Главная страница | Детская проза | Before I Wake

Before I Wake
Rachel Vincent


Even death can’t get you out of high school… Covering up her own murder was one thing, but faking her life is much harder than ex-teen banshee Kaylee expected. Now she’s fighting to stay visible to the human world and struggling to find time alone with her new reaper boyfriend Tod.To stay in the mortal realm, Kaylee must reclaim stolen souls and, when her first assignment brings her face-to-face with an old foe, she knows the game has changed. Her immortal status won’t keep her safe. And this time Kaylee isn’t just gambling with her own life…










‘Well, look who survived her own demise.’

‘What the hell are you doing here, Thane?’ And how had he escaped Avari, the hellion Tod had given him to?

‘This is all your fault, little miss won’t-stay-dead. You and that blond reaper…’

Chills crawled up my arms. ‘What’s my fault? What’s coming?’

A slow, creepy smile spread over his face. ‘Until next time, little bean sidhe…’

‘No!’ I realised he was about to blink out of the alley and, in my desperation to take the soul he carried before he left, I accidentally unleashed my bean sidhe wail at full power.

Top volume.


Praise for RACHEL VINCENT’S

SOUL SCREAMERS series

‘unputdownable’ —Shout

‘a fantastic fun-filled rush of a book’

—Girls Without a Bookshelf

‘You’ve got to love it when a series gets better

with each book.’ —YA Book Reads

‘Twilight fans will love it’ —Kirkus Reviews

‘Awesome with a side of awesome’ —Mostly Reading YA

‘I’m so excited about this series.’ —The Eclectic Book Lover

‘A book like this is one of the reasons that I add authors

to my auto-buy list.’ —TeensReadToo.com


Also available fromRachel Vincent

Published by






Soul Screamers

MY SOUL TO TAKE

MY SOUL TO SAVE

MY SOUL TO KEEP

MY SOUL TO STEAL

IF I DIE

NEVER TO SLEEP

(e-book exclusive)



To find out more about Rachel, head to www.miraink.co.uk




Before I Wake

Rachel Vincent







www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)


This is for every reader who’s ever stayed up too late to read just one more chapter.

For every reader with a paperback in a purse, or backpack, or glove compartment. For everyone with an ebook on a phone, or tablet, or laptop. For everyone listening to an audio book in the car, at the gym, or on the train.

This is for every reader the librarians know by name.

For everyone who’s ever said, “You have to read this!”

Thank you all so much for making Kaylee and her friends a part of your lives.




Acknowledgments


Thanks first of all to my husband, who puts up with the mental fog I walk around in midbook.

Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for endless advice and patience.

Thanks to everyone at MIRA Ink™, for everything done behind the scenes to make this book happen. That is truly an enormous list.

Thanks to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who made this book possible.

And a special thanks to Karen Shangraw, who brought Kaylee’s guidance counselor to life.




1


I WAS A VIRGIN SACRIFICE. AND YEAH, IT’S JUST as creepy as it sounds. I died on a Thursday, at twenty-seven minutes after midnight, killed by a monster intent on stealing my soul. The good news? He didn’t get it. The bad news? Turns out not even death will get you out of high school….

I’ve always hated Mondays, but this particular Monday, a beautiful day in late April, seemed ready to deliver its very own brand of hell. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror at seven-thirty in the morning, staring at myself, trying to decide exactly how alive I should look. In the movies, people are always faking their own deaths, but I couldn’t think of anyone else—real or fictional—who’d faked survival. I’d have to blaze this trail all on my own.

How pale would a person look twenty-nine days after being stabbed to death? That would depend on the severity of the wound, right? On the number of organs injured? On the amount of blood lost? Since no one at school knew any of those details, they wouldn’t know if my performance was off. So I could play the part however I wanted. Right?

No one had to know that my pale skin and sweaty palms were really the result of a colossal case of first-day-back nerves.

My stomach churned as I stared at my reflection, wondering how I could possibly feel so different, yet look exactly the same as I had before I died, except for the new scar. Exactly the same as I would look next year, and the year after that, and a decade after that, and for as many centuries as my afterlife lasted.

“Kaylee! Breakfast!” my father called from the kitchen.

“I’m dead, Dad,” I called back, dropping my hairbrush into the drawer. “I don’t eat anymore.”

A minute later, my father appeared in the doorway in a grease-splattered T-shirt and jeans, frowning at me. “You don’t have to eat. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I think you’d feel a lot better if you had something warm in your stomach.”

I turned and leaned against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest. “That’s not really how it works.”

“No arguments. I made pancakes and bacon. I want you at the table in five minutes.”

I sighed as his footsteps retreated toward the kitchen. He was trying. I wasn’t sure what he was trying, but he was serious about it.

I crossed the hall into my room for a pair of shoes and blinked in surprise at the empty space at the center of my room, where the bed used to be. It had been four weeks since we’d gotten rid of the ruined mattress and sheets, and I still wasn’t used to the new purple quilt that had replaced the blue comforter my psychotic math teacher had bled out on.

After my death, I’d avoided my room for nearly a week until my father figured out what I’d been too embarrassed to tell him—that I couldn’t go in there without seeing it all in my head. Reliving my own death.

That night, he and Tod had rearranged every piece of furniture I owned until my room was unrecognizable. That was three weeks ago, and I still couldn’t get used to seeing my bed against the wall, my desk slanted across one corner of the room. But this time when I glanced into that corner, I couldn’t help but smile.

Tod sat in my desk chair, his curls golden in the glow from my bedside lamp, his eyes as blue as the ocean, the one time I’d seen it. Styx was curled up on my bed, asleep, paying the reaper no attention whatsoever. Half Pomeranian, half Netherworld guard dog, she was the fiercest, most dangerous six pounds of frizzy fur and pointy teeth I’d ever seen, other than her littermates. She was also a living, breathing, growling security system, bred to warn me when danger approached on either side of the world barrier.

It had taken her weeks to understand that growling at Tod wasn’t going to get rid of him.

Tod’s brother—my ex—was wrestling with that same conclusion.

Tod stood as soon as he saw me, and I couldn’t resist a smile, in spite of the nerves still twisting my insides into knots.

My arms slid around his neck and delicious, tiny little sparks shot up my spine as his hand settled at my waist, and I secretly marveled at the fact that I was allowed to touch him whenever I wanted.

This was still new, me and Tod. Our relationship was only a month old, yet somehow, he was the only thing that still seemed to fit, since my death. Going through the motions in the rest of my life—an ironic term, if I’d ever heard one—now felt like trying to fit into clothes I’d outgrown. Everything was uncomfortable, and too tight, and not as bright as I remembered.

But Tod was the same. Only better.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work? Eventually Levi’s going to notice that you keep skipping out,” I said when I finally had to let him go. Levi, his boss, had a soft spot for Tod, but in their line of work, leniency could only go so far. Tod was a reaper—more than two and a half years dead, but perpetually nearly eighteen. He worked the midnight-to-noon shift at the local hospital, reaping the souls of those scheduled to die on his watch.

Except when he was delivering pizza. And helping me pretend I was still alive.

“I had a break and I thought you might be nervous this morning. So I brought you this.” He handed me a paper cup of coffee, and I took a cautious sip. Caramel latte. My favorite, and the only edible thing I still seemed to crave since my unfortunate demise. “And this.” He spread his arms, showing off a physique even death couldn’t mar, and I wanted to touch him some more. Then some more after that. “I figure one or the other will make you feel better.”

“Both. They both make me feel better.” I pulled him close for a kiss, then didn’t want to let him go. “I don’t wanna go back to school today.”

“So don’t. Come hang out with me at work.” Tod dropped back into my desk chair and swiveled to face me while I knelt to grab my sneakers from beneath my bed. “We can play naughty dress up with the hospital gowns and rearrange the supply closets.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? What if they can’t find some important drug or equipment in an emergency?”

Tod shrugged. “Nobody’s gonna die without my help, anyway, so what’s the harm?”

The harm? Potential brain damage. Paralysis. And all kinds of other nonlethal catastrophes. Fortunately, his grin said he was kidding, so I didn’t have to go through with the lecture.

“Kaylee!” my dad shouted, and Tod sniffed in the direction of the hall.

“Is that bacon?”

“And pancakes.” I shoved my foot into the sneaker and tugged on the laces to tighten it. “He thinks I should start my first day back at school with a healthy breakfast. I think he’s been spending too much time with your mom.” In addition to being an amazing amateur baker, Harmony Hudson was the only fellow female bean sidhe I knew.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Tod said. “Breakfast is my third favorite meal of the day.”

“Not today.” Standing, I tugged him closer so I could slide my hand behind his neck, my fingers playing in the soft curls that ended there. “I think he needs some father-daughter time.”

As grateful as my father was for everything Tod had done to try to save my life, he’d had his fill of houseguests for a while. Tod and I had spent nearly every waking moment together since my death, and for two people who didn’t need sleep, that was a lot of moments, even with his jobs and my training standing in the way.

“Oh, fine. Enjoy your pancakes and homework.”

“Thanks. Enjoy your sick people. Will I see you at lunch?”

The blues in his irises swirled like cobalt flames, and something deep inside me smoldered. “You’ll be the only one who sees me. You don’t need to eat, anyway, right?”

“Oh, now I don’t need to eat….”

He pulled me close again, and that kiss was longer, deeper. Hotter. Touching Tod made me feel more alive than anything else had since the moment my heart stopped beating.

“Kaylee, please come eat something!” my dad yelled, and Tod groaned in frustration. He held me tighter for just a second, then stepped back and let his hand trail down my arm slowly. Then he was gone, and for a moment, I felt empty.

That was a scary moment, but one I couldn’t quite shake. I’d thought that being dead-but-still-there would feel a lot like being alive, but I was wrong. I felt like I was out of sync with the world. Like the planet had kept spinning while I was gone, and now that I was back, I couldn’t catch up.

I grabbed my latte and headed for the kitchen, where I dropped into my chair at the card table we’d been meaning to replace with a real one since my dad had moved back to town seven months ago. The plate in front of me held four pancakes and—I swear—half a pound of bacon. Fried, not microwaved, as evidenced by the grease splattered all over the stove and adjacent countertop. My dad was serious about this traditional home-life thing.

It was kinda cute.

My father pulled out his own chair and started to hand me one of the coffee mugs he held, but then he noticed the latte, and his smile slipped a little. “Tod?”

“Yeah, but he’s gone. He was just trying to help.”

He set both mugs in front of his own plate and picked up his fork. “I’m going to assume the steaming cup of Starbucks means he wasn’t here all night?”

Translation: Your undead boyfriend is supposed to be gone by eleven so you can pretend to sleep.

“He works nights, Dad.” But we both knew that didn’t mean anything, when the commute was instantaneous.

For the first couple of days after my death, my father had tried to stay up all night to make sure there were no unauthorized visits, and I didn’t bother to point out how futile his efforts were. If Tod and I didn’t want to be seen or heard, we wouldn’t be. Both reapers and extractors—my official new title with the reclamation department—had selective visibility, audibility, and corporeality. Basically, we could choose who saw and heard us, and whether or not we existed physically on the human plane.

Sounds cool, I know, but it comes with a hell of a price.

My dad set his fork down and I caught a rare glimpse of the concern swirling in his eyes. “I’m worried about you, Kaylee.”

“Don’t be. Nothing’s changed.” But that wasn’t true, and even if it had been, it wouldn’t have set him at ease. My life wasn’t exactly normal before I died, and death had done nothing to improve that.

“You don’t eat. You hardly ever talk anymore, and I haven’t seen you watch TV or pick up a book in days. I walk into your room, and half the time you’re not there, even when you’re there.”

“I’m working on that,” I mumbled, swirling a bite of pancake in a puddle of syrup. “Corporeality is harder than it looks. It takes practice.” And concentration.

“Are you sure you’re ready for school? We could give it another week.” But he seemed to regret the words as soon as he’d said them. Another week off would mean another week of me sitting around the house doing nothing when I wasn’t training as an extractor, and that’s what was worrying him in the first place.

“I need to go. They all know today’s the day.”

“They” were my teachers, classmates, and the local television stations. I was big news—the girl who’d survived being stabbed by her own math teacher. My father had stopped answering the home phone, and we’d had to change my cell number when someone leaked it to the press. They all wanted to know what it was like to nearly die. To kill the man who’d tried to kill me. They wanted to know how I’d survived.

None of them could ever know the truth—that I hadn’t survived. That was part of the deal—allowing me to live my afterlife like my murder had never happened. Protecting my secret meant keeping up with schoolwork and work-work, in addition to my new duties extracting souls from those who shouldn’t have them.

“If anything goes wrong, I want you to call me,” my father said, and I nodded. I wasn’t going to tell him that if anything went wrong, I could blink out of school and into my own room before he could even get to his car in the parking lot at work. He knew that. He was just trying to help and to stay involved, and I loved him for it. For that, and for the pancakes, even if I had no real desire to eat them.

We both sipped our coffee, and I noticed that his appetite seemed to have disappeared, too. Then he set his mug down and picked up a strip of bacon. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this Friday …” He left the sentence hanging while he took a bite.

“What’s this Friday?” I asked, and my father frowned.

“Your birthday, Kaylee.”

For a moment, I could only blink at him, mentally denying the possibility, while I counted the days in my head. Time had lost all meaning over the past month. Tod said that was normal—something about absent circadian rhythms—but it didn’t seem possible that I could have forgotten my own birthday.

“I’m turning seventeen …” I whispered.

Except that I wasn’t. The anniversary of my birth would come and go, but I’d still be sixteen and eleven-twelfths. I’d be sixteen and eleven-twelfths forever—at least physically. I would always look too young to vote. Too young to drink. Too young to drive a rental car, should that urge ever strike. And none of those limitations had ever seemed more pointless. What did it matter?

What did any of it matter, anymore?

“So, who do you want to invite to the party?” My dad picked up his mug and sipped, waiting for my answer.

I frowned. “I don’t want a party.” Very few people knew I hadn’t really lived, and of those, Nash and Sabine—my ex and his ex—currently hated me for framing Nash for my murder. I’d had no choice, and I’d accepted the duties of my afterlife mostly to unframe Nash—if I wasn’t dead, he couldn’t have killed me. But I couldn’t blame him for hating me.

