My Soul to Keep

  “What’s wrong with him?” Emma whispered, still staring at Scott’s breakdown. “He’s really freaking out.”

  I shrugged and shoved my frozen hands into my pockets. “I guess frost is pretty hard to come by.”

  Em huffed, and a white puff of her breath hung on the air. “What is it, anyway? Some kind of inhalant?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt bad about lying to Emma, even if it was for her own good, so I compensated with a little bit of the truth. “But it’s not good, Em. Look what it’s doing to Scott.”

  Scott’s anger simmered just shy of the boiling point. Fortunately, the small crowd had dispersed—all but the central players—and there weren’t many people left to watch as Doug and Nash tried to talk him down. Less than a minute later, their efforts failed.

  “Screw this!” Scott threw his bag into the car, where it smacked the passenger’s side window, then tumbled to the floorboard. “I can’t be here right now.” He dropped into the driver’s seat and shoved his key into the ignition. Then he slammed the door and gunned his engine before taking off straight across the parking lot. Bright winter sunlight glinted on his rear fender as he raced between two parked cars, sending students scrambling out of his way.

  Across the lot, the teachers on duty scowled and crossed their arms over their chests, but there was nothing they could do, except be grateful no one was hit. And possibly recommend that the principal suspend his parking pass.

  With Scott gone, and Nash and Doug conferring softly in the space he’d just vacated, my gaze settled on Sophie, who now stood alone in front of her friend’s car, a bucket of paint hanging from each clenched fist. Her mouth hung open, her nose red from the cold, and I got a rare glimpse of pain and disappointment before she donned her usual arrogant scowl and marched across the lot in a pair of trendy flats, as if she couldn’t care less that her boyfriend had just bailed on his promise to her without a word.

  And everyone knew it.

  “YOU SURE SCOTT’S OKAY to drive?” I asked as Nash placed his palms flat against my temporary car, on either side of me. I was trapped, but willingly, deliciously so, and when he leaned in for a kiss, I stood on my toes to meet him.

  “Yeah, he’s fine.” Nash’s mouth pressed briefly against mine, then he murmured his next sentence against my cheek, near my ear, which lent his words a tantalizing intimacy, in spite of the subject matter. “He’s pissed, not high.” Another kiss, this one a little longer and a lot deeper. “And I’ll check on him when we get done here.” He and Doug were going to stay and help the carnival committee, to honor their friend’s promise in his time of…withdrawal. “Call me when you get off work?”

  I ran my hand up the cold leather sleeve of his jacket. “Yeah. My dad’s working late, and I think I might need help with my anatomy.”

  Nash’s brows shot up. “You’re not taking anatomy.”

  I grinned. “I know.”

  The next kiss was longer, and ended only when Sophie made a rude noise in the back of her throat, wordlessly calling on Nash to help carry the five-gallon buckets of white paint. He waved her off without turning away from me. “Leave them here, and I’ll bring them in a minute.”

  Sophie stomped off, obviously irritated, but silent for once.

  “Here, let me get the balloon before you go.” Nash glanced around the lot to make sure no one was within hearing range as he unzipped his nearly empty backpack.

  “Why don’t you just come over and get it tonight?” I said, reaching to open the driver’s door.

  Nash frowned. “Has your dad checked out the loaner yet?”

  “No. He passed out right after dinner last night.”

  “So what if he gets off early today and decides to take a look? You want him to find that in your car?”

  “He’s not gonna search the trunk, Nash.”

  His gaze hardened. “Just give me the balloon, Kaylee,” he snapped.

  I stepped back, surprised. “What’s wrong with you? You’re being a dick.” And whatever was wrong with him was about more than a couple of strung out friends. It had to be.

  Nash sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want you driving around with that in your car. Please let me take care of it, so I won’t have to worry about you.”

  “Fine.” It was not fine, but I didn’t want to argue. Again.

  “Give me your bag.” I rounded the car and opened the trunk, standing ready in case the weighted balloon somehow rose and escaped. It did not. Instead of handing me his bag, Nash leaned into the trunk with it and shoved the balloon inside, then zipped it before anyone could see what he was doing. “Don’t get caught with that,” I warned. None of the teachers would know what it was, but anyone who’d seen Scott’s melt-down might. “And don’t forget to put his key back.”

