My Soul to Keep

  “How did you get to him?” I demanded, uncovering the receiver. Yes, I was stalling, but I also needed to know how he’d crossed my father over, so I could stop him from doing it again. Otherwise, bargaining for my dad’s freedom, or even his life, would be like holding ice in my palm in July; it would only melt away again.

  “My resources are vast, Ms. Cavanaugh, and unlike you, I have no moral qualms preventing me from using them to my advantage.”

  I stood, pacing the length of my living room as I spoke. “Is that your way of saying you have people?”

  He chuckled again, sounding genuinely amused that time. “I suppose so. I have many, many people. One more, in fact, than I had an hour ago.”

  My anger raged again at his implication, but I did my best to contain it. Avari was trying to make me mad. Trying to rush me into a snap decision that would likely get all three of us killed.

  Out of the corner of my eye, something moved, and I glanced up to see that Tod had returned. “It’s not Emma,” he said, breathing hard, as if he’d actually had to exert himself for that piece of information. Or as if he was too furious to breathe properly. “She’s having brunch with her mom and one of her sisters. It’s not my mom, either. I already checked.”

  Crap! Who else could it be?

  “So what about your people, Ms. Cavanaugh?” Avari asked, blessedly oblivious to the other conversation I was holding. “What are you willing to do to save them?”

  I covered the mouthpiece again and sank onto the edge of the coffee table, my head spinning with anger, frustration, and exhaustion. “It could be anyone…” I moaned to Tod, staring up at him in desperation. “What are there now, six billion people on the planet?”

  Tod shook his head. “He can’t just possess some random sleeping stranger, Kaylee. The host has to be someone with a connection to the Netherworld. Someone who’s left a psychic imprint there, either by crossing over or by tasting death in one form or another. Which is how he got Emma. She was technically dead for a couple of minutes back in September, right?”

  I nodded, my thoughts as scattered as dandelion fuzz on the breeze. Em had died, and I’d crossed over. Those were our connections. Were we both now fair game for demon possession?

  “It probably also has to be someone with a connection to you. Otherwise, how would he get your phone number? It’s unlisted right?”

  “Kaylee?” Avari’s impatience reclaimed my attention, as Tod’s new information began to process in the back of my mind.

  “It’s not about what I’m willing to risk!” I snapped into the phone, having hit the limit of my own tolerance. “It’s about what I stand to gain from that risk. Which is nothing, because we both know you’ll never let them go if I cross over.” After all, he was a hellion of greed.

  “I might not,” the hellion agreed, and in my mind, I saw a featureless, borrowed head nodding sagely. “But you’ll have to take that chance if you ever want to see your father and boyfriend again.”

  I covered the mouthpiece and met Tod’s eyes. “Someone who’s tasted death and has a connection to me. Like Emma…” Oh, no. No, no, no… “It’s Sophie.” My eyes closed in horror, but I knew I was right. “Avari’s in Sophie.”

  Tod frowned, then he was gone again.

  “Well?” Avari said into my ear. “Which do you value more—their lives, or your freedom?”

  But I had no answer to that because it wasn’t a fair question—if I crossed over, I’d be giving up both options. “Give me a gesture of goodwill,” I demanded. “A sign that you intend to keep your word.”

  Avari laughed so hard they probably heard him in the next dimension. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, amusement still ringing loud and clear in his voice. “A pinkie swear?”

  I rolled my eyes. Where did he get his cultural references, Hannah Montana? “Send one of them back now,” I clarified. “And I’ll cross over, then you can release the other.” Of course, I had no intention of crossing over, because I didn’t believe for a second that he’d actually give back either my father or Nash. So his next question stunned me into speechlessness.

  “Which one?”

  “What?” I asked when his words finally sank in.

  “Which one will you trade yourself for? Which one will you save?”

  “Oh, right,” I snapped, digging deep to find the courage for a few more words—and desperately hoping my bravado didn’t get anyone killed. “Like you’re actually going to let one of them go.”

