Книга - My Soul to Save

My Soul to Save
Rachel Vincent


When Kaylee Cavanaugh screams, someone dies.So when teen pop star Eden croaks onstage and Kaylee doesn't wail, she knows something is dead wrong. She can't cry for someone who has no soul. The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad's ironclad curfew and putting her too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend's loyalty to the test.But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls: a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld—a consequence they can't possibly understand. Kaylee can't let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk. . . .










Praise for the novels of

New York Times bestselling author

RACHEL VINCENT

“Twilight fans will love it.” Kirkus Reviews on My Soul to Take

“A high octane plot with characters you can really care about. Vincent is a welcome addition to this genre!”

Kelley Armstrong on Stray

“I liked the character and loved the action. I look forward to reading the next book in the series.”

Charlaine Harris on Stray


my soul to Save

RACHEL VINCENT




















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




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Thanks, as always, to my husband, and to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, for being my first sounding boards. Thanks to Alex Elliott, the first reader from my target audience. Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, and to the entire editorial and production teams, for believing in this book. And a huge thank you to my agent, Miriam Kriss, for holding my hand and keeping me sane.




1


ADDISON PAGE had the world at her feet. She had the face, the body, the voice, the moves, and the money. Let’s not forget the money. But advantages like that come with a price. I should have known it was all too good to be true….

“What?” I yelled, my throat already raw from shouting over the roar of the crowd and the music blasting from dozens of huge speakers. Around us, thousands of bodies bobbed in time to the beat, hands in the air, lips forming the words, shouting the lyrics along with the beautiful, glittery girl strutting across the stage, seen close-up on a pair of giant digital screens.

Nash and I had great seats, thanks to his brother, Tod, but no one was sitting. Excitement bounced off every solid surface, fed by the crowd and growing with each passing second until the auditorium seemed to swell with the communal high. Energy buzzed through me, setting my nerve endings on fire with enough kick to keep me pinging off the walls through high school and well into college.

I didn’t want to know how Tod had scored seats a mere fifteen rows from the stage, but even my darkest suspicion hadn’t kept me at home. I couldn’t pass up a chance to see Eden live in concert, even though it meant giving up a Saturday night alone with Nash, during my dad’s extra shift at work.

And this was only Eden’s opening act….

Nash pulled me closer, one hand on my hip, and shouted into my ear. “I said, Tod used to date her!”

I rode the wave of adrenaline through my veins as I inhaled his scent. Six weeks together, and I still smiled every time he looked at me, and flushed every time he really looked at me. My lips brushed his ear as I spoke. “Tod used to date who?” There were several thousand possible suspects dancing all around us.

“Her!” Nash shouted back, nodding over the sea of concert-goers toward the main attraction, his spiky, deliberately messy brown hair momentarily highlighted by a roaming spotlight.

Addison Page, Eden’s opening act, strutted across the stage in slim black boots; low-cut, ripped jeans; a tight white halter; and a sparkly silver belt, wailing a bitter yet up-tempo lament about the one who got away. The glittery blue streak in her straight, white-blond hair sparkled beneath the lights and fanned out behind her when she whirled to face the audience from center stage, her voice rising easily into the clear, resonant notes she was famous for.

I stared, suddenly still while everyone around me swayed along with the crescendo. I couldn’t help it.

“Tod dated Addison Page?”

Nash couldn’t have heard me. I barely heard me. But he nodded and leaned into me again, and I wrapped my arm around him for balance as the cowboy on my other side swung one eager, pumping fist dangerously close to my shoulder. “Three years ago. She’s local, you know.”

Like us, the hometown crowd had turned out as much for Texas’s own rising star as for the headliner. “She’s from Hurst, right?” Less than twenty minutes from my own Arlington address.

“Yeah. Addy and I were freshmen together, before we moved back to Arlington. She and Tod dated for most of that year. He was a sophomore.”

“So what happened?” I asked as the music faded and the lighting changed for the second song.

I pressed closer to Nash as he spoke into my ear, though he didn’t really have to at that point; the new song was a melodic, angsty tune of regret. “Addy got cast in a pilot for the HOT network. The show took off and she moved to L.A.” He shrugged. “Long distance is hard enough when you’re fifteen, and impossible when your girlfriend’s famous.”

“So why didn’t he come tonight?” I wouldn’t have been able to resist watching a celebrity ex strut on stage, and hopefully fall on his face, assuming I was the dumpee.

“He’s here somewhere.” Nash glanced around at the crowd as it settled a bit for the softer song. “But it’s not like he needs a ticket.” As a grim reaper, Tod could choose whether or not he wanted to be seen or heard, and by whom. Which meant he could be standing on stage right next to Addison Page, and we’d never know it.

And knowing Tod, that’s exactly where he was.

After Addison’s set, there was a brief, loud intermission while the stage was set for the headliner. I expected Tod to show up during the break, but there was still no sign of him when the stadium suddenly went black.

For a moment, there was only dark silence, emphasized by surprised whispers, and glowing wristbands and cell-phone screens. Then a dark blue glow came from the stage and the crowd erupted into frenzied cheers. Another light flared to life, illuminating a new platform in the middle of the stage. Two bursts of red flames exploded near the wings. When they faded, but for the imprint behind my eyelids, she appeared center stage, as if she’d been there all along.

Eden.

She wore a white tailored jacket open over a pink leather bra and a short pink-fringed skirt that exaggerated every twitch of her famous hips. Her long, dark hair swung with each toss of her head, and the fevered screaming of the crowed buzzed in my head as Eden dropped into a crouch, microphone in hand.

She rose slowly, hips swaying with the rhythm of her own song. Her voice was low and throaty, a moan set to music, and no one was immune to the siren song of sex she sold.

Eden was hypnotic. Spellbinding. Her voice flowed like honey, sweet and sticky. To hear it was to crave it, whether you wanted to or not.

The sound wound through me like blood in my veins, and I knew that hours from then, when I lay awake in my bed, Eden would still sing in my mind, and that when I closed my eyes, I would still see her.

It was even stronger for Nash; I could see that at a glance. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her, and we were so close to the stage that his view was virtually uninterrupted. His eyes swirled with emotion—with need—but not for me.

A violent, irrational surge of jealousy spiked in me as fresh sweat dampened his forehead. He clenched his hands at his sides, the long, tight muscles in his arms bulging beneath his sleeves. As if he were concentrating. Oblivious to everything else.

I had to pry his fingers open to lace them with mine. He turned to grin at me and squeezed my hand, beautiful hazel eyes settling into a slower churn as his gaze met mine. The yearning was still there—for me this time—but was both deeper and more coherent. What he wanted from me went beyond mindless lust, though that was there, too, thank goodness.

I’d broken the spell. For the moment. I didn’t know whether to thank Tod for the tickets or ream him.

Onstage, soft lights illuminated dancers strutting out to join Eden as the huge screen tracked her every movement. The dancers closed in on her, writhing in sync, hands gliding lightly over her arms, shoulders, and bare stomach. Then they paired off so she could strut down the catwalk stretching several rows into the crowd.

Suddenly I was glad we didn’t have front-row seats. I’d have had to scrape a puddle of Nash goo into a jar just to get him home.

Warm breath puffed against my neck an instant before the sound hit my ear. “Hey, Kaylee!”

I jumped, so badly startled I nearly fell into my chair. Tod stood on my right, and when the cowboy’s swinging arm went through him, I knew the reaper was there for my viewing pleasure only.

“Don’t do that!” I snapped beneath my breath. He probably couldn’t hear me, but I wasn’t going to raise my voice and risk the guy next to me thinking I was talking to myself. Or worse, to him.

“Grab Nash and come on!” From the front pocket of his baggy, faded jeans, Tod pulled two plastic-coated, official-looking cards attached to lanyards. His mischievous grin could do nothing to darken the cherubic features he’d inherited from his mother, and I had to remind myself that no matter how innocent he looked, Tod was trouble. Always.

“What’s that?” I asked, and the cowboy frowned at me in question. I ignored him—so much for not looking crazy—and elbowed Nash. “Tod,” I mouthed when he raised both brows at me.

Nash rolled his eyes and glanced past me, but I could tell from his roving stare that he couldn’t see his brother. And that, as always, he was pissed that Tod had appeared to me, but not to him.

“Backstage passes.” Tod reached through the cowboy to grab my hand, and if I hadn’t jerked back from the reaper’s grasp, I’d have gotten a very intimate feel of one of Eden’s rudest fans.

I stood on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “He has backstage passes.”

Nash’s scowl made an irritated mask of his entire face, while on stage, Eden shed her jacket, now clad only in a bikini top and short skirt. “Where did he get them?”

“Do you really want to know?” Reapers weren’t paid in money—at least, not the human kind—so he certainly hadn’t bought the passes. Or the tickets.

“No,” Nash grumbled. But he followed me, anyway.

Keeping up with Tod was a lost cause. He didn’t have to edge past row after row of ecstatic fans, or stop and apologize when he stepped on one girl’s foot or spilled her date’s drink. He just walked right through seats and concertgoers alike, as if they didn’t exist in his world.

They probably didn’t.

Like all reapers, Tod’s natural state of existence—if it could even be called natural—was somewhere between our world, where humans and the occasional bean sidhe reside in relative peace, and the Netherworld, where most things dark and dangerous dwell. He could exist completely in either one, if he chose, but he rarely did, because when he was corporeal, he typically forgot to avoid obstacles like chairs, tables, and doors. And people.

Of course, he could easily become visible to both me and Nash, but it was evidently much more fun to mess with his brother. I’d never met a set of siblings with less in common than Nash and Tod. They weren’t even the same species; at least, not anymore.

The Hudson brothers were both born bean sidhes—that was the correct spelling, though most people knew us as banshees—from normal bean sidhe parents. As was I. But Tod had died two years earlier, when he was seventeen, and that’s when things got weird, even for bean sidhes. Tod was recruited by the grim reapers.

As a reaper, Tod would live on in his own un-aging body. In exchange, he worked a twelve-hour shift every day, collecting souls from humans whose time had come to die. He didn’t have to eat or sleep, so he got pretty bored for those other twelve hours of each day. And since Nash and I were among the few who knew about him, he typically took that boredom out on us.

Which was how we’d gotten kicked out of a mall, a skating rink, and a bowling alley, all in the past month. And as I bumped my way through the crowd after Tod, I had a feeling the concert would be next on the list.

One glance at the irritation glowing in Nash’s cheeks told me he still couldn’t see his brother, so I pulled him along as I tracked the headful of blond curls now several rows ahead of us, heading toward a side door beneath a red exit sign.

Eden’s first song ended in a huge flash of purple light, reflected on the thousands of faces around me, then the lights went out.

I stopped, unwilling to move in the dark for fear that I’d trip over someone and land in an unidentified puddle. Or a lap.

Seconds later, the stage exploded with swirling, pulsing light, and Eden now swayed to the new beat in a different but equally skimpy costume. I glanced at her, then back at Tod, but caught only a fleeting glimpse of his curls disappearing through the closed side door.

