Cinder Read online

  I don’t know anything except that you saw a death omen. Sorry, princess, but I can’t give you all the answers, especially when I don’t know them all. However, I will say that I think you need to steer clear of the mayor.

  “I already knew that.” I put the shifter in reverse, ready to get as far away from here as I can; ready to forget, wishing I could forget. But I can’t. It hurts from head to toe; throbbing, burning, intoxicating. “There has to be a way to stop it,” I whisper. “All those deaths on top of all the other death’s that have happened.”

  He laughs. How many times have I told you, Ember? You can’t stop death. Death is endless.

  “Yeah, death is endless,” I say, steering the car towards the road. “But it doesn’t mean I can’t try to stop it.” I pause, considering if I should ask him my next question, wondering if it might be a mistake by trusting him so much, but what other option do I have. “Cameron, have you ever heard of a Reaper stealing a Grim Angel’s soul?”

  That’s not possible, he says. I would have done it to you if it was.

  “Yeah, but…”

  But what? He presses.

  “But what if it is? What if you just don’t know about it?”

  He contemplates what I said. What do you know about it?

  “Nothing,” I say. “Other than that if it can be done, and then it could possibly free innocent souls being possessed, like this entire town.”

  Maybe… I mean, I don’t know everything about Reapers, he says, which I find a little strange since he is a Reaper. What I’d really like to know is where you learned about this.

  Not wanting him to know about the book, fearing he’ll track it down and figure out how to steal my soul, I opt to keep my mouth shut and he astonishingly doesn’t press. I drive down the road and up Main Street towards where the clinic is, at the end of the city. There are people on the streets, coming in and out of stores. Most of them are acting normal, which means the Anamotti haven’t gotten to the entire town just yet. Still, how have they even managed to take over so many people? I mean, when they captured me that night there was only a handful. However they’ve at least got a hundred people under their possession now.

  “Cameron, how are they doing it?” I ask. “Taking over so many people? Are there more Anamotti in Hollows Grove than I know about? Or is it something bigger than the Anamotti?” I ask, thinking about the mayor, wondering what he is—if he’s just a powerful human or so much more.

  I wait for Cameron to respond, but I never get an answer. I try a few more times with a few different questions, however his silence remains. I should be grateful, getting a break from the Reaper living inside my head except the silence of the car is heavier than anything. I twistedly find myself wishing he’d come back.

  Chapter 5

  The receptionist at the clinic tells me the same thing as she did on the phone; that my mom left a few days ago and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Thankfully, all of them seem like they’re in control of their minds, but it still doesn’t help me figure out where my mom is.

  As I head home, I drive down a couple back roads and search the areas where I’ve found my mom in the past.

  There was a two-month period where she was addicted to meth and spent a lot of time out on the streets, sleeping behind dumpsters and doing God knows what to earn money. I was fourteen when this was going on and pretty much had to take care of Ian and myself, living off money I scrounged up wherever I could. We almost got evicted, but my mom came wandering back, got cleaned up and got a job again, deciding to briefly be responsible. It was always sort of her thing. Off and on she’d take care of us. It sucked—still does—knowing that your mom doesn’t care enough about you to be around and help take care of you, or take care of herself.

  The messed up part is that I’m not sure whether or not I’d rather her be out on the streets somewhere, doing drugs, or if I’d prefer something has actually happened to her.

  Eventually, I make it home to the quiet and go up to my room to take a nap, but I’m restless and end up simply staring at the ceiling, wide awake. Minutes tick by. Hours. I call Ian, wanting to hear someone’s voice. He doesn’t answer. I check the clock to see if it’s four yet and time to call Elliot. I have two more hours, so I take out the book he put into my bag and my jaw nearly drops to the floor. It looks just like the book that was stolen from me. Sucking in a sharp breath, I open it up, but the wind is instantly knocked out of me.

  “What the hell?” I mumble as I fan through the blank pages. I look back at the cover, wondering if I was wrong about it being the same book, but the title is still the same and August Millard is listed at the author.

  I immediately take the piece of paper out of my pocket and call Mr. Morgan, but it sends me straight to voicemail. There’s got to be an explanation for this. He’ll explain it, right? He’ll know what the words on the pages meant, right? I’m not so sure.

  I’m not so sure about anything anymore.

  I shut the book, set it aside, then flop down on the bed. None of this makes sense. I need some sort of answers. What I need is someone to talk to. “Cameron, can you hear me?” I ask and then wince at my desperation.

