Page 72 of Death and Do-Overs

The gnarled stick, glowing at the tip like ET’s finger, waved in my face then stabbed into my neck. White hot pain.

Flashes of yellow.

Flashes of red.

The stick pressed to the neck of a gorilla man, crying on the ground in the fetal position. Thorny vines of blue light grew over his skin as the curse overtook his body.

A man with purple skin and tentacles wiggling beneath his mustache handed over a bag of french fries.

My eyes shot open and I gasped for breath.

I was on the ground, and whole, back to Halloween night, back to myself.

Huge branches flush with pine needles reached out across a starry sky. Warm, strong arms wrapped around me. Levi was holding me, looking down with concern wrinkling his face.

His eyes shone like bright green beacons of hope.

My heart somersaulted in my chest. Elation ballooned my lungs. I actually had new information to work with, all thanks to Levi.

Stuffed with cotton candy, my brain spun, dizzy and disoriented.

A bubble of laughter made my whole body lighter.

And without a thought, without control, I found myself grabbing Levi’s cheeks. I found myself kissing him.

His lips were firm and then plush. Sparks scattered throughout my body like tiny fireworks.

It was crazy and inappropriate and not at all like me. But I liked it. I liked what being around him did to me.

One chaste kiss and I felt like an entirely different person. I felt free.

“Frozen fudgy fiddlesticks,” Imogen said.

I nodded, because that was the only reasonable response to the lightness blooming through my muscles.

I stared up at Levi, afraid to blink and break this perfect moment.

But then he looked to the side.

I did, too.

And found another me lying on the ground beside me.

Her gaze skimmed over my hands as they cupped Levi’s cheeks, to everywhere he was touching me. And suddenly I was all too aware of what I had just done.

My every muscle tightened. That balloon-lightness popped, and I came crashing down.

I’d kissed Levi.

The other me frowned. “I guess that makes me the clone.”

CHAPTER 17

MAR

Iscrambled away from Levi as quickly as I could. I wished I could crawl into a hole and hide until everyone left. My head was still spinning, and I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions when I was hardly conscious and reeling from the flood of new memories.

“You kissed a man and made another Nie.” Imogen clapped her hands together in pure glee.

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