  He grinned, good mood intact once again. “I’m a big boy.”

  “I know.” But on the drive to work with Emma, all I could think about was Nash walking around with a balloon full of Demon’s Breath in his backpack, where anyone might find it.

  So after a later-than-expected shift at the Cinemark, I called him as I was getting ready for bed—I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I knew he’d safely disposed of the balloon. He assured me he had given it to Tod, and we talked for about half an hour, until my dad knocked on my door and told me to hang up and go to sleep.

  Rolling my eyes, I said good-night to Nash and turned off my lamp. But even once I’d curled up with one leg tossed over my extra pillow, I couldn’t stop the slideshow playing behind my eyes.

  Doug’s car smashing into mine.

  Scott’s fit in the parking lot.

  Nash holding the stolen balloon.

  We were in deep with the Demon’s Breath, and as I lay in my dark room, trying to sleep, something told me that taking Scott’s stash was about as helpful as plugging a hole in the Hoover Dam with a chewed-up piece of gum….

  7

  “NOOOO!” MY OWN SHOUT echoed in my head like gunfire in a closed room, shocking me into semiawareness in spite of the thick gray haze swirling languidly around my ankles. The haze was like smoke—heavier than air and impossible to see through—except that it carried no heat and no stench of burned debris.

  Hesitant to move when I couldn’t see my surroundings, I turned in place, then turned again, searching the gray haze desperately for some familiar landmark. Or even an unfamiliar landmark. For anything that could tell me where I was. But I saw nothing but more grayness, as if I’d gone blind, and what lay behind my eyelids now was not the sparking, staticky darkness of closed eyes, but a vast, featureless expanse of gray.

  A thing of nightmares.

  Okay, Kaylee, think! I demanded silently. Why were you screaming?

  For one long, terrifying moment, the answer wouldn’t come. I didn’t know why I’d been screaming. Then I sucked in a deep, fog-bitter breath and held it, focusing on how thick and oily the grayness tasted in my mouth. I wanted to spit it out, but I couldn’t stop breathing it, because there was no fresh air to be found.

  Then the answer came to me, slithering softly into my head like a snake into the solace of a dark pond. Hoping to escape notice.

  I’d had a premonition. I’d been screaming because someone was going to die.

  Crap! I was in the Netherworld. I had to be, because no place in my world had fog like the thick haze oozing over my jeans to curl around my hands, brushing my fingers like swabs of damp cotton.

  Wait, that wasn’t right, either. I’d never actually seen fog in the Netherworld. I’d only seen it layered over my own reality when I peeked into the Netherworld. So, was I peeking? And if so, why could I now feel the fog, which had always been a simple visual element before?

  Something was wrong. I wasn’t in the real Netherworld. I was in some stylized version of it as if I were…

  Dreaming.

  That’s it! I was asleep, dreaming about someone’s death. Which put me in some dream version of the Netherworld, the best approximat
ion my subconscious mind could come up with. And even as that truth sank in, the scream welled up in my throat again, greeting the dark, fuzzy form coming toward me out of the fog.

  The walking dead.

  It was human. Or at least humanlike, with head and shoulders in the proper proportions, and presumably matching pairs of arms and legs. I couldn’t tell the figure’s gender, though it was only feet from me now, because it was thoroughly obscured by the grayness, which seemed to thicken even as I thought of it.

  I clamped my jaws shut against the scream scraping my throat raw and clenched my fists hard enough to draw blood with my nails, hoping to wake myself up. To leave this sleep-version Netherworld before I saw whose demise I was dreaming. Whose death my subconscious was predicting with every bit of stubborn certainty my waking body put into each screech that left my mouth.

  But nothing happened. I felt no pain in my palms, saw no blood, and certainly did not wake up. And the figure kept coming.

  Five feet away now, and its steps made no sound on the ground. Four feet away, yet there was no brush of fabric or click of heels.

