The Stars Never Rise

  “I’m sorry, Finn, I just…I don’t understand. I mean, if you don’t have a body, how do you know what you are?”

  “Well, I guess I don’t. Not for sure.” He shrugged. “But I know what I’m not. I’m not a demon, Nina. I have a soul. In fact, that may be all I have.” He held my gaze, waiting for my response, and just like every time he’d looked at me since the moment we’d met, there was no sign of doubt in his green eyes. He meant everything he’d said. Including the fact that he didn’t know for sure what he was, and I didn’t know how to process that.

  “Okay,” he said, when I’d opened and closed my mouth twice without managing an actual response. “I know that’s a lot to chew on at once, but I need you to understand something.” When I nodded, he took a deep breath and continued, in Reese’s voice. “I may not know for sure what I am, but I know who I am. I’m left-handed, no matter whose body I’m in. I love spicy food and hate licorice, no matter whose tongue I taste it with. My favorite color is blue—the exact shade of the deepest blue in your eyes,” he said, his gaze glued to mine, and something deep in my stomach flip-flopped so hard and fast I almost lost my balance sitting still on the couch. “I’ve learned a lot about who you are too.”

  I shook my head, denying what couldn’t possibly be true. “We met less than twenty-four hours ago.”

  “It’s not the amount of time that matters, Nina. It’s what you do with it.”

  “What did you do with the time?” My voice was only half a whisper. That was all I could manage with him looking at me like that. As if nothing else in the world existed. As if there was only me, and this moment.

  “I paid attention.”

  “To me?”

  “To everything. To the green peas you picked out of your beef stew. To your secondhand clothes.” He ran one finger over the frayed hem of my long-sleeve T-shirt. “To the way you frown when you’re thinking, as if your disapproval should be enough to change whatever’s wrong.” He blinked and his focus deepened somehow, as if he could see right through my eyes and into my soul. “I paid attention to the fact that you got your sister out of the house and faced down that demon yourself, with no idea you could actually handle the fight. And I paid very close attention to the way you kissed me back.”

  My cheeks flushed bright red at the bottom edge of my vision, and the memory of that kiss warmed me everywhere else.

  He reached for my hand and I let him take it, but my fingers wouldn’t relax in his grip, because it wasn’t his grip. It was Reese’s. I frowned. This new hand was broader, its fingers longer. This hand felt different. It didn’t feel like Finn. This hand swallowed mine like it had when I’d shaken Reese’s hand.

  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.

  “Grayson, right?” I stared at the clear, pinkish shampoo pooled in my skinned palm. “What do you want, Grayson?”

  The toilet seat squeaked as she shifted, and she spoke loud enough to be heard over the patter of water all around me. “I want my brother back. I want Reese to exercise more caution and less impulse. I want Finn to be happy. Also, I kind of want some pizza, but even if we had the money, calling for delivery is out of the question, thanks to the fugitive lifestyle.”

  My mom used to order pizza sometimes, when we were still little and she was still healthy. And employed.
I could remember the aroma of onions and pepperoni, and the grease that had soaked through the bottom of the box.

  I gave Grayson a frown she couldn’t see through the curtain. “I meant, why are you in here? While I’m showering.”

  “Oh. I brought you a towel.”

  “Thanks.” I smeared the shampoo on top of my head and began to lather, and the artificial strawberry scent brought back memories of helping Mellie rinse suds from her hair when she was five and I was seven. Mom had decided we were old enough to bathe ourselves, but my sister’s long, thick hair was virtually unmanageable for a kindergartner.

  Melanie loved smelling like strawberries.

  “Also, we didn’t get a chance to talk much when you came in, so I thought, if you’re going to be with us, you and I might want to get to know each other.”

  “That’s nice of you.” I tilted my head back to rinse my hair, and the pressure on my throat made my voice sound strained. “But I’m not sure I’ll be staying with you.”

  “Why not?” Now her voice sounded strained. “We took a lot of risks to find you. We could have been killed. Finn saved your life.”

