Before I Wake (6 page)

“He wasn’t trying to save me,” I said. “He was trying to make
sure Thane wouldn’t be the one to end my life, when the time came. Because he
was…kind of…stalking me. And threatening my friends and my dad. He was there
that day you and I fought about Tod. In my kitchen.” I didn’t want to remember
that. But Nash had a right to know. “He was asking me questions while we were
arguing, and it was impossible to hear you both at once. You thought Tod was
there. Do you remember?”

He did. I could tell. “Thane was stalking you? He was there
with us, and you didn’t tell me?” His voice was soft and angry. His irises were
too still. “Exactly how long have you been lying to me, Kaylee?”

“I was trying to save your life. He said he’d kill you if I
told you he was there.”

“Maybe you should have let him. Maybe then—” Nash bit the rest
of his sentence off, but I had no trouble finishing it in my head. “I can’t do
this with you, Kaylee. Not yet.” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands. Then he
stood and headed for the cafeteria, without another word or a look back. Sabine
only hesitated long enough to grab another burger for the road, then she jogged
after him, leaving me alone at my table, in the middle of lunch.

“What was that all about?” Em asked, and I looked up to find my
best friend and her new boyfriend, Jayson Olivera, staring after Nash and
Sabine.

“History. Secrets. Drama. You know, the usual.” I pushed the
fast-food bag toward them as they sat. “So, tell me what I missed.” Having been
abandoned by a necromancer, a
mara,
and an angry
male
bean sidhe
in the past five minutes alone, I
could sure use a dose of normal. At least until my undead boyfriend showed
up.

4

AFTER SCHOOL,
I
lay on my stomach on my bed, with my chemistry text open in front
of me. I’d read the assigned chapter three times, but it still hadn’t sunk in,
so I’d moved on to staring at the not-a-locket Madeline had given me, which I’d
found lying on my dresser when I got home.

It didn’t look like anything important. But it was the
difference between final rest and eternal torture to anyone unlucky enough to
have his or her soul stolen at death. Madeline had called it an amphora. I’d
looked the word up. An amphora was an ancient Greek style of vase with a skinny
neck and two handles.

My heart-thing looked nothing like an amphora. Yet the name
seemed oddly appropriate, because like an old jar, my amphora was made to hold
things. Specifically, souls.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I dropped the necklace into
the crack between the pages of the open book, then dug my phone from my pocket.
The screen showed a text from Tod.

Incoming in five…four…three…two…

“One,” he said, and I looked up to find the reaper standing in
the middle of the rug at the end of my bed.

“Cute.” I rolled over to make room for him, and Tod stretched
out on the bed next to me.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asked, glancing at the Cinemark
uniform draped over my desk chair.

“Probably,” I admitted. “But what’s the point? Scooping popcorn
and selling tickets for minimum wage feels like a waste of time now.”

Tod’s brows rose. “It’s not like either of us is short on
time.”

“I know, but I don’t want to spend eternity wearing red
polyester and smelling like fake butter.” Too late, I realized he was doing that
very thing, only his uniform shirt was blue and he finished his shifts at the
pizza place smelling like grease and pepperoni. Because the reaper gig didn’t
pay in human currency and without cash, he couldn’t pay for his cell phone, or
food and clothes he didn’t technically need, or the in-public date we kept
promising ourselves.

“You obviously don’t want to spend eternity doing chemistry
homework, either.” Tod slid the necklace onto the comforter between us, then
flipped the textbook closed and set it on the floor. “I take it your return to
class was less than triumphant?”

I rolled onto my back with a sigh. “Today sucked. No way around
it. Between the stares, the gossip, and the inappropriate questions, school felt
more like a three-ring circus than an institute of learning. Three different
people actually asked to see my scar. Can you believe that?”

“Can’t say I blame them. As scars go, it’s pretty damn sexy.”
Tod grinned and pushed the hem of my shirt up to expose the straight, pinkish
line of raised tissue on my stomach. His fingers traced it slowly and chills
gathered just below my navel. Then he lowered his head and followed that line
again with a series of soft kisses. I closed my eyes and gripped handfuls of my
comforter, and those chills at my center became a fire that burned deep inside
me.

Suddenly that scar was my very favorite part of my body.

“No fair,” I moaned. “Only you could make me love the wound
that killed me.”

“Never underestimate the therapeutic power of a few well-placed
kisses,” he mumbled against my skin.

I laughed and pulled him up until our mouths met. “Mmm… If I’d
known the afterlife could be this yummy, I might have tried to expedite the
process.”

Tod pulled away, frowning. “That’s not funny.”

