My Soul to Take

  “I don’t think I’ve seen that one.”

  “He gets all kinds of freaky abilities, then he dies. It’s tragic. I don’t want to be tragic, Nash. I want to be alive.” And suddenly the tears were back. I couldn’t help it. I’d had more than enough of death in the past few days, without adding my own to the list.

  “Okay, you’re going to have to trust me on this, Kaylee.” The footsteps were back, and then a door closed, cutting off the bluster of wind on his end of the call. Then his voice got softer. “Your premonitions don’t come from brain cancer. Whatever your aunt and uncle were talking about, that’s not it.”

  “How do you know?” I blinked the moisture from my eyes, irritated with how emotional I was becoming. Wasn’t that another symptom of brain cancer?

  Nash sighed, but he sounded more worried than exasperated. “I have to tell you something. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  8

  SEVEN MINUTES LATER, I sat on the living-room couch, my keys in my pocket, my phone in my lap, my fingernails rasping anxiously across the satin upholstery. I was angled to face both the television—muted, but tuned to the local evening news—and the front window, hoping no one would realize I was expecting company. “No one,” meaning my aunt and uncle. Sophie was still out cold, and I was starting to wonder how many of those pills her mother had given her.

  Aunt Val was in the kitchen, banging pots, pans, and cabinet doors as she made spaghetti, her favorite comfort food. Normally she wouldn’t indulge in so many carbs in a single meal, but she was obviously having a rough day. A very rough day, if the scent of garlic bread was any indication.

  “Hey, Kay-Bear, how you holdin’ up?”

  I glanced up to find my uncle leaning against the plaster column separating the dining room from the living room. He hadn’t called me that in nearly a decade, and the fact that he was using my old nickname probably meant he thought I was…fragile.

  “I’m not crazy.” I met his clear green eyes, daring him to argue.

  He smiled, and the resulting smile lines somehow made him look even younger than usual. “I never said you were.”

  I huffed and shot a glare toward the kitchen, where Aunt Val was stirring noodles in a huge aluminum pot. “She thinks I am.” I knew better than that now, of course, but wasn’t about to let on that I’d heard their argument.

  Uncle Brendon shook his head and crossed the eggshell carpet toward me, arms folded over the faded tee he’d changed into after work. “She’s just worried about you. We both are.” He sank into the floral-print armchair opposite me. He always sat there, rather than on the solid white chair or sofa, hoping that if he spilled something, Aunt Val would never notice the stain on such a busy pattern.

  “Why aren’t you worried about Sophie?”

  “We are.” He paused, then seemed to consider his answer. “But Sophie’s…resilient. She’ll be fine once she’s had a chance to grieve.”

  “And I won’t?”

  My uncle raised one brow at me. “Val said you barely knew Meredith Cole.” And just like that, he’d sidestepped the real question—that of my future well-being.

  And we both knew it.

  Before I could answer—and I was in no hurry—an engine purred outside, and I glanced through the sheers to see an unfamiliar blue convertible pull into the driveway beside my car, glittering in the late-afternoon sun. Behind the wheel was a very familiar face, crowned by an equally familiar head of thick brown hair.

  I stood, stuffing my phone into my empty pocket.

  “Who’s that?” Uncle Brendon twisted to look out the window.

  “A friend. I gotta go.”

  He stood, but I was already halfway across the room. “Val’s making dinner!” he called after me.

  “I’m not hungry.” Actually, I was starving, but I had to get out of the house. I couldn’t possibly suck down spaghetti like it was a regular Monday night. Not knowing that my entire family had been lying to me for who knows how long.

  “Kaylee, get back here!” Uncle Brendon roared, following me through the front door onto the porch. I’d rarely heard him raise his voice, and had never heard him yell like that.

  I took off at a trot, slid into the passenger seat, then slammed the door and locked it.

  “Is that your uncle?” Nash asked, right hand hovering over the gearshift. “Maybe I should meet—”

  “Go!” I shouted, louder than I’d meant to. “I’ll introduce you later.” Assuming I lived that long.