Nash and I rushed after him, stepping on a series of toes and vaulting over a half-empty bottle of Coke someone had smuggled in. We were out of breath when we reached the door, so I glanced one last time at the stage, then shoved the door, grateful when it actually opened. Doors Tod walks through usually turn out to be locked.

Tod stood in the hall beyond, grinning, both backstage passes looped over one arm. “What’d you do, crawl all the way here?”

The door closed behind us, and I was surprised to realize I could barely hear the music, though it had been loud enough to drown out my thoughts in the auditorium. But I could still feel the thump of the bass, pulsing up through my feet from the floor.

Nash let go of my hand and glared at his brother. “Some of us are bound by the laws of physics.”

“Not my problem.” Tod waved the passes, then tossed one to each of us. “Snoozin’, loozin’, and all that crap.”

I slipped the nylon lanyard over my neck and pulled my long brown hair over it. Now that I wore the pass, it would be seen by anyone who saw me; everything Tod holds is only as visible as he is at the time.

The reaper went fully corporeal then, his sneakers squeaking on the floor as he led us down a series of wide white hallways and through several doors, until we hit one that was locked. Tod shot us a mischievous grin, then walked through the door and pushed it open from the other side.

“Thanks.” I brushed past him into the new hall, and the sudden upsurge of music warned that we were getting close to the stage. In spite of the questionable source of our backstage passes, my pulse jumped with excitement when we rounded the next corner and the building opened into a long, wide hall with a cavernous ceiling. Equipment was stacked against the walls—soundboards, speakers, instruments, and lights. People milled everywhere, carrying clothes, food, and clipboards. They spoke into two-way radios and headset microphones, and most wore badges similar to ours, though theirs read “Crew” in bold black letters.

Security guards in black tees and matching hats loitered, thick arms crossed over their chests. Background dancers raced across the open space in all stages of the next costume change, while a woman with a clipboard pointed and rushed them along.

No one noticed me and Nash, and I could tell Tod had gone non-corporeal again by the silence of his steps. We headed slowly toward the stage, where light pulsed and music thumped, much too loud for any of the backstage racket to be heard out front. I touched nothing, irrationally afraid that sneaking a cookie from the snack table would finally expose us as backstage-pass thieves.

In the wings of the stage, a small crowd had gathered to watch the show. Everyone wore badges similar to ours, and several people held equipment or props, most notably a small monkey, wearing a collar and a funny, brightly colored hat.

I laughed out loud, wondering what on earth America’s reigning pop queen would do on stage with a monkey.

From our vantage point, we saw Eden in profile, now grinding in skintight white leather pants and a matching half top. The new song was gritty, with a crunchy guitar riff, and her dancing had changed to suit it; she popped each pose hard, and her hair swung out behind her. Guys in jeans and tight, dark shirts danced around and behind her, each taking her hand in turn, and lifting her on occasion.

Eden gave it her all, even several songs into the performance. The magazines and news stories hyped her hard work and dedication to her career, and the hours and hours a day she trained, rehearsed, and planned. And it showed. No one put on a show like Eden. She was the entertainment industry’s golden girl, rolling in money and fame. Rumor had it she’d signed on for the lead in her first film, to begin shooting after the conclusion of her sold-out tour.

Everything Eden touched turned to gold.

We watched her, enthralled by each pose she struck, mesmerized by each note. We were under such a spell that at first no one noticed when something went wrong. During the guitar solo, Eden’s arms fell to her side and she stopped dancing.

I thought it was another dramatic transition to the next song, so when her head fell forward, I assumed she was counting silently, ready to look up with those hypnotic, piercing black eyes and captivate her fans all over again.

But then the other dancers noticed, and several stopped moving. Then several more. And when the guitar solo ended, Eden still stood there, silent, a virtual vacuum sucking life from the background music.

Her chest heaved. Her shoulders shook. The microphone fell from her hand and crashed to the stage.

Feedback squealed across the auditorium, and the drummer stopped drumming. The guitarists—both lead and bass—turned toward Eden and stopped playing when they saw her.

Eden collapsed, legs bent, long, dark hair spilling around her on the floor.

Someone screamed from behind me in the sudden hush, and I jumped, startled. A woman raced past me and onto the stage, followed by several large men. My hair blew back in the draft created by the sudden rush, but I barely noticed. My gaze was glued to Eden who lay unmoving on the floor.

People bent over her, and I recognized the woman as her mother, the most famous stage parent/manager in the country. Eden’s mom was crying, trying to shake her daughter awake as a member of security tried to pull her away. “She’s not breathing!” the mother shouted, and we all heard her clearly, because the crowd of thousands had gone silent with shock. “Somebody help her, she’s not breathing!”

And suddenly neither was I.

My hand clenched Nash’s, and my heart raced in dreadful anticipation of the keening that would rip its way from my throat as the pop star’s soul left her body. A bean sidhe’s wail can shatter not just glass, but eardrums. The frequency resonates painfully in the human brain, so that the sound seems to rattle from both outside and within.

“Breathe, Kaylee,” Nash whispered into my ear, wrapping both arms around me as his voice cocooned my heart, his Influence soothing, comforting. A male bean sidhe’s voice is like an audio-sedative, without the side effects of the chemical version. Nash could make the screaming stop, or at least lower its volume and intensity. “Just breathe through it.” So I did. I watched the stage over his shoulder and breathed, waiting for Eden to die.

Waiting for the scream to build deep inside me.

But the scream didn’t come.

Onstage, someone’s foot hit Eden’s microphone, and it rolled across the floor and into the pit. No one noticed, because Eden still wasn’t breathing. But I wasn’t wailing, either.

Slowly, I loosened my grip on Nash and felt relief settle through me as logic prevailed over my dread. Eden wasn’t wearing a death shroud—a translucent black haze surrounding the soon-to-be-dead, visible only to female bean sidhes. “She’s fine.” I smiled in spite of the horrified expressions sur rounding me. “She’s gonna be fine.” Because if she were going to die, I’d already be screaming.

I’m a female bean sidhe. That’s what we do.

“No, she isn’t,” Tod said softly, and we turned to find him still staring at the stage. The reaper pointed, and I followed his finger until my gaze found Eden again, surrounded by her mother, bodyguards, and odd members of the crew, one of whom was now giving her mouth-to-mouth. And as I watched, a foggy, ethereal substance began to rise slowly from the star’s body like a snake from its charmer’s basket.

Rather than floating toward the ceiling, as a soul should, Eden’s seemed heavy, like it might sink to the ground around her instead. It was thick, yet colorless. And undulating through it were ribbons of darkness, swirling as if stirred by an unfelt breeze.

My breath caught in my throat, but I let it go almost immediately, because though I had no idea what that substance was, I knew without a doubt what it wasn’t.

Eden had no soul.




2


“WHAT IS THAT?” I whispered frantically, tugging Nash’s hand. “It’s not a soul. And if she’s dead, how come I’m not screaming?”

“What is what?” Nash hissed, and I realized he couldn’t see Eden’s not-soul. Male bean sidhes can only see elements of the Netherworld—including freed souls—when a female bean sidhe wails. Apparently the same held true for whatever ethereal sludge was oozing from Eden’s body.

Nash glanced around to make sure no one was listening to us, but there was really no need. Eden was the center of attention.

Tod rolled his eyes and pulled one hand from the pocket of his baggy jeans. “Look over there.” He pointed not toward the stage, but across it, where more people watched the spectacle from the opposite wing. “Do you see her?”

“I see lots of hers.” People scrambled on the other side of the stage, most speaking into cell phones. A couple of vultures even snapped pictures of the fallen singer, and indignation burned deep in my chest.

But Tod continued to point, so I squinted into the dark wing. Whatever he wanted me to see probably wasn’t native to the human world so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious.

And that’s when I found her.

The woman’s tall, slim form created a darker spot in the already-thick shadows, a mere suggestion of a shape. Her eyes were the only part of her I could focus on, glowing like green embers in the gloom. “Who is she?” I glanced at Nash and he nodded, telling me he could see her too. Which likely meant she was letting us see her …

“That’s Libby, from Special Projects.” An odd, eager light shone in blue eyes Tod usually kept shadowed by brows drawn low. “When this week’s list came down, she came with it, for this one job.”

He was talking about the reapers’ list, which contained the names and the exact place and time of death of everyone scheduled to die in the local area within a one-week span.

“You knew this was going to happen?” Even knowing he was a reaper, I couldn’t believe how different Tod’s reaction to death was from mine. Unlike most people, it wasn’t my own death I feared—it was everyone else’s. The sight of the deceased’s soul would mark my own descent into madness. At least, that’s what most people thought of my screaming fits. Humans had no idea that my “hysterical shrieking” actually suspended a person’s soul as it leaves its body.

Sometimes I wished I still lived in human ignorance, but those days were over for me, for better or for worse.

“I couldn’t turn down the chance to watch Libby work. She’s a legend.” Tod shrugged. “And seeing Addy was a bonus.”

“Well, thanks so much for dragging us along!” Nash snapped.

“What is she?” I asked as another cluster of people rushed past us—two more bodyguards and a short, slight man whose face looked pinched with professional concern and curiosity. Probably a doctor. “And what’s so special about this assignment?”

“Libby’s a very special reaper.” Tod’s short, blond goatee glinted in the blue-tinted overhead lights as he spoke. “She was called in because that—” he pointed to the substance the female reaper now was steadily inhaling from Eden’s body, over a twenty-foot span and dozens of heads “—isn’t a soul. It’s Demon’s Breath.”

Suddenly I was very glad no one else could hear Tod. I wished they couldn’t hear me, either. “Demon, as in hellion?” I whispered, as low as I could speak and still be heard.

Tod nodded with his usual slow, grim smile. The very word hellion sent a jolt of terror through me, but Tod’s eyes sparkled with excitement, as if he could actually get high on danger. I guess that’s what you get when you mix boredom with the afterlife.

“She sold her soul….” Nash whispered, revulsion echoing within the sudden understanding in his voice.

I’d never met a hellion—they couldn’t leave the Netherworld, fortunately—but I was intimately familiar with their appetite for human souls. Six weeks earlier, my aunt had tried to trade five poached teenage souls in exchange for her own eternal youth and beauty, but her plan went bad in the end, and she wound up paying in part with her own soul. But not before four girls died for her vanity.

Tod shrugged. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

Horror filled me. “Why would anyone do that?”

Nash looked like he shared my revulsion, but Tod only shrugged again, clearly unbothered by the most horrifying concept I’d ever encountered. “They usually ask for fame, fortune, and beauty.”

All of which Eden had in spades.

“Okay, so she sold her soul to a hellion.” That statement sound wrong in sooo many ways. … “Do I even want to know how Demon’s Breath got into Eden’s body in its place?”

“Probably not,” Nash whispered, as heavy black curtains began to slide across the front of the stage, cutting off the shocked, horrified chatter from the auditorium.

But as usual, Tod was happy to give me a morbid peek into the Netherworld—complete with irreverent hand gestures. “When the hellion literally sucked out her soul, he replaced it with his own breath. That kept her alive until her time to die. Which is why Libby’s here. Demon’s Breath is a controlled substance in the Netherworld, and it has to be disposed of very carefully. Libby’s trained to do that.”

