Dates. And drama—but the innocent, annoying kind. Not the murdered-in-your-sleep kind.
Meeting boys like Sam… Her throat tightens.
Here is her chance.
A chance at a real school. A chance to make real friends.
She’ll figure out how to live with the constant fear that someone will recognize her and bring the world down on her head. She can see her own name in the headlines: Daughter of Murdered Zealots Found. Sole Witness of Their Final Hours.
And there are other reasons she doesn’t want to be found.
Ever since Jesse used her own breathing gift to wake her from death, Maisie’s been…different. She isn’t sure how, but she’s certain she can still feel that power inside her—some other gift given to her when Jesse gave her back her life.
A new gift.
She supposes only time will tell. She’s certain she will discover it the same way she discovered her breathing gift—in a time of need.
You were always meant to be special, Azrael had said. It was one of the very last things she’d said before disappearing.
When the gate closes, I’ll be sealed on the other side.
But I need you!
Azrael had laughed at that.
Yet…she fought for this life. She fought for this. For the friends. For the homework and prom. For Gloria and Winston.
So she’s going to live the dream, damn it.
Gideon lets go of her hand. “Go on then, love. You don’t want to be late. First impressions and all that. I’ll check back around graduation. Your public school Rumspringa will be over, and you’ll be legal.”
He smirks flirtatiously.
Before her nerves fail her, she leans across the console and plants a kiss on Gideon’s mouth. It’s hot and tastes like coffee. She feels his stubble scrape her cheeks and chin.
Then she’s stepping out of the car and onto the sidewalk before he can say anything about it.
She doesn’t expect more. She isn’t even sure she wants more. He might have taken the plastic asylum bracelet off his wrist, but he isn’t over Rachel. If Maisie is being honest with herself, he probably never will be. But she had to know what it was like to kiss Gideon Bale. Just once.
Life is too short to spend wondering.
On the sidewalk, a gaggle of girls stare at the cherry-red Ferrari and its handsome driver with unabashed curiosity. Realizing they must’ve seen the kiss, Maisie blushes harder.
She makes it only three steps away from the car before he’s calling after her. “Maya, darling?”
The girls passing Maisie on the walk perk up at the sound of that melodic, British accent. One walks right into the back of the girl in front of her.
Maisie completely understands. “What do you want now, Gideon?”
“Call me if you change your mind about Paris, will you? The offer is good anytime.” He gives her a devilish wink, and pulls away from the curb.
The first bell rings, and the last few kids dawdling on the sidewalk hurry in.
“Is that guy your boyfriend?” one of the girl asks, a pretty blonde with glossed lips. The others fall into step beside her.
Maisie takes a deep breath and smiles. “In his dreams.”
Jesse
Somewhere, Sometime
I sit up. The comforter falls away from my chest. Its soft, feathery weight lays across my legs as I look around. I’m alone in this king-sized bed. To my right is nothing but an enormous window overlooking an endless ocean. The water is blue-gray with foamy white waves lapping at the shore.
I take it all in. The enormous bed. A hundred fluffy pillows laying against the polished, gray headboard that looks like some kind of reclaimed wood. Hell, it could’ve washed up on this very shore. Matching side tables with glass lamps and white shades. The door to the right is closed except for a thin crack. A white, silk robe hangs on a silver hook. And this breathtaking ocean view.
“I’m dead,” I say.
No one confirms this.
“Oh shit. I’m really dead.”
Still no answer.
“Gabriel?” I call out his name. Then I remember Ally. Ally holding onto me as the power ripped me apart. The soft feel of her hair across my face.
“Ally?”
Nothing. My voice echoes in the bedchamber. But no footfall rings through the house. No one comes running.
“Ally!”
I throw back the covers, and realize I’m in a gray tank top and black boxer shorts. Interesting, considering I can’t remember how I got here, let alone who dressed me and put me in bed.
I step into the hallway. My feet settle against the cool, wood floor. To the right seems to be a bathroom. It’s huge with white subway tile and double sinks. A white tub big enough for two grown men sits under another enormous, picturesque window, this one overlooking a sandy dune. There’s also a shower with two waterfall shower heads against the adjacent wall and a linen closet full of fluffy white towels.
Toothpaste. Toothbrushes. Two of everything.
I catch my reflection in the mirror. Nope. Not two heads—in fact, I look exactly the same.
I give myself a good hard look in the vanity mirror. I look the same as always. Long chestnut hair. Bangs a tad too long. Green eyes and splatter of freckles across my nose. I open my mouth just to make sure I haven’t grown fangs or anything. I don’t know, maybe you need two toothbrushes for fangs.
Nada.
So who the hell is all this other stuff for?
I creep down the hallway, admiring the high ceilings, and find myself in a living room. It’s spacious with a vaulted ceiling giving me a clear sense of the A-frame shape of the house. Windows run all the way up, and wooden beams cross overhead. To the right, there’s a kitchen big enough to cater a family of twelve in.
“Someone has nice taste,” I mumble. “Ally? Gabriel?”
