My Soul to Steal

  I swallowed thickly as I swerved onto the on-ramp, trying to pretend her threat hadn’t scared the crap out of me. But it had. Aside from the terror she could inspire, my very worst fear was of not being in control of myself. I couldn’t stand the thought of being at someone else’s mercy. And she knew that. But I wouldn’t bend to her threats—not even the big one.

  “Threatening me isn’t going to make me help you, you know,” I said, wishing I could watch for her reaction, instead of staring at the road. Because frankly, I wasn’t sure which was more dangerous, the highway traffic, or the mara in my passenger seat.

  “Then what will?” She sniffled again, and wiped her face with both hands this time.

  “Nothing! I don’t owe you anything, and I’m glad Nash isn’t talking to you! You half stripped and jumped my boyfriend, right in front of me, and you wanted to get caught. The whole thing was just another part of your mind game!”

  “Well, yeah,” Sabine said, and I glanced away from the road to see her frowning, apparently surprised by my statement of the obvious. “You knew I was coming after him—I told you that up front. It’s nothing personal. But you’re wrong about that last part. This isn’t a game. This is my life, and he’s the only good thing in it. He’s all I’ve thought about in the two years I spent trying to get back to him, and I’m not going to lose him now. You have to help me, Kaylee. Please.”

  Her voice cracked on the last word, and I glanced at her again in surprise. She obviously hated asking for my help, but she’d do anything to get Nash back, and I knew how she felt.

  Nash and I had made up, but not because I’d forgiven him. I missed him so much that we’d made up in spite of me not forgiving him. Which meant that Sabine was totally barking up the wrong ex-girlfriend.

  “No, I don’t have to help you,” I said at last, and the words sounded so foreign coming from my own mouth that I actually had to repeat them in my head, to reinforce the certainty.

  “You are such a selfish bitch! You have everything!” she shouted, and I nearly swerved into the next lane. “You could find someone else to love you—hell, all you’d have to do is open your eyes—but I can’t. Nash is all I have. He’s all I’ll ever have, and I put everything I am into finding him again.” She stopped yelling and swallowed thickly, staring out the windshield for a long moment while we both tried to catch our breath.

  Then she turned to me again, calmer now, but no less intense. “Kaylee, I’m not asking you to shove him at me. I’m not even asking you to step aside. I just need you to stop pulling him away from me.”

  I flicked my right blinker on and veered smoothly off the highway at my exit, and when I didn’t answer, Sabine tried again.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “You want me to beg?”

  The theater was up ahead, and I picked a spot near the back of the lot. “I want you to get out of my car! I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to. Nash made up his own mind.”

  “I know, and he’s mad now, but he’ll get over it. I’m pretty sure it’ll take longer without makeup sex, but he will get over it. But he won’t tell either of us that unless you get over it, too. If you forgive me, he’ll forgive me, and we can go back to the way things were.”

  “I don’t like the way things were!” I shut off the engine and pulled the key from the ignition. “And he doesn’t, either.”

  “Ask him.” She grabbed my arm when I tried to get out of the car. “Ask him if he really wants to be rid of me, Kaylee. He’ll tell you the truth. And if he says he doesn’t want to lose me—at least as a friend—and you still won’t help me, then you’re intentionally trying to make him unhappy. Why would you do that if you really love him?”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense! I…” But I didn’t have anything logical to follow that up with, so I could only groan and let my head fall back against the headrest. “You are the most infuriating person I’ve ever met.”

  She lifted one brow, half-amused, even with tears still standing in her eyes. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “It’s really not.”

  “Yet you haven’t kicked me out of your car.”

  “Not for lack of trying!” I sighed again, but recognized the sound of futility in that breath. It was so much harder to hate her when she wasn’t kissing my boyfriend or stalking my dreams. “Sabine, I have to be on the clock in five minutes. And this isn’t going to happen. You can’t seriously expect me to forgive you for a topless make-out session with Nash. Much less sanction your friendship.”

  “Why are you always telling me what I can’t do? There’s nothing I can’t do, and the same goes for you, whether you know it or not. And if you weren’t so threatened by me, you’d have no problem with this.”

  “That’s it. I’m done.” I shoved open my door and got out. “Lock the doors when you go. And stay out of my car.” And out of my life.

  MY SHIFT ENDED at two, and I was relieved to find my car empty. And not so relieved to find all four doors unlocked—a metaphorical middle finger from Sabine. Fortunately, I didn’t keep anything in my car, so there was nothing to be stolen except the car itself, which probably would have happened if I’d been working a night shift.

  When I walked through my front door half an hour later, I found a note from my father in the empty candy dish on an end table, where I usually dropped my keys. The note repeated what his voice mail had already told me: he’d driven Alec to the factory for a preliminary drug test and training video, and he’d be back by six with dinner.

  What the note didn’t say, but I’d heard in my father’s voice, was that he was unwilling to leave Alec alone if at all possible, after last night’s demon-roping marathon.

  So for the first time in weeks, I found myself alone in my house. I would have loved a nap, or even just a couple of hours spent staring at the TV, with no one else around to fight me for the remote. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really relax until I knew how to keep Avari out of my dreams, and out of Alec’s body.

