With All My Soul (2 page)

“Emma and Emily are pretty similar.” Nash sank into my dad’s
armchair and wrapped one arm around the
mara
’s
waist. “Wouldn’t you rather pick something different? I mean, you could be
anyone you want. It could be fun. None of the rest of us got to pick our
names.”

Em didn’t even look up.

“We called her Cynthia for three days.” Tod shoved a pillow
over so I could sit with him on the couch. “She couldn’t remember to answer.
Calling her Emily is just easier.”

“Who cares what you call her? Emma is still Emma, and that’s
all that matters, right? That she survived.” Sophie shrugged in her spaghetti
strap dress, leaning against the wall by the door like she wanted to stay but
needed to be near an exit, just in case.

I could tell she was trying to say the right thing. To be
useful and insightful. She’d been doing that a lot since she and Luca got
together, which seemed to show her that she had more in common with me and my
“freak” friends than she would ever again have in common with her fellow dancers
and teen socialites. But when filtered through the lens of narcissism through
which my cousin viewed the world “useful and insightful” usually came out
sounding more like “pointless and trite.”

Sophie had come a long way, but the journey was far from
over.

“Yeah, I survived.” Em sat up and glared at her over the half
wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “Unless you count the part
where my neck was snapped by a hellion who wanted to wear me like a perpetual
Halloween costume. And the fact that my permanent address is now plot number 436
at the Grandview Cemetery. You think Zappos delivers to burial plots? If so, you
must be right! Nothing’s changed! So what if I’m now a brunette, and a B-cup,
and an
Emily?
At least I
survived,
right?”

“I was just trying to help.” Sophie blinked back tears that
probably had more to do with her own frustration than with sympathy for Em. “I
almost died, too, you know. We all did.”

“
Almost
only counts in beauty
pageants.” Emma slid off her bar stool and pulled a can of soda from the fridge,
then took down a tall glass and the bottle of whiskey my dad had confiscated
from Nash a couple of weeks earlier. No one said anything when she poured
generous helpings of both into the glass.

“We’re going to get him,” I said through clenched teeth,
struggling to hide my anger on her behalf while she drained a quarter of the
glass. “We’re going to get them
all.
”

She didn’t deserve this. It was
my
fault Emma had lost everything she’d ever had, except for a best friend who’d
failed to protect her. It was my fault, and it was Avari’s, and he was going to
pay for what happened to Em and to everyone else he’d hurt.

“Sure we are.” Emma rolled her eyes and took another drink.
“We’re going to sock it to the immortal hellions capable of squashing us like
ants on the sidewalk. So what if they can’t be killed, or caught, or even hurt,
as far as we know. Maybe we can kill them with
kindness.
Or maybe they’ll see us wearing our big-boy pants, all
ready to take them down, and they’ll die laughing. That’s the only way we’re
going to get them. I know nothing about the Netherworld, but I know that.”

“I have a plan, Em. A good one.”

“I know you do. I’m sorry.” She shoved limp brown hair back
from her face and sat, still holding her glass. “I just... I attended my own
funeral today. There’s just no way to improve a day that started with throwing
clods of dirt on your own coffin.”

“I know.” My hand tightened around Tod’s. I hadn’t seen myself
buried, but I had been...well...murdered. Sacrificed, in fact. As a virgin.

Cliché? Sure. Painful? Hell, yes.

Reversible?

Nope.

“Well, at least you’re compatible roommates,” Sabine said as
Luca headed into the kitchen. “Kaylee’s dead, but pretending to live in her own
body, and Emma’s alive in someone else’s body, but faking death. Your living
situation was meant to be. Unlike mine.” The
mara
threw an angry glance at my cousin.

Since her foster mother’s death, Sabine had been staying with
Sophie and my uncle Brendon, who’d officially applied to be her new foster
parent, to keep her within the fold. Because in spite of obvious
attitude...
issues,
she’d proved useful.

Also because if we tried to get rid of her, she’d only claw her
way back into Nash’s life, stepping on everyone in her way. She’d certainly done
it before.

Sabine had a unique perspective on boundaries—she refused to
recognize them.

Sophie stepped away from the wall she’d been holding up and
adjusted her black silk dress. “Hey, Luca, I told my dad we’d put in an
appearance at the reception,” she said, but we all saw through that—she looked
more comfortable in her three-inch stiletto heels than in my house. “Are you
ready?”

