Wood creaked as Tod lifted his very corporeal weight from my desk, and a second later he sat next to Nash on Em’s bed. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
Nash laughed, a harsh sound that carried disbelief but no real hostility. “I get that you think you’re all badass, with the undead thing you’ve got going on, but it’s been nearly three years. The mystique has worn off, and we all know the truth. Reapers don’t save people—they kill people. Besides, if she dies in the Netherworld, there’s nothing you can do.” Nash stood, headed for the hall, walking backward, and I scurried away from the door. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m not the little brother anymore. You don’t need to coddle me. The truth is that if Avari wants Mom dead, there’s nothing either of us can do to stop that. Especially you. No offense, but you couldn’t even save Kaylee, and she was in the human world. Hell, she was in your reaping zone.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I pushed my bedroom door open. “Food’s here.” Nash turned, eyes wide with surprise, but Tod looked like he’d known I was there the whole time. He studied me, and I realized he was trying to figure out if I agreed with Nash. If I thought he’d failed me when I’d died. “Sabine’s not back yet,” I said. “Do you think you could go check on her?”
Tod nodded, almost reluctantly, then stood and slid one hand behind my head and into my hair. The goodbye kiss he gave me lingered, and it tasted like sorrow. “Be back in a few.” Then he disappeared.
When he was gone, I closed the door at my back, then leaned against it. Nash’s brows rose. “What are you doing?”
“We need to talk.”
He frowned. “Is it opposite day? ’Cause I think that’s my line.”
“I wish you could trust him as much as I trust him.” I let go of the doorknob and sat on the edge of my desk, where Tod had been moments earlier. “It would mean the world to him to look at you just once and not see contempt and suspicion.”
“Wow, seriously? I kinda thought he was lucky that I’m speaking to him at all, considering...what you two did behind my back. That’s not exactly the kind of thing that inspires trust.”
Granted. And we were obviously never going to be done paying for that. “But you trust me?”
Nash sat on my bed and thought in silence for a minute. “Yeah, actually, I do.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We were together for so long....”
“Six months. We were together for six months, about a quarter of which I spent grounded.” Since neither of us had to sleep, I’d actually spent more time with Tod in the month and a half we’d been together than I’d spent with Nash during our entire half year as a couple. “But you and Tod have been brothers your whole lives. Why would you trust me but not him? Especially considering that I’m responsible for everything you blame him for. I kissed him, Nash. Not the other way around. I kissed him.”
“I know. But...” He exhaled in frustration. “I understand why you would do that. I messed things up between you and me. Looking back, I’m surprised it took as long as it did for you to bail on me—”
“I didn’t bail. I—”
He held up one hand. “I know. Just let me finish. My point is that I practically pushed you toward him, so I can’t really blame you for your part in this. But I never pushed him toward you. He went after you all on his own.”
“But he didn’t,” I insisted. “And he wasn’t going to. If I hadn’t kissed him, he’d probably still be watching from the sidelines, holding everything inside because he’s your brother. Because he cares about you. Because he wants to protect you, even from himself.”
“Oh, that’s such bullshit!” Anger flashed behind Nash’s eyes, and I saw him struggle to control it. Which meant more to me than he could possibly imagine. “I’m sorry, but you’re wearing rose-colored glasses, Kay. You think that just because you have a heart of gold everyone else must, too, but that’s not—”
“I don’t have a heart of gold.” Lately it felt more like I had a heart of steel. Like full-body armor was the only way I could protect the muscle that didn’t always beat anymore but always felt bruised.
“Yeah, you do. What you don’t see is that Tod would do anything for you because he loves you, but he’s not like that with everyone else. He’s not like that with anyone else.”
“You’re wrong. He’s not perfect—none of us are—but he’d do anything for the people he loves, and you’re one of them.”
“Right. I almost forgot that stealing your brother’s girlfriend is the best way to strengthen that fraternal bond,” Nash said. I started to object, but he held one hand up again to stop me. “I know. I have to get over that, and I am getting over it. I’m getting over you, anyway. But he’s my brother. We share the same parents. The same blood. He was willing to die to keep from reaping your soul, but he wasn’t even willing to keep his tongue in his own mouth to keep me from getting dumped. That tells me exactly how much I mean to him.”
I exhaled slowly and sank into my desk chair, one foot on the floor to keep it from turning. Don’t say it, Kaylee. It wasn’t my place. I had no intention of saying it until the words just fell out of my mouth.
“You died, Nash.”
He kind of tilted his head, like he hadn’t quite heard me. “What?”
“You died, when you were sixteen. In a car wreck. Hit head-on by a drunk driver who forgot to turn on his headlights. Your heart stopped beating. You stopped breathing. I know you probably don’t remember all of that, but I’m assuming you remember at least part of it.”
“Is this a joke? That’s how Tod died. I broke a few ribs, but I was fine. See?” He spread his arms, like that would prove he was right and I was wrong, and I only stared up at him, waiting for him to understand. For him to let himself understand what was surely already starting to sink in.
