Inbetween (Kissed by Death, #1) (5 page)

I braced my hands on my knees, unable to look away from her. My world was spinning. And it wasn’t the hell I knew I was about to pay with Balthazar. It wasn’t even the energy I’d spent touching her. It was knowing that everything had just changed. It was knowing there was no way I could go an eternity without that again. Balthazar’s call turned to spikes in my skull, blocking my thoughts.

I would have given anything to have one more moment with her. To let her know I was there. That I’d always be there. But instead, I gave in to the wind. As usual, I belonged to death.

Chapter 4

Finn

The Inbetween. I couldn’t make myself take another step closer. I’d spent too much time avoiding this place. Avoiding the memory of Allison and how badly I’d wanted her. Avoiding how that wanting had blinded me to the consequences of our relationship and doomed us both. Choosing to drop the souls off at the gates was easier than facing the memories that hid behind every shadow inside. Balthazar made sure I had plenty of reminders without this. But of course, that was my punishment. Every reap was connected to something I’d done, and I hated it. God only knew how much longer he was going to keep this up. After today…I had a feeling it wasn’t ever going to end.

A gatekeeper in a gray hooded cloak raised a brow at me. “Are you coming in or not?”

I nodded and stepped through the gates, looking out over the frozen horizon. Neither day nor night, light nor dark. Just a blanket of charcoal mist that I couldn’t feel on my face, and a bouquet of stars butting against the glass floor beneath my feet. The swaying mass of silver wheat that always sat off in the distance tapered off into the rolling hills, where it was swallowed by shadows. There wasn’t a single weeping willow, skyscraper, shipwreck, or double-decker bus, but their opaque shadows haunted the colorless terrain like ghosts of a land long forgotten.

Somewhere in the distance, the rush of waves washed over a shore that I’d never been able to find. Back when she’d only been Allison to me, Emma and I looked for hours once. Even after I’d been called away to a reap, Allison scoured the endless miles of nothing searching for the ghost of an ocean that didn’t exist. I’d found her later lying on the glass floor staring up at a long, twisted shadow that rippled with far-away screams.

“I can’t remember what this is,” she whispered, sounding so small and lost. “I should know what it is, right?”

“It’s a roller coaster,” I told her, “or the shadow of one, anyway.”

She just nodded, the quiet madness swirling in the depths of her ocean-blue eyes. “And I’m…”

I knelt down beside her and brushed the white-blond hair away from her neck. “You’re Allison.” I said. “You’re my Allison.”

I blinked away the memory when the throng of reapers gathering became too loud to ignore. A nervous energy bounced through the crowd like sparks—to be expected when the reapers from Heaven, the Inbetween, and Hell congregated in one place. I could feel those sparks in my chest, driving fear into my jittery limbs. We didn’t get called in for a meeting like this too often, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out this one was for me.

I stayed on the outskirts of the crowd, avoiding the stares and whispers that spread like a virus as I moved toward the gathering square. I wasn’t just a reaper to them. To them I was the outcast who had broken an age-old rule and fallen in love with a charge, defied Balthazar in an unforgivable way, and gotten away with it. To them I’d spit in the face of God.

And now I’d done it again. They just didn’t know it yet.

I searched for a safe, familiar face. Easton or Anaya, preferably, but at that point, I would have settled for Scout, a reaper who’d been recruited twenty years ago or so. Which meant he was still new. And stupid. His assigned territory bled into ours, so we crossed paths from time to time. He was the closest thing I had to a friend outside of Easton and Anaya, and while Scout might have been a lot of things, judgmental wasn’t one of them.

Unable to locate the three of them, I was forced to face the reality of my situation. Balthazar was standing on the steps to the Great Hall, the only real building in the Inbetween, though none of us ever went in it. Shiny marble steps led up to the reflective structure, its walls like mirrors, so that it practically disappeared into the nothingness around it. Reapers milled around the dry stone fountain in the center of the meeting square, casting questioning glances my way. Balthazar pressed his lips together and narrowed his gaze on me.

That look said I was screwed.

“Ten minutes, people!” Balthazar’s voice crashed through the crowd like a wave, echoing in myriad languages so there’d be no misunderstanding his message. “Get seated or I lose my patience. I don’t think any of you want to find out what that’s like.”

