Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(132)

I run until there’s no town around me anymore, until there’s no person or soul or breath in sight, until even the dead trees have fallen scarce, and before me only a cliff’s edge grows closer.

That’s when I stop running.

At the edge of the cliff.

I peer down into the misty valley below which looks nothing like a valley at all. It’s as though this place, the deadwood forest, the town, as though it were aloft in the clouds somewhere. The mist down below, perhaps that’s the planet from which I’d died.

YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF.

I’m going to jump. That sounds like a brilliant idea. I lean over the precipice. All I see is a world of mist below, a world below the mist where maybe I lived a life.

The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.

I’m going to do this. I close my eyes.

“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?”

I spin, startled by the voice, but my foot has already slipped and I fall—then catch the edge of the cliff with my hands, clinging on for life, hanging on for death.

The person emerges over the brink of the cliff. His pale face peers down at me as I hang from the edge, my legs dangling, far below me the mists of unknown, far below me where my second death waits patiently.

“Can I help you?” he offers kindly.

His face is handsome and gentle. Of course I’d notice something like that at a time like this.

“I don’t want to be helped,” I cry out, breathless.

“Then why are you hanging on at all? Let go.”

He’s my age—I assume—with short black hair cutting partway down his forehead. I must’ve had the fashion eye when I was alive, or else the Refinery girls already rubbed off on me, because I notice he’s garbed in a fitted black button-down and slim jeans, clean, well-dressed and sleek. He smiles when our eyes meet, lighting up his whole tortured, dark demeanor. I even see blush in his cheeks, as though blood actually flows through his veins, just as it totally doesn’t in mine, such a liar even a cheek can be.

“This is the first day of my life,” I explain.

“Careful,” he warns me very seriously. “It’s a crime here to count days.”

“Are you serious?” I ask, then realize at the sight of his chuckling eyes that he’s teasing me. Or maybe not, I can’t tell. Dead people aren’t the easiest to read. “What’s it matter, anyway? What’s the point of all this …?”

“Many people have come to this cliff,” he admits, looking off into the mist, pensive. “Many have also, like you, considered throwing away this opportunity.”

“Opportunity??” I blurt out, while simultaneously marveling at how light my body is … how easy it is to just hang here from this precipice, just as easily as I could let go. Is strength another quality that accompanies this new body? Or is it that I now weigh less than a person?

What does that say?

“I’ll make you a deal,” he says. “Let me help you up and I’ll give you a kiss.”

“That’s your offer?”

“Yes.”

I fully realize I can pull myself up. Somehow, hanging effortlessly as I am, I know I can do it without his help.

Or his kiss. “You need to offer more than that,” I tell him, my eyes narrowing. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Why am I here? Wasn’t I—Wasn’t I peaceful enough, happy enough being left dead and in the ground where I belong?”

“You tell me,” he says teasingly, that snarky smile curling his cheeks into dimples again.

I hate that cute, snarky smile. “What will happen if I let go? Will I die? Can the dead die again?”

“No,” he admits with a hint of sadness in his voice. “If you must know, you’ll likely have a hard landing on the rock lands below, and your body will break into pieces. Shatter. Like a statue. Or a mannequin. A very pretty mannequin,” he adds. I look away, annoyed. “And you will remain alive, mostly in your head. The rest of you won’t be animated anymore, as I understand it.”

I regret asking. I sorely, sorely regret asking.

“Or you could let me help you,” he goes on, “and I could show you the town. Show you what you have in your Final Life. If still you’re not convinced, feel free to jump into the sky.” And he extends his hand.

Helena’s last words resonate with me, that I was a “task” for her, and someday I may be chosen to Raise my own poor soul into this world. Not to mention that some unassuming moment, I may recover all my lost memory at once. Snap, it’ll all come back, shocking me like an “unwelcome enemy” ... and I wonder if the anger and unhappiness I’m harboring is just my Old Life locked away in my skeleton somewhere—a prisoner. Maybe it’s something that, if I remembered it, I would be glad I was freed from. Maybe this new life is something I’d secretly begged for, wished for. Maybe I really am ungrateful.

Or maybe I’ll never remember the person I was.

Maybe she’s gone forever.

“Okay,” I agree emptily, taking his hand.

In one short little effort, I’m standing on the edge of the cliff again, no longer hanging on for dear death. I look into the eyes of the person who saved me from a certain shattering—or postponed a certain shattering.