“A controlled substance?” I felt my brows dip in confusion. “Like plutonium?”

Tod chuckled, running his fingers across a panel of dead electronic equipment propped against the wall. “More like heroin.”

I sighed and leaned into Nash, letting the warmth of his body comfort me. “The Netherworld is soooo weird.”

“You have no idea.” Tod’s curls bounced when he turned to face Libby again, where the lady reaper had now inhaled most of the sluggish Demon’s Breath. It swirled slowly into her mouth in a long, thick strand, like a ghostly trail of rotting spaghetti. “Come on, I want to talk to her.” He took off toward the stage without waiting for our reply, and I lunged after him, hoping he was solid enough to touch.

He was—at least for me. Though I was sure Nash’s hand would have gone right through the reaper.

“Wait.” I hauled him back in spite of the weird look I got from some random stagehand in a black tee. “We can’t just trot across the stage without being seen.” Though, there were certainly times I wished I could go invisible. Like, during P.E. The girls’ basketball coach was out to get me, I was sure of it.

“And I don’t think I want to meet this super-reaper.” Nash stuffed his hands in his front pockets. “The garden variety’s weird enough.”

Plus, most reapers hold no fondness for bean sidhes. The combined natural abilities of a male and female bean sidhe—the potential to return a soul to its body—are in direct opposition with a reaper’s entire purpose in life. Or, the afterlife.

Tod was the rare exception to this mutual species aversion, by virtue of being both bean sidhe and reaper.

“Fine, but don’t expect me to pass on any pearls of wisdom she coughs up….” Tod’s gaze settled on me, and his full, perfect lips turned up into a wicked smile. He knew he had me; I was trying to learn everything I could about the Netherworld, to make up for living the first sixteen years of my life in total ignorance, thanks to my family’s misguided attempt to keep me safe. And as creeped-out as I was by Eden’s sudden, soulless death, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to learn something neither Tod nor Nash could teach me.

“Nash, please?” I pulled his hand from his pocket and wound my fingers through his. I would go without him, but I’d rather have his company, and I was pretty sure I’d get it. He wouldn’t leave me alone with Tod, because he didn’t entirely trust his undead brother.

Neither did I.

I saw Nash’s decision in the frown lines around his mouth before he nodded, so I stood on my toes to kiss him. Excitement tingled along the length of my spine and settled to burn lower when our lips touched, and when I pulled away, his hazel eyes churned with swirls of green and brown, a sure sign that a bean sidhe was feeling something strong. Not that humans could see it.

Nash nodded again to answer my unspoken question. “Yours are swirling, too.”

I dared a grin in spite of the solemn circumstances, and Tod rolled his eyes at our display. Then he stomped off silently to meet this “special” reaper.

The fluttering in my stomach settled into a heavy anchor of dread as we followed Tod behind the stage, dodging shell-shocked technicians and stagehands on our way to the opposite wing. I needed all the information I could find about the Netherworld to keep myself from accidentally stumbling into something dangerous, but I didn’t exactly look forward to meeting more reapers. Especially the creepy, intimidating woman swallowing the ominous life-source that had kept Eden up and singing for who knew how long.

“So what makes this reaper such a legend?” I whispered, walking between Nash and Tod, whose shoes still made no sound on the floor.

For a moment, Tod gaped at me like I’d just asked what made grass green. Then he seemed to remember my ignorance. “She’s ancient. The oldest reaper still reaping. Maybe the oldest reaper ever. No one knows what name she was born with, but back in ancient Rome she took on the name of the goddess of death. Libitina.” I arched both brows at Tod. “So, you address the oldest, scariest grim reaper in history by a nickname?”

Tod shrugged, but I thought I saw him blush. Though, that could have been the red satin backdrop panels showing through his nearly translucent cheek. “I’ve never actually addressed her as anything. We haven’t officially met.”

“Great,” I breathed, rolling my eyes. We were accompanying Tod-the-reaper-fanboy to meet his hero. It couldn’t get any lamer without a Star Trek convention and an English-to-Klingon dictionary.

When we rounded the corner, my gaze found Libby just as she sucked the last bit of Demon’s Breath from the air. The end of the strand whipped up to smack her cheek before sliding between her pursed lips, and the ancient reaper swiped the back of one black-leather-clad arm across her mouth, as if to wipe a smudge of sauce from her face.

I didn’t want to know what kind of sauce Demon’s Breath swam in.

“There she is,” Tod said, and the eerie, awed quality of his voice drew my gaze to his face. He looked … shy.

My own intimidation faded in the face of the first obvious nerves I’d seen from the rookie reaper, and I couldn’t resist a grin. “Okay, let’s go.” I took Tod’s hand and had tugged him two steps in Libby’s direction before his fingers suddenly faded out of existence around my own.

I stopped and glanced down, irritated to see that he had dialed both his appearance and his physical presence down to barely-there, to escape my grasp. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing a little dignity wouldn’t fix,” Tod snapped. “So could we please not mob the three-thousand-plus-year-old reaper like tweens at a boy-band concert?” He ran transparent hands over his equally transparent tee and marched toward Libby with his shoulders square, evidently satisfied that his composure was intact.

He grew a little more solid with each step, and I glanced around, afraid someone would notice him suddenly appearing in our midst. But when his shoes continued to make no sound, I realized he hadn’t stepped into human sight. Not that it mattered. All eyes were glued to the stage, where the doctor still worked tirelessly—and fruitlessly—on Eden.

We followed Tod, and I knew by the sudden confidence in Nash’s step that he could now see his brother. And that he was probably secretly hoping Tod would do or say something stupid in front of the foremost expert in his field.

We caught up with him as he stopped, and since they were the same height, Libby’s bright green eyes stared straight into Tod’s blue with enough intensity to make even me squirm. “Hi,” Tod started, and I had to give him credit for not stuttering.

My own tongue was completely paralyzed.

Libitina was very old, very experienced, and clearly very powerful—all obvious in her bearing alone. She was also so impossibly beautiful that I was suddenly embarrassed by the makeup I’d probably sweated off during the concert and the long brown hair I could see frizzing on the edge of my vision, in spite of my efforts with a flatiron.

Libby wore a long, black leather trench coat, cinched at her tiny waist to show off slim hips. I would have said the coat was cliché for someone intimately involved with Death, except that as old as she was, she’d probably been wearing black leather much longer than it had been in vogue for hookers and superheroes alike.

Her hair was pulled back from her face in a severe ponytail that trailed tight, black curls halfway down her back. Her skin was dark and flawless, and so smooth I wanted to touch her cheek, just to assure myself she wasn’t as perfect as she looked. She couldn’t be.

Could she?

“Yes?” Libby said, her piercing gaze still trained on Tod. She hadn’t acknowledged either me or Nash, and I was suddenly sure that, like most reapers, she hated bean sidhes. Maybe we shouldn’t have tagged along after all.

Yet she hadn’t become invisible to us….

“My name is Tod, and I work for the local branch office.” He paused, and I was amused to realize Tod’s cheeks were blazing—and this time that had nothing to do with the stage backdrop. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

Libby scowled, and a chill shot up my spine. “You are dissatisfied with my services?” She bit off the ends of her words in anger, distorting an accent I couldn’t place, and we all three stepped back in unison, unwilling to stand in the face of her fury.

“No!” Tod held up both hands, and I was too busy choking on my own fear to be amused by his. “This has nothing to do with the local office. I’m off duty tonight. I’m just curious. About the process …”

Libby’s thin, black brows arched, and I thought I saw amusement flicker behind her eyes. “Ask,” she said finally, and suddenly I liked her—even if she didn’t like bean sidhes—because she could easily have made Tod feel about an inch tall.

Tod stuffed his hands into his pockets and inhaled slowly. “What does it feel like? Demon’s Breath. You hold it … inside. Right?”

Libby nodded briefly, then turned and walked away, headed toward a hallway identical to the one we’d followed to the stage.

We hesitated, glancing at one another in question. Then Tod shrugged and hurried after her. We actually had to jog to keep up as her boots moved silently but quickly over the floor.

“You breathe it in, deep into your lungs.” Her rich accent spoke of dead languages, of cultures long ago lost to the ravages of time and fickle memory. Her voice was low and gruff. Aged. Powerful. It sent shivers through me, as if I were hearing something I shouldn’t be able to. Something no one else had heard in centuries. “It fills you. It burns like frostbite, as if the Breath will consume your insides. Feed on them. But that is good. If the burning stops, you have held it too long. Demon’s Breath will kill your soul.”

The shivers grew until I noticed my hands trembling. I took Nash’s in my left, and shoved the right into my pocket.

A couple of technicians passed us carrying equipment, and Tod waited until they were gone to pose his next question. “How long do you have?” He paced beside the female reaper now. Nash and I were content to trail behind, just close enough to hear.

“An hour.” Her lips moved in profile against the white wall as she turned to half face him. “Any longer, and you risk much.”

“What do you do with it?” I asked—I couldn’t help it—and Libby froze in midstep. She pivoted slowly to look at me, and I saw time in her eyes. Years of life and death, and existence without end. The shivers in my hands became tremors echoing the length of my body.

I should not have drawn her attention.

“Who is this?” Libby faced Tod again.

“A friend. My brother’s girlfriend.” He nodded toward Nash, who stood tall beneath her hair-curling, nerve-crunching scrutiny. Then Libby whirled on one booted heel and marched on.

Cool relief sifted through me, and only then did I realize Tod hadn’t given her either of our names. Nash had practically beaten that precaution into him; it was never wise to give your name to Death’s emissaries. Though, if a reaper wanted to know your name, it was easy enough to find, especially in today’s world. Which is why it was also unwise to catch a reaper’s attention.

Sirens warbled outside the stadium then, and another gaggle of official-looking people rushed down the hall toward the stage, but Libby didn’t seem to notice them. “There are places for proper disposal of Demon’s Breath. In the Nether,” she added, as if there were any question about that.

“If a reaper wanted to get into that—collecting Demon’s Breath instead of souls—how might he get started?” Tod asked as we followed Libby around a sharp white corner, her feet silent on the slick linoleum.

“By surviving the next thousand years.” Her accent grew sharper, her words thick with warning. “If you still live then, find me. I will show you. But do not try it alone. Fools suffer miserable deaths, boy.”

“I won’t,” Tod assured her. “But it was awesome to watch.”

Libby stopped, eyeing him with a strange expression caught on her features, as if she didn’t quite know what she intended to say until the words came out. “You may watch again. I will return in five days.”

“For more Demon’s Breath?” I asked, and again her creepy green gaze slid my way, seeming to burn through my eyes and into my brain.

“Of course. The other fool will release hers on Thursday.”

“What other fool?” Tod demanded through clenched teeth, and I glanced at him, surprised by his sharp tone. His brows were furrowed, his beautiful lips thinned by dread.

“Addison Page. The singer,” Libby said, like it should have been obvious.

Tod actually stumbled backward, and Nash put a hand on his shoulder, but it went right through him. For a moment, I was afraid he’d fall through the featureless white wall. “Addy sold her soul?” Tod rubbed one hand across his own nearly transparent forehead. “Are you sure?”

