My Soul to Keep

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I ran one hand through my long brown hair to smooth it.

  Tod shrugged. “I’m on my lunch break.”

  I lifted both brows. “You don’t eat.”

  He only shrugged again, and smiled.

  “Get out,” Nash growled, tossing his head toward the door. Like Tod would actually have to use it. One of the other perks of being dead, technically speaking, was the ability to walk through things. Or simply disappear, then reappear somewhere else. That’s right. I got swirling eyes and the capacity to shatter windows with my bare voice. Tod got teleportation and invisibility.

  The supernatural world is so far from fair.

  Tod stood and kicked the chair aside, running one hand through short blond curls that not even the afterlife could tame. “I’m not here to watch you two, anyway.”

  Great. I scowled at the reaper, my eyes narrowed in true irritation now. “I told you to stay away from her.” Emma had met him once, briefly, and we’d made the mistake of telling her what he really was. He’d been watching her covertly before, but after Addison’s death and his obvious heartbreak, I’d assumed that had stopped.

  Tod mirrored his brother with his arms crossed over his chest. “So you won’t let me go near her, but you’ll let her get in the car with some drunk jock? That doesn’t even kinda make sense.”

  “Damn it.” Nash was off the couch in an instant and I followed, whispering a thank-you to Tod as I passed him. But he’d already blinked out of the office.

  I trailed Nash down the hall and through the packed living room, accidentally bumping a beer from a cheerleader’s hand on the way. We ran out the front door and I wished I’d stopped to find my jacket when the frigid air raised goose bumps all over my skin.

  We paused at the end of the walkway, and I spotted Emma near the mouth of the cul-de-sac, a brief glimpse of long blond hair. “There.” I pointed and we took off again. We got there just as Doug pulled his passenger’s side door open. He had Em pressed against the side of the car, his tongue in her mouth, his free hand up her shirt.

  Emma was totally into it, and though I didn’t think she’d have gone so far in public if not for the beer, that was her business. But getting in the car with a drunk crossed the line from stupid into dangerous.

  “Em,” I said as Nash slapped one hand on Doug’s shoulder and pulled him backward.

  “What the hell, man!” Doug slurred as his hand pulled free from Emma’s bra hard enough that the elastic slapped her skin.

  “Kaylee!” Emma smiled and fell against me, and I glared at Doug. She didn’t know what she was doing, and he was being a complete asshole.

  “Em, you know how it goes.” I wrapped one arm around her waist when she stumbled. “Come together, stay together…”

  “…leave together,” she finished with a wide-eyed, pseudo-serious expression. “But we didn’t come together, Kay…”

  “I know, but the last part still applies.”

  “Fuller, she’s drunk.” Nash angled him so that Doug fell into his own passenger’s seat. “And so are you.”

  “Noooo…” Emma giggled, blowing beer breath at me.

  “He’s not drinking, so he gets to drive.”

  “Em, he’s wasted,” Nash insisted, then glanced at me and tossed his head toward the house. “Take her back in.”

  I started walking Emma up the sidewalk, trying to keep her quiet as she told me how nice Doug was. She wasn’t just drunk, she was gone. I should have watched her more closely.

  A minute later, Nash caught up to us as I was lowering Emma onto the porch. “Did you get his keys?” I asked, and Nash frowned. Then, as he turned to head back toward Doug’s car, an engine growled to life and a sick feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. Nash took off running and I leaned Emma against the top step. “Tod?” I called, glancing around the dark yard, grateful there was no one around to see me talking to myself.

  “What?” the reaper said at my back, and I whirled around, wondering why he always appeared behind me.

  “Can you sit with her for a minute?”

  He scowled and glanced at Emma, who stared up at us, blinking her big blue eyes in intoxicated innocence. “You told me to stay away from her.”

  “Hey, I remember you,” Emma slurred, loud enough to make me wince. “You’re dead.”

  We both ignored Em. “I know. Just watch her for a minute, and don’t let her get into any cars. Please.” Then I raced after Nash past the entrance to the cul-de-sac, confident Tod would watch Emma. That he’d probably been doing it all night, though he’d catch hell for missing work.

