With All My Soul (31 page)

Avari jerked his hand back, and that serpentine coldness—his
own breath—was ripped up through my core and out my mouth with a metaphysical
brutality that made me gasp. For a single second, my insides were a gaping
vacuum, sucking at the world—at eternity—in search of something substantial.
Something to support my existence and anchor it to the physical reality of my
resurrected body.

Then he held up his other hand, but I couldn’t clearly see what
it held. I could no longer clearly see anything. Sight and sound were already
fading as I faded, for the lack of a soul. I collapsed to my knees, but didn’t
feel the impact.

“Do it!” Tod shouted, and distantly I registered the panic in
his voice.

A second later, a blast of something light and warm hit me. It
surrounded me like a blanket molded to the shape of my body, then sank into me.
Through me.

I didn’t realize how cold I’d been on the inside until the
warmth of my own returned soul brought me back to myself for the first time in
four interminable years. I gasped, sucking in one great breath, and the
Netherworld came into focus around me. Creatures eyeing me like Sabine would eye
a hamburger. Avari,
simmering
with rage eager to
bubble up and over him.

And Tod...

Tod pushed his way through the inhuman crowd toward me, trying
to see if it was over. If my soul was indeed restored. If I was
back.

And I
was
back.

“Little fury, our business is complete,” Ira said from my left.
“I’ve already guaranteed your safe passage to the human world, as part of our
agreement, and I suggest you leave now, before you find yourself in trouble you
cannot bargain your way out of.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

I raced across the room, and what remained of the crowd split
for me. Tod’s eyes widened and filled with tears. His arms opened. My letter
fluttered to the ground. I threw myself at him—arms around his neck, legs around
his waist—and the moment we touched, fog rolled up from the floor and over
us.

The Netherworld faded, and Avari’s bellow of fury faded with
it.

The school basement came into focus around us, and I exhaled
like I hadn’t had a breath to release in years. And in truth, I hadn’t.

Tod’s arms tightened around me as he lowered us to the floor,
my limbs still wrapped around him. Tears poured down my face as I clutched him,
feeling the muscles shift beneath his shirt as I ran my hands over his back. He
felt so solid. So real. His features didn’t shift into monstrous shapes with
each change of temperament. His teeth didn’t bite. His touch didn’t hurt.

I slid my fingers into his hair, and his curls were the softest
thing I’d ever felt. He smelled so good—so sweet and clean—and he felt so good,
so I kissed my way down his jaw until I found his mouth, then I kissed him. And
kissed him. And kissed him some more. And finally I had to make myself stop
before I devoured him whole, because I was starving, and he was the first
sustenance I’d had in
years,
and he was exactly the
right
sustenance, but I would never feed from
him like Avari fed from me, and just that thought sent horror rolling through me
and...

I opened my eyes. Tod was shaking. His whole body was trembling
beneath mine, and when I pulled away to see his face, I realized he was crying.
At first I thought I’d hurt him. Then I realized how ridiculous that was. I
couldn’t hurt anyone. I was the least threatening thing in the world. In
either
world. I had no claws, or fangs, or tail, or
horns, or any abilities strong enough to command respect or fear....

“Are you real?” He pulled me close again and whispered the
halting words into my ear. “Did that really just happen? You’re alive?”

My arms slid around him again. “No more now than I was before,
but yes.” My voice was hoarse and I couldn’t stop grinning. I couldn’t remember
ever seeing a room as glorious as my grungy high school basement, based solely
on the fact that it was in the human world. Beyond the reach of hellions.

“You were dead. Gone. For
four
years.
We mourned you. We
grieved,
” he
said, and I could see the truth of that in his eyes. In the solemn slant of his
mouth. “Everyone else moved on.”

“They moved on.” I blinked, denying fresh tears an exit. That
was good. I
wanted
them to move on. That was why
they couldn’t know. “Did you...move on?”

