Before I Wake (4 page)

Ms. Hirsch blinked. Then she pulled open a drawer and took a
pamphlet from inside and slid it across the desk to me. “This is the contact
information for a group of survivors of violent crimes. I think it would be
worth your time to…”

“No, thank you.” I pushed the pamphlet back toward her. She was
only trying to help. I knew that. But I also knew that through no fault of her
own, she was in way over her head. And honestly, she’d probably been there all
year, considering how many students and teachers Eastlake had lost under
unexplained circumstances since the school year started. “I really have to go,”
I said, picking up my backpack.

Ms. Hirsch exhaled slowly, then met my gaze again. “Kaylee,
this office is a safe space.” She spread her arms to take in all four walls,
then folded them on top of her desk, rumpling the pamphlet. “You can say
anything you need to say in here, and what you tell me is completely
confidential. I’m sure you have family and friends you can talk to, but
sometimes it helps to talk to someone completely uninvolved. I want you to know
that I can be that person for you. If things get too overwhelming at any point
during the school day, I want you to come down here. We can talk. Or you can
just sit in here and take a break.” She placed her hands palms down on the
desktop and her gaze intensified. “Safe space. Please remember that.”

“Thanks. That’s good to know.” I threw my backpack over my
shoulder and practically ran out the door and through both sets of offices. In
the bathroom, I had to take refuge in a stall, waiting for the small
mid-third-period crowd to go back to class so I could blink out of the school
without anyone seeing me disappear. While I waited, two sophomores whose names I
couldn’t remember chatted in front of the mirrors, like they had nowhere better
to be. As soon as they started talking, I realized they hadn’t seen me come in.
If there was ever a time to use my new instantaneous method of transportation,
this was it. But their conversation froze me in place.

I shouldn’t have listened. But I couldn’t help it.

“The cops think he tried to…you know. And she fought back.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mom works in dispatch.”

“Well, I don’t believe it. Mr. Beck could have had anyone he
wanted, so why go after Kaylee Cavanaugh? And even if he did, it’s not like she
would have said no. She’s a closet slut. She was with Scott Carter the day he
was arrested, remember? Cheating on her boyfriend with his best friend—her own
sister’s boyfriend.”

“I think Sophie’s her cousin.”

“Whatever. She cheats on Nash with Scott, and he ends up in the
psych ward. Then she kisses some guy in the middle of the school, and the next
day they find Mr. Beck dead on her bed, and Nash gets arrested. She’s like King
Midas, only everything she touches turns to shit instead of gold.”

Anger flared inside me and I threw the stall door open—then
realized that’s as far as my plan went. “You have no idea what you’re talking
about,” I snapped, glaring at both of them in the mirror. “Is there some broken
filter or busted pressure gauge in there that lets every half-formed thought
leak out of your mouths?” I demanded, tossing a careless gesture at their heads.
“Because if these are the gems you actually intended to share with the world,
you should know they don’t paint a very flattering picture of your
intellect.”

I stomped out of the bathroom with them staring after me and
ran smack into a tall, dark-haired guy I’d never seen before.

“Whoa, are you okay?” he asked, one hand on my arm to steady
me. I nodded, and he frowned down at me, like he suddenly recognized me. “Hey,
are you Kaylee Cavanaugh?”

I exhaled, trying to purge my anger, but with it came words I
hadn’t intended to say. “Yeah. I am. And, yes, I’m glad to be alive. No, I’m not
a slut. And, no, you can’t see my scar. Does that about cover it?”

He stared at me in surprise and I took off down the hall at a
run because I could feel myself fading from physical existence and I couldn’t
let him—or anyone else—see that happen. My footsteps faded as I rounded the
corner, and a girl at the other end of the hall looked up like she’d heard
something, but her gaze floated over me like I wasn’t even there. And from her
perspective, I wasn’t.

Dead people have to want to be seen in order to exist on the
physical plane, and I’d never wanted to exist less.

3

“HEY, WHAT ARE
you doing here?” Tod said, taking my hand as I sank into the waiting-room
chair next to him. “Rough day at school?”

