Bridge of Souls (Cassidy Blake #3)(47)

But this didn’t happen.

I didn’t drown, and Lara won’t burn out like a light. I won’t let her.

“Lara.” I reach out and take her hand. It’s hot, but I don’t let go. I squeeze. “Wake up.”

She murmurs in her sleep. “Why?”

“Because this isn’t real,” I say. “It’s just a dream.”

“Bad dream,” she whispers. She sounds far away. The pulse on the hospital monitor is too slow. Her breathing is too shallow. My hand is burning up in hers, but I don’t let go.

“You have to wake up,” I say.

“I’m so tired,” she murmurs.

I get it. I’m tired, too.

I want to lie down beside her on the bed.

I want to, but when I look down at our hands, I see the red thread on my wrist, a reminder to come back.

In the bed, Lara’s breath hitches, and I don’t know if it’s sweat or tears running down her face. “They never stay,” she whispers.

I look through the hospital window, to the man and woman in the hall, talking frantically with the doctor. I can’t hear what they’re saying, because Lara never did, but they look upset. They look frightened. Helpless.

But even if they can’t help, I can.

I just have to figure out how.

If she were a ghost, I could hold up a mirror. Show her what I see, remind her who she is. But she’s not a ghost, not yet, so I’ll just have to tell her instead.

“Listen to me, Lara,” I say as she curls up smaller on the bed. “You’re the smartest person I know, and I need you to teach me, to show me, to save me from all the stupid, reckless decisions I’ll make, because Jacob can’t.”

“Ghost,” she whispers, with just a shadow of her normal disdain. But it’s a shadow, and I hold on to it.

“Lara Chowdhury, you have to wake up so we can get out of this place. You have to wake up, because if you don’t, you never will.” My voice cracks. “You have to wake up because you’re my friend, and I’m not leaving here without you.”

A small furrow appears between her brows. Her eyes drift open, glassy and fevered.

“Cassidy?” she says.

“Yes,” I say, the word rushing out.

She blinks, and as she does, she grows up, aging from the small girl in the bed to the one I know. She looks around.

“How did I get here?”

“The Emissary,” I say. “The bridge.”

Her eyes sharpen, finally coming into focus. “I remember.”

Lara tries to get up, but she can’t. I help her sit, and then stand, let her lean her weight on me.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “The Emissary was after me, not you, and—”

“Oh, don’t bother, Cassidy,” she cuts in, sounding more like herself. “We’re in-betweeners, after all. Death is an occupational hazard.”

I smile, almost laugh, before I notice that the hospital room is getting darker around us, the details dissolving into shadow.

“Cassidy!”

Jacob’s voice swims through the room, faint and far away. I help Lara to the door. She grabs the handle, forcing the door open, and we step through. And as we do, the hospital falls away and we’re back on the Bridge of Souls, nothing but wind, and mist, and Jacob, looking wide-eyed.

“Hello, Ghost,” says Lara, right before Jacob flings his arms around her neck. She staggers a little, but I don’t know if it’s surprise or the lingering fever, the head-swimming wrongness of this place.

“We have to get out of here,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Jacob, “about that.”

He points over my shoulder. Back, toward the beginning of the bridge. Back toward the land of the living. Back toward safety.

I squint into the mist.

At first, I can’t see anything.

And then I see a streak of black.

A broad-brimmed hat, floating in the fog.

And long limbs in a crisp dark suit.

And a bone-white mask with a frozen grin.

The Emissary walks toward us through the mist.

And even though it doesn’t have a face, somehow, it still looks very, very mad.





Back in the land of the living, the Emissary was a skeletal thing, a thin figure in a skull mask and a dark suit. Something almost human.

Here on the bridge, it doesn’t look human at all.

Its once-gloved hands are now bone-white talons, and its broad-brimmed hat is a halo of night, the air around it smudged a charcoal black. Cold and darkness spill off its limbs, and every step it takes leaves an inky stain on the bridge.

And it is coming straight toward us.

“You belong to Death,” says the Emissary in a voice like smoke rising from a fire. Like steam hissing from the lid of a pot. “And we will take you back.”

“I don’t think so!” shouts Jacob, flinging himself in front of me. He looks back over his shoulder, arms spread wide as if he can single-handedly keep the monster at bay.

A smile flickers at the edge of Jacob’s mouth. “I can slow it down,” he says, turning back to face the Emissary. “Run.”

Maybe he can slow it down.

Maybe he’s strong enough to face the Emissary.

Maybe he can buy us time.