  Ahead, streetlights shone on the glossy surface of Doug’s car, gliding past like a slice of the night itself. Then, as I caught up to Nash, Doug leaned suddenly to one side, and his car lurched forward and to the right.

  There was a loud pop, followed by the crunch of metal. Then the crash of something more substantial.

  “Shit!” Nash took off running again and I followed as that sick feeling in my stomach enveloped the rest of me. “Oh, no, Kaylee…”

  I knew before I even saw it. The street was lined with expensive, highly insured cars belonging to people who could easily afford to replace them. But the drunk jock had hit mine. When I got closer, I saw that he’d not only hit it, he’d rammed it up onto the sidewalk and through a neighbor’s brick mailbox.

  My car was crunched. The driver’s side door was buckled. Bricks and chunks of mortar lay everywhere.

  Behind us, Scott’s front door squealed opened and voices erupted into the dark behind me. I glanced back to find Tod—now fully corporeal—ushering Emma away from the crowd pouring into the yard. When I was sure she was okay, I turned to my poor, dead car.

  Until I noticed that Doug Fuller had yet to emerge from his.

  Crap.

  “Help me with him,” Nash called, and I rounded the car as he pulled open the completely unscathed driver’s side door of the Mustang. Doug’s head lolled on his shoulders, and he was mumbling drunk nonsense under his breath. “…with me. Somebody else in my car, dude…”

  Nash leaned inside to unlatch the seat belt—what kind of drunk remembers to buckle up?—but he couldn’t fit between his friend and the steering wheel, which had been shoved way too close to Doug’s chest. “Kay, could you get the belt?”

  I sighed and crawled across his lap, wedging my torso between the wheel and his chest as I felt around for the button. “Scared the shit out of me…” he mumbled into the hair that had fallen over my ear. “He was just there, outta nowhere!”

  “Shut up, Doug,” I snapped, seriously considering leaving him in the car until the cops arrived. “You’re drunk.” When I had the belt unlatched, I backed out of the linebacker’s lap and he exhaled right into my face.

  I froze, one hand braced against his thigh, and that sick feeling in my stomach became a full-body cramp. Ice-cold fingers of horror clenched my heart and shot through my veins. Emma was right. Doug hadn’t been drinking.

  Somehow, Eastlake High School’s completely human first-string linebacker had gotten his big, dumb hands on the most dangerous controlled substance in the Netherworld.

  Doug Fuller absolutely reeked of Demon’s Breath.

  2

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Nash whispered, brows drawn low as, behind him, a big man in a grease-stained coat hooked the front of my smashed car up to the huge chain dangling from the back of his tow truck.

  “Yes. I’m sure.” He’d already asked me four times. I’d only had two brief whiffs of Demon’s Breath a month earlier, but that bittersweet, biting tang—more like an aftertaste than a true scent—was emblazoned on my brain, along with other memorial gems like the feel of nylon straps lashing me to a narrow hospital bed.

  “Where would he even get it?” I murmured, zipping the jacket Nash had gotten for me as a motor rumbled to life on the street and the big chain was wound tighter, raising the front of my poor car off the ground.

  “I don’t know.?
?? Nash wrapped his arms around me from behind, cocooning me in a familiar warmth.

  “Humans can’t cross into the Netherworld and hellions can’t cross into ours,” I murmured, thinking out loud while no one else was close enough to hear me. “So there has to be some way to get Demon’s Breath into the human world without bringing the hellion who provided it.” Because the name was a very literal description: Demon’s Breath was the toxic exhalation of a hellion, a very powerful drug in the Netherworld. And evidently a hell of a high in our world, too.

  But Demon’s Breath could rot the soul of a reaper who held it in his lungs for too long. Did the same hold true for humans? Had Doug breathed enough of it to damage his soul? How had he gotten it in the first place?

  “I’m gonna take a look around,” I whispered, and Nash shook his head.

  “No!” He stepped closer to me, so everyone else would think he was comforting me over the loss of my car. “You can’t cross over. Hellions don’t like to lose, and Avari’s going to be out for your soul for the rest of your life, Kaylee.”

