplet of water off of my lower lip and he lowered his face…

“Ouch!” Cash jerked his hand away from my hip as heat bubbled up between us. My scythe. I’d been so caught up I hadn’t even felt it calling. I placed my palm over the blade, attempting to calm the tumultuous emotions tumbling around inside of me. Everything about this was wrong. Tarik was up there waiting for me and I was about to let Cash touch me in ways only Tarik ever had. What was wrong with me? I still intended to turn Cash over at the end of this, so what was I doing with him? How could I want him like this and still claim to love Tarik? I had to get out of there.

“I have to go.” I took a step back in the water and Cash followed.

“Don’t run away again, Anaya,” he pleaded. “You can’t keep taking off on me every time we’re standing on the edge of something important.”

His gaze clashed with mine and connection blazed between us. He wanted me. It didn’t have anything to do with escape this time, and it was terrifying. It was terrifying because I wanted him, too. The only way to fight this was to get as far away from Cash as possible.

“I’m not running,” I said. “I just…I have to go.”

“Wait.” His brown eyes got wide as he watched the air ripple around me like a puddle of liquid pearls. I turned away and shut my eyes. Stepped into the warmth. I felt Cash’s fingers close around my wrist, and the feeling of his skin on mine was so shocking and right I couldn’t move. I didn’t even have time to think about what it meant. Not when the light and warmth already had me in its pull like this. Stars winked across my vision. They swirled and spun and shimmered until it was all a blur. A blur that faded into a dark, dank basement that swallowed that perfect glow down its throat.

It took me a moment to sort through the dark to find them, though it shouldn’t have. These girls didn’t belong in a place like this. Dirty and bound. Limp and awaiting salvation. I couldn’t wait to give it to them. I stepped forward and stopped when someone behind me gasped. I turned around expecting to see their captor, or maybe a person who had been minutes too late to help them. What I didn’t expect to see was Cash.

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.