Cold Kiss

my shower—every time I close my eyes I see the empty loft, the confusion in Danny’s eyes when he tells me he can’t think, the horrifying image of him walking toward his mother, arms outstretched…
    And now it’s daylight. Anyone could see him, this marble statue of a boy with dead eyes and cold, gray lips. I throw on jeans and my boots and pull on a ragged black hoodie over a dirty T-shirt, and my hands won’t stop shaking. I don’t know what’s adrenaline and what’s the power anymore—there’s too much of both, a constant pulsing hum beneath my skin.
    My trig book breaks into a pile of dead leaves when I pull it out of my backpack, and when I try to do my hair, it goes purple and blue by turns until I give up. I have to calm down, but if wishing could make it so, I would already be downstairs drinking coffee and pretending I’m heading off for school.
    If wishing could make anything so, Danny would be up in the loft and I would be … I don’t know where. Asleep. In a coma. It sounds pretty good at the moment.
    My phone rings just as I’m finally collecting my stuff to head down to the kitchen. I don’t bother to look at the display before I flip it open—it has to be Gabriel.
    My hello isn’t even completely out of my mouth when I hear, “I found him.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    I’VE NEVER REALLY BEEN NERVOUS ABOUT THE whole meet-the-parents thing. I may dress sort of weird and have a lot of holes in my ears, but I’m little and polite and most of the moms I’ve met have never even blinked at me hanging out with their kids. Even Danny’s mom, who is sort of disgustingly sitcom normal in her sweater sets and khaki pants, loved me.
    I’m terrified to meet Gabriel’s sister, Olivia, though.
    Mostly I’m just plain freaked out to start with, since Gabriel had to walk all the way across town to the park to find Danny, which means Danny had to walk all that way, too.
    To the place where he died, and from what Gabriel said on the phone, Danny remembers every minute of it now. Gabriel doesn’t want to get too close, and I don’t blame him, but he told me he can hear Danny from behind the storage shed where Gabriel’s waiting for me. He’s sometimes mumbling and sometimes shouting. Stuff about Becker, the car, that night.
    Me.
    When I stop to think about it, meeting Olivia is actually a lot less scary than seeing Danny is going to be, even though my hand is shaking when I knock on the door to their apartment.
    She must have been waiting. The door opens a mere second after I draw my hand away, and the girl standing on the other side looks so much like Gabriel I blink in surprise. She’s older, yes, but her hair is the same cool, ashy blond, her eyes only a slightly deeper gray. She’s not as tall as he is, but she’s taller than I am, and concern has already bled into the tight line of her jaw.
    I guess it’s better than suspicion.
    “I’m Wren,” I say needlessly, and she nods.
    “Come on in.”
    Her hair is twisted into a careless knot on top of her head, and she’s still in faded sleep pants and a pink YOGA IS LIFE T-shirt. When the door is closed, she leans up against it and folds her arms over her chest.
    “You do know how to drive, right?”
    In theory is probably the right answer to that question, but Gabriel assured me she doesn’t have the same gift he does.
    I can’t make my mouth work, though, so I simply nod. She considers me for a long minute, her face pinched with worry. She looks kind, pretty cool, but it has to be a little weird to get a phone call from your kid brother at seven fifteen in the morning saying some girl is coming over to borrow your car.
    “I don’t know,” she says finally, and pushes off the door to cross the room toward me. “You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin, he sounds like a truck ran over him, and someone needs to tell me what the hell is really going on here.”
    “I know.” It’s a cracked whisper, and if she needed any more proof of my nerves, it’s right there.
    “But he talks about you.” Her face softens then, on the way to a smile, and she reaches up to push hair out of my eyes and correct the slant of the green knit cap I pulled on over it. “And I trust him. I have to. He said it would be better if it was just you, so…”
    I let out a shaky breath when she walks past me and digs into a big brown leather bag, coming up with the keys. She dangles them in front of me and shrugs. “Don’t crash it, okay? I