My Soul to Keep

  My front door opened just as the first zombie ripped its way into the farmhouse on-screen, and I jumped, dumping popcorn everywhere.

  My father trudged through the door in faded jeans and a flannel shirt, an entirely different kind of zombie thanks to shift after shift on an assembly line, trying to keep us both clothed and fed. Then he stopped and backed onto the porch again, and I knew exactly what he was looking for.

  “Where’s your car?” Dread warred with the exhaustion in his voice as he tossed his jacket over the back of a living room chair.

  I stood while Nash began dropping stray kernels into the bowl. “Um, there was a little accident, and—”

  “Are you okay?” My dad frowned, eyeing me from head to toe for injuries.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t even in the car.” I stuffed my hands into my back pockets because I didn’t know what else to do with them.

  “What? Where were you?”

  “At a party. When Doug Fuller left, he accidentally…hit my car.”

  My dad’s dark brows furrowed until they almost met. “Were you drinking?”

  “No.” Thank goodness. I wouldn’t put it past him to whip out a plastic cup and demand a urine sample. I swear, he would have been a great parole officer.

  My father studied me, and I could see the exact moment he decided he believed me. And with that settled, his gaze fixed behind me, where Nash now stood with the bowl of spilled popcorn. “Nash, go home.” The most common words in his verbal arsenal.

  Nash handed me the bowl. “You want me to take Emma home?”

  “Emma…?” My dad sighed and ran one hand through his thick brown hair. “Where is she?”

  “In my bed.”

  “Drunk?”

  I thought about lying. I had no idea how he would react, even if I wasn’t the one drinking. But Em smelled like beer; my lie would never float.

  “Yeah. What was I supposed to do, toss her the keys and wish her luck?”

  My dad sighed. Then to my complete shock, he shook his head. “No, you did the right thing.”

  “So she can stay?” I couldn’t believe it. He didn’t even sound mad.

  “This time. But next time, I’m calling her mother. Nash, I’m sure we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nash squeezed my hand, then headed for the door. He would walk to his house, two streets away, like he’d done every time he’d come over since I’d been grounded. Including several times when my father’d had no idea he was there.

  “What happened?” My dad locked the door behind Nash, then sank into his favorite armchair as I settled onto the couch, trying to decide whether or not to tell him the whole truth. About the Demon’s Breath. He was being pretty cool so far, but the Netherworld element was guaranteed to push him over the edge.

  “I told you. Doug Fuller hit my car.”

  “How bad is it?”

  I sighed, mentally steeling myself for an explosion. “He wrapped it around a neighbor’s brick mailbox.”

  Air whistled as he inhaled sharply, and I flinched.

  “He was drinking, wasn’t he?” my father demanded, and I almost smiled in relief. Part of me had been sure he’d know about the Demon’s Breath from my posture, or my expression, or some kind of weird bean sidhe parenting telepathy I didn’t know about. But he thought it was just regular teenage drama, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he looked a little relieved, too.

  I was not going to burst his bubble. “I don’t know. Maybe. But he is about as smart as a tractor.”

  “Where’d they take the car?”

  “To the body shop on Third.”

  My dad stood and actually smiled at me, and I could almost taste his relief. He was thrilled to finally be faced with a normal parent’s problem. “I’ll go look at it in the morning. I assume this Fuller kid is insured?”

  “Yeah. The cops gave me this.” I held out the form with Doug’s contact information and his insurance company’s number. “And he said his dad would pay for it.”

  “Yes, he will.” My father took the form into the kitchen, where the light was better. “Go get some sleep. You and Em are working in the morning, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” From noon to four, we’d be selling tickets and serving popcorn at the Cinemark in the never-ending quest for gas money. Which we spent going to and from work. It was a vicious cycle.

  Dismissed, and feeling like I’d just been pardoned from death row, I changed into my pj’s, brushed my teeth, and lay down next to Emma in the bed. And as I listened to her breathe, I couldn’t help thinking about how badly everything might have turned out if she’d actually gotten into that car.

