Madeline gaped at me for a second. Then she blinked and nodded. “A valid point.”
“Good. Then make yourself visible and introduce yourself to the rest of your crew.”
“My crew?”
“What crew? What the hell is going on here, Kaylee?” Nash asked.
I could tell the minute Madeline appeared to the room in general, because both Nash and Sabine focused on her instantly. “Madeline, this is Nash Hudson. You saved him from going down for my murder. And this is Sabine Campbell, his…Nightmare.” I wasn’t sure how else to explain their relationship. “Madeline is my boss in the reclamation department. And evidently Luca’s aunt. That part’s new to me.”
“Great-great-aunt,” Madeline supplied. “I was originally recruited for my own abilities as a necromancer, but they turned out not to extend into the afterlife—evidently being dead interferes with one’s ability to detect the dead. When I realized we would need the skills I lost, I brought my nephew on board, because his mother didn’t inherit the gift. It seems to skip random generations.”
“My parents think I’m at some fancy boarding school, on a soccer scholarship,” Luca added with a conspiratorial smile.
“So, what kind of crew is this, and why do you need us on it?” Sabine asked.
“It’s the reclamation department,” I said, just as Madeline said, “I don’t need you.”
“The hell you don’t,” I snapped. “Luca and I are all you have left, and we’re not going to be enough against Avari, especially now that he’s figured out how to cross over. You’re going to need everyone you can get, and everyone in this room except for you and Luca has survived an encounter with Avari, which puts them at the top of a very short list of people who can help you.”
And that’s when the room exploded into chaos and questions.
“Who and what is Avari?” Madeline asked.
“What do you mean, he can cross over?” Nash demanded, looking more scared than I’d seen him in a long time.
From Sabine: “Why are you and Luca all she has left?”
Em said, “What about Tod? Can’t he help? And his boss? What’s his name?”
“Okay, one thing at a time.” I wanted to bury my head in my hands. Or curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head. Instead, I took a deep breath and sat on the arm of my father’s chair. “I don’t want to have to repeat this, so everyone get comfortable and listen up.”
“Em’s right,” Sabine said from the kitchen as she helped herself to a soda from the fridge. “If we’re looking for people who’ve survived run-ins with Avari, shouldn’t we wait for Tod? And Alec. He’ll be more help than anyone else, right?”
“You’re right. Call Alec.” I nodded to Emma and she started scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “Tod already knows. Madeline can talk to Levi after we’re done here, and I’ll hit up my dad and my uncle when they get home from work.”
Madeline made a stuffy humphing sound. “Ms. Cavanaugh, this isn’t how we at the reclamation department operate.”
I raised one brow and eyed her boldly. “As of right now, we are the reclamation department, and if you don’t jump on board, we’ll carry on without you. Frankly, at this point, you’re the one with the least to offer.”
Madeline fumed visibly, and Sabine laughed out loud. “Damn. Death looks good on you, Kay!”
I ignored her and crossed the room to speak to Madeline in semiprivacy while Emma spoke to Alec on the phone and Nash and Sabine filled Luca in on some basics of dealing with hellions—most of which were no longer relevant, now that Avari could cross over. “Look, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I think we need to face facts here. Your people are dead because they didn’t know what they were up against. We do, and that still may not be enough to protect us, but we’re the best shot you have at saving more lives than you can even imagine. Including your nephew’s.”
Madeline stared into my face, studying me. Looking for something worth putting her trust in. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for or just finally truly understood that we were all she had. Either way, she nodded, hesitantly. Then she blinked, and I saw a new fortitude building on her face. And this time when she nodded, she meant it.
While we waited for Alec, Emma and Sabine filled Madeline and Luca in on Avari—all stuff Alec already knew—while Nash and I listened in growing discomfort. It was an odd conversation, at best.
“He’s kind of obsessed with Kaylee,” Em said, by way of an opener.