  I try again and again without any response. After the fifth attempt, I finally turn up some music, a little Breaking Benjamin, hoping that will help with the quiet, yet there’s still emptiness around me and inside me. “God, I can’t take it anymore.” The soundlessness. The seclusion. Everyone I have no longer talks to me, and I can’t talk to them because I’m not sure if they’re still themselves. I wish it’d be over. God, just get it over with. I can’t take it anymore. “Please, just make it…” I trail off, realizing where I’m heading and how I can’t go there, especially after what Cameron told me. I can’t give up. Give in. “Is that what’s going on?” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Is all this loneliness part of the torture, the Reapers’ new way to get to me? Leave me alone to let me rot in my own lonely existence.”

  Now, how would I know what they’re up to? He answers and then unexpectedly the music turns down. “I’ve already told you that I don’t want them to have you and therefore I have nothing to do with them…. I want you for myself.”

  My eyes shoot open at the sound of his voice around me instead of in my head. He’s standing near the doorway of my room, dressed in normal clothes; a loose pair of name brand jeans, a fitted grey shirt, and his blonde hair lightly tousled.

  “So you finally decided to show yourself.” I sit up on the bed. “Instead of just cowering inside my head.”

  He laughs wickedly as he skims over the contents of my room with intrigue. “I wasn’t cowering, princess. You just made it clear that you’re in dire need of some company and I thought I’d step up and help out, since I care for you.”

  I smooth my long, black hair into place as I lower my feet over the edge of the bed. “Like hell you do. And besides, I don’t want your help.” Lie. Lie. Lie.

  “You say that now,” he says, entering my room. He picks up a feather from my dresser and I have the most overwhelming urge to snatch it from his hand, especially since Asher had held it once when he was in my room. “But eventually you’ll want me.” He touches the feather with the tip of his finger, smiling at himself since it’s a raven’s feather and he can shift into a raven. Then he sets it back down on the dresser. “Especially for what’s in store for you in the very near future.” He says it with implication.

  “What do you mean?” I stand up from my bed. “Are you talking about the omen I saw?”

  He nods his gaze boring into me and it makes my skin feel like it’s crawling and spontaneously combusting at the same time. “I’ve been hearing stuff and I think something’s going down in the Angel/Reaper battle,” he finally says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Something that requires a lot of sacrifice of innocent people so that someone can get a lot of power, which I’m guessing might be linked to the death omen you saw… all those deaths are a great source of power.”

 
; “And do you think the mayor has something to do with this?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Maybe, but if that’s true than I’m guessing he’s probably not really the mayor, but a Reaper, working for a much powerful Reaper—our leader probably.”

  “You think the leader of the Reapers has something to do with this?” I blow out a frustrated breath. “The murders? The number of people being possessed in the town multiplying overnight?”

  “I’m not sure if the possession has anything to do with the increasing possession,” he explains. “I still think that’s the Anamotti trying to take down the last Grim Angel standing. I think things are getting close and their upping the forces.”

  As my muscles wind in knots, I work to keep a steady voice. “Have things… is there only one Grim Angel left now?”

  His brow crooks. “Well, that’d make it you, wouldn’t it?”

  I nearly fall down and have to grip onto the bedpost for support. “Please tell me that’s not true.”

  He rolls his eyes, like I just overreacted. “No, we haven’t gotten to that point yet. There’s still some left… although the numbers are small. And besides, you’d know when you were the last one standing because your inner Reaper and Angel would reveal.” He sighs and leans against my dresser. “But I think that’s the least of our problems now, because if the lovely mayor is working for the Reapers, then it could quite possibly mean that my leader could be here, which is very bad for you and for me too, considering my family’s rebellion to cooperate with the rules and order of the Reapers.”

  “Why am I not surprised by that last fact?” I say then frown, thinking about the story Elliot told me. “When you say leader of the Reapers, do you mean the one that used to own that necklace you stole from me?”

  “The one and only Altarius Vinceton.” His lips curve to a sinister grin. “And I never stole the necklace from you; your grandmother stole it from me.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “So you say.”

  His grin darkens. “So I know.” We carry each other’s gazes, refusing to look away, and finally his facial expression softens. “Look, I want to help you, Ember, no matter what you think.”

  I laugh sharply. “Oh, I doubt that.”

  His feet shuffle across the carpet as he strides towards me. “Why so doubtful? Have I ever done anything to harm you?”

  “You made me kill a person,” I remind him, noting that I have nowhere to go as he closes in on me.

  “Which I brought back to life.” He takes another stride. The closer he gets, the more the lines on my arms beneath my gloves burn.

  I back away, bumping into the bed and then fall down on the mattress on my butt. I continue to scoot back on the bed to get back the distance he’s stealing as he moves across my room.

  “Well, if you want to help me, then give me the necklace. So it can protect me.”

  “I can’t,” he says matter-of-factly as the front of his legs graze against the side of the bed. “My family needs it for their own protection. We’re not the most loved Grim Reapers in the clan, especially when stole the necklace to begin with.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” I say sarcastically as my back brushes the wall.