  I’d already lost Emma once and had no intention of losing her again anytime soon. Which meant I’d have to find out how her boyfriend got his human hands on Demon’s Breath—then make sure that never happened again.

  3

  “KAYLEE, COME ON IN!” Harmony Hudson brushed blond curls back from her face and held the door for me as I stepped into her small, neat living room, stuffing my freezing hands into my jacket pockets. “Do we have a lesson this morning?”

  “No, I just came to see Nash.”

  “Oh!” She smiled and closed the door, cutting off the frigid draft. “Then you must have served out your sentence.”

  “As of yesterday.”

  Nash had been grounded, too, but he only got two weeks, to my four. I think he would have gotten more if he’d still been underage, but it’s hard to ground an eighteen-year-old. And punishing Tod wasn’t even an option, considering he was fully grown and technically dead, and had unlimited access to the Netherworld. She couldn’t even keep him in one room—not to mention corporeal—long enough to yell at him.

  “He’s still asleep. What did you guys do last night, anyway?”

  I dropped my duffel on the faded couch, going for nonchalance, though I hated withholding information from her even worse than from my father. “Party at Scott’s house. Doug Fuller rammed my parked car with an ’08 Mustang.”

  “Oh, no!” Harmony stopped in the kitchen doorway, holding the swinging door open with one palm. “You’re insured, right?”

  “Liability only.” That’s all I could afford, working twelve hours a week at the Cinemark. “But Doug’s parents are loaded, and there’s no way they can say I’m at fault. I wasn’t even in the car.”

  “Well, that’s good at least, right?” I nodded, and she waved one hand toward the short hallway branching off from the opposite side of the living room. “Go wake up van Winkle and see if you can get him to eat something. I’m making apple-cinnamon muffins.”

  Harmony was always baking something, and always from scratch. She was really more like a grandmother than a mom, in that respect, though she looked more like Nash’s older sister. She was eighty-two years old, with the face and body of a thirty-year-old.

  So far, slow postpuberty aging was the only real advantage I’d discovered to being a bean sidhe. My father was one hundred thirty-two and didn’t look a day over forty.

  Nash didn’t answer when I knocked, so I slipped into his room, then closed the door and leaned against it, watching him sleep. He looked so vulnerable in his boxers, one side of his face buried in the pillow, one leg tangled near the bottom of his sheet.

  I knelt by the bed and brushed thick brown hair from his forehead. The room was warm, but his skin was cool, so I started to cover him up, but before I could, his face twisted into a grimace, his eyes still squeezed shut.

  He was breathing too fast. Almost panting. His teeth ground together, then he made a helpless mewling sound. His arms tensed. He clenched handfuls of the fitted sheet.

  I watched Nash’s nightmare from the outside, trying to decide if I should wake him up or let the dream play out. But then his eyes flew open and he gasped, his gaze still unfocused. He scuttled over the mattress, bare chest heaving, and stood against the far wall, staring across the bed at me. His irises churned in terror for several seconds before recognition settled into place and
by then my own heart was racing in response to his fear.

  “Kaylee?” He whispered my name, like he wasn’t sure he could trust his own eyes.

  “Yeah, it’s me.” I stood as his breathing slowed and he started to calm down. “Nightmare?”

  He rubbed both hands over his face, and when he met my gaze again he was calm, back in control of his expression. And of his eyes. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What was it about?”

  “I don’t remember.” He frowned and sank onto the mattress. “I just know it was bad. But the waking up part is good so far…”

  Nash pulled me onto his lap. “So, what’s with the personal wake-up?” He swept my hair over one shoulder and suddenly I was acutely aware that he was half-naked and now very close. “Phone calls just aren’t as satisfying anymore?” he whispered, trailing feather-soft kisses down my neck.

  He leaned us both back, and before I even realized what had happened, I was lying on his bed, his weight pressing me into the mattress. His lips trailed down my neck again and his hand roamed over my shirt, and all I could think was that I didn’t want to stop him. He’d waited long enough. I wanted to just let it happen…

  My next exhale was ragged, and I couldn’t control my racing pulse.