  Because I’d escaped with mine when we’d crossed over to reclaim the Page sisters’ souls.

  “I’m just going to peek.” Like looking through a window into the Netherworld, instead of actually walking through the door. “And anyway, Avari won’t be there.” I frowned. “Here.” Or whatever. “At Scott Carter’s party.”

  The Netherworld was like a warped mirror image of our own world. The two were connected at certain points, wherever the bleed-through of human energy was strong enough to anchor the Netherworld to ours, like a toothpick through layers of a sandwich.

  “Kaylee, I don’t think—”

  I cut him off with a glance. I didn’t have time to argue.

  “Just stand in front of me so no one can see me. It’ll only take a second.”

  When he hesitated, I stepped behind him and closed my eyes. And I remembered death.

  I thought back to the first time it had happened—at least, the first time I remembered—forcing myself to relive the horror. The certainty that the poor kid in the wheelchair was going to die. That dark knowledge that only I had. The shadows that churned around him. Through him.

  The memory of death was enough, fortunately, and the scream began to build deep in my throat. A female bean sidhe’s wail heralds death and can suspend the deceased’s soul long enough for a male bean sidhe to redirect it. But my wail would also let me—and any other bean sidhe near enough to hear me—see into the Netherworld. To cross into it, if we wanted to.

  But I had no desire to go to the Netherworld. Ever again.

  I held the scream back, trapping it in my throat and in my heart so that Nash heard only a thin ribbon of sound, and no one else would hear a thing.

  Nash took my hand, but I could barely feel the warmth of his fingers around mine. I opened my eyes and gasped. Scott Carter’s street had been enveloped by a thin gray film, like a storm cloud had settled to the ground. My world was still there—police, tow trucks, an ambulance, and a small crowd of onlookers.

  But beneath that—deeper than that—was the Netherworld.

  A field of olive-colored razor wheat swayed in a breeze I knew would be cold, if I could have felt it, the brittle stalks tinkling like wind chimes as they brushed together. The sky was dark purple streaked with greens and blues like bruises on the face of the world.

  It was both beautiful and terrifying. And blessedly empty. No hellions. No fiends. No creatures waiting to eat us or to breathe toxic breath on Doug Fuller, even if we’d found some kind of hole in the barrier between worlds.

  “Okay, it’s clear. Let it go,” Nash whispered, and I swallowed my scream.

  The gray began to clear and the wrong colors faded, leaving only the upper-class suburban neighborhood, somehow less intimidating to me now that I’d seen what lay beneath. The Netherworld version of Scott’s neighborhood looked just like mine.

  I wrapped my arms around Nash, discomforted by the glimpse of a world that had once tried to swallow us both whole. “However he got it, it didn’t come straight from the source,” I said, then I let go of Nash to face the real world.

  Only a few brave—and sober—partyers had stayed once word got out that the police were on their way, and the stragglers were gathered around Scott on his front lawn, watching the cleanup from a safe distance. The cops knew there’d been a party, and they obviously knew Scott had been drinking. But so long as he stayed in his own yard and didn’t try to get behind the wheel, they were clearly willing to look the other way, thanks to his elite address and his father’s considerable influence in the community.

  Emma wouldn’t be so lucky. She and Sophie had taken refuge four doors down, in Laura Bell’s living room. Laura—Sophie’s best friend and fellow dancer—had only let Emma in because Nash used the male bean sidhe’s vocal Influence to convince her.

  But just in case, we’d sent Tod to watch out for Emma. Invisibly, of course.

  Nash’s arms tightened around me as a uniformed policeman clomped across the street toward us. “Miss—” he glanced at the notebook in his hands “—Cavanaugh, are you sure you don’t need a ride?”

  “I have one, thanks.” I let him think Nash was my ride so I wouldn’t have to mention Emma or her car.

  The cop glanced at Nash, and my heart fell into my stomach. He’d finished his one drink hours earlier, but suddenly I was afraid the cop would make him walk the line or breathe into something. But when Nash didn’t flinch beneath the appraisal, the cop’s gaze found me again.

