I opened my eyes. Tod was shaking. His whole body was trembling beneath mine, and when I pulled away to see his face, I realized he was crying. At first I thought I’d hurt him. Then I realized how ridiculous that was. I couldn’t hurt anyone. I was the least threatening thing in the world. In either world. I had no claws, or fangs, or tail, or horns, or any abilities strong enough to command respect or fear....
“Are you real?” He pulled me close again and whispered the halting words into my ear. “Did that really just happen? You’re alive?”
My arms slid around him again. “No more now than I was before, but yes.” My voice was hoarse and I couldn’t stop grinning. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a room as glorious as my grungy high school basement, based solely on the fact that it was in the human world. Beyond the reach of hellions.
“You were dead. Gone. For four years. We mourned you. We grieved,” he said, and I could see the truth of that in his eyes. In the solemn slant of his mouth. “Everyone else moved on.”
“They moved on.” I blinked, denying fresh tears an exit. That was good. I wanted them to move on. That was why they couldn’t know. “Did you...move on?”
Tod shook his head. “I tried. I tried so hard. But no matter where I went and what I did, I could still feel you. It was... It felt like I could walk into the next room, and you’d be there smiling. Waiting for me. Like I could turn a corner, and you’d be standing there. I missed you so much. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He put one hand on either side of my face and kissed me. “It makes sense now. I had part of your soul. You gave it to me. That’s why I couldn’t let you go.”
That’s why he’d suffered for four years, like my father had been suffering for thirteen, since my mother died.
Nope. Seventeen. The past four years in the Nether had felt like an eternity, yet I could hardly comprehend that same passage of time in the human world. I felt like everything in my native plane should have stood still. Like the world should have stopped revolving in my absence, only to resume when I returned. But that hadn’t happened. Tod had lived through those four years without me, suffering a subconscious promise to wait for me. Carrying a bit of my soul with his own.
My eyes closed as I realized the depth of the pain I’d put him through.
But I’d had no choice. If I hadn’t done what I’d done, he’d still be suffering. We all would. And it would never have ended.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I opened my eyes to find him staring at me. I started to nod, but he continued before I could. “Of course you’re not okay. You’ve been there for four years. Four years of what?” His features twisted with some form of suffering I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around. He wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t hurt. Yet he was clearly in pain.
Empathy. That word came out of nowhere. From deep within the well of things I hadn’t needed in the Nether. Things I hadn’t seen or used.
But that wasn’t it, exactly.
Rage. That one I’d used. That one I’d seen. But that wasn’t quite it, either.
Tod was hurting for me. He was angry for me. He felt...powerless. Helpless. Useless. Those I saw in his eyes, in the moment before I became overwhelmed by the fact that I was staring into his eyes. In my more rational moments, over the past four years, I’d been convinced I’d never see him again.
“Four years of what, Kaylee?” he whispered, and his voice cracked on my name.
I shook my head slowly. “Doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”
“It matters. I need to know what you...what I let...”
“No.” I took his chin in my hand and made him look at me, terrified by what I saw in his eyes now. Guilt. “You didn’t do this. You couldn’t have stopped it. I went through a lot of trouble to make sure you didn’t know about it, because I knew that if you thought I was still here—still anywhere—you would move heaven and the Netherworld to get to me. And I couldn’t let that happen.”
“What happened to you, Kaylee?”
“Listen to me.” I spoke through clenched teeth, desperate to stop the tears standing at the ready. “Forget about that. I plan to.”
“Kaylee...”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t have to think about that. Not ever again. And neither do you. Everything’s okay now, Tod. Everything is amazing now. Perfect.” I smiled. I couldn’t stop smiling. “We’re together.” I kissed him again, and when his tears fell, mine followed, but these tears didn’t hurt. “And this time, forever is real.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. More than anything.” I stood and pulled him up with me, swiping tears from my cheek with my free hand. “Now let’s go bring me back to life. Again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Bringing me back to life turned out to be a two-step process. The first part involved a very private reunion with the reaper who deserved more gratitude than I even knew how to express for loving me. For waiting for me. For safeguarding my soul from a distance. And for braving the Netherworld one last time to finally bring me home.
Tod still had his room at reaper headquarters. He still had the same bed. The same chair. The same minifridge used as a nightstand. His dirty clothes still littered the floor. His tub was still too short for a proper bath, and he still only owned two towels and five washcloths.
He still had my spare toothbrush.
He still touched me like I was the most precious thing in existence.
I still loved every single second of it.
Based on my first two hours back in the human world, it was tempting to assume very little had changed. I knew that wasn’t true, but for those two hours, I let myself pretend.
When we’d finally done enough touching and holding and kissing to be sure I wasn’t going to simply melt from reality, like a mirage, we sat cross-legged on his bed, facing each other, eating ice cream with plastic spoons from paper bowls.
“How did you do it?” Tod dumped more caramel syrup on the mound of home-style vanilla in my bowl, then topped it with a scoopful of candied walnuts. “I mean, I know that since your soul wasn’t yours in the first place—very clever, by the way—the deal you struck with him was nullified. But doesn’t that nullify his promise to leave us all alone forever?”