“Yeah. Just a sec.” Luca looked up from the kitchen peninsula,
where he was talking softly to Emma with his back to the rest of us. He said
something, and she actually chuckled. When he tucked a strand of hair behind her
ear—Lydia’s ear—the look Sophie gave them should have boiled the blood in their
veins.

Em and I were supposed to go to the reception, too, but when
I’d told my dad how she’d reacted to her mother at the funeral, he’d agreed that
we should probably forgo any more close contact with Ms. Marshall until they’d
both had a little time to adjust to Emma’s death.

“Luca?” my cousin repeated.

He stood and gave Emma one more smile before joining Sophie in
the living room. “Hey, I was thinking maybe you could give Em a hand with her
hair before school tomorrow.” He tried to take his girlfriend’s hand, but she
pulled it firmly from his grasp. His smile faltered, but he barreled forward,
and I was impressed by his resolution in the face of imminent temper tantrum.
“She’s never had to work with thin, fine hair before, so—”

“Are you saying my hair is limp?” Sophie demanded.

“No, your hair is beautiful.” He tucked a long blond strand
behind her ear and ended the gesture with his palm cupping her jaw. I could
practically see Sophie melt. “I was just thinking that Em’s a little insecure
about her new look, and you’re good with stuff like that, and she’s your friend,
so...?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Sophie blinked. “No problem.” She almost
looked ashamed of herself, and I couldn’t resist a smile. She was nicer when she
was with him. She wanted to be better, which made me want to like her.

Luca was the best thing that had ever happened to my cousin,
and he’d come at the best possible time—in the middle of the worst year of her
life. I think she truly cared about him. I couldn’t help hoping that someday
she’d actually deserve him.

After Luca and Sophie left to mourn my best friend in public,
Emma brought her half-empty glass into the living room and sank onto the couch
on my other side. “Okay, let’s hear this brilliant plan. How are we going to
bring the hurt to everyone’s least favorite hellions?”

“We’re not.” I smiled. I was proud of my plan, even if it still
had a few kinks to work out. “You were right—we can’t hurt them. But they can
hurt one another. A lot, hopefully. Maybe they can even kill each other.”
Because goodness knows
we
couldn’t kill them. We’d
never even come close to hurting a hellion, even though a couple of weeks
before, I’d been forced to stab Avari over and over every time he took a new
form in the human world—stolen from a murder victim—to torture us.

“Okay, that sounds promising.” Nash leaned forward in my dad’s
chair, and Sabine put one hand on his back. “How do we get them to do that?”

“We’re going to use their weaknesses against them.” Tod’s hand
tightened around mine again. He already knew the plan. We’d gone over and over
it during his breaks at work for nights on end—he was both a reaper at the local
hospital and a delivery boy for a nearby pizza place, but the reaper gig came
with more free time.

Way more people ordered pizzas than met their death on any
given night.

“Weaknesses?” Sabine said. “Hellions have weaknesses?”

“Only one apiece, that we’ve seen.” I scooted forward until I
sat on the edge of the couch, excited and relieved to finally tell them what
we’d come up with. “Think about it. When Sabine tried to sell me and Emma
to—”

“Really? We’re on that again?” the
mara
snapped. “You
know
I was under the
influence of a hellion of envy. As were
you.
We both
did some pretty stupid shit because of Invidia.”

“Yeah, but Kaylee didn’t try to sell anyone to a demon,” Tod
pointed out.

“Forgiven and forgotten, remember?” Nash aimed an irritated
glance at his brother.

I remembered forgiving Sabine, but I’d never said I could
forget.... “Just listen. When we were all with Avari and Invidia in the
Netherworld, how did we get away?”

Sabine shrugged. “I crossed over with Nash.” Because male
bean sidhes
don’t wail, they can’t cross to and from
the Netherworld on their own. “Tod took Em, then came back for you.”

Like his brother, Tod was a male
bean
sidhe,
but he could cross freely by virtue of his reaper abilities,
most of which didn’t work in the Netherworld, much like my own undead skills.
Unfortunately.

“Yes, but how did we get that chance?” I waved one hand in a
circular motion, encouraging them to follow that thought through to the
conclusion.

Nash’s brows rose with the realization. “Avari attacked
Invidia.”

“Why?” Tod said, and his brother—my ex—frowned, trying to
remember. He’d been in a lot of pain at the time, and I’m sure the memory was
fuzzy.

“Because he wanted what she had,” the
mara
said.