  He gets aggravated as he leans over the bed and hovers over me. “You know, I don’t know why you are so eager to believe that the necklace will protect you,” he says. “You know nothing about Elliot, other than he’s Asher’s uncle. It makes you really naïve to simply believe him because of that.”

  I ignore the fact that his closeness accelerates my heart rate, telling myself that it’s just like at the lake and the cemetery, that he’s controlling it—me. However I’m not sure if it’s entirely true. “It doesn’t make me naïve. If I had a reason not to trust him, then I wouldn’t, but he hasn’t given me a reason yet.”

  “But you don’t trust me,” he says, like I don’t have a reason not to.

  I struggle not to laugh, knowing it won’t make the situation any better. “You have to earn trust, Cameron.”

  “Asher didn’t earn your trust,” he states, leaning closer to me, his shadow covering my body. “He lied to you just as much as I did.”

  “Yeah, but Asher’s good.”

  “How do you know?” A hand comes down on each side of my head, so he’s pretty much lying on top of me, yet he remains standing. “Maybe you shouldn’t go around believing things until they’re proven.”

  He’s right. Not about Asher, but about getting facts before deciding on what to believe “Tell me what the leader looks like,” I demand, pressing my back against the mattress, desperate to get space between us. “And why he’s here. That’s how you can establish my trust, if you want it.”

  “I don’t know those answers.” He looks as lost as me. “However, what I do know is that it’s really bad that he’s here.” He licks his lips, eyeing mine. I can read all over his face that he wants kiss me.

  “I know it’s bad.” I place my hands on his chest to hold him back. “But how bad exactly? I mean, people are already possessed and there’s a murder or disappearance at least once a week. How much worse could things get?”

  “Much, much worse.” He reaches for my face and I flinch as he strokes my cheek with his finger. “More and more deaths will happen. Reapers love their death. It’s like a drug for us.” He looks like he’s going to kiss me and I’m not sure if I can—want to stop him if he tries. “We crave it. Breathe it. And our leader is connected to all our power; our feelings. So imagine how much death he craves—needs.” He leans in closer, our lips inches apart.

  Despite that I’m confused about how I feel for him, I still manage to get some room, pushing him away as far as he’ll allow me.

  “You can’t touch me, Cameron. I-I don’t want you to.”

  “Why not? You let Asher touch you and kiss you.” His breath is hot on my cheek and I shiver.

  “Asher’s an Angel,” I say, loathing that my voice cracks. “And he didn’t just tell me that he’s addicted to stealing souls.”

  “So what if he’s an Angel?” His eyes flare, the tips of his fingers pressing into my skin. “And I’m a Reaper. Both of us symbolize death. Both of us collect souls. There’s a very thin line between what we are.”

  “Not really.” I wince from his violent touch. “And besides, I know Asher enough to know that he cares about me and wouldn’t do anything that would hurt me.”

  When he speaks his voice is low and conveys rage, his breath hot on my cheeks. “Maybe you should get your facts straight before you go yammering your mouth off,” he says. I open my mouth to speak, but he covers my lips with his hands. “Tell me this, princess. Did Asher, by chance, ever mention who his father is?”

  I reluctantly shake my head. “No, but what does that matter?” I ask, my lips moving against the palm of his hand.

  He lowers his hand from my mouth. “It matters when his father’s part of the Anamotti.”

  “That’s impossible… It’d mean he’d have to have Reaper blood. And he can’t have Reaper blood because then it’d mean Asher would have Reaper blood in him, and I know that’s not true,” I say, my voice sounding a little off pitch. I can’t help having some doubt. I know hardly anything about Asher’s father, and from the few conversations we had about him, I got the impression that Asher’s father wasn’t that great. Still, it doesn’t mean he’s a Reaper.

  I push Cameron off me and kneel up on the bed. “Quit messing with my head. If Asher’s father was a Reaper then he would have told me. And you would have told me a long time ago.”

  “Why would I have told you sooner?” Cameron asks, pressing his hand to his chest where I shoved him as if my touch burned. “I barely tell you anything that’s true.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Believe what you want, princess. But before you go deciding things, get your facts straight.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that when my entire life is a mind game at the moment.”

  “Maybe by going to the source and askin
g him.”

  “I would love to, if I could, but since I have no idea where Angels go to get punished by their leader, that’s not happening anytime soon.” I pause, assessing Cameron’s reaction closely. “You wouldn’t by chance know how to bring him back, would you?”

  He looks at me like I’m a moron. “Do you think if I did, I’d tell you…” He trails off, tipping his head back with his eyes to the ceiling as he smirks. “Wait a minute. We have company.”

  My forehead creases. “What—”

  Before I can finish, Cameron poofs into thin air with only a wisp of smoke that takes the form of a shadow left behind.

  “Oh, Emmy,” Raven singsongs, and my entire body stiffens. “Can you come downstairs? I need to talk to you.”