  “I know, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am, but the Church has my sister. I can’t leave her.”

  Grayson was quiet for a moment. “Is she an exorcist?”

  “No, she’s only fifteen.” And based on the fact that we had different biological fathers, I was betting she never would be an exorcist, even at my age. “And she’s pregnant.”

  Grayson’s soft “Oh” echoed deep within my soul. “They have my brother too. He’s not pregnant, obviously. But he’s an exorcist.”

  I let the suds slide down my forehead, then closed my eyes. “You left him?”

  “No. When they came for him, he made me hide. I can’t fight the Church, and it’s not like they’d give him back if I just smiled and said ‘Pretty please.’ ”

  No, they would have taken her as well, because if her brother was an exorcist, she might be one too.

  “I don’t know where he is. Or if he’s alive.” The ache in her voice made my heart hurt.

  “How did it happen?” I asked as I rubbed conditioner into my hair. I didn’t actually expect her to answer, but I really wanted to know just how much she and I had in common. “Finn said your parents were breeders, like my mom?”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t know that then. We didn’t know Carey was an exorcist. We still don’t know if I’ll be one. I was your sister’s age when Carey was triggered, almost a year ago. Now I understand that his abilities came in kind of early, so our parents didn’t have a chance to harvest him before the degenerates came for him. He was still two months away from his seventeenth birthday when the first one found him. It happened on our way home from school. His hand started glowing and instinct took over. He fried his first demon in broad daylight, in front of several witnesses.”

  I rinsed the conditioner from my hair and pretended I couldn’t hear the pain in her voice, because I didn’t know how to gracefully acknowledge it.

  “Someone must have called my dad at work, because he came home early. He tried to harvest Carey, but we didn’t know what was going on. We thought he’d lost his mind. We thought he was trying to kill us.” Her voice hitched with the obviously painful memory. “We heard sirens, and Carey told me to hide. The police shot my dad, then took my brother. They didn’t know I was there. I don’t know what happened to my mom.

  “Maddock and Devi showed up later that night, looking for Carey, and found me instead. I was alone and terrified. I’ve been with them ever since. Almost a year now.”

  So she was sixteen. She looked younger than that. She reminded me of Melanie, even though physically they had little in common.

  “What about Finn and Reese?” I lathered the bar soap and had already washed my face when I realized that our dead hostess had a special squirt bottle of soap just for face washing.

  “Finn was already with them. He and Maddock are a package deal. Reese came next, after me. We’d been making our way through the badlands for a couple of months, driving when we could find gas, walking when we couldn’t.”

  I shuddered at just the thought of wandering through the American wasteland, easy prey for degenerates, demons, and human predators alike.

  “Then Finn and I noticed that the degenerates in the area seemed to be…flocking. They were all going the same direction. We figured that had to mean there was a new exorcist about to transition, so we went looking for him.”

  I rinsed my face and lathered everything else while she talked, grateful for the seemingly endless hot water. Even when the water heater worked at my house, the supply never lasted very long.

  “We found Reese in Diligencia. He hadn’t been triggered yet, and his parents were normal. Comparatively.” By which I assumed she meant that they weren’t breeders.

  “So, he left his parents?”

  “His dad didn’t make it. His mom sent him with us to protect him. He came with us to protect her.”

  Because those wanted by the Church were dangerous to the people who loved them. I’d already figured that much out.

  I turned off the faucet, and before I could ask for the towel, she draped it over the curtain rod.

  “So, you and Reese are…”

  “We’re together,” she said as I dried myself behind the curtain, and I was surprised by the difference in her tone from one sentence to the next. I could hear how much she cared about Reese, and how happy she was with him even though she’d lost her brother and was living on the run from the Church.

  “I figured that out for myself. I was gonna say you two are…bold.” Actually, I was thinking “shameless,” but I was afraid she might take that as an insult. “Aren’t you afraid of…” But I couldn’t finish that thought. They were already wanted for sins worse than carnal contact, so what did she and Reese have to lose by loving each other? What did any of them have to lose?

