"You have to get it back, Addison," I ventured, hugging myself in horror. I hadn't known much about hellions, either. "You have to get your soul back, with this…out-clause." Whatever that was.
Addison eyed Tod fiercely, clutching at his arms. "Help me!" she begged softly. "I don't know what I'm doing. You have to help me. Please!" She glanced over his shoulder at me and Nash. "All of you, please!"
I had no idea what to say, but Tod nodded. "Of course we will."
Nash went stiff at my side, but before he could protest, more shouting came from the hallway.
"Okay, break it down!" the stage mother called, and Addison glanced around frantically, probably looking for somewhere to hide us.
"Wait, I'm coming!" she shouted. "Here," she whispered, pulling me toward the door by my arm. Nash followed, and she pressed us against the wall behind the door, so we'd be hidden when it opened. She tried to pull Tod into line with us, but he only smiled and shook his head.
"I can hide myself." He forced a smile, and Addy nodded, wiping tears from her face with her bare hands.
"Oh, yeah." She hesitated, then glanced at the door again. "Just a minute, Mom!" Then she turned to Tod and whispered, "I'm staying at the Adolphus, as Lisa Hawthorne. Call me tomorrow night and I'll sneak you guys up. Please?"
Tod nodded, but his smile was grimmer than I'd ever seen it. "I'll call you at eight."
"Thank you," she mouthed.
Tod winked at me and Nash, then blinked out of sight. Addy pressed one finger to her mouth in the world-wide signal for "shhhh," then unlocked the door and pulled it open.
"Mom! Are you okay? What happened?" Shoes brushed the carpet as she ushered her mother to the bathroom, but all I could see was the back of the door, an inch from my nose. Nash's hand curled around mine, and our pulses raced together.
"I didn't expect your door to be locked," her mother snapped as water ran, and I couldn't resist a grin. "Addy, you look like a tomato. Have you been crying?"
"I'm just worried about Eden. Hurry and get cleaned up so we can go." More footsteps brushed toward us, and Addy called out, "Roger, can you go get some wet rags or something?"
"Sure, Ms. Page," a deep voice said from outside the room. Heavy footsteps headed away, and Addy swung the door open, signaling the all clear.
I spared her one last, sympathetic smile, then Nash tugged me into the hall, still blessedly deserted.
We speed-walked through the maze of hallways, through the empty auditorium, and out to the half-empty parking lot, where Tod leaned against the closed passenger door of their mother's car.
Nash's hand went stiff in mine the moment he saw the reaper, and Tod had his hands up to ward off his brother's anger long before we got within hearing distance. "What was I supposed to do?" he asked, before either of us could get a word out.
"Not my problem!" Nash tried to shove Tod out of the way so he could unlock my door, but the reaper went non-corporeal at the last second, and Nash went right through him. His shoulder slammed into the car just above the window, and when he turned, anger blazed in his swirling eyes. "You could have done anything! Except tell her we'd get her soul back for her."
He pulled open the passenger side door and shoved it closed when I was settled in my seat and was still yelling when he opened his own door. "How are we supposed to do that? Wander around the Netherworld asking random hellions if they took possession of a human pop star's soul, and if so, would they please consider giving it back out of the kindness of their decayed hearts?"
Nash slid into his seat and slammed the door, leaving Tod alone in the dark parking lot with a handful of humans now watching us warily. He turned the key in the ignition, shifted into Drive, then took off across the asphalt, headed toward the exit with his parking receipt already in one fist.
As soon as we turned out of the lot, something caught my eye from the side-view mirror and I twisted in my seat to see Tod staring back at me, his usual scowl unusually fierce. "Don't do that!" I said, for at least the thousandth time since we'd met. "Normal people don't get in the car while it's still moving!"
Nash glared at him in the rearview mirror. "But as long as you're here, you need to understand something, and I'm only going to say this once—we are not tracking down Addison Page's soul. It's not our responsibility, and we wouldn't even know where to start. But most important, it's—too. Damn. Dangerous."
"Fine," Tod said through teeth clenched with either fear or anger. Or both.