  By my best guess, the only reason he hadn’t tried to steal my body was that I couldn’t feed him like Alec could. But it was only a matter of time before I made him mad enough that he’d take me over just to hurt or humiliate me. Or worse. Because if he had the power to possess a half hypnos, he had the power to possess me, and it wouldn’t take him long to figure out how to use my own abilities to cross me into the Netherworld. And I couldn’t just sit around with that thought eating at me like acid.

  Unfortunately, I had no idea where to start looking for solutions. My dad and uncle—and probably Harmony Hudson—were already burning their respective candles at both ends, so far without a thing to show for their efforts.

  My only idea—some of that weird Netherworld dreamless-sleeping herb Harmony had given Nash while he was sick—was shot down before I’d even fully expressed it. Nash said that the herb would keep Sabine from giving me nightmares—she can’t mess with dreams that aren’t there—but wouldn’t even slow Avari down. He didn’t need us to dream; he only needed us to sleep.

  And I already knew from experience that the internet had nothing about hellions. At least, not about real hellions. There was plenty of info on comic book and video game hellions. But nothing of use, unless I had an enchanted sword hanging from my belt or a gang of mismatched but powerful superheroes at my back.

  And even then, there were no guarantees.

  I was staring at my Betty Boop phone message pad—still blank—when the doorbell rang. Surprised, I dropped my pen and pad on the coffee table and crossed the room to glance out the front window, where I found Tod standing on the porch, his hands behind his back.

  Huh. Weird.

  I pulled open the door and looked up at him. “What’s with the doorbell?”

  He grinned, and a blond curl fell over his forehead. “Just tryin’ on some manners.”

  “Why? Who died?” I meant it as a joke, but when his smile faded, I frowned. “Please tell me no one died….”

&nbsp
; “Well, I’m sure someone, somewhere, died. But no one I know.” He hesitated, and I stared at him, still trying to figure out what the reaper was doing on my porch. “Can I come in?”

  I shrugged and stepped back to clear the way. “You don’t usually ask permission. Or use the door. So…what are you delivering today—pizza or death?”

  “Both, actually.” He pulled his arms out from behind his back as he stepped over the threshold, and his right hand held a grease-stained medium pizza box. “Pepperoni for you now, and a fatal aneurism to the woman in room 408, in about ten hours.”

  “Thanks.” I took the box and closed the door behind him, a little disturbed that I was only a little disturbed by the mention of his night job. “What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion. I need to talk to you, and I was hungry.”

  Okaaay… “What do we need to talk about?” I set the pizza box on the coffee table and flipped open the lid to find the pie still steaming and gooey with cheese.

  But instead of flopping into my dad’s favorite chair, Tod stood in the middle of my living room, watching me like he wasn’t sure what to do next. “Are you alone?”

  “Not as alone as I was a minute ago,” I said, and at that, he cracked a smile—but a small one. “What’s up, Tod? Is something wrong?”

  “We need to talk about Nash. And Sabine.”

  I dropped onto the couch and grabbed a slice of pizza, then gestured for him to help himself. “Pizza isn’t enough to get me to talk about Sabine. You should have brought chocolate.” I chewed my first bite as he sank onto the opposite end of the couch, but made no move on the pizza. “She broke into my car this morning and wouldn’t get out, so I had to take her to work with me. Then she left my car unlocked, like a tribute to suburban crime statistics.”

  Tod’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “You’re lucky she didn’t take a bat to it.”

  “So I hear. That girl is seriously damaged.”

  “I know. She came to see me after she left the theater.”

  “At work?”

  “Yeah. She’s hurting, Kaylee.”

  “I know. Now explain the part where that’s my fault.”

  “It’s not. But she’s not the only one. I talked to Nash after that.”

  I frowned and swallowed another bite. “You have too much free time. Two jobs, yet you’re never at either of them. I’m in the wrong line of work.”

  He shrugged and glanced at the pizza, but didn’t take a slice. “I have a lot of ‘driving’ time to kill, so I stopped by home—” by which he meant Nash’s home “—on the way to a delivery address.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Yeah.” He frowned. “It almost makes up for the whole walking corpse thing, huh?”

  “Anyway…”

  “Anyway, Nash is in bad shape, Kaylee. On Friday, he had been reunited with a good friend and was a couple of steps from getting back together with his girlfriend. Today he has neither one of those.”

  “He has me,” I insisted. “We kinda made up. He even came over last night.” Or early this morning…

  “Yeah. You ‘kinda’ made up. In the sense that he’ll drop everything to come running when you call, but you still haven’t forgiven him enough to deal with his problems. Which means that he’s still alone in every way that counts. And being alone is really hard on his willpower.”

  I made myself swallow another bite. “By willpower, are we talking about resisting certain Netherworld addictive substances, or certain willing ex-girlfriends?”

  “I’m talking about frost, Kaylee. Demon’s Breath. He can’t do this on his own, and Mom and I can’t be there all the time. Especially now that I have two jobs.”

  “When were you ever there?”