  Nash slammed the car into Reverse and swerved backward out of the driveway, twisting in his seat to peer out the rear windshield. As we pulled away from the house, I took one last look at my uncle, who stared after us from the middle of the driveway, thick arms crossed over his chest. Behind him, Aunt Val stood on the porch holding a dishrag, her perfect mouth hanging open in surprise.

  When we turned the corner, I let myself melt into the car seat, only then noticing how posh it was. “Please tell me you didn’t pick me up in a stolen car.”

  Nash laughed and glanced away from the road to smile at me, and my pulse sped up when our gazes met, in spite of the circumstances. “It’s Carter’s. I’ve got it till midnight.”

  “Why would Scott Carter let you take his car?”

  He shrugged. “He’s a friend.”

  I just blinked at him. His questionable choice of companions aside, Emma was my best friend, and I would never let her take my car. And I didn’t drive a brand-new Mustang convertible.

  Nash grinned when I didn’t seem convinced, and his next glance lingered longer than it should have, then roamed south of my face. “He might be under the impression that you…um…need some serious comfort.”

  My heart leaped into my throat, and I had to speak around it. “And you think you’re up for the challenge?” Flirting should have felt weird, considering the day I’d had. But instead, it made me feel alive, especially with the possibility of my own death hanging over me like a black cloud, casting its malignant shadow over my life. Over everything but Nash, and the way I felt when he looked at me. Touched me…

  Nash shrugged again. “Carter offered to pick you up himself….”

  Of course he had. Because he was Nash’s best friend, and Sophie’s boyfriend. And my cousin had seriously bad taste in guys. As, apparently, did Nash. “Why do you hang out with him?”

  “We’re teammates.”

  Ahhh. And if blood was thicker than water, then football, evidently, would congeal in one’s veins.

  “And that makes you friends?” I twisted to peer briefly into the tiny backseat, which was empty and still smelled like leather. And like Sophie’s freesia-scented lotion.

  Nash shrugged and frowned, like he didn’t understand what I was getting at. Or like he wanted to change the subject. “We have stuff in common. He knows how to have a good time. And he goes after what he wants.”

  He could easily have been describing my father’s German shepherd. As could I, when I replied, “Yeah, but once he gets it, he’ll just want something else.”

  Nash’s hands tightened around the wheel, and he glanced at me with his eyes wide in comprehension, his forehead furrowed in disappointment. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  I shrugged. “Your record kind of speaks for itself.” And why else had he put up with so much from me? Why would a guy like Nash Hudson stick around through freaky death premonitions and possible brain cancer, if he didn’t want something?

  Or even if he did, for that matter? He could have put in a lot less work for a lot more payoff somewhere else.

  “This isn’t like that, Kaylee,” he insisted, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what “that” was. “This is…We’re different.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, but I felt myself flush anyway.

  “What does that mean?”

  He sighed, and his hands loosened around the wheel. “You hungry?”

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, we sat in Scott Carter’s car with the front seats pushed back as fa
r as they would go. The setting sun took up the entire windshield, painting White Rock Lake a dozen deep hues of red and purple.

  I was well into a six-inch turkey sub, and Nash was half done with some combination of provolone, ham, pepperoni, and a couple of meats I didn’t recognize. But it smelled good.

  I’d already dripped mustard on Carter’s gearshift, and vinegar on the front seat. Nash had just laughed and helped me mop it all up.

  If I was dying, I’d decided to spend every single day I had left eating at least one meal with Nash. Talking to him made me feel good, even when everything else in my life was totally falling apart.

  I swallowed a big bite, then washed it down with a gulp from my soda. “Promise me that if I do have a brain tumor, you’ll bring me sandwiches in the hospital.”

  He eyed me almost sternly, peeling paper away from his bread. “You don’t have cancer, Kaylee. At least, that’s not why you’re having premonitions.”

  “How do you know?” I bit another chunk from my sandwich, chewing as I waited for an answer he seemed reluctant to provide.

