I'd Rather Not Be Dead (27 page)

Ricky, his eyes moving
constantly, licks his lips and fumbles for his wallet. He takes out
a twenty, which shakes as he holds it out.

“That all you want?” Cris asks,
taking the money and shoving it in his pocket.

“That's like four pills, right?”
Ricky asks.

“Yeah. Four.” Sliding open a
drawer in the nightstand, Cris takes out a bottle. The four pills
he shakes out into his hand look identical to the ones he took a
minute ago. He dumps them into a little bag and tosses the bottle
back where he got it.

“This is the same stuff as
before?”

“Yep. Same supplier and
everything.” Cris holds out the baggy, smirking at Ricky's obvious
nervousness.

I've never asked him about his
business, never asked why he does something likely to get him into
massive trouble. Didn't have to, I know the answer. It's because he
gets off on the idea of being needed. Ricky Woodman wouldn't have
any use for Cris if it weren't for these pills.

“Thanks.” Ricky seems to forget
it's socially polite to say goodbye to people, turning and
virtually running away without another word.

Cris shuts the door, downs two
more pills from the dresser stash, and crashes back onto the bed,
going so far as to literally pull the covers up over his head.

I'm not hanging around to see if
anything else happens. Pressing my face into Juliet's fur so I can
pretend I'm not crying, I think about Finn's house and I tug on the
universe.

Fray appears next to me on the
porch, right as Finn's truck pulls into the driveway.

Finn frowns at the sight of us
there, then his face goes carefully blank. Bobbi's next to him, her
makeup a mess. Lines of black run down her cheeks, a side effect of
wearing non-waterproof mascara and then crying. Crying a lot from
the looks of it.

Juliet clucks in what might be
relief and leaps over to Finn the second he's close enough. “Long
story,” I say, hoping he can't tell I'm upset about something, but
fairly certain he can.

“Is that a ferret?” Bobbi asks,
obviously seeing Juliet. I wonder about that. No one at Cris's
house saw her.

“She was in Shadow at Cris's,”
Fray tells me thoughtfully.

Too bad he's too busy thinking
about whatever he's thinking about to think about the fact that he
really shouldn't have told Finn where we just arrived from. I was
definitely going to tell him about seeing The Shadow Lord again and
then skip forward to being on the porch.

“Yeah,” Finn answers Bobbi, his
posture tense. “Her name's Juliet. I have no idea why she's out
here.” The last is spoken with a quiet anger orders of magnitude
more frightening than Cris's loud and violent temper.

He unlocks the door and stalks
into the house. “There's a bathroom right over there,” he tells
Bobbi, pointing toward the closest one. He manages to make his
voice sound kind, although his eyes are burning with brown. “You
want some tea or anything?”

“Please,” she sniffles with an
attempt at smiling that falls far, far short.

Finn goes straight for the
kitchen, waiting only until the door into it swings shut to turn to
me with a demanding glare.

Fray edges around us to sit at
the table and pretend nothing interesting is happening.

“Why was Juliet in Shadow?” Finn
asks. I give him points for asking that rather than asking what he
wants to ask, which is what either of us were doing at Cris's.

“The Spirit came.”

The anger flees immediately,
replaced by a pale terror. Without a word he puts the ferret on the
floor and wraps his arms around me.

“I was holding her when The
Shadow Lord brought me into The Mountain to escape it,” I go on,
hugging him back and pressing my cheek against his shoulder. “That
must have been when it happened.”

“I didn't think that was
possible.” Finn runs a hand up and down my back.

“All Shadow Walkers can do it,”
Fray says. “That's why they're called 'Walkers.' They just don't
generally like to.”

The guys' eyes meet and I get
the impression Finn's asking something he doesn't want me to
hear.

“If you spent too much time
here, you'd die of it,” Fray replies. “With no guarantees of being
here when you're dead.”

My arms tighten around Finn for
a second, understanding that if he was certain he'd be with me,
he'd be willing to die for it. As if I'd every allow that.

“You promised my sister tea,” I
remind him.

Pulling back, he puts his hands
on my shoulders and looks down into my eyes. “I'm not that easily
distracted. The Shadow Lord took you to The Mountain, and...”

