Page 104 of Kill Me Again: Psychics

“Me?” There was no keeping the surprise out of my voice. “You killed me. I should be dead now because of you.”

“I made a mistake. I thought you were my nemesis when I should have known that wasn’t the case. We’re twins. Two halves of a whole. I was young and stupid, and damaged. You could have helped me. I see that now.” He tried for a smile, but it didn’t take. “Even after what I did, you’ve been trying to help me. You keep asking me to come down when you have every reason to want me to fall.” He held out his hand. “Help me, Baxter.”

I stared at the hand. He was right about me not wanting him to fall. But he was giving it more altruistic reasons than it deserved. No human wanted to bear witness to the extinction of someone’s life. Nobody normal, anyway.

Owen leaned back slightly. “Help me before I fall.”

“Stop. Don’t do that.”

“I won’t if you help me. I need to know that someone is there for me, someone I can talk to, someone that gets me.” I held fast to the barriers as something probed at my mind.

He shuffled his feet back so that his heels hung over the edge. “Please, Baxter.”

The wind picked up again, and I moved before giving it conscious thought. I realized his intention as soon as his fingers closed around mine in an iron grip and he tugged me toward him. My foot slid on the damp concrete and the parapet bit into my hip as I lurched forward. Owen laughed then, not loud, just a breath of it, and leaned back harder. He’d dropped all the barriers in his mind, his thoughts broadcasting that this wasn’t so much a murder attempt, but a twisted suicide pact that lacked the consent of one of its participants.

The only way I could stop it was not to let him drag me up there. Owen was strong, though. And determined. I wrenched my arm down and slammed my shoulder into the parapet, the impact knocking the breath out of me.

The laugh cut off, replaced by a sharp intake of breath as his balance finally broke and his foot slipped. For a split second he looked surprised—not afraid, just wrong-footed—and then he was hanging there, my hand locked around his wrist, the wind tearing at us both as the night opened up beneath him.

The pain came all at once, bright and fiery, a hot line spreading from my shoulder down into my fingers, as if I’d stretched my arm past any sensible limit. My grip burned, tendons screaming, the joint in my shoulder feeling loose and wrong, every gust of wind making him heavier as his feet scrabbled for purchase without finding any.

I pressed my chest into the concrete and held on anyway, teeth clenched, knowing exactly how easy it would be to let the pain decide for me—and refusing to give it that power.

“Let go,” he said.

“No.” The word scraped out of me, small and final, and it seemed to surprise him more than anything else. His weight dragged again, a vicious, deliberate pull, and white pain tore through my shoulder, down my spine, until my vision pinched at the edges. My fingers went numb, then burning-hot, skin slick with sweat as if my hand no longer quite belonged to me.

“Baxter,” he said, anger and fear in his voice. I flattened myself harder against the roof, cheek pressed to the cold grit of the concrete, breathing in short, broken pulls of air. Every second stretched, unbearable and ordinary at the same time, the wind roaring past my ears as I held on and learned exactly how much it hurt to keep someone alive.

I had every reason to let go. My death. Jamie’s near-death. The cat-and-mouse game he’d played with me in recent days. His parents’ death at his hands. Him luring me here. His intention to die, but to take me with him. The reasons lined up neatly in my head and waited for me to act, and I still didn’t.

The problem was that I couldn’t hold on forever.