  Finally, after three more bites and two false starts, Nash wrapped the remains of his sandwich and stuffed it between our drinks on the console, then took a deep breath and met my gaze. His forehead was wrinkled like he was nervous, but his gaze held steady. Strong.

  “I have to tell you something, and you’re not going to believe me. But I can prove it to you. So don’t freak out on me, okay? At least not until you’ve heard the whole thing.”

  I swallowed another bite, then wrapped the rest of my sandwich and set it in my lap. This didn’t sound like the kind of news I should get with food in my mouth. Not unless I wanted to check out earlier than I’d expected, with a chunk of turkey wedged in my throat. “Okaaay…Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than brain cancer, right?”

  “Exactly.” He ran his fingers through deliberately messy hair, then met my gaze with an intensity that was almost frightening. “You’re not human.”

  “What?” Confusion was a calm white noise in my head, where I’d expected fear or even anger to rage. I’d been prepared to hear something weird. I was intimately acquainted with weird. But I had no idea what to say to “not human.”

  “Either your aunt and uncle don’t know, or they don’t want you to know for some reason, which is why I didn’t tell you yesterday at breakfast. But you’re killing me with this whole brain cancer thing.” He was watching me carefully, probably judging from my expression how close I was to flipping out on him.

  And honestly, if I’d had any idea what he was talking about, I might have been pretty close.

  “I think if they knew you thought you were dying, they’d tell you the truth,” he continued. “It sounds like they’re going to tell you soon anyway, but I didn’t want you to think I was lying to you too.” He flashed deep dimples with a small grin. “Or that you have cancer.”

  For a moment, I could only stare at him, struck numb and dumb by an outpouring of words that contained no real information. And I have to admit there were a couple of seconds there when I wondered if maybe I wasn’t the one in need of a straitjacket.

  But he’d believed me when I told him about Heidi, as crazy as the whole thing sounded, and had talked me through two different premonitions. The least I could do was hear him out.

  “What am I?” The very question—and my willingness to ask it—made my heart pound so hard and so fast I felt like the car was spinning. My arms were covered in goose bumps.

  Fading daylight cast shadows defining the planes of his face as he squinted through the windshield into the sun, now a heavy scarlet ball on the edge of the horizon. But his focus never left my eyes. “You’re a bean sidhe, Kaylee. The death premonitions are normal. They’re part of who you are.”

  Another moment of stunned silence, which I clung to—a brief respite from the madness that each new word seemed to bring. Then I forced the pertinent question to my lips, fighting to keep my jaw from falling off my face as my mouth dropped open. “Sorry, what?”

  He grinned and ran one hand over the short stubble on his jaw. “I know, this is the part where you start thinking I’m the crazy one.”

  As a matter of fact…

  “But I swear this is the truth. You’re a bean sidhe. And so are your parents. At least one of them, anyway.”

  I shook my head and pushed my hair back from my face, trying to clear away the confusion and make sense of what he’d said. “Banshee? Like, from mythology?” We’d done a mythology unit in sophomore English the year before, but it was mostly Greek and Roman stuff. Gods, goddesses, demigods, and monsters.

  “Yeah. Only the real thing.” He took a drink from his cup, then set it in the holder. “There’s a bunch they don’t teach you in school. Things they don’t even know about, because they think it’s all just a bunch of old stories.”

  “And you’re saying it’s not?” I found myself scooting closer to the door, until the handle cut into my back, trying to put some space between myself and the only guy in the world who could make me sound normal.

  “No. Kaylee, it’s you!” He watched me intently, expectantly, and while I wanted to wallow in denial, I couldn’t. Even if Nash was one grape short of a bunch, there was something compelling about him. Something irresistible, even beyond the sculpted arms, gorgeous eyes, and adorable dimples. He made me feel…content. Relaxed. Like everything would be okay, one way or another. Which was quite a feat, considering his claim that I was unqualified to run in the human race.

  “Think about it,” he insisted. “What do you know about bean sidhes?”