Still, even if Nash and Sabine both came, there wouldn’t be enough of my real friends to constitute a party, and I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone else.

“So, what do you usually do on your birthday?” He didn’t know the answer to his own question because he’d left me with my aunt and uncle—his brother—after my mother died. I’d only had him back for seven months.

He regretted leaving me—I knew that for a fact—and that regret was infinitely heavier for him, now that I was dead.

“Em and I usually rent movies and binge on junk food.” But that wouldn’t work this year. I’d never had a boyfriend on my birthday before, and I’d never had a father on my birthday before. And I’d certainly never been dead on my birthday before.

My dad looked so disappointed I wanted to hug him. So I did the next best thing. “Fine. A party. But a small one. Friends and family only.”

He gave me half a smile. “Decorations?”

“No. But you can get a cake. Chocolate, with cream cheese frosting. And I get a corner slice.” If my appetite ever came back, I planned to eat whatever the hell I wanted, for the rest of my afterlife. Calories mean nothing to the dead. “And I wouldn’t turn down a couple of presents.”

“Done.” He gave me a real smile that time, and I was relieved to see it. “I’m sorry I missed all the other birthdays, Kay.”

I shrugged. “You didn’t miss much.”

My dad opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak, a tall woman in a brown suit skirt appeared in the kitchen in sensible low heels, her short brown hair perfectly arranged. “Jeez, Madeline.” My dad half choked, then gulped from his mug to clear his throat. “Ever hear of knocking?”

Madeline raised one perfectly arched brow at him. “Mr. Cavanaugh, I’m doing you a courtesy by letting you see and hear me at all. If that isn’t good enough for you, I can appear to Kaylee alone.”

Madeline was my boss in the reclamation department—she was the one who’d okayed the cover-up that hid my death and kept Nash from going down for my murder. She was also the only department member I’d met so far. My dad didn’t like her. She hadn’t bothered to form an opinion of him one way or another.

“It’s fine. Would you like some coffee?” He held up the untouched mug he’d fixed for me.

“This is not a social visit, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Madeline turned to me, arms crossed over her white blouse. “Kaylee, there’s some question about whether or not you’re ready to begin work on your own as an extractor. Four weeks is a rather short training period, we admit, but the soul thief you were restored to deal with has killed again, and we can’t let this continue if there’s any chance you’re ready to take him or her on now.”

A dull knot of fear blossomed deep in my stomach and I fed it with doubts about my own abilities because I knew I should be scared. I would be, if not for the pervasive numbness that settled deeper into me with each day of my afterlife.

“Wait a minute—who is this thief, and why does Kaylee have to be the one to stop him? No one ever bothered to explain that to me. After all, I’m just her father.”

Madeline focused her steely stare at him. “We don’t know who or what the thief is, Mr. Cavanaugh. That’s part of what we need Kaylee to find out. But we’ve already lost two agents chasing him, and frankly, because she is a bean sidhe, Kaylee is our best bet at the moment.”

I was far from sure I could actually do what she wanted, but I couldn’t find any flaw in her logic. As a female bean sidhe, in life, I’d been a death portent. When someone near me was close to death, I got the overwhelming need to wail for the departing soul. But what that wail really did was suspend the soul. Capture it. With the help of a male bean sidhe—Tod, Nash, my uncle, and my dad all qualified—I could reinstate that soul and save the life of its owner. But at great cost. To preserve the balance between life and death, when one life was saved, another would be taken.

Madeline had brought me back from the dead and recruited me in hopes that my bean sidhe abilities would help me succeed where the other extractors had failed. I desperately hoped she was right, because the alternative was the end to my afterlife. A final rest, as she called it.

“And you want me to do this today? Face this thief?” That fear inside me swelled until I felt cold on the inside, like ice was forming in my stomach.

“No. We don’t know the thief’s current whereabouts. But we need to know you’re ready whenever we find him, so today is a trial run, to see how you perform on your own.”

“But the target is real?” my father asked, and I was starting to wonder if I even needed to be here for this discussion of my afterlife.

“Very real.” Madeline met my gaze. “Our necromancer has pinpointed a reaper Levi can’t identify, which means this reaper isn’t from his district.” Tod’s boss was familiar enough with his own employees to recognize their restored souls from a distance. “We suspect he’s a rogue and we think he’ll strike very soon. When that happens, I’ll come for you, and you will go extract the stolen soul from him. Do you understand?”

“No.” In fact, I wanted to curl up in my bed and hide under the covers. “If you know he’s there, why not go get him now?”

“Because he hasn’t stolen any souls yet.”

“So you’re just going to let someone die?”

Madeline scowled. “If we were to apprehend him now, we’d never know for sure the reaper is a rogue and we’d lose this opportunity to see you in action, on your own. Whatever life this reaper takes doesn’t outweigh our opportunity to stop the thief you were restored to deal with. To put it in terms you’ll understand, that’s like swatting a fly, but letting the hornet live.”

“Those aren’t terms I understand! What if yours was the life he was going to take?” I shoved my plate away and stood. I’d found something else that could beat back the numbness—anger. “Who are you to decide what one life is worth?”

“I am your boss.” Madeline didn’t even raise her voice, and it irritated me to realize she wasn’t as upset about this as I was. She wasn’t upset at all. “This serial soul thief is much more dangerous than a single rogue reaper, which makes the reaper an ideal trial run for you. Especially considering that we can track the reaper, thanks to our new necromancer.”

A necromancer, I’d recently learned, was someone who could see and communicate with the dead. Only see isn’t a precise term. It’s more of a sense than true sight. Though in my case, the literal interpretation also applied—a necromancer could see and hear me, even when I made myself invisible and inaudible to everyone else.

“When am I going to meet this necromancer?”

“Today,” Madeline said. “He started class at your school last week, and since it seems likely that the two of you will run into each other, we’d like you to keep an eye on him.”

“Your necromancer is a teenager?”

“I believe he’s in his junior year.”

“Is he alive?” my father asked. He thought the dead-to-living ratio of my friends and coworkers was high enough already.

“Both alive and human, Mr. Cavanaugh. He’s also a very polite young man.”

“They’re gonna eat him alive,” I mumbled, and my father chuckled. “Fine, I’ll keep an eye out for your necromancer, but I can’t promise that associating with me will do him any favors, socially.”

“Thank you, Kaylee,” Madeline said, and I glanced up in surprise over the courtesy. Not that Madeline was ever truly rude, she just wasn’t very…personable. “I’ll find you when and if this reaper turns out to be a rogue.”

With that Madeline disappeared, and my father sighed. “So much for a normal first day back.”

I dipped a strip of bacon in a pool of syrup. “Dad, I can count the number of normal school days I’ve had this year on one hand.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that.” He sipped from his mug, and I shrugged, but before I could reply, Madeline appeared in the kitchen again, and this time I nearly choked. “Change your mind about the coffee?” my dad asked, but she only shook her head.

“The reaper made a kill. It’s time to earn your keep, Kaylee.”

I swallowed the bite I’d nearly choked on then stood, nerves buzzing in my stomach like I’d devoured a swarm of flies, even though I knew what to do. I’d been practicing for a month. But… “I have to be in first period in twenty minutes.”

“Then work fast.” Madeline reached into the pocket of her suit jacket and pulled out what looked like a handful of metal, which she held out for me to take. I lifted what turned out to be a heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. It was pretty, in a sweet, dated kind of way.

“It’s heavy.” I frowned, trying to slide my fingernail into the edge seam. “And it doesn’t open.”

“That’s because it’s not a locket. It’s an amphora. This will hold the soul after you capture it. This was designed especially for you, to look like something a young woman would wear.”

“A young woman from what era?” I mumbled, slipping the chain over my head.

Madeline frowned. “Bring this back to me when you have the soul. Do not try to apprehend the rogue. It’s up to the reapers to police their own—we’re only concerned with the stolen soul he carries. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t looking to pick a fight on my first day, anyway. “Where is this reaper?”

“He killed someone at the Daylight Donuts shop three minutes ago. If you hurry, he might still be close. If you have trouble finding or identifying him, sing for the soul.”

“Okay, but—”

“Go, Kaylee.”

I glanced from Madeline to my father, who nodded reluctantly. So I closed my eyes and thought of the doughnut shop—fortunately, I’d been there a million times. When I opened my eyes, I stood in the middle of the small dining area. The shop was open, but empty, and a quick glance around revealed the body of the owner on the floor of the kitchen, still in his long white apron. But there was no reaper.

Panicked, I stepped through the locked back door of the shop and into an alley, my feet silent on the concrete because I was both invisible and incorporeal at the moment. I expected to have to wail for the stolen soul—hell, I half expected to be too late already—but there the reaper stood, near the Dumpster. Like he was waiting for me.

My breath caught in my throat, which would have been a problem if I’d actually needed to breathe. I recognized the reaper, even in those ridiculous sunglasses. I’d seen Tod give him to a hellion in the Netherworld to keep him from reaping my soul. Yet there he stood, alive and kicking—metaphorically speaking. The reaper who’d wanted me dead since the day he killed my mother, thirteen years ago.

Thane. Back from the dead. Again.




2


“WELL, LOOK WHO SURVIVED HER OWN DEMISE.” Thane had clearly been waiting for someone, but based on the surprise drawn in the arch of his brows, I was obviously not that someone. “This is what happens when they replace an experienced reaper like me with a rookie.” Thane shoved both hands into the pockets of the black slacks he’d been wearing the first time I’d seen him, days before I was scheduled to die, and my stomach clenched around nothing. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should be personally afraid of him, now that my death date had come and gone, but I had plenty of still-living friends and family he could threaten if he decided he wanted revenge. “That is who sucker punched me, then sold me out, right? Your boyfriend’s reaper brother?”

“No.” Well, yes, but Thane had missed the whole boyfriend/brother drama, and I had no urge to fill him in. “What the hell are you doing here, Thane?” And how had he escaped Avari, the hellion Tod had given him to? “You have some kind of grudge against the doughnut industry? Did they forget to give you sprinkles?”

“Cute.” He leaned with one shoulder against the side of the Dumpster and crossed both arms over his chest. “I’m reaping what you sowed.”

“What I sowed?”

“This is all your fault, little miss won’t-stay-dead. You and that blond reaper. Normally I hate sharing credit, but that doughnut guy is dead because of the two of you, and everything else that’s coming…it’s all your fault.”

Chills crawled up my arms. “What’s my fault? What’s coming?

A slow, creepy smile spread over his face. “Until next time, little bean sidhe …”

“No!” I realized he was about to blink out of the alley with less than a second to spare, and in my desperation to take the soul he carried before he left, I accidentally unleashed my bean sidhe wail at full power. Top volume.

Thane flinched and slapped his hands over his ears. Glass rattled in the windows of the doughnut shop behind me, and something actually shattered inside the Dumpster. If I hadn’t been inaudible to everyone else, anyone within a two-block radius would have wanted to claw their own ears out of their heads.

I’d grown as a bean sidhe over the past few months, and death had further strengthened my skills, a fact I’d been kind of horrified to realize during my training.

“What are you?” Thane asked, arms spread for balance as the soul he’d stolen began to leach out of his body like smoke sucked out the only open window in a room. But I had to read his lips, because I couldn’t hear him over my own screech, and I certainly couldn’t answer.

The soul—a formless foglike shape—began to coalesce around him, and for a moment, I panicked. I didn’t know how to actually get it into the not-a-locket. Desperate, and acutely aware that I was running late for school, I took the locket off and held it by the chain at arm’s length. To my immense relief, the soul began to spiral toward the locket, and as I watched, it soaked into the metal, just like Mr. Beck’s soul had soaked into the dagger I’d killed him with.

When the soul was completely absorbed, I let my wail die and slid the chain over my head.

“What the hell are you?” Thane demanded again, his eyes wide with fear for the first time since I’d met him. Though the word met hardly seemed to do our introduction justice.

“You first. Why aren’t you dead?”

“I am. You can’t come back from death.” His focus narrowed on me. “Which you now know from personal experience, don’t you?” But I didn’t know how to respond without giving up information he obviously hadn’t yet figured out for himself. Thane reached for the amphora around my neck, and I backed away. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, little girl, but if you think being dead puts you beyond Avari’s reach, you’re in for quite a shock. He’s pissed that he didn’t get your soul when you died, and he’ll be willing to go through everyone you love to get to you once he finds out you’re still…here. So why don’t you save them all an eternity of pain and come with me now?”

“Not gonna happen.” I backed farther away, one hand clutching the amphora. “He can’t get to me, and he can’t get to anyone else, either.” Because hellions couldn’t cross into the human world. That was one of very few things I still knew without a doubt since my death. “Go to hell.”

“I’m already there, little dead girl.” Thane’s voice faded to a whisper. “Soon you will be, too….” Then he blinked out of existence, and I knew he was truly gone, because reapers couldn’t make themselves invisible to me anymore. Unfortunately, the opposite was also true.

I took a minute to catch my breath and when the shock wore off, a sharp new fear settled into its place. Avari’s threats were nothing new, but Thane was back, and he was reaping again, and that was very bad. But I couldn’t tell Madeline that I’d identified the rogue reaper or why his presence was a surprise without telling her what Tod had done. If she found out Tod had acted against a fellow reaper without authorization, she’d tell Levi. Levi already suspected what Tod had done, of course, but as long as no one else in a position of authority found out, he was free to keep ignoring what he knew. Because he liked Tod. But if he was notified of the crime through any official channel, he’d have no choice but to fire Tod, and an unemployed reaper was a truly dead reaper.

I couldn’t lose Tod. But I couldn’t let Thane keep killing people.

Shit!

A glance at the time on my phone threw another layer of trouble over my already-problematic morning. I had five minutes to be in my first-period class.

With a frustrated sigh, I closed my eyes and pictured my own kitchen, and when I opened my eyes again, I was there.

“Here.” I shoved the amphora at Madeline and grabbed the backpack slung over my chair at the table. “I gotta go.”

