Everything in me freezes.
Shit.
A surge of aggression builds through my veins as I turn to face Chloe still lying on the ground, her left arm cut and spewing blood at unnatural levels.
“Who is he, Chloe?” I seethe. “You’ve been in on this for weeks.” All of that talking, that scheming—I should have known Logan would never do that. “I hope you bleed out.” I shake my head in disgust. “That’s my arm you’re bleeding from, and I hope you die because it refuses to heal.” I spin back into Marshall. “Who’s the imposter pretending to be Logan? Is it a Fem? Pierce?” It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find out it was Pierce. A nuclear detonation couldn’t get rid of those Kraggers.
“Skyla”—Marshall shakes his head ever so slightly—“I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’m bound by my pledge.”
“Screw you and your pledges!” I push past him and run like I’m on fire right out of Ezrina’s fucked up lair. I sprint like hell until my Celestra strength kicks in and run a million miles an hour into a sheer wall of granite.
I’m going back to Paragon—and I’m most certainly about to kick some ass.
Part Two
24
Can of Whoop Ass
The sky, the sand, the pounding surf all take on the same oily hue. Paragon shimmers under the duress of a full waxy moon as the ocean slaps the rocky shore.
I climb the trail to the top of Devil’s Peak, exhausted from the effort I put forth just to land myself on this God-forsaken rock.
The parking lot is booming with bodies clad in cheap polyester costumes.
It turns out every teenager on the island finally figured out what I already knew—Demetri Edinger is boring as hell and should be avoided at all costs. I’d much rather hang out on a freezing cliffside than in his warm and toasty demonic abode.
“Skyla!” Brielle runs toward me at a million miles an hour in her blue and white-checkered barely-there dress. Her ruby slippers shimmer like the jewels they were meant to be. “Ellis is back! A bunch of us are going over to his…” Her voice trails off as she inspects me. “Is that seaweed in your hair?” She plucks something out of my ponytail.
“I know Ellis is back. Believe me, I’m thrilled Ellis is back. Would you do me a favor and text Gage to let him know?” I move past her toward the dark highway.
“Where are you going?” she shouts.
But I don’t answer. I’m too preoccupied with thoughts of killing a Fem as I run off into the blank of night.
“I can give you a ride! Let me help you!” Brielle’s voice escalates into the night and replicates itself over Paragon as if it were mocking me. Nobody could truly help me—perhaps not even my mother. She, herself, is already apprised of the situation and hasn’t bothered to clue me in. Marshall knew—I’m sure he knew right from the beginning.
My legs pick up speed as I run a flat mile with the aid of my Celestra abilities, the ones Logan, himself, told me about to begin with. Everything I am is because of Logan’s generosity, and now he’s gone, living with my father—with God.
A lump the size of a tennis ball blooms in my throat, but I try to deny it. I refuse to shed a single tear until I’ve mutilated the liar that has taken the form of the boy who stole my heart.
The bowling alley comes up in the distance. It winks into existence, closer and closer until it magnifies like a giant rousing from his slumber, and I land in the parking lot, gasping for air.
I rest my hands over my knees a moment, observing the “closed” sign hanging in the door. The lowlights are on inside, which usually means whoever’s in there is cleaning up and getting ready to go home. But only Logan’s truck remains in the lot, parked at the most distal point like Logan himself was prone to do.
I make a face.
Of course this Fem knows all about Logan and his secrets. Demons know everything about the past.
The door to the bowling alley is unlocked, so I let myself in. I turn a moment and glance across the street at the skeleton of that house the old Logan—correction, that this one—wanted to build for me. It’s nothing but a house of lies. My Logan is gone, and he could never build a home for us now. Chloe took all of his joy, his laughter, every single day that was ordained for our future and hijacked it into the great beyond.
The blinking lights of the arcade make this already surreal situation feel like a nightmare, like a rabbit hole I keep falling through on a loop.
