Page 8 of The Blood we Crave

“They are—” He stumbles, and it looks so odd on him, like stumbling over his words aren’t common. “The coins are payment used to ferry the dead into the next life. It guarantees safe passage across the River Styx and ensures the soul makes it safely into the afterlife.”

There is a sense of warmth that permeates the cold he has wrapped me in. A little sliver of heat curls between us and causes my eyes to soften. My eyebrows dip together.

Why would he do something so…nice?

If his job when he got here was to follow in his monstrous father’s footsteps, why would he go out of his way to soothe the dead?

“I—”

The floorboards creak, and the sound of heavy footsteps ricochets off the hallway walls. Panic floods my system once again, and that piece of serenity that had briefly cascaded through me is now gone.

“Are you going to kill me?” I ask again with more urgency in my voice as his father approaches the bedroom. If I’m going to die, if one of them was going to kill me, I want it to be him.

This boy.

The unnamed boy that wished my mother a safe passage into whatever afterlife awaits us. I want him to be the one to take my final breath, however he sees fit. If anyone deserves to kill me tonight, it’s him.

He looks at me, his eyes swirling with an emotion I can’t decode. But it’s gone when the footsteps get closer.

“No.” He grimaces, and I can tell he doesn’t like that answer. Like he wants to say yes, like he wants to kill me. “But if you don’t get back in that closet, my father is going to.”

My head shakes violently. “I don’t want to go back in there. I don’t want to hide.”

His nostrils flare, and annoyance pours from him like water from a leaky faucet.

“It doesn’t matter what you—” he breathes down onto my face. “You have to hide. Go back into the closet, be quiet, don’t make a sound, don’t breathe. Be a ghost. You don’t want to die, not like this.”

With ease, he pulls me off the ground with him as if I weigh nothing, steadying me before looking me in the eyes once more, making sure I’m meeting his gaze.

“Be a ghost, Scarlett. Don’t let him see you, ever.”

I can’t help the question that erupts from my mouth, the rush of emotions that attack me all at once.

“If I become a ghost, how willyousee me?”

There’s something scary about him. Something untouched and unpredictable that feels dangerous, but as I lie on that floor, looking at him even in this horrible situation, he makes me feel safe.

There’s more to him than just what I had perceived on the surface, something I briefly caught a glimpse of, and that peek feels like the only thing tethering me to life.

“I won’t.”

That’s all he says before shoving me back, leading me towards the other side of the room where my hiding place is located.

Everything that happened tonight is spinning around in my thoughts. The crash of my adrenaline licks at my heels, and I know soon I’ll have to deal with the glaring breakdown that waits for me once I’m all alone.

Because that’s what I am.

I’m all alone now.

And for a moment, this boy made me feel not so lonely, even though I’ve lost the only person who’d ever loved me. Now, I’ll be losing him too before I even get a chance to know him.

I am alone.

I go back into the closet, and I become a ghost.

And he…well, he kept his word.

He never saw me again.

---