Before I Wake

  “Who do you think it looks like? It has to be someone you know.” Tod stopped pacing and the fear in his eyes no doubt mirrored my own. “Someone you both know. How else would Alec know it’s actually a hellion?”

  My phone slid through my grip and thumped to the floor at his feet. I hadn’t thought of that. Alec would have to know whomever he’d seen well enough to know that person was acting strange. “There are only a few people on that list, and most of them are in this house,” I said, grasping at that fact for what little hope I still clung to.

  Tod knelt for my phone, then handed it back to me. “So who’s not here? Your uncle?”

  I nodded slowly and squeezed his hand when it slid into mine. “And your mom.”

  “No.” His denial surfaced as a furious burst of pale, pale blue, churning within the brighter cobalt in his irises. “I’ll kill the bastard myself if he’s touched my mother.”

  “You won’t have to.” I’d do it. That was my job. I’d thought I was being resurrected to save souls, but so far I felt more like a murderer than a savior, even though I knew in my head that I was only doing what had to be done.

  Tod pulled his own phone from his pocket and started to dial his mother’s number, but before he could place the call, Madeline appeared on the rug behind him, holding my dagger. I was off the bed in an instant and took the knife from her so fast I almost grabbed the blades instead of the hilt.

  “Thanks. Don’t tell anyone where we’re going. We’ll explain to everyone all at once, when we get back.”

  “Where are you going?” Madeline demanded as Tod stood and took my hand.

  “Be back soon.” I squeezed his hand, then blinked us both into the living room of Alec’s apartment, about half a mile away.

  I’d only been there a couple of times, but the minute my feet touched the carpet, I knew something was different. Everything looked the same, but felt…wrong.

  The TV was off. Alec left the TV on all the time when he was home, and I’d always assumed that was part of his ongoing quest to integrate with the twenty-first century, after having missed a quarter of the previous one. Sports, cartoons, infomercials—he’d watch anything. But this silence was new. And creepy.

  “Alec?” I called, then immediately wished I hadn’t. I couldn’t limit my audibility to him if I didn’t know where he was, and I really didn’t want to alert the hellion to our presence.

  The tiny galley-style kitchen was empty, but an open bottle of beer stood on the counter, next to a half-eaten chocolate cupcake—Alec’s favorite snack food.

  A second later, I realized that television sounds weren’t the only things missing. “Where’s Falkor?” I whispered as Tod headed across the living room toward the short hall. Alec’s half Nether-hound—another littermate of Styx’s—was named after a flying dog-creature he’d loved in some movie from his childhood in the eighties. And like Toto, Cujo, and Baskerville, he’d growled every time he saw me since my unfortunate demise.

  But now Falkor was silent.

  “Stay here,” Tod said, and I could tell from his bold volume that no one but me could hear him. “I’ll check the back rooms.” Which included the only bedroom, the bathroom, and a single small storage closet.

  I stomped after him. “This is my job! I’m not gonna stay behind while you—”

  “Kaylee, wait!” Tod tried to hold me back from the bedroom doorway, but it was too late. I saw it over his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around me and tried to walk us back into the living room. I saw it all. Blood streaking the walls and Alec’s unmade bed. A small lump of bloody fur on the floor, too mangled to recognize.

  “Falkor…” I buried my face in Tod’s shoulder and he led me toward the living room, holding me up when I backed over my own foot and nearly tripped. “Who did this?” I whispered, blinking back tears I didn’t want to let fall.

  “It was him or me,” a familiar voice said from behind me, and Tod stopped walking as I twisted in his arms.

  Alec stood in the middle of his own living room, a bloodied, broken broom handle in his right fist while his left arm dripped blood onto the floor from the jagged, gaping wound on his forearm. Only it wasn’t really Alec. It couldn’t be.

  Avari couldn’t take Alec’s shape unless he already had Alec’s soul.

  Alec was dead.

  “No…” I whispered, and this time I couldn’t stop the tears. “No, not Alec,” I said through teeth clenched against an agony I couldn’t possibly express in mere words.