"What?" Nash stopped for a red light and glanced in the mirror again, his brows low in confusion. He'd obviously expected an argument, as had I.
Tod shifted on the cloth seat, his corporeal clothes rustling with the movement. "I said fine. This is my problem, not yours. I'll do it myself."
"This isn't your problem, either," Nash insisted, and I turned in my seat again so I could see them both at once. "She sold her soul of her own free will for fame and fortune. The contract is legally binding, and it has a legally binding out-clause. Let her get it back herself." He stomped on the gas when the light changed, and the tires squealed beneath us as I grabbed the armrest.
"She didn't know what she was doing, Nash, and she still doesn't." Tod leaned forward, glaring into the rearview mirror. "She has no idea what rights she has in the Netherworld, and she can't even get there on her own. The out-clause is no good if you can't enforce it. You know that."
"Wait…" I loosened my seat belt and found a more comfortable sideways position as dread twisted my stomach into knots a scout couldn't untie. "She really can't do this on her own?"
Tod shook his head. "She doesn't stand a chance."
I sighed and sank back into my seat.
Nash glanced away from the road long enough to read my expression, shadows shifting over his face as we drove under a series of streetlights. "No, Kaylee. We can't. We could get killed."
"I know." I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the headrest. "I know."
"No!" he repeated, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, jaw clenched in either fear or anger. Probably both.
"Nash, we have to. I have to, anyway." I stared at his profile, desperate for the words to make him understand. "I couldn't save the souls Aunt Val sold. Heidi, and Alyson, and Meredith, and Julie are going to be tortured forever, because I couldn't save them." My throat felt thick, and my voice cracked as tears burned my eyes.
"Kaylee, that's not your fau—"
"I know, but, Nash, I can help Addison. I can stop the same thing from happening to her." I wasn't sure how, but Tod wouldn't have offered our help if there was nothing we could do. Right? "I have to do this."
Nash clutched the wheel even tighter, and he looked like he wanted to twist it into a pretzel. Then he exhaled, and his hands relaxed. He'd made his decision, and I held my breath, waiting for it. "Fine. If you're in, I'm in." His focus shifted to the rearview mirror, where he glared at Tod. "But I'm in this for Kaylee, not for you, and not for your idiot pop princess." The look he shot me then was part disappointment, part anger, part loyalty, and all Nash. His gaze scalded me from the inside out, and I squirmed in my seat as that heat settled low within me.
But when he turned back to the road, the flames sputtered beneath a wash of cold fear. Nash would get involved for me, but the truth was that I had no idea what I was doing.
What had I just gotten us into?
5
"OKAY, KAYLEE, FOCUS…." Harmony Hudson, Nash's mother, leaned forward on the faded olive couch, licking her lips in concentration as she watched me. She wore jeans and another snug tee, her blond curls pulled into the usual ponytail, a few ringlets hanging loose around her face. Harmony was the hottest mom I'd ever personally met. She looked thirty years old, at the most, but I'd seen her blow out her birthday candles a month earlier.
All eighty-two of them.
"Close your eyes and think about the last time it happened," she continued, and I sucked in a lungful of the fudge-brownie-scented air. "The last time you knew someo
ne was going to die."
And that's where I lost my motivation. I didn't want to think about the last time. It still gave me nightmares.
Pale brows dipped low over Harmony's bright blue eyes—exact copies of Tod's—and her dimple deepened when she frowned. "What's wrong?"
I stared at the scarred hardwood floor. "Last time was…with Sophie and Aunt Val."
"Oh…" Harmony's eyes took on a familiar glint of wisdom, which, at first glance, seemed at odds with her youthful appearance. She was there when the rogue reaper killed my cousin and tried to take her soul. She saw my aunt give her life instead of Sophie's—a last-minute act of courage and selflessness that had gone a long way toward redeeming her in my eyes.
Until I'd learned that the other souls she'd sold to Belphegore would be tortured for eternity along with my aunt's. Now I was leaning decidedly toward the Aunt-Val-deserved-what-she-got school of thought.