“With her soul,” Sabine corrected. “Because it’s all purer-than-thou, with her being both a martyr and a virgin.”
I flinched, and Sabine noticed Emma’s sudden silence. The mara’s focus narrowed on me and her brows rose. I groaned inwardly. She knew. Why did she have to be bitchy and perceptive?
“But, um…” Em said when Nash glanced from Sabine to me and frowned. “Avari likes to spread the pain around. He’s possessed me and Sabine, and Nash was addicted to his breath for a while. Then again for another while…” Her words faded into uncomfortable silence when Nash tried to obliterate her with only the power of his glare.
“Alec was his servant in the Netherworld for a quarter of a century,” Sabine said. “And Tod did this whole drug-trafficking gig for him—”
Madeline frowned, like she was trying to keep it all straight. “Tod is the undead boyfriend?”
“He had no idea what he was carrying,” I interjected. “And he had a really good reason.”
“A mule should always know what he’s carrying,” Sabine insisted, and I wanted to smack her a little more than usual.
“Okay, clearly you all have very complicated relationships,” Madeline said, effectively calling a truce for us all. “But the point seems to be that the hellion in question has had quite a bit of contact with you. I appreciate your willingness to help us deal with him.”
“What happened to the others?” Nash asked. “The rest of the department?”
“I suppose the truth is the least that I owe you all.” Madeline sighed and glanced at her hands before meeting his gaze again. “Until a couple of months ago, the reclamation department had no real presence in this district, because we weren’t needed. But then we got word of an incubus in the area. That happens from time to time. They tend to frequent the same haunts, and we knew that if he was breeding, he’d need a soul for his son. So I was transferred here along with three extractors. As you probably all know, we didn’t have a chance to deal with the incubus—Kaylee did that for us. But by then, we’d discovered another problem. Something else had settled into the area and was making unscheduled kills and collecting the souls.”
“Avari?” Emma said.
Madeline nodded. “Evidently. But we didn’t know that at the time. I sent my extractors after him one at a time, and none of them ever returned. We lost two men before Kaylee died, and I started to panic. That’s why we needed her so badly.”
“Because she’s a bean sidhe?” Nash asked.
“Yes. When I found out that a female bean sidhe had killed the incubus but lost her own life in the process, I…made some emergency phone calls and arranged to have her restored so I could ask her to join us. We were hoping her unique abilities would give her the edge my other extractors obviously lacked. I only had one left by then, and even though the soul thief kept killing, I held my last extractor back, so he could help run things while I trained Kaylee. Then she proved herself in a dry run—” when I’d been sent to the doughnut shop after Thane “—so I sent my last man after the serial soul thief two days ago. He never came back. Now Kaylee and Luca are all I have left.”
“No, you have all of us,” Nash said. “There’s no way we’d let Kaylee do this alone. Neither will Alec or…my brother.”
Em nodded eagerly, and Sabine rolled her eyes at the room in general. “Yeah. I’m all about the greater good. But it’s gonna cost you some snacks. I’m starving.” She got up to help herself to my kitchen, and I followed to keep her from making a
mess I’d get stuck cleaning up.
“There’s popcorn in the cabinet over the bar,” I said, pointing. “And there’s fruit in the fridge.” But Sabine didn’t even glance in either direction.
“So, was it all you hoped it would be?” she asked, soft enough that no one in the living room could hear.
“What are you talking about?” But I knew. And she knew I knew.
She stepped so close I wanted to back up, but I was already leaning against the counter. “You know, the only thing worse than a self-righteous virgin is a self-righteous fake virgin.”
“I’m not faking anything.” I pulled a bag of popcorn from the cabinet and unwrapped it, then practically threw it into the microwave and pressed some buttons so the noise would cover yet another discussion I really didn’t want to have with Sabine. “I’m saying it’s none of your business.”
“Does Nash know?”
I sighed heavily, wondering if it was too late to take the fifth. “You know he doesn’t. And you can’t tell him.” I took a large salad bowl from the dish drainer and set it next to the microwave.