“Exactly.” Sabine was smart—I had to give her that. “Avari is a
hellion of greed. The only weakness I’ve
ever
seen
him display is an obsession with having everything. He wants his toys
and
Invidia’s. And Belphegore’s. And any others on the
playground.”

Em set her nearly empty glass on the coffee table. “So we’re
going to play them against one another? How?”

Tod frowned, and his voice deepened. This was the part he
didn’t like. “By dangling the same bait in front of all three of them at
once.”

“What bait?” Em asked, but I could tell by her tone that she
was already catching on.

“Us.” I glanced around the room. “Some of us, anyway. Including
Sophie and Luca, if we need them and they’re willing.” And we probably would
need them. Avari had already gone after them both. “We’re the bait.”

Chapter Two

“We’re the bait? And you’re okay with this?” Nash
stared across the room at his brother, challenge swirling in the greens and
browns of his eyes—a
bean sidhe
’s emotions could be
read in the colors twisting in their irises, at least by fellow
bean sidhes.

“Hell no, I’m not okay with it. It’s dangerous, and risky, and
perilous, and also profoundly unsafe. But I have yet to come up with a better
idea, so...” Tod gestured to me, reluctantly yielding the floor, but Em snatched
it before I could speak.

“We’re the bait? So we’re going to be dangled?
How
are we going to be dangled?”

“Okay, first of all, no one has to do this.” I stood and Tod
scooted over so I could sit on the arm of the couch, from where I could see
everyone in the room. “You’re all completely free to just...not participate. But
obviously, I can’t promise that staying out of this will keep you safe. We
weren’t dangling anything in front of anyone the last time Avari and his hellion
posse set their sights on us. Not on purpose, anyway. Which is why I’m pretty
sure it’ll be easy to get their attention. The hard part will be keeping them
from seeing the setup. So, raise your hand if you want to be a part of this,
then I’ll—”

“I’m in.” Nash didn’t bother to raise his hand.

“Just like that?” Em frowned at him.

He nodded. “No one wants to see that bastard pay more than I
do.”

“I’m fully prepared to debate that statement with you, but
there’s really no point.” I glanced around the room again. “I’m in, obviously,
as is Tod.” He nodded to confirm, and a single pale curl fell over his forehead.
“What about you two?”

“You couldn’t keep me out of this if you tried,” Sabine said.
“This place is dull when there’s no evil afoot.”

“When is that, exactly?” Tod gave her a sardonic grin, and
Sabine returned it.

“Em?” I wasn’t yet familiar enough with her new face to tell
what she was thinking. “You totally don’t have to do this.”

“No.” She drained the last of her whiskey and soda, made a sour
face, then set the glass down a little too hard on the coffee table. “I’m in.
Just tell me what to do.”

“Yeah. What kind of dangling are we talking about?” Nash said.
“Carrot in front of a donkey? Or raw meat over a pit of lions?”

“Probably not the carrot.” Sabine shrugged. “Hellions strike me
more as carnivores.”

I’d rarely heard a truer statement. As far as I could tell,
hellions lived only to consume humanity—whichever parts of us they could get.
Our emotions. Our blood. Our flesh. And, rumor had it, any other bodily fluids
on hand.

“Since they can’t cross into the human world, with a few
obvious exceptions—” like the recent invasion of hellions wearing the souls and
forms of the dead “—we’re only going to be dangling our emotions.”

“Oh, good. Metaphysical carrots.” Emma exhaled in relief and
looked like she might want a refill.

“Here’s where it gets tricky,” Tod said, while I headed into
the kitchen for a six-pack of sodas from the fridge. “They’re not going to be
fooled by anything less than the real thing. Authentic—and very strong—envy and
vanity.”

“Envy for Invidia and vanity for Belphegore?” Sabine said, and
I nodded.

Nash accepted the soda I handed him, then passed it to Sabine.
“What about Avari?”

I handed him another can. “We’re not going to worry about him.
He’s harder to get rid of than to trap, and if one of us starts flaunting
unusual levels of greed, he’ll know something’s up. But if he thinks Invidia and
Belphegore are closing in on the carrot he’s been chasing for months—”

“Or any of us other carrots,” Tod added, accepting a can for
himself.

“—he’ll jump into the game on his own. Which is exactly what we
want. So all we really have to do is dangle one carrot in front of each of the
other two. And since this involves you all, I’m open to suggestions. Anyone want
to dangle?”

Sabine raised her hand. “I nominate Sophie as bait for
Invidia.”

Tod laughed. He was always able to find humor in even the
creepiest situations. I’d thought that was an undead thing, until I became a
member of the undead. Then I realized it was a Tod-thing.

“Just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you can feed
her to a hellion,” Em said. “Haven’t we been over this?”

“I don’t want to get rid of her, I—” Sabine rolled her eyes and
started over. “Okay, I do
kind of
want to get rid of
her, but that’s not what this is. Think about it. Out of all seven of us, who’s
currently harboring the most envy?”

The three of them turned to look at Nash, who fired back angry
glares. “Screw you all. Just because I don’t think my brother should have made
out with my girlfriend doesn’t mean I’m jealous of him!”

“Forgiven and forgotten...” I reminded him, but his glare only
deepened.

“Not Nash,” Sabine snapped. “He has everything he could
possibly want. Everything. More than he can handle,” she added, as if we could
possibly have missed her point. “I’m talking about Sophie. Did you all see the
look she gave Em when Luca was talking to her in the kitchen?”

I
had
seen that.

“That was nothing. He was trying to make me feel better about
my hair. Seriously. He’s totally into Sophie.”

“I know. I can’t figure it out, but I don’t doubt it,” Sabine
said. “But Sophie does. And with a little nudging, I think I can turn your
prissy little cousin’s shiny new insecurity into a feast of jealousy any hellion
of envy would covet.” She glanced around for our reactions. “How’s that for a
carrot?”

“What kind of nudge are you talking about?” I wasn’t Sophie’s
biggest fan either, but that didn’t give me the right to put her in any danger
she didn’t volunteer for.

Sabine shrugged. “A little strategic feeding of her fears.
Namely, self-doubt.” As a
mara,
she could do that
and much more. “And I’ve been dying to try out my vial of Invidia’s hair. That
shit is concentrated liquid envy.”

“No.”

“Oh, come on.” The
mara
rolled her
eyes at my hesitance. “I figure a drop in her morning diet shake should be
enough to do the job. That can’t be any worse for her than those pills she pops
when she gets upset.”

Aunt Val’s sedatives.

I made a mental note to sneak into Sophie’s room in the middle
of the night and flush the whole stash.

“We could at least ask her if she wants to.” Em shrugged. “She
did look pretty jealous....”

“She can’t know about it!” Sabine insisted. “If we tell her,
she’ll know she has no reason to be jealous, and there goes our carrot.”

“We’re not going to spike her protein shake and throw her to
the wolves!” I insisted.

Tod chuckled. “I thought they were lions. Or donkeys. You’re
losing control of your metaphors, Kay.”

I turned on him, but before I could yell at him to stop
lightening the mood, Nash spoke up. “We could watch her. All of us. We could
take shifts. That way, if anything goes wrong, we can stomp on the brakes
immediately.”

“No.”

Tod took my hand again. “She’s already in danger, Kaylee. You
said it yourself. We all are. At least this way, someone will have her back,
24/7. If you think about it, she may actually be safer this way.”

So I thought about it, and I had to admit they were right. I’d
done everything I could think of to keep Emma safe and only wound up getting her
killed. Twice. Maybe the best way to keep Sophie safe was to manipulate her
environment.

I thought we should
at least
tell
Luca what we were doing, though, so he could watch out for her, too. But he
would never go for it. And he was spending almost every waking moment with her
anyway, so he’d definitely notice if something went wrong, even if he didn’t
know she was in any particular danger....

“You all swear you’ll help me look out for her?”

Heads nodded all over the living room, but Sabine only
shrugged. “I’m in the perfect position for that, unfortunately.”

“Fine. But we’re not giving her a drop of Invidia’s creepy
liquid hair until we’ve tested it.”

“Wait.” Emma frowned and raised Lydia’s thin, pale brown
eyebrows. “Isn’t that stuff, like, corrosive? It sizzles like acid.”

“Yeah, in its concentrated form. It was a challenge to contain.
Over time, it’ll eat through nearly anything but plastic.” Sabine’s grin looked
almost vindictive, and I started to question her motives. “But it’s easily
diluted in anything water based, like coffee or tea. Or nondairy diet protein
shakes.”

Tod set his empty soda can on the coffee table. “You’ve been
experimenting with it?”

“Just a little—I don’t want to waste it. But one drop dissolved
in eight ounces of water is perfectly safe to touch. I stuck a finger in and
felt nothing. Even took a little sip.”

“And?” Nash prompted.