“Did you get the soul?” she asked as I threw my bag over my shoulder.

“Yeah. The owner of the doughnut shop. Someone should call the police.”

“Did you see the reaper?” my father asked, worry lining his face as I scooped my keys from the empty candy dish on the half wall between the living and dining rooms.

“Yeah. I’ll describe him later. I have to be in my chair in three minutes.” With that, I blinked out of the house and left them both staring at the spot I’d just vacated.

When I opened my eyes an instant later, I was in the girls’ bathroom, completely incorporeal. Which was good, because two freshmen stood at the sinks, overdoing their lip gloss. I groaned in frustration, then stepped into an empty stall and concentrated on becoming completely corporeal. Then I flushed the toilet and threw the stall door open.

“I hope I’m not behind her in the cafeteria,” one of the girls said when I rushed past the sinks, and I groaned again, then went back to wash my hands for no reason at all. By the time my hands were dry, I had ninety seconds to be in my chair. I shoved open the bathroom door and ran for my math class, then slid into my seat just as the bell started ringing.

On the bright side, being almost late to school meant that neither the reporters nor the other students had time to mob me with questions. But that didn’t stop my classmates from staring at me as a man I’d never seen before started calling roll.

“Hey. I didn’t think you were gonna make it,” my best friend, Emma Marshall, whispered from her desk next to mine.

“Me, neither.” During my convalescence, she’d come to hang out on the afternoons when she didn’t have to work and I didn’t have to train, and seeing her never failed to make me smile, even when I had to feign interest in school gossip, which had never felt less relevant to my life. She didn’t pass on the rumors about me, thank goodness. “I got a surprise visit from Madeline this morning.”

Em’s eyes widened. “But it’s your first day back.”

“Also my first day on the job, evidently.”

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” the new math teacher called, and thirty-one heads swiveled my way, thirty-one sets of eyes watching me.

“Here,” I said, like I was used to being stared at by the entire class. Before, I’d felt invisible. Now I really could be invisible—if there weren’t so many people already watching me. So far, my afterlife seemed made of that kind of bitter irony.

“Kaylee, welcome back,” the man at the front of the class said. “According to school policy, you have just over a month to complete your makeup work. Please let me know if you need any help at all with the math portion.”

I nodded. I’d already finished my makeup work, but I couldn’t admit that. Most stab victims aren’t concerned with school work during their recovery. I wasn’t, either, but without the need for sleep, I’d had hours and hours to kill when neither Tod nor training had kept me busy. During those endless solitary hours, it sometimes felt like homework was the only thing connecting me to the world I was no longer truly a part of.

The new math teacher—Mr. Cumberland—went back to the roll book and Em leaned closer to whisper. “I can’t believe they even bothered filling that faculty position again. They might as well rename the class Defense Against the Dark Arts. I mean, seriously, who would answer an ad for this job?”

I shrugged, studying Mr. Cumberland. “Is he …?”

“Criminally dull? Yes. But so far I’ve seen no sign that he intends to feed from the student body in any way. So? What was the job this morning?”

Normally, no one paid any attention to Em and me whispering in class, but with my unfortunate morbid-celebrity status, I could practically feel the ears all around me perk up, hoping for some juicy bit of gossip about what had happened the night Mr. Beck died. So I concentrated really hard on Emma, to make sure she was the only one who could hear me.

“Rogue reaper,” I said, and when no one reacted, I knew I’d done it right; hopefully anyone else who saw my lips move would think I’d whispered too softly to be heard. “Thane’s back,” I added, and Em’s eyes widened even farther in fear and surprise. But before I could elaborate, Mr. Cumberland started class.

When the bell rang fifty minutes later, only a couple of people headed for the door. Everyone else waited, slowly loading books into their bags or digging through purses, not-quite-surreptitiously watching me. When Em and I headed for the door, suddenly everyone else was ready to go, too.

“Today’s gonna suck,” I whispered.

As if the crowd of gawkers falling into step behind us wasn’t enough, Mr. Cumberland chose that moment to ask Emma to stay after class for a minute. Math had never been her best subject.

She glanced at me apologetically, then veered toward his desk. I started to wait for her, but soon realized I wouldn’t be waiting alone. When the second-period students began wandering into the classroom, adding their stares and whispers to the collective, I pushed my way into the hall against the flow of traffic and race-walked toward my locker.

But escape was futile.

Chelsea Simms, reporter for the student newspaper, was the first to take the plunge, falling into step with me as I rounded the corner into the front hall. “Hey, Kaylee, we’re so glad you’re back.”

“Thanks.” I walked faster, but she matched my speed.

“So, I heard you died. Like, your heart stopped on the operating table.”

“Only for a few minutes.” I had to concentrate on remaining corporeal, because my desire to disappear had never been so strong.

“But the news said you were dead. For real. They showed a body bag on a gurney.”

Chills traveled down my arms in consecutive waves. Knowing I’d died and hearing about it were two completely different things.

A familiar hazel-eyed gaze met mine from across the hall, and my steps slowed as I passed Nash and Sabine, desperately wishing I could join them. That we could talk, or bicker, or just stand in uncomfortable silence, thinking of everything that had gone wrong between the three of us. Anything to avoid the stares and questions from relative strangers. To escape the crowd following me, a teen-paparazzi mob that felt more like a morbid funeral procession, a month too late.

But Nash and Sabine only watched as the parade of crazy marched by. I wanted to stop and talk, but I had no idea where to begin. I hadn’t seen Nash since the day I came back from the dead, and “I’m so sorry I dumped you and framed you for my murder” seemed like a really bad way to start a conversation. Or rekindle a friendship. Or ask for forgiveness.

Either way, Em had said the gossip mob only laid off Nash when everyone heard I was coming back to school, and I couldn’t suck him back into such a brutal spotlight. Not after what I’d already put him through.

“Kaylee?” Chelsea said, staring at me from inches away, and I was horrified to realize she’d pulled out a pencil and a notepad, and was now taking notes. “The body bag?”

“That was stock footage and a clerical error.” I finally spotted my own locker through the sea of heads. “I don’t know what else to tell you. The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated,” I said, misquoting Mark Twain. But though she seemed to believe me—after all, I was walking evidence of my own survival—the questions didn’t stop.

“Did you see a bright light? Did your life flash before your eyes?”

“If so, it must have been the shortest, most boring recap in history,” my cousin Sophie said from her locker. But for once, her insult lacked real bite, which was just as well, because no one seemed to notice she’d spoken.

The crowd parted in front of me as I headed for my locker, several doors down from Sophie’s, but before I could enter the combination, a girl from my French class stepped into my private space, leaning with one shoulder on the locker next to mine. I could tell from the bold combination of curiosity and determination in her eyes that someone had finally found the courage to ask what they all really wanted to know.

“Is it true that Mr. Beck died in your bed?”

On my bed. He’d died on my bed, not in it. But I knew better than to answer.

I’d known this moment was coming, but knowing you’re about to be dunked headfirst into ice-cold water is never enough to prepare you for the shock. And with that one question from the masses, the floodgates opened on all queries personal and inappropriate, and I could only stand there, wishing it all away as voice after voice shouted at me, dissecting my personal trauma and baring my wounds for the world.

“Why was he in your bed?”

“Did you really kill him?”

“Were you sleeping with Mr. Beck?”

“Is that why Nash dumped you?”

“Why was Nash arrested?”

“Why did they let him go?”

“Was he there that night?”

“Did he kill Mr. Beck?”

After all the time and concentration it had taken to reestablish breathing as a habit and convince my heart to beat, my body chose that moment to claim perfect recall of both processes. My heart pounded too hard. Blood rushed through my veins so fast my head swam. Air slid in and out of my lungs so quickly that if I’d had actual need of it, I probably would have passed out.

Panicked, I glanced at Sophie, desperate for help, but she was edging slowly, silently out of the crowd, probably hoping no one knew she’d been there that night so they couldn’t assault her with the same questions. When I died, her dad had finally been forced to tell her the truth about our family. I wondered how she was handling it, but I couldn’t tell that from watching her back as she fled. I wanted to escape with her, but I couldn’t get through the crowd. I couldn’t even get my locker open, because there wasn’t room.

There wasn’t room to move, and there wasn’t room to breathe. The world started to close in on me, and the only way I knew to escape was to disappear, and I couldn’t do that. No matter what, I couldn’t disappear in front of fifty fellow students.

The questions kept coming, but the answers got stuck behind the lump in my throat. They weren’t the real answers, anyway, because I couldn’t tell them what had really happened, because the truth wouldn’t set me free. The truth would get me locked up.

Distantly, I heard a couple of teachers yelling for order, but it was Emma who finally made it stop. “Back off, vultures!” she shouted, and I exhaled in relief as she pushed her way to the center of the crowd. “She just got out of the hospital. Why don’t you go gossip behind her back, like decent people?”

I could have kissed her.

Once Emma had achieved near-silence in the hall, the teachers were able to start herding everyone toward their classes again, and through the crowd, I saw Nash and Sabine heading away from us. Without a word.

I don’t know what I expected. For all I knew, he might never forgive me, and I couldn’t really blame him.

“Are you okay?” Coach Tucker, the girls’ softball coach, asked as I finally pulled my locker open.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” What else could I say?

“Here.” She pulled out a notepad and started scribbling on it, then ripped the top sheet off and handed it to me. It was a late pass, with my name on it. “Take a few minutes and get yourself together,” she said, already scribbling on a second pass for Emma.

“Thanks.” But all I could think about was that she’d remembered my name for the first time in nearly three years.

“I’m so sorry about what happened to you, Kaylee,” Coach Tucker said as she handed Em her pass. “I feel like one of us should have known something was wrong with him. We saw him every day. We talked to him. Ate with him. I’m so sorry we failed you.”

I didn’t know what to say. The faculty had sent flowers to my house the day after I’d been restored from the dead, but I’d assumed the bouquet was an autoresponse from the secretary. Now I wondered if Coach Tucker had arranged the whole thing.

“Nobody failed me. I’m fine. Really,” I said, but she didn’t look convinced.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you get readjusted,” she said, and I nodded, then started removing books from my backpack and sliding them into my locker. I wasn’t trying to be rude. I just didn’t know what else to say.

Finally Coach Tucker left to scold a couple kissing in the hall, and I exhaled slowly.

“You okay?” Emma asked, leaning against the locker next to mine.

“Been better. People suck.”

Em smiled. “Yeah. People do suck.” Her smile died as I stared into my now-empty backpack, trying to remember what I’d been doing. What book I needed.

Second period. Chemistry. Oh, yeah.

“So, Thane’s back?” Em said softly as I dropped my chemistry text into my bag again. “How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does this mean?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Em. I don’t know anything about it, except that he killed the owner of the doughnut shop around the corner from the school, and you’re the only person I’ve told.” But I couldn’t tell her what he’d said about Avari coming after my friends and family. That would scare her to death.

“You haven’t told Tod?”

“Haven’t had a chance.” I closed my locker and threw my backpack over one shoulder. “I can’t tell Madeline, because she’ll tell Levi, and that will force him into making trouble for Tod. Like, big trouble. I have to do something, but I have no idea what that is yet. For now—”

The bell rang, and several underclassmen ran past, on their way to class.

“—we’re both late for second period,” I finished. And Em hadn’t been to her locker yet.

“Okay, I know. But one more thing.” She laid a hand on my arm and the rare show of nerves in her expression made me stop. “Since you’ve been gone, Nash and Sabine have been avoiding me, so I’ve been eating lunch with Jayson.”

“Jayson Olivera?”

“Yeah. We’ve been kind of…going out. For a couple of weeks.”

I blinked in surprise. To my knowledge, she hadn’t actually dated anyone since Doug died right before Christmas.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I wasn’t sure it would turn into anything—I’m still not sure—and you had enough on your mind without having to worry about censoring yourself in front of my human boyfriend.”

My chest ached at the look in her eyes and at the silence, where all the things she wasn’t saying should have gone. “I didn’t realize you knew Jayson,” I said.

Em shrugged. “I didn’t, really.” She clutched her books to her chest and leaned against my closed locker. “It was really weird here when you were gone. Nash and Sabine were all closed off and unapproachable. Not that I can blame them, with everyone talking about his arrest. And everyone else just wanted to know what really happened that night at your house. Nash wasn’t talking, so they came after me. Jayson was the only one who still acted…normal.”

And she’d needed normal. I’d tried so hard not to drag Emma into danger, but the Netherworld was like quicksand—the harder I tried to pull her out of it, the harder it sucked her in.

She would have been better off if she’d never met me.

“I’m so sorry, Emma.”

“It’s okay,” Em said. “Really. But I like him, and he was totally there for me when I was…lonely. I just…Is it going to be weird if Jayson sits with us? I’m assuming Tod will be there, and you never know when Nash and Sabine will decide they want to talk. He can’t be mad at you forever.”

“Yes, he can. So, are Nash and Sabine…together?” Em hadn’t said much about that during my month off, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the possibility. The probability. It was officially none of my business who Nash went out with, and I wanted him to be happy, but…just asking the question felt weird.

So much had changed so fast—my head was still spinning.

Em frowned in thought. “I can’t tell. You never see one without the other anymore, but they’re not all over each other in public or anything. Maybe that was never their style.”

But if there’d been a ban on public displays, that was Nash’s doing. Sabine would claim him any way she could. Any way he’d let her.

I shrugged and tried to shake the thought off. “I wouldn’t worry about Nash and Sabine showing up to make your human boyfriend uncomfortable, and when Tod gets there…we’ll make it work.” So what if Em’s boyfriend wouldn’t be able to see or hear mine. “Any boyfriend of yours…You know the rest.” I scrounged up a parting smile, then headed for second-period chemistry, where the stares continued for another miserable fifty minutes.

Third period was my free period, so I shoved my backpack into my locker, then headed for the nearest restroom, which was quickly turning into my own personal transit system. But as I passed the front office, the glass door opened and the school’s attendance secretary stuck her head out. “Kaylee Cavanaugh?” she said, both her eyebrows and her voice high in question.