  “I, uh…” What was I saying? What did he ask? Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter….

  His hand slid beneath my shirt, but his fingers were freezing on my skin, and the shock woke me up. Irritated, I pulled Nash away and sat up to frown at him. “Are you Influencing me?”

  He shrugged, a heated grin turned up one side of his mouth. “Just helping you relax.”

  “Don’t Influence me, Nash!” I stood, struggling to sustain my anger with his voice still slithering through my mind.

  “Don’t ever do that to me when I’m not singing for someone’s soul.” Sometimes his voice helped me quiet my bean sidhe wail, but that’s not what this was. Not even close. “I hate losing control. It’s like falling off a cliff in slow motion.” Or being sedated. “And that’s not what I came in here for,” I insisted, waving one hand at the bed.

  Nash scowled, and that tremendous, irresistible false calm deserted me, leaving only the chill of its sudden absence and his obvious irritation. “How am I supposed to know that? I wake up and you’re in my bedroom with the door closed. What was I supposed to think? That you want to play Scrabble?”

  “I…” I frowned, unsure how to finish that thought. Had I sent him some kind of signal? Was I wearing my “I’m done with my virginity, please get rid of it for me” T-shirt? “Your mom’s in the other room!”

  “Whatever.” He sighed and pulled me closer by one hand.

  “Forgive me?”

  “Only if you promise to play nice.”

  “I swear. So, what’s up?” He leaned back on a pillow propped against his headboard, hands linked behind his skull, putting himself on display in case I changed my mind.

  “You said you’d give me a ride.”

  His eyes swirled with mischief, and my cheeks blazed when I realized what I’d said. “Um…you’re the one who said no.”

  “A ride to work.” I’d just discovered the cause of spontaneous combustion. Surely I’d burst into flames any moment.

  “I guess I could do that, too.”

  “I’m serious!” But not too serious to let my gaze wander. After all, I was being invited to look… “I need a lift to work, and I was hoping we could make a stop first.”

  “Where?”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Doug Fuller’s.”

  “Kaylee…” he began, and I could already hear the protest forming. He sat up and I let one leg hang off the bed. “Whatever Fuller’s into is none of our business.”

  “He’s taking Demon’s Breath,” I whispered with a nervous glance at the closed door, hoping his mother was still in the kitchen. “How is that none of our business?”

  “It has nothing to do with us.” He stood and snatched a shirt from the back of his desk chair.

  “Don’t you want to know where he got it? He could have killed someone last night. And if he takes any more of it, he’ll probably kill himself.”

  Nash sank into his desk chair. “You’re overreacting, Kaylee.”

  “No, you’re underreacting.” I scooted to the edge of his bed. “What happened to looking out for your friends?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” He shrugged, frustration clear in the tense line of his shoulders. “Go up to Fuller and say, ‘Hey, man, I’m not sure where you’re getting secondhand air from a demon you don’t even know exists, but you need to lay off it before you kill yourself’? That’s not gonna sound weird.” He kicked a shoe across the room to punctuate his sarcasm.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, struggling to keep my voice low. “You’re worried about sounding weird in front of a guy who’s getting high off someone else’s breath?”

  “Why do you care, anyway?” Nash demanded. “You don’t even like Fuller.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to watch him die.” Especially considering that his impending death would send me into an uncontrollable, screaming bean sidhe fit, forcing us to decide whether or not to try to save him. “And I won’t let him take Emma with him.”

  Nash’s scowl wilted, giving way to confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “They were all over each other last night, Nash. While he was high on Demon’s Breath. And it probably wasn’t the first time. She could be accidentally inhaling what he exhales.”

  Horror flitted across Nash’s face, greens and browns twisting in his irises, then he closed his eyes and reset his expression before I was even sure of what I’d seen, effectively locking me out of his thought process.