I took a bite of my victory sundae—which had been preceded by my Welcome Back from the Netherworld pizza—and let the sugar melt in my mouth. If I’d ever tasted anything so sweet before, I couldn’t remember it.
But the sugar soured on my tongue with the memory his question triggered.
It’s a word game, little fury. You are building a cage made of promises, and Avari must believe that the bars he sees between you are locking you in. Then, later, he will turn and realize he’s the one in the cage, and that you stand on the outside, watching him, a free woman.
“Ira taught me how to negotiate.” But not until after he and I had struck our own deal. “The key was phrasing my demands as two separate agreements. The first bargain said that he would let my dad go in exchange for my immortal soul. Since my soul was never mine to give him, that deal is now null and void, and if he still had my dad, Avari wouldn’t have to give him up. But he doesn’t have my dad. And since the other bargain we struck is still in effect, he never will have my dad.”
Tod leaned over to set the syrup bottle on top of the minifridge, and the mattress creaked beneath his weight. “What was the second part?”
Water dripped from my shower-wet hair and soaked into the T-shirt he’d lent me. I swallowed another bite and licked a smear of caramel from my lower lip. “That one was intentionally simple. Deceptively so. It just said that once he took possession of my soul, he could have no further contact with you guys. Ever again. He did take possession of my soul, and since there were no contingencies named in case he ever lost possession of it, that deal still stands.”
Tod stared at me, a ghost of a smile haunting the corners of his mouth. “You
may be the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”
I laughed and plucked a walnut from a peak of ice cream. “The devil is in the details.”
“Have I ever told you how sexy your brain is?”
“Finally! A man who wants me for my brain.”
“I want you for all of you. Each individual part and the sum of them all. I want you for everything you are and everything you will ever be. I will never have enough of you, because there’s no such thing.” He stared right into my eyes, and I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. I was trapped, and never in my life had I been so happy to be caught. “I will never let you go again.”
* * *
“What did you tell them?” I scooped ice into the last of the plastic cups and nearly tripped over Styx for the fourth time in the past quarter hour. She’d been following me everywhere since the moment we’d blinked into my house, and I loved her for it.
I also loved her for the fact that, like Tod, she hadn’t changed at all in the four years I’d been gone. That couldn’t be said for anyone else, based on the pictures I’d found in Emma’s room—my former room. The twin beds had been replaced with a full, and my things were packed into boxes stacked at the back of her closet.
They hadn’t gotten rid of me. They’d just packed me up. Seeing those boxes reminded me of the day I’d helped Emma pack up her former life and move into her new one. We’d changed places, sort of. That felt weird.
“I told them I had an announcement,” Tod said. “They probably expect me to announce my retirement.” Which, for a reaper, meant requesting or accepting his final death. “It’s kind of...been coming.”
I frowned and dropped the ice scoop into the sink, and he shrugged. “It was hard without you, Kaylee. I couldn’t let you go, but I didn’t know how to be here without you. If I’d never met you, I probably would have been fine.” He shrugged, and that same stubborn curl fell over his forehead. “I mean, creatures who only exist in the dark don’t know they’re missing the sun, right? But once you’ve seen the sun. Once you’ve seen it light up the world...once you’ve felt its heat all around you...inside you...” He clutched his own chest, and my heart cracked open. “It’s hard to live in the dark after the sun dies.”
“I’m so sorry.” I set the last cup on the counter and threw my arms around him again. “I’m so glad you didn’t do something...permanent.”
“I almost did. I started slipping away again. If not for my mom and Emma, I might have lost most of my humanity by now.”
“Em? You and Emma?” I pulled back to look at him, my chest aching, and I had to remind myself that four years was a long time, and they were only human—mostly. And that I’d left them, and they’d thought I was dead, and they had had every right to move on. To at least try...
Tod’s eyes widened, then he laughed and pulled me closer. “Not like that. Emma has a boyfriend. A necromancer friend of Luca’s. They’ve been together almost three years now.”
“The guy in the picture on her dresser?” They looked happy in the photo. They looked...normal. Emma deserved some normal.
“Yeah. He’s a good guy, and he loves her, and he knows how to handle the occasional syphon meltdown. But even if none of that were true...” Tod put a hand on each of my arms and looked right into my eyes. “You have my heart and soul, Kaylee Cavanaugh, and that never changed, even when I thought you were gone. Em and I are just friends. There was never anyone else. Which means that all of this—” he stepped back and spread his arms with a grin I’d missed like I would miss my own heartbeat if I never felt it again “—went to waste for four very long years.”
“Well, that’s all over now. An ego like that deserves to be stroked.” I ran my hands over his chest and stood on my toes to whisper in his ear, “Or at least humored.”
“Humored, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll take what I can get. For now...”
I pulled his head down for a kiss and didn’t let him go until an engine rumbled to a stop out front, and my heart stopped with it. “They’re here.” One of them, at least. I’d only heard one car.