  “Never mind.” I wrung water from my hair with the towel. “I’m just not used to seeing…”

  “Public display?” She laughed. “It’s not really public when we’re on our own, but I know it’s a shock after school and the Church and everything. It felt weird for me too, at first, but we spend so much time together as a group, hiding from everyone else, that we kind of live in our own little world. With our own norms.”

  I peeked around the curtain again. “So, what’s your norm?”

  Grayson smiled softly. “There’s not a lot to laugh about, running from the Church and hiding out in ghost towns. Our norm is whatever feels right. Whatever makes us happy.”

  I wrapped myself in the green towel, then pushed back the shower curtain, and this time when I looked at Grayson, she didn’t look like a stranger. She looked…familiar. I saw some of the same things in her brown eyes that I’d often seen in Mellie’s: Intelligence. Personal strength. Determination. And a strong, stubborn core of optimism—just enough to keep her from ever admitting defeat.

  Grayson was what Melanie could have been under slightly less horrible circumstances. If our mother hadn’t neglected her “investments.” If Finn and his friends had found us sooner. If I had kept a better eye on her “tutoring sessions” with Adam.

  I tightened the towel beneath my arms and stepped out of the tub, and that was when I saw what else Grayson held. Jeans. And a blue tee. They looked clean.

  “I was going to lend you some underwear too, but Reese said you might think that was weird.”

  “Thanks.” I accepted the jeans and pulled them on beneath my towel. They felt uncomfortable without underwear, but uncomfortable was better than naked. “Reese is back?”

  “Yeah. Finn left. He was upset.”

  Crap. He’d saved my life—twice—and I’d questioned his humanity. He deserved better than that; it wasn’t his fault I was having trouble dealing with his…state. “Where does someone with no body go when he leaves?”

  Grayson shrugged. “Anywhere he wants.” She handed me the T-shir
t. “Sorry there’s no bra. Mine won’t fit you.” She eyed the modest cleavage the edge of my towel was tucked into, then glanced down at her own nearly flat chest. “Devi’s might, but I wouldn’t ask her for anything right now.”

  “Because she and Maddock are making crude noises from behind closed doors?” I couldn’t pretend that didn’t creep me out, considering that half an hour earlier I’d thought Maddock was Finn, and an hour before that I’d been kissing him.

  She smiled again—a cute little grin of private amusement—and tucked stray curls behind her ear while I pulled the tee over my head. “No, actually…Devi’s mad.”

  “Mad crazy, or mad angry?” I pulled the shirt down, then tugged the towel out from under it and hung it over the curtain rod to dry. “Because I’d believe either of those.”

  Grayson sighed. “Here’s how it works. When Finn’s upset, Maddock’s upset, and when Maddock gets upset, Devi gets mad on his behalf, and when Devi gets mad, she makes us all miserable. So…you need to fix this.”

  I wiped the fogged-up mirror with my skinned left hand and studied my face. “Fix what?” I looked tired, and I’d found several new scrapes and bruises in the shower, but I was intact, which was more than I could say for the degenerates we’d fought on my first night as an exorcist.

  “Finn likes you,” Grayson said, and my hand clenched around the comb I’d just found in the vanity drawer. “A lot. I’m not sayin’ you have to like him back, but if you do, please don’t let his weird personal situation scare you off.”

  “His weird personal situation?” I started tugging the comb through my wet hair. “That may be the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard.”

  “It took me a while to get used to it too, but I promise you it’s worth the effort. He’s not a demon, Nina. He has a soul. I think he is a soul. We’re all he has, and he loves every single one of us—even Devi—and that’s not something a demon is capable of.”

  “I know.” I turned to face her, leaning against the counter while I combed my hair. “But I don’t know how to process the fact that when he talks to me I’m hearing someone else’s voice, and when I touch him I’m holding someone else’s hand. I mean, I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to dissociate Finn from Maddock’s face and voice.”