Cold Kiss

volumes with cracked leather or cloth bindings. I picked three and carried them up to the counter, where Creepy Guy raised a thick black eyebrow.
    “Pretty heavy reading there, kid.”
    “I’m in Mensa,” I said, getting out my wallet.
    “Smart doesn’t have anything to do with this stuff.”
    “Cool. Then maybe you’ll want to borrow them when I’m done.” I gave him a sweet smile and waited. “You going to give me a price or what?”
    He shook his head, but he toted up The Burnside Grimoire, The Compendium of Shadow Magick, and a book by Aleister Crowley. I’d read on the internet that he was some famous occult guy from the turn of the century who was into all kinds of what he called “magick.” I was lucky I had my ticket home—I was out nearly a hundred dollars, all the money I had saved at the moment.
    “Good luck,” Creepy Guy called as I left, the brown paper bag of books stuffed into my backpack. I closed my eyes and focused, and just as the door shut behind me, a cloud of slate-colored smoke mushroomed into the shop, tickling the back of my legs.
    It was just smoke, not fire, and it was petty and wrong, but I didn’t care. I paid for a soda from a cart on the corner when I knew I had enough money left for the subway, and spent the ride home sneezing, my nose buried in the musty books.
    It should have gotten scarier the more I researched. When you find yourself buying mandrake root on the internet, it’s probably a good time to question what you’re doing.
    But the more I read, page after page of incantations and phases of the moon and streams of energy, the better I could see Danny’s face again. Not the waxy, blank one I had seen in his casket. Danny, laughing, shaking the hair off his forehead, rolling his eyes at Becker’s weak Borat impression, leaning in to kiss me, his wide, soft mouth curved up on one side.
    I wanted him back. I wanted him back so much I couldn’t think about anything else. Everywhere I looked was suddenly somewhere Danny wasn’t. My hands were empty because Danny wasn’t holding them. My room echoed with quiet because Danny wasn’t there whispering ridiculous things to make me laugh, or make me shiver.
    It seemed so right. Danny was mine, I was his, and that wasn’t going to work if he was dead. So I would make him not dead, not anymore. I didn’t think any further than what it would feel like to kiss him again, to wrap my arms around him and bury my head against his shoulder.
    That was my first mistake. It also turned out to be the biggest.
    Gabriel pushes a hand through his hair, mouth set in a tight line. “Then what?”
    I finished the strong tea he brought halfway through my story, and now my throat is dry. “I had to wait for the right time.”
    “Full moon?”
    I nod, hating the look in his eyes. Pity, horror, something a little like awe, but not the good kind. The kind that “awful” comes from.
    “Tell me,” he says for probably the thirtieth time. “The details, Wren.”
    “Why does it matter?” I huff out a breath and sink back against the sofa. “You know how it turned out.”
    “It matters, Wren.” The sharp edge of his voice slices through the room. “It matters because it determines what you brought back.”
    “What are you talking about? I brought back Danny .”
    “Come on, Wren.” For the first time in over an hour, he gets up, and the coffee table screeches against the floor as he pushes off it. He rakes his fingers through his hair again as he paces toward the windows. “Is he really the Danny you knew?”
    The cold knot in my stomach tightens. I swallow back a wave of nausea. “Yes. Mostly.”
    “Wren.” Gabriel turns around, head tilted to one side. “Be honest.”
    “He is .” I sit up, wrapping my arms around my knees again. “He’s a little … different, but it’s him. It is, Gabriel. He is.”
    It’s nearly four thirty, and the light outside is already dying. Backlit by the windows, Gabriel’s face is hard to read—I can’t make out more than the angular line of his profile and the hard set of his jaw. When he suddenly moves across the room to turn on a lamp, I’m startled, and I flinch when he drops down next to me on the sofa.
    “Just tell me.”
    I take a deep breath. He’s so close, there’s only an afterthought of space between his thigh and my hip. The lamplight is a dirty gold puddle across the room, and in it the apartment looks even more like Early Fallout Shelter crossed with Garage