Before I Wake (5 page)

And as soon as I had that thought, it started to happen. I
could feel it—I could feel myself slipping out of the physical plane—and it took
all of my concentration to remain visible. I propped my elbows on the table and
buried my face in my hands, chanting to myself silently.

I want to be here. I want to be here.
Iwanttobehere.
But that wasn’t true, and it didn’t help.

Unfortunately, the rest of the table mistook my concentration
for pain and everyone started asking me if I was okay. If there was something
they could get me. Someone even tried to pull my hands away from my face to make
sure I was still conscious. Evidently I’d stopped breathing.

“All right, back the hell off!” a familiar voice shouted as I
jerked my arm free from whoever’d pulled it. I looked up to see Sabine staring
down the boldest of my new “friends.” I knew by the almost liquid depths of her
black, black eyes that she was unleashing their own fears on them, literally
scaring them away.

Sabine was a Nightmare. For real. Though the politically
correct term was
mara,
the old-fashioned one fit
better, in my opinion. She could read people’s fears and weave nightmares from
them, then feed from her victims in their sleep.

Creepy? Yeah. Especially when she’d tried to use her
mara
abilities and appetite to scare me away from
Nash. But in that moment, in the quad, I was more than grateful for the rescue
from someone I’d considered my nemesis a few short months earlier.

“Thanks,” I said when the last of the vultures was gone, and
when I looked up again, Nash stood behind Sabine. Watching me. It killed me that
I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling, though I completely understood
why he would control the telltale swirling in his irises around me now.

“Bastards have no self-respect,” Sabine muttered as the last of
the crowd dissipated. “Even I don’t feed off the weak or the injured.”

I decided not to waste my breath telling her I was neither weak
nor injured—physically, anyway. “Will you stay and eat with me?” I asked,
glancing from Sabine to Nash, who closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then
met my gaze again. “I brought burgers.”

Free food was usually enough to tempt Sabine, but Nash was
another story.

“Is he here?” Nash asked, and I realized that was the first
time I’d heard his voice since the day I died.

“He” was Tod, of course.

“Not yet, but you could stay till he gets here. Or you could
just stay. You have every right to hate us both, but this doesn’t have to be…”
Words failed me when the thought behind them trailed into nothing.

“Doesn’t have to be what, Kaylee?” Nash demanded softly.
“Awkward and painful? Because if you know of some other way for me to view the
fact that my brother stole my girlfriend, who then framed me for her murder, I’m
willing to listen.”

But I didn’t. That was all true, and trying to defend either of
us would only have made Nash angrier.

He started to turn away, and I stood, hyperaware of all the
eyes watching us. “Please, stay,” I said, and he stopped. “Please, just… Maybe
we could start again?” I said, so that only he and Sabine could hear. “I know we
can’t erase everything that went wrong between us, but maybe we could kind of
turn the page and start on a fresh one.
Tabula
rasa.
”

Nash glanced at Sabine, who shrugged, then they both sat. And I
realized I had no idea what to say. My plan ended with begging them both to sit
with me, because I hadn’t really expected that to work.

“Um, Em and her boyfriend will be here any minute, which will
probably put an end to genuine conversation, but… How are you?” I asked, pulling
burgers from the grease-stained bag. His recovery from frost addiction had
suffered a recent relapse and Harmony had said that kicking the habit a second
time was even harder, because withdrawal was more severe.

“Do you even eat anymore?” Nash asked, ignoring my question
entirely.

“I don’t have to, but, yeah, I can.” I handed him a burger and
a carton of fries, and Sabine helped herself to the bag, impatient as always.
“Nash, I’m so sorry.”

“You already said that,” Sabine said, folding the wrapper back
from her burger. “You said it a lot, actually. Which supports my theory that
apologies are basically pointless. They don’t fix anything, right? That’s why I
rarely bother.”

“An apology isn’t a Band-Aid,” I insisted. “It’s an expression
of regret.”

“Not that that matters.” Nash’s voice was deep and angry. He
hadn’t touched his food. “Half these assholes still think I stabbed you, Kaylee.
How is it that I stayed away from you, just like you told me to, yet I still
wound up arrested and charged with killing you?”

“I didn’t have any choice.” That was the truth, and I needed
him to believe that worse than I’d ever needed anything from him. “Beck said
he’d rape and kill Em and Sophie if I didn’t cooperate. I couldn’t let that
happen. He’d already hurt so many.” The memory chilled me, which made it hard to
keep my heart beating, in a body that was already reluctant to cooperate. “But I
fixed it. I told the police you weren’t even there.”

“You got the charges dropped, but you can’t take back what you
did,” Nash insisted, and he was right. “I was convicted in the court of public
opinion the minute they handcuffed me and threw me in the back of the police
car. In front of my
mother.
How are you going to
undo that?”

“I don’t know.” Tears burned at the back of my eyes and I
fought to keep them from falling. I hadn’t even known I could still cry, but
there they were, and suddenly I felt just as powerless in death as I’d been in
life. “I’ll tell people. I’ll say whatever you want. I’ll…I’ll do an interview
for the school paper, if that’ll help. Chelsea’s been bugging me to—”

“Forget about it.” Nash picked up his burger and tore half the
wrapper from it, but he looked like the thought of eating made him sick. “Just
don’t talk about it, and maybe this’ll all go away. Eventually.”

“Kaylee?”

I jumped, then turned toward the new voice to see the guy I’d
collided with in the hall earlier, staring down at me like he was determined to
have his say. “Look, I’ve had a rough day, and I can’t handle any more gawkers
or gossipmongers, so if that’s what—”

“I’m Luca Tedesco. Madeline told me to introduce myself.” He
smiled and stuck his hand out, and for a moment, I could only stare at it, as
what he’d said sank in.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Instead of taking the hand he offered, I
scooted over to make room for him on the bench. “You’re the necromancer?” I
whispered, unable to hide my surprise. After what Madeline had said, I’d
expected small, shy, and awkward, not tall, dark, and gorgeous.

Although, hadn’t I once been even more surprised when a certain
rookie reaper turned out to be tall, blond, and beautiful?

“The new guy’s a necromancer?” Sabine said, and I enjoyed a
rare glimpse of her surprise.

“Yeah.” Luca sat and glanced around the table, instantly at
ease with a group of people he’d never met before. “So, I assume your friends
are…?”

It took me a second to realize what he was asking, but Sabine
caught on quickly. “I think ‘friend’ is kind of an iffy descriptor at the
moment, but your necro-talk isn’t going to freak out a
mara
and a
bean sidhe.
I’m Sabine
Campbell and this is Nash Hudson.” She placed one hand on her own chest, then
gestured toward Nash.

“A
mara
and a
bean sidhe.
Wow.” Luca took a fry from the carton I offered him.
“Madeline said I’d be in good company here, but I assumed she was just trying to
con me into moving.”

“Who the hell is Madeline?” Sabine asked as Nash alternately
stared at me, then Luca.

“She’s my boss in the reclamation department.
Our
boss, I guess,” I said with a glance at the new
guy. “Luca and I are going to be working together.”

“So, how do you know Kaylee?” Luca asked, and I could tell from
Sabine’s evil grin that I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Oh, Nash used to not-quite-sleep with her, and I hung around
to reinforce the ‘not quite’ part. But I’ve been relieved of duty on that front,
since Kaylee dumped him for his brother in a nasty public spectacle. It was
quite the scandal, even for those of us who saw it coming.”

Nash frowned, but didn’t argue. “Okay, what the hell is a
necromancer?”

“He sees dead people,” Sabine said, favoring Luca with a rare
smile. “Like that kid in the movie, right?”

Luca shrugged. “Sort of. Only without the ghosts. I mostly
sense the recently dead and the restored. Like Kaylee. And like that reaper this
morning.”

Nash stiffened. “Tod?”

Luca shrugged and glanced at me in question, and I winced over
the verbal quicksand he had no idea he’d just stepped into. “I don’t know. Was
the reaper named Tod?”

“Um, no. It was someone else.”

Nash relaxed a little, but Sabine frowned at me. As usual, she
was too perceptive for her own good. And
way
too
perceptive for
my
good. “Someone you know? Do you
know another reaper?”

I looked up to find all three of them staring at me, waiting
for the answer to a question I desperately didn’t want to answer in front of
Luca, at least until I could be sure he wouldn’t tell Madeline.

“He was a rogue, right?” Luca said. “He killed that guy in the
doughnut shop?”

“Yeah, he…wasn’t Tod,” I finished lamely, while Nash and Sabine
stared at me. “I reclaimed the soul, though. Madeline has it.”

“Luca?” a familiar voice called from across the quad, and I
looked up to see my cousin Sophie crossing the grass toward us, her gaze holding
steady on the necromancer. That look was comfortable. Familiar. She didn’t even
glance at the rest of us. “Did you get lost?”

Luca smiled like he knew her, and another layer of weird
settled onto my life. “Nope. I braved the great divide to introduce myself to
your cousin.” His arm slid around her waist when she stopped at the end of our
table, and my mouth actually dropped open. “Turns out we’re going to be working
together.”

“Wait, you two know each other?” My voice sounded kind of
funny. Stunned. Sophie knew the necromancer. She knew him well enough to accept
his arm around her.

“Yeah,” Sabine said, and I realized that neither she nor Nash
looked surprised. “If by ‘know each other’ you’re referring to their liberal and
frequent exchange of saliva in public, and who knows what other fluids in
private.”

“You’re
dating Sophie?
” I said,
gaping at Luca in confusion and disbelief. Could the world get any weirder?

Luca shrugged. “We haven’t been on an actual date yet—she’s
suffered a recent family tragedy, in case you haven’t heard,” he said, brown
eyes sparkling in amusement. “But—”

“You
work
with
Kaylee?
” Sophie demanded, before he could finish his sentence, like
she’d just recovered the gift of speech, after our mutual shock.

“We just now officially met, but, yeah.”

“I assume you’re not talking about scooping popcorn at the
Cinemark….”

“My
other
job,” I whispered. How
much had I missed in just a month? “I don’t understand. You hate all things
weird and potentially dangerous. No offense—” I glanced at Luca “—but necromancy
definitely qualifies.”

Sophie’s expression frosted over, like it used to when I bought
an off-brand pair of shoes or went out without fixing my hair. Like she was
thoroughly disappointed in me. “That’s specist, Kaylee. Specism is just as bad
as racism. Maybe worse. I thought you’d have a little more compassion than that,
considering you’re neither human nor alive.” Her voice dropped into a fierce
whisper on the last few words, and I could only stare at her in astonishment as
her hand slid into Luca’s and she tugged him up from his seat. “Come back over
here, where people appreciate you for who and what you are.”

“Great to meet you, Kaylee and friends,” Luca said, slowly
walking backward while Sophie tried to pull him away from us.

When they were gone, I turned back to Nash and Sabine. “Is it
just me, or did the earth suddenly do an about-face in its rotation? ’Cause
that’s what that felt like.”

“That was definitely weird,” Nash agreed, and the fact that he
hadn’t argued with me made me unreasonably happy.

“No one over there even
knows
who
or what he is,” Sabine pointed out, staring at Luca as he sat with Sophie and
her friends like he’d known them all his life.

“How does Sophie know?” I asked, and she shrugged.

“They already seemed to know each other when he started
school.” Sabine leaned closer to me from across the table. “But enough about
necro-boy and the dancing queen. You lied about the reaper,” she whispered. “You
knew him. Spill.”

I sighed, then concentrated to make sure they were the only
ones who would hear my next words. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of
Luca, but it was Thane. We thought he was gone, but now he’s obviously
back.”

“Thane, the reaper who killed your mom?” Nash asked. “The
reaper who killed
you?
Where did you think he’d
gone?”

I blinked at Nash, surprised. I’d assumed someone—Harmony?—had
filled him in on how I died, but I was obviously wrong. “Nash, Thane never got
the chance to reap my soul. Tod fed him to Avari. Which is why we thought he was
gone.”

“Tod gave him to the hellion of greed?” Sabine said, and I
could hear admiration in her voice. “Bold. Risky. Dramatic. I approve.”

Nash scowled, and I could practically feel the progress we’d
made toward friendship slipping away. “Why the hell would he do that? It
obviously didn’t save your life.”