“Mandatory counseling. And I got mobbed in the hall between
first and second period.”

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “You’d think they’ve
never seen a murder victim returned from the dead to reclaim the souls of the
fallen and grant them eternal rest.”

“Well, when you say it like that…”

“Just give them some time, Kaylee. Eventually you’ll be old
news again, and life will go back to normal.” Tod shrugged. “Except you won’t
actually be living it.”

“Not helping.” There was a time when I’d thought it would be
nice to be noticed. To stand out, like Emma or Sophie. Now I stood out, but for
all the wrong reasons. Anonymity was a luxury I’d never expected to miss.

I ran my thumb over the back of Tod’s hand. Just touching him
made me feel more…real. More
there.
More alive. I
pulled him closer for a kiss and my heart beat faster when his lips touched
mine. My pulse raced, and I suddenly remembered what it had felt like the first
time we’d kissed, not in my head, like a mere memory, but in my entire body.
Like I was reliving it. Like I could go back to that moment, the most alive I’d
ever felt before or since, and live in it for eternity.

For a second, I almost forgot I was dead. And that he was dead.
And that we were surrounded by sick people in the waiting room of the local
hospital.

Then someone coughed and a baby started crying. Reality roared
back into focus, and it was such a disappointment that my chest ached from the
loss of something I hadn’t really had in the first place.

Why did I feel so disconnected from everything around me? How
could I look the same, but feel so different? Empty, like a shell. A
Kaylee-shell, still me on the outside, but hollow on the inside. I’d thought
that going back to school—seeing friends and classmates, and even teachers—would
help me fill the void. I’d thought that if I could stuff the shell of my former
self with the pieces of my former life, everything could go back to the way it
was.

I’d thought my death could be just a blip on the radar of my
life, over and done with in short order. I should have known better, just from
being with Tod. His death wasn’t a blip. It was the defining moment of his
existence. His death—how, why, and when he’d died—had shaped him. Defined
him.

What did my death say about me? That I was a victim? That I
wasn’t strong enough to protect Nash like I’d protected Emma and Sophie?

“Hey.” Tod squeezed my hand to draw me out of my thoughts. “I
think death looks good on you.” He took my other hand and his fingers wound
around mine, my arm stretched over the chair rail between us. “I look forward to
the day when I won’t have to share you with roving bands of high-school gossip
mobs.”

“That day could be today,” I admitted. “I don’t want to go
back.” But I didn’t have any choice. I’d begged and bargained for the chance to
pretend I was still alive, and now that I’d gotten that chance, I had to uphold
my end of the deal. I had to keep up with appearances.

“It’ll get better,” Tod said, and his next blink was too long.
“So, did you see Nash?”

“Only in passing. I doubt he’ll be offering an olive branch
anytime soon.”

“You could make the first move,” Tod suggested, running his
thumb over the back of mine.

“Yeah, if I could get him to speak to me. How is he?” During
both rounds of recovery from addiction to frost—Demon’s Breath, to those in the
know—Tod had checked in on his brother regularly, though Nash never saw him.

“I can’t get very close to him anymore. That damn dog barks
every time I show up, and Nash starts yelling for me to get out.”

Nash’s dog, Baskerville, was Styx’s littermate.

“Nash isn’t going to forgive me,” Tod said. “Not yet, anyway.
But he might forgive you. He still loves you, Kaylee.”

Something in his voice made my heart hurt, and I hated that I
liked that. Feeling
anything
was so rare lately that
even pain had become interesting.

“You’re not worried about me and Nash, are you?” I asked,
ducking to catch his gaze. “Because—”

“No.” He put one finger over my mouth, then replaced it with
his lips, and that kiss went deeper and longer than would have been appropriate
in a hospital, if anyone could have seen us. And when he finally pulled away,
his gaze met mine, and everything that kiss had said was still echoing in his
eyes, in fierce cobalt swirls of emotion so bold and confident it couldn’t
possibly be shaken. “I’m not worried about
you
and
Nash. I’m worried about just Nash.”

“Me, too.”

“Did something happen?”

“Something happened, but not because of Nash. I had my first
reclamation this morning,” I said, wishing we weren’t separated by the arm of
the chair between us. “Rogue reaper. Sort of a trial run, before they send me on
the job they brought me back for.”

“So, did you kick ass?”

I grinned, indulging in a moment of pride over the fact that
I’d actually gotten the job done. First time. “There was both the kicking of ass
and the taking of names. One name, actually.”

Tod’s pale brows rose. “I take it this is a name I might
know?”

My moment of pride ended in a cold wash of fear and confusion.
“Thane.”

His brow furrowed. “Thane, the lovable, brand-new reaper I’ve
never met, who means none of us any harm? Please say you mean that Thane… .”

“Nope, the other one. Thane, the reaper who killed my mother,
then came back for me thirteen years later. He’s back, Tod. He killed a
doughnut-shop owner this morning, then just kind of hung around waiting to be
caught, like he knew someone would come for him. He was surprised to see me,
though, and he looked terrified when I took the soul from him.”

“Did you tell Madeline?” Tod asked, his irises noticeably
still.

“No, I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

His frown deepened. “Kaylee, either Avari let Thane go, or
Thane escaped. Either way, something’s wrong. You have to tell her.”

“No!” That came out louder than I’d intended, and if I’d been
audible, everyone in the E.R. waiting room would have been staring at us. “I’m
not
spending eternity here without you. No
way.”

His fingers tightened around mine. “That’s not what I want,
either, but we can’t just let Thane keep killing.”

“I know, but there has to be a way I can get rid of him without
losing you. I think we should start at Lakeside.” The psychiatric unit attached
to the hospital we sat in at that very moment.

“With Scott?” Tod’s irises were swirling now, reflecting his
emotions as he started to understand my plan.

“Yeah.”

Scott Carter, one of Nash’s best friends and
Sophie’s—ex?—boyfriend, had gone insane when addiction to Demon’s Breath left
him with a hardwired mental connection to Avari, the hellion whose breath he’d
huffed. The very same hellion Tod had given Thane to. If anyone knew how and why
Thane was back on the human plane, Avari would.

Getting him to tell us would be the hard part.

“Okay,” Tod said finally. “We’ll go see Scott tonight, but for
now, I need to get back to work. These sick people aren’t going to kill
themselves, you know.”

I fought a smile, more relieved than truly amused. “Your sense
of humor is so morbid.”

“Says the dead girl. See you at lunch?”

“Yeah. It’ll probably be you, me, Em, and her human boyfriend,
though, so it might be kind of awkward.” He could show himself to just me and
Em, but it would be easier for Em to pretend not to see him if she actually
couldn’t see him.

Tod scowled. “Fine. But if I have to stay invisible the whole
time, I can’t promise to be on my best behavior. There’s no telling what I might
do… I mean, if no one else can see me, anyway, why bother with clothes at
all?”

I laughed, trying to disguise the sudden curious heat settling
into my face. “Well, that ought to spice up the lunch period.”

“That’s a game two can play, you know,” he said, his gaze
wandering south of my collarbones.

“Except that I won’t be invisible,” I pointed out as he leaned
over the chair arm between us to drop a kiss on my neck, and my heart thumped a
little harder, a sensation I’d taken entirely for granted when I was still
alive.

Tod groaned against my skin. “Remind me again why we’re going
to lunch, when neither of us needs food?”

“I’m having trouble remembering at the moment,” I whispered
when he sat up and the heat in his eyes burned straight through my own.
“Something about pretending to be alive…”

“How’s that working out?”

“It feels less like pretending at the moment.” With my heart
beating on its own. My skin tingling from just the possibility that he might
touch me again. But that would stop when I went back to school. I’d have to
concentrate on the appearance of life—a pulse, regular breaths, physical
presence—and everything would suddenly be immeasurably harder.

Everything that came naturally to everyone else would be a
constant effort for me. So much to remember. So much to hide. So much to
lose.

Suddenly keeping up with appearances didn’t seem worth the
work.

