My Soul to Take (11 page)

Nash frowned. “This isn’t Disney, Kaylee. ‘Faerie’ is a very broad term. It basically means ‘other than human.’ And forget about the wispy gowns and following funerals. All that went out of style a long time ago. But the rest of it? Women as death heralds? Sound familiar?”

Okay, there was a
slight
similarity to my morbid predictions, but…“There’s no such thing as
bean sidhes,
no matter how you spell it.”

“There are no premonitions either, right?” His hazel eyes sparkled in the fading light when he grinned, refusing to be derailed by my cynicism. “Okay, let’s see how much of this I can get right. Your dad…He looks really young, right? Too young to have a sixteen-year-old daughter? Your uncle too. They’re brothers, right?”

Unimpressed, I rolled my eyes and folded one leg beneath me on the narrow leather car seat. “You saw my uncle an hour ago—you know he’s young. And I haven’t seen my dad in a year and a half.” Though as a child, I’d always thought he looked young and handsome. But that was a long time ago….

“I know your uncle looks young, but that means nothing to a
bean sidhe.
He could be a hundred.”

That time I laughed. “Right. My uncle’s a senior citizen.” Wouldn’t it piss Aunt Val off to think he could be more than twice her age and still look younger!

Nash frowned at my skepticism, his face darkening as the last rays of daylight slowly bled from the sky. “Okay, what about the rest of your family? Your ancestors are Irish, right?”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “My name’s Cavanaugh. That’s not a big leap.” Plus, he already knew my dad lived in Ireland.

“
Bean sidhes
are native to Ireland. That’s why the stories all stem from old Irish folktales.”

Oh. Now that was quite a coincidence. But nothing more.

“Got anything else, Houdini?”

Nash reached across the center console and took my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away. “Kaylee, I knew what you were the minute you told me Heidi Anderson was going to die. But I probably would have known earlier if I’d been paying attention. I just never expected to run into a
bean sidhe
at my own school.”

“How would you have known earlier?”

“Your voice.”

“Huh?” But my heart began to beat harder, as if it knew something my head hadn’t quite caught on to.

“Last Friday at lunch, I heard you and Emma talking about sneaking into Taboo, and couldn’t get you out of my head. Your voice stuck with me, like after I truly heard you that first time, I couldn’t stop hearing you. Your voice carries above everything else. I can find you in a crowd even if I can’t see you, so long as you’re talking. But I didn’t know why. I just knew I needed to talk to you outside of school, and that you’d be at the club on Saturday night.”

Suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. My lungs seemed too big for my chest, and I couldn’t make them fully expand. “You followed me to Taboo?” His admission made my head spin,
questions and confessions both battling for the right to speak first. But I couldn’t think clearly enough to focus on them.

“Yeah.” He sounded so matter-of-fact, as if it should be no big surprise that a hot, out-of-my-league guy would go to a club on a Saturday night just to see me. “I wanted to talk to you.”

I swallowed thickly and stared at my hands. I could hardly believe what I was about to tell him. “When you talk to me, I feel like everything’s okay, even when things are really falling apart. Why?” I looked up then and met his gaze, searching for the truth even if I wouldn’t understand it. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing. Nothing on purpose, anyway.” He squeezed my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “We truly hear each other because we’re the same. I’m a
bean sidhe,
Kaylee. Just like my mom and dad, and at least one of your parents. Just like you.”

Just like me.
Was it possible? My instinct was to say no. To shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut until I was sure the crazy dream was over. Really, though, was being a
bean sidhe
any weirder than being plagued with premonitions of death?

But even if it was true, something didn’t fit….

“In the stories there are no male
bean sidhes.
”

“I know.” Nash scowled and let go of my hand to cross his arms over his chest. “The stories come from what humans know about us, and they only seem to know about the ladies. You girls are pretty hard to miss, with all the screaming and wailing.”

“Ha ha.” I started to shove him, then froze in the act of raising my arm. I’d just defended—albeit jokingly—a species I claimed not to belong to. Or even believe in.

And that’s when it hit me. When the whole thing sank in.

Yes, it sounded crazy. But it felt
right.
And little pieces of it actually made sense, in a way that was more intuitive than logical.

My throat felt swollen, and my eyes began to burn with tears of relief. Being not-human was better than being crazy. And infinitely better than dying of cancer. But most important, having answers—even weird answers—was better than not knowing. Than doubting myself.