Libby raised her brows, as if to ask if he were serious.

“When?”

“That is not my concern.” The reaper slid her slim, dark hands into the pockets of her coat, watching Tod with disdain now, as if her hunch that he wasn’t yet ready to collect Demon’s Breath had just been confirmed. “Mine is to gather what I come for and dispose of it properly. Time marches on, boy, and so must I.”

“Wait!” Tod grabbed her arm, and I wasn’t sure who was more surprised—Libby or Nash. But Tod rushed on as if he hadn’t noticed. “Addy’s going to die?”

Libby nodded, then disappeared without so much as a wink to warn us. She was just suddenly gone, yet her voice remained for a moment longer, an echo of her very existence.

“She will release the Demon’s Breath by taking her own life. And I shall be there to claim it.”




3


“ADDY SOLD HER SOUL.” Tod’s voice sounded odd. Distant. I think he was in shock. Or maybe that was just an echo from the empty hallway.

If a voice isn’t audible in the human range of hearing, can it echo?

“Um, yeah. Sounds like it,” I said. The very thought sent chills through me, and I rubbed my arms through my sleeves, trying to get rid of the goose bumps.

“She’s gonna kill herself.” Tod’s eyes were wide with panic and horror. I’d never seen him scared, and I didn’t like how fear pressed his lips into a tense, thin line and wrinkled his forehead. “We have to stop her. Warn her, or something.” Tod took off down the hall, and Nash and I ran after him. If we didn’t keep up, he’d disappear through a wall or something, and we’d never find him. At least, not in time to finish arguing with him.

“Warn her of what? That she’s going to kill herself?” Nash’s shoes squeaked as we rounded a corner. “Don’t you think she already knows that?”

“Maybe not.” Tod stopped when the hallway ended in a T, glancing both ways in indecision. “Maybe whatever’s supposed to drive her to suicide hasn’t happened yet.” He looked to the left again, then took off toward the right.

“Wait!” I lunged forward and grabbed his arm, relieved when my hand didn’t pass right through him. “Do you even know where you’re going?”

“No clue.” He shrugged, looking more like his brother in that moment than ever before. “I know where her dressing room is, but I don’t know how to get there from here, and I can’t just pop in without losing you two.”

I didn’t want to know how he knew where her dressing room was, but considering how often he’d gone invisible to spy on me, the answer seemed obvious.

“Yeah, physics is a real bitch.” Nash rolled his beautiful hazel eyes and leaned with one shoulder against the wall like he had nowhere better to be.

“You don’t have to wait for us.” As cool as it would have been to meet Addison Page, telling a rising star that she was going to end both her career and her life in less than a week was so not on my to-do list. “I think I’m going to sit this one out.” I propped my hands on my hips and glanced at Nash to see if he was with me, but he and Tod wore identical, half amused, half reluctant expressions. “What?”

“I’m dead, Kaylee.” Tod stopped in front of the first door we’d come to, his hand on the knob. “Addy came to my funeral. I can’t show up in her dressing room two years after I was buried and tell her not to kill herself. That would just be rude.”

I laughed at his idea of post-death etiquette, pretty sure that “rude” was a bit of an understatement. But I sobered quickly when his point sank in. “Wait, you want us to tell her?”

“If she sees me, she’ll freak out and spend the last days of her life in the psych ward.”

I bristled, irritated by the reminder of my own brief stay in the land of sedatives and straitjackets. “It’s called the mental health unit, thank you. And we are not going to go tell your famous ex-girlfriend to lighten up or she’ll be joining you six feet under. That would be rude.”

“She wouldn’t believe us, anyway,” Nash said, crossing his arms over his chest in a show of solidarity. “She’d probably call Security and have us arrested.”

“So make her believe you.” Tod gestured in exasperation. Like it’d be that easy. “I’ll be there to help. She just won’t be able to see me.”

I glanced at Nash and was relieved to see my reluctance still reflected in his features. As much as I wanted to help—to hopefully save Addison Page’s life—I did not want to be taken from her dressing room in handcuffs.

And my dad would be soooo pissed if he had to bail me out of jail.

But before I could even contemplate how bad that would be, something else sank in….

“Tod, wait a minute.” He let go of the knob when I stepped between him and the door, but his oddly angelic frown said he wasn’t happy about it. “How do we know this will even work? I mean, say she believes us and decides not to kill herself. Won’t she just die of some other cause next week, at the same time she would have killed herself? If her name’s really on the list, she’s going to die one way or another, right? You can’t stop Libby from coming for her, and frankly, I think you’d be an idiot to even try.”

Nash and Tod had explained to me how the whole death business works right after I found out I was a beansidhe, during the single most stressful week of my life. Evidently people come with expiration dates stamped on them at birth—much like food in the grocery store. It was the reapers’ job to enforce that expiration date, then collect the dead person’s soul and take it to be recycled.

As far as I knew, the only way to extend a person’s life was to exchange his or her death date for someone else’s, to keep life and death in balance. So if we saved Addison Page’s life—which, as bean sidhes, Nash and I could technically do—someone else would have to die in her place, and that someone could be anyone. Me or Nash, or some random, nearby stranger.

As much as I wanted to help both Tod and Addison, I was not willing to pay that price, nor would I ask someone else to.

Tod blinked at me, and while his scowl remained in place, his sad eyes revealed the truth. “I know.” He sighed, and his broad shoulders fell with the movement. “But I haven’t actually seen the list yet, so I’m not going to worry about that right now. What I am going to do is try to talk her out of suicide. But I need help. Please, guys.” His gaze trailed from me to Nash, then back.

Nash frowned and leaned against the wall beside the door again, striking the I-cannot-be-moved posture I recognized from several of our own past arguments. “Tod, you’re the one who says it’s dangerous for bean sidhes to mess in reaper business.”

“And that knowing when they’re going to die only makes a human’s last days miserable,” I added, perversely pleased by the chance to throw his own words back at him.

Tod shrugged. “I know, but this is different.”

“Why?” Nash demanded, his gaze going hard as he glared at Tod. “Because this time it’s an ex? One you’ve obviously never gotten over …”

Anger flashed across the reaper’s face, mirroring his brother’s, but beneath it lay a foundation of pain and vulnerability even he could not hide. “This is different because she sold her soul, Nash. You know what that means.”

Nash’s eyes closed for a moment, and he inhaled deeply. When he met Tod’s gaze again, his held more sympathy than anger. “That was her choice.”

“She didn’t know what she was getting into! She couldn’t have!” the reaper shouted, and I was floored by the depth of his anger and frustration. I’d never seen him put so much raw emotion on display.

“What was she getting into?” I glanced from brother to brother and crossed my own arms, waiting for an answer. I hate always being the clueless one.

Finally Nash sighed and turned his attention to me. “She sold her soul to a hellion, but he won’t have full use of it until she dies. When she does, her soul is his for eternity. Forever. He can do whatever he wants with it, but since hellions feed on pain and chaos, he’ll probably torture Addison’s soul—and thus what remains of Addison—until the end of time. Or the end of the Netherworld. Whichever comes first.”

My stomach churned around the dinner we’d grabbed before the concert, threatening to send the burger back up. “Is that what happened to the souls Aunt Val traded to Belphegore?” Nash nodded grimly, and horror drew my hands into cold, damp fists. “But that’s not fair. Those girls did nothing wrong, and now their souls are going to be tortured for all of eternity? “

“That’s why soul-poaching is illegal.” Tod’s voice was soft with sympathy and heavy with grief.

“Is selling your soul illegal, too?” A spark of hope zinged through me. Maybe Addison could get her soul back on a technicality!

But the reaper shook his head. “Souls can’t be stolen from the living. They can only be given away or sold by the owner, or poached after death, once they’re released from the body. There’s a huge market for human souls in the Netherworld, and what Addy did was perfectly legal. But she had no idea what she was getting into. She couldn’t have.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t decide whether I was more horrified for those four innocent souls or for my aunt, who’d given up her own soul to save her daughter’s. Or for Addison Page, who would soon suffer the same fate.

“We have to tell her.” I looked into Nash’s eyes and found the greens and browns once again swirling, this time with fear and reluctance, based on the expression framing the windows of his soul. “I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t at least try.”

“Kaylee, this is not our responsibility,” he said, his protest fortified with a solid dose of ordinary common sense. “The hellion already has her soul. What are we supposed to do?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we could help her break her demon contract, or something. Is that possible?”

Nash nodded reluctantly. “There are procedures built in, but Kaylee, it’s way too dangerous….” But he knew he couldn’t change my mind. Not this time. I could see it on his face.

“I can’t walk away and leave her soul to be tortured if there’s anything I can do to help. Can you?”

He didn’t answer, and his heavy silence frightened me more than the thought of the hellion waiting for full possession of Addison’s soul. Then he took my hand, and I exhaled deeply in relief. “Lead the way, reaper,” he said. “And you better hurry. With Eden dead, Addy probably won’t stick around for the finale.” The previous shows had each closed with a duet from Addison’s forthcoming album.

With Nash’s warning in mind, we wound our way through the backstage area, Tod popping into locked rooms and side hallways occasionally to make sure we were on the right track. He also popped into Addison’s dressing room twice, to make sure she was still there.

The closer we got, the more people we saw in the halls, and they were all talking about Eden’s onstage collapse. She’d been rushed to the hospital moments after we left the stage, and though the EMTs had been giving her CPR and mouth-to-mouth when they left, no one seemed to think she would live.

Which we already knew for sure.

Thanks to the badges around our necks, no one tried to throw us out, or even ask where we were headed, so when we finally made it to Addison’s dressing room, I couldn’t help thinking the whole thing had been too easy.

I was right. There was a security guard posted outside her door. He had a newspaper rolled up in one fist and biceps the size of cannons.

“Now what?” I whispered, bending for a drink from the water fountain twenty feet from the closed door.

“Let me make sure she’s still alone,” Tod said, and I flinched over how loud he was speaking until I realized no one else could hear him. “Then I’ll get rid of the guard.”

Before we could ask how he planned to do that, the reaper disappeared.

Nash and I strolled arm in arm down the hall, trying not to look suspicious, and I grew more grateful by the second that he’d come with us—because I would have done it even without him. The security guard wore sunglasses, though it was night and we were inside, so I couldn’t tell whether or not he was watching us, but I would have bet money that he was.

Out of nowhere, a hand touched my elbow, and Tod suddenly appeared at my side. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and the guard’s head swiveled slowly in my direction.

“Don’t do that!” I whispered angrily.

“Sorry,” Tod said. But he didn’t look very sorry. “Her mom’s in there with her now, but she’s about to leave to call the car.”

He’d barely spoken the last word when the dressing room door opened, and an older, darker version of Addison Page emerged. She nodded to the guard, then clacked off down the hall past us, without a word or a glance in our direction.

“Okay …” This time Tod whispered, as if setting the tone for the Acme tiptoe routine we were about to pull. “You guys duck into the bathroom around the corner. I’ll draw the guard away while you sneak into Addy’s room, then I’ll pop in with you. Get her attention fast, and don’t let her scream.”