“No.” He shook his head a little too hard, and his thick hair looked like a crazy brown halo for a second. “Kay, no, Tod died. It nearly killed our mom. It nearly killed me. It was my fault, because I went out when I was grounded and my ride got drunk, so I called Tod. If it weren’t for me and that stupid party, he wouldn’t have been on the road that night, but he still would have died, because it was his time. He was on some reaper’s list.”
“No, you were on the list. And you died, just like you would have died even if your drunk friend had been driving instead of Tod. But lucky for you, Tod was driving. He was there when you died, and he was there when Levi showed up for your soul.”
“No.” Nash stared at his hands, lying limp in his lap. “No, no, no...”
“Do you know what it takes to become a reaper, Nash?” He didn’t look at me. He was still trying to see the truth in his own empty palms. “It takes a sacrifice. To even be considered for a position as a reaper, the recruit has to be willing to exchange his death date with someone else’s, without knowing about the possibility of being granted an afterlife.”
“You’re serious?” His irises were a storm of browns and greens, twisting too fast for me to interpret. “This is real? You’re saying Tod really...?”
“I’m saying that when you died, your brother started shouting for the reaper to show himself. He demanded to be taken in your place. He died way before his time so you could live. So that you could go on and make something of your life.”
“My fault...” Nash closed his eyes, and I could no longer see the tangle of shock and regret swirling in his irises. “All this time I’ve been telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, because he would have died anyway. But it really is my fault. I got him killed.”
“No, you didn’t. It was his choice, and I would bet you the rest of my own afterlife that if he had the chance, he’d do it all over again.”
Nash’s eyes flew open, and now the emotion in them was clear—heartbreak. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he didn’t want you to feel guilty. The same reason he made your mom and me promise not to tell you, either.” A
nd I’d just broken that promise. Damn it.
“My mom knows?”
I nodded. “She’s known almost from the beginning. I just found out last month.”
Nash looked devastated. Confused. Almost...fragile. “Why are you telling me, if he didn’t want me to know?”
“I probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to. I think that’s the first promise to him that I’ve ever broken, and I swear it’ll be the last.” Tod deserved better than a girlfriend who couldn’t keep her word. “But you needed to know what he’s given up for you. You need to know that he does care about you, more than you can possibly imagine. We both do. And he would never have tried to come between you and me, though goodness knows he had several chances.” Sabine had even tried to convince him to work with her to break us up, and he’d refused. “Because he doesn’t want to hurt you.”
For nearly a minute, Nash sat unmoving on the end of Emma’s bed. Staring at the carpet. His heart must have been pounding, because I could see his pulse jump on the side of his neck, even when everything else was so incredibly still.
Then he met my gaze from across the room. “I’m supposed to be dead. Tod’s supposed to be alive.”
“No. There’s no more ‘supposed to be,’” I insisted. “It is what it is, for both of you. This is what he wanted. For you.”
“But he didn’t graduate. He didn’t go to college. He didn’t even get a senior year of high school. He gave those to me instead, and what did I do with them?”
My heart hurt for him. “Nash, don’t—”
“I wasted them. He paid for my future with his own life, and I threw it all away, like it was worth nothing, when the truth is that it was worth everything.”
“You didn’t waste it. You—”
“I wasted it.” Nash shook his head slowly, and his gaze lost focus. “All this time I wanted him to move on. No, I wanted him to go away. I thought he took the job as a reaper because he wasn’t ready to leave. I thought he was hanging around because he hated me or was jealous of my life. Or wanted to take away the things I care about.”
Like me. He didn’t say it, but we both heard it.
“But the truth is...” Nash stopped and looked at me again, like he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. “I...I don’t really know what to do with this information, Kaylee. I don’t know how to process it. I’m not supposed to be here. I feel like the past two and a half years of my life have been a lie.”
“No, your life isn’t a lie, and it never has been. Your life is an opportunity. A gift. Just like mine is. We have that in common, Nash. We got a second chance.” Okay, technically I was on my third chance, but then, technically, I was dead.
I took a deep breath I didn’t really need, then prepared to say what I’d wanted to say to him for more than a month. I’d imagined this moment a million times, but now that it had come, I was suddenly unsure of the words. And of my right to say them. But someone had to.
“I don’t want to put any additional pressure on you or anything, but if you ask me, second chances come with a responsibility.” That’s what I believed about my own second chance, anyway. “The responsibility to earn the extra time you’ve been given. And to enjoy it. To live with and for everyone you love. To fight harder and longer than anyone else, because you owe it to your brother and I owe it to my mother to make sure that their deaths mean something.”
Nash blinked, and when the motion in his irises slowed, I knew he was thinking. He was truly considering what I was saying and its relevance to him. “That’s what you’re doing? That’s why you always jump in headfirst whenever anyone’s in trouble, whether they want your help or not? Whether they deserve it or not?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and let my rolling chair rotate a little. “I don’t do that.”
“That’s all you ever do. It’s who you are. And I think I’m starting to understand why.” The motion in his irises slowed even more, greens spreading into browns to make that hazel shade I knew so well. “You think you have to earn your place in the world.”