Harmony watched emotions flit across my face, but as usual, she reserved her own judgment. That was why I liked her. Well, that, and the fact that she always had fresh-baked goodies ready to be devoured after our how-to-be-a-bean-sidhe lessons. "Okay, then, pick a different time. Just think back to any death premonition. One that was less traumatic."
But the truth was that they were all traumatic. I'd only known I was a bean sidhe for six weeks, and so far every premonition I'd ever suffered through had thoroughly freaked me out. And every wail was largely uncontrollable.
Thus the lessons.
"Okay…" I closed my eyes and leaned against the soft, faded couch cushions, thinking back to the most memorable premonition—other than that last one.
Emma.
My best friend's death had been unbearably awful, made even worse because I'd known it was coming. I'd seen Em wearing the death shroud for at least two minutes before she collapsed on the gym floor, surrounded by hundreds of other students and parents, gathered to mourn a dead classmate.
But I chose Emma's death to focus on because hers had a happy ending.
Okay, a bittersweet ending, but that was better than the screaming, panicking, clawing-my-way-out-of-the-Nether-fog ending most of them had. I'd suspended Emma's soul above her body with my wail to keep it from the reaper who'd killed her, while Nash had directed it back into her body. Emma had lived.
But someone else had died instead. That was the price, and the decision we'd made. I'd felt guilty about it ever since, but I'd do it all over again if I had to, because I couldn't let Emma die before her time, no matter who took her place.
So two months later I sat on Nash's couch beside his mother, picturing my best friend's death.
Emma, in the gym, several steps ahead. Voices buzzing around us. Nash's arm around my waist. His fingers curled over my hip. Then the death shroud.
It smeared her blond hair with thin, runny black, like a child's watercolors. Streaks smudged her clothes and her arms, and the scream built inside me. It clawed at my throat, scraping my skin raw even as I clenched my jaws shut, denying it exit.
As in memory, so in life.
The scream rose again, and my throat felt full. Hot. Bruised from the inside out.
My eyes flew open in panic, and Harmony stared calmly back at me. She smiled, a tiny upturn of full lips both of her sons had inherited. "You've got it!" she whispered, eyes shining with pride. "Okay, now here comes the hard part."
It gets harder?
I couldn't ask my question because once a bean sidhe's wail takes over, her throat can be used for nothing else until that scream has either burst loose or been swallowed. I couldn't swallow it—not without Nash's voice to calm me, to coax my birthright into submission—and I wasn't willing to let it loose. Never again, if I could help it.
This lesson was on harnessing my wail. Making it work for me, rather than the other way around. So I nodded, telling Harmony I was ready for the hard part.
"Good. I want you to keep a tight rein on it. Then let it out a little at a time—like a very slow leak—without actually opening your mouth. Only keep the volume down. You want to just barely hear it."
Because the whole point was for me to be able to see and hear the Netherworld through my wail, without humans noticing anything weird. Like me screaming loud enough to shatter their minds. But that was easier said than done, especially considering how much time I'd spent trying to hold back my wail. Evidently suppressing it completely and letting just a little leak through were two very different skill sets.
But I tried.
Keeping my lips sealed, I opened my throat a tiny bit, forcing my jaws to relax. That's where the whole thing went downhill. Instead of that little leak of sound Harmony had mentioned, the entire wail ruptured from my throat, shoving my mouth open wide.
My screech filled the room. The entire house. My whole body hummed with the keening, a violent chord of discordant sounds no human could have produced. My head throbbed, my brain seeming to bounce around within my skull.
I closed my eyes. I couldn't take it.
Cold, smooth fingers brushed my arm, and I opened my eyes again to find Harmony speaking to me. The room around her had become a blur of colors and textures, thanks to my inability to focus on it. Her pretty face was twisted into a constant wince of pain from the shards of steel my scream was no doubt driving into her brain. Male bean sidhes hear a female's wail as an eerie, beautiful soul song. They crave the sound, and are pulled toward it. Almost seduced by it.
Female bean sidhes hear it as it is. As humans hear it. As a titanic racket loud enough to deafen, and sharp enough to shatter not just glass, but your ever-loving sanity.