Reapers scattered in a panic to find a place to sit. I shoved my hands in my pockets and hightailed it over to where I spotted Easton sitting down.

“Hey,” I said, taking the seat beside him. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the gold lectern at the top of the steps that awaited Balthazar’s arrival. “You still pissed at me?”

“He warned you, Finn. He told you what would happen if you interfered in her life again.”

“I told you, I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. “It…it just happened.”

“You’re an even bigger moron than I thought if you think he’s going to buy that.”

A dark gray fog rolled in, erecting walls of darkness around us, sealing us in. Not that we needed the reminder that we weren’t allowed to mix with the souls. My little stunt with Allison had taken care of that.

I sank lower in my chair, hating that the reapers around us looked like they were about to witness an execution. Mine. “What do you want from me, Easton?”

His eyes, two violet slits, crushed me with their stare. “I want you to stop being too ignorant to worry about anything but that stupid human.”

“Don’t call her stupid.”

“Fine,” he hissed, leaning forward so that I couldn’t escape the scent of brimstone and death wafting between us. “
You’re
stupid. You’re stupid and an asshole.”

“What is your problem?” A few reapers with white jackets and eerily golden eyes raised their brows at us, so I lowered my voice. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me? Who do you think he’ll get to haul you off to Hell when he’s done giving you second chances?”

I could only stare at him. Maybe it was because I was still a half-put-together puzzle without Emma. Maybe I was still high from touching her. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t find the words to make any of this okay between us.

“You’re my friend.” His voice broke, something I’d never witnessed in over seventy years of reaping with Easton. “My
best
friend, you selfish bastard. And you’re just going to…” He shook his head and pressed his lips together. “If you had any idea what Hell really was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

I scrubbed my hands over my face, and looked through my fingers at Easton’s black combat boots. I tried to imagine what he was telling me. The only Hell I’d ever known was living without Emma for fifteen years, not knowing what kind of life I’d sent her to. Was she happy? Was she safe? Was there someone who loved her as much as I did? I went so long without knowing. I finally spoke into the hollow of my palms, hoping Easton could hear me because I wasn’t ready to look at him. “I’m sorry.”

Easton shifted in his seat, leaned close enough to whisper. “Not as sorry as you’ll be if you end up downstairs. You know your little fear of fire?”

I swallowed.

“They’ll use it against you. You won’t just burn. You’ll melt. Slowly. And when you’re nothing but a bubbling puddle of flesh and ash and blood, they’ll reanimate you so they can do it all over again.”

Easton’s whispers burned me. I scooted an inch away from him. From his heat.

He glanced down at the space between us and shook his head. “Do you even care what it would do to me to have to hand you over to them?” His bitter gaze held me hostage, searching for something. I wasn’t sure what. “Of course you don’t. All you’ll ever care about is making sure your precious human is safe.”

Easton stood up, knocking his chair over, but Scout caught it with the toe of his tennis shoe before it could hit the glass floor. “Are you two having another lovers’ spat?”

He spun the chair around and sank into it backward, grinning up at Easton. For a moment, I thought Easton might grind Scout and his shiny blond curls into dust, but he just grumbled something under his breath and stormed off, leaving me suffocating in the rotting stench of death and decay he’d left in his wake.

“There’s always so much more drama on your side of the border. Maybe I should ask for a transfer,” Scout said as he winked at a pretty reaper from an East Coast territory. “But then, the east has its perks, too.”

Scout looked the same as the day Easton had shown up to reap his soul. The same as the day he’d agreed to become one of us to buy his way out of Hell, forever frozen with the same tall athletic build, curly blond hair, and surfer boy tan skin that had gotten him girls when he was alive. And he was still using those looks to his advantage. Even in death.

We were all handpicked. Every one of us a soul that had crossed a moral line, just far enough to give Balthazar the leverage he needed to reel us in. I’d shot down at least three planes in my final hours. It may have been war, but to them, murder was murder.

I watched him undress the redheaded reaper with his eyes, trying not to feel annoyed. I’d known Scout for twenty years, and even in death he could only think about one thing. Though most of us weren’t far off in age from Scout’s nineteen years, when it came to girls, he seemed especially…enthusiastic. Balthazar told me once that younger souls were easier to transition. Better able to hold onto the power we were granted. I didn’t know. I just knew there was something sad in seeing so many young faces representing the thing people feared the most. Death.