  Alec, who’d helped me rescue my father and Nash from the Netherworld. Alec, who’d made me tie him to a chair so he couldn’t hurt me if Avari possessed him in the middle of the night. Alec, who’d proofread my history term paper, and listened to my French recitation, and shared the last chocolate-chip pancake with me, even though he’d called dibs fair and square.

  Tears pooled in my eyes until I couldn’t see clearly, mercifully blurring a face Avari had no right to wear. They poured down my cheeks, scalding against the cold of my own shock and denial.

  Alec couldn’t be gone. Not after everything he’d already suffered at Avari’s hands. Lost youth. Dead parents. Avari had used him to kill three teachers just a couple of months earlier.

  Alec was supposed to be okay now. He was living the life he’d missed out on. He was supposed to get a happy ending, not death at the hands of a hellion who stole his soul and wore it like a costume.

  Then Avari smiled coldly at me with Alec’s beautiful mouth, displaying malice where there had only ever been kindness before. His dark eyes shined with greed as he drank up my pain and abused the memory of my good friend.

  I choked on sobs, trying to collect myself and my thoughts so I could do what needed to be done. The only thing I could still do for Alec—reclaim his soul from the monster who’d stolen it.

  “Alec…” Just saying his name brought more tears to my eyes, and I blinked them away. “You soul-stealing bastard,” I hissed, and the Alec-monster shrugged.

  “Is this about the dog? He was a ferocious little beast—tougher than his size would indicate. He reminded me of you, and I didn’t want to kill him, either. Not that quickly, anyway. But he gave me no choice.” Avari held up his injured left arm. Both his sleeve and his flesh were shredded, and still dripping blood. “Your true death will last much longer. I’ve given the matter serious thought, yet I can only imagine it one way. Your pain will be elegant and beautiful, your screams crystalline and fragile in tone, but robust in volume. I have always wanted to hear a bean sidhe scream in pain. I’m positively glowing with anticipation.”

  “Kaylee, give me the dagger,” Tod said, his voice low and dangerous, threaded throughout with a thin ribbon of fear. But I pulled the knife out of his reach.

  “No.” This was my job. Alec was my friend. The least I could do was give his soul some peace.

  “You shouldn’t have to do this. He was your friend, and I can’t watch you do this.”

  “Then close your eyes.” I stepped away from him, and he let me go, but I could feel how badly he wanted to pull me back again. To protect me from what I was about to do.

  “I warned you,” Avari said with Alec’s voice. He stood his ground as I advanced, knife gripped tightly, eyes still wet. “You could have prevented this.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Tod said at my back, and I realized he was closer. Within arm’s reach. He wouldn’t interfere with my job, but he wouldn’t let me assume the risk on my own, either.

  “A stranger in the mall. Then a boy from your class. Now a personal friend. Can you see the progression at work here?” Avari lifted one of Alec’s dark brows at me in question. “It’s a crescendo of death, all building toward that powerful note at the finale that makes the audience gasp and hold its collective breath. You are that last note, Kaylee. You are my finale, and the symphony of pain we create together will echo throughout eternity before finally fading into an agonized silence. Much like the bean sidhe’s wail itself. Unless you’d like to cut thi
s whole production short and skip to the end.” The hellion shrugged with Alec’s shoulders, still holding his injured arm. “Normally I’m fairly patient—I suppose I have eternity to thank for that—but there is something to be said for instant gratification.”

  “I’m gonna be gratified the instant she shoves that knife into your gut,” Tod said at my back. “And if you even look like you’re gonna touch her, I’ll take your head off myself.”

  “I have no intention of stopping her, but that has nothing to do with your useless threat.” Avari’s focus shifted to me then. “Eliminate this form, and I will see you again soon, in another, even more treasured one. Or you can come with me now and spare the life of someone you love. What will it be, little bean sidhe?”

  My teeth ground together and my fists curled around the handle of the knife in my grasp. My free hand wiped tears from my face. He’d already killed someone I loved—Alec was the closest thing to a brother I’d ever had. The closest I would ever have.

  My mouth opened, and a bellow of rage burst from me, lower and more raw than any sound my bean sidhe lungs had ever produced. I lunged forward and shoved the double-bladed knife into his stomach and up beneath his sternum, going for the heart—for the quick kill—out of some instinct I hadn’t known I possessed.