I hesitated, almost certain she wouldn’t have been able to pick me out of a crowd a month earlier.

“I was just on my way to find you. You’re late for your appointment with your guidance counselor.”

Well, crap. There’d been a message on my home phone the week before, mentioning an appointment during my free period when I returned to school, but I’d deleted the message and made a mental note to have my dad talk the school out of mandatory trauma counseling.

Obviously I should have left myself an actual note …

Reluctantly, I followed the secretary through the main office and into another suite, where several other students sat waiting for the N-Z counselor, whose door was closed. I’d never met my counselor—the A-M counselor—but the moment I entered the waiting room, she stepped out of her office and directed me inside with one outstretched arm while she gave the secretary a thank-you nod.

“Hi Kaylee. I’m Ms. Hirsch. Come in and have a seat, please.”

I sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk while she closed the door behind me, then circled the desk to sit in her own chair. My file folder was open on her desk, and when she turned off the computer monitor—though I couldn’t see it from my seat—I realized that she’d been reading the local paper online. Or maybe she’d just Googled me in preparation for our appointment. Were school counselors allowed to Google?

“Would you like a bottle of water?” Ms. Hirsch set a small plastic bottle at the front of her desk, next to a bowl full of Jolly Ranchers.

“No, thanks.” I set my backpack on the floor between my feet, then realized that left me nothing to do with my hands.

“So, Kaylee, how’s your first day back going?”

“Fine.” As long as “fine” could be defined as the half-way point between horrible and unbearable.

“What about your classes? Are you having any trouble getting caught up? Did the school set you up with a tutor while you were out?”

They’d tried. But my father had insisted that he could help me with anything I didn’t understand. The tutor finally accepted that as the truth—after my father hit him with a heavy dose of verbal Influence, his natural gift as a male bean sidhe.

“I’m not that far behind,” I said with a shrug.

“Well, if you decide you do want a tutor or need help scheduling any makeup exams, just let me know.”

“I’m fine. Really,” I insisted, but Ms. Hirsch only frowned like she didn’t believe me. And why should she? What sixteen year old is fine four weeks after being stabbed by her math teacher?

Certainly not this one…But that had less to do with what Mr. Beck had done to me than the thought of facing another mob like the one in the hall that morning. Beck was dead and gone, but the vultures were still alive and circling.

“I’m sure it must be very difficult being back here for you,” Ms. Hirsch said, and I realized she’d heard about the incident in the hall. “I suspect you’re dealing with a lot of unwanted attention today.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you feel you’re coping with that?”

I was trying to cope by fleeing school grounds during my free period—until I’d been dragged into the counselor’s office. “All I can really do is ignore them, right?”

She nodded slowly. “People, especially teenagers, are curious by nature, they don’t always think about how their curiosity affects others. Peers may ask you directly or indirectly about what happened to you. But you have every right to tell them you don’t want to talk about it with them. You should never feel guilty about that.”

I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t feel…much of anything, except for the need—a truly escalating drive—to get as far away from school and my “peers” as possible.

I should have been a wreck. People were obviously waiting for me to fall apart at the seams and spill my emotional guts all over the floor, and some small part of me wished I could. I wished things were still simple enough that a good cry could purge all the bad stuff and give me a fresh start. But I’d never felt less like crying, and I was all out of fresh starts. My mother had given me the only one I was allowed when I was three.

“I’m fine. Really,” I said, and her frown deepened.

“Kaylee, it’s perfectly normal to be upset for a very long time after something like what you’ve been through. It could be months before you start to feel anything like normal and that is perfectly okay.”

Normal? Seriously?

“So, what, there’s a timeline for how long it should take me to get over being stabbed by my math teacher? Someone really wrote that? How convenient! Does it happen to mention how long I should be upset about the fact that I had to kill him? Because honestly, with no guidelines in place, I might be tempted to linger in mourning for, like, a solid week. Is that too long?”

Ms. Hirsch blinked. Then she pulled open a drawer and took a pamphlet from inside and slid it across the desk to me. “This is the contact information for a group of survivors of violent crimes. I think it would be worth your time to …”

“No, thank you.” I pushed the pamphlet back toward her. She was only trying to help. I knew that. But I also knew that through no fault of her own, she was in way over her head. And honestly, she’d probably been there all year, considering how many students and teachers Eastlake had lost under unexplained circumstances since the school year started. “I really have to go,” I said, picking up my backpack.

Ms. Hirsch exhaled slowly, then met my gaze again. “Kaylee, this office is a safe space.” She spread her arms to take in all four walls, then folded them on top of her desk, rumpling the pamphlet. “You can say anything you need to say in here, and what you tell me is completely confidential. I’m sure you have family and friends you can talk to, but sometimes it helps to talk to someone completely uninvolved. I want you to know that I can be that person for you. If things get too overwhelming at any point during the school day, I want you to come down here. We can talk. Or you can just sit in here and take a break.” She placed her hands palms down on the desktop and her gaze intensified. “Safe space. Please remember that.”

“Thanks. That’s good to know.” I threw my backpack over my shoulder and practically ran out the door and through both sets of offices. In the bathroom, I had to take refuge in a stall, waiting for the small mid-third-period crowd to go back to class so I could blink out of the school without anyone seeing me disappear. While I waited, two sophomores whose names I couldn’t remember chatted in front of the mirrors, like they had nowhere better to be. As soon as they started talking, I realized they hadn’t seen me come in. If there was ever a time to use my new instantaneous method of transportation, this was it. But their conversation froze me in place.

I shouldn’t have listened. But I couldn’t help it.

“The cops think he tried to…you know. And she fought back.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mom works in dispatch.”

“Well, I don’t believe it. Mr. Beck could have had anyone he wanted, so why go after Kaylee Cavanaugh? And even if he did, it’s not like she would have said no. She’s a closet slut. She was with Scott Carter the day he was arrested, remember? Cheating on her boyfriend with his best friend—her own sister’s boyfriend.”

“I think Sophie’s her cousin.”

“Whatever. She cheats on Nash with Scott, and he ends up in the psych ward. Then she kisses some guy in the middle of the school, and the next day they find Mr. Beck dead on her bed, and Nash gets arrested. She’s like King Midas, only everything she touches turns to shit instead of gold.”

Anger flared inside me and I threw the stall door open—then realized that’s as far as my plan went. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped, glaring at both of them in the mirror. “Is there some broken filter or busted pressure gauge in there that lets every half-formed thought leak out of your mouths?” I demanded, tossing a careless gesture at their heads. “Because if these are the gems you actually intended to share with the world, you should know they don’t paint a very flattering picture of your intellect.”

I stomped out of the bathroom with them staring after me and ran smack into a tall, dark-haired guy I’d never seen before.

“Whoa, are you okay?” he asked, one hand on my arm to steady me. I nodded, and he frowned down at me, like he suddenly recognized me. “Hey, are you Kaylee Cavanaugh?”

I exhaled, trying to purge my anger, but with it came words I hadn’t intended to say. “Yeah. I am. And, yes, I’m glad to be alive. No, I’m not a slut. And, no, you can’t see my scar. Does that about cover it?”

He stared at me in surprise and I took off down the hall at a run because I could feel myself fading from physical existence and I couldn’t let him—or anyone else—see that happen. My footsteps faded as I rounded the corner, and a girl at the other end of the hall looked up like she’d heard something, but her gaze floated over me like I wasn’t even there. And from her perspective, I wasn’t.

Dead people have to want to be seen in order to exist on the physical plane, and I’d never wanted to exist less.




3


“HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” TOD SAID, taking my hand as I sank into the waiting-room chair next to him. “Rough day at school?”

“Mandatory counseling. And I got mobbed in the hall between first and second period.”

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “You’d think they’ve never seen a murder victim returned from the dead to reclaim the souls of the fallen and grant them eternal rest.”

“Well, when you say it like that …”

“Just give them some time, Kaylee. Eventually you’ll be old news again, and life will go back to normal.” Tod shrugged. “Except you won’t actually be living it.”

“Not helping.” There was a time when I’d thought it would be nice to be noticed. To stand out, like Emma or Sophie. Now I stood out, but for all the wrong reasons. Anonymity was a luxury I’d never expected to miss.

I ran my thumb over the back of Tod’s hand. Just touching him made me feel more…real. More there. More alive. I pulled him closer for a kiss and my heart beat faster when his lips touched mine. My pulse raced, and I suddenly remembered what it had felt like the first time we’d kissed, not in my head, like a mere memory, but in my entire body. Like I was reliving it. Like I could go back to that moment, the most alive I’d ever felt before or since, and live in it for eternity.

For a second, I almost forgot I was dead. And that he was dead. And that we were surrounded by sick people in the waiting room of the local hospital.

Then someone coughed and a baby started crying. Reality roared back into focus, and it was such a disappointment that my chest ached from the loss of something I hadn’t really had in the first place.

Why did I feel so disconnected from everything around me? How could I look the same, but feel so different? Empty, like a shell. A Kaylee-shell, still me on the outside, but hollow on the inside. I’d thought that going back to school—seeing friends and classmates, and even teachers—would help me fill the void. I’d thought that if I could stuff the shell of my former self with the pieces of my former life, everything could go back to the way it was.

I’d thought my death could be just a blip on the radar of my life, over and done with in short order. I should have known better, just from being with Tod. His death wasn’t a blip. It was the defining moment of his existence. His death—how, why, and when he’d died—had shaped him. Defined him.

What did my death say about me? That I was a victim? That I wasn’t strong enough to protect Nash like I’d protected Emma and Sophie?

“Hey.” Tod squeezed my hand to draw me out of my thoughts. “I think death looks good on you.” He took my other hand and his fingers wound around mine, my arm stretched over the chair rail between us. “I look forward to the day when I won’t have to share you with roving bands of high-school gossip mobs.”

“That day could be today,” I admitted. “I don’t want to go back.” But I didn’t have any choice. I’d begged and bargained for the chance to pretend I was still alive, and now that I’d gotten that chance, I had to uphold my end of the deal. I had to keep up with appearances.

“It’ll get better,” Tod said, and his next blink was too long. “So, did you see Nash?”

“Only in passing. I doubt he’ll be offering an olive branch anytime soon.”

“You could make the first move,” Tod suggested, running his thumb over the back of mine.

“Yeah, if I could get him to speak to me. How is he?” During both rounds of recovery from addiction to frost—Demon’s Breath, to those in the know—Tod had checked in on his brother regularly, though Nash never saw him.

“I can’t get very close to him anymore. That damn dog barks every time I show up, and Nash starts yelling for me to get out.”

Nash’s dog, Baskerville, was Styx’s littermate.

“Nash isn’t going to forgive me,” Tod said. “Not yet, anyway. But he might forgive you. He still loves you, Kaylee.”

Something in his voice made my heart hurt, and I hated that I liked that. Feeling anything was so rare lately that even pain had become interesting.

“You’re not worried about me and Nash, are you?” I asked, ducking to catch his gaze. “Because—”

“No.” He put one finger over my mouth, then replaced it with his lips, and that kiss went deeper and longer than would have been appropriate in a hospital, if anyone could have seen us. And when he finally pulled away, his gaze met mine, and everything that kiss had said was still echoing in his eyes, in fierce cobalt swirls of emotion so bold and confident it couldn’t possibly be shaken. “I’m not worried about you and Nash. I’m worried about just Nash.”

“Me, too.”

“Did something happen?”

“Something happened, but not because of Nash. I had my first reclamation this morning,” I said, wishing we weren’t separated by the arm of the chair between us. “Rogue reaper. Sort of a trial run, before they send me on the job they brought me back for.”

“So, did you kick ass?”

I grinned, indulging in a moment of pride over the fact that I’d actually gotten the job done. First time. “There was both the kicking of ass and the taking of names. One name, actually.”

Tod’s pale brows rose. “I take it this is a name I might know?”

My moment of pride ended in a cold wash of fear and confusion. “Thane.”

His brow furrowed. “Thane, the lovable, brand-new reaper I’ve never met, who means none of us any harm? Please say you mean that Thane….”

“Nope, the other one. Thane, the reaper who killed my mother, then came back for me thirteen years later. He’s back, Tod. He killed a doughnut-shop owner this morning, then just kind of hung around waiting to be caught, like he knew someone would come for him. He was surprised to see me, though, and he looked terrified when I took the soul from him.”

“Did you tell Madeline?” Tod asked, his irises noticeably still.

“No, I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

His frown deepened. “Kaylee, either Avari let Thane go, or Thane escaped. Either way, something’s wrong. You have to tell her.”

“No!” That came out louder than I’d intended, and if I’d been audible, everyone in the E.R. waiting room would have been staring at us. “I’m not spending eternity here without you. No way.”

His fingers tightened around mine. “That’s not what I want, either, but we can’t just let Thane keep killing.”

“I know, but there has to be a way I can get rid of him without losing you. I think we should start at Lakeside.” The psychiatric unit attached to the hospital we sat in at that very moment.

“With Scott?” Tod’s irises were swirling now, reflecting his emotions as he started to understand my plan.

“Yeah.”

Scott Carter, one of Nash’s best friends and Sophie’s—ex?—boyfriend, had gone insane when addiction to Demon’s Breath left him with a hardwired mental connection to Avari, the hellion whose breath he’d huffed. The very same hellion Tod had given Thane to. If anyone knew how and why Thane was back on the human plane, Avari would.

Getting him to tell us would be the hard part.

“Okay,” Tod said finally. “We’ll go see Scott tonight, but for now, I need to get back to work. These sick people aren’t going to kill themselves, you know.”

I fought a smile, more relieved than truly amused. “Your sense of humor is so morbid.”

“Says the dead girl. See you at lunch?”

“Yeah. It’ll probably be you, me, Em, and her human boyfriend, though, so it might be kind of awkward.” He could show himself to just me and Em, but it would be easier for Em to pretend not to see him if she actually couldn’t see him.

Tod scowled. “Fine. But if I have to stay invisible the whole time, I can’t promise to be on my best behavior. There’s no telling what I might do…I mean, if no one else can see me, anyway, why bother with clothes at all?”

I laughed, trying to disguise the sudden curious heat settling into my face. “Well, that ought to spice up the lunch period.”