“You won’t have to pretend forever,” Tod said. “One more year
of high school, and then you can do whatever you want. Universities don’t hold
students captive, so you could pop on and off campus at will, if you want to go
to college. Or we could just…hang out.”

“Forever?” The very concept of forever—of time without end—was
too daunting to truly contemplate. Doing
nothing
for
a millennia of spare time—even nothing with Tod—didn’t seem possible. Surely I’d
lose my mind.

“What about you? What do you want?” In all the conversations
we’d had in the past month—spilling secrets, doubts, wants, and hopes—it had
never occurred to me to ask that.

“I have what I want.” His hand squeezed mine again, but it felt
like he was squeezing my heart. “There’s plenty of time to figure the rest out.
Hopefully it’ll go something like this… .”

He leaned in for another kiss, and it took every single bit of
willpower I had to pull away from him, when what I really wanted to do was climb
into his lap, and bury my hands in his hair, and make a private spectacle of us
both. I’d
never
had an urge so strong, and the
reasons to resist were suddenly frighteningly vague.

Oh, yeah. Work. And school.

“I thought you had souls to reap…” I whispered, staring into
the desire swirling in his eyes, wondering if he could see mine reflected back
at him.

“They’ll wait.”

“I’m trying to do the mature thing here.” I groaned when he
pulled me close again.

“I’m not.”

“Why do I always have to be the one who says ‘stop’?” I
demanded, my voice little more than a moan.

“You don’t. In fact, at this point I’m considering a petition
to have that word stricken from the English language.” His grin was almost lazy,
the gleam in his eyes an effortless challenge. “If I did, would you sign?”

“No fair. If there was a pen in my hand right now, I’d sign
whatever you put in front of me.”

“Good thing I’m not a hellion.”

He was kidding, but thinking about Avari accomplished what I’d
lacked the willpower to do on my own. Playtime was over.

“I better get back. But I’ll see you at lunch?”

“Yeah, but I might be late. I want to check in at work after my
shift and see if anyone else has spotted Thane.”

“Okay.” I gave him another quick kiss, then blinked out of the
hospital and into a bathroom in the food court across the street from school,
where I picked up a bag full of burgers and fries. Then, just for fun, I blinked
into Emma’s third-period art class, careful that no one else could see or hear
me, and leaned over her shoulder.

“Lunch is on me.”

Em yelped, and when she jumped, she accidentally painted a long
yellow line across the canvas she’d been working on. Everyone looked up, and Em
apologized, mumbling something about a bee buzzing around her head, then glared
at me before turning back to her painting. “Not funny,” she breathed, like she
was talking to herself.

“Sorry,” I said. But it
was
kind of
funny, and laughing felt good, even if no one else could share the moment of
levity with me. I understood then why Tod had stayed near his family after he
died. The living bring out what life remains in the dead. I was drawn to my
friends and family, and when I couldn’t be with them, the world—my entire
afterlife—felt so much emptier in their absence.

I blinked into the empty quad and sat at the picnic table Em
and I had shared with Nash and Sabine until the week I’d died, and since no one
was watching, I concentrated on pulling myself onto the physical plane right
there in the open. Then I munched on fries from my bag until the bell rang.

Unfortunately, I’d failed to factor my new infamy into my lunch
plans.

The first few people who entered the quad with lunch trays
glanced at me, then sat at their own tables and stared while they ate. The
gawking wasn’t polite, but it wasn’t truly invasive, either, so I could deal.
Then the quad started to fill up and more people stared, upping the ante with a
little obvious gossip. But before long, people I actually had classes with—the
ones who’d known who I was before Beck stabbed me—started asking if they could
join me.

Most of them sat without waiting for an answer.

To their credit, they were outwardly polite. Most asked how I
was feeling and several offered to help with my makeup work. One idiot even
asked me to the prom. I could only stutter in response.

When my table filled up before Em and Jayson arrived, I started
to panic again. I was sick of questions, and stares, and friends who hadn’t been
my friends before. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I just wanted to
disappear.