  Avari chuckled softly, and the sound skittered up my spine like spiders crawling on long-dead bones. “I’m just intrigued enough by your proposition to actually send one of them back. But only because your agony over the decision promises to be a rare and extravagant treat.”

  As if I would ever let him snack on my pain…

  Still, it was a chance to get one of them out alive, immediately, which meant Tod and I would only have to escape the Netherworld with two passengers, instead of three.

  “So, which one will it be? The father or the lover? Which do you love more?”

  I don’t know. My father, who loved me, but abandoned me to his brother. Or my boyfriend, who loved me, but lied to me, Influenced me, and let a hellion wear my body.

  There were no guarantees that I’d make it out of the Netherworld alive with whichever one I left in Avari’s…care. So the only one whose safety was guaranteed—assuming the hellion’s people couldn’t get to him again—was whichever one he sent over immediately.

  And I couldn’t choose.

  “This offer expires in two minutes, Kaylee…” Avari’s intimate whisper made me feel dirty, and promised much worse things to come when we met in his territory. Things that may have already happened to my father and Nash. And I couldn’t decide which of them to rescue….

  Fortunately, before I could squeak out a desperate, impulsive answer, I heard a dull thud over the line, then the smack of something hitting the floor.

  An instant later, Tod’s voice spoke to me over the line. “You were right. It was Sophie.”

  “What did you do?” I demanded. My momentary relief was eclipsed by concern for my cousin, who hadn’t exactly volunteered her body for hostile occupation. Even if her own occupation of it was usually hostile.

  Tod chuckled. “You can’t possess someone who doesn’t have control over his or her own body. That’s like stealing a horse without grabbing the reins—how are you supposed to control the animal?”

  Had he just compared my pampered cousin to a beast of burden? I shouldn’t like the comparison, but I do….

  Still… “So what did you do?” I repeated.

  “I hit Sophie on the back of the head with a universal remote. This thing is huge. It’s like a cell phone from the ’90s.”

  “You were supposed to get rid of Avari without hurting the host!”

  “Yeah, I didn’t get that memo. Maybe next time you should be a little more specific when you boss me around while I’m saving your ass. Though, frankly, this whiny little shrew is lucky she only has one bump, ’cause she’s had this coming for a while.”

  Well, I couldn’t argue with him there. “Is she still breathing?”

  “It was a remote, not a sledgehammer. Anyway, it’s not her time. She’ll be fine.”

  “She better be.” I sighed and sank onto the couch again, desperately hoping I hadn’t just signed my father’s death warrant. Or Nash’s. “But the real question is how can we keep it from happening again? What’s to stop Avari from taking over everyone I know?”

  “Other than the qualifications for an intermediary? I mean, how many people do you know who have a connection to the Netherworld?”

  Not many, fortunately. Not that I knew of, anyway. But there were a few—Emma, Sophie, Uncle Brendon, and Harmony—none of whom I wanted to see hurt. Especially because of me.

  “Besides,” Tod continued, suddenly appearing in the middle of my living room floor, still holding Sophie’s home phone. “I think the key to keeping Ava
ri out of your friends and family is right in front of us.”

  “It is?” I dropped my phone back into its cradle as Tod nodded solemnly, ignoring the static bleeding from the receiver in his grip.

  “Alec.”

  “The proxy?” Finally wide-awake, I made my way toward the open kitchen window.

  “Yeah.” The reaper’s gaze followed me, but in true Tod fashion, he made no move to help as I used most of my weight to force the first heavy pane of glass closed. “Possession takes an enormous amount of energy, and most hellions can only do it every now and then, and only for short periods of time. A few minutes, at the most. But Avari’s been possessing you regularly for a month now, right?”

  I latched the kitchen window, then moved on to the two in the living room. “As near as I can tell.” I felt sick just thinking about it. How could Nash let Avari possess me? Had he even tried to evict the body snatcher? Even once I forgave Nash for lying about the Demon’s Breath—after all, he’d been exposed while helping me—I wasn’t sure I could forgive him for letting Avari inside me. And even if I could forgive, I could never forget….