“He needs to know, Kaylee.”
“The hell he does! Are you trying to hurt him?”
She exhaled slowly, like she was the one fighting for patience. “I’m trying to pull off the Band-Aid and expose the wound so it can heal.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Yes, you do. You ripped Nash’s heart out, and instead of dealing with the gaping hole in his chest, he just slapped a bandage over it, so he wouldn’t have to see the wound.”
“A bandage?”
“Denial. He was avoiding both of you, so he wouldn’t have to think about it, and now he thinks he can pretend to be happy with your friendship, and if he plays his cards right and stays clean, you’ll realize Tod was just a temporary comfort and everything will go back to the way it was. You and I both know that’s not going to happen, but he refuses to see it. But he won’t have any choice if he knows that after all those months when you barely let him touch you, you gave it up to his brother after a month.”
Anger clouded my judgment and defeated my determination not to have this conversation with her. “Why do you have to make it sound like that? And who the hell are you to question my timing or my relationship with Tod? You can’t possibly understand what he and I have been through or what he means to me.”
“I’m not questioning anything,” Sabine insisted. “And maybe I can’t understand all the specifics of your weird-ass, undead relationship, but I do understand what he means to you. And Nash needs to understand that, too. Which is why you have to tell him.”
“Are you insane?” I demanded, and when the microwave beeped, I pulled out the full bag and threw another one in, then pressed more buttons, again for the noise. “Nash is only a month past a relapse, and he’s just now speaking to me again. He still won’t be in the same room as Tod. And you want to tell him I slept with his brother. Which is none of your business or his, for the record.”
“Yes, it is. Whether you like it or not, the four of us are all tangled up, Kaylee. And we always will be. Nash loves me, but he loves you, too, even though you’re in love with his brother. Whom he currently hates, but can’t get rid of. And you’re the first girlfriend I’ve ever had. Can you see those threads, all tied in a knot?”
“I’m not your friend, Sabine.” How could I be, after she’d stalked my dreams and given me nightmares, then tried to sell me to Avari so she could have Nash for herself?
She looked hurt for a second, then that familiar obstinacy was back. “Then why did you try to help me with Thane the other night? Nash loves me, and he just stood there, at first, but you tried to come to my rescue. Tod had to hold you back.”
“I…” I had no good answer for that. “Fine. I didn’t want you to get hurt. But if you want to call yourself my friend, you should know that position comes with boundaries.”
Sabine frowned. “I’m no good with boundaries.”
“Yes, and the ocean is damp. Can we be done with the understatements now?”
“I’m just trying to help Nash move on.”
“Bullshit. You’re not thinking about what’s good for him. You’re thinking about what’s good for you.”
“I am what’s good for him!” The microwave dinged, then went silent, and she lowered her voice, but not the intensity of her argument. “I’m the only good thing he has left until he starts speaking to his brother and trusting his mother again. But he won’t see that as long as he thinks there’s a chance for the two of you. He knows you were waiting for the ‘right’ time to break the world’s most damage-resistant hymen and if he finds out that time came and went without him, he’ll know the two of you are truly over. And he really needs to know that, Kaylee.”
I hate it when she’s right.
“He does need to understand that we won’t be getting back together,” I finally admitted. “But what Tod and I do in private is not up for discussion. I’ll think of some other way to show Nash. And, Sabine, if you really want to be my friend, you’ll respect that.” I dumped both bags of popcorn into the bowl and left her in the kitchen to think about that.
Alec knocked on the door as I set the bowl on the coffee table, and four different people yelled for him to come in. To my house.
“Hey, Kaylee,” he said, pulling me into a hug as Luca closed the door behind him. “How’s Death treating you?”
“No better than life did.” I hugged him back, treasuring one of the few uncomplicated relationships I had. Alec was my friend, and that line was blessedly unblurred by attraction, jealousy, or any feelings of neglect or betrayal. Alec was a drama-free safe zone.