“That’s a game two can play, you know,” he said, his gaze wandering south of my collarbones.

“Except that I won’t be invisible,” I pointed out as he leaned over the chair arm between us to drop a kiss on my neck, and my heart thumped a little harder, a sensation I’d taken entirely for granted when I was still alive.

Tod groaned against my skin. “Remind me again why we’re going to lunch, when neither of us needs food?”

“I’m having trouble remembering at the moment,” I whispered when he sat up and the heat in his eyes burned straight through my own. “Something about pretending to be alive …”

“How’s that working out?”

“It feels less like pretending at the moment.” With my heart beating on its own. My skin tingling from just the possibility that he might touch me again. But that would stop when I went back to school. I’d have to concentrate on the appearance of life—a pulse, regular breaths, physical presence—and everything would suddenly be immeasurably harder.

Everything that came naturally to everyone else would be a constant effort for me. So much to remember. So much to hide. So much to lose.

Suddenly keeping up with appearances didn’t seem worth the work.

“You won’t have to pretend forever,” Tod said. “One more year of high school, and then you can do whatever you want. Universities don’t hold students captive, so you could pop on and off campus at will, if you want to go to college. Or we could just…hang out.”

“Forever?” The very concept of forever—of time without end—was too daunting to truly contemplate. Doing nothing for a millennia of spare time—even nothing with Tod—didn’t seem possible. Surely I’d lose my mind.

“What about you? What do you want?” In all the conversations we’d had in the past month—spilling secrets, doubts, wants, and hopes—it had never occurred to me to ask that.

“I have what I want.” His hand squeezed mine again, but it felt like he was squeezing my heart. “There’s plenty of time to figure the rest out. Hopefully it’ll go something like this …”

He leaned in for another kiss, and it took every single bit of willpower I had to pull away from him, when what I really wanted to do was climb into his lap, and bury my hands in his hair, and make a private spectacle of us both. I’d never had an urge so strong, and the reasons to resist were suddenly frighteningly vague.

Oh, yeah. Work. And school.

“I thought you had souls to reap …” I whispered, staring into the desire swirling in his eyes, wondering if he could see mine reflected back at him.

“They’ll wait.”

“I’m trying to do the mature thing here.” I groaned when he pulled me close again.

“I’m not.”

“Why do I always have to be the one who says ‘stop’?” I demanded, my voice little more than a moan.

“You don’t. In fact, at this point I’m considering a petition to have that word stricken from the English language.” His grin was almost lazy, the gleam in his eyes an effortless challenge. “If I did, would you sign?”

“No fair. If there was a pen in my hand right now, I’d sign whatever you put in front of me.”

“Good thing I’m not a hellion.”

He was kidding, but thinking about Avari accomplished what I’d lacked the willpower to do on my own. Playtime was over.

“I better get back. But I’ll see you at lunch?”

“Yeah, but I might be late. I want to check in at work after my shift and see if anyone else has spotted Thane.”

“Okay.” I gave him another quick kiss, then blinked out of the hospital and into a bathroom in the food court across the street from school, where I picked up a bag full of burgers and fries. Then, just for fun, I blinked into Emma’s third-period art class, careful that no one else could see or hear me, and leaned over her shoulder.

“Lunch is on me.”

Em yelped, and when she jumped, she accidentally painted a long yellow line across the canvas she’d been working on. Everyone looked up, and Em apologized, mumbling something about a bee buzzing around her head, then glared at me before turning back to her painting. “Not funny,” she breathed, like she was talking to herself.

“Sorry,” I said. But it was kind of funny, and laughing felt good, even if no one else could share the moment of levity with me. I understood then why Tod had stayed near his family after he died. The living bring out what life remains in the dead. I was drawn to my friends and family, and when I couldn’t be with them, the world—my entire afterlife—felt so much emptier in their absence.

I blinked into the empty quad and sat at the picnic table Em and I had shared with Nash and Sabine until the week I’d died, and since no one was watching, I concentrated on pulling myself onto the physical plane right there in the open. Then I munched on fries from my bag until the bell rang.

Unfortunately, I’d failed to factor my new infamy into my lunch plans.

The first few people who entered the quad with lunch trays glanced at me, then sat at their own tables and stared while they ate. The gawking wasn’t polite, but it wasn’t truly invasive, either, so I could deal. Then the quad started to fill up and more people stared, upping the ante with a little obvious gossip. But before long, people I actually had classes with—the ones who’d known who I was before Beck stabbed me—started asking if they could join me.

Most of them sat without waiting for an answer.

To their credit, they were outwardly polite. Most asked how I was feeling and several offered to help with my makeup work. One idiot even asked me to the prom. I could only stutter in response.

When my table filled up before Em and Jayson arrived, I started to panic again. I was sick of questions, and stares, and friends who hadn’t been my friends before. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I just wanted to disappear.

And as soon as I had that thought, it started to happen. I could feel it—I could feel myself slipping out of the physical plane—and it took all of my concentration to remain visible. I propped my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands, chanting to myself silently.

I want to be here. I want to be here. Iwanttobehere. But that wasn’t true, and it didn’t help.

Unfortunately, the rest of the table mistook my concentration for pain and everyone started asking me if I was okay. If there was something they could get me. Someone even tried to pull my hands away from my face to make sure I was still conscious. Evidently I’d stopped breathing.

“All right, back the hell off!” a familiar voice shouted as I jerked my arm free from whoever’d pulled it. I looked up to see Sabine staring down the boldest of my new “friends.” I knew by the almost liquid depths of her black, black eyes that she was unleashing their own fears on them, literally scaring them away.

Sabine was a Nightmare. For real. Though the politically correct term was mara, the old-fashioned one fit better, in my opinion. She could read people’s fears and weave nightmares from them, then feed from her victims in their sleep.

Creepy? Yeah. Especially when she’d tried to use her mara abilities and appetite to scare me away from Nash. But in that moment, in the quad, I was more than grateful for the rescue from someone I’d considered my nemesis a few short months earlier.

“Thanks,” I said when the last of the vultures was gone, and when I looked up again, Nash stood behind Sabine. Watching me. It killed me that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling, though I completely understood why he would control the telltale swirling in his irises around me now.

“Bastards have no self-respect,” Sabine muttered as the last of the crowd dissipated. “Even I don’t feed off the weak or the injured.”

I decided not to waste my breath telling her I was neither weak nor injured—physically, anyway. “Will you stay and eat with me?” I asked, glancing from Sabine to Nash, who closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then met my gaze again. “I brought burgers.”

Free food was usually enough to tempt Sabine, but Nash was another story.

“Is he here?” Nash asked, and I realized that was the first time I’d heard his voice since the day I died.

“He” was Tod, of course.

“Not yet, but you could stay till he gets here. Or you could just stay. You have every right to hate us both, but this doesn’t have to be …” Words failed me when the thought behind them trailed into nothing.

“Doesn’t have to be what, Kaylee?” Nash demanded softly. “Awkward and painful? Because if you know of some other way for me to view the fact that my brother stole my girlfriend, who then framed me for her murder, I’m willing to listen.”

But I didn’t. That was all true, and trying to defend either of us would only have made Nash angrier.

He started to turn away, and I stood, hyperaware of all the eyes watching us. “Please, stay,” I said, and he stopped. “Please, just…Maybe we could start again?” I said, so that only he and Sabine could hear. “I know we can’t erase everything that went wrong between us, but maybe we could kind of turn the page and start on a fresh one. Tabula rasa.”

Nash glanced at Sabine, who shrugged, then they both sat. And I realized I had no idea what to say. My plan ended with begging them both to sit with me, because I hadn’t really expected that to work.

“Um, Em and her boyfriend will be here any minute, which will probably put an end to genuine conversation, but…How are you?” I asked, pulling burgers from the grease-stained bag. His recovery from frost addiction had suffered a recent relapse and Harmony had said that kicking the habit a second time was even harder, because withdrawal was more severe.

“Do you even eat anymore?” Nash asked, ignoring my question entirely.

“I don’t have to, but, yeah, I can.” I handed him a burger and a carton of fries, and Sabine helped herself to the bag, impatient as always. “Nash, I’m so sorry.”

“You already said that,” Sabine said, folding the wrapper back from her burger. “You said it a lot, actually. Which supports my theory that apologies are basically pointless. They don’t fix anything, right? That’s why I rarely bother.”

“An apology isn’t a Band-Aid,” I insisted. “It’s an expression of regret.”

“Not that that matters.” Nash’s voice was deep and angry. He hadn’t touched his food. “Half these assholes still think I stabbed you, Kaylee. How is it that I stayed away from you, just like you told me to, yet I still wound up arrested and charged with killing you?”

“I didn’t have any choice.” That was the truth, and I needed him to believe that worse than I’d ever needed anything from him. “Beck said he’d rape and kill Em and Sophie if I didn’t cooperate. I couldn’t let that happen. He’d already hurt so many.” The memory chilled me, which made it hard to keep my heart beating, in a body that was already reluctant to cooperate. “But I fixed it. I told the police you weren’t even there.”

“You got the charges dropped, but you can’t take back what you did,” Nash insisted, and he was right. “I was convicted in the court of public opinion the minute they handcuffed me and threw me in the back of the police car. In front of my mother. How are you going to undo that?”

“I don’t know.” Tears burned at the back of my eyes and I fought to keep them from falling. I hadn’t even known I could still cry, but there they were, and suddenly I felt just as powerless in death as I’d been in life. “I’ll tell people. I’ll say whatever you want. I’ll…I’ll do an interview for the school paper, if that’ll help. Chelsea’s been bugging me to—”

“Forget about it.” Nash picked up his burger and tore half the wrapper from it, but he looked like the thought of eating made him sick. “Just don’t talk about it, and maybe this’ll all go away. Eventually.”

“Kaylee?”

I jumped, then turned toward the new voice to see the guy I’d collided with in the hall earlier, staring down at me like he was determined to have his say. “Look, I’ve had a rough day, and I can’t handle any more gawkers or gossipmongers, so if that’s what—”

“I’m Luca Tedesco. Madeline told me to introduce myself.” He smiled and stuck his hand out, and for a moment, I could only stare at it, as what he’d said sank in.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Instead of taking the hand he offered, I scooted over to make room for him on the bench. “You’re the necromancer?” I whispered, unable to hide my surprise. After what Madeline had said, I’d expected small, shy, and awkward, not tall, dark, and gorgeous.

Although, hadn’t I once been even more surprised when a certain rookie reaper turned out to be tall, blond, and beautiful?

“The new guy’s a necromancer?” Sabine said, and I enjoyed a rare glimpse of her surprise.

“Yeah.” Luca sat and glanced around the table, instantly at ease with a group of people he’d never met before. “So, I assume your friends are …?”

It took me a second to realize what he was asking, but Sabine caught on quickly. “I think ‘friend’ is kind of an iffy descriptor at the moment, but your necro-talk isn’t going to freak out a mara and a bean sidhe. I’m Sabine Campbell and this is Nash Hudson.” She placed one hand on her own chest, then gestured toward Nash.

“A mara and a bean sidhe. Wow.” Luca took a fry from the carton I offered him. “Madeline said I’d be in good company here, but I assumed she was just trying to con me into moving.”

“Who the hell is Madeline?” Sabine asked as Nash alternately stared at me, then Luca.

“She’s my boss in the reclamation department. Our boss, I guess,” I said with a glance at the new guy. “Luca and I are going to be working together.”

“So, how do you know Kaylee?” Luca asked, and I could tell from Sabine’s evil grin that I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Oh, Nash used to not-quite-sleep with her, and I hung around to reinforce the ‘not quite’ part. But I’ve been relieved of duty on that front, since Kaylee dumped him for his brother in a nasty public spectacle. It was quite the scandal, even for those of us who saw it coming.”

Nash frowned, but didn’t argue. “Okay, what the hell is a necromancer?”

“He sees dead people,” Sabine said, favoring Luca with a rare smile. “Like that kid in the movie, right?”

Luca shrugged. “Sort of. Only without the ghosts. I mostly sense the recently dead and the restored. Like Kaylee. And like that reaper this morning.”

Nash stiffened. “Tod?”

Luca shrugged and glanced at me in question, and I winced over the verbal quicksand he had no idea he’d just stepped into. “I don’t know. Was the reaper named Tod?”

“Um, no. It was someone else.”

Nash relaxed a little, but Sabine frowned at me. As usual, she was too perceptive for her own good. And way too perceptive for my good. “Someone you know? Do you know another reaper?”

I looked up to find all three of them staring at me, waiting for the answer to a question I desperately didn’t want to answer in front of Luca, at least until I could be sure he wouldn’t tell Madeline.

“He was a rogue, right?” Luca said. “He killed that guy in the doughnut shop?”

“Yeah, he…wasn’t Tod,” I finished lamely, while Nash and Sabine stared at me. “I reclaimed the soul, though. Madeline has it.”

“Luca?” a familiar voice called from across the quad, and I looked up to see my cousin Sophie crossing the grass toward us, her gaze holding steady on the necromancer. That look was comfortable. Familiar. She didn’t even glance at the rest of us. “Did you get lost?”

Luca smiled like he knew her, and another layer of weird settled onto my life. “Nope. I braved the great divide to introduce myself to your cousin.” His arm slid around her waist when she stopped at the end of our table, and my mouth actually dropped open. “Turns out we’re going to be working together.”

“Wait, you two know each other?” My voice sounded kind of funny. Stunned. Sophie knew the necromancer. She knew him well enough to accept his arm around her.

“Yeah,” Sabine said, and I realized that neither she nor Nash looked surprised. “If by ‘know each other’ you’re referring to their liberal and frequent exchange of saliva in public, and who knows what other fluids in private.”

“You’re dating Sophie?” I said, gaping at Luca in confusion and disbelief. Could the world get any weirder?

Luca shrugged. “We haven’t been on an actual date yet—she’s suffered a recent family tragedy, in case you haven’t heard,” he said, brown eyes sparkling in amusement. “But—”

“You work with Kaylee?” Sophie demanded, before he could finish his sentence, like she’d just recovered the gift of speech, after our mutual shock.

“We just now officially met, but, yeah.”

“I assume you’re not talking about scooping popcorn at the Cinemark….”

“My other job,” I whispered. How much had I missed in just a month? “I don’t understand. You hate all things weird and potentially dangerous. No offense—” I glanced at Luca “—but necromancy definitely qualifies.”

Sophie’s expression frosted over, like it used to when I bought an off-brand pair of shoes or went out without fixing my hair. Like she was thoroughly disappointed in me. “That’s specist, Kaylee. Specism is just as bad as racism. Maybe worse. I thought you’d have a little more compassion than that, considering you’re neither human nor alive.” Her voice dropped into a fierce whisper on the last few words, and I could only stare at her in astonishment as her hand slid into Luca’s and she tugged him up from his seat. “Come back over here, where people appreciate you for who and what you are.”

“Great to meet you, Kaylee and friends,” Luca said, slowly walking backward while Sophie tried to pull him away from us.

When they were gone, I turned back to Nash and Sabine. “Is it just me, or did the earth suddenly do an about-face in its rotation? ‘Cause that’s what that felt like.”

“That was definitely weird,” Nash agreed, and the fact that he hadn’t argued with me made me unreasonably happy.

“No one over there even knows who or what he is,” Sabine pointed out, staring at Luca as he sat with Sophie and her friends like he’d known them all his life.

“How does Sophie know?” I asked, and she shrugged.

“They already seemed to know each other when he started school.” Sabine leaned closer to me from across the table. “But enough about necro-boy and the dancing queen. You lied about the reaper,” she whispered. “You knew him. Spill.”

I sighed, then concentrated to make sure they were the only ones who would hear my next words. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Luca, but it was Thane. We thought he was gone, but now he’s obviously back.”

“Thane, the reaper who killed your mom?” Nash asked. “The reaper who killed you? Where did you think he’d gone?”

I blinked at Nash, surprised. I’d assumed someone—Harmony?—had filled him in on how I died, but I was obviously wrong. “Nash, Thane never got the chance to reap my soul. Tod fed him to Avari. Which is why we thought he was gone.”

“Tod gave him to the hellion of greed?” Sabine said, and I could hear admiration in her voice. “Bold. Risky. Dramatic. I approve.”

Nash scowled, and I could practically feel the progress we’d made toward friendship slipping away. “Why the hell would he do that? It obviously didn’t save your life.”

“He wasn’t trying to save me,” I said. “He was trying to make sure Thane wouldn’t be the one to end my life, when the time came. Because he was…kind of…stalking me. And threatening my friends and my dad. He was there that day you and I fought about Tod. In my kitchen.” I didn’t want to remember that. But Nash had a right to know. “He was asking me questions while we were arguing, and it was impossible to hear you both at once. You thought Tod was there. Do you remember?”

He did. I could tell. “Thane was stalking you? He was there with us, and you didn’t tell me?” His voice was soft and angry. His irises were too still. “Exactly how long have you been lying to me, Kaylee?”

“I was trying to save your life. He said he’d kill you if I told you he was there.”

“Maybe you should have let him. Maybe then—” Nash bit the rest of his sentence off, but I had no trouble finishing it in my head. “I can’t do this with you, Kaylee. Not yet.” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands. Then he stood and headed for the cafeteria, without another word or a look back. Sabine only hesitated long enough to grab another burger for the road, then she jogged after him, leaving me alone at my table, in the middle of lunch.

“What was that all about?” Em asked, and I looked up to find my best friend and her new boyfriend, Jayson Olivera, staring after Nash and Sabine.

“History. Secrets. Drama. You know, the usual.” I pushed the fast-food bag toward them as they sat. “So, tell me what I missed.” Having been abandoned by a necromancer, a mara, and an angry male bean sidhe in the past five minutes alone, I could sure use a dose of normal. At least until my undead boyfriend showed up.




4


AFTER SCHOOL, I LAY ON MY STOMACH ON MY bed, with my chemistry text open in front of me. I’d read the assigned chapter three times, but it still hadn’t sunk in, so I’d moved on to staring at the not-a-locket Madeline had given me, which I’d found lying on my dresser when I got home.

It didn’t look like anything important. But it was the difference between final rest and eternal torture to anyone unlucky enough to have his or her soul stolen at death. Madeline had called it an amphora. I’d looked the word up. An amphora was an ancient Greek style of vase with a skinny neck and two handles.

My heart-thing looked nothing like an amphora. Yet the name seemed oddly appropriate, because like an old jar, my amphora was made to hold things. Specifically, souls.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I dropped the necklace into the crack between the pages of the open book, then dug my phone from my pocket. The screen showed a text from Tod.

Incoming in five…four…three…two …

“One,” he said, and I looked up to find the reaper standing in the middle of the rug at the end of my bed.

“Cute.” I rolled over to make room for him, and Tod stretched out on the bed next to me.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asked, glancing at the Cinemark uniform draped over my desk chair.

“Probably,” I admitted. “But what’s the point? Scooping popcorn and selling tickets for minimum wage feels like a waste of time now.”

Tod’s brows rose. “It’s not like either of us is short on time.”

“I know, but I don’t want to spend eternity wearing red polyester and smelling like fake butter.” Too late, I realized he was doing that very thing, only his uniform shirt was blue and he finished his shifts at the pizza place smelling like grease and pepperoni. Because the reaper gig didn’t pay in human currency and without cash, he couldn’t pay for his cell phone, or food and clothes he didn’t technically need, or the in-public date we kept promising ourselves.

“You obviously don’t want to spend eternity doing chemistry homework, either.” Tod slid the necklace onto the comforter between us, then flipped the textbook closed and set it on the floor. “I take it your return to class was less than triumphant?”

I rolled onto my back with a sigh. “Today sucked. No way around it. Between the stares, the gossip, and the inappropriate questions, school felt more like a three-ring circus than an institute of learning. Three different people actually asked to see my scar. Can you believe that?”

“Can’t say I blame them. As scars go, it’s pretty damn sexy.” Tod grinned and pushed the hem of my shirt up to expose the straight, pinkish line of raised tissue on my stomach. His fingers traced it slowly and chills gathered just below my navel. Then he lowered his head and followed that line again with a series of soft kisses. I closed my eyes and gripped handfuls of my comforter, and those chills at my center became a fire that burned deep inside me.

Suddenly that scar was my very favorite part of my body.

“No fair,” I moaned. “Only you could make me love the wound that killed me.”

“Never underestimate the therapeutic power of a few well-placed kisses,” he mumbled against my skin.

I laughed and pulled him up until our mouths met. “Mmm…If I’d known the afterlife could be this yummy, I might have tried to expedite the process.”

Tod pulled away, frowning. “That’s not funny.”

“What, you can make death jokes, but I can’t?” His morbid sense of humor used to worry me, but now I understood it. Eternity is hard to face when you can’t find anything to laugh about. Yet jokes couldn’t hide the truth. I was conscious, and warm, and…preserved. But I wasn’t alive, and I never would be again. Faking it was the best I could do. He and I had that in common.

“I would have done anything to keep you from dying.” Tod slid one hand slowly down my arm, leaving a trail of chills in its wake. “This would have been just as amazing while you were alive.”

“That was never part of the plan,” I said. “We just didn’t know it.” Not until he’d seen my name on the list of souls scheduled to be reaped. And because I’d already had my one allowed death-date exchange, there was nothing Tod, or my dad, or anyone else, could do to save me. “Besides, there are advantages to the afterlife. For instance, if I were to do this—” I pushed him gently but firmly onto his back, then I straddled him “—no one could see us unless we wanted them to.” And we did not.

“A valid point …” He reached for my hips, and I hated both layers of clothing between us almost as much as I loved the look in his eyes, part surprise, part heat, and no hint of an objection.

“And if I were to do this—” I leaned forward and kissed the edge of his jaw, and Tod groaned as my shift in position created a delicious friction between us “—and you were to make that sound you just made, no one could hear you unless you wanted to be heard.”

His hands tightened on my hips, pressing me tighter into him as my lips trailed down his jaw toward his neck, over the pale, late-night stubble he’d died with. “What happened to the good little girl who blushed and covered her face at the thought of what you’re doing right now?”

“She died,” I whispered into his ear.

That girl had felt alive with every breath she’d taken, even knowing she’d soon breathe her last. This one—the restored me—only felt alive when she experienced very strong emotions, which Madeline had assured me was perfectly normal. And so far the only strong emotions I actually enjoyed were the ones I felt when I was with Tod.

“Why? You like the good girl better?” I asked.

“I know her better.” Tod’s hand slid up my back beneath my shirt. “But this one’s certainly making me wish I’d shown up for invisi-lunch.” He’d texted me halfway through lunch to say he couldn’t make it.

I laughed, then rolled off of him and onto my side, watching his profile from inches away. “What could possibly compete with the lure of cafeteria food, adolescent conversation, and hostile company?”

“I spent two hours trying to question reapers without sounding like I was questioning them. What do you think it says about us as a group, that every reaper I know is either irritable, egotistical, voyeuristic, or some combination of the three?”

“That you fit in well?”

“Ha, ha.”

“So, had any of them seen Thane?”

“Not that they told me. But I can’t be sure, because I couldn’t come right out and ask. It was probably a waste of time that would have been better spent with you. What did I miss at lunch?”

I shrugged with the shoulder not pressed into my mattress. “Nash is still mad. Sabine is still blunt. And I met Madeline’s necromancer. His name’s Luca.”

“A death detector?” Tod made a face. “That’s creepy.”

“Says the living dead boy.”

“I’m serious.”

I pretended to study his expression. “So that’s what that looks like….”

“You know you can’t hide from him, right? He’ll see you, whether you’re corporeal or not, and he’ll hear you if he’s close enough. Tell me that’s not creepy.”

“It’s a little creepy, but he’s the one who found Thane this morning. I’m thinking a necromancer on our side is infinitely less creepy than one working for the bad guys.”

“I guess …”

“It gets weirder. He’s dating Sophie.”

“On purpose?” Tod looked horrified. It takes a lot to scare a reaper.

“Looks like it. She knows what he is and doesn’t seem to care. Oh, and we ate with Em’s new boyfriend, too.”

“These are the days of our lives.” Tod announced in a false baritone, and I smacked his shoulder. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Em’s boyfriend like?”

“His name’s Jayson. He’s human. Normal and nice. He’s probably perfect for her.”

“But …?”

“But nothing.” I shrugged. “She’s safer with him than with any of us. She deserves a nice, normal relationship, but—”

“I knew there was a ‘but.’”

“—but I don’t know how to be around her when she’s with him. There’s too much I can’t say. Too much he doesn’t know.”

Tod ran his hand down my arm until he found my hand, and his fingers folded around mine. “Are we still talking about Jayson? ‘Cause it kind of sounds like you’re talking about Emma now.”

I sighed. “Maybe.” Em knew a lot about my world—not to mention the Netherworld—but she was still in the dark about a lot of it, too. She didn’t know much about Thane, or that Avari was willing to kill her to get to me. She didn’t know that Mr. Beck—the incubus math teacher who’d murdered me—had planned to kill her, too, but not until after he’d fed from her. She didn’t know that her sister was pregnant with Beck’s incubus fetus, or that Harmony was busy collecting and combining a blend of Netherworld herbs that could end the brand-new pregnancy and save her sister’s life. Though I’d have to tell her most of that very soon, because I was not looking forward to explaining the truth to Traci, who could discover her own pregnancy any day.

But mostly, Emma didn’t know how hard it was for me to sit through class after class today, knowing that none of it mattered anymore. I wasn’t going to grow up and go off to college with her. I wasn’t ever going to use the past-perfect conjugation of French verbs, and after finals, I’d probably never again be required to write out a mathematical proof.

The only things still certain in my future were the reclamation of stolen souls and Tod. That’s it. Those were the only things that mattered anymore, and the harder I clung to the plans that were important to the once-living Kaylee, the more I felt like a fraud walking around in her skin.

“I keep forgetting to be, Tod,” I whispered, my voice muted by the enormity of what I was admitting.

“Forgetting to be what?”

“To be. To be here. To exist. If I don’t concentrate, I slip right out of the physical plane, and I don’t even notice it until I realize people can’t see or hear me.” That had happened with my dad over and over since I’d died, and if it ever happened at school, I was screwed.

“That’s normal.”

“That’s not normal!” I insisted. “Forgetting to exist is textbook-weird!”

His hand tightened around mine, and his blue irises swirled in sympathy. “It takes a while to get into the routine of taking physical form. I didn’t make a habit of it until I met you.”

“It’s like I don’t exist anymore. Like I’m nowhere.” I rolled onto my back, and he leaned over me, staring down at me from inches away.

“You’re very much here, Kaylee. From my vantage point, you’re everywhere.” His eyes were all I could see, his irises swirling slowly, confirming everything he was saying and hinting at even more.

“This is the only time I feel real, Tod. Only when I’m touching you. I wish it could be like this forever.”

“It can be. It will be,” he said, and he sounded so sure of that that I could almost believe him.

“What if you get tired of me? Forever’s a long time.”

“I’m well aware.” Tod sat up and pulled me up with him until we faced each other on my bed. “Forever used to feel like a curse. Now it feels like a promise,” he said, and my chest ached, and I loved that feeling—that rare pain that came from feeling too much, so different from the emptiness I’d almost gotten used to. “All you have to do is stay here with me.”

“That, and eat breakfast for my dad. And reclaim souls for Madeline. And go to school and work to convince everyone that Nash is innocent.” I frowned as something ridiculous occurred to me. “In the movies and on TV, there are all these ancient vampires taking math and PE with a bunch of teenagers, and I always thought that was the stupidest thing. I mean, if you had eternity to spend however you want—and for the most part, we do—why the hell would you go back to high school? What on earth was I thinking?”

Tod laughed. “I can’t speak for ancient, fictional creatures, but you were thinking that you wanted to retain what little normalcy still exists in your life. Er, your afterlife. Also, going back to school and work is part of proving you’re still alive, and being alive is the only way to prove that Nash didn’t kill you.”