  I shrugged. “They’re women in long, wispy gowns who walk around during funerals, wailing over the dead. Sometimes they wail over the dying, announcing that the end is near.” I sipped watered-down soda, then gestured with my cup. “But, Nash, banshees are just stories. Old European legends.”

  He nodded. “Most of it, yes. They spell it wrong, for starters. The Gaelic is B-E-A-N S-I-D-H-E. Two words. Literally, it means ‘woman of the faeries.’”

  My eyebrows shot halfway up my forehead as I dropped my cup back into the drink holder. “Wait, you think I’m a faerie? Like, with little glittery wings and magic wands?”

  Nash frowned. “This isn’t Disney, Kaylee. ‘Faerie’ is a very broad term. It basically means ‘other than human.’ And forget about the wispy gowns and following funerals. All that went out of style a long time ago. But the rest of it? Women as death heralds? Sound familiar?”

  Okay, there was a slight similarity to my morbid predictions, but…“There’s no such thing as bean sidhes, no matter how you spell it.”

  “There are no premonitions either, right?” His hazel eyes sparkled in the fading light when he grinned, refusing to be derailed by my cynicism. “Okay, let’s see how much of this I can get right. Your dad…He looks really young, right? Too young to have a sixteen-year-old daughter? Your uncle too. They’re brothers, right?”

  Unimpressed, I rolled my eyes and folded one leg beneath me on the narrow leather car seat. “You saw my uncle an hour ago—you know he’s young. And I haven’t seen my dad in a year and a half.” Though as a child, I’d always thought he looked young and handsome. But that was a long time ago….

  “I know your uncle looks young, but that means nothing to a bean sidhe. He could be a hundred.”

  That time I laughed. “Right. My uncle’s a senior citizen.” Wouldn’t it piss Aunt Val off to think he could be more than twice her age and still look younger!

  Nash frowned at my skepticism, his face darkening as the last rays of daylight slowly bled from the sky. “Okay, what about the rest of your family? Your ancestors are Irish, right?”

  I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “My name’s Cavanaugh. That’s not a big leap.” Plus, he already knew my dad lived in Ireland.

  “Bean sidhes are native to Ireland. That’s why the stories all stem from old Irish folktales.”

  Oh. Now that was quite a coinci
dence. But nothing more.

  “Got anything else, Houdini?”

  Nash reached across the center console and took my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away. “Kaylee, I knew what you were the minute you told me Heidi Anderson was going to die. But I probably would have known earlier if I’d been paying attention. I just never expected to run into a bean sidhe at my own school.”

  “How would you have known earlier?”

  “Your voice.”

  “Huh?” But my heart began to beat harder, as if it knew something my head hadn’t quite caught on to.

  “Last Friday at lunch, I heard you and Emma talking about sneaking into Taboo, and couldn’t get you out of my head. Your voice stuck with me, like after I truly heard you that first time, I couldn’t stop hearing you. Your voice carries above everything else. I can find you in a crowd even if I can’t see you, so long as you’re talking. But I didn’t know why. I just knew I needed to talk to you outside of school, and that you’d be at the club on Saturday night.”

  Suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. My lungs seemed too big for my chest, and I couldn’t make them fully expand. “You followed me to Taboo?” His admission made my head spin, questions and confessions both battling for the right to speak first. But I couldn’t think clearly enough to focus on them.

  “Yeah.” He sounded so matter-of-fact, as if it should be no big surprise that a hot, out-of-my-league guy would go to a club on a Saturday night just to see me. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  I swallowed thickly and stared at my hands. I could hardly believe what I was about to tell him. “When you talk to me, I feel like everything’s okay, even when things are really falling apart. Why?” I looked up then and met his gaze, searching for the truth even if I wouldn’t understand it. “What did you do to me?”

  “Nothing. Nothing on purpose, anyway.” He squeezed my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “We truly hear each other because we’re the same. I’m a bean sidhe, Kaylee. Just like my mom and dad, and at least one of your parents. Just like you.”