Dying Light (37 page)

Jesse

F
or a minute, I stand in the burning house and watch what’s
left of my old life go up in flames. If I stay here, I will die,
and I’ll put everyone else at risk. Ally will insist on staying
here until they can recover my body, and it isn’t safe for
her.

I’m still on fire when I walk out of
the house. I have enough sense not to get into the car until I’ve
managed to extinguish my flames though. I take a deep breath and
the flames go out.

Maisie runs up to me in the yard. For
a second, I think she’s going to hit me, but she doesn’t. “You’re
stupid! You should’ve let me go with him.”

“
You’re stupid if you want
to be with him.”

“
This is what he wants!”
She throws up her hands. “When he had me he was talking in my head.
He told me I have to watch you, learn all about you and your
friends. He said that if I don’t tell him everything, he’s going to
hurt my mom.”

I grab hold of her and squeeze hard.
She tries to pull away.

“
He’s going to hurt my
mom. I can’t stay with you.”

I squeeze her a little harder and she
goes soft. Her soft sobs vibrate against my chest.

“
It’s okay,” I tell her,
placing a hand on her head. “Let the bastard spy if he wants. But
you’re staying with us.”

“
I’m going to get you
killed,” she sobs. “You have to let me go.”

“
No,” I tell her. “We need
you. Who’s going to take care of Winston while I’m fighting
assholes?”

Ally comes up on the other side of us
and wraps her arms around us both, sandwiching Maisie between
us.

Maisie’s sobs quiet. “You really want
me here?”

“
Of course. Don’t be
stupid.”

She wiggles free of us and wipes her
snotty nose on her sleeve. “I don’t mind looking out for
Winston.”

“
Good. Now let’s get out
of here before we’re all arrested.”

I slide into the backseat next to
Rachel, and she immediately wraps her arms around me.

“
You’re doing so much
better than me,” she says.

I cast a last look at the burning
house. “You’re kidding.”

“
I tried to stab you,” she
says. “You’re just blowing up a few houses. It’s fine.”

Her earnestness makes me smile if only
for a minute. Then the reality that everything I own is burning to
the ground hits my chest like a cold stone again.

“
We have insurance,” Ally
says from the passenger seat. “Possessions can be
replaced.”

But not a
life
, I think. This life is
dead.

Ally

W
e pull into the cemetery just as the sun dips behind the
horizon. It gives the early winter night a red glow. Now
that
we’re
wearing proper
coats
, I feel warmer than I ever did
in Chicago. A thin layer of frost tints the grass between the paved
drive and the grave
stone.

Maisie wants to wait in
the car with Winston, the heater running
.

“
Will you be okay?” I ask
her. “They just need a little time with an old friend.”

“
I’m okay,” Maisie says
and snuggles up to Winston.

I bring a thick fleece
blanket from the car and lay it down on the grave before the
marker
.

Rachel is the first to put her hand on
the stone, tears in her eyes. “Oh B. You stubborn
bastard.”

Gideon snorts. “He was
that.”

“
Don’t talk about him that
way,” Jesse says. “He’s dead.”

Rachel takes Jesse’s hand and squeezes
it. Jesse lets her. Then Rachel grabs Gideon’s hand and does the
same.

I scoot back a
little
, giving them their
moment.

“
He’d like this,” Rachel
says, placing her head on Jesse’s shoulder. “The three of us,
together.”

“
Not that we’re fighting,”
Gideon says. “But otherwise, yes, I believe you’re
right.”

“
It’s my fault he’s dead,”
Jesse says, tears forming in her eyes. “If I could’ve just killed
Caldwell —”

“
Hey.”
I place a hand on her back.
“You
didn’t break Brinkley’s neck.”

“
He didn’t want you to
fight,” Rachel says.

“
You don’t know that,”
Jesse says through the snot.

“
Uh, actually I do. He
asked me to kill Caldwell so that you wouldn’t have to.”

Gideon is the only one of us who
doesn’t look surprised.

Rachel shrugs at our expressions.
“Everyone is allowed to have their favorites.”

Gideon squeezes her hand. “You’re
mine.”

She gives him a placating smile before
turning to Jesse. “And you’re mine too, Jessup. Not one person here
believes you’re to blame for any of this.”

Jesse pulls away from her and scoots
closer to me. I open my coat and tuck her inside. Her cold hands
clasp behind my back.

We fall silent. Jesse grows warm in my
arms and Rachel leans against Gideon. We stay there until the last
of the light dies and night creeps up on us.

I replay everything that
Nikki, Gloria, and Jeremiah told me.
She’s
going to become less stable as she acquires power. She will be the
apex. She will destroy the world. Be her voice of
reason
.

I’m the first to break the silence.
“At least we figured out who the partis are. We’ve seen their
faces.” I give Jesse a brief recap of Brinkley’s list and Gloria’s
belief that there were eight partis left.

“
But Cindy and Minli are
dead, so that’s six,” I say.

“
Seven,” Jesse says.
“Because no one absorbed it, Minli’s power will transfer to someone
else. So there’s a partis out there that we don’t know
about.”