“I’m a
bean sidhe?
” Two tears fell before I could banish them, and I wiped the rest away with my sleeve. Nash nodded solemnly, and I repeated it, just to get used to the idea. “I’m a
bean sidhe.
”

Saying it out loud helped that last little bit of certainty slip into place, and I felt my chest loosen. One long breath slipped from my throat, and I sank into the car seat, staring out the windshield at a sunset I barely noticed. A tension I hadn’t even felt began to ease through my body.

Nash had given me one answer, but he’d brought to mind dozens of others, and I needed more information. Immediately.

“So why doesn’t anyone know about male
bean sidhes?
And if you’re a guy, wouldn’t that make you more of a male
sidhe?
”

He reached for his drink, and the muscles in his arm shifted beneath skin tinted red in the last rays of sunlight. “Unfortunately, the term was coined by humans, who don’t know male
bean sidhes
exist, because we don’t wail. We don’t get the premonitions.”

I frowned. “So what makes you a
bean sidhe?
I mean, how are you different from…humans?” Even having accepted my new identity, it felt weird to refer to myself as other than human.

He leaned against Carter’s car-door handle and took another long drink before answering. “We have other abilities. But what I can do won’t make much sense to you until you know what you can do.”

I shook my head, uncomprehending. “I thought I was a death herald.”

“That’s what you are, not what you can do. At least, that’s not all you can do.”

I
LEANED FORWARD
, angling my knee to avoid the gearshift, more curious than I wanted to admit as I waited for the rest of it. But he twisted to peer out his window. “My legs are getting stiff. Let’s walk.” He pushed his door open without waiting for my reply.

“What?” I demanded, leaning over the console to watch as he stretched in the parking lot, muscles bunching and shifting as he pulled both arms over his head. “You’re going to keep me in suspense?”

“No, just in motion.” I groaned with impatience, and he ducked into the car to grin at me. “What, you can’t walk and talk at the same time?” Then his grin widened and he slammed the door in my face. I had no choice but to follow.

Automatic lights flared to life as I stepped onto the concrete, bathing the entire lot, the adjacent, deserted playground, and part of the pier in a soft yellow glow. I circled the car and gave him my hand when he reached for it. “Fine, I’m walking. Start—”

Nash kissed me, one hand gripping the curve of my left hip, and the rest of my sentence was lost forever. When he finally pulled away, he left me breathing hard and craving things I
could barely conceptualize. His gaze met mine from inches away, and I noticed that his irises were still swirling in the soft yellow light overhead. Or maybe they were swirling again.

Suddenly his eyes didn’t seem so strange. And neither did my fascination with them. “So…your eyes?” I whispered when I could speak again, making no move to step back. “Is that part of what male
bean sidhes
do?”

“My eyes?” He frowned and blinked. “The colors are swirling, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.” I leaned closer for a better look, and since I was so close, anyway, I kissed him back, sucking lightly on his lower lip, then delving deeper. Exhilaration shot through me when he groaned and gripped my waist with both hands. His hands started to slide lower, and I only stepped back when I got scared by the realization that I didn’t want him to stop.

“Um…” I cleared my throat and shoved my hands in my pockets, then finally looked up to find him watching me. “Your eyes are beautiful,” I said, desperate to bring the conversation back on track. “But don’t they kind of clue people in? That you’re…not human?”

“Nah.” He brushed a chunk of dark hair from his forehead and grinned. “It only happens when I’m experiencing something…um…really intense.” I felt myself flush, but he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “A
bean sidhe’s
eyes are like a mood ring you can’t take off. But you can’t read your own, and humans can’t see it at all. Just other
bean sidhes.
” His held my gaze with an intense look of his own. “Yours are doing it too. More shades of blue than the ocean, swirling like a Caribbean whirlpool.”

Oh, lovely.
My flush deepened until I thought my cheeks would combust. He could see what I was thinking—what I wanted—in my eyes. But I could see what he wanted too….

“Tell me the rest of it.” I turned toward the park with my hands still in my pockets. I wanted to know everything—but mostly I wanted to change the subject.

Nash stepped over a parking bumper and caught up with me in two strides. “Human lore says that when a
bean sidhe
wails, she’s mourning the dead, or the soon-to-be dead, but that’s not the whole story.” He glanced up to study my profile. “I’ve seen you hold back your wail twice. What do you remember about the time you let it go?”

