The Stars Never Rise

I’d been introduced to this hand as Reese’s, and because of that, it would always feel like Reese’s hand to me.

That was when I realized I had no idea what Finn’s hand actually felt like, because Finn didn’t have a hand, and he never would. Maybe he really never had. The hand I’d held earlier was Maddock’s, and the mouth I’d kissed had been his too. It wasn’t Finn’s soft, wavy hair. It wasn’t his short cheek stubble. Finn couldn’t grow stubble because he didn’t have a face, and he never would, and that meant I’d never know what he really looked like, because he didn’t look like anything.

Yet he could look like anyone.

“Nina…?”

But those green eyes were Finn’s, and they were staring right through me. Finn’s eyes could see everything I was thinking but not saying. I could tell because of how sad those eyes suddenly looked, and his sad green eyes made me want to cry.

The bathroom door opened, and Maddock and Devi came out wrapped in matching towels before I’d figured out what to say to Reese-who-was-really-Finn. How to explain that yes, I’d kissed him back, and I didn’t regret that, but I wasn’t sure I could deal with the fact that he didn’t have a body, and that whatever body he borrowed might randomly step out of the bathroom in a towel with another girl, and that I’d never really be able to see the guy who’d saved my life and helped me fight and stood watch over me while I was unconscious.

I wanted to be as straightforward and bold as he was, because he deserved that, but I had no experience with being straightforward and bold. I had experience with lying, and clothing myself in darkness if in nothing else, and stealing, and paying a high price for the things Mellie and I couldn’t survive without.

And running. I was used to running, and that impulse took over when I saw a chance to escape.

“I…I really need a shower. I’m so sorry.” I hated myself before the words had even left my lips, but that didn’t stop me from bolting into the bathroom while Devi and Maddock stared at me, or from locking the door behind me.

I did need a shower, but what I needed even worse was time to think. It was too much—all of it. Demons in New Temperance. Glowing heat from my left hand. Pregnant Mellie. My pulse synchronizing with the horde of degenerates hunting me. A fearless boy I liked and was attracted to, who turned out to have no face or body of his own.

I couldn’t process any of it without a few minutes to myself.

I turned on the shower and dropped my clothes on top of the smelly pile Maddock and Devi had left in the corner, then relieved my screaming bladder while I waited for the water to heat up. I was already standing naked beneath the hot flow of water before I remembered I didn’t have anything to change into. Or anything to dry off with. The linen closet was right outside the bathroom, and I’d forgotten to grab a towel.

And for some reason, after everything that had gone horribly, tragically wrong over the past twenty-four hours, having no towel to dry off with became the straw that broke the new exorcist’s back.

I cried in the shower.

I let everything out because there was no more room for holding it in. I cried for Mellie and her doomed baby. For Adam and his parents, and the decision they’d soon have to make. I cried for the mother I’d never met, and for the people who’d been possessed by the demons I’d helped exorcise.

Then I cried for the future that had been rewritten for me twice, first by a surgeon’s scalpel, then by the demon who’d tried to possess me as a replacement for my mother’s deteriorating body.

“You know we can all hear you, right?”

I jumped at the sound of Grayson’s voice, then slipped and had to grab the towel rack at the end of the shower to keep from busting my butt on the bottom of the tub. When I’d regained my balance, I stuck my face under the faucet to rinse away the tears, then peeked around the shower curtain, my hair dripping on the linoleum.

Grayson sat on the toilet lid, a folded green towel on her lap. She blinked up at me with big brown eyes, then tucked shoulder-length curls behind one ear. “I’m just sayin’, if you were looking for a private cry, you’re out of luck. The walls are pretty thin here. They’re thicker in some of the old ghost houses, but there’s very little running water in the badlands, so it’s kind of a trade-off.”

So much for a few minutes to myself.

“How did you get in here?” I closed the curtain and stepped beneath the flow of water again, then grabbed a bottle of strawberry-scented shampoo.

“I opened the door. Devi broke the lock yesterday ’cause she had to pee while Reese was in the shower. Someone probably should have told you that.”

Mental note: no lock on the bathroom door.

Related mental note: Devi breaks things.