Page 15 of Ghosts of the Dead

The car we used to escape the city sits twenty yards from camp, wedged between a collapsed billboard and ivy-covered fencing. It’s a boxy, battered thing, probably a late-90s hatchback, sun-bleached and rust-splotched with one missing mirror and a spiderwebbed windshield. I got it running with salvaged parts, stubborn will, and sheer desperation, but it’s on borrowed time. The engine coughs every time it turns over. The timing’s off, and the gas tank is nearly bone dry.

The hinges groan when I pop the hood. I wipe sweat and grime from my brow and lean in. The engine bay’s a disaster. It’s all half-melted wires, a radiator hose is held on with a zip tie, and there’s a cracked belt fraying like old rope. Not to mention the blackened fuse, probably been hotwired one too many times. I couldn’t have picked a vehicle in worseshape. This thing is being held together with rust, spit, and prayer.

Perfect.

It would be easier to find another vehicle in better condition, but this is better than sitting by the fire, letting it whisper memories into the back of my skull where the ghosts live. So, I tighten a bolt that doesn’t need tightening, and twist a hose clamp that’s already stripped. Anything to avoid going back to the fire I shouldn’t have been near in the first place. I’m elbow-deep in a useless patch job when I hear her approach.

“Jace,” her voice slices through the quiet and cuts right through the noise in my head, and the rising chaos that always takes over when I’m alone.

I straighten and blink into the shadows. Autumn steps out from the gap in the broken wall, silhouetted in the dying light. Her hair is mussed from sleep, or lack of it, and her posture is stiff. She carries a gas can in one hand, the cracked red plastic jostling against her leg when she walks.

Even disheveled and hurt, she’s beautiful. The thought hits me before I can stop it, and I shove it down hard. I can’t afford to think about the way the fading light catches in her hair, or how her determined stride makes something tighten in my chest.

She stops a few feet away, her fingers curling tight around the handle. “Can’t sleep?”

“Can’t shut my brain off,” I say, rolling my shoulders to shake loose the tension.

She holds out the jug. “Found this stashed in what used to be a maintenance closet. Smells like actual gasoline.”

I take it from her, careful not to let our fingers brush again. The weight’s decent, half full, maybe more. Enough to get us somewhere. Maybe not far, but far enough. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

She shrugs, then winces. Her wrist must still bescreaming despite the wrap I put on earlier. I wish I had more things that could help, but supplies are limited out here. She’s going to be in pain for a while longer, and that bothers me more than it should. “I was already up. Thought I’d search the shelter and check the perimeter,” she says.

I should tell her not to wander off alone. That it’s dangerous, and she’s not healed yet. All the excuses that run to the tip of my tongue. Instead, I nod. “Lucky find.”

A grin tugs at her lips. It’s small, bright, and unfairly effective. Her hazel eyes light up and drift to my mouth. “You’re smiling,” she says.

“I am not.” I summon my best scowl.

She laughs. No one has ever laughed at my scowl before. “You kind of are.”

I shake my head and turn back to the car, but my mouth betrays me and lifts again. Dammit.

She makes me smile. That’s a problem. I don’t want to smile.

Smiling means softening.

Softening means losing focus.

And losing focus gets people killed.

I’ve seen what happens when I start letting people in.

When I start hoping.

When I start caring.

People die.

I won’t let anyone get hurt for getting too close to me. Not again.

I glance over my shoulder. She’s watching me, and I mean really watching, with that look again. Like she’s trying to read something I haven’t said. She saw it back at the fire when I wrapped her wrist, and she sees it now. The way I’m drawn to her despite every instinct screaming at me to keep my distance.

She doesn’t push, but I do, because that’s what I do best.Detonate things before they can get dangerous. After all, explosions are our specialty.

“He kissed you.”

Her expression stutters, then jolts. “What? He didn’t mean to. He thought I was someone else, maybe dreaming, maybe delirious. I don’t know.”

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