  Three feet, and the features started to come into focus through the Nether-smog. A nose. Two shadowy eyes, like the hollows of an unlit jack-o’-lantern. And a mouth like a great, dark void…

  My throat hurt so bad I thought it would swell shut. It felt like I’d swallowed rose stems, thorns and all, and someone was trying to pull them back up.

  Yet the sound kept coming.

  In front of me, as I stood frozen in disharmonic agony, the figure stumbled and went down on one knee. A ghostly hand reached out for me, fingers penetrating the haze for one tortured moment before the hand fell, too, disappearing completely into the fog, along with the body.

  But before the haze melted away, before the features came in clearly enough for me to identify, the real scream burst from my throat, slicing through the night—or day?—like a foghorn through the stormy sea.

  And still I screamed.

  I tried to bring one hand up to cover my mouth, to stop the sound rattling my teeth. But my hand was pinned to my side, though nothing held it there. My limbs were frozen, and with that realization, my panic doubled, dumping a fresh dose of adrenaline on top of the premonition-panic already fueling my wail.

  And finally, with nothing left to try, I closed my eyes tight—relieved that they, at least, still seemed to follow my commands—and prepared to ride out the scream.

  When the last hoarse note slipped through my mouth like the exhale of a dying man, I licked my lips, then swallowed gingerly. My throat hurt like I’d been gargling shards of glass.

  A frigid breeze blew against my bare legs, raising chill bumps the length of my body, and a soft, eerie tinkling sound tickled my ears, a thousand wind chimes all jingling at once.

  Wait, bare legs? Where did my jeans go?

  My eyes flew open and devastating, terrifying comprehension sank through me, anchoring me to the ground where I stood as if I were mired in concrete. But I wasn’t. I was mired in razor wheat, and the tinkling hadn’t come from wind chimes. It had come from hundreds of tall, olive-colored stalks of grass brushing against one another, as sharp and brittle as blown glass.

  I wasn’t sure when the dream ended and the real horror began, but I’d woken up at some point, still wailing, and accidentally crossed into the Netherworld. In my tank top and pj shorts. Barefoot and freezing.

  Oh, shit!

  Gone were my warm bed, fluffy pillows, and worn-thin carpet. Instead, I stood on bare dirt—oddly gray in color—with my big toe pressed against the base of one cold, fragile stalk of razor wheat. Another stalk brushed my elbow as the cold wind blew it toward me, and I froze to keep from shattering it and being pricked by thousands of glasslike slivers.

  Harmony had said it wasn’t possible. That we couldn’t accidentally cross over, because moving from one world into the next required intent, in addition to the bean sidhe wail. So what did this mean? That I secretly wanted to cross over?

  If so, I’d certainly been keeping that secret well. Even from myself.

  But there would be time to figure that out later—hopefully. My immediate concern was getting my defenseless bean sidhe butt out of the Netherworld before something predatory came along to eat me. And in the Netherworld, that could be anything. Including the plant life.

  I had plenty of intent to cross over when I called forth my wail this time, but nothing came out but a soft, hoarse croak. I’d lost my voice screaming my way into the Netherworld, and now had no way out. Nor could I move from the spot where I stood without slicing my bare feet open on every stalk of wheat I shattered.

  Then, with panic looming, my hands actually shaking from both the cold and my slim chance of escape, a sudden crashing, furiously chiming sound made me jump. My elbow hit the stalk to my left, and it shattered into tiny needle-sharp shards. Several points scraped my leg as they fell, three or four actually lodging in my skin, but I couldn’t bend to examine the damage without breaking more of the wheat. So I stood as still as possible, my mind racing in search of a way out, and I flinched each time the racket from my left grew louder.

  The sound was like the tinkling of shattering razor wheat, only it echoed, and each burst followed a heavy metallic crash.

  Desperate now, I held Emma’s death in my mind—remembering how she’d looked as she’d collapsed to the gym floor, her eyes empty, her hands uncurling at her sides—as I tried to work up enough saliva to swallow and ease the pain in my throat. Which would hopefully make it possible for me to wail, at least long enough to cross over.

