Chapter 22
Finn
The club I tracked Scout to was up on the mountain. It would have been about an hour’s drive past the reaping border, but it only took me a few minutes. One perk to being a dead guy—no traffic. Peak was the closest thing to a club you got in this part of the state, and it seemed like every drunken single person within a fifty-mile radius had made it out despite the crappy weather. I dreaded going in. The music was loud and the obnoxious drunks were even louder. It wasn’t anywhere close to where I wanted to be, but I had to do this. I had to at least see what Scout was up to. Not to mention find out what in God’s name he could possibly be doing with Maeve. I was almost afraid to find out.
I dissolved through the cold steel doors and into a smoke-filled room packed with bodies. The music was so loud, I could barely hear myself think. Where the hell was Scout? A better question—what was he doing here?
“Finn?” I stopped when I heard Scout’s voice next to the bar. Spinning around, I accidentally dissolved through a girl and came out the other side reeking of cigarette smoke and apple martinis.
I made my way over to him. He looked like the same old Scout, but something was different. His eyes…he looked…alive.
“Holy Hell, Dr. Death. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again after that meeting. Seriously, what did you do? Balthazar looked pissed.”
“You know me. I’ve never been very good with rules.” I looked around, getting dizzy as my eyes flickered from face to face. “Can we go outside and talk?”
Scout smiled and I followed him, cutting through the crowd to an emergency exit, and slid silently through the door. The sleet had picked up, but it was so black outside, the only place you could see it was under the orange glow of the streetlights, tiny flickers of ice in a frenzy to coat the earth.
Scout leaned against the brick wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s up?”
“You tell me. Why is Maeve saying I should come see you?”
“Probably because I told her to tell you to come see me,” he said.
Yeah, this was going nowhere fast. “Okay, better question. Why the hell are you talking to Maeve in the first place?”
Scout raised his hands defensively. “She came to me. I told you before—you and her, your girlfriend, the drama… Count me out, man.”
So much for loyalty. I blew out a long breath and leaned against the wall next to him. “What’s the big secret?”
“I did it.” The look on Scout’s face was nothing short of triumphant. “I found a way back in.”
“Back in where?”
“Back in there.” He pointed at a couple around the corner, laughing and kissing. I froze, paralyzed by a thousand different emotions: fear, disgust, but the most unsettling…hope.
“I can get into a body, Finn. I found a way.”
I shook my head. Back when he was just a newbie and I was dumb enough to hang around him, we’d tried a lot of stupid crap, this particular stunt being the most moronic by far. “You can’t. We tried, remember? It doesn’t work.”
“It does,” he argued, his blue eyes intense. “They just have to be inebriated. Alcohol, pills, sleep aids. Anything to lower their defenses, make them cloudy, and I’m in. It only lasts for a few hours, though, but that’s long enough to have some fun.” Scout bounced on the balls of his feet, smiling. “You have no idea how good the cold feels. You’d think it would suck as much as these yahoos complain about the weather, but it doesn’t. It’s amazing.”
“I don’t believe you,” I finally said. I didn’t want to believe him. If it was true, it meant way more bad than good.
“Seeing is believing, friend.” Scout winked and backed up, watching the couple he’d pointed to stumble around the corner, laughing. Idiots. They were going to freeze in this weather, but they were probably too drunk to notice.
“What are you doing?” Stepping away from the wall, I watched Scout approach the redheaded guy’s back. Something inside me twisted. This wasn’t about to happen. It couldn’t.
Scout took a deep breath and dissolved through the thick denim jacket of the redhead, who now had his tongue shoved halfway down his girlfriend’s throat. But that wasn’t the disturbing part. Scout didn’t come out the other side. He was…gone.
“No,” I whispered stumbling back against the wall, balancing myself on my heels before I went spilling through the brick wall. I clenched my jaw and focused. The shock of what was happening was making it hard to stay in one piece. “What did you do?”
The redhead backed away from the girl and cleared his throat before casting me a quick glance. “Baby, why don’t you wait inside? I’ll be there in a minute, just want a quick smoke before we go.” She smiled and nodded before heading inside, swaying her hips when the stream of music poured through the open door into the night air.
The redhead pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shivered as he lit one up. The red glow from the end of the stick lit up the dark shadow he stood in. After he’d taken a long drag, he threw his head back and groaned, blowing smoke out the side of a grin.
“I forgot how much I liked smoking,” he said. “The last kid didn’t smoke. I lucked out this time.” He tapped his pocket where he’d shoved the pack, then strode over to me, smiling. “What do you think, Finn?”
I didn’t know what to say. This meant a lot of things, but the most important to me at the moment was that Maeve knew there was a way in, too. And if Maeve knew…son of a bitch! I gripped the back of my neck, trying to think.
“I pray to God that you weren’t stupid enough to tell Maeve about this.”
He frowned and took another puff of the cigarette. “I don’t get you, man. I’m standing here telling you I found a way in. A way to actually freeze from the cold, savor the sensation of a drink sliding down your gullet, feel the wind in your hair!” He ran his fingers through his short red spikes and frowned. “Well, not this kid. This kid doesn’t have the greatest hair for that. But that girl in there.” Scout lifted his chin and laughed, smoke sliding past his lips with the sound. “I’m going to feel that, too.”
I wanted to puke. In that moment I wished more than ever that I still had that human function so that I could expel whatever it was that I was feeling. The whole thing was disgusting. “And the girl? Or should I say ’girls,’ since it looks like you’ve been doing this a while. What do they think about it?”
“Trust me. They have a good time. It’s not like most of them know the guy they’re with any better than they’d know me. And the guys waking up next to a hot chick—you think they’re complaining? Nope.” He made a popping sound to exaggerate his “nope,” then flicked his cigarette to the ground and rubbed his arms.
“I’m telling you man, the cold hurts, but I can’t get enough. It makes me feel alive.” He laughed and the sound felt stale, leaving a bad taste in my mouth, just like the cigarette smoke. “You want to try it? I’m sure we could find you someone, too.”
This was sick. And I was screwed. I couldn’t help but wonder where the hell the real Scout had gone, because this wasn’t him. “Balthazar is going to let you burn for this.”
“Whatever, man,” he said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been dreaming about this very thing for years. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it to be with Emma.”
“Not like this. This is wrong, Scout. These people don’t know you any more than they know what’s happening to them. It’s screwed up and you know it.”
“Bullshit. You are so full of—”
I cut him off, watching his breaths come out in foggy puffs of white that looked like clouds wandering into unfamiliar darkness. “Tell me you didn’t show Maeve. Please, Scout, just give me that.”
His eyes, which strangely enough were Scout’s eyes, stared back at me as if I should’ve already known the answer. “She’s known for a week.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid! He knew what would happen. How could he… Something inside me broke in half, a dam breaking, flooding me with rage. “What the hell did you do? You knew what she’d try to use this for. You knew!” I pulled out my scythe and backed him into the bricks, not really sure what I was planning to do with it.
“I’m sorry! What do you want me to say? I thought if she could figure out how to use this maybe she’d give up on Emma.”
The sleet pelting the asphalt was the only sound to break the bitter silence that hung between us. It didn’t matter that he was sorry. It didn’t matter what he thought. It didn’t even matter that a lost soul like Maeve might not even be able to pull this off. I couldn’t take chances with Emma.
I backed away, losing my steam. “Good-bye, Scout.”