Taking a breath, I move away,
going to the cabinets and opening them in search of a mug and tea.
“He was keeping me safe. Apparently he's been setting things up for
you to save me.”

He's staring at my back with
enough force that I don't have to look at him to know it.

“We don't know how,” I say.

He opens a door I just shut and
pulls out two boxes of tea. “Earl Grey or chamomile?”

“Chamomile,” I answer for Bobbi.
“With honey.”

Nodding, he takes out a teabag,
laying it on the counter as he puts the rest away. He takes a mug
from the next cabinet I was going to look in and fills it with
water, placing it in the microwave. “And then?”

“Then The Shadow Lord zapped us
to Chris's.” I shrug and wave my hands to my side. “I don't know
why.”

Jaw tight, he grunts.

“The other me was there. Arguing
about you.”

He raises his eyebrows
skeptically.

“He was not happy about that
walk last night.” I fold my arms and meet his eyes dead on. “But he
doesn't kill me.”

“He's the reason you were crying
when I got here.”

Guess I didn't manage to cover
that up. “Sort of. He's just so miserable...”

“The poor dear,” Finn grumbles,
not a hint of sympathy in him.

“Indeed,” Fray says from where
he's busy leaning toothpicks against the sides of the empty vase
sitting in the middle of the table. “My heart nearly broke watching
such a sweet innocent fall into such despair.”

I decide it's best to ignore
both of them. “After she left, Ricky Woodman turned up wanting
pills.”

“What kind?” Finn asks
swiftly.

“They never said, other than the
same stuff he bought before.” I lean against the counter and look
at the floor tiles. “I think they were what Cris was taking
earlier. Some of kind of sedative.”

Finn frowns unhappily at the
answer and I wonder what he thinks was going on. My assumption was
Ricky's just as miserable as everyone else and wants something to
escape his stress with. Finn's mind seems to be somewhere else
though.

The microwave beeps, reminding
me to ask, “Since we're sounding all accusatory anyway, why are you
back here? And why is my sister with you?”

He smiles faintly. “Yeah,
alright. My turn.” Opening the microwave door, he plops the teabag
into the water and sets the mug on the counter. He takes a deep
breath.

“I'm not going to like the
answer, am I?” I ask.

“Don't know.” He leans against
the counter next to me, our shoulders less than a millimeter apart.
“Are you more pissed your sister threw herself at me or happy I
wasn't even tempted to do anything other than throw her off?”

I take a deep breath.

“Well?” he asks.

“Give me a second.”

We smile at each other.

“So, you shot her down and made
her cry?” I ask.

“In a nutshell.” He sighs and
looks down at his feet. “And she couldn't stand the thought of
seeing all of her friends just then and I wanted to come back
anyway, so I called and told everyone she was sick and I was
driving her back home.”

“And now she's cleaning up in
your bathroom.”

He gives me a hard-to-read look.
“Ironically enough, she begged me not to take her to your house
because she didn't want you seeing her like that.”

Thrown, I just stare for a few
moments. “She was worried about me seeing her?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs, not seeming
to understand either.

There are footsteps approaching,
then the door opens and Bobbi, freshly washed and looking
heartbroken in a distressingly pretty way, comes into the room.
Finn grabs the honey jar and puts it next to her mug, then gets her
a spoon. She takes it with new tears starting up, making him look
away uncomfortably.

“I need to put Juliet away,” he
says, scooping up the ferret and starting for the stairs.

I don't think he meant for Bobbi
to follow him, but she does, and when he parts his lips to tell her
not to, he closes them again. She's a tragic figure and she's
already faced massive rejection, what harm could letting her tag
along do? So all of us traipse up the stairs in one gaggley
line.

Finn puts Juliet on the floor in
his room and she sprints for her cage, diving straight into her
hammock as if trying to escape everything that's happened to her
today. Can't blame the poor fuzzy. I'm tempted to do the exact same
thing, just tunnel under Finn's blankets and stay there until all
the nastiness goes away.