“What, you can make death jokes, but I can’t?” His morbid sense
of humor used to worry me, but now I understood it. Eternity is hard to face
when you can’t find anything to laugh about. Yet jokes couldn’t hide the truth.
I was conscious, and warm, and…preserved. But I wasn’t alive, and I never would
be again. Faking it was the best I could do. He and I had that in common.

“I would have done anything to keep you from dying.” Tod slid
one hand slowly down my arm, leaving a trail of chills in its wake. “This would
have been just as amazing while you were alive.”

“That was never part of the plan,” I said. “We just didn’t know
it.” Not until he’d seen my name on the list of souls scheduled to be reaped.
And because I’d already had my one allowed death-date exchange, there was
nothing Tod, or my dad, or anyone else, could do to save me. “Besides, there are
advantages to the afterlife. For instance, if I were to do this—” I pushed him
gently but firmly onto his back, then I straddled him “—no one could see us
unless we wanted them to.” And we did not.

“A valid point…” He reached for my hips, and I hated both
layers of clothing between us almost as much as I loved the look in his eyes,
part surprise, part heat, and no hint of an objection.

“And if I were to do this—” I leaned forward and kissed the
edge of his jaw, and Tod groaned as my shift in position created a delicious
friction between us “—and you were to make that sound you just made, no one
could hear you unless you wanted to be heard.”

His hands tightened on my hips, pressing me tighter into him as
my lips trailed down his jaw toward his neck, over the pale, late-night stubble
he’d died with. “What happened to the good little girl who blushed and covered
her face at the
thought
of what you’re doing right
now?”

“She died,” I whispered into his ear.

That girl had felt alive with every breath she’d taken, even
knowing she’d soon breathe her last. This one—the restored me—only felt alive
when she experienced very strong emotions, which Madeline had assured me was
perfectly normal. And so far the only strong emotions I actually enjoyed were
the ones I felt when I was with Tod.

“Why? You like the good girl better?” I asked.

“I
know
her better.” Tod’s hand
slid up my back beneath my shirt. “But this one’s certainly making me wish I’d
shown up for invisi-lunch.” He’d texted me halfway through lunch to say he
couldn’t make it.

I laughed, then rolled off of him and onto my side, watching
his profile from inches away. “What could possibly compete with the lure of
cafeteria food, adolescent conversation, and hostile company?”

“I spent two hours trying to question reapers without sounding
like I was questioning them. What do you think it says about us as a group, that
every reaper I know is either irritable, egotistical, voyeuristic, or some
combination of the three?”

“That you fit in well?”

“Ha, ha.”

“So, had any of them seen Thane?”

“Not that they told me. But I can’t be sure, because I couldn’t
come right out and ask. It was probably a waste of time that would have been
better spent with you. What did I miss at lunch?”

I shrugged with the shoulder not pressed into my mattress.
“Nash is still mad. Sabine is still blunt. And I met Madeline’s necromancer. His
name’s Luca.”

“A death detector?” Tod made a face. “That’s creepy.”

“Says the living dead boy.”

“I’m serious.”

I pretended to study his expression. “So
that’s
what that looks like… .”

“You know you can’t hide from him, right? He’ll see you,
whether you’re corporeal or not, and he’ll hear you if he’s close enough. Tell
me that’s not creepy.”

“It’s a little creepy, but he’s the one who found Thane this
morning. I’m thinking a necromancer on our side is infinitely less creepy than
one working for the bad guys.”

“I guess…”

“It gets weirder. He’s dating Sophie.”

“On purpose?” Tod looked horrified. It takes a lot to scare a
reaper.

“Looks like it. She knows what he is and doesn’t seem to care.
Oh, and we ate with Em’s new boyfriend, too.”

“These are the days of our lives…” Tod announced in a false
baritone, and I smacked his shoulder. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Em’s boyfriend
like?”

“His name’s Jayson. He’s human. Normal and nice. He’s probably
perfect for her.”

“But…?”

“But nothing.” I shrugged. “She’s safer with him than with any
of us. She deserves a nice, normal relationship, but—”

“I knew there was a ‘but.’”

“—but I don’t know how to be around her when she’s with him.
There’s too much I can’t say. Too much he doesn’t know.”

Tod ran his hand down my arm until he found my hand, and his
fingers folded around mine. “Are we still talking about Jayson? ’Cause it kind
of sounds like you’re talking about Emma now.”