Tod shook his head. “I tried. I tried so hard. But no matter
where I went and what I did, I could still feel you. It was... It felt like I
could walk into the next room, and you’d be there smiling. Waiting for me. Like
I could turn a corner, and you’d be standing there. I missed you so much. I
thought I was losing my mind.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He put one hand on either side of my face and
kissed me. “It makes sense now. I had part of your soul. You gave it to me.
That’s why I couldn’t let you go.”

That’s why he’d suffered for four years, like my father had
been suffering for thirteen, since my mother died.

Nope. Seventeen.
The past four
years in the Nether had felt like an eternity, yet I could hardly comprehend
that same passage of time in the human world. I felt like everything in my
native plane should have stood still. Like the world should have stopped
revolving in my absence, only to resume when I returned. But that hadn’t
happened. Tod had lived through those four years without me, suffering a
subconscious promise to wait for me. Carrying a bit of my soul with his own.

My eyes closed as I realized the depth of the pain I’d put him
through.

But I’d had no choice. If I hadn’t done what I’d done, he’d
still
be suffering. We all would. And it would
never have ended.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and I opened my eyes to find him
staring at me. I started to nod, but he continued before I could. “Of course
you’re not okay. You’ve been there for four years. Four years of what?” His
features twisted with some form of suffering I couldn’t quite wrap my mind
around. He wasn’t hurt.
I
wasn’t hurt. Yet he was
clearly in pain.

Empathy.
That word came out of
nowhere. From deep within the well of things I hadn’t needed in the Nether.
Things I hadn’t seen or used.

But that wasn’t it, exactly.

Rage.
That one I’d used. That one
I’d seen. But that wasn’t quite it, either.

Tod was hurting for me. He was angry for me. He
felt...powerless. Helpless. Useless. Those I saw in his eyes, in the moment
before I became overwhelmed by the fact that I was
staring
into his eyes.
In my more rational moments, over the past four years,
I’d been convinced I’d never see him again.

“Four years of what, Kaylee?” he whispered, and his voice
cracked on my name.

I shook my head slowly. “Doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”

“It matters. I need to know what you...what I let...”

“No.” I took his chin in my hand and made him look at me,
terrified by what I saw in his eyes now. Guilt. “You didn’t do this. You
couldn’t have stopped it. I went through a lot of trouble to make sure you
didn’t know about it, because I knew that if you thought I was still here—still
anywhere
—you would move heaven and the
Netherworld to get to me. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

“What happened to you, Kaylee?”

“Listen to me.” I spoke through clenched teeth, desperate to
stop the tears standing at the ready. “Forget about that. I plan to.”

“Kaylee...”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t have to think about that. Not
ever again. And neither do you. Everything’s okay now, Tod. Everything is
amazing
now. Perfect.” I smiled. I couldn’t stop
smiling. “We’re together.” I kissed him again, and when his tears fell, mine
followed, but these tears didn’t hurt. “And this time, forever is real.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you, too. More than anything.” I stood and pulled him
up with me, swiping tears from my cheek with my free hand. “Now let’s go bring
me back to life. Again.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bringing me back to life turned out to be a two-step
process. The first part involved a very private reunion with the reaper who
deserved more gratitude than I even knew how to express for loving me. For
waiting for me. For safeguarding my soul from a distance. And for braving the
Netherworld one last time to finally bring me home.

Tod still had his room at reaper headquarters. He still had the
same bed. The same chair. The same minifridge used as a nightstand. His dirty
clothes still littered the floor. His tub was still too short for a proper bath,
and he still only owned two towels and five washcloths.

He still had my spare toothbrush.

He still touched me like I was the most precious thing in
existence.

I still loved every single second of it.

Based on my first two hours back in the human world, it was
tempting to assume very little had changed. I knew that wasn’t true, but for
those two hours, I let myself pretend.

When we’d finally done enough touching and holding and kissing
to be sure I wasn’t going to simply melt from reality, like a mirage, we sat
cross-legged on his bed, facing each other, eating ice cream with plastic spoons
from paper bowls.