The bowling alley is illuminated a soft, powder yellow from the lights behind the lanes. A shadowed figure stands erect and alone at the far end.
And there he is. This Logan imposter sweeps the deck, moving his arms in long, careful strokes, molesting the gutter with the bristles of his broom as if he cared enough to keep this place gleaming.
I speed over. Adrenaline pumps through me like a firebrand.
Just being near this asshole makes me ten different kinds of crazy.
He glances up, and his face smooths out with a half-smile riding up his cheek.
I bet the lying Fem thinks he’s going to get lucky—that I’m going to lay myself out for him right here on the lacquered floors of the bowling alley. He could do me in the gutter and report it back to Demetri, so they can both have a good laugh.
“Well if it isn’t my favorite undead girlfriend.” He tosses his broom from one hand to another, happy to see me.
I don’t make nice with the enemy. I don’t turn on the dumb-blonde routine and pretend not to notice what the hell he’s up to. My feet move, lithe and quick, over to the bowling balls in search for the exact one Logan gave me the first time I nearly blew a hole through his floor. I spot the blue mother of pearl ball hiding behind a bright pink lightweight. I pluck it off the shelf and feel its heft, twelve pounds.
“Oh, I see.” He lets out a chuckle. “Challenging me to a game? How about a series—three games winner gets to decide what to do and how to do it.” A lewd grin twitches on his lips.
“My rules start now.” I stride over, building up speed as I come upon him. I pull back and chuck that baby blue orb dead-on into his gut until he folds in half and drops to his knees like the coward he really is.
Something indistinguishable grunts from his vocal cords as I speed past him and snatch up a pin.
The old Logan, the real one, supplied the place with good old-fashioned wood pins, three pounds six ounces of skull-cracking fun.
His eyes widen when he sees me coming. His hand flies up in a feeble attempt to ward off the blow, but I choke the tip and swing it like a baseball bat, gifting him with a gnarly thump to the back of the head, guaranteed to make any Fem in the universe see an entire bevy of cartoon stars.
“Fuck!” he roars, falling to his face. His hands press against the floor as he staggers back to his feet. “Skyla,” he says it calm, resolved to the fact we’re still in the beginning phase of the mandatory ass kicking. “Don’t do this.”
Not why—funny how he doesn’t bother to ask why.
I shake my head incredulous at his overt admission and lunge at the creature. I beat him over the face, the top of the head as he stumbles back into the mirrored glass. He twists out of my line of fire, and I bash a hole in the décor, cracking the mirror in the process. Glass falls in shards as this fake version of Logan closes his eyes, fatigued and dizzy with disbelief.
“Shit, Skyla! Let me explain.”
I land one swift hurricane force slap-shot right to his temple. The sound of a melon splitting satisfies my soul on a level I didn’t think was possible. He falls to the floor and rolls onto his back, moaning, groaning out…my mother’s name?
I crawl in just close enough to listen.
“Candace,” he whispers again and again.
“What’s going on?” I say it just a little louder than his ridiculous cries for my mother’s attention.
“I’m in pain.” He closes his eyes a moment and a seam of blood trickles down the side of his face. Faux Logan grimaces before attempting to lean up on his elbows. “Who to
ld you?” It comes out sharp, through gritted teeth as if the effort to emit those words hurt as much as the power blows I was doling out a minute ago.
“Who told me that you’re nothing but a fake? Who the hell cares?” I lean in a little closer, still wielding the bowling pin like a weapon of mass cranial destruction. “If you try anything funny, I swear to God this pin is going to meet up with your balls.”
He gives a depleted smile.
“God, Skyla.” He tucks his chin a moment. “I’m sorry.” It comes out strangulated, weary. He lays back on the floor with his arms spread wide, his legs comfortably parted. He covers his face with the back of his arm, and his body trembles as if he’s laughing—only he’s not.
“Logan?” I step in. A part of me wonders if this is a trap. Swear to God if the Logan lookalike I’m staring at morphs into a clown Fem, I’m going to go ape shit. “What are you so sorry about?”