I flinched at the memory, reluctant to revisit the event that landed me in the hospital. “It was horrible. Once I let it go, I couldn’t pull it back. And I couldn’t think about anything else. There was this feeling of total despair, then this awful noise that felt like it just erupted from my throat.” I stepped over a landscape timber, then onto the thick bed of wood chips carpeting the playground, and Nash followed. “The scream was in control of me, rather than the other way around. People were staring, and dropping purses and shopping bags to cover their ears. This little girl started crying and clinging to her mom, but I couldn’t make it stop. It was the worst day of my life. Seriously.”

“My mom says the first time’s always rough. Though it doesn’t usually get you locked up.”

That’s right; his mother was a
bean sidhe
too. No wonder she’d stared at me. She probably knew I had no idea what I was.

When we got to the heart of the playground—a massive wooden castle full of towers, and tunnels, and slides—Nash stepped beneath a piece of equipment and reached up for the first monkey bar beam. “Were you watching the pre-departed when he actually…departed?”

I raised an eyebrow in dark amusement, trying not to stare
at the triceps clearly displayed beneath the snug, short sleeves of his tee. “Pre-departed?”

He grinned. “It’s a technical term.”

“Aah. No, I wasn’t looking at anything.” I sank onto a low tire swing held up by three chains, rocking back and forth slowly, trying to forget the words even as I spoke them. “I was trying to make the screeching stop. Mall Security called my aunt and uncle, and when I couldn’t stop crying, they took me to the hospital.”

Nash let go of the bar and settled onto the rubber-coated steps of a nearby slide, watching me from a couple of feet away. “Well, if you’d looked at the other guy, you would have seen the deceased’s soul. Hovering.”

“Hovering?”

“Yeah. Souls are fundamentally attracted to a
bean sidhe’s
wail, and as long as it lasts, they can’t move on. They just kind of hang there, suspended. You remember sirens in mythology? How their song could draw a sailor to his death?”

“Yeah…?” And that image did nothing to ease the apprehension now swelling inside me like heartburn.

“It’s like that. Except the people are already dead. And they aren’t usually sailors.”

“Wow.” I put my feet down to stop the tire from rocking. “I’m like flypaper for the soul. That’s…weird. Why would anyone want to do that? Suspend some poor guy’s soul?”

Nash shrugged and stood to pull me up. “Lots of reasons. A
bean sidhe
who knows what she’s doing can hold on to a soul long enough for him to prepare for the afterlife. Let him make his peace.”

I frowned, unable to picture it. “Okay, but how peaceful can it possibly be, with me screaming bloody murder?”

He laughed again, and I followed him up the steps to a
wobbly bridge made of wooden planks chained loosely together. “It doesn’t sound like screaming to the soul. Or to me either. Your wail is beautiful to male
bean sidhes.
” Nash turned to look at me from the top step, his gaze soft, and almost reflective. “More like a wistful, haunting song. I wish you could hear it the way we hear it.”

“Me too.” Anything would be better than the earsplitting screech I heard. “What else can I do? Tell me the parts that don’t make me want to dig my own ears out of my skull.”

Nash pulled me onto the bridge, which rocked beneath us until I sat in the middle with my legs dangling over the side. “You can keep a soul around long enough for him to hear the thoughts and condolences of his friends. Or say goodbye to his family, though they can’t hear him.”

“So I’m…useful?” My pitch rose in earnest hope.

“Totally.” He settled onto the next plank, facing my profile with one leg hanging over the edge of the bridge and the other arching behind me.

My smile swelled, as did the warmth spreading throughout my chest, slowly overtaking my unease at the very thought of suspending a human soul. I wasn’t sure whether this blossoming peace stemmed from my newfound purpose in life—and in death—or from the way Nash watched me, like he’d do anything to make me smile.

“So what can you do?”

“Well, my vocal cords aren’t as powerful as yours, but a male
bean sidhe’s
voice does carry a kind of…Influence. A strong power of suggestion, or projection of emotion.” He shrugged and draped one arm over the rope railing, leaning back to see me better. “We can project confidence, or excitement. Or any other emotion. A bunch of us together can urge groups into action, or pacify a mob. That one was big during the witch
trials, and public panics of old.” He grinned. “But mostly, we just relax people when they’re nervous, or upset.” Nash shot me a meaningful look, and I sucked in a startled breath so big I nearly choked on it.