“How did you do it?” Tod dumped more caramel syrup on the mound
of home-style vanilla in my bowl, then topped it with a scoopful of candied
walnuts. “I mean, I know that since your soul wasn’t yours in the first
place—very clever, by the way—the deal you struck with him was nullified. But
doesn’t that nullify his promise to leave us all alone forever?”

I took a bite of my victory sundae—which had been preceded by
my Welcome Back from the Netherworld pizza—and let the sugar melt in my mouth.
If I’d ever tasted anything so sweet before, I couldn’t remember it.

But the sugar soured on my tongue with the memory his question
triggered.

It’s a word game, little fury. You are
building a cage made of promises, and Avari must believe that the bars he
sees between you are locking you in. Then, later, he will turn and realize
he’s
the one in the cage, and that you stand on
the outside, watching him, a free woman.

“Ira taught me how to negotiate.” But not until
after
he and I had struck our own deal. “The key was
phrasing my demands as two separate agreements. The first bargain said that he
would let my dad go in exchange for my immortal soul. Since my soul was never
mine to give him, that deal is now null and void, and if he still had my dad,
Avari wouldn’t have to give him up. But he doesn’t have my dad. And since the
other bargain we struck is still in effect, he never
will
have my dad.”

Tod leaned over to set the syrup bottle on top of the
minifridge, and the mattress creaked beneath his weight. “What was the second
part?”

Water dripped from my shower-wet hair and soaked into the
T-shirt he’d lent me. I swallowed another bite and licked a smear of caramel
from my lower lip. “That one was intentionally simple. Deceptively so. It just
said that once he took possession of my soul, he could have no further contact
with you guys. Ever again. He
did
take possession of
my soul, and since there were no contingencies named in case he ever
lost
possession of it, that deal still stands.”

Tod stared at me, a ghost of a smile haunting the corners of
his mouth. “You may be the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”

I laughed and plucked a walnut from a peak of ice cream. “The
devil is in the details.”

“Have I ever told you how sexy your brain is?”

“Finally! A man who wants me for my brain.”

“I want you for all of you. Each individual part and the sum of
them all. I want you for everything you are and everything you will ever be. I
will never have enough of you, because there’s no such thing.” He stared right
into my eyes, and I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. I was trapped,
and never in my life had I been so happy to be caught. “I will never let you go
again.”

* * *

“What did you tell them?” I scooped ice into the last of
the plastic cups and nearly tripped over Styx for the fourth time in the past
quarter hour. She’d been following me everywhere since the moment we’d blinked
into my house, and I loved her for it.

I also loved her for the fact that, like Tod, she hadn’t
changed at all in the four years I’d been gone. That couldn’t be said for anyone
else, based on the pictures I’d found in Emma’s room—my former room. The twin
beds had been replaced with a full, and my things were packed into boxes stacked
at the back of her closet.

They hadn’t gotten rid of me. They’d just packed me up. Seeing
those boxes reminded me of the day I’d helped Emma pack up her former life and
move into her new one. We’d changed places, sort of. That felt weird.

“I told them I had an announcement,” Tod said. “They probably
expect me to announce my retirement.” Which, for a reaper, meant requesting or
accepting his final death. “It’s kind of...been coming.”

I frowned and dropped the ice scoop into the sink, and he
shrugged. “It was hard without you, Kaylee. I couldn’t let you go, but I didn’t
know how to be here without you. If I’d never met you, I probably would have
been fine.” He shrugged, and that same stubborn curl fell over his forehead. “I
mean, creatures who only exist in the dark don’t know they’re missing the sun,
right? But once you’ve
seen
the sun. Once you’ve
seen it light up the world...once you’ve felt its heat all around you...inside
you...” He clutched his own chest, and my heart cracked open. “It’s hard to live
in the dark after the sun dies.”

“I’m so sorry.” I set the last cup on the counter and threw my
arms around him again. “I’m so glad you didn’t do something...permanent.”

“I almost did. I started slipping away again. If not for my mom
and Emma, I might have lost most of my humanity by now.”

“Em? You and Emma?” I pulled back to look at him, