Before I Wake (22 page)

“I’m good with that… .” He leaned in for a kiss, but I stopped
him.

“Sabine knows, too.”

Tod’s brows rose, and he leaned back for a better look into my
eyes. “I didn’t think you two were that close.”

“We’re not. She’s crazy perceptive and psychotically
honest.”

“Meaning…?”

“She wants to tell Nash.”

Tod frowned. “I don’t see how that could possibly be good for
his ego. Especially if you told the story the way
I
remember it.” He grinned, trying to lighten the mood, but I couldn’t even summon
a smile.

“I don’t want to hurt him any more than we already have. I told
her that if she values our friendship, she’ll keep her mouth shut.”

“You’re friends now?”

“If that’ll keep her from spewing our personal business in
front of the entire world, then, yes. We’re friends.”

* * *

“Sophie?” I set my backpack on the ground next to my
usual lunch table, surprised to find my cousin sitting on it. I was almost
always the first to reach the quad—a benefit of having no third-period class—but
even when someone beat me there, it wasn’t Sophie. My cousin had never once sat
at my table. In two years, she’d rarely even glanced our way without throwing an
insult at me.

This time she just blinked at me and brushed blond hair behind
her shoulder. “Hey.”

My frown deepened. If she hadn’t spoken with her own voice, I’d
assume she’d been possessed—that had certainly happened before. “Is something
wrong?”

“No.” She frowned and reconsidered. “Well, yes. Everything’s
wrong. But no one would know that better than you, I guess.”

“I meant, why are you here?”

She shrugged. “I’m meeting Luca. I have yet to convince him
that he doesn’t have to sit in the social wasteland.”

“And you honestly think he’d be more comfortable in the
intellectual wasteland?” I tossed a pointed glance at the table where she and
her jock friends had been sitting every day of the two years she’d been at
Eastlake.

Sophie exhaled and nodded, and I waited for verbal venom that
never came. “I guess I deserve that. I just…” She hesitated, glancing at the
grass for a moment before meeting my gaze again. “I never got a chance to tell
you that I’m sorry for what happened to you that night. With Mr. Beck.”

Except that she’d had plenty of chances. She just hadn’t taken
any of them.

“Oh.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You mean the night I
was brutally murdered in my own bed?”

Sophie flinched. “You don’t have to make it sound so…”

“So what? True? Because it’s true.”

“So…
ugly.
” Her face scrunched up,
like she found the word personally offensive. Or maybe it was the truth that
offended her. “You don’t have to go for the shock factor with every weird-ass
sentence that comes out of your mouth. Especially considering that you got a
happy ending.”

“Happy ending?” I couldn’t pile enough disbelief into my voice
to accurately express how much of it I was dealing with. “What part of ‘walking
corpse’ sounds like a happy ending to you? The part where I’ll never reach the
age of consent or the legal drinking age?” Not that either of those really
mattered anymore. “Or the part where there’s still a demon from another
dimension out to get my soul, and willing to go through everyone I love to get
to me? I understand that there’s a discrepancy between the way the world really
looks and the way you see it, but I think you need to open your eyes a little
wider.”

Irritation flared behind her gaze. “I’m trying to apologize,
Kaylee, and you’re not making that very easy.”

“So sorry to have inconvenienced you with the truth. Go ahead.
I’m listening.”

Yes, I was being hard on her. But life would be even harder on
her, assuming she survived long enough to graduate. And with Avari on the
warpath, there was no guarantee of that at all.

“Look. My dad said you saved my life that night,” Sophie said,
and I shrugged. I’d actually saved her life several times, but who was counting?
“So I wanted to say thank you, and tell you I’m sorry for all the mean things I
said about you being a crazy freak before. I swear I had no idea those weren’t
personal life choices.”

I didn’t know whether to pity her or smack her. Fortunately,
the decision was taken out of my hands when the bell rang and students started
pouring into the quad with lunch trays.

Nash and Sabine arrived first, but Luca was only a minute
behind, and one glance at what passed for chili on their trays was enough to
make me grateful that I didn’t have to eat ever again, if I chose.

“Is my brother here?” Nash asked, sliding onto the bench seat
across from me and next to Sabine. Sophie sat on his other side, so she could
stare across the table at Luca.

“No, and I don’t know if he will be. He has to cover all the
hospital shifts, with Mareth gone. Levi’s filling in for him tonight, though, so
he can do a shift at the pizza place.”

“Because delivering pizza is more important than reaping
souls?” Sophie’s brows rose as she took a carrot from Luca’s tray.

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t have to cover her own
cell-phone bill. Or make her own car payment. Or buy her own clothes,” Sabine
said, and I realized it would be hard for me to choose sides in a Sophie/Sabine
cage match.

“So who pays
your
cell bill?”
Sophie asked.

“It’s a prepaid phone,” Nash supplied, and from the look on his
face, I could tell he regretted sitting between them.

“And how does she prepay for it?”

Sabine leaned around Nash to glare at Sophie, and I swear a
cloud rolled across the sun and the whole quad got darker. “Don’t ask questions
you don’t want answers to.”

“Okay, truce!” Luca threw his arms out across the table, like
an umpire declaring the batter safe. “Let’s talk business before Jayson gets
here.” Em had been holding him back at the beginning of every lunch period—I
could only guess her method of distraction—to give us a chance to talk about
something more important than prom and postgraduation parties.

“Was your aunt able to ID the souls in the dagger?” I asked.
The knife had been on my desk when I got out of the shower that morning, but
Madeline hadn’t waited around to talk to me.

“Yeah. You were right. Other than the incubus, there were two
souls, and one of them has been missing for seven months. It was last reported
in the possession of a rogue reaper Levi says he killed.” Marg, of course. “They
have no reason to doubt that Belphegore ended up with the soul, and as for how
Avari got it from her… Their guess is as good as ours.”

Which meant we had yet to uncover the connection between Avari
and Belphegore, or figure out what Avari wanted with the reapers.

“Did you find Thane?” I asked. Thanks to Tod, I already knew
Mareth was still missing. Tod was pretending that didn’t worry him, but how
could it not?

“No.” Luca exhaled heavily. “Either he’s left town, or he’s
left the human realm altogether.”

“My money’s on the latter,” Sabine said, and Sophie laughed so
hard she nearly choked on a carrot.

“What money?”

Sabine stood, fists clenched, and Nash pulled her back
down.

“Sophie, Sabine beat up a reaper two nights ago,” I said. “And
it’s entirely possible that she may one day be the only thing standing between
you and a hellion ready to rip your head off and suck out your soul. Do you
really think it’s wise to piss her off?”

Sophie glanced from me to Sabine, then back, scowling. “I’m not
scared of her. I can handle myself.”

“Yeah, and hissing kittens think they’re badass, too,” Sabine
said.

“Okay, listen,” I said, and I couldn’t quite shake the
discomfort of having all four sets of eyes turned my way. I wasn’t used to being
the center of attention, and the recent media coverage of my so-called attempted
murder had done nothing to change that. But someone had to say what needed to be
said. “Everyone here has some reason to dislike everyone else at this table.
Except for Luca,” I added when he started to object. “But we don’t have the time
or energy to waste hating one another, so from here on out, everyone gets a
clean slate. No more grudges. Got it?”

“You know that’s a lot easier said than done, Kaylee,” Nash
said softly, and we all knew he was thinking about Tod. About a betrayal he
didn’t think he could forgive. But he was wrong about that.

“Yeah, I know. But I’m willing to—” The rest of that sentence
died on my tongue as my gaze snagged on something behind him. A girl in a
green-and-white-letter jacket, watching me from the edge of the quad,
half-hidden by the brick wall of the building.

“Kaylee?” Nash twisted to see what I was looking at.

I stood and the girl smiled at me. My heart stopped
beating.

No.
It couldn’t be.

But it was.

Meredith Cole. Sophie’s fellow dance-team member, who’d died
last September, here in the quad. I’d screamed for her soul. Which Marg the
reaper had then given to Belphegore, the hellion of vanity.

Meredith was back, and that could only mean one thing.

“Shit,” Luca mumbled, and in my peripheral vision—I didn’t dare
let Meredith out of my sight—I saw him scrub one hand over his face and through
his hair. “There’s a body. In the parking lot, I think.”

I grabbed my backpack and climbed over the bench seat as
Meredith disappeared around the building. I took off after her, dodging tables
and kids with trays, and I ran right past Emma and Jayson, who stared after me
in surprise.

“Kaylee!” Nash shouted, and footsteps pounded on the ground
behind me, but I couldn’t tell how many of my friends were following me. And I
could only hope the rest of the student body hadn’t decided to come watch
whatever drama they imagined we were playing out.

I chased Meredith around the corner of the building and she
stopped halfway to the parking lot and turned to face me. I slowed to a walk and
my grip tightened around the strap of my bag as I pulled the zipper open with my
free hand.

“Avari?” I said so softly I could barely hear myself.

“Who else?” the hellion said in Meredith’s voice. “I thought
this ensemble most appropriate for a visit during school hours. However, I’m not
sure I got the smile quite right. How does she look on me?” He spread Meredith’s
arms, inviting me to inspect her. She looked exactly like she had the day she’d
died. Letter jacket. Skirt that barely passed the dress code. Too-thin legs.
Honey-brown ponytail. This was beyond creepy. I was being haunted by everyone
I’d ever failed to save—all the ghosts of my past.

Dickens was probably rolling over in his grave.

“Who’d you kill?” I demanded as several sets of footsteps
slowed to a stop behind me.

Meredith cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t ask his name. I
only asked if he knew you, and when he was finished soiling himself—evidently he
recognized my disguise—he managed to say that he shares a class with you.”

My backpack shook in my grip. Another death laid at my
doorstep. Another classmate dead for no reason. Who would be next? One of my
friends? A member of my family? I could hardly see through the horror clouding
my vision. I couldn’t let this go on.

“I warned you, Ms. Cavanaugh, yet you greedily cling to your
soul, when you could have spared your friends and classmates another loss.”

“Meredith?” Sophie’s voice was a shocked whisper as she slowed
to a stop at my side, and I glanced back just long enough to make sure no one
else—no one human—had followed us out of the quad. They hadn’t, but that
couldn’t last long.

I tried to step in front of my cousin, but she shoved me away,
her eyes wide and filled with tears.

“Get her out of here,” I said to Luca. He tried to lead her
away, but she wouldn’t go.

“Meredith?” she said again, and I could hear the tears in her
voice.

To my horror, the hellion answered, in Meredith’s voice. “Don’t
let them hurt me, Sophie. Your crazy cousin wants to kill me.”

“Kaylee?” Sophie demanded, and on the edge of my vision, I saw
Nash move to help Luca with her. “No! Get off me!” She shoved their hands away.
“Kaylee, is that Meredith?”

“No. Meredith is dead.” I didn’t dare look away from the
hellion as he watched her, a quiet smile turning up one corner of his stolen
mouth, enjoying her confusion and pain.

“So are you!” Sophie hissed, pushing Nash away. If she threw a
fit, people would come running. We had to keep her quiet and get her away from
the hellion. “Is Meredith back? You can’t kill her! I won’t let you!”

“Sophie, get out of here and let me do my job.” I desperately
didn’t want her to be there when I had to stab a monster who looked like one of
her friends.

Luca stepped in front of Sophie, blocking her view of the
hellion, and when she tried to step around him, he wrapped both arms around
her—more hug than restrictive hold. He spoke into her ear, so softly I could
hardly hear him. “I don’t know who Meredith is, but if Kaylee says that’s not
her, then that’s not her. That’s not even her corpse—you have my word.”

“Then what is that? What the hell
is
that?” Her voice went shrill and terrified, and for the first
time I thought I heard a little of her mixed-blood
bean
sidhe
heritage leaking through. “What’s going on? What does it
want?”

“I came back for you, Sophie,” the Meredith-thing said. “Come
with me. You belong in hell. That’s where all snotty little bitches wind up
eventually, anyway.” The hellion’s lips curled up into a creepy smile, and
Sophie screamed.

Luca and Nash tried to cover her mouth, but her lungs were
powerful and her voice was shrill.

I reached into my backpack and pulled the dagger from an inside
pocket. I’d had to blink straight into the school building to get it past the
metal detectors, and now I was glad I’d gone to the extra trouble.