I sighed. “Maybe.” Em knew a lot about my world—not to mention
the Netherworld—but she was still in the dark about a lot of it, too. She didn’t
know much about Thane, or that Avari was willing to kill her to get to me. She
didn’t know that Mr. Beck—the incubus math teacher who’d murdered me—had planned
to kill her, too, but not until after he’d fed from her. She didn’t know that
her sister was pregnant with Beck’s incubus fetus, or that Harmony was busy
collecting and combining a blend of Netherworld herbs that could end the
brand-new pregnancy and save her sister’s life. Though I’d have to tell her most
of that very soon, because I was
not
looking forward
to explaining the truth to Traci, who could discover her own pregnancy any
day.

But mostly, Emma didn’t know how hard it was for me to sit
through class after class today, knowing that none of it mattered anymore. I
wasn’t going to grow up and go off to college with her. I wasn’t ever going to
use the past-perfect conjugation of French verbs, and after finals, I’d probably
never again be required to write out a mathematical proof.

The only things still certain in my future were the reclamation
of stolen souls and Tod. That’s it. Those were the only things that mattered
anymore, and the harder I clung to the plans that were important to the
once-living Kaylee, the more I felt like a fraud walking around in her skin.

“I keep forgetting to be, Tod,” I whispered, my voice muted by
the enormity of what I was admitting.

“Forgetting to be what?”

“To
be.
To be
here
. To exist. If I don’t concentrate, I slip right out of the
physical plane, and I don’t even notice it until I realize people can’t see or
hear me.” That had happened with my dad over and over since I’d died, and if it
ever happened at school, I was screwed.

“That’s normal.”

“That’s not normal!” I insisted. “Forgetting to exist is
textbook-weird!”

His hand tightened around mine, and his blue irises swirled in
sympathy. “It takes a while to get into the routine of taking physical form. I
didn’t make a habit of it until I met you.”

“It’s like I don’t exist anymore. Like I’m nowhere.” I rolled
onto my back, and he leaned over me, staring down at me from inches away.

“You’re very much here, Kaylee. From my vantage point, you’re
everywhere.” His eyes were all I could see, his irises swirling slowly,
confirming everything he was saying and hinting at even more.

“This is the only time I feel real, Tod. Only when I’m touching
you. I wish it could be like this forever.”

“It can be. It
will
be,” he said,
and he sounded so sure of that that I could almost believe him.

“What if you get tired of me? Forever’s a long time.”

“I’m well aware.” Tod sat up and pulled me up with him until we
faced each other on my bed. “Forever used to feel like a curse. Now it feels
like a promise,” he said, and my chest ached, and I loved that feeling—that rare
pain that came from feeling too much, so different from the emptiness I’d almost
gotten used to. “All you have to do is stay here with me.”

“That, and eat breakfast for my dad. And reclaim souls for
Madeline. And go to school and work to convince everyone that Nash is innocent.”
I frowned as something ridiculous occurred to me. “In the movies and on TV,
there are all these ancient vampires taking math and PE with a bunch of
teenagers, and I always thought that was the
stupidest
thing. I mean, if you had eternity to spend however you
want—and for the most part, we do—why the hell would you go back to high school?
What on earth was I thinking?”

Tod laughed. “I can’t speak for ancient, fictional creatures,
but
you
were thinking that you wanted to retain what
little normalcy still exists in your life. Er, your afterlife. Also, going back
to school and work is part of proving you’re still alive, and being alive is the
only way to prove that Nash didn’t kill you.”

“Oh, yeah. But I went back for a day, and everyone saw me, so
they know I’m alive now. So I don’t have to go back, right? Tell me I don’t have
to go back.”

“You don’t have to go back.” Tod leaned down and kissed me, and
my hand slid into his hair, holding him close as my mouth opened beneath his.
“If you quit school we could spend every afternoon just…” Kiss. “Like…” Kiss.
“This.” Another, longer kiss, and this time when he pulled away, he left me
gasping for breath.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me to be responsible and stay in
school?”

Tod’s lips brushed my ear. “I signed on for the role of
‘boyfriend,’ not ‘conscience.’ If you want wholesome and ethical, you’ll have to
look elsewhere. But I promise that won’t be half as much fun as this is… .”

His hand slid down my side and over my hip, and my heart beat
faster.

“That feels so good,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my
chin and down my neck. “
You
feel good. Real.” Solid,
like no matter how incorporeal he made himself, I would always be able to touch
him. To feel him.

I gasped when his line of kisses skirted my collarbone and
dipped into what little cleavage I’d accumulated before death put an end to the
possibility of accruing any more.

“You, too,” he said, his lips still pressed against my skin.
“You make me feel alive. Every time I touch you, I feel like there’s some kind
of charge flowing between us. Like tiny little bolts of lightning, setting me on
fire. Can you feel it here?” He pushed my shirt up and laid one hand on my
stomach.