Still no answer.
I swear, if someone comes popping out of a closet…
I open the back door and see only sand stretching out to a dense treeline. I can smell the salt and sun and hear the branches rustling in the soft and constant breeze. I close the door and cross the living room to the large windows facing the ocean, or what I consider the front of the house.
Someone stands on the shore, looking out over the sea.
Before I fully know what I’m doing, I throw open the door, step out onto the deck, and clamber down the steps. I’m running across the sand at full tilt.
The woman in the white, silk robe stands with her bare feet in the surf.
“Ally!” I scream.
She turns, and smiles. It’s radiant. She pulls blond hair away from her face. “Good morning.”
The next instant, my arms are around her. I’m clinging to her the way a drowning man clings to flotsam.
“Fucking hell.”
She wraps her arms around me.
“Are you okay? Are we okay?”
I’m aware that it’s mostly gibberish falling out of my mouth.
“It’s the beach house from The Way Home,” she says, pushing the hair out of my eyes. She nods toward the house.
I only glance at it, but then I look again. The landscape is different now. Not the torrential battlefield with Michael and his angels. The storm has passed. It’s only sunshine shimmering on the water as far as the eye can see. And the windows are no longer dark and insectile. Instead, they reflect the dancing light.
“Did you make this place? When we—”
“I don’t know and don’t care,” I say. “I just want to kiss you.”
So I do.
I kiss her about a thousand times. I kiss her until she sags in my arms, laughing and begging me to stop.
“I still have to breathe!” she says, laughing. Her eyes shine.
“Do you?” I ask, flabbergasted. “I don’t know. I think we’re dead.”
Ally stiffens beside me, startled, and I have just an instant to think—of course. Of course this isn’t over. I’m going to turn around and find
out that Michael is right there, ready to kill me again. And again, and he’ll throw in Ally this time for good measure because just killing me was getting boring…
But I turn and see Gabriel. He’s stark in this landscape of light, with his black suit and wings.
I let go of Ally slowly, making sure she’s regained her footing.
“What the hell happened?” I cross to him and stare up into his face to make sure it’s really him. Hadn’t Michael changed faces on me there at the end? It’s all a jumbled-up blur now, but I’m pretty sure that happened.
But it’s Gabriel, all right. And his placid green eyes.
“You saved them,” he says.
“And we’re dead,” I say.
“Are you?” he asks with a sheepish smile.
“Really? Really Gabriel? After all we’ve been through together? I would have thought that double-speak was behind us now. We’ve shared… so much.”
“You are inside the gate,” he says, as if this is supposed to answer all my questions.
“The gate where evil shit tries to come through and eat the planet? The little in-between place where Earth meets…meets whatever.” I’m resorting to crude hand gestures.
“Yes.”
I consider this. “Well…we must’ve gotten a great deal on the house. Interdimensional beach front property can’t be cheap! What’s the resale value, you think?”
He doesn’t laugh at my joke. Save the world and can’t even get a guy to smile.
“Did I put a shield around the Earth or blow it up? Is there even an Earth on the other side of the gate, because I’m not going to lie, it was all a clusterfuck there at the end. I didn’t know which way was up or down.”
“You cast the shield. They are safe to progress in their time.”
“Until they destroy each other.”
He says nothing.
“Is Michael going to come back?”
“My kind can only enter the gate through a mindscape, like the one you’ve created here. And they cannot enter any sanctum where your heart lives.”
“And Ally is my heart.”
“Yes. Evil cannot enter where the heart resides,” Gabriel says. He casts a look over my shoulder. He’s giving Ally the eyes.
“Hey now.” I snap my fingers in front of his face. “Don’t make eyes at my girlfriend. You misled me! You made me feel like I could keep her out of it, but the whole time you planned to get her in…here.”
“I am sorry.”
“You’re sorry? She’s dead because of you!”
“Jess.” Ally slips her arms around my waist and puts her chin on my shoulder. “We have a house on the beach. We’re safe. No more fighting. No more war.”
I consider this. Then, to make sure I understand, I say, “My punishment for almost destroying the world is I have to live in a beachside paradise with the woman I love for all eternity?”
Never growing old. Never getting sick. Never losing her to someone else…
“And I never have to watch you die again,” Ally adds.
She is so cute. I kiss the tip of her nose.
“Okay, maybe I forgive you,” I say, turning back to Gabriel. “And what about you? Are you going back to Planet Angel? Is there a Planet Angel?”
But Gabriel isn’t there. There’s nothing but beach.
“Hey!” I exclaim. “Not even a decent goodbye? Aren’t you going to miss me? Even a little?”
I am never far. I will always be here if you need me, he whispers through my mind. But he doesn’t appear again.
I sigh. “So dramatic.”
Ally slips her hand into mine.
“How do I know this isn’t a dream?” I ask, staring into Ally’s beautiful, brown eyes. “I could be crispy toast on the tundra and someone could be scraping me up with a spatula right now. Or I’m just straight up hallucinating all this in an asylum. Is that mashed bananas I taste?”
Ally clasps her hands on the back of my neck and smiles up at me. Then she kisses me. It’s a good kiss, lots of lower lip and jaw action going on.
When she’s finished with me, she asks, “Do I feel like a dream?”
“Yes.” I can’t keep the grin off my face. “I don’t know. Maybe. You should do that again so I can be sure.”
She obliges.
I start to suspect that maybe we don’t need to breathe anymore.
“You’re going to get tired of kissing me,” I say, squeezing her tight.
“Never.”
“Don’t say that! You want to jinx us?”
She laughs and runs a hand through my hair.
“You might get tired of me,” she says.
“Are you kidding? My imagination is endless.” I gesture at the ocean, the sky, the house. “You don’t think I can keep things interesting?”
She laughs. “Of that I have no doubt.”
“None?”
“None.” She kisses the tip of my nose. “I’ve never doubted you, Jesse Sullivan.”
“You must be into long shots.” I snort. “Don’t tell me this is the happy ending you wanted.”
She pulls back so she can look into my eyes. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”
“And now you have me.”
I hold her against me. I bury my face in her hair and smell the sunshine and the salt collected there.
“What about you? Did you get what you wanted?” She presses her warm cheek against mine.
A wave of gratitude washes over me. Gratitude for all the people who carried me through the darkest hours. Comrades like Gabriel. Gloria. Brinkley. Rachel. Gideon. Maisie. Winston. Even old friends like Kyra. Umbri. Kirk. Lane. Cindy.
Maybe I’ll even count Sasquatch, for protecting Ally when I couldn’t.
I take a moment to thank them all. Everyone who got me here.
But most of all, I’m grateful for the woman in my arms, for her endless love. For her boundless faith in me and her unwavering willingness to follow me to the ends of the earth—and beyond…
“I got what I wanted,” I whisper into her ear and hold her tighter. “I got far more than I deserve.”
Acknowledgments
A round of applause to my critique group, The Horsemen of the Bookocalypse: Angela Roquet, Monica La Porta, and Katie Pendleton for your hard work on this book and being the first to call me on my bullshit! They’re always the first to approve—or veto the story. Lucky for y’all.
Thanks to my ever-eager proofers and early reviewers: For this book we have: Wendy Nelson, Rachel Menzies, Cindy Bailey, Catherine Longi, Amy Morga, Kristina Hawley, Andrea Cook, Christina Wheeler, Trisha Gushue, Barbara Solzberg Lukin, Claudette Bouchard, Fiona Agnew, Tami McClain, Betsi O’Hara, Judy Johnson, Ashley Ferguson, Misty Neal, Lisa Morris, Alli March, Jennifer Wadlington, Marix Barrow, Rosemary Kenny, Linda Longo, Tammy Baker, Katja van der Heijde, and Heather Williams.
Eternal gratitude to John K. Addis for the special edition cover for #7. And thanks to Christian Bentulan for brand new Dying for a Living covers for all seven books
Thank you to Hollie Jackson who will narrate the audiobook. Thank you to everyone who reviews it and ensures its mutual success by telling everyone they know to go buy it.
And last but far from least, thank you to my wife, Kimberly Anne. We just celebrated our first year of marriage together and every passing day I feel more and more blessed to have you in my life.
Winning your love is my greatest achievement. In the words of Jesse Sullivan, with you, “I got far more than I deserve.”
Did you enjoy this book? You can make a BIG difference.
I don’t have the same power as big New York publishers who can buy full spread ads in magazines and you won’t see my covers on the side of a bus anytime soon, but what I *do* have are wonderful readers like you.
And honest reviews from readers garner more attention for my books and help my career more than anything else I could possibly do—and I can’t get a review without you!
So if you would be so kind, I
’d be very grateful if you would post a review on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever for this book—or both for those ambitious, overachievers! It only takes a minute or so of your time and yet you can’t imagine how much it helps me.
It can be as short as you like and yes, I cherish every. single. one.
So please find your preferred retailer here and leave a review for this book today.
Eternally grateful,
Kory
Other Novels by Kory M. Shrum
The Complete Dying for a Living urban fantasy series
Dying for a Living
Dying by the Hour
Dying for Her: A Companion Novel
Dying Light
Worth Dying For
Dying Breath
Dying Day
Lou Thorne Thrillers
Shadows in the Water
Standalone
Badass and the Beast: 10 “Tails” about Kickass Heroines and the Beasts That Love Them
Learn more about Kory’s work at her website: www.korymshrum.com
About the Author
Kory M. Shrum lives in Michigan with her wife, Kim, and their ferocious guard pug, Josephine March. Kory naps like an adult and chugs caffeine like one too.
She’s an active member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Horror Writers of America, and best of all, the Four Horsemen of the Bookocalypse, where she's known as Conquest.
She’s the author of the Dying for a Living urban fantasy series and her Shadows in the Water supernatural thrillers.
When not reading, writing, or battling her pug for the covers, she teaches writing to college students.
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