My Soul to Take (20 page)

Then I screamed.

The shriek poured from me in an agonizing torrent of discordant, abrasive notes that scraped my throat raw and seemed to empty me, from my toes all the way to the top of my head. It hurt like hell. But beyond the pain, I felt overwhelming relief to no longer be the physical vessel for such an unearthly din and agonizing grief over having lost my best friend. The cousin I should have had. My confidante and, at times, my sanity.

The entire gymnasium went still in an instant. People froze, then turned to stare, most slapping hands over their ears and grimacing in pain. Someone else screamed—I could tell because her mouth was wide open, though I couldn’t hear her over the much more powerful noise coming from my own mouth.

And then, before I could even process all the gawking stares aimed my way, the whole world seemed to
shift.

That fine gray mist settled into place all around me,
over
everything normal, though that was more a feeling than a physical fact. The strange, misshapen creatures I couldn’t focus on before were suddenly everywhere, interspersed with and in some cases overlaying the human crowd, ogling me just like the students and parents, but from the far side of the grayness. They were drab, as if the haze had somehow stolen their color, and they looked distant, as if I were watching them through some kind of formless, tinted glass.

Was that what Nash meant, when he said they wouldn’t actually be with us? Because if so, I didn’t quite understand the distinction. They were entirely too close for comfort, and drawing nearer every second.

On my left, a strange, headless creature stood between two boys in wrinkled khakis, blinking at me with eyes set into his bare chest, between small, colorless nipples. An odd, narrow
nose protruded from the hollow below his sternum, and thin lips opened just above his navel.

No need to
mention
how I knew it was a he….

Horrified, I closed my eyes, and my scream faltered. But then I remembered Emma. Em needed me.

They’re not here with us. They’re not here with us.
Nash’s voice seemed to chant from inside my head. I let the song loose again, marveling at the capacity of my lungs, and opened my eyes. I was determined to look only at Nash. He could get me through this; he’d done it before.

But my gaze snagged instead on a beautiful man and woman slinking their way toward me through the crowd. They looked almost normal, except for their hazy gray coloring and the odd, elongated proportion of their limbs—and the tail curled around the female’s slim ankle. As I watched, spellbound, the man walked
through
my science teacher, who didn’t so much as flinch.

That’s it. Enough.
I couldn’t handle any more weird gray monsters. This time I would look at Nash, or at nothing.

My throat burned. My ears rang. My head pounded. But finally Nash’s face came into focus directly across from me. But to my complete dismay, his gaze did not meet mine. He stared, rapt, at the space over Emma’s body, eyes narrowed in concentration, face damp with sweat.

I looked up, and suddenly I understood. There was Emma. Not the body cooling slowly on the floor in front of me. The real Emma. Her soul hung in the air between us, the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. If a soul can be called a thing.

She wasn’t beautiful, like I’d expected. No glowing ball of heatless light. No Emma-shaped ghost fluttering in an ethereal breeze. She was dark and formless, yet translucent, like a clear,
slowly undulating shadow of…nothing. But what her soul lacked in form, it made up for in feel. It felt important. Vital.

Cold fingers touched my arm and I jumped, sure one of the Nether-creatures had come for me. But it was only the principal, kneeling next to me, saying something I couldn’t hear. She was asking me what had happened, but I couldn’t talk. She tried to pull me away from Emma, but I wouldn’t be budged. Nor would I be silenced.

A short, round woman in a sacklike dress burst into the circle that had formed around us, shoving people out of her way. The gray creatures took no note of her, and I realized they probably couldn’t see her. Or any of the other humans.

The woman squatted by Nash and said something, but he didn’t answer. His eyes had glazed over; his hands lay limp on his lap. When she couldn’t get through to Nash, she tossed an odd glance my way and shot to her feet. She wobbled for a moment, then dashed around him and knelt at Emma’s head to check her pulse.

More people knelt on the ground, hands covering their ears, their mouths moving frantically, uselessly. They were oblivious to the creatures peppered throughout their midst, a condition which was apparently mutual. A tall, thin man made frantic motions with both arms, and the humans behind him backed up. The gray creatures seemed to press even closer, but I saw it all distantly, as the scream still tore from my throat, burning like razors biting into my flesh.

Then my eyes were drawn back to Emma’s soul, which had begun to twist and writhe frenetically. One smoky end of it trailed toward the corner of the gym, as if struggling in that direction, while the rest wrapped around itself, sinking toward Emma’s body like the heavy end of a raindrop.