“Oh, yeah. But I went back for a day, and everyone saw me, so they know I’m alive now. So I don’t have to go back, right? Tell me I don’t have to go back.”

“You don’t have to go back.” Tod leaned down and kissed me, and my hand slid into his hair, holding him close as my mouth opened beneath his. “If you quit school we could spend every afternoon just …” Kiss. “Like …” Kiss. “This.” Another, longer kiss, and this time when he pulled away, he left me gasping for breath.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me to be responsible and stay in school?”

Tod’s lips brushed my ear. “I signed on for the role of ‘boyfriend,’ not ‘conscience.’ If you want wholesome and ethical, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But I promise that won’t be half as much fun as this is….”

His hand slid down my side and over my hip, and my heart beat faster.

“That feels so good,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my chin and down my neck. “You feel good. Real.” Solid, like no matter how incorporeal he made himself, I would always be able to touch him. To feel him.

I gasped when his line of kisses skirted my collarbone and dipped into what little cleavage I’d accumulated before death put an end to the possibility of accruing any more.

“You, too,” he said, his lips still pressed against my skin. “You make me feel alive. Every time I touch you, I feel like there’s some kind of charge flowing between us. Like tiny little bolts of lightning, setting me on fire. Can you feel it here?” He pushed my shirt up and laid one hand on my stomach.

I closed my eyes. “I feel it.”

“Can you feel it here?” His hand glided over my skin and around the curve of my ribs until his finger brushed the edge of my bra, and I stopped breathing, just for a second.

“I feel it.” I pulled him back up and slid my hands beneath his shirt, feeling my way over his chest as I pulled the material up and over his head. I dropped his shirt on the floor and laid my hand over his heart, and I could feel it beating.

“Does it do that all the time?” I whispered, and he shook his head, his eyes swirling with pale blue twists of need, and hunger, and something deeper, and steadier, and…endless. “Mine doesn’t, either.”

Tod laid his hand over my heart and I blinked up at him. “It’s beating now,” he said softly.

“Yeah. It is.”

He kissed me, and I didn’t realize my legs had wrapped around his hips until he moaned into my mouth and pressed himself into me.

I felt so alive in that moment. So real and—

“Kaylee, are you home?” my father called from the living room, and the front door slammed shut on the tail of the question.

“Shit!” I whispered, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear us. He couldn’t see us, either, but I couldn’t hide the rumpled comforter.

Tod sat up and reached for his shirt while I straightened mine. “Relax,” he said as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “What’s he going to do, kill us again?”

“Not me.” I ran both hands through my hair to smooth it. “You.”

“You’re almost seventeen, and you’re dead. He has to know that his parental influence is nearing its end stage.”

“He does. I think. We’re gonna talk about it. Just…not today.”

“Kaylee?” My dad’s footsteps echoed in the hall, headed our way.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on making myself both visible and audible. “In here.” I opened the door and my dad stepped into the doorway as I dropped the amphora around my neck. “Hey, do you wanna go out for …” His words melted into a sigh when he noticed Tod, but then he rallied with a smile. “Hi, Tod, I didn’t realize you were here. In my daughter’s bedroom. With the door closed.”

“Happy to be here,” Tod said, and I groaned out loud.

“Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute, please?” my dad said with a glance at the rumpled comforter.

“Um, yeah.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he pulled a soda from the fridge and popped the tab.

“I know things are inevitably going to change, but I’m not going to pretend to be happy that the two of you were here, alone, behind closed doors.” I didn’t bother to tell him that doors no longer mattered. The only time I didn’t feel alone was when Tod was with me.

“I don’t really want to have this conversation with you, Dad.”

“I don’t want to have it, either, but you’re kind of forcing my hand.”

“No, I’m not.” I took a soda from the fridge for myself, and after a moment’s consideration, I grabbed one for Tod, too. “If you think about this logically, you have to admit that most of the reasons for me to wait to have sex died when I died.”

My dad flinched. “You said it out loud. There’s no going back now, is there?”

“Nope.”

He was thinking about my mother. Wishing she was here for this conversation. I knew, because I was thinking the same thing. But wishes were worthless, so I launched into logic.

“I can’t get pregnant, and I can’t catch anything.” Not that Tod had anything for me to catch. “And I love him. And he loves me. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

“Yes. It should. And it will be.” He closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the countertop, like it was the only thing holding him up. Then his eyes opened and his gaze met mine, his swirling with brown twists of regret and nostalgia. “But you’re still so young.”

“I’m as grown up as I’m going to get, Dad. And hell, I died a virgin. I died because I was a virgin. So I hope you can understand why I no longer see the point in preserving something that only served to get me killed.”

“Okay.” My dad nodded slowly. “Those are valid points. Just promise me you’ll think about this before you jump into anything.” He flinched again, and met my gaze with what looked like great effort. “You haven’t already jumped…right?”

“No. There’s been no jumping yet. And I promise that I’m not done thinking. How’s that?”

“Is that as good as I’m going to get?”

“It’s as good as I have to offer.”

“Okay.” He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look exactly mad, either. He looked…disappointed. And maybe a little scared. “You do understand that if we were to add up all the time we’ve actually spent together, you’d still only be around five years old to me, right?”

“I know,” I said, and his sad smile made me ache. “And you understand that I grew up during those years you missed, right? That’s not how I wanted it, but that’s how it happened, and I can’t go back and fix it. I can’t go back and fix anything, Dad.”

“I know. And I’m so sorry. So, how ‘bout I start making it up to you with Chinese delivery? We got this coupon in the mail….” He set his soda down and started digging through a pile of junk mail on the counter.

“Thanks, but I’m not really hungry, and Tod and I need to do something. Something work-related,” I added when his brows arched in suspicion.

“Oh. Okay.”

“But maybe we could watch a movie tonight?” I said when his disappointment nearly broke my heart. “Just the two of us?”

He nodded and forced a smile. “I’ll be waiting.”

Tod caught my gaze from the hallway, where he’d waited, unseen by my father, and when he took my hand so we could blink out together, he leaned close to whisper in my ear. “I’d say he took that pretty well. You know your dad’s the coolest dad on the face of the planet, right?”

“I know. One of these days, I may just tell him.”

“Do you remember the last time we were here?” Tod asked as we stood on the sidewalk in front of Lakeside, the mental-health unit attached to the hospital where Tod reaped souls and his mother worked the second shift as an R.N.

“How could I forget?” I felt a little queasy just thinking about it. “Feels different this time, though.”

“Because you can get in and out on your own?”

“Yeah.” That eliminated my fear of being trapped. Caught. Locked up. “Maybe I’ll pretend I still have to hold your hand to be invisible.”

“Role-playing. I like it.” His fingers curled around mine. “Have you heard from Lydia since we broke her out?”

Lydia was a psychic syphon and former psychiatric patient who’d saved both my life and my sanity by taking some of my pain into herself when I was locked up in Lakeside. Tod and I had freed her less than a month ago.

“No.” I’d tried two different women’s shelters—while I was incorporeal—before I’d realized she might not be allowed to stay without risking being put into foster care. “But I’ll keep looking for her.” She’d saved my life. I owed her nothing less.

“You ready for this?” Tod asked.

“Let’s go.” I closed my eyes and concentrated on Scott’s room, in the youth wing, on the third floor. Somewhere on the way, I lost Tod’s hand and started to panic, but he was there waiting for me when I opened my eyes in Scott’s room. “Guess I still need practice doing that in tandem, huh?”

“We have plenty of time to get it right. We have time to get everything right.” He started to pull me close, but I froze with one glance over his shoulder. Scott lay on his back, on top of his made bed, fully dressed, including laceless sneakers. His hands were folded beneath his head and his eyes were closed. Watching him when he didn’t know we were there was a little creepy. I still wasn’t used to being incorporeal on purpose.

I glanced around the room and frowned. Scott’s clothes were folded neatly on the open shelves bolted to the wall, but all of his other personal items—mostly photos of him, Nash, and Doug, who’d died of the frost addiction that drove Scott insane—were packed into an open box on the floor next to the desk bolted to the wall.

“Maybe they’re getting ready to move him,” Tod said, squatting to look into the box.

“Why? And where?” I didn’t look at his stuff. I didn’t want to see pieces of Scott’s shattered life and know that they all fit in a single box on the floor. I didn’t want to know how close Nash had come to sharing the same fate. I didn’t want to remember how I hadn’t been fast or perceptive enough to save either of them.

“Is there a way to let him see us without scaring the crap out of him?” I whispered, though my volume had no effect on whether or not Scott could hear me.

“There’s the slow fade-in,” Tod said, standing again, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “But I’m a fan of the dramatic sudden appearance.” His grin was to lighten the mood, but I had trouble smiling at Lakeside. There was nothing funny about being locked up with only your personal demons for company.

In Scott’s case, the demon was real.

“Okay, here goes nothing.” I focused on Scott, trying to make sure he was the only one other than Tod who could hear and see me, in case someone else came in while we were there. That’s harder than it sounds, and I’d messed it up in practice more times than I cared to admit.

When I was pretty sure I had it right, I cleared my throat.

Scott’s eyes opened and his head rolled in our direction. His brows rose, but he didn’t look particularly surprised. Maybe because he was accustomed to seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe because he was used to seeing me in particular. Avari had been giving him hallucinations of me, a fact that creeped me out almost as badly as the hellion himself did.

“Hi, Scott,” I said, and he sat up slowly, feet on the floor, leaning forward with his hands curled around the mattress on either side of his knees. His eyes were clear and focused. He didn’t look medicated.

“I heard you were dead. Kinda assumed that meant I wouldn’t be seeing you again.”

“Sorry.” I wasn’t sure whether or not I should admit that I had, in fact, died. Scott was officially crazy, so no one would believe him, anyway. But I decided not to mention it. Just in case. “Scott, I need a favor. Could you ask Avari a question for me?”

“Why?” Scott looked straight into my eyes as he spoke, and his gaze was oddly steady.

“Because we can’t speak to him directly without crossing over,” Tod said.

“What if you could?” His focus narrowed on me, and my skin started to crawl.

“Then we wouldn’t be here asking you for help,” I said. We’d come prepared for a strange conversation with Scott, but I found this apparent lack of strange even stranger than the strange I’d been expecting.

“Why should I help you?” Scott demanded, and his voice had an odd edge to it now. He wasn’t confused by either our presence or our questions. “What did you ever do for me?”

Tod glanced at me with both pale brows raised. “Is it just me, or does he seem a little saner than usual?”

“Maybe he’s having a good day,” I whispered, desperately hoping that was true.

“I’m insane, not deaf,” Scott said, and when he stood, I backed away. I was already dead, but because I was corporeal—I had to be, for him to see me—he could do physical damage to me, as both my father and Tod had already demonstrated on Thane.

“Can Avari hear us?” I wasn’t sure if Scott served as a sort of amplifier, through which Avari could hear us directly, or if it was more of a messenger service, where Scott had to mentally ask Avari everything we asked him.

“He can hear you, so be careful what you say. He can see you, so be careful what you do.” Scott stepped closer, and I backed up as Tod stepped between us. The psych patient peered at me over the reaper’s shoulder. “And if you’d come a little closer, he’d be able to taste you, too. Though he’d settle for just a little whiff.”

“I don’t want to punch a mental patient, but I will,” Tod growled.

“So the prince of death has become the white knight. I would not have laid wager on that.” In an instant, Scott changed, without changing at all. He stood straighter and suddenly seemed to take up more space in the small room than he should have. His gestures became formal, but didn’t seem overstated. He looked older. Scarier. He looked…familiar. “But you know you cannot wear both hats at once, dark prince. Not for long, anyway,” the Scott-thing said. “Someday you will have to choose.”

Chills raced up my spine “That’s not Scott.”

“I know,” Tod said as I stepped to the side for a better view around his arm. “Avari?”

Scott’s mouth smiled, and it was creepy to see the hellion’s mannerisms bleeding through the skin of a former classmate. “Human emotion is a handicap to a reaper, Mr. Hudson. She melts your cold heart and softens your hard edges, and she’ll keep at it until there’s nothing left of you but what beats and bleeds and burns for her. And then the formless lump of a man you’ll become won’t be capable of reaping souls. What will befall you then?”

“He’s possessed,” Tod whispered, and I could only nod, trying not to hear what Avari was saying. Trying not to remember that he couldn’t lie.

“If you stay with her, neither of you will see eternity.” Avari glanced at me through Scott’s eyes, and the hunger in them terrified me beyond what I’d thought I could feel in death. “Give her to me, and you will live forever.”

“I’m already dead,” I said.

“So am I,” Tod pointed out.

“But you don’t have to be.” The hellion focused on Tod, ignoring me completely. “Give her to me, and I’ll give you a body. A real one, that breathes and beats on its own. One that can age, and change, and truly feel every proper pleasure and base desire. And when that one wears out, there will be another body, fresh and young. They will stretch into eternity for you, and with them, untold lifetimes in the human world, a part of it again, instead of watching from the fringes. All of that, in exchange for one, insignificant little soul. You will forget about her by the end of your first mortal lifetime. Your second, at the latest. Or I could help you forget her now, if you’d prefer.”

Tod glanced at me, both brows raised. “Can a hellion go insane? Because I think this one’s lost his fucking mind.”

“I’m dead, Avari,” I repeated. “Doesn’t that make this whole stupid obsession kind of pointless?”

Scott clasped his hands at his back like an old man and tried to come closer, but Tod stayed between us, and the hellion didn’t seem to like having to look up at him. Or having to look around him to get to me. “Do you still have a soul, Ms. Cavanaugh?”

“Yes …” I said, and I could already see where this was headed.

“That soul is yet unsmudged, and unless I’m mistaken—” he made a show of sniffing the air in my direction, and my chill bumps doubled in size “—you died with other virtues intact. Do you have any idea how rare that is in today’s world?”

“So I’ve heard,” I mumbled.

“Now, if a hellion had access to the human plane, to a wealth of even purer souls and younger bodies, you might find your value eroded,” he continued. I didn’t give a damn about my value in the Netherworld, but I’d never been more relieved that Avari was stuck there. “Or perhaps not. There is something intriguing and rare about your persistent selflessness.” His frown was part fascination and part confusion, like he couldn’t quite figure out why I drew his interest.

That made two of us.

“Okay, I’ve had enough of this crap.” I stepped around Tod, and when he tried to pull me back, I gave him the warning look I’d perfected on Sabine. He backed off, but stayed close. “What the hell happened with Thane? Why didn’t you eat him when you had the chance?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?” Avari’s words rolled off Scott’s tongue with an ease that made me sick to my undead stomach.

“I saw him this morning, so unless you regurgitated him, it looks to me like he escaped your evil clutches. Or something like that.”

“No one escapes—”

“I did,” I said, before he could even finish his sentence. “Twice, if memory serves.”

“Three times,” Tod corrected, ticking them off on his fingers. “There was the time in his office, with Addy, then the time at the carnival, then in the cafeteria. Three times.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about the time with Addy.” I turned back to Scott, who looked distinctly unamused. “Three times.”

“As loathe as I am to concede the fact, you were never truly captured, so you can’t possibly have escaped. And neither has Thane.”

I crossed both arms over my chest, frowning. Hellions couldn’t outright lie. Possession of a human body didn’t change that, right? “Then what was he doing at the doughnut shop this morning?”

“Reaping.”

“Why?”

“Because that is what reapers do.”

I rolled my eyes and looked up at Tod. “Okay, this is a waste of time. Let’s go.”

“Not without what we came for,” he said, and I’d never heard his voice deeper or angrier. “You have two choices here,” Tod said to the hellion. “You can answer some questions, or you can let your boy Scott take a lump to the head.” Which would evict Avari from the body he’d possessed and put a temporary end to his playtime on the human plane.

“And how will you get the answers you seek then?” Avari demanded, and neither of us had an answer for that. “Nothing is free, Ms. Cavanaugh. Perhaps if you offered a trade …”

“You’re not getting my soul, or any other part of me,” I said.

“Information is tonight’s currency, is it not?” he said. “You answer two questions for me, and I will answer one for you.”

“How is that fair?” Tod demanded, and I realized he’d edged closer to me, like he might have to lunge between me and mortal danger any second. I was beyond the mortal phase of my existence, but his instinct still made me smile.

“Fair is irrelevant. I am a hellion of greed. I won’t offer this exchange again.”

“Okay,” I said, and Tod groaned, but I ignored him. “You get two questions, but I go first.” And as soon as I had my answer, I’d blink out.

Avari clucked Scott’s tongue and shook his head. “I haven’t succumbed to stupidity since we last spoke, Ms. Cavanaugh. But as a gesture of goodwill, I will allow you the second question.”

That was as good as I was going to get. “Fine. Ask.”

“What are you, little bean sidhe? How did you survive your own death?”

“That’s two questions,” Tod pointed out.

“They are one in spirit,” Avari insisted.

“But they were two in…words. So I’ll answer one of them,” I said. “I am a reclamation agent. I take stolen souls from monsters like you and see that they get their final rest. Now my question.” But I had to think about that. If he could possibly answer me without divulging any actual information, he would. I’d have to phrase it carefully.

“Why is Thane on the human plane, if he hasn’t wiggled free from your grip?”

“He is doing my bidding, Ms. Cavanaugh. Thane the wayward reaper is now bound by new chains of servitude.”

“So you told him to kill the doughnut-shop owner? Why?”

Scott’s brows rose, but the expression was all hellion. “Does that mean you’d like to bargain for more information? If not, you still owe me another answer.”

“You can settle up with her later.” Tod took my hand and reality started to twist and bend around me. The last thing I saw before we appeared in the middle of my bedroom floor was Scott’s face, warped in an angry snarl as the hellion peered out at me through his eyes.




5


“SO, DID THAT CREEP YOU OUT AS MUCH AS IT creeped me out?” I asked, flopping down on my bed on my stomach.

Tod sank into my desk chair and rolled it forward until his knees touched the mattress. “Maybe more. Why would Thane work for Avari, if he’s free to leave the Netherworld?”

Styx growled at him from the foot of my bed, then settled into my lap when I clucked my tongue at her and patted my leg. “I think the bigger question is what is he doing for Avari, other than the obvious?” Reaping unauthorized souls.

“What is who doing for Avari?” my father asked, and I looked up in surprise to find him standing in my bedroom doorway. But I could tell from the way his gaze flitted over the room that he couldn’t see either of us. “The disembodied voice and the growling guard dog gave you both away, so you might as well show up for real.”

“Sorry.” I concentrated on the physical plane—on truly being there—and my father’s gaze finally landed on me. “I didn’t realize I was only half-there.”

“It takes some practice,” Tod said, and I knew that he’d become fully corporeal, too.

“So, what’s going on with Avari?” My father leaned against the door frame, not truly in my room, but clearly stating his intent to be involved in whatever we were up to. And since he’d overheard part of what I’d thought was a private conversation, we’d have to let him into the loop. Otherwise, he’d ask Madeline next time he saw her, and we’d be screwed.

I glanced at Tod and found just a hint of frustration and fear swirling in the cerulean depths of his eyes. “Thane’s back, and Avari appears to be pulling his strings.”

My father frowned. “Thane’s back? From the dead? Again?”

Tod nodded. “He’s like the Rasputin of reapers. He’s evidently impossible to get rid of. But don’t worry,” he said, turning to lay one hand over mine on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to handle this.”

My father’s forehead furrowed. “And by handle it, you mean …?”

“I’m going to ask Levi for help.” Tod met my gaze. “Madeline told you to let the reapers police our own, right?” he asked, and I could only nod. “I’m hoping Levi can deal with Thane before anyone else sees him and reports his return. That way he can’t carry out whatever nefarious task Avari put him up to and neither Levi nor I will get in trouble for dealing with him through unsanctioned means like last time.”

“How would Levi deal with him?” I asked, and my dad looked just as interested in the answer.

“I assume he’d…end Thane. The only way to do that—that I know of—is to take his soul. I’ve seen Levi do it several times,” Tod said, and my chill bumps were back.

“I’ve seen it, too,” I said, and the memory was enough to make my hands shake. “I saw him take yours, and he’ll do it again, if Madeline forces his hand.” I sat up on the end of the bed and met my father’s heavy gaze. “You can’t tell Madeline about Thane.”

My father frowned. But then he nodded.

“I started this, and I’ll finish it,” Tod said, still watching me. “There’s no reason for you to put yourself in any danger.”

“I agree,” my father said.

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m not submitting to a vote. I have every reason to get involved in this,” I insisted. “First, I am not going to spend eternity alone,” I said, glaring Tod into silence when he started to argue. “Second of all, Thane has a grudge against all three of us, one of whom he could still kill.” I aimed a pointed glance at my father, who looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “And anyway, you and Levi are going to need help finding Thane, and I happen to know someone who can sense the dead.”

“The necromancer?” Tod frowned. “How do you know you can trust him?”

I shrugged. “Madeline trusts him.”

“But I don’t trust her.”

“Neither do I,” my father added. “She doesn’t really care about you, Kaylee. She only cares about what you can do for her and the reclamation department.”

“That’s because she’s my boss, not my guidance counselor.” I exhaled slowly in frustration. “Look, we don’t have much time and we don’t have many resources, and Luca is too great an asset to ignore just because you don’t trust Madeline.” I focused on Tod. “Come meet him tomorrow at lunch?”

“Okay, but if he brings a Ouija board, I reserve the right to mess with anyone who can’t see me.”

“Fair enough. You talk to Levi tonight and, in the morning, I’ll see if Luca can pinpoint the rogue reaper again—he doesn’t even know who Thane is, much less that that’s who he spotted yesterday.”

“I love a woman with a plan,” Tod said, and my father scowled.

“Good, ‘cause there’s more. Avari and Thane know that the best way to get to us is through our friends and family, and they know where to find everyone we care about. So we need to keep tabs on everyone. Tod, can you keep an eye on Nash and your mom?” I figured Sabine would be wherever Nash was.

Tod nodded, and I turned to my father. “If you can check on Uncle Brendon and Sophie, when she’s at home, I’ll keep up with Emma and with Sophie while she’s at school.”

My dad nodded, and I breathed a little easier. Literally. I felt better having a plan, even if that plan was vague and full of holes.

When Tod went to work and my father went to bed, I spent an hour trying to dig up enough interest to get through my chemistry homework, but chemical formulas and equations seemed no more important at one in the morning than they had twelve hours earlier, and every time my mind wandered, I found Scott, or Thane, or Avari, haunting me from my own memories.

After a solid half hour spent tapping my pencil on the page and twisting the amphora heart on its chain around my neck while Styx snored on my pillow, I closed my textbook and admitted defeat. School no longer felt relevant, because I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t need most of what I learned there.

Even if I decided to go to college, what would I do with my degree? Assuming someone would be willing to hire a doctor, or a lawyer, or a physical therapist who looked sixteen, I wouldn’t be able to hold any one job for very long, because it wouldn’t take people long to notice that I wasn’t aging. And it would take a very patient boss to overlook all the times I’d have to take a long lunch or an unauthorized hour off to hunt down a stolen soul.

Suddenly my future was looking long and boring. And frustrating beyond reason. And I’d only been dead a month.

What if the boredom and sense of futility got worse? What if I eventually lost my humanity and wound up like Thane, so bored I was willing to hurt people just to entertain myself? To break up the monotony of day after day and night after night of nothing.

If that were to happen, would I know it was happening? Would I even care? Once my friends and family were all gone, would I even have a point of reference for what humanity and normalcy look like? What they feel like? Would Tod and I be enough to keep each other sane and human enough to care about each other? To care about anything?

I closed my eyes and rolled over on my bed, trying to purge the litany of fears and useless questions marching through my brain, but I couldn’t get rid of them because I had nothing to replace them with except more fears and useless questions.

What if Luca couldn’t find Thane?

What if Levi wouldn’t help us deal with him?

How would I protect my friends and family from a hellion willing to use them to get to me?

The questions played through my head like a song list on repeat, but I had no answers, and after a while, the questions themselves stopped making sense. And when I looked up, I realized I’d been staring at the amphora in my hand for forty-seven minutes, without moving. Without breathing. Without even blinking.

My eyes and my throat were dry, but the really weird thing was that I had no urge to stretch or find a new position. Or to move at all. I could easily have sat there doing and thinking nothing for another forty-seven minutes or longer.

The even weirder thing was that that thought didn’t bother me. It didn’t scare me, though I knew it should have. I felt like a bear in hibernation, minus all the sleeping. I’d just…shut down.

That had happened before. Always at night, when I was alone. When there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. It hadn’t scared me then, either, but the next day, in retrospect, it always did. And it would again.

I was trying to decide whether or not to get up and find something worth doing, on general principle, when I heard a thud from outside. I froze and listened, and heard it again.

I was on my feet in an instant, racing down the hall in my bare feet. I grabbed a knife from the butcher block in the kitchen and fought memories of sharp metal, warm blood, and excruciating pain as I headed slowly for the door, telling myself I couldn’t die twice. Er, three times. I was halfway there before I remembered that I could make sure no one heard my footsteps.

Being dead takes a lot of practice.

At the door, I peered through the peephole, but saw nothing but my empty front yard, damp from a steady drizzle of spring rain. But then I heard another thud, this time followed by a familiar groan. I set the knife on the end table next to my father’s recliner and pulled the front door open.

Nash sat on the top step, leaning against the porch railing, a squarish glass bottle loosely held in one hand. His clothes were wet, his hair plastered to his head.

“Nash, what the hell are you doing here?”

He looked up, like he was surprised to see me. At my own house. “I’m drinking on your porch. Care to join me?” He held the bottle of whiskey up and I shook my head, then stepped out of the house and closed the door behind me, so my dad wouldn’t hear him. “Why are you drinking on my porch?”

“The lawn’s too wet to sit on.”

“That’s because it’s raining. Give me that.” I pulled the bottle from his grip. “Did you walk here? You’re soaked.”

He laughed, but the sound was harsh. Half choked. “My mom frowns on driving drunk.”

“Your mother frowns on being drunk. Come dry off and I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“You need to go home. Come on.” I tried to pull him up but he was too heavy, so he pulled himself up, using the porch railing for balance. Standing, he stared down at me, his eyes half focused in the porch light. He blinked, too drunk to hide the swirls of confusion and longing in his irises. Then he leaned down like he’d kiss me.

I stepped back and put my empty hand on his chest, my heart aching for him. For me. For all four of us, and the ties twisting us together. “No. Don’t do this, Nash,” I said, and his next exhalation seemed to deflate him.

I stepped over the threshold and held the door open for him, and he trudged inside, dripping on the floor. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Working.” I pushed the door closed and set his whiskey on the half wall between the kitchen and living room, then dug a clean hand towel from a drawer in the kitchen. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“In bed.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah,” he said, and I caught my breath, surprised by the hollow feeling in my chest—an unexpected residual ache. “That’s what you wanted, right? You want me with her, so I can forget about you?”

I handed him the towel and he blotted his face with it, but his gaze never left mine. “I just want you to be happy, Nash.” And clean. And stable.

“Yeah, well, that ship’s sailed.” He stood dripping on the tiled entry, still watching me. “Tell me it hurts, Kaylee. Tell me it hurts, just a little bit.”

I exhaled slowly and took the towel when he handed it back. “It hurts. More than a little.” It hurt to see him, knowing that I’d played no small part in making him into what he’d become. It hurt a lot. “Go dry off in the bathroom. I’ll get you something to wear.” My dad’s clothes would be big on him, but at least he’d be dry and dressed.

“I don’t want to wear your dad’s clothes. He hates me.”

“You’d rather wear mine?”

Nash scowled, but took off his shoes, stumbled over his own feet, and headed for the bathroom.

I pawed through the dryer for a pair of my dad’s drawstring jogging shorts and the smallest T-shirt I could find. When I knocked softly on the bathroom door, Nash opened it wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Here.” I handed him the clothes and he took them, then just stood there, watching me.




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/rachel-vincent/before-i-wake/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.