Page 39 of Death Wish

I waved my hand at him. “Magic light fingers again.”

“Ah.” That’s when he noticed the glass all around him from his shattered window. He looked up and cursed.

“Sorry about that. That was me, too.”

He grabbed the side mirror and tried to haul himself up to stand.

It must have taken a second for my words to register, but when they did, his eyes widened. “Wait. You? How?”

Articulate, wasn’t he?

“Would you be surprised if I told you I have no idea?” I said.

His gaze fell to my hand, still gripping his gun. An ugly-looking burn mark, pink and raised, wrapped around my wrist from where he had grabbed me. My other arm, which thumped and throbbed like it had a heartbeat, hung lifelessly at my side. Blood dripped from the Halfling’s claw gashes.

He gasped. “You’re bleeding.”

“A lot.”

“You’re…solid?”

“I-I think so.”

“How? Why?”

I blew out a breath. “You keep asking me questions I can’t answer. I have no idea. It just…happened.”

“Is this a reaper thing?”

What did he think? We were given some kind of textbook on these things after death with all the information I could ever need and tested on it? Reaper 101 or Reaping for Dummies? That’s not how this worked.

“It’s never happened to me before,” I explained. “I am going through it at the same time as you are.”

He scratched his chin in thought. “Does this mean you’re alive now?”

I paused, my heartbeat speeding up. But was it really beating this time or just mimicking an action it remembered from a past life?

Staring at my arm, still throbbing and bleeding, I marveled at what I was feeling and seeing. The pain was more intense than anything I had experienced in the last year. And the blood—I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen blood, my own blood, coming anywhere from my body.

I was aware Cole was staring at me, saying nothing, but I didn’t care how stupid I looked. The more I studied my cut-up forearm, my burned wrist, and the gun still firmly in my grasp, the more hope bubbled up, even though my common sense said there was no way. What I was seeing and feeling—it had to be in my head.

I drew in a deep breath, filling my lungs to the point of pain with actual warm, morning air, and then released it too fast, choking a little at the end from the unfamiliarity of it.

As I sputtered and struggled to suck in another breath, I couldn’t help but smile.

Could it be true?

Was it even possible?

Could I really be...alive?

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