Caldwell. Georgia. Maisie. Jesse.
Rachel. Monroe…and someone new. “I guess I’ll have to go through
the list again—but it didn’t have Georgia or Maisie on it, so maybe
I need a better method.”

“
Jeremiah said he saw
everyone get ‘called’.” Jesse uses air quotes. “We’ll make him tell
us who the seventh partis is.”

“
Should we do that first?”
Rachel asks with a mischievous grin.

“
No, now we disappear,”
Gideon says, his eyes still on the gravestone.

“
We can’t disappear and
pretend none of this is happening.” Even as Jesse says it, I get a
sense that it’s exactly what she wants to do. Hope tinges her
words.

“
We won’t be gone
forever,” Gideon adds, standing and brushing off his
knees.

Rachel stands and wraps her coat
around herself tighter. “We need some time. We are always reacting
to Caldwell. He makes a plan, sets it in motion, and we
jump.”

It’s true. And it was worse when we
tried to act under Jeremiah’s guidance. I’m glad to be away from
Tate Tower and on our own again.

Gideon grins. “We’re going
to change that. With
your
lovely talents, tenacious bodies, and my copious
amounts of money, favors, and technology,
we
are going to make the
plans.”

Gideon and Rachel go back to the car,
fingers still laced together. I pull Jesse to her feet and pick up
the blanket. Jesse holds the other end, helping me fold it in half,
then quarter it.

“
What happened with
Nikki?” she asks me.

I exhale, searching for the right
words. “I like her, but now just isn’t the right time.”

She nods. “We
do
have a lot going
on.”

“
What happened with
Gabriel?” I ask her. I’m hoping she opens up about the apex stuff
soon. I can’t be her voice of reason if I don’t know what he’s
telling her.

She looks out over the cemetery and
then meets my eyes. “He said I can have whatever I
want.”

She’s going to become less
stable as she acquires power. She will be the apex. She will
destroy the world.
I drown out all the
voices who want to decide Jesse’s fate for her. I push back the
fear and find my love. I bring it to the surface of my mind and
hold onto the warmth of it until my voice finds me
again.

“
And what do you want?” I
ask.

She smiles, coming closer. She wraps
her arms around me, her face nearly touching mine. “I want
you.”

I smile, drop the blanket, and take
her face in my hands. “You have me.”

the fifth novel in the
Dying for a Living series,

Worth Dying For

coming May 2,
2016.

Jesse

A
ll this screaming hurts my ears.

“
Nine, Eight,
Seven—”

Ally presses her body against mine,
counting down with the crowd.

I open my coat, letting her slip her
chilled arms around me. I try to protect her from the worst of the
unforgiving wind cutting across our cheeks and tearing at our hair.
“I never understood the countdown. Are they trying to build
tension?”

Her grin stretches wider
and she squeezes me again. “Four,
three
—”

“
It’s not like we don’t
know what’s happening.” I gesture at the swarm of bodies clustered
on the balcony around us. My sides and back are protected by their
mass, but leaning against the concrete railing leaves us utterly
exposed in the front. If only we were more in the middle of the
balcony, then Ally and I could be the queen bees of this hive, the
drones vibrating to keep us warm.

“
One
—”

I gasp, pantomiming shock.
“Oh look, the New Year. What a
surprise!
I had no idea what was
going to happen when we reached
one
!”

Ally tugs me forward by the lapels of
my coat. “Shut up and kiss me.”

The balcony erupts in chaos, everyone
singing, cheering, and sucking on each other’s faces. The ruckus is
blocked out by Ally’s palms covering my ears as we kiss. Her hair
smells like some kind of fruity shampoo, and her lips taste like
the wine she drank earlier. I kiss her deeper, my hands twining up
in her hair. I don’t care who sees us or what they
think.

Tonight is all about us.
Me and Ally. Gideon, Rachel, and Maisie. We’re celebrating. After
weeks and weeks, we finally have a plan for taking down Caldwell.
And it’s a
good
plan.

Ally pulls back, laughing. “I can’t
breathe.”

“
You started it.” I pull
her close again, kissing her.

“
I
have
to breathe,” she says, chest
heaving.

“
Right. Sorry. I forgot
you have to do that.”

I assault her cheeks and neck instead.
She devolves into laughter, hanging heavy and drunk in my
arms.

“
Stop,
stop
,” she begs, trying squirm
away.

“
I can’t. I’ll die.” But I
do stop long enough for her to catch her breath, and because I know
firsthand that if I torment a drunk girl for too long, my chances
of getting vomited on increases tenfold.

Gideon and Rachel stumble forward from
the crowd arms around each other. Their dark eyes reflect the
dancing lights coming from everywhere. Billboards. Lighters. The
ball itself.

A boom makes us all jump.
A second after the
boom
comes a
pop
and a dozen strands of red light rain down on us.
Fireworks.

“
We should head back,”
Gideon says, pushing his black frame glasses up on his nose before
tightening his hold on a sagging Rachel. “Or risk being crushed by
the crowd.”