“I’m dead, Skyla.” He gives a hard sniff and pulls back his arm revealing bloodstained eyes, his lips swollen a bright shade of red. “I’m sorry that I’m dead.”
My heart lurches into my throat.
“I just saw you in the Transfer. How could you be there and—”
“Your mother put me in a treble.” He sits up and gives a sad smile. “Come here.” He pats his thigh, for me to join him. Logan exudes a level of grief reserved for a brilliant heartbreak, and I have a feeling that is exactly what’s brewing between us.
“I can still take you.” I flex the bowling pin in my hand, armed and ready.
“I give.” He holds up his hands. “Please don’t beat the shit out of me. I get all the pain and none of the gain of dying twice—three times if you want to get technical.”
“OK.” I sit down across from him, cradling my weapon of choice as if it were a baby. “Spill it.”
Logan presses out a painful smile, his dimple inverts as if begging for mercy.
“It was the night of Dudley’s party.” He motions to his face. “The one with all the masks.”
“The night of the masquerade.” The night the war ended and everything changed in the ethereal plane, or rather didn’t because my mother has remained zip-lipped on the situation.
“We were talking. You were holding the baby, and he got fussy, so I offered to take him to Brielle.”
“I remember.” I graze my eyes over the glossy floors a moment. I remember thinking Brielle didn’t have the right equipment to satisfy him. “Then what?” I examine him like this, hunched in pain, the detailed look of hurt on his replica of a face. I’m slow to believe him—none of this is real. I’m going to wake up, and the entire day is going to have been one long nightmare.
“Then, I came upon your mom, Lizbeth, and she took the baby. I headed back in the woods toward you and Gage, and…” He lets his words hang. His lips twist as he fights the tears “I saw you—then I blacked out.”
My stomach pinches.
Logan saw Gage and me in a lip lock that I swore wouldn’t happen.
The last thing that Logan saw with those beautiful champagne eyes was me essentially cheating on him.
My entire person goes numb.
“Logan?” I get onto my knees and start in on the slow crawl over to him. “Oh, my God,” it comes out broken, hoarse. “Is it really you?”
He shakes his head just barely. “I don’t know, Skyla. Everything about this”—he plucks at his jeans—“feels real.” He reaches out, and I take his hand. Logan pulls me into his lap, and I grip onto him as if we were about to be blown apart by hurricane force winds. He feels solid as an anchor. His cologne greets me with that familiar scent as I bury my lips in his neck a moment.
“When I finally came to—your mother—” he points up briefly—“that one. She was sitting next to me.” Logan runs his fingers over my bare arms and warms me. “She let me know that Chloe took the working end of the spirit sword to my neck and that it was game over for Logan Oliver.”
“But you’re here, so she must have changed her mind.” I slip my arms around his waist and sink further into his lap.
“No. I’m not here. She said the version I was experiencing life through had entered a portal that enabled me to exist in the future as if I were one of you—a treble. I’m still the same person who walked away with a fussy baby. Not a cell in my body has aged—I don’t need sleep or food. I’m your real live zombie boyfriend, Skyla. Life”—he shakes his head—“it’s something for the rest of you, I’m just an observer from the past, nothing more, nothing less.” He strokes my back like petting a cat.
“It’s not true. This treble, it’s still you.” I won’t lie, I don’t really get the underpinnings of something as complicated as a treble, but I can be damn sure I’m going to have my mother, herself, redefine it for me. “You could live a lifetime like this—two.”
“No.” He pulls me in close and brushes his lips over my cheek. “I can’t. She was emphatic this was temporary.”
The room spins. My stomach gives a hard bite of acid at the thought of losing Logan forever.
“Then I’ll have Ezrina work on a second reprisal.” I refuse to give up. I refuse to let my mother win.
He gives a gentle laugh. “That’s what I like about you, Skyla. You always bring a solution to the table.”