  Avari’s eyes widened. A sound of pain caught in his throat, like he was choking on it. He swallowed thickly, then smiled at me in spite of obvious pain. Blood poured over my hand, gruesomely warm and wet. Avari fell forward, one hand grasping weakly for my shoulder, and I stumbled beneath his weight.

  Tod was there in an instant, trying to pull him off me, and cold horror unfurled deep inside my stomach. This wasn’t right. None of the others had died like this, with weight, and staggering pain, and blood gushing over my hand and onto my clothes, pooling on the floor between us.

  Tod pulled, but Avari clung to me with what had to be the last of his strength, and whispered into my ear. “I didn’t kill Alec, Ms. Cavanaugh. You did that yourself. And it was magnificent…”

  Then he let go, and Tod shoved him to the floor.

  Avari sucked in a shocked gasp and stared up at me, blinking in confusion, dark skin waxy with pain and blood loss. “Kaylee?”

  And that’s when I understood. Avari wasn’t wearing Alec’s soul. He was wearing Alec’s body. Alec had only been possessed. And I’d just killed him.

  “No!” I dropped to my knees next to him, and my hands shook over the hilt of the knife. I didn’t know whether to pull it out or leave it in. Which would be worse? Did it even matter? He couldn’t survive this. No one could.

  I hadn’t.

  “Alec!”

  “What happened?” His lips moved, but there was no sound, other than the wheezy breaths he pulled in slowly, and exhaled even more slowly.

  “Avari.” I couldn’t see through my tears. “I’m so sorry. Oh, Alec, I’m so sorry!”

  “Kay.” Tod tried to pull me away, but I wouldn’t go. “Kaylee, let him go.”

  “No! We can save him. Just… Just don’t take his soul. Then he can’t die, right?” With no reaper there to end his life and take his soul, he’d be okay. The doctors could still work their miracles. I stood and took his hand, staring at him through my tears. “Call an ambulance. No, take him to the hospital yourself. Please, Tod!”

  “Kaylee, it’s too late.” He turned my head gently so that I had to look. So that I had to see Alec’s soul, pale and clean, already wrapping around the hilt of the blade still in his stomach. “He doesn’t need a reaper—the dagger took his soul. He’s already gone.”

  “No.” I closed my eyes, so I wouldn’t have to see Alec staring at the ceiling, his eyes empty. Dead. “No! This wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t how it works! I don’t kill people. I rescue souls. This can’t be…”

  I dropped onto my knees again, sitting on my feet. My hands fell into my lap and left dark, sticky smears of blood on my jeans. The world started to lose focus.

  “Kay, look at me.” Tod tried to pull me up with one hand, but I wouldn’t stand. I couldn’t. So he lifted me by both arms. “This is not your fault. Avari did this. He fooled us both. Alec’s fate was sealed the minute Avari possessed him, and you saved his soul from eternal torture.”

  “No.” I shook my head, blinking through tears. “My knife. I stabbed him.”

  “Kaylee, don’t do this to yourself.”

  “How can I…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t have the words. How could I live with myself, knowing what I’d done?

  I couldn’t. I wasn’t living, anyway. But I wouldn’t even be unliving when Madeline found out. She’d kill me for real, which was no less than I deserved, but my father would be devastated. Em would be devastated. Tod would be…

  And it was all my fault.

  Tod started to let me go, but my legs buckled beneath me. “Kaylee, hold it together. I need you to stand up.”

  I stood, and distantly I saw him pull the dagger from Alec’s stomach and wipe the blades on his pants, where they left dark smears. “Come on.” He wrapped one arm around my waist and slid his hand beneath my shirt so that his skin connected with mine. “I’m going to take you some place safe, so you can get yourself together. So we can deal with this. I need to think.” He squeezed me so tight my ribs ached, and as the world dissolved around us, his last words echoed in my ears. “I won’t let them take you away… .”

  * * *

  The world pulled itself into focus around me again and when Tod let go of me, my skin felt cold without his touch. Everything felt cold.

