Cold Kiss

back to the cool brick. Gabriel joins me, his knee brushing mine.
    “Do you want to talk about it?”
    “Not really.” I shrug, and he winds his arm around my shoulders. The weight of it is a comfort, and I let my head rest against it. “I had to make up a spell last night just so I could leave. It was terrifying—I was trying to remember what I’d read in some of the books and figure out what to say, and all I could think was that I didn’t want to make things worse.”
    “What do you mean, so you could leave?”
    I stare at my lap, where my battered backpack is covered with Danny’s doodles, faded Sharpie initials and faces. “He doesn’t like being alone anymore. So when I need to leave, he gets … upset.”
    It’s an understatement for the stubborn way Danny held on to me last night, wrapped around me from behind, his chin digging into my shoulder, his voice low and cold in my ear.
    “Wren.” Gabriel stiffens beside me, and I reach up to grab his hand, twining my fingers with his.
    “I’m going to figure it out, I promise. And he’s not going to hurt me, Gabriel. He wouldn’t.”
    I wish I was actually sure of that. I wish I had any idea what “figuring it out” meant. Just the thought of doing something to hurt him is enough to make me ill. I’m not strong enough to strangle him or smother him, and he isn’t actually breathing anyway, so what good would that do?
    The fact that I’m sitting here in the chilly leaves imagining ways to get rid of the boy I loved so much I brought him back from the dead is so ridiculous, so horrifying, it’s almost funny. In an unbelievable, black humor way that’s not really funny at all.
    “I wish I believed that,” Gabriel says, and rests his head against mine, kissing my hair gently.
    I can’t tell him that Danny was down in the garage last night, way too close to venturing outside. I can’t tell him that with Danny’s arms around me last night, it had been hard to breathe, harder still to concentrate on winging a makeshift spell with my ribs crushed under Danny’s forearms.
    “I just have to get through tomorrow night,” I say instead. “This weekend, I’m going to … well, I don’t know what, but I’ll figure something out. And then…”
    I don’t know where that sentence should end. Then what? We can stop hiding? We can date? I can pretend that I didn’t make the most horrible mistake you can make in the name of love and get on with kissing the cute new guy?
    I don’t deserve a happy ending. I don’t even deserve a semi-happy ending, because Danny isn’t going to get one. He might have—he might have been in heaven, for all I know, lounging around in his favorite T-shirt with his guitar making the kind of noises he couldn’t quite get it to make while he was alive and pinning his drawings to the clouds. I took that away from him. So I could have him back, so I wouldn’t be alone.
    And now, somehow, I’m going to be the one to end his life, again. Kiss of death, that’s me.
    “Hey,” Gabriel says, and nuzzles the top of my head. “And then, okay? Just concentrate on there being a then.”
    “I know.” I twist around so I can look up at him, the bricks scraping against my back, and find him right there, waiting. There aren’t any more words, not right now, so I kiss him again.
    He tastes sweet, and the soft give of his mouth feels like coming home. I lick the curve of his bottom lip before I pull away, and he shudders out a breath and tightens his arm around me before resting his forehead on mine.
    Then feels impossibly far away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    “HEY, ARE YOU LISTENING?”
    I drag my gaze away from the window in the butler’s pantry, where I’m holed up with my phone. The yard is dark in the shadow of the trees, and I can barely make out the outline of Mrs. Petrelli’s garage.
    “I’m here, sorry. Just trying to figure out this last trig problem.” It’s a lie, of course, but Jess will buy it. I’m worse at trig than she is.
    “Wren, it’s almost midnight. Do it tomorrow. Or skip it and beg mercy from Ms. Nardini. She’ll let you off if you just gush about her knockoff Louboutins.”
    “Oh yeah, because I really look like the type to be craving Louboutins of my very own,” I say, rolling my eyes. The windowsill is digging into my forearm as I press my nose to the glass and squint into the thick blackness outside. There’s barely a moon tonight.
    Mom didn’t go up to bed until almost eleven, and I heard