“It’s not just a solution—it’s the answer.” I lean against his warm chest, feel the beating of his heart thumping against my body, and close my eyes in an effort to memorize it.
Logan offers a gentle kiss over my temple.
“So what else did she say?” I ask. “I mean, why would she give you the treble unless she wanted to keep you around?”
“She does, but I have no idea for how long. She did mention that I would be judged. I could still be punished.”
Shit.
My mother, my own flesh and blood is holding court over Logan and me for going against the factions and taking matters into our own hands. A Count or two may have paid with their lives, but at the end of the day it didn’t help our cause. They were all resurrected anyway. “I wish we never did those things. The only ones that will have to truly pay are you and me.” And lest I not forget poor Ezrina and Nev get another trial-by-fire from the Caelestis running around with my face.
“What now, Logan?” We’re finished. It all feels so damn final.
“We enjoy every minute while we have it.” He tucks a kiss just under my ear. “Hey? Do you know where we are?”
“The bowling alley,” I say it measured in the event he’s had brain malfunction no thanks to this temporal gift of my mother’s—or the head bashing I recently administered.
“Yeah, but more specifically this lane.”
“This lane?” I look around, hoping it’ll ring a bell. “I’m hearing crickets. Is this lane important?” God—what if Logan wants to immortalize the lane I beat the crap out of him in?
“This lane is exactly where we were just about this time last year when we broke things off.”
“Correction—when you broke things off.” Now it’s coming back to me, all of the heartache, the horrific pain he inflicted with nothing but that silver sword in his mouth. “You plunged a knife into my heart and killed a very real part of me that night.”
“It’s over now.” Logan buries his face into my neck and takes in my scent. “You know what kills me the most?”
“What’s that?” I look up into those honey-yellow eyes and melt under the supervision of his love. Logan washes over me with affection like a waterfall. It feels safe like this, special.
“Once she calls us to court and she makes her final decision, I’m assuming my treble will be revoked, and I’ll just up and disappear. I may never have the chance to say goodbye.”
“No,” I whisper. “I never want to hear those words from you.”
“Skyla”—his voice trembles as he turns me toward him—“I would die a thousand deaths to have you love me the way you do. Just love me. Love my memory if you have to, that will be more than enough.”
/> A resolute sadness settles between the two of us. It’s as if I can feel my mother’s presence as she pumps the joy right out of the room.
She wishes I would roll over and leave well enough alone. She so loves the fact she’s completely in control of our destinies. I’m sure she’s laughing it up with her cronies at the destination station saying things like, you only think you can fuck up your kids—look what I did to mine!
“Loving your memory”—I start in slow—“will never—ever be enough. I’ll make damn sure there’s more to you than just some vague recollection. We get to live to a ripe old age, remember?”
He shakes his head. “I am old, Skyla. If you added up my years, I’m ripe for the picking.”
“Not by my standards. Not by anybody’s standards.” I pull him in until my cheek warms to his. “I don’t ever want to lose you, Logan. You’ll come back to me. I know you will.” I press my lips to his for a moment. “And look”—a tiny laugh quivers from me—“I already have you.”
“I’m nothing more than a ghost in the flesh.”
I trace out his lips, those perfect cheekbones, the high ridge of his brow.
“That’s all any of us are, Logan—ghosts in the flesh.”
He locks his fingers over mine and smiles.
Logan—if she takes you, she’s going to have to take me, too. I say it in private in the event my mother is broadcasting this event to the heavenly hosts the way she did the war. If you die, I die. It’s as simple as that.
You have a destiny, Skyla. You need to be here—you need to fulfill it.
Well then— I pull back and do my best to deny the smile itching to bloom across my face—sounds like my mother has a very serious problem.
No, Skyla. The only one with a very serious problem is you. Logan dots my nose with the tip of his finger. We’re in a race against time to get that pendant back where it belongs, and if we don’t, we’ll lose it forever.
And we’ll lose Marshall forever, too.
I glance up at him.