“And I dumped the rest of it out. I just wanted to make sure it
was safe, not feel the effects myself.”

I groaned, “Do we even want to know why you were testing
it?”

Sabine shrugged. “Probably not. But I’m willing to take a full
dose this time, if that’ll convince you that it’s safe. Physically, at
least.”

“No!” Em and I said in unison. She continued, “The last time
you were all hopped up on jealousy you tried to sell us in the Netherworld.”

“I’ll try it,” I said. “Otherwise, we’re not doing this.”

Sabine shrugged again and sank back against Nash’s shoulder.
“Fine. I’ll go get it when we’re done here.”

“It’s not somewhere Sophie could find it, right?” Tod said.

“It’s in the toe of my left boot. The dancing queen won’t go
near shoes without a designer label. She thinks she’s allergic to cheap fabric.”
She twisted to scowl at Nash. “Sophie and I are
not
compatible. I still don’t see why your mom won’t let me stay with you guys.”

Emma actually grinned, for the first time in days. “Because
Harmony thinks she’s too young to be a grandmother. But she’s, like, what?
Eighty?”

“Eighty-two,” Tod said. From puberty on,
bean sidhes
age much slower than humans. Our average life span is
around four hundred years. Not that I’d know from personal experience. Half the
bean sidhes
I knew were already dead or living
on borrowed time. But Nash didn’t know his brother had traded death dates with
him—Tod didn’t want him to feel guilty about something that was beyond his
control. “Anyway, it’s not the grandmother thing that bothers her. It’s the
thought of you two as parents.”

“That thought bothers me, too.” Sabine’s gaze settled on me and
Tod. “Not a risk for you, though, right? You two have all the luck.”

“Yeah.” Sarcasm dripped from the word as Tod pushed pale curls
back from his face, and I could feel my own cheeks flame. “Not having to worry
about teen pregnancy
totally
makes up for the fact
that we’re dead.” His eyes flashed in anger, probably on my behalf. “Every time
I think you’ve reached the pinnacle of insensitivity, you exceed your own
reach.”

“No way. You don’t get to be mad about the truth.” Sabine
turned to Nash, obviously puzzled by social etiquette she didn’t understand.
“Are they pissed because I mentioned sex or death?”

“New subject!” Nash stood and stomped into the kitchen with his
soda.

“I second the motion,” I mumbled as he drained his can and
dropped it into the recycling bin. I would much rather talk about trekking
toward certain death in the Netherworld than ever again discuss sex in front of
my boyfriend, his brother/my ex, and his new girlfriend. Who was also his
old
girlfriend/first love, who’d once tried to sell me
to a demon to get rid of me.

Some conversations will just never be comfortable.

“Okay. So.” I shook my head, trying to mentally strike the
previous two minutes from the official record. “Any ideas for how to lure
Belphegore into our hellion cage match?”

“Vanity, right?” Nash reappeared in the living room with an
open bag of potato chips. “I nominate my venerable brother. He likes to play
hero, and one look at him should establish the vanity angle.”

“Nash!” I really shouldn’t have been surprised by the dig. But
I was.

“What?” He raised one brow at me in challenge. “It’s okay to
call me jealous, but not to call him vain?”

“Awareness of one’s obvious advantages doesn’t imply vanity,”
Tod insisted calmly.

Nash turned on him. “Does it imply narcissism?”

Tod huffed. “This coming from the guy who owns more hair
products than his girlfriend.”

“I don’t own
any
hair products,”
Sabine said. And that was true. Her beauty was natural. Dark, fierce, and kinda
scary at times, but completely natural.

Nash glared at his brother. “When you were still alive you
spent more time looking at yourself than at girls, and I doubt death changed
that.”

“Seriously? Are we doing this again?” The overhead light
flickered in response to Sabine’s irritation—another creepy aspect of hanging
out with a
mara.
“
You’re
pretty.
He’s
pretty.” She turned to scowl at Nash.
“Your brother’s arrogant, and you’re confrontational. You’re both fed, clothed,
sheltered, and sexually satisfied.”

“Sabine!” I hissed, while Em stared at the floor, evidently
lost in her own thoughts. But the
mara
continued
without even glancing at me.

“Now bury the hatchet in this stupid little family feud, or I’m
going to bury one in you both!”

For a moment, we all stared at her. I should have been
accustomed to her lack of a verbal filter and apparent determination to discuss
my private life in front of the entire world, but every now and then she still
shocked me.