But something told me that would be easier said than done.

“I’m gonna kill you if this goes bad,” Nash hissed as we followed the reaper around the corner toward the public restroom.

“It’s a little late for that,” Tod snapped. Then he was gone again.

I opened the door to the ladies’ room to make sure it was empty, then waved Nash inside and left the door slightly ajar. While he looked around in awe at the cleanliness and the fresh flowers, I peeked through the crack, waiting for some all-clear sign from Tod.

We’d only been in the bathroom a few seconds when rapid footsteps clomped toward us from the direction of Addison’s dressing room. Tod appeared around the corner, fully corporeal now, a wild grin on his face, the security guard’s newspaper tucked under one arm. The guard raced after him, but the poor man was obviously built for strength rather than speed, because Tod put more distance between them with every step.

“Get back here, you little punk!” the guard shouted, huge arms pumping uselessly at his sides.

Tod glanced at me as he passed the bathroom, and I could swear I saw him wink. Then he rounded the next corner, and the guard trailed after him.

As soon as they were gone, Nash and I jogged back to the dressing room, hearts pounding with exhilaration, afraid the guard would return at any moment. We stood in front of the door, hand in hand, and my pulse raced with nerves. Nash met my eyes, then nodded toward the doorknob.

“You do it,” I whispered. “She doesn’t know me, but she may remember you.”

Nash rolled his eyes but reached toward the door. His hand hesitated over the knob for a second, then I saw determination—or was that resignation?—flash across his face. He twisted the knob and opened the door in one smooth motion, so brash I almost envied his nerve.

He stepped inside and pulled me in with him, then closed the door.

I braced myself, expecting to hear Addison scream for Security. Instead, I heard nothing and saw no sign of Addison Page.

But her room was awesome. A rack of flashy costumes stood against one wall, beside a full-length stand-alone mirror. Which was next to a vanity lit by several large, frosted bulbs. In one corner stood a small round table covered in an array of meats, cheeses, fruit, and bite-size desserts. And in the center of the room, a couch and two chairs were gathered around a flat-screen television hooked up to a PlayStation 3.

But no Addison Page.

Nash glanced at me with his brows raised in question, and I shrugged. Then jumped when the sound of running water drew my focus to an open door I hadn’t noticed before. The dressing room had a private restroom. And Addison Page was in it.

“Is the car ready?” The singer stepped out of the restroom and crossed the floor toward her vanity, head tilted away from us as she pulled an earring from her left ear. Then she looked up and froze. For just a second, I thought she might actually scream. But then Nash spoke, and her features relaxed, just enough to hold true fear at bay.

“Hi, Addison,” he said, and his Influence flowed over the room like a warm, comforting breeze, smoothing her ruffled feathers and taking the edge off my own nerves. Male bean sidhes rocked the whole audio-anesthesia thing, whereas the females of our species sported only an eardrum-bursting scream.

Not fair, right? But convenient at times.

A brief flicker of annoyance flashed across Addison’s famous, pixieish features, replaced an instant later by a gracious, bright white smile. “Um, this isn’t really a good time. I’m on my way to the hospital to check on Eden,” she said, brushing back the blue streak in her pale hair while she grabbed a pen from the vanity. “But I guess I have time for a quick autograph.”

She thought we were fans. And she didn’t know Eden was dead. I wasn’t sure which misunderstanding to correct first, so I started with the lesser of two evils.

“Oh, we’re not fans.” I shrugged, stuffing my hands into my pockets. But then she frowned, and I realized how that had sounded. “I mean, we are fans. We love your music. But that’s not why we’re here.”

Her frown deepened. Even with Nash’s Influence, by my best guess, we had less than a minute before she would yell for the guard, who had surely returned to his post by now. “Then what do you want?” Addison narrowed beautiful, impossibly pale blue eyes, though her smile stayed friendly. Or at least cautious.

I glanced at Nash, hoping for some help, but he only shrugged and gestured for me to start talking. After all, I’d gotten him into this.

“We have to tell you something.” I hesitated, glancing at the couch. “Could we maybe sit down?”

“Why?” She was openly suspicious now, and her hand snuck into her pocket, where a bulge betrayed her cell phone. “Who are you?”

“My name is Kaylee Cavanaugh, and this is Nash Hudson. I think you two used to know each other.”

The lines in her brow deepened, and she propped one hand on her hip. “No, I … Wait. Hudson?” Understanding flickered behind her eyes.

Nash nodded.

“Tod’s brother.” Addison pulled her hand from her pocket and laid it across her chest, like she was crossing her heart. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I haven’t seen you since the funeral. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” Nash gave her a small, sad smile. “But you’re not.”

Alarm flashed across her face and her hand slid into her pocket again, her thin, gold chain-link bracelet pushed up her arm with the motion. “What is this?”

Before I could answer, Tod appeared at my side, still winded from his race with the security guard. “What’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” Nash said, having obviously heard, if not seen, him. “We haven’t told her yet.”

“Told who what?” Addison pulled the phone from her pocket and flipped it open, truly frightened now. “What’s going on?”

“Say something,” Tod urged, elbowing me. I glared at him, and Addison followed my gaze to … nothing. She couldn’t see him, and she obviously couldn’t hear him. “Start talking or she’s going to call someone.”

“I know!” I whispered, elbowing him back. There was no use pretending he wasn’t there on her account. She already thought we were nuts. “Addison, please sit down. We have to tell you something, and it’s going to sound very … strange.”

“It already does. I think you should go.” She edged toward the door, stretching one arm ahead of her, as if to point the way. “You’re creeping me out.”

“Do something!” Tod yelled this time, eyes wide and desperate.

Nash sighed heavily, and I knew what he was going to do a moment before the words left his mouth. But not soon enough to prevent them. “Okay, here’s the deal. You’re going to kill yourself in five days, and we’re here to talk you out of it.”

Addison blinked, and for a moment her fear gave way to confusion, then anger as her empty hand clenched the back of the sofa. “Get out. Now.”

“What, you couldn’t put a little Influence behind that one?” I snapped, glaring at Nash.

“Not if you want her to understand.” His gaze shifted past me to Tod. “I told you she wouldn’t listen.”

“Who are you talking to?” Addison demanded, her voice rising in both pitch and volume.

“You’re gonna have to show her,” I told Tod, hyper-conscious of the singer’s near panic. “She won’t listen to us, but she can’t ignore you.”

Tod glanced at Nash for a second opinion, but his brother only nodded, leaning with one hip against the arm of an overstuffed chair. “I don’t see any other way.”

Tod sighed, and I knew from the surprise on Addison’s face that she’d heard him. A second later she jumped backward and her free hand went to her throat in shock. “No …”

She could see him.




4


“ADDY, PLEASE DON’T freak out.” Tod held his hands palms out, as if to calm her.

“There’s another option?” Addison backed slowly toward her vanity, planting one wedge-heeled foot carefully behind the other with each step. “You’re dead. I saw you in your coffin.”

She had? I turned to Tod with one hand propped on my hip, surprised. “Wait, you were actually in the coffin?”

“Not for long,” he mumbled. Then, “Not the point, Kay.”

Oh, yeah. Soulless pop star contemplating suicide. Focus, Kaylee.

“Who are you?” Addison demanded. The backs of her thighs hit the vanity and she gripped the edge of it to steady herself. “How did you do that?”

It took me a second to realize she meant his sudden appearance out of nowhere. And maybe the whole coming-back-to-life thing.

“Addison, it’s Tod. You know it’s him,” I said, desperately hoping that was true. That she was even listening to me, though her shocked, wide-eyed gaze was glued to her undead ex-boyfriend.

Her breathing slowed and her pale blue eyes narrowed. She was studying him, probably trying to decide whether to freak out and shout for help, or to calm down and listen. I honestly don’t know which I would have chosen in her position. But then she shook her head once, as if she were trying to toss off sleep, and denial shone bright in her eyes again.

“No. You’re not him. You can’t be. This is some kind of joke, or stunt. I’m being Punk’d, right? Ashton, if you’re out there, this is not funny!” Her face flushed with anger, and tears formed in her eyes.

“You’re gonna have to prove it,” I whispered, glancing sideways at Tod.

He sighed, and I was impressed with how calm he stayed. “You know me, Addy. We went out for eight months in high school, back in Hurst, before you got the pilot. You were a freshman and I was a sophomore. Remember?”

Instead of answering, Addy crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. “Lots of people know that. I mentioned Tod in an interview once, and paparazzi followed me to his funeral. Nice try, but you’re done. Get out before I yell for Security.”

She talked about Tod to reporters? Wow. They must have been really close. …

“Addy, you remember our first date? You didn’t talk to the press about that, did you?”

She shook her head slowly, listening, though her arms remained crossed.

“We went to the West End for ice cream at Marble Slab, and we got a caricature done together by a guy with an easel set up on the sidewalk. I still have it. Then you got carsick on the way home and threw up on the side of the road. Do you remember? You didn’t tell anyone else about that, did you?”

She shook her head again, her eyes wide. “Tod?” Addison’s famous voice went squeaky, and broke on that one syllable. He nodded, and she hugged herself. “How …? That’s impossible. I saw you, and you were dead. You were dead!”

“Yeah, well, it turns out that’s not always as permanent as it sounds.” Nash spoke calmly, softly, and the tension in my own body seemed to ease at his first words. “He was dead. But he’s not anymore. Kind of.”

Addison’s shoulders relaxed as her gaze traveled from Tod to his still-living brother. “How? That doesn’t make sense.” Yet she wasn’t as upset by that as she should have been. With any luck, Nash could strike a balance between too-terrified-to-listen and too-relaxed-to-understand.

“It doesn’t make sense up here—” Nash tapped his temple “—but I think you know the truth inside. You’ve seen strange things, haven’t you, Addy?” His voice lilted up with the question and he stepped forward, capturing her gaze. “You sold your soul, and you must have seen some pretty weird stuff in the process….”

Addison’s shock broke through her mild daze for a moment, and she opened her mouth, but before she could ask how he knew about her soul, Nash continued. “But all of that was real, and so is this. So is Tod.”

Her gaze slid to the reaper again, and now that Nash had calmed her fear and quieted that stubborn human denial, I could tell she really saw him. “How did you … get here?”

The reaper shrugged, and mild mischief turned up the corners of his lips. “I distracted the guard at the door, then doubled back.” Addison frowned, then a small smile began at her mouth and spread to include those famous, eerily pale eyes. “I see death hasn’t killed your sense of humor.”

Though, the great dirt nap hadn’t exactly revived it, either….

She laughed over her own lame joke. “Wow. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to say.”

“So, are you okay with all this?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “Done freaking out?”

She shrugged and propped both hands at her waist. “I can’t promise there won’t be a relapse, but Tod’s clearly here and alive. I can’t really argue with the facts.”

I liked her already.

“So, can we sit?” Tod gestured toward the plush seating arrangement.

“Yeah.” Addy rounded one of the stiff-looking, green-upholstered armchairs and sank into it, waving a hand at the matching green-striped couch. “But my mom will be back in a few minutes, and she’s not going to take this anywhere near as well as I am.”

