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think? I think you don’t even know what Balthazar is up to. I think he’s got his claws in you so deep, you’re not even bothering to try to get away.”
    I shook my head and my braids scattered over my shoulder blades, hopefully hiding how violently I was shaking. With guilt. And fear. And a thousand other emotions I had no right to feel. “He wouldn’t be doing this unless he had a good reason.” I had to believe that. I had to because this human was starting to make me feel things no human should. I closed my eyes, trying to find peace in the warmth that ran through me, but all I found was guilt.
    Finn folded his arms over his chest, and something about his silence drew my gaze to his.
    “Fix this, Anaya,” he pleaded. “I know what I’m asking of you. I know it seems impossible to give, but I have to try. I have to try because I put my happiness before so many others, and he’s on that list. It’s too late to make it up to the rest of them, but I have to believe I can make it up to him. He didn’t deserve what I did to him. Taking his body, using him to be with Emma…it was inexcusable, and I regret it every day. If I hadn’t crossed the line, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
    “Finn—”
    “Let me finish.” He held his hand up. “I don’t know what Balthazar has on you, what he’s promising you, but you need to ask yourself something. Is it worth it? Is it worth losing the very things that make you worthy of that light you carry around inside of you?”
    I slipped my arms around my waist and tried to calm the hollow throb of shame staining my insides. Finn was right. Balthazar may be pulling the strings here, but I made a choice. I made a choice to put my happiness before this human’s.
    “He’s confused,” Finn continued. “If nothing else, he deserves some honesty. He deserves to know what’s going to happen at the end of this.”
    I nodded and Finn’s hand ghosted through my fingers. “I kept so many things from Emma. I did so many things the wrong way. Don’t make my mistakes, Anaya. Trust me when I say they will haunt you for an eternity.”
    With that, Finn turned and jogged away. I didn’t follow. Instead, I closed my eyes and searched for that pull to Cash. Maybe I couldn’t stop Balthazar or the things he’d already put into motion, but Finn was right. Cash deserved answers. What he didn’t deserve was blind fear, eating away the last of his moments on this earth. Maybe Balthazar would have had a problem with me spilling what I knew to an ordinary human, but Cash was something else. If he were ordinary, Balthazar wouldn’t want him. I thought about his expired body, his soul inside, pulsing to be set free. No human should have survived more than a couple of days like that, yet Cash was still alive.
    No. He was no ordinary human. If he were, he’d be dead.

Chapter 5
    Cash
    The library was too quiet. I needed noise. Distraction. I felt like a walking target without either. Not that I was naive enough to think I could hide from the little bastards, but I didn’t want to make it easy for them, either. Me being in the same place twice in a matter of two days made me feel way too obvious. I kept my head down, ducking from book stack to book stack. The musty smell of pages that hadn’t been turned in a decade made my throat itch.
    I stopped in the art section, just for a minute, and ran my fingers over the spines of a few of the colorful books collecting dust. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a stack of Jackson Pollock prints and pretend my world wasn’t falling to pieces around me. In the end, my need for answers won out. I didn’t even pluck one from the shelf. Instead I slipped down a slim, dark aisle that contained big, dusty, underused books on mythology, religion, and the supernatural. The people of Lone Pine obviously didn’t get much use out of this section. I could have grilled Finn some more, but honestly that idea sounded about as appealing as