  My pulse raced. My palms began to sweat in spite of the cold eating at my skin, echoing the sting of the wheat shards in my flesh. The crashing continued, headed toward me, and I flinched with each new burst of sound.

  I swallowed convulsively, wishing I dared to move enough to rub my throat, and wishing even harder that I had something to drink. Something warm and sweet, like the hot tea Harmony always made after I wailed.

  Another crash, alarmingly close, and my stomach leaped into my throat. The next was closer still—just yards away now. On my left, stalks of grass swayed to either side in a nearly straight line, like the part between a little girl’s pigtails. But the seed clumps at the top of the stalks were eye height on me, so I couldn’t see much more than the movement itself.

  Drowning in fresh panic, I opened my mouth and forced a sound out, devastated when the croak warbled, then faded.

  I swallowed again and clenched my fists at my sides. Then I pictured Emma’s pale, dead face in my mind and let loose my wail with everything I had left in me.

  A new scream tore free from my throat, just as painful as the last one, but nowhere near as loud. The sound fractured, and I scrambled to pull it back together, closing my eyes in concentration. And when the notes finally steadied, I opened my eyes again to see that the grass around me had gone still. I no longer heard the crashing, but then, I could rarely hear anything over my own wailing. Yet I knew instinctively that the creature in the wheat with me had stopped moving, either scared or surprised by my wail.

  The stalks bent in my direction again. I screamed harder. Razor wheat shattered. My pulse raced. My throat ached. My stomach was leading a revolt of my entire body. Then, finally, a familiar gray fog swept in to overlay my vision, heralding my return to my own world.

  Just in time.

  And as my bedroom began to reform around me—pale walls and furniture oddly overlaid across the still-real olive-tinted field—the crashing creature penetrated the wall of wheat at my side, bursting into view.

  I almost laughed out loud.

  It wasn’t some weird, Netherworld monster, eager to eat me. It was an ordinary trash-can lid. An old-fashioned metal disk, wielded by the handle on the topside. The suburban knight had used his shield to break the stalks ahead of him, to avoid being sliced to bits by the literal blades of grass.

  It was brilliant, really. I wished I’d thought of it.

&nb
sp; The improvised shield began to lower, and with the last breath I took in the Netherworld, my gaze landed on a pair of bright brown eyes set into a dark face not much older than my own, crowned by a nest of tight curls and the slightest shadow of a beard.

  Then I was back in my room, those eyes fading slowly from the image burned into the backs of my eyelids.

  “Well, then, get dressed! Harmony, you have to come right now!” my father yelled. Terror echoed in his voice like a shout from a lost cave.

  My feet shifted on something soft and springy, and my eyes popped open. I stood in the middle of my bed. My bare toes curled around a fold in my comforter, still smudged with gray Netherworld dirt and dotted with tiny spots of blood from splinters of razor wheat. My father stood at the foot of my bed with his back to me, the home phone pressed to his ear.

  “She’s crossed over, and I can’t get into the Netherworld without you!” he yelled.

  “Dad?”

  He whirled toward me, eyes going wide even as the line of his jaw softened with relief.

  “Never mind, she’s back,” he whispered into the phone. Then he hung it up and dropped the receiver on the blankets at my feet. “Kaylee, are you okay?”

  “Fine.” I whispered, then followed his gaze to the thin shards of razor wheat still protruding from my bloodstained left thigh. “Just scratches,” I said, reaching down to pluck the needle-sharp splinters from my skin. I collected them loosely in my other palm, and breathed a sigh of relief that razor wheat—while painful—wasn’t poisonous.

  “Where the hell did you go?” He stomped around the foot-board and lifted me from the mattress like a naughty toddler caught jumping on the bed. “I heard you wailing, but by the time I got here you’d crossed over. What were you doing?”

  “It was an accident,” I muttered, my mouth pressed into his shoulder as he hugged me so tight I couldn’t catch my breath. The scruff on his chin scratched my neck, and I felt his heart racing through my nightshirt. “I dreamed someone died, and woke up in the Netherworld.”