  “I’m freezing,” I whispered, and my teeth started to chatter on the last syllable, drawing it out.

  “I think you’re in shock. Here. Sit down.” Tod led me by the elbow to a chair in one corner of the room. I thought the elbow thing was kind of weird—until I realized my hands were still covered in blood.

  “How can I be in shock, if I’m dead?” I sank into the chair and laid my hands in my lap, palms up. And when I remembered why my hands were messy, the chattering got worse.

  “That’s actually a really good sign. It means that you’re still tapped into your humanity. If you weren’t upset right now, I’d be worried. Well, more worried.”

  I should have been glad to hear that I wasn’t turning into an emotionless undead monster—like Thane—but I couldn’t think past the blood on my hands and the memory of Alec staring up at me in agony as he died. “This doesn’t feel like a good sign.” And for the first time since I’d been restored to my body, I understood that it might actually be easier to let my humanity go—to divorce myself from emotion entirely—than to watch loved one after loved one die, or to live with the guilt of what I’d done to Alec.

  Was that what had gone wrong with Thane? Had he given up his humanity to avoid suffering guilt and loss? If I took the easy way out, would I turn out just like he had?

  “You’ve only been dead for a month,” Tod said, drawing me out of the most terrifying temptation I’d ever experienced. “Your emotions are going to be inconsistent for a while.” His voice sounded kind of distant, muffled by the sound of running water. “Sometimes it’s hard to feel anything, then suddenly you feel everything all at once, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which of those is harder to deal with.”

  “This.” My voice sounded hollow. Why did my voice sound hollow? “This is the hardest to deal with.” The numbness I’d been resisting for weeks was suddenly the most appealing thought in the world.

  But Tod had made it. He’d held on to his humanity in spite of the pain, and if he could do it, I could do it.

  “Come here.” Tod stepped into the doorway, and that’s when I realized he’d left the room in the first place.

  I stood and took two steps toward him. Then I stopped and glanced around. The room was tiny—space only for the twin bed, armchair, and a small television on a cart. “Where are we?”

  He tugged me into the other room with him and I realized it was a bathroom. A ti
ny bathroom, with a shorter-than-standard shower/tub combo, a toilet, and a pedestal sink, with hardly any room between them. Water was running in the tub. Steaming water.

  “This is my place.” Tod slid his hands beneath the sides of my shirt, and his skin was so warm. I closed my eyes and just felt him for a moment, blocking everything else out. Because everything else hurt. Then his hands moved, pulling my shirt up, and the way the cotton clung to my skin, sticky with blood, made me gag. “Arms up,” he ordered softly, and I couldn’t comply fast enough.

  “You have a place?” Think about the place. Tod’s place.

  Don’t think about Alec.

  Don’t think about the knife.

  Don’t think about the blood.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise. Everyone gets a locker, but there aren’t enough rooms for all the reapers, and I’m kinda low on seniority,” he said, and I wondered if he was talking just so I’d have something to listen to. To keep my mind off things I shouldn’t think. “That never mattered before, though—I always just hung out at my mom’s house when I wasn’t working, whether they could see me or not. But after you died…” He shrugged, then tugged the sticky material over my head, careful not to let it touch my face. “I put my name on the waiting list the next day. This spot opened up yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” That was good timing. Too good. “Because of Mareth…” My eyes closed, denying this new layer of pain when I had yet to deal with the others. They were too heavy. I could hardly move. “This was Mareth’s room?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He dropped my shirt on the floor, in the corner, then turned me by my shoulders and unhooked my bra. “But she’s not the only one missing. Two more reapers have disappeared in the past few days. One before her. One after her.”

  “And you inherited a room.”

  “Yeah.” He reached for the button on my jeans, but I brushed his hand away. I could do it. I wasn’t a baby.

  “Because Levi doesn’t think they’re coming back.” I slid my jeans over my hips and stepped out of them one leg at a time.

  “Yeah.” Tod reached over to turn the water off while I stepped out of my underwear, and I was already calf-deep in the water before I realized I was naked. In front of him. I should have been embarrassed, or at least nervous. I’d been naked with him before, obviously, but last time there’d been more touching than looking.