  “And he’s been able to do it twice in two days, since he got his hands on Nash and your dad,” Tod continued, dragging my thoughts back on topic. “Which suggests that he’s using them as additional energy supplements—logical for a hellion of greed, don’t you think?” The reaper raised one brow for emphasis.

  “Yeah.” And that also supported my theory that Avari had no intention of returning them, no matter what I did. Especially now that I’d blown the “one now” deal.

  “But without proxies to boost his energy level, Avari won’t have the power to possess his own wardrobe, much less the entire cast of the Kaylee Cavanaugh show.”

  “Okay, that makes sense…” I nodded slowly as I reached into the fridge for another Coke. “But won’t he just get more proxies?”

  The sides of Tod’s mouth lifted in the first true smile I’d seen from him in a very long time. “He’ll try. But we’re banking on the fact that proxies like he has now are few and far between.”

  “Wait, Dad and Nash are bean sidhes—I get that. But Avari was possessing me way before he had either of them, back when Alec was his only walking snack. And Alec is human, right? He called himself a human proxy.”

  The reaper shook his head slowly. “I don’t know exactly what this Alec is, but I’d bet my afterlife that he isn’t only human. If he were, there’s no way he could have possessed Emma for so long. Or twice in one night.”

  So Tod was right. The key to disabling Avari’s human-telephone mode was to get Alec away from him. Not to mention my father and Nash. But since he’d just been physically expelled from my cousin’s body by an unknown third party, the hellion would probably guess that not only would I be coming for my men, but I’d have backup.

  Something told me that getting us all out of the Netherworld would not be as easy as Alec seemed to think….

  23

  TOD HAD TO REPORT to work at noon, but before he popped out of my living room at three minutes ’til, he swore he’d be back by five o’clock. That he would find someone to cover his shift, even though he’d already burned most of those bridges with his previous absences. Then he disappeared from my reality, leaving me alone with thoughts of my missing father and boyfriend.

  Well, with those, and with Sophie’s phone.

  Great.

  With a frustrated sigh, I grabbed her phone and my keys, then shrugged into my coat on the way out the door. All the way to Sophie’s house, I tried out different explanations for how I’d gotten her phone, and why she’d woken up on her living-room floor with a big bump on the back of her head. But my efforts turned out to be unnecessary—she was still unconscious when I got there.

  My old house key still worked, and when I pushed the front door open, I found Sophie lying facedown on the living-room floor, her cheek against the carpet, her eyes closed.

  She looked so fragile without her figurative fangs bared at me, or her eyes flashing in bitter triumph over the advantages her life had over mine. Unconscious, she looked frail and tragically human, and it was easier than usual to remind myself that she hadn’t chosen her own path in life any more than I had chosen mine. And she certainly hadn’t chosen to have her body hijacked by a nefarious Netherworld entity she didn’t even know existed.

  Even if she had deserved the whack on the head. Speaking of which…

  I knelt on the spotless white carpet next to the huge remote control and gently prodded the lump on the back of my cousin’s skull. Sophie didn’t even flinch. How hard had Tod hit her?

  Resigned, I sat on the coffee table and slid my cell from my front pocket, dialing my uncle’s cell number from my contacts list. He answered on the second ring.

  “Kaylee? What’s wrong?”

  Jeez, what isn’t wrong? I honestly had no idea where to start, without completely freaking him out. “Okay, Uncle Brendon, I have to tell you something, but first I need you to promise you won’t tell Harmony. I swore to Tod that we’d keep his mother out of this, no matter what.”

  Something clicked, and background music died, leaving only highway noise and the sound of his engine. He was in the car. Hopefully on the way home. “Did something happen to Nash?”

  I sighed. “Just promise, or I can’t tell you until it’s over.”

  “Kaylee, you’re scaring me…”

  “Then promise.”

  He exhaled heavily. “I promise.”