Harmony glanced at her living-room window, the glass trembling in its frame. Because we shared a gender and species—though I was fuzzy on exactly how the whole thing worked—I could hear her words through my own screaming, but they sounded like they came from within my own head.
Calm down. Take a breath. Close your mouth….
I snapped my jaws shut, muffling the sound, but not eradicating it. It buzzed in my mouth now, rattling my teeth, and still seeped out like a moan on steroids. But I could hear her normally now.
"Breathe deeply, Kaylee," Harmony soothed, rubbing my arms until goose bumps stood up beneath my sleeves. "Close your eyes and draw it back in. All but that last little bit."
I let my eyelids fall, though that small effort took a lot of courage, because closing my eyes meant blocking her out and embracing my own private darkness. Being alone with the ruthless keening. With the memory of Emma's death, before I'd known it would be temporary.
But I did it.
"Okay, now pull it back. Deep inside you. Picture swallowing your wail—forcing it down past your throat into your heart. You can set it free in there. Let it bounce around. Ricochet. The human heart is a fragile thing, all thin vessels and delicate pumps. But the bean sidhe heart is armored. It has to be, for us to survive."
I pictured my heart with iron plating. I forced my arms to relax, my hands to fall into my lap. I listened to my wail as it seeped from my throat, forcing myself to hear each inharmonic note individually. And slowly, painfully, I drew them back into myself. Forced them down into my center.
I felt the wail in my throat, in reverse. It was tangible, and the sensation was eerie. Downright creepy. It was like swallowing smoke, if smoke were sharp. Prickly, as if it were bound in thorns.
When I'd swallowed all but the thinnest, most insubstantial thread, I felt a smile spread slowly from the corners of my mouth to my cheeks, then into my eyes. I heard only a ribbon of sound, so faint it could have been my imagination. My shoulders slumped as an odd peace filtered through me, settling into each limb. I'd done it. I called up my wail when I needed it, and restricted it on my own terms.
I opened my eyes, already grinning at Harmony. But my grin froze, then shattered before my gaze had even focused.
Harmony smiled back at me, curls framing her face, her dimples piercing cheeks that should have been rosy with good health and good cheer. But now
they were gray. As was everything else. A hazy, foglike filter had slipped over my vision while I was modifying my wail, like my eyes had been opened farther than should have been possible.
The Nether-fog. A veil between our world and the Netherworld.
A female bean sidhe's wail allows her—and any other bean sidhes near enough to hear her—to see through the fog into both the human world and that other, somehow deeper one simultaneously. Or to travel from one to the other.
My head turned, my eyes wide with horror. I wanted to learn about the Netherworld, but had no interest in going there!
"Kaylee? It's okay, Kaylee. Do you see it?" Harmony's words were smooth and warm like Nash's, but bore none of the supernatural calm his could carry. Harmony and I shared a skill set, and while Nash's voice could soothe and comfort human and bean sidhe alike, ours summoned darkness, and heralded pain and death.
Nash and I were two sides of the same weird coin, and I didn't like wailing without him.
My heart galloped within my chest, skipping some beats and rushing others, unable to find a steady rhythm. My palms dampened with sweat, and I rubbed them on the threadbare couch cushions, both to dry them and to anchor myself to the only reality I understood. The only truth I wanted any part of.
"Kaylee, look at me!" Harmony stroked my hand as she leaned to the side to place herself in my field of vision. "This is supposed to happen. I'm right here with you, and everything is fine."
No-no-no-no-no! But I couldn't speak as long as that last thread of sound still trailed from me. I could only glance around in panic at the fog layering Nash's house like a coat of dust too fine to settle. It hung in the air over Harmony's battered coffee table and old TV, darkening my world, my vision, and my heart.
My pulse raced, and each breath came faster than the last. I knew the pattern. First came the gloom, then came the creatures. I'd seen them before. Beings with too many or too few limbs. With joints that bent the wrong way, or didn't bend at all. Some had tails. Some didn't have heads. But the worst were the ones with no eyes, because I knew they were watching me. I just didn't know how….