“Come on, Romeo.” Finn ushers
the other ferret over from where he was patting the milk crate with
his claws to hear the clicking sound. The little weasel rushes to
his sister's side as soon as he smells her, licking her in a
display of ferrety affection.

Meanwhile, Bobbi's staring at
Finn's desk, at the pictures I left on it. At the one with me
smiling at Finn, little hearts in my eyes. Even if I hadn't signed
it, she's seen enough of my drawings to recognize the artist. Her
hand's shaking enough for tea to lap over the sides of her mug but
she doesn't seem to notice the heat hitting her skin. “Drew,” she
states in a dead voice. “Drew.” The second intonation of my name is
louder. “Drew!” she finally bellows.

She spins, spraying tea across
the room. “Answer me one question, Cooper Finnegan.”

I have a new understanding of
the phrase 'Like a deer in headlights' as he asks, “What?”

“Is my sister the reason you
said those things to me?”

His response is quick. “No.”

But neither of us believe
him.

She hurls the mug.

Finn dodges it, cursing as tea
hits him. Fray laughs as the mug passes through him to shatter
against the wall. He's still laughing as Bobbi runs away, her
footsteps loud on the stairs. The front door slams with enough
force to make the windows rattle.

“Looks like you're not the only
one in your family with a temper,” Fray tells me, his eyes
sparkling.

Outside, the wind roars to
signal an incoming storm.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“My sister didn't kill me,
Fray.” I've said this several times already, but it's not sinking
into his head any better than the idea it wasn't Cris has sunk into
Finn's.

We're in a triangle in Finn's
floor with the ferrets laying between me and Finn while we
brainstorm about my death. We're not getting very far.

“She was thinking about it when
she left.”

I roll my eyes. “Of course she
was. And that I'd ruined her life. And that the only reason I would
possibly want Finn is because she wanted him first. But thinking
about murdering me when she's pissed off doesn't mean she'd
actually go through with it.”

Fray scowls.

“That's exactly what she was
thinking, wasn't it?” I ask.

“Almost verbatim.”

“Should I feel insulted?” Finn
wonders as he holds out a piece of string for Juliet to bat.

“You should feel scared,” I tell
him, earning myself a confused look.

“I thought you just said Bobbi
wasn't going to do anything.”

“No, I said she wasn't going to
kill me,” I correct. “She's going to go home and scream at me for a
very long time.”

His eyes close in accompaniment
to a moan as he catches on to my meaning. “At the version of you
that wasn't in my room.”

“And who's going to be
incredibly pissed at you telling people you've hooked up with her,”
I finish.

He shoots me a look of protest.
“I never said that.”

“Doesn't matter,” Fray says.

“Nope,” I agree.

“So... What?” Finn opens his
free hand in a gesture of having nothing. “What now? Do I call her
about it?”

“No!” Are all boys this clueless
or just the ones I know? “If you call her, you'll be keeping me
company in the afterlife.”

“Wouldn't that suck?” He gives
me a droll roll of his eyes. “Being stuck with me?”

I smack his foot as his phone
starts ringing. “That's not me. I'd yell in person.”

He lets it go to voice mail,
then listens to the message with a frown. “It's not Cris,” he
whispers. “He doesn't kill you.”

“Why?” I ask, suddenly very
cold.

Finn puts the phone down, his
expression making me want to cry before he even says anything.
“He's OD'ed.”

“He's alive. But...” He shakes
his head angrily. “You know what, it's gossip.”

He get up and puts the ferrets
away. “This moving through Shadow thing, how do I do it?”

He grunts in frustration when no
one answers right away. “I'm coming with you, Drew.”

Only after those words do I
realize I should be doing something other than sitting here in
shock, that I should be rushing to the hospital to see what's going
on. “He's in the hospital?”

Finn reaches down to help me
stand, lets me lean on him when I find myself on my feet but not
able to fully balance myself. “Intensive care.”

Intensive care's bad. Means
they're really worried about you. My grandfather died there.

Fray gets up and takes my hand.
“When you feel us start to leave, just hold onto her and
concentrate on coming with us.”

“That's it?” Finn asks.

I sniffle, noticing for the
first time that I'm crying. “You might have to pull on the universe
a little too.”