  “You want me to call your parents?”

  I hesitated, trying to look like I was seriously considering that option. Then I shook my head decisively. “Um, no thanks.” I waved my cell for him to see. “I’ll call my dad.”

  He shrugged. “They’re hauling your car to the body shop on Third, and the guys there should have an estimate for you in a couple of days. But personally, I think an angry word from your lawyer could get this Fuller kid’s parents to buy you a new one. He looks like he can afford it—” the cop shot a contemptuous glance over one shoulder “—and I’m willing to bet a year’s pay that kid’s baked hotter than an apple pie. They’re taking him to Arlington Memorial, so make sure your lawyer gets a look at his blood-test results.”

  I nodded, numb, and the cop glanced at Nash over my head. “Get her home safely.”

  Nash’s chin brushed the back of my head as he nodded, and when the cop was out of hearing range, I twisted to find Nash’s irises swirling languidly with none of the urgent fear skittering through me.

  “Do you think the blood test will show anything?”

  “No way.” Nash shook his head firmly. “There’s not a human lab built that can detect a Netherworld substance, and that cop lacks the necessary equipment to do it himself.” He tapped my nose and smiled reassuringly, and for a moment, I felt like a supernatural bloodhound. “You ready to go?”

  “I guess.” I stared as the tow truck pulled away with my car, and a second one backed slowly toward Doug’s Mustang.

  Doug sat on the floor of the ambulance, legs dangling over the edge, and as I watched, another officer held out a small electronic device with a mouthpiece on one end. Doug blew into the breathalyzer, and the cop glanced at the reading, then smacked the device on the palm of his hand. Like it wasn’t working.

  It probably showed at least one beer, but nowhere near enough to account for his current state. Nash was right; neither humans nor technology could detect Demon’s Breath. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy about that, or scared out of my mind.

  We knocked on Laura Bell’s door as the ambulance pulled away, followed closely by the second wrecker pulling Doug’s car. Laura led us through a large, tiled foyer and into a sunken living room full of dark colors and expensive woods.

  Emma sat in a stiff wingback chair, looking lost and half-asleep. When I reached to help her up, Tod popped into view a foot away and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Would I never get used to that?
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  “She’s fine,” Tod said as I knelt to look into Emma’s heavy-lidded eyes, and I knew by the lack of a reaction from anyone else—including Nash—that no one else could see him. “She just needs to sleep it off. And to get away from these squawking harpies you call friends.”

  In fact, I did not call Sophie and Laura friends, but I couldn’t explain that without looking crazy to everyone who didn’t see the invisible dead boy. So I scowled at the reaper as I helped Emma up, and Nash wrapped her other arm around his neck.

  “Hey, Sophie, do you want a ride?” I asked as we passed my cousin, standing with her hand propped on one denim-clad hip.

  She sneered at me with shiny pink lips. “Didn’t Doug just wrap your rolling scrap pile around a mailbox?”

  “In Emma’s car,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Sophie sank onto the couch and crossed one skinny leg over the other. “I’m staying with Laura.”

  “Fine.” They deserved each other. “Thanks for watching her,” I said to Tod.

  “Someone had to.” But before I could answer, the reaper popped out of existence again, presumably gone back to the hospital, where he was no doubt overdue.

  “Just get her out of here before my parents get home,” Laura said, assuming I was talking to her. “They don’t like me hanging out with drunk sluts.” I bit back a dozen replies about the irony of her friendship with Sophie and settled for slamming the door on our way out.

  I called my dad on the drive home, but he was working overtime again, and I got his voice mail. I hung up without leaving a message, because somehow “my car got rammed by a linebacker high on Demon’s Breath” just seemed like the kind of thing he’d want to hear in person.

  It was almost midnight—my official curfew—when I pulled into my driveway, and Emma had fallen asleep in her own backseat. Nash carried her inside and put her on my bed. I took off her shoes, then curled up next to Nash on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a sci-fi channel broadcast of the original Night of the Living Dead—a holiday classic if I’d ever seen one.