“I think we should all earn our place in the world. Especially people like me and you, who keep getting our friends and family hurt, whether we mean to or not.” I was afraid he would take that the wrong way, but he only nodded, like he might actually eventually agree. “We owe the world something. We owe the world everything.”
Nash stared at me like he hadn’t in a long time. Studying me, like he might be figuring me out. “You’re something else, Kaylee. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I’m sure it’s true.”
“Yeah, you, too. You’re something special, Nash.” And he could be something great if he’d stop looking at life as a challenge to be conquered rather than an opportunity to be seized.
“So, now what?” He sat up straight and glanced at the room around us as if he no longer recognized it. As if what he’d learned had changed the way he saw everything, and a little spark of anticipation shot through me. I hadn’t seen him look like that—like he was ready for a challenge—in months.
“Now, you take a few minutes to process all this, then come out and have dinner. No one else knows about any of this, and I need you to keep it quiet until I’ve had a chance to tell Tod that I told you. But we’re going to get your mom back. We’re going to get them all back, and that’s going to be much easier if we’re all fighting on the same side. If we all trust one another. If we can all count on one another. Okay?”
Nash nodded, still kind of dazed, and I stood to give him some time to himself.
“When you’re ready, there’s food in the kitchen.”
When I got there, Em, Luca, and Sophie were nearly finished eating, but Tod and Sabine weren’t back yet. I scooped some noodles onto a plate for myself, but somehow I had even less appetite than usual. I’d just finished picking all the slivers of carrot from my meal and was about to check on Nash again when Tod suddenly appeared in the living room with Sabine in his arms.
She was unconscious, her head, arms, and legs hanging limp.
“Someone help me with her!” He kicked the coffee table out of the way and laid the mara on the couch. Chairs scratched the kitchen floor as we all stood at once. Nash made it into the living room at the same time I did—he must have flown down the hall. He shoved the coffee table over even farther and knelt on the floor next to the couch, brushing dark hair back from his girlfriend’s forehead.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded as Sophie and Emma sank onto the coffee table where they could see and Luca stood behind them, watching. Waiting to see how he could help.
“Look at her hand!” Em said, and I glanced at Sabine’s right arm—the one without a cast. Her wrist and hand were swollen to the point that the skin should have split, and a bright red web of veins traced the surface of her inflamed flesh, inching up her arm toward her chest. Toward her heart.
But what stood out to me most was a ring of bright red pinpricks encircling her wrist like a bracelet. Or like a tattoo.
“Oh, shit.” I knew those marks. I had an identical circle of them around my right ankle—permanent reminders of the day I’d been pricked by a crimson creeper vine. I’d nearly died.
“Avari got her ankles, too.” Tod carefully lifted Sabine’s leg, where a severed section of creeper vine dangled from the end of her jeans, its thorns still piercing the denim. A thick, viscous fluid dripped slowly from the cut end of the vine to soak into the carpet. “That cast is the only thing that saved her other arm.”
“Shit!” Nash carefully unwound the vine from her left ankle. “How did this happen?”
“He must have caught her.” Tod lifted the mara’s other leg so he could unwind the single loop of vine, and I stepped back to give them room. “I found her alone, unconscious, tied to the ground by all four limbs with creeper vines.”
“Live vines?” Sophie’s voice flowed thick with horror.
“Yeah. Dead ones wouldn’t have held. Fortunately, they were young. Thin, as you can see, and j
ust now sprouting through cracks in the concrete.” Tod dropped the severed end of vine on the end table next to the couch, and a single drop of yellow venom leaked onto the wood while the inch-long thorns scratched the already-chipped varnish.
Nash’s vine followed a second later, then each brother rolled up a leg of her jeans and slid her sneakers and socks off so we could get a better look at the damage.
“Not as bad as her arm but not great,” Nash said through clenched teeth. His irises swirled with fear, and his voice shook with it. “If we don’t do something, this’ll kill her.”
Em lifted Sabine’s right arm and examined it, careful not to touch the puffy flesh. “What can we do?” Worry looked much the same on her as it had on Lydia. But Emma’s eyes were all her own, and they were so full of sadness I couldn’t help wondering whether she was syphoning it all from Nash or had actually started to care about Sabine, as I had.
That damn mara was an emotional ninja, sneaking up on your heart when you least expected it.
“Harmony treated me for this once,” I said. “She had this stuff—”
“She still has the stuff!” Nash stood so fast my head spun. “She has jars of it at home—she started making it in larger batches after you got pricked that time—she even carries some in her purse now, just in case.”
“Oh!” Sophie stood and raced into the kitchen. A second later, she was back with Harmony’s purse, shoving it at me. “She left it here when you guys crossed over.”
“Thanks.” I opened the bag and pawed through it, then began laying travel-size plastic bottles on the coffee table. There were three of them, and each was labeled in permanent marker with Harmony’s neat, all-caps print.
Water—amnesia. Obviously, that was what she’d put in Traci’s tea.
Water—analgesic. A painkiller, made from water native to the Netherworld.
XX.