The Stars Never Rise

That was when I noticed that Devi didn’t wear a purity ring.

She took one look at Finn’s weird blue eyes, and then her face erupted into a huge smile for the first time since I’d met her. She looked stunning in that moment. Immodest and forbidden and relieved and…happy about something I hadn’t yet wrapped my mind around.

“Maddock!” She shoved me over and threw herself at him, and the only thing holding her towel on was the fact that it was pinched between their bodies. While she kissed Finn. Whom she’d called Maddock. Who kissed her back. And had blue eyes.

“What the hell?” I turned to Reese, who held up one finger, an obvious request for me to wait a second.

Wait for what?

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them an instant later, his brown eyes were green. Finn-green. Unmistakably.

“Nina?” It was Reese’s voice. But they were Finn’s eyes.

“I don’t…” I retreated until my back hit the wall, my heart thumping so hard I could practically hear it.

“What’s going on?” Finn said from behind me. Except that what I was starting to understand—in the sense of still being totally lost—was that the Finn I’d met wasn’t really Finn. He was Maddock. “How long was I gone?”

“Almost two days!” Devi let him go and resecured her towel, preserving what little modesty she had left. “Finn found the new exorcist, then lost her, then she exorcised her mother’s demon and the Church tried to arrest her for matricide, and he played hero. Then he flirted with her while she was vulnerable, and now she’s thoroughly confused.” She turned to me, one hand on the seam in her towel. “Nina, this is Maddock. My boyfriend.”

“Wow.” Maddock stepped forward and stuck his hand out almost formally, as if his girlfriend weren’t standing there half naked. Tears blurred my vision when I shook his hand. He moved differently from Finn. He held himself differently from Finn. “Good to meet you,” he said, and his voice sounded like Finn, but his words didn’t. “Sorry I missed all the action.”

When he let go of my hand, I brought my fingers to my lips, where I could still feel the ghost of Finn’s mouth on mine. Only my memory was really of Maddock’s mouth.

I glanced at Reese. Then back at Maddock.

“Oh shit.” Maddock turned to his girlfriend. “He kissed her, didn’t he?”

She made a disgusted face. “It was completely gratuitous.”

This coming from a girl in a towel.

Maddock actually laughed, and even that sounded different from the way Finn had laughed with the same voice. “Did you play nice?”

Devi gave him a coy smile, and long, straight hair fell over one of her dark eyes. “Don’t I always?”

He laughed again. “Do you ever?”

She shrugged and pouted, and wet hair brushed the curve of her backside, over her towel. “What can I say? I don’t like to share.” Devi pulled Maddock toward the bathroom. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” She plucked his damp T-shirt away from his chest, then let it go. “Finn got you all sweaty.”

“Sorry about this, Nina.” Maddock hung back while Devi tugged on his arm. “I’m sure Finn didn’t mean to tell you like this.” He glanced up at Reese. “Right?”

Reese nodded. Then he blinked Finn’s green eyes.

The bathroom door closed behind Devi and Maddock, and pipes groaned within the walls when they turned on the shower. I should have been fundamentally shocked by the bold implication of that sound, but I was too busy being fundamentally confused about everything else.

I turned to Reese, and my vision cleared a little as the tears standing in my eyes fell. “You’re Finn now?” He nodded and his mouth opened. But then it closed, as if words had abandoned him. “Are you still Reese?”

Another nod. “The body is Reese. Always was, always will be, if I have anything to say about it. But the rest is me. At the moment.”

“Can he…Can Reese…see me?”

“No.” Finn ran one hand through Reese’s light brown hair. “He’s still in here, but he’s kind of…asleep. He can’t see or hear any of this.”

“I…” There were too many questions to ask. I didn’t know where to start. Then suddenly I did. “Are you a demon?”

“No.” He shook Reese’s head emphatically, but kept his distance from me, as he had in the alley behind the Grab-n-Go almost twenty-four hours earlier. As if he were afraid I’d back away if he came closer.

“But you’re possessing someone else’s body. How can you be sure you’re not a demon?”

He sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair against the wall shared by the small kitchen. “Are you a demon?”

“Of course not!”

Reese’s brows rose over Finn’s eyes. “How do you know?”