Transfixed, I glanced at Nash to see sweat dripping down
his face. His eyes were open but unfocused, his hands now clenching handfuls of his pressed khaki pants. And as I watched, the soul descended a little more, as if the gravity over Emma’s body had been somehow boosted.

People rushed all around us, staring in my direction, shouting to be heard over me. Human hands touched my arms, tugged at my clothing, some trying to comfort me and silence my cry, others trying to pull me away. Odd colorless forms gathered in groups of two or three, watching boldly, murmuring words I couldn’t hear and probably wouldn’t have understood. And Emma’s soul moved slowly toward her body, that one smoky tendril still winding off toward the corner.

Nash almost had her. But if he couldn’t do it quickly, it would be too late. My voice was already losing volume, my throat throbbing in agony now, my lungs burning with the need for fresh oxygen.

Then, at last, the lucent shadow settled over Emma’s body and seemed to melt into it. In less than a second, it was completely absorbed.

Nash exhaled forcefully, and blinked, wiping sweat from his forehead with one sleeve. My voice finally gave out, and my mouth closed with a sharp snap, loud in the sudden silence. And every single gray being, every last wisp of fog, simply winked out of existence.

For a moment, no one moved. The hands on me went still. The human onlookers were frozen in place as if they could feel the difference, though they clearly had no idea what had happened, other than that I’d stopped screaming.

My gaze settled on Emma, searching out some sign of life. Rising chest, jiggling pulse. I would even have taken a wet, snotty sneeze. But for several torturous seconds, we got nothing, and I was convinced we’d failed. Something had gone
wrong. The unseen reaper was too strong. I was too weak. Nash was out of practice.

Then Emma breathed. I almost missed it, because there was no Oscar-worthy gasp for air. No panting, no wheezing, and no choking cough to clear sluggish lungs. She simply inhaled.

My head fell into my hands, tears of relief overflowing. I laughed, but no sound came out. I had truly lost my voice.

Emma opened her eyes, and the spell was broken. Someone in the crowd gasped, and suddenly everyone was in motion, leaning closer, whispering to companions, covering gaping mouths with shaking hands.

Emma blinked up at me, and her forehead furrowed in confusion. “Why am I…on the floor?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but the residual pain in my throat reminded me I’d lost my voice. Nash shot me a grin of total, exhilarating triumph and answered for me. “You’re fine. I think you passed out.”

“She had no pulse.” The round woman sat back from Emma, her face flushed in bewilderment. “She was…I checked. She should be…”

“She passed out,” Nash repeated firmly. “She probably hit her head when she fell, but she’s fine now.” To demonstrate, he held out his hand for one of hers, then pulled her upright, her legs stretched out on the floor in front of her.

“You shouldn’t move her!” the principal scolded from my side. “She could have broken something.”

“I’m fine.” Emma’s voice was thick with confusion. “Nothing hurts.”

A quiet murmur rose around us, as the news spread to those too far back to have seen the show. Whispered words, like “died” and “no pulse” set me on edge, but when Nash reached across Emma’s lap to take my hand, the anxiety receded.

Until a second scream shattered the growing calm.

Heads turned and people gasped. Emma and Nash stared in horror over my shoulder, and I twisted to follow their gaze.

The crowd still surrounded us, but through gaps between the bodies, I saw enough to piece together what had happened.

Someone else was down.

I couldn’t see who it was, because someone was already bent over her, performing CPR. But I knew by the straight black skirt and slim, smooth calves that it was a girl, and I knew from the pattern that she would be young and beautiful.

Nash’s hand tightened around mine, and I glanced up to find his face as tense with regret as mine surely was. We’d done the unthinkable. We’d saved Emma at the expense of someone else’s life. Not one of ours—an innocent, uninvolved girl’s.

I arched both eyebrows at him, asking silently if he was willing to try it again. He nodded gravely but looked less than confident that we could carry it off. And in the back of my mind, tragic certainty lingered: if we saved another one, the reaper would simply strike again. And again. Or he’d take one of us. Either way, we couldn’t afford to play his game.

But I couldn’t let someone else die for no reason.

I opened my mouth to scream—and nothing came out. I’d forgotten my voice was gone, and this time so was the urge to wail. There was no panic. No fresh pain clawing up the inside of my throat.

Horrified, I looked to Nash for advice, but he only frowned back at me. “If you can’t sing, she’s already gone,” he whispered. “The urge ends once the reaper has her soul.”

Which was why my song for Meredith had ended as soon as she’d died—we’d made no bid for her soul.

Devastated, I could only watch as people scurried around the dead girl, trying to help, trying to see, trying to understand.
And in the middle of the confusion, one of the onlookers caught my eye. Because she wasn’t looking on. While everyone else was focused on the girl lying on the gym floor, one slim arm thrown across the green three-point line, one woman stood against the back corner, staring at…me.

She didn’t move, and in fact seemed eerily frozen against all the commotion surrounding us. As I watched, she smiled at me slowly, intimately, as if we’d shared some kind of secret.

And we had. She was the reaper.

“Nash…” I croaked, and groped for his hand, hesitant to take my eyes from the oddly motionless woman.

“I see her.” But he’d barely spoken the last word before she was gone. She blinked out of existence, as silently and suddenly as Tod had, and in the bedlam, no one else seemed to notice.

Frustration and fury blazed through me, singeing me from the inside out. The reaper was taunting us.

We’d known the possible consequence and had taken the risk anyway, and now someone had died to pay for our decision. And the reaper had probably known all along that we couldn’t stop her.

And the worst part was that when I looked at Emma, who had no idea what her life had cost, I didn’t regret my choice. Not even a little bit.

O
VER THE NEXT FEW
minutes, details filtered back to us through the crowd, now thankfully focused on the other side of the room. The girl was a junior. A cheerleader named Julie Duke. I knew the name and could call up a vague image of her face. She was pretty and well liked, and if memory served, more friendly and accepting than most of the other pom-pom-wavers.

When Julie still had no pulse several minutes after she collapsed, adults began herding the students toward the doors, almost as one. Nash and I were allowed to stay because we were Emma’s ride, but the teachers wouldn’t let her leave until the EMTs had checked her out. However, Julie was the top priority, so when the medics arrived, the principal led them directly to the cluster of people around her.

But it was too late. Even if I hadn’t already known that, it would have been obvious by their posture alone, and the un-hurried way they went about their business, and eventually wheeled her out on a sheet-draped gurney. Then a single EMT in black pants and a pressed uniform shirt walked across the gym toward us, first-aid kit in hand. He examined Emma
thoroughly, but found nothing that could have caused her collapse. Her pulse, blood pressure, and breathing were all fine. Her skin was flushed and healthy, her eyes were dilating, and her reflexes were…reflexing.

The medic concluded that she’d simply fainted, but said she should come to the hospital for a more thorough exam, just in case. Emma tried to decline, but the principal trumped her decision with a call to Ms. Marshall, who said she’d meet her daughter there.

When I was sure Sophie had a ride home, Nash and I followed the ambulance to the hospital, where the triage nurse put Emma in a small, bright room to await examination. And her mother. As soon as the nurse left, closing the door on his way out, Emma turned to face us both, her expression a mixture of fear and confusion.

“What happened?” she demanded, ignoring the pillows to sit straight on the hospital bed, legs crossed yoga-style. “The truth.”

I glanced at Nash, who’d pulled a rubber glove from a box mounted on the wall, but he only shrugged and nodded in her direction, giving me the clear go-ahead. “Um…” I croaked, unsure how much to tell her. Or how to phrase it. Or whether my still-froggy voice would hold out. “You died.”

“I
died?
” Emma’s eyes went huge and round. Whatever she’d expected to hear, I hadn’t said it.

I nodded hesitantly. “You died, and we brought you back.”

She swallowed thickly, glancing from me to Nash—who was now blowing up the disposable glove—and back. “You guys saved me? Like, you did CPR?” Her arms relaxed, and her shoulders fell in relief—she’d obviously been expecting something…weirder. I considered simply nodding, but no one else would corroborate our story. We had to tell her the truth—or at least one version of it.

“Not exactly.” I faltered, raising one brow at Nash, asking him silently for help.

He sighed and let the air out of the glove, then sank onto the edge of Emma’s bed. I sat in front of him and leaned back against his chest. I’d barely broken physical contact with him since singing to Emma’s soul, and I wasn’t looking to do it anytime soon. “Okay, we’re going to tell you what’s going on—” However, I knew when he squeezed my hand that he wasn’t going to tell her
every
thing, and he didn’t want me to either. “But first I need you to swear you won’t tell anyone else. No one. Ever. Even if you’re still living ninety years from now and itching to make a deathbed confession.”

Emma grinned and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like I’ll be thinking about the two of you when I’m a hundred and six and breathing my last.”

Nash chuckled and wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned into his chest, and his heart beat against my back. When he spoke, his breath stirred the hair over my ear, softly soothing me, though I knew that part was meant for Emma. Just in case.

“So you swear?” he asked, and she nodded. “You know how Kaylee can tell when someone’s going to die?” Emma nodded again, her eyes narrowed now, fresh curiosity shining in them, edged with fear she probably didn’t want us to see. “Well, sometimes, under certain circumstances…she can bring them back.”

“With his help,” I added hoarsely, then immediately wondered if his own involvement was one of the parts Nash wanted to keep to himself. But he kissed the back of my head to tell me it was okay.

“Yes, with my help.” His fingers curled around mine, where my hand lay in my lap. “Together, we…woke you up. Sort of. You’ll be fine now. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you,
and the doctor will probably decide you passed out from stress, or grief, or something. Just like the EMT did.”

For nearly a minute, Emma was silent, taking it all in. I was afraid that even under Nash’s careful Influence, she might freak out, or start laughing at us. But she only blinked and shook her head. “I died?” she asked again. “And you guys brought me back. I
knew
I should have had that little digital health meter installed over my head, so I know when I’m about to drop.”

I smiled, relieved that she could see the humor in the situation, and Nash laughed out loud, his whole body quaking against my back. “Well, with any luck, we’ve unlocked infinite health for you,” he said.

Emma smiled back briefly, then her face grew serious. “Was it like the others? I just collapsed?”

“Yeah.” I hated having to tell her about her own death. “In midsentence.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” Nash said before I could answer. I let his response stand, because technically it was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. And because I didn’t want Emma mixed up in anything that involved a psychotic, extra-grim, female reaper.

She thought for a moment, her fingers skimming the white hospital blanket. When her hand bumped the bed’s controller, she picked it up, glancing at the buttons briefly before meeting my gaze again. “How did you do it?”

“That’s…complicated.” I searched for the right words, but they wouldn’t come. “I don’t know how to explain it, and it’s not really important.” At least as far as Emma was concerned. “What matters is that you’re okay.”

She pressed a button on the controller, and the head of the bed rose several inches beneath her. “So what happened with Julie?”

That was the question I’d been dreading. I glanced at my
lap, where my fingers were twisting one another into knots. Then I shifted to look at Nash, hoping he had a better, less traumatizing way to explain it than simply “She died for you.”

But evidently he did not. “We saved your life, and we’d do it again if we had to. But death is just like life in some ways, Em. Everything has a price.”

“A price?” Emma flinched, and her hand clenched the controller. The bed lowered beneath her, but she didn’t even notice. “You killed Julie to save me?”

“No!” I reached out for Emma, but she scooted backward into the pillow, horrified. “We had nothing to do with Julie dying! But when we brought you back, we created a sort of vacuum, and something had to fill it.” Which wasn’t exactly true. But I couldn’t explain that there shouldn’t have been a price for her life without telling her about
bean sidhes,
and reapers, and other, darker things I didn’t even understand yet myself.

Emma relaxed a little but didn’t move any closer to us. “Did you know that when you saved me?” she asked, and again I was surprised by how insightful her questions were.
She’d probably make a much better
bean sidhe
than
I
will.

Nash cleared his throat behind me, ready to field the question. “We knew it was a possibility. But your case was an exception, of sorts, so we hoped it wouldn’t happen. And we had no idea who would go instead.”

Emma frowned. “So you didn’t get a premonition about her death?”

“No, I…”
Didn’t.
I hadn’t even thought about it until she asked. “Why didn’t I know about her?” I asked, twisting to look at Nash.

“Because the reason for her death—” meaning the reaper’s
decision to take her “—didn’t exist until we brought Emma back. Which proves Julie wasn’t supposed to die either.”

“She wasn’t supposed to die?” Emma hugged a hospital pillow to her chest.

“No.” I leaned into Nash’s embrace and immediately felt guilty because she’d just died, yet had no one to lean on. So I sat up again, but couldn’t bring myself to let go of his hand. “Something’s wrong. We’re trying to figure it out, but we’re not really sure where to start.”