“No doubt,” Tod mumbled. He sat in the chair opposite Addy’s, while I took the couch. At Tod’s signal, Nash locked the door to give us warning when her mother returned, then he joined me on the couch. “You remember my brother, right?”

“Of course. Nash. It’s been a while.” She crossed her legs and smiled, as if we hadn’t come to discuss her immortal soul and impending suicide. Addison was much more poised than I would have been in her position, and I have to admit I was a little jealous of her composure. But then, maybe that was one of the advantages of being an actress.

That, and massive fame and fortune.

Her gaze slid my way, and she made actual eye contact. “And you’re Kaylee, right?”

I nodded and gave her a genuine smile. People hardly ever remembered my name after only one introduction. I was pretty forgettable. At least, when I wasn’t screaming.

Tod cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention, and I turned to see him watching Addison intently from the chair opposite hers. One impeccably solid foot tapped the thick carpet. “Addy, you can’t kill yourself,” he said, and it took the rest of us a second to absorb his abrupt launch into a conversation no one else seemed prepared for.

Addison recovered first. “Hadn’t planned to.” She shrugged and smiled, then launched into a question of her own. “So, how are you alive now, when you were dead two years ago? Did your mom freak out, or what?” Unbridled curiosity illuminated her flawless features better than any stage lights could have.

“It’s complicated.” Tod tugged briefly on the blond fuzz at the end of his chin. “I’ll tell you all about it later, but right now I just need to know you’re not going to kill yourself.” The gravity in his voice surprised me, and I’d never seen Tod look so frightened. So genuinely concerned for someone else. “Please,” he said, and that last word wrung a bruising pang of sympathy from my heart, though I wasn’t sure which of them I felt worse for: the soulless pop star with five days to live, or the reaper who would lose her again.

Addison’s brows furrowed. “I said I won’t. I love my life.” She spread her arms to take in the entire room, as if to ask who wouldn’t love her life.

Tod exhaled slowly, his features weighted by doubt and worry. He didn’t believe her. How could he, considering Libby’s inside information?

“Maybe she’s not planning it yet.” I shifted to lean against Nash’s chest. His arm wound around me, his fingers spread across my ribs, and my pulse raced in response. “Maybe whatever drives her to it hasn’t happened yet.”

Tod nodded, and his gaze went distant. “Yeah.” He turned back to Addison. “Is there anything wrong, Addy? You’re probably under a lot of stress. Is your mother pushing you into this? Are you on something? There were rumors a couple of months ago. ….”

“No.” Addison cut him off, her smile wilting like a cut flower. “Nothing’s wrong, Tod. Nothing serious, anyway. There’s pressure, but that’s true no matter who you are or what you do.”

Isn’t that the truth. …

“And am I on something …?” Her brows formed a hard line, and she clenched the arms of her chair, bracelet pressed into the upholstery. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that, with my mom still strung out on those damn pain pills.”

Tod sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. I’d never seen him look so tense. So worried. “Is it bad again?”

Addy twisted her bracelet. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“You sure?” Tod asked, obviously thinking the same thing I was. A strung-out parent could be a lot of stress. Especially for someone like Addison Page, for whom privacy was only a vague concept.

“As sure as I am that you’re sitting there.” Addy forced an awkward laugh at her own joke, and the reaper rolled his eyes. “Nothing’s wrong, Tod. Other than Eden collapsing onstage. We’re going to see her in a couple of minutes.” She paused and glanced at the hands now twisted together in her lap. “You guys want to come? I don’t think they’ll let you in to see her, but I could use the company.”

“Addison …” I began, but then hesitated. I’d never been the bearer of such bad news before, but someone had to tell her. “Eden died onstage.”

Addison shook her head in echo of her earlier denial. “How do you know …?” She stopped as something occurred to her, and glanced at both of the guys. “Does this have anything to do with me … killing myself?”

I deferred to Tod, unsure about that one.

“We don’t know,” he said finally. “But, Addy, I need you to promise me….”

Suddenly the doorknob turned behind us, and was followed by a wooden thunk when someone walked into the door, obviously expecting it to open. “Addy?” a woman’s nasal voice called. “What are you doing? Open the door.”

Addison stood so quickly my head spun, rubbing her palms nervously on the sides of her jeans. “Just a minute, Mom,” she called. “I’m … in the bathroom.”

I stood and pulled Nash off of the couch, my pulse racing now. No human mother—even one strung out on painkillers—would understand what we’d come to tell Addy. But Tod could go invisible, and Nash and I could pretend to be fans.

If Addison hadn’t already panicked and lied …

She glanced at the door in dread, but before she could say anything else, Tod grabbed her hand. “Addy, promise me that no matter what happens, you won’t kill yourself. Promise me.”

“I …” Addison’s gaze flicked from his face, lined in desperation, to the door, which her mother was now pounding on.

“Addison Renee Page, let me in right now! My nose is bleeding!”

“Are you okay in there?” her bodyguard called, and the knob twisted again.

Nash tugged me toward the wall, either to give the ex-couple more space or to put us out of the line of fire when the door gave way.

“Promise me!” Tod hissed, loud enough that I knew he’d gone inaudible to everyone outside the room. “You do not want to die without your soul. Trust me on this.”

Addy’s breaths came rapidly. Her jugular vein stood out in her neck, jiggling wildly in fear and confusion. Her voice was an uneven whisper. “How do you guys know about that?”

“The same way we know Eden’s dead.” Tod pulled her close, speaking almost directly into her ear, his voice low and gravelly with fear. “Addison, if you die while that hellion has your soul, he’ll give you form in the Netherworld and will own you forever. Forever, Addy. He’ll feed on your pain. He’ll slice you open and let you bleed. He’ll wear your intestines around his neck and peel your skin off inch by inch while you scream.”

Tears formed in Addison’s eyes, and her hands began to shake as she tried to push Tod away. But he wasn’t done. “He’ll twist your sanity with your own memories. He’ll exploit your every fear, and every twinge of guilt you’ve ever felt. Then he’ll heal you—inside and out—and start all over again.”

Tod held her at arm’s length so he could see her, and I jumped in, hissing softly as I tried to pull him away from her while Nash tried to hold me back. “Tod, stop it! You’re scaring her!” And me.

But he meant to. He was scaring her to keep her alive. Though surely he knew such an effort was pointless. He’d taught me that you can’t cheat death. Not without paying the price …

“Addison!” Ms. Page shouted from outside the door, and a fresh jolt of alarm shot up my spine and raced down my limbs. “Open up or I’ll have Roger break down the door.” But this time we barely heard her.

“You’re serious?” Addison’s terrified gaze was glued to Tod, her hands shaking worse than ever.

He nodded. “You have to get out of it, Addy. Get your soul back. There’s an out-clause in your contract, right? That’s hellion law. There has to be an out-clause.”

Oh. He wasn’t just trying to save her life, which was probably impossible, anyway. He was trying to save her soul.

Addison nodded, tears rolling down her face. “Eden did it, too,” she sobbed softly. “Is she … Does he … have her now?”

Tod nodded and let her go, then wrapped his arms around her when she collapsed against him. “They didn’t tell us that. About the torture.” She sniffled against his shoulder. “They just said humans don’t need their souls, and that if we sold ours, we could have everything. Everything.” She shook silently, then stepped back to look at him, eyes flashing with terror and indignation. Delirium, maybe. “He said we don’t need souls!”

“You don’t need them to keep you alive,” Nash said softly. “Demon’s Breath will do that just as well. But while a hellion has your soul, you can’t move on. You’ll be stuck there, a plaything for whoever owns you.”

“You have to get it back, Addison,” I ventured, hugging myself in horror. I hadn’t known much about hellions, either. “You have to get your soul back, with this … out-clause.” Whatever that was.

Addison eyed Tod fiercely, clutching at his arms. “Help me!” she begged softly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. You have to help me. Please!” She glanced over his shoulder at me and Nash. “All of you, please!”

I had no idea what to say, but Tod nodded. “Of course we will.”

Nash went stiff at my side, but before he could protest, more shouting came from the hallway.

“Okay, break it down!” the stage mother called, and Addison glanced around frantically, probably looking for somewhere to hide us.

“Wait, I’m coming!” she shouted. “Here,” she whispered, pulling me toward the door by my arm. Nash followed, and she pressed us against the wall behind the door, so we’d be hidden when it opened. She tried to pull Tod into line with us, but he only smiled and shook his head.

“I can hide myself.” He forced a smile, and Addy nodded, wiping tears from her face with her bare hands.

“Oh, yeah.” She hesitated, then glanced at the door again. “Just a minute, Mom!” Then she turned to Tod and whispered, “I’m staying at the Adolphus, as Lisa Hawthorne. Call me tomorrow night and I’ll sneak you guys up. Please?”

Tod nodded, but his smile was grimmer than I’d ever seen it. “I’ll call you at eight.”

“Thank you,” she mouthed.

Tod winked at me and Nash, then blinked out of sight. Addy pressed one finger to her mouth in the world-wide signal for “shhhh,” then unlocked the door and pulled it open.

“Mom! Are you okay? What happened?” Shoes brushed the carpet as she ushered her mother to the bathroom, but all I could see was the back of the door, an inch from my nose. Nash’s hand curled around mine, and our pulses raced together.

“I didn’t expect your door to be locked,” her mother snapped as water ran, and I couldn’t resist a grin. “Addy, you look like a tomato. Have you been crying?”

“I’m just worried about Eden. Hurry and get cleaned up so we can go.” More footsteps brushed toward us, and Addy called out, “Roger, can you go get some wet rags or something?”

“Sure, Ms. Page,” a deep voice said from outside the room. Heavy footsteps headed away, and Addy swung the door open, signaling the all clear.

I spared her one last, sympathetic smile, then Nash tugged me into the hall, still blessedly deserted.

We speed-walked through the maze of hallways, through the empty auditorium, and out to the half-empty parking lot, where Tod leaned against the closed passenger door of their mother’s car.

Nash’s hand went stiff in mine the moment he saw the reaper, and Tod had his hands up to ward off his brother’s anger long before we got within hearing distance. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked, before either of us could get a word out.

“Not my problem!” Nash tried to shove Tod out of the way so he could unlock my door, but the reaper went non-corporeal at the last second, and Nash went right through him. His shoulder slammed into the car just above the window, and when he turned, anger blazed in his swirling eyes. “You could have done anything! Except tell her we’d get her soul back for her.”

He pulled open the passenger side door and shoved it closed when I was settled in my seat and was still yelling when he opened his own door. “How are we supposed to do that? Wander around the Netherworld asking random hellions if they took possession of a human pop star’s soul, and if so, would they please consider giving it back out of the kindness of their decayed hearts?”

Nash slid into his seat and slammed the door, leaving Tod alone in the dark parking lot with a handful of humans now watching us warily. He turned the key in the ignition, shifted into Drive, then took off across the asphalt, headed toward the exit with his parking receipt already in one fist.