  I leaned against his headboard and fiddled with his pillow-case. “Tod says it’s highly addictive and ultimately deadly to humans. What if she gets hooked on it, too? What if she already is?”

  Nash sighed and sank onto the bed, facing me. “Look, we don’t even know that Fuller’s actually addicted, okay? We just know he took some last night. And to even be exposed, Emma would have had to suck air straight from his lungs, right after he inhaled. And the chances of that are almost nil. Right?”

  “How do you know? He was still exhaling enough for me to smell it on him, and they’ve been all over each other for the past two weeks. Are you sure she couldn’t have gotten even a tiny bit by kissing him?”

  “I seriously doubt it, Kaylee.” But before he regained control of his eyes, I saw the truth in the nervous swirl of color. Nash wasn’t sure. And he was scared.

  He exhaled heavily, then met my gaze again. “Okay, we’ll find out if he knows what he was taking and where he got it. But if he doesn’t know, don’t tell him what it is, okay? No more full disclosures to friends. Emma was plenty.”

  “Fine.” I wasn’t exactly eager to tell anyone else I wasn’t human, anyway.

  “You have to be at work at noon?” I nodded, and he pulled off the shirt he’d just put on, then tossed it at his open hamper like a basketball. “We’ll leave as soon as I get out of the shower.”

  “After breakfast,” I corrected on my way to the door, smiling over my victory. “Your mom’s making muffins.”

  In the kitchen, I waited for Nash in a rickety chair at the scratched, round table, watching Harmony wash dishes.

  “So are you enjoying your freedom?” She glanced at me over her shoulder as she set a metal bowl in the dish drainer.

  I shrugged. “I haven’t experienced much of it yet.”

  She dried a clean, plastic-coated whisk, dropped it into an open drawer, then leaned against the counter and eyed me in blatant curiosity. “Was it worth it?”

  “Was it worth being grounded?” I asked, and she nodded.

  “Yes. And no. Getting Regan’s soul back was totally worth it.” Four weeks of house arrest were nothing compared to the eternity she would have suffered without her soul. “But there was nothing we could do for Addy.” And every time
I thought about that, my stomach pitched like I was in freefall, a mixture of guilt and horror over my failure.

  “Do you still hear from Regan?” Harmony asked when I didn’t elaborate.

  “Not very often. I think it’s easier for her to try to forget about what happened with Addy.” About the fact that her sister had been damned to eternal torment because she died without her soul. With nothing to release upon her death but a lungful of Demon’s Breath.

  And suddenly I had an idea… “Do you think Regan will be okay? Because of the Demon’s Breath, I mean. Tod said it’s really dangerous.”

  Harmony nodded absently, opening the oven door to check the muffins. “It certainly can be. Demon’s Breath decays your soul. It rots the parts of you that make you you.”

  Okay, that’s not terrifying….

  “But on the surface, it acts a bit like a very strong hallucinogenic drug. It’ll make you see and hear things that aren’t there.”

  Which would explain why Doug thought someone had been in the car with him…

  Harmony continued, sounding every bit like the nurse she was. “It’s also highly addictive, and even if it doesn’t kill you quickly, long-term use can lead to brain damage and psychosis.”

  I swallowed the huge lump that had formed in my throat and hoped my voice sounded normal. “Psychosis, like, insanity?”

  “Simply put, yes. A complete loss of contact with reality.” She used a pot holder to pull the muffin pan from the oven, then kicked the oven door closed. “And withdrawal is even worse. It sends the entire system into shock and can easily be fatal, even to someone who survived the substance itself.”

  “Great…” I whispered. So cutting off Doug’s supply might kill him even faster than the Demon’s Breath would.

  “Oh, no, hon!” I looked up to find her watching the horror surely growing on my face. “Don’t worry about Regan. She wasn’t huffing Demon’s Breath for a high—she was sustained by it in the absence of her soul. That’s a totally different ball game. Still very dangerous, for obvious reasons,” she conceded with a shrug. “That whole sell-your-soul thing. But very little risk to her, physically.”