I raced to the front window and peeked through the gap in the drapes to see an unfamiliar vehicle in the driveway. The driver’s door opened, and I hardly recognized the man who stepped out. He had Nash’s artfully mussed hair, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses. And he was...bigger.
My heart ached. Each beat seemed to bruise me from the inside out.
Nash had grown up, like Tod and I never would. Mental math told me he was twenty-two now, and though I could see it, I couldn’t truly believe it.
The passenger’s-side door opened and a headful of long, straight, dark hair appeared over the roof of the car. A second later, Sabine rounded the front bumper and slid her hand into Nash’s, and I’m sure my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.
She’d grown up, too, and she was gorgeous, in a mature, collected way the teenage mara I’d come to thoroughly tolerate had never been. And she looked...happy. Even with all the eyeliner she still wore and a familiar pair of guys’ khakis hanging low on the swell of her hips.
“This is bizarre,” I whispered, and Tod’s hand settled at my lower back.
“I guess it must be, seeing it all of a sudden like that.” He shrugged. “They grew up.”
“And they’re...okay? They’re good?”
“Yeah. Better than I would have expected.” His arm slid around my side and pulled me close again, just as the rear door of the car opened, and my breath caught in my throat.
Emma.
Lydia’s body had grown up, too, and Em now wore it like it was her own. She’d cut her thin hair, and it looked healthier than I’d ever seen it, bouncing on her shoulders in light brown waves. Her arms were tanned, and she’d finally figured out how to dress a body with no curves to speak of—a dilemma I remembered well.
I was still watching her walk up the sidewalk when Nash knocked on the door, then opened it and came in without waiting for the key Em had dug from her purse. “Hey, Peter Pan? You in here?”
Sabine followed him inside, and I could tell by the way their gazes passed over us, then settled on the cups of ice lined up on the kitchen counter that they couldn’t see either of us yet. I hadn’t gone spectral on purpose. Evidently—subconsciously, at least—I wasn’t ready to be seen.
“Kay?” Tod said, and they didn’t hear that, either. “You ready?”
I nodded, and I only realized that was the truth at the very last second.
Tod cleared his throat. Nash and Sabine turned our way just as Em stepped into the house.
For a moment, shocked silence reigned.
Nash took off his sunglasses, and his hazel eyes were as wide and still as I’d ever seen them. Emma dropped her purse, and Styx skittered away from the falling debris. Sabine’s mouth widened in a stunning smile. She was the first to believe her eyes, and, somehow, that didn’t surprise me.
“Kay?” She crossed the room in an instant and threw strong arms around me, while I tried to ignore the fact that she’d grown at least two inches taller since I’d last seen her. She towered over me now, and was only a couple of inches shorter than Nash. “Are you real?”
Tod laughed. “I’ve been asking her that for the past three hours. She’s real. Solid and thoroughly functional.”
“Well then.” Sabine let go of me and grinned. “I guess we know how they spent the past three hours, instead of alerting anyone else to the miraculous resurrection.” She shrugged. “Not that I blame you. If it were me and Nash, we’d still be sequestered.”
Obviously some things hadn’t changed....
“I—I don’t...” Em stuttered, and as soon as Sabine stepped back, Emma was there. She’d grown, too, but that put her at exactly my height, and I hugged her so tight I could almost hear her ribs groan. “How...?”
“She didn’t die. Levi lied.” Tod still sounded less than pleased by that, and I couldn’t blame him.
“I asked him to,” I clarified,
without letting go of Emma. I couldn’t let her go. I wasn’t ready. And based on the strength of her hug, neither was Em. “I knew that if you guys knew what I was planning, you’d come after me.”
“Come after you where?” Sabine frowned, and I could tell by the suspicion dripping from that one question that she’d figured at least part of it out.
“The Netherworld.” Tod told them the part I couldn’t make myself say out loud. “She turned herself in. Which sounds really asinine until you hear about the out clause she built into her deal with Avari. That part’s really brilliant.”
“You turned yourself in? To Avari?” Emma shuddered even as she said his name, and I could see all the questions she obviously wanted to ask hiding just below her surprise and confusion. “You were there the whole time? So you’ve been...? He’s been...?” Horror washed over her face in slow motion as comprehension surfaced. As she realized where and how I’d spent the past four years. And why I’d spent them.
“Damn, Kay,” Sabine whispered.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tears formed in Emma’s eyes. “How can you be okay?”
“I made a deal with Ira. I gave him everything I couldn’t handle....” Mostly massive amounts of pain and rage. “And that left me with my...um...sanity.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but no one bought that.
“Ira. Damn.” Sabine tossed long, dark hair over her shoulder. “I haven’t heard that name in years. And you actually talked a hellion of wrath into sucking the crazy right out of you?”
“It was mutually beneficial. And Ira’ll be munching on Avari’s fury for centuries. That’s really why he agreed to the whole thing.” I blinked and shook my head, mentally changing the subject. “Enough about the Netherworld. We’re done with that now.” I’d put myself through hell for four years to make damn sure of that. “I want to talk about you guys! You’re all...grown!”