“You calmed me, didn’t you? In the alley behind Taboo.”

“And behind the school, this afternoon. With Meredith…”

How could I not have realized? I’d never been able to control the panic before, without putting distance between myself and…the pre-deceased.

I blinked back grateful tears and started to thank him, but he spoke before I could get the words out. “Don’t worry about it. It was cool to finally get to show off.”

“And there’s more, other than the Influence?”

He nodded, and the bridge rocked as he leaned forward, eyeing me dramatically. “I can direct souls.”

“What?” Chill bumps popped up beneath my sleeves, in spite of the unseasonably warm evening.

Nash shrugged, like it was no big deal. “You can suspend a soul, and I can manipulate it. Tell it where to go.”

“Seriously? Where do you send it?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept.

“Nowhere.” He leaned back against the rope and frowned. “That’s the problem. Your skills are useful. Altruistic, even. Mine…? Not so much.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s only one place to send a disembodied soul.”

“The afterlife?” I folded one leg beneath the other and twisted to face him, trying not to be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities he was throwing at me.

He shook his head as a cicada’s song began in the distance. “A soul doesn’t need me for that.”

And suddenly I understood. “You can put it back! Into the
body.
” I sat up straight and the bridge swayed. “You can bring someone back to life!”

Nash shook his head, still somber in spite of my growing enthusiasm, and stood to pull me up. “It takes two of us. A female to capture the soul, and a male to reinstate it.” His hand found my hip again, and the heat behind his gaze nearly scorched me. “We could be amazing together, Kaylee.”

My cheeks blazed.

Then the reality of what he was saying truly hit me, like a blast of cold air to the face.

“We can save people? Reverse death? You should have told me that part first!” A tingly exhilaration blossomed in my chest, and at first I didn’t understand when he shook his head.

But then my excitement withered, replaced by a cold, heavy feeling of regret. Of mounting guilt. “So not only did I fail to warn Meredith, I let her die, when we could have saved her. Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t stop the flash of anger that realization brought. Meredith would still be alive if I’d known how to help her!

“No, Kaylee.” Nash tilted my chin up until I saw the dark regret swirling in his eyes. “We can’t just go around shoving souls back into dead bodies. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t even warn someone of his own death. It’s physically impossible, because you can’t do anything else while you’re singing a soul’s song. Right?”

I nodded miserably. “It’s completely consuming….” Though I still couldn’t imagine that horrible screech sounding like the song he’d described. “But there has to be a way around that.” I sidestepped him on the wobbly bridge and took the steps two at a time. My mind was racing and I needed to move. “We could work out some kind of signal or something. When I get a premonition, I could point, and you could go warn the…um…pre-deceased.”

Nash caught up with me, already shaking his head again. He caught my arm and pulled me to a halt, but let go when I stiffened. “Even if you could warn someone, it wouldn’t change anything. It would just make the poor guy’s last moments terrifying.” I started to shake my head, but he rushed on. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Kaylee. You can’t stop death.”

“But you just said we could.” I leaned against the side of a green plastic twisty-slide, frowning up at him. “Together, we could have saved Meredith. Maybe even Heidi Anderson. Doesn’t it bother you that we didn’t even try?”

“Of course it does, but saving Meredith wouldn’t have stopped her death. It would only have prolonged her life. And reanimating someone whose time has come carries serious consequences. And believe me, the price isn’t worth paying.”

“What does that mean?” How could saving someone not be worth the price?

Nash’s gaze burned into me, as if to underline the importance of what he was going to say. “A life for a life, Kaylee. If we’d saved Meredith, someone else would have been taken instead. Could be one of us, or anyone nearby.”

Ouch.

I sank onto the rubber mat at the base of the slide, my eyes closed in horror. Okay, that was a high price. And even if I’d been willing to pay it myself, I had no right to make that decision for an innocent bystander. Or for Nash. Yet I couldn’t let the issue go. No matter what he said, no matter how logical the arguments, letting Meredith die felt wrong, and I couldn’t stand the thought of ever having to do that again.

Nash sighed and sank onto the mat with me, his arms propped on his knees. “Kaylee, I know how you feel, but that’s the way death works. When someone’s time comes, he has to go, and you’ll only drive yourself crazy looking for loopholes
in the system. Trust me.” The anguish in Nash’s voice resonated in my heart, and I ached to touch him. To ease whatever grief lent such pain to his words.