As soon as we turned out of the lot, something caught my eye from the side-view mirror and I twisted in my seat to see Tod staring back at me, his usual scowl unusually fierce. “Don’t do that!” I said, for at least the thousandth time since we’d met. “Normal people don’t get in the car while it’s still moving!”

Nash glared at him in the rearview mirror. “But as long as you’re here, you need to understand something, and I’m only going to say this once—we are not tracking down Addison Page’s soul. It’s not our responsibility, and we wouldn’t even know where to start. But most important, it’s—too. Damn. Dangerous.”

“Fine,” Tod said through teeth clenched with either fear or anger. Or both.

“What?” Nash stopped for a red light and glanced in the mirror again, his brows low in confusion. He’d obviously expected an argument, as had I.

Tod shifted on the cloth seat, his corporeal clothes rustling with the movement. “I said fine. This is my problem, not yours. I’ll do it myself.”

“This isn’t your problem, either,” Nash insisted, and I turned in my seat again so I could see them both at once. “She sold her soul of her own free will for fame and fortune. The contract is legally binding, and it has a legally binding out-clause. Let her get it back herself.” He stomped on the gas when the light changed, and the tires squealed beneath us as I grabbed the armrest.

“She didn’t know what she was doing, Nash, and she still doesn’t.” Tod leaned forward, glaring into the rearview mirror. “She has no idea what rights she has in the Netherworld, and she can’t even get there on her own. The out-clause is no good if you can’t enforce it. You know that.”

“Wait …” I loosened my seat belt and found a more comfortable sideways position as dread twisted my stomach into knots a scout couldn’t untie. “She really can’t do this on her own?”

Tod shook his head. “She doesn’t stand a chance.”

I sighed and sank back into my seat.

Nash glanced away from the road long enough to read my expression, shadows shifting over his face as we drove under a series of streetlights. “No, Kaylee. We can’t. We could get killed.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the headrest. “I know.”

“No!” he repeated, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, jaw clenched in either fear or anger. Probably both.

“Nash, we have to. I have to, anyway.” I stared at his profile, desperate for the words to make him understand. “I couldn’t save the souls Aunt Val sold. Heidi, and Alyson, and Meredith, and Julie are going to be tortured forever, because I couldn’t save them.” My throat felt thick, and my voice cracked as tears burned my eyes.

“Kaylee, that’s not your fau—”

“I know, but, Nash, I can help Addison. I can stop the same thing from happening to her.” I wasn’t sure how, but Tod wouldn’t have offered our help if there was nothing we could do. Right? “I have to do this.”

Nash clutched the wheel even tighter, and he looked like he wanted to twist it into a pretzel. Then he exhaled, and his hands relaxed. He’d made his decision, and I held my breath, waiting for it. “Fine. If you’re in, I’m in.” His focus shifted to the rearview mirror, where he glared at Tod. “But I’m in this for Kaylee, not for you, and not for your idiot pop princess.” The look he shot me then was part disappointment, part anger, part loyalty, and all Nash. His gaze scalded me from the inside out, and I squirmed in my seat as that heat settled low within me.

But when he turned back to the road, the flames sputtered beneath a wash of cold fear. Nash would get involved for me, but the truth was that I had no idea what I was doing.

What had I just gotten us into?




5


“OKAY, KAYLEE, FOCUS….” Harmony Hudson, Nash’s mother, leaned forward on the faded olive couch, licking her lips in concentration as she watched me. She wore jeans and another snug tee, her blond curls pulled into the usual ponytail, a few ringlets hanging loose around her face. Harmony was the hottest mom I’d ever personally met. She looked thirty years old, at the most, but I’d seen her blow out her birthday candles a month earlier.

All eighty-two of them.

“Close your eyes and think about the last time it happened,” she continued, and I sucked in a lungful of the fudge-brownie-scented air. “The last time you knew someone was going to die.”

And that’s where I lost my motivation. I didn’t want to think about the last time. It still gave me nightmares.

Pale brows dipped low over Harmony’s bright blue eyes—exact copies of Tod’s—and her dimple deepened when she frowned. “What’s wrong?”

I stared at the scarred hardwood floor. “Last time was … with Sophie and Aunt Val.”

“Oh.” Harmony’s eyes took on a familiar glint of wisdom, which, at first glance, seemed at odds with her youthful appearance. She was there when the rogue reaper killed my cousin and tried to take her soul. She saw my aunt give her life instead of Sophie’s—a lastminute act of courage and selflessness that had gone a long way toward redeeming her in my eyes.

Until I’d learned that the other souls she’d sold to Belphegore would be tortured for eternity along with my aunt’s. Now I was leaning decidedly toward the Aunt-Val-deserved-what-she-got school of thought.

Harmony watched emotions flit across my face, but as usual, she reserved her own judgment. That was why I liked her. Well, that, and the fact that she always had fresh-baked goodies ready to be devoured after our how-to-be-a-bean-sidhe lessons. “Okay, then, pick a different time. Just think back to any death premonition. One that was less traumatic.”

But the truth was that they were all traumatic. I’d only known I was a bean sidhe for six weeks, and so far every premonition I’d ever suffered through had thoroughly freaked me out. And every wail was largely uncontrollable.

Thus the lessons.

“Okay.” I closed my eyes and leaned against the soft, faded couch cushions, thinking back to the most memorable premonition—other than that last one. Emma.

My best friend’s death had been unbearably awful, made even worse because I’d known it was coming. I’d seen Em wearing the death shroud for at least two minutes before she collapsed on the gym floor, surrounded by hundreds of other students and parents, gathered to mourn a dead classmate.

But I chose Emma’s death to focus on because hers had a happy ending.

Okay, a bittersweet ending, but that was better than the screaming, panicking, clawing-my-way-out-of-the-Netherfog ending most of them had. I’d suspended Emma’s soul above her body with my wail to keep it from the reaper who’d killed her, while Nash had directed it back into her body. Emma had lived.

But someone else had died instead. That was the price, and the decision we’d made. I’d felt guilty about it ever since, but I’d do it all over again if I had to, because I couldn’t let Emma die before her time, no matter who took her place.

So two months later I sat on Nash’s couch beside his mother, picturing my best friend’s death.

Emma, in the gym, several steps ahead. Voices buzzing around us. Nash’s arm around my waist. His fingers curled over my hip. Then the death shroud.

It smeared her blond hair with thin, runny black, like a child’s watercolors. Streaks smudged her clothes and her arms, and the scream built inside me. It clawed at my throat, scraping my skin raw even as I clenched my jaws shut, denying it exit.

As in memory, so in life.

The scream rose again, and my throat felt full. Hot. Bruised from the inside out.

My eyes flew open in panic, and Harmony stared calmly back at me. She smiled, a tiny upturn of full lips both of her sons had inherited. “You’ve got it!” she whispered, eyes shining with pride. “Okay, now here comes the hard part.”

It gets harder?

I couldn’t ask my question because once a bean sidhe‘s wail takes over, her throat can be used for nothing else until that scream has either burst loose or been swallowed. I couldn’t swallow it—not without Nash’s voice to calm me, to coax my birthright into submission—and I wasn’t willing to let it loose. Never again, if I could help it.

This lesson was on harnessing my wail. Making it work for me, rather than the other way around. So I nodded, telling Harmony I was ready for the hard part.

“Good. I want you to keep a tight rein on it. Then let it out a little at a time—like a very slow leak—without actually opening your mouth. Only keep the volume down. You want to just barely hear it.”

Because the whole point was for me to be able to see and hear the Netherworld through my wail, without humans noticing anything weird. Like me screaming loud enough to shatter their minds. But that was easier said than done, especially considering how much time I’d spent trying to hold back my wail. Evidently suppressing it completely and letting just a little leak through were two very different skill sets.

But I tried.

Keeping my lips sealed, I opened my throat a tiny bit, forcing my jaws to relax. That’s where the whole thing went downhill. Instead of that little leak of sound Harmony had mentioned, the entire wail ruptured from my throat, shoving my mouth open wide.

My screech filled the room. The entire house. My whole body hummed with the keening, a violent chord of discordant sounds no human could have produced. My head throbbed, my brain seeming to bounce around within my skull.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t take it.

Cold, smooth fingers brushed my arm, and I opened my eyes again to find Harmony speaking to me. The room around her had become a blur of colors and textures, thanks to my inability to focus on it. Her pretty face was twisted into a constant wince of pain from the shards of steel my scream was no doubt driving into her brain. Male bean sidhes hear a female’s wail as an eerie, beautiful soul song. They crave the sound, and are pulled toward it. Almost seduced by it.

Female bean sidhes hear it as it is. As humans hear it. As a titanic racket loud enough to deafen, and sharp enough to shatter not just glass, but your ever-loving sanity.

Harmony glanced at her living-room window, the glass trembling in its frame. Because we shared a gender and species—though I was fuzzy on exactly how the whole thing worked—I could hear her words through my own screaming, but they sounded like they came from within my own head.

Calm down. Take a breath. Close your mouth….

I snapped my jaws shut, muffling the sound, but not eradicating it. It buzzed in my mouth now, rattling my teeth, and still seeped out like a moan on steroids. But I could hear her normally now.

“Breathe deeply, Kaylee,” Harmony soothed, rubbing my arms until goose bumps stood up beneath my sleeves. “Close your eyes and draw it back in. All but that last little bit.”

I let my eyelids fall, though that small effort took a lot of courage, because closing my eyes meant blocking her out and embracing my own private darkness. Being alone with the ruthless keening. With the memory of Emma’s death, before I’d known it would be temporary.

But I did it.

“Okay, now pull it back. Deep inside you. Picture swallowing your wail—forcing it down past your throat into your heart. You can set it free in there. Let it bounce around. Ricochet. The human heart is a fragile thing, all thin vessels and delicate pumps. But the bean sidhe heart is armored. It has to be, for us to survive.”

I pictured my heart with iron plating. I forced my arms to relax, my hands to fall into my lap. I listened to my wail as it seeped from my throat, forcing myself to hear each inharmonic note individually. And slowly, painfully, I drew them back into myself. Forced them down into my center.

I felt the wail in my throat, in reverse. It was tangible, and the sensation was eerie. Downright creepy. It was like swallowing smoke, if smoke were sharp. Prickly, as if it were bound in thorns.

When I’d swallowed all but the thinnest, most insubstantial thread, I felt a smile spread slowly from the corners of my mouth to my cheeks, then into my eyes. I heard only a ribbon of sound, so faint it could have been my imagination. My shoulders slumped as an odd peace filtered through me, settling into each limb. I’d done it. I called up my wail when I needed it, and restricted it on my own terms.

I opened my eyes, already grinning at Harmony. But my grin froze, then shattered before my gaze had even focused.

Harmony smiled back at me, curls framing her face, her dimples piercing cheeks that should have been rosy with good health and good cheer. But now they were gray. As was everything else. A hazy, foglike filter had slipped over my vision while I was modifying my wail, like my eyes had been opened farther than should have been possible.

The Nether-fog. A veil between our world and the Netherworld.

A female bean sidhe’s wail allows her—and any other bean sidhes near enough to hear her—to see through the fog into both the human world and that other, somehow deeper one simultaneously. Or to travel from one to the other.

My head turned, my eyes wide with horror. I wanted to learn about the Netherworld, but had no interest in going there!

“Kaylee? It’s okay, Kaylee. Do you see it?” Harmony’s words were smooth and warm like Nash’s, but bore none of the supernatural calm his could carry. Harmony and I shared a skill set, and while Nash’s voice could soothe and comfort human and bean sidhe alike, ours summoned darkness, and heralded pain and death.

Nash and I were two sides of the same weird coin, and I didn’t like wailing without him.

My heart galloped within my chest, skipping some beats and rushing others, unable to find a steady rhythm. My palms dampened with sweat, and I rubbed them on the threadbare couch cushions, both to dry them and to anchor myself to the only reality I understood. The only truth I wanted any part of.

“Kaylee, look at me!” Harmony stroked my hand as she leaned to the side to place herself in my field of vision. “This is supposed to happen. I’m right here with you, and everything is fine.”

No-no-no-no-no! But I couldn’t speak as long as that last thread of sound still trailed from me. I could only glance around in panic at the fog layering Nash’s house like a coat of dust too fine to settle. It hung in the air over Harmony’s battered coffee table and old TV, darkening my world, my vision, and my heart.

My pulse raced, and each breath came faster than the last. I knew the pattern. First came the gloom, then came the creatures. I’d seen them before. Beings with too many or too few limbs. With joints that bent the wrong way, or didn’t bend at all. Some had tails. Some didn’t have heads. But the worst were the ones with no eyes, because I knew they were watching me. I just didn’t know how. …

Yet no creatures appeared. Harmony and I were alone in her house in the human world, and somehow alone in the Netherworld.

With that realization came the calm I craved. My tension eased, and my wail faded, thoughts of Emma’s death melting into my memory to be used again when they were needed. Or better yet, forgotten.

The haze cleared slowly, until Harmony came into focus. Her hair looked more golden than ever, her eyes much brighter than I remembered in contrast to the drab shades of gray that had covered her moments earlier. “You okay?” she asked, forehead pinched with worry.

“Yeah. Sorry.” I rubbed both hands over my face, tucking my own limp brown strands behind my ears. “I knew it was coming, but it still scared the crap out of me. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

“Yes you will.” She smiled and stood, motioning for me to follow her into the kitchen. “It gets easier with practice.”

That’s what I was afraid of.

Harmony waved an arm at the round breakfast table, and I pulled out a ladder-back chair with clear finish chipping off the back and one missing rung while she headed for the oven. The timer blinking above the stove was counting back with thirty-eight seconds to go, and it never failed to amaze me how Harmony always knew when it was about to go off. That timer had never once interrupted one of our lessons, and none of her treats had ever come out over-or underdone.

Unlike the cookies I’d baked two nights earlier.

“There’s soda in the fridge.” She slid her hand into a thick glove-shaped pot holder and pulled the oven door open.

“How ‘bout milk?” I like milk with my chocolate.

“Top shelf.” She pulled a glass pan of brownies from the oven and slid it onto a wire cooling rack on the counter. I took a short glass from the cabinet over the sink and filled it with milk, then sat at the table again while she poured one for herself.

“So, explain to me why I needed to learn to do that?” I sipped from my glass, suddenly grateful for cold, white milk, and all things normal and this-worldly.

Harmony shot me a sympathetic smile as she slid the carton onto the top shelf of the fridge, then swung the door shut. “It’s mostly to help you learn to control your wail. If you can manipulate it on your own terms, you should be able to avoid screaming your head off in front of a room full of humans.”

Because humans tend to lock up girls who can’t stop screaming. Trust me.

“But other than that, it’s helpful to be able to peek into the Netherworld when you need to. Though, I wouldn’t suggest trying it unless you have to. The less you’re noticed by Netherworlders, the easier your life will be.”

She’d get no argument from me on that one. But I was curious on one point….

“So … why were we alone?”

“While you were wailing?” Harmony crossed the linoleum toward me and pulled out the chair next to mine while I nodded. “Well, first of all, we weren’t really there. We were just peeking in. Like watching the bears at the zoo through that thick glass wall. You can see them and they can see you, but no one can cross the barrier.”

“So the Netherworlders could see us?”

“If anyone had been there, yes.” She sipped from her glass again.

“So how come no one was there?”

“Because this is a private residence. Those only exist on one plane or the other. Only large, public buildings with heavy traffic exist in both worlds.”

“Like the school?” I was thinking of all the weird creatures I’d seen when I peeked into the Netherworld from the gym, the day Emma died. “Or the mall?” That one brought even worse memories.

“Yeah. Schools, offices, museums, stadiums. Anywhere there are lots of people most of the time.”

I frowned and took another sip of my milk as a new worry occurred to me. “How would I actually go there?”

“You wouldn’t.” Harmony’s blue eyes were suddenly dark and hard, as if the sky had clouded over. They didn’t swirl, because she had more than eighty years’ experience hiding her emotions, but I could tell she was worried. “Kaylee, you have no business in the Netherworld.”

Let’s hope you’re right.

“I know.” I smiled to set her at ease. “I just want to make sure I don’t wind up there accidentally, practicing what I learned today.”

She relaxed at my explanation, and the light flowed back into her eyes. “You won’t. The difference between looking through the glass and stepping through it is all a matter of intent. You have to want to go there to be there.”

“That’s it?” I frowned as she stood and rummaged through a drawer, clanging silverware together in search of something. “Have desire, will travel?” It couldn’t be that easy. Or that scary.

“Well, that and the soul song.”

Of course. I felt the tension in my body ease, and I took another short sip of my milk, saving the rest to wash down my brownie.

Harmony finally pulled a knife from the drawer, followed by a long, thin metal spatula. She ran the knife across the glass dish, cutting the brownies into large, even squares.

“Harmony?”

“Hmm?” She slid the spatula under the first square and lifted it carefully out of the pan and onto a small paper plate. She liked baking but hated doing dishes.

“How can someone live without a soul?” “What?” Harmony froze with a brownie crumb halfway to her mouth, the spatula still in her other hand. “Why are you …? What’s going on, Kaylee?” Her eyes narrowed, and I felt guilty for making her worry.

I decided to tell her the truth. Part of it, anyway. “Nash and I saw Eden’s concert last night in Dallas, remember?”

“Of course.” Fear drained from her features again, and she scooped an extra-large brownie onto the second plate, then carried them both to the table, without forks. The Hudsons ate their brownies the proper way—with their fingers. My aunt would have thrown a fit, but I was enjoying being converted.

“I saw that on the news this morning.” She set one plate in front of me, then sank into her chair with the other, smaller square. Her eyes brightened as the next piece of the puzzle slid into place. “Are you saying Eden died without her soul?”

I nodded, then chewed, swallowed, and washed the first rich bite down with a sip of milk before answering. “It was weird. She dropped dead right there on the stage, but I thought she’d just passed out, because there was no premonition. No death shroud. No urge to wail. But Tod said she was dead, and sure enough, a few seconds later, this weird, dark stuff floated up from her body. Too dark and heavy-looking to be a soul.”

“Demon’s Breath, probably.” Harmony took another bite, licking a crumb from her lip before she chewed.

“That’s what Tod said.” I twisted my half-full glass of milk on the table. “That Eden sold her soul to a hellion.”

She shrugged and brushed a ringlet back from her forehead. “That’s the only explanation I can think of. A soul can’t be taken from a living being. It can be stolen after a person’s death—” or murder, as with Aunt Val’s victims “—or it can be given up willingly by its owner. But then something else has to take its place, to keep the body alive. Usually, that something else is Demon’s Breath.”

“But I thought a person’s soul is what determines his life span. If Eden’s was gone, how did the reapers know when she was supposed to die?”

Harmony held up one finger as she swallowed, and I bit another huge, unladylike bite from my brownie. She wiped her lips on a paper towel, already shaking her head. “A person’s soul doesn’t determine how long he or she lives. The list does.”

“So … where does the list come from? Who decides when everyone has to die?”

Harmony raised one brow, like she was impressed. “Now you’re asking the good questions. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for that one. But maybe that’s a good thing….”

I frowned, twisting my used napkin into a thin paper rope. “What do you mean?”

“No one actually knows who makes out the list. No one I know, anyway.” She sipped from her cup before continuing. “Maybe the Fates traded in their thread and scissors for a pen and paper. Maybe the list comes from some automated printer in a secure room none of us will ever see. Maybe it comes straight from God. But there has to be a reason we don’t know the specifics, and frankly, I’m pretty blissful about that particular nugget of ignorance.”

“Me, too.” I wasn’t exactly eager to see whoever plotted my lifeline; I’d kind of drawn the short straw on that one. Though, it was very likely I’d live longer than I would have as a regular human.

“All we really know is that upsetting the balance between life and death is not an option. Somebody has to die for every entry on the list. Fortunately, there’s a little wiggle room for special circumstances.” Harmony hesitated, then met my eyes before continuing. “Which is how your mom was able to trade her death date for yours.”

I cleared my throat and swallowed my last bite, trying to swallow my guilt along with it. I was supposed to die when I was three, but my mother took my place. I hadn’t known the truth about her death until I discovered my bean sidhe heritage and my family was finally forced to tell me everything. Despite their insistence that what happened to my mom was not my fault, the fact was that if it weren’t for me, she’d still be alive.

Guilt was inevitable. Right?

“Considering the sacrifice your mom made for you, I find it hard to understand how Eden—or anyone else for that matter—could possibly see her own soul as acceptable currency. As payment for something else.”

I shrugged and dropped my wadded-up napkin on my empty plate. “I don’t think she understood what she was getting into. Humans don’t know about any of this.”

“They’re supposed to know, before they sign the contract. Hellion law requires full disclosure. But who knows if the poor fool actually read her contract before signing. What a waste.” Harmony shook her head in disappointment and pushed the rest of her brownie toward me. “So much potential, squandered. For what, do you know?”

I shook my head, staring at her plate. I’d lost my appetite.

My best guess would be that Eden sold her soul for fame and fortune, but I didn’t know for sure. All I knew for certain was that she was probably regretting that decision now, and that if we couldn’t get Addison’s soul back in four days, she would suffer the same fate. I would not let that happen.




6


“SO, WHAT’S WITH THE FAKE name at the hotel? She’s avoiding the press?” I tried to distract myself as I typed “hellion” into the search bar at the top of my laptop screen, then tapped the enter key. Links filled the screen faster than I could read the entries, and my vision started to blur with exhaustion. I hadn’t slept very well the night before, thanks to nightmares of dead girls being tortured in the Netherworld, and had poured the last of my energy into my bean sidhe lesson that afternoon.

“I guess.” Nash leaned back on my bed and I watched him in the mirror, my heart tripping faster when he put his hands behind his head and cords of muscle stood out beneath his short sleeves. Sometimes it still felt weird to be going out with a jock, but Nash Hudson wasn’t your average football player. His bean sidhe bloodline, dead father, not-so-dead reaper brother, and familiarity with a world that would land most humans in a straitjacket meant that on the inside, Nash didn’t fit in at school any more than I did.





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