  “Thank you.” I sucked in a deep breath, then spit the whole story out, as coherently as I could, considering my current state of exhaustion, stress, and fear. “Avari the hellion of greed is holding Nash and my dad in the Netherworld, and after he took them, he possessed Sophie so he could call me and try to talk me into trading myself for them. But I know he’s not really going to send them back. So Tod hit Sophie on the back of the head with your universal remote to kick Avari out of her body. It worked, but now Sophie’s unconscious on the living-room floor with a big bump on her head. Could you come home and take a look at her? And maybe let me nap on your couch for a couple of hours?”

  For a moment, there was only silence on the other end of the line. Then my uncle released the breath he’d been holding. “I’ll be right there.” The phone went dead in my hand, and I smiled, more relieved than I could express that he and my father were two completely different people.

  Twenty-five minutes later, my uncle walked through his own front door, and he seemed almost as relieved to find me still there as he was upset to find Sophie still unconscious. “I think part of it is exhaustion from being possessed,” I said as he knelt beside me. “Emma slept for a long time afterward, too.”

  “Emma Marshall?” he asked, gently turning his daughter over. “This hellion possessed her, too?”

  I nodded solemnly. “Tod said that so long as they’re sleeping, he can get anyone with a connection to the Netherworld. Which Em and Sophie both have, since they’ve both been technically dead.”

  “Yes, but that takes an enormous amount of energy from a hellion. He shouldn’t be able to do it very frequently or for very long.” He brushed Sophie’s hair back from her face and pulled back her eyelids to check her dilation. “Otherwise, you’d hear about people committing crimes in their ‘sleep’ all the time.”

  I shrugged and perched on the end of the coffee table. “Well, he has a proxy, and Tod thinks he’s feeding off my dad and Nash, now that he has them.”

  Uncle Brendon’s expression went as hard as I’ve ever seen it. “I’ll kill him.” Presumably Avari, not Tod. Tod was already dead. But was Avari actually living?

  “That’d be great, except we don’t think you can kill a hellion, and you can’t cross over on your own.”

  “Take me.” He stood in one fluid motion, lifting his daughter like a sleeping toddler.

  “No way.” I shook my head. “You have to stay here and watch Sophie, to make sure Avari doesn’t take her over again.” And
because you can neither defend yourself in nor escape from the Netherworld… “Don’t leave her vulnerable just because you want revenge, Uncle Brendon.”

  “I don’t just want revenge.” My uncle stomped down the hall and into Sophie’s room so quickly I had to jog to keep up.

  “I want my brother back. And Harmony’s lost enough already. We can’t let her lose Nash.”

  “I want them back, too.” I crossed my arms over my chest and sat on the edge of my cousin’s desk. “And we’re going to get them tonight. But you have to stay here, and you already promised not to tell Harmony. If you do, she’ll run out after Nash and get herself killed. Or worse. And it’ll be your fault.”

  Uncle Brendon frowned at me like I’d lost my mind. Again. “The same could happen to you, Kaylee. What am I supposed to tell your father then?”

  I raised both brows at him as he lowered his daughter gently onto her bed. “If I don’t make it back, there won’t be any father to tell.”

  My uncle sighed so deeply I thought his entire body would deflate. “One hour.” He stood straight and scowled at me, and I knew that was the best we’d get, and only because we’d given him no other choice. “You and Tod have one hour in the Netherworld, then Harmony and I are coming after you. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. “But we can’t cross over till five. Can I sleep here until then?”

  He pulled the desk chair closer to the bed and sank into it, folding his daughter’s limp hand into his own. “You know you’re always welcome here, Kaylee.”

  Yeah. So long as Sophie was unconscious. “Great. It’ll be like old times.” Except that now there was a Netherworld demon out for my soul and my cousin’s body.

  SOMETHING HARD POKED my elbow, and I struggled to rise from the mire of sleep that had swallowed me like a sinkhole. A warm, soft, peaceful sinkhole…

  The poke came again, hard enough to jar my injured arm that time. “Why are you passed out on our couch? This is not a park bench.”