I turned my attention back to Scout, who had gotten the reaper girl’s attention with a wide smile. “Do you ever think about anything else?”

“Sometimes. Just not today.” He stood up and combed his fingers through his curls. “You mind if we talk about this later?”

I rolled my eyes and waved him off. “Just go.”

I sank back, vaguely aware that Anaya had taken the seat on the other side of me.

“Hey, what happened to you?” She looked over at me. “I got dispatched to one of your reaps. Why didn’t you take it?”

I watched Easton take a place alone on the far wall. Catching my eye, he dissolved into the shadow of a clock tower. “A complication.”

She followed my gaze to where Easton stood. “What’s his problem?”

“He says I’m a selfish bastard.”

Anaya patted my hand and smiled. “Oh, Finn… Honey, that’s because you are.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. At least the girl was honest. “Gee, thanks, Anaya.”

“I didn’t say that was a bad thing.” She stared off into the distance. “That’s what happens when you fall in love.”

I searched for a scrap of sunlight in the heavy clouds overhead. “Have you ever been a selfish bastard?”

Anaya sighed and traced the toe of her sandal along the glass floor. Stars followed her, leaving wispy trails of blue-gold streaks across the dark black sky. Just when I didn’t think she’d answer she said, “Yes. I loved someone once. I loved someone very much.”

The trumpets sounded, preventing me from asking her more, and Balthazar took the lectern at the top of the stairs, overlooking the sea of chairs we sat in. His snow-white robe was snug over his broad shoulders. His blond hair brushed against his neck. Everything about him seemed youthful and new, except his eyes. The corners were creased with age and held too many years to fathom. Before he spoke, his eyes connected with mine, a look of disappointment clouding his gaze. It was so much like the look my pop used to give me that I ached inside.

He finally looked away, surveying the crowd. “It seems
some
of you don’t remember the rules.” He locked his fingers together behind his back, and all I could hear was the sound of ghostly waves washing up, receding, then starting all over again. No one even went through the motion of breathing.

“It’s not difficult. There is no great secret to your afterlife. You collect the souls that pass for your assigned location.” His silvery eyes flickered over me, then away. “When you are called to reap, you do not ignore that call, nor do you come back empty-handed.”

The shocked whispers swirling around in the crowd grew louder and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“You go
unseen
to the living. You do not
touch
the living. You do not
associate
with the living.” Balthazar slapped his palms down onto the gold lectern. The clap rippled through the mist. “Do I make myself clear?”

Anaya pinched my side. Like I needed her to drive home his point. I was breaking every rule imaginable. Everyone’s time was being wasted because of me. I already knew this. And it didn’t change anything. It didn’t change the fact that Emma would be dead within a week if I did what they all wanted and walked away. But, okay. I could still do this. Balthazar didn’t actually follow us around—I’d just have to be more careful about never going corporeal. I’d gone two years without touching her, after all. Today was impulse. Today was reckless. I couldn’t let it happen again.

Anaya looked at me and rolled her eyes as if she could read my thoughts. I ignored her and hunched down farther in my seat.

“On a lighter note,” Balthazar said. “I notice some of you are not keeping up with the current time period. I know to some of you who have been around for centuries, this may seem silly, but you are better able to transport your souls if they cooperate. They cooperate when they feel comfortable, and they feel comfortable with what they know. It only takes a second to envision a new look.”

He frowned at a reaper wearing brown pantaloons, a white ruffled top, and a black hooded cloak. “Darius, you terrify even me. Do your homework.” Smiling, he clapped his hands. “All right, everyone. Back to work. The dead won’t collect themselves.”

I looked at Anaya at the same time she looked at me. She wore a simple white sundress with a brown leather belt that carried her scythe. Gold gladiator sandals laced up her slender calves. They matched the gold band that wrapped around her biceps like a serpent.

“When was the last time you changed your style?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Some looks are timeless. Besides, I have an image of purity to uphold, Finn. We can’t all run around looking like we just got off a shift at the Gap.”