He laughed. “I meant Tod. You know, death with a capital D?”
“Ah. More death humor. Never gets old.” I let him go and grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Tod’s great.” I wanted to say more, but Nash was listening, and I didn’t want him to think I was rubbing anything in his face.
“Who’re they?” Alec whispered, less-than-subtly tossing his head toward Madeline and Luca.
I reached up and turned him by his shoulders to face them both, then cleared my throat to catch everyone’s attention. “Madeline is my boss at the reclamation department. She helped me cover up my own murder and clear Nash’s name. And Luca is her great-great-nephew. He’s a necromancer, which means he sees dead people.”
Alec frowned. “Like that kid in the movie?”
“Not really. But close enough,” Luca said, crossing the room to shake Alec’s hand. “No ghosts, but I see the undead, even when no one else does, and I can sense corpses until they’re preserved or start to rot.”
Alec shook his hand. “No offense, man, but that’s creepy.”
I rolled my eyes. “This, coming from a psychic parasite.”
“Half,” Alec insisted. “Half-psychic parasite. My mother was human.”
“Okay, so everyone knows everyone else now, right?” I said, and heads all over the room nodded.
“Don’t you wanna call in Tod before we get started?” Alec said.
“He’s filling in for a missing reaper at the hospital, but he’ll be here when he can. He already knows all this, anyway.”
“Missing reaper? Is that what this is about?” Alec sank onto the couch and I sat between him and Emma.
“No,” Madeline said, just as I said, “Yeah, in part.”
“Maybe start from the beginning?” Alec suggested. “For those of us just joining the party?”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and did a mental search for the beginning of the story. “For those who may not know this, Madeline recruited me specifically to help hunt and take out a serial soul thief—”
“I call him Cap’n Crunch,” Luca interrupted, and was rewarded with a roomful of frowns. “You know. Because he’s a cereal thief?”
“Wouldn’t that make him more like the Cookie Crook?” Alec said, then shrugged at all the blank stares. “Am I the only one who remem
bers breakfast food from the eighties?”
“You’re the only one who remembers anything from the eighties,” Nash said, and Madeline frowned.
“That’s the wrong kind of ‘serial’ entirely, and we do not have time for anecdotal tangents. Kaylee, please continue.”
Sabine muttered something bitter and profane beneath her breath, and Nash laughed.
“Anyway…” I said. “The serial soul thief turned out to be Avari. Also, he is now officially a serial killer, which is how he comes by the souls ready to be stolen.”
“So, how’s he getting them into the Netherworld?” Alec asked. “Sounds like you’re actually looking for whoever’s working for him.”
“Nope. You know how they say old dogs can’t learn new tricks? Well, they’re wrong. Avari’s figured out how to cross over.”
13
“THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” ALEC said. “He doesn’t have a soul. He can’t cross over.”
“Yeah.” Emma tucked her feet beneath her, like she did during scary movies, so nothing evil could grab her ankles from beneath the couch. “The only reason I get any sleep at all anymore is because you told me he couldn’t cross over. No way, no how. That’s the rule. How is he breaking it now?”
“Kaylee,” Madeline said, before I could even try to answer Em. “I’ve been dead for more than half a century, and my superiors have been here even longer, and in all that time, I’ve never heard of a hellion crossing through the fog. It can’t be done. If it could, they would have taken over the human realm centuries ago.”
“The realm? The whole realm?” Em was close to panic.
“Stop saying the word realm,” Sabine said. “I’m having sci-fi convention flashbacks.”
“When were you at a sci-fi convention?” Alec asked, and the mara shrugged.
“Nerds give good nightmare. They’re afraid of everything.”
“Could we focus, please!” I snapped. Then I turned to Alec. “If a soul is all that’s keeping hellions from crossing over, why has it taken them this long to make the trip? I can think of half a dozen souls Avari’s stolen this school year alone.”