“Was
I
supposed to die?” Her gaze burned into me. I’d never seen my best friend look so vulnerable and scared.

Nash shook his head firmly on the edge of my vision. “That’s why we brought you back. I wish we could have helped Julie.”

Emma frowned. “Why couldn’t you?”

“We…weren’t fast enough.” I grimaced as frustration and anger over my own failure twisted at my gut. “And I sort of used it all up on you.”

“What does that mean—” But before she could finish the question, the door opened, and a middle-aged woman in scrubs and a lab coat entered. She carried a clipboard and led a very flustered Ms. Marshall.

“Emma, I believe this woman belongs to you?” The doctor tucked her clipboard under one arm, and Ms. Marshall brushed past her and rushed to the bed, where she nearly crushed her youngest daughter in a hug.

Suddenly the bed lurched beneath us, and Nash and I jumped off the mattress, startled. “Sorry.” Emma dug the controller from beneath her leg, where it had fallen.

“Um, we’re gonna go,” I said, backing toward the door. “My dad’s supposed to get in tonight, and I really need to talk to him.”

“Your dad’s coming home?” Still tight within the embrace,
Emma pushed a poof of her mother’s hair aside so she could see me, and I nodded.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. ’Kay?”

Emma frowned as her mother settled onto the bed, but nodded when the doctor held the door open for us. She would be fine. For better or worse, we’d saved her life, at least for now. And with any luck, she wouldn’t catch another reaper’s eye for a very, very long time.

Ms. Marshall waved to me as the door closed in front of us, and the last thing I heard was Emma insisting that she
would
have called, if she still had her phone.

Our footsteps clomped on the dingy vinyl tile as we passed the nurses’ station, heading for the heavy double doors leading into the ER waiting room. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, and I was exhausted. And the tickle in my throat reminded me that I still sounded like a bullfrog.

I’d barely finished that thought when a familiar voice called my name from the broad, white corridor behind us. I froze in midstep, but Nash only stopped when he noticed I had.

“I thought you might want something warm for your throat. Sounds like you really wore it out today.”

I turned to find Tod holding a steaming paper cup, his other hand wrapped around an empty IV stand.

Nash tensed at my side. “What’s wrong?” he asked. But he was looking at me rather than at Tod.

I glanced at the reaper with my brows raised. Tod shrugged and grinned. “He can’t see me. Or hear me unless I want him to.” Then he turned to Nash, and I understood that whatever he said next, Nash would hear. “And until he apologizes, you and I will carry on all of our conversations without him.”

Nash went stiff, following my gaze to what he apparently
saw as an empty hallway. “Damn it, Tod,” he whispered angrily. “Leave her alone.”

Tod grinned, like we’d shared a private joke. “I’m not even touching her.”

Nash ground his teeth together, but I rolled my eyes and spoke up before he could say something we’d all regret. “This is ridiculous. Nash, be nice. Tod, show yourself. Or I’m leaving you both here.”

Nash remained silent but did manage to unclench his jaws. And I knew the moment Tod appeared to him, because his focus narrowed on the reaper’s face. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” Tod let go of the IV stand and ambled forward, holding the steaming cup out for me. I took it without thinking—my throat did hurt, and something hot would feel good going down. I sipped from a tiny slit in the lid and was surprised to taste sweet, rich hot chocolate, with just a bit of cinnamon.

I gave him a grateful smile. “I love cocoa.”

Tod shrugged and slid his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans, but a momentary flash in his eyes gave away his satisfaction. “I wasn’t sure you’d like coffee, but I figured chocolate was a sure thing.”

A soft gnashing sound met my ears as Nash tried to grind his teeth into stubs, and his hand tightened around mine. “Let’s go, Kaylee.”

I nodded, then shrugged apologetically at Tod. “Yeah, I should get home.”

“To see your dad?” The reaper grinned slyly, and whatever points he’d gained with the hot chocolate he lost instantly for invading my privacy.

“You were spying on me?”

A door opened on the right side of the hallway and an
orderly emerged, pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair. They both glanced our way briefly before continuing down the hall in the opposite direction. But just in case, Tod lowered his voice and stepped closer. “Not spying. Listening. I’m stuck here twelve hours a day, and it’s ridiculous for me to pretend I don’t hear stuff.”