Cold Kiss

stumble when he pushes me, not hard, but enough to back me into the unforgiving bulk of the tree. It’s a lot less than I deserve, but I still have to hold up a hand to keep Gabriel from charging toward us.
    He’s inched closer, maybe only a dozen feet away now, but when Danny sees him it doesn’t seem to register. Gabriel, a stranger, has no part in this for him—it’s all me, me and the memories that cloud his eyes.
    I straighten up, trying to catch my breath. My heart is pounding, and the shocking rush of adrenaline is nothing compared to the hot, violent buzz of power beneath my skin. It needs to go somewhere, and it’s hard to contain it now—fear and guilt and grief are feeding it, making it more and more potent.
    “Wren, tell me!” Danny shouts, pushing his hands through his hair. He’s wheeling now, staggering circles in the dying autumn grass. “Did I die? What is this? I remember it, Wren! We … we crashed . Becker was… There was the radio, and I thought… And you, Wren, I was thinking, I kept thinking, and then…”
    I know I’m crying as he goes on like that, I can feel the wet heat on my cheeks in the chill of the morning, but I can’t do anything about it. I can’t move, I can’t speak, I can’t do anything but watch as Danny remembers.
    There’s nothing left inside me but a single word, stop, and it echoes like an alarm. Stop, stop, stop, endless, because that’s where this has been heading all along.
    I have to stop. Danny has to stop. Everything needs to stop until I make this right.
    I don’t even move when Danny turns and finally sees me again, the storm of memories clearing and simple horror replacing them. For a moment that seems as fragile and weightless as a soap bubble, he just stares as I stand there, my hands clenched, tears streaming.
    Then he charges.
    I can hear Gabriel’s feet on the dry grass, thudding closer, but it’s too late for him to do anything. It’s all up to me now, again.
    I’ve never done this before, not even when I needed Danny to go to sleep. Then it was just words, a suggestion fed to him with nothing more than the sound of my voice, the gentle sweep of my hands on his back.
    That’s not going to work this time.
    So I focus everything inside me on that single word, and push it at Danny with the force of all my power behind me: “Stop!”
    The air around us crackles, blue-green with ozone, and he snaps like his strings have been cut, falling three feet away from me in a twisted jumble of arms and legs and too-long hair.
    Even Gabriel’s not quick enough to catch me when I fall, too.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    WHATEVER I DID HIT ME NEARLY AS HARD AS Danny, and I can barely see through the throbbing howl of pain in my head as Gabriel drives us back to his place. When I look at Danny slumped in the backseat, my stomach joins the protest, and I have to point my face at the cold air streaming through the open window so I won’t puke.
    I open my eyes when the car stops in the driveway behind the big old Victorian where Gabriel and Olivia’s apartment is. I can’t believe we have to bring him here.
    Not in the condition he’s in right now, anyway.
    He looks, more than ever, dead. He’s so pale he practically gleams in the crisp autumn sunlight, and the cool blue veins in his hands and arms stand out like the tracings on a map.
    “You’re going to have to help me with the doors and stuff,” Gabriel says, getting out of the car and handing me the keys. He’s pale, too, drawn into himself like a turtle, and I can’t do more than nod when I get out and join him on the other side of the car.
    It’s just as awkward and horrible getting Danny out of the car as it was getting him into it, one limp arm lolling out to smack the open door, his head just missing the roof. Gabriel’s tall, but he’s lean, and Danny is just as big—maneuvering him up over Gabriel’s shoulder would be funny if Danny were drunk, maybe, but now? It’s awful, just another reminder that the boy Gabriel’s lugging into the house and up the stairs is dead.
    Olivia opens the door to the apartment before I can even get the keys out. “I heard the car,” she says, and steps back as Gabriel struggles over the threshold and heads straight for his room.
    Which leaves me face-to-face with Olivia, who is clearly a little freaked out by the kid draped over her brother’s shoulder.
    “Is he okay?” she says, craning her head to watch as Gabriel sort of dumps Danny on his