  “I was around. He just didn’t know it. But I’m not gonna let my brother start using again.” He looked right into my eyes then, and I saw a hint of true turmoil flicker in the cerulean depths of his eyes. Turmoil and…something else. Something even more aching and suppressed. “Being alone and in pain makes everything harder to resist, and right now Nash is hurting because he knows you can’t forgive him. And he’s resisting something that already has a hold on him. He’s fighting the undertow, Kaylee, and he needs your help.”

  Nash hadn’t said anything to me about that. He didn’t talk to me about his cravings or the lingering effects of withdrawal, because he knew I wanted nothing to do with that part of his life.

  “You think I should forgive him?” Like it was just that easy.

  Tod blinked and met my gaze. “I think you should give him up. You need to let Sabine have him.”

  20

  “I NEED TO WHAT?” Tod was kidding. He had to be.

  The reaper held two hands up in a defensive gesture. “Okay, just hear me out before you start yelling, okay?”

  I nodded, because the truth was that I could barely speak, much less yell. My vocal cords were paralyzed by shock. Which almost never happens to a bean sidhe.

  “Kay, you and Nash are no good for each other,” Tod said. I tried to interrupt, but he spoke over my inarticulate mumble. “You know it, even if you won’t admit it. He needs you, but you don’t need him.”

  “That’s not true.” I shook my head, emphasizing my denial. “I do need him. I needed him last night.”

  “No, you didn’t. He said that by the time he got there, you’d already expelled the hellion, tied up the host, and cut your dad loose, all by yourself. You’re so strong, and smart, and you never hesitate when something needs to be done, and that’s all…amazing.” Tod’s irises sparked with a sharp twist of bright blue before going suddenly still. “But Nash needs to be needed. You both want each other—even a dead man could see that—but you’ve changed, and he has nothing to offer you anymore, and eventually you’re going to realize that on your own. But probably not before you’ve wasted years of your life—and his—with the wrong guy.”

  My chest throbbed like one big bruise, like my heart was trying to pound its way out through my ribs. But above that steady beat of pain, my indignation roared, drowning out everything else, demanding to be heard.

  “What gives you the right to tell me who I shouldn’t be with? What, you think being a few years older than me means you know everything?”

  Tod’s irises pulsed with a quick beat of anger, then went still when he got control of them. “No. But I think being dead for a couple of those years gives me a perspective most people don’t have. I know how short life really is, and I can see things you and Nash don’t understand yet. Like, maybe there’s someone better out there for him. And maybe there’s someone better for you.”

  I dropped my half-eaten slice of pizza into the box and stared at him in disbelief. “Being dead doesn’t qualify you to play matchmaker between my boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend. Maybe she’s an ex for a very good reason.”

  “Or maybe she’s an ex because my death got in the way of their relationship. Maybe they never should have been separated. And then you two never would have met, and this whole thing would have played out differently.”

  Shocked silent, I could only blink for several seconds, as what he was really saying sank in. “Then he wouldn’t be an addict, right? Because if he’d never met me, he would never have been exposed.” I could barely breathe through the sting in his words.

  “No.” Tod reached for me, looking both stunned and confused, but I pulled away from him. “Kaylee, I swear that’s not what I meant. I’m not even sure how you got that out of what I was trying to say…”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “I just meant that if you and Nash had never met…” He stopped and closed his eyes, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “If you hadn’t met, you wouldn’t have to deal with letting each other go now.”

  “I’m not letting him go.”

  “If you give a damn about him, you will. As bad as it probably hurts to think about this right now, Nash and Sabine are right for each other. Maybe more so now than they ever were
before, because now they need each other. They’re both messed up pretty bad, but together, their two halves make a whole, while the most you and Nash are ever gonna add up to is one and a half.”

  “One and a half?” I repeated, like a brain-damaged parrot. I heard what he was saying, but I just couldn’t believe that some manipulative, antagonistic, dream-pirate could possibly be better for Nash than I was.

  Tod nodded solemnly. “It’s an improper fraction. Sad, but true.”

  “Actually, it’s a mixed number,” I said, slowly going numb as his words continued to sink in. “Fourth-grade math.”

  “Whatever.” He glanced down, then met my gaze again and let me see a sad little swirl of color in his eyes. “My point stands, and I have to side with Sabine on this one. If you really care about him, you have to let her have him. That’s the only way either of them are ever going to be whole. If you try to keep Nash for yourself, you’ll only ever really have half of him.”

  “But he loves me.” I felt like I’d just turned in a hundred circles and the room wouldn’t stop spinning.

  Then Tod put his hand on my arm, and the world went still.

  “Yeah. He does. And it’ll hurt like hell for him to get over you. But he will get over you. And she’ll help make that happen.”

  “What if I don’t want him to get over me?”

  “Then you’re being selfish.” Tod leaned back and ran his hand through his hair again. “Kaylee, you’re never going to be able to truly forgive him for what he did, and honestly, I don’t know that you should. But my point is that if you can’t forgive him, he won’t be able to forgive himself. Which means that as long as the two of you are together, he’s going to be living with this, trying to make up for it and failing over and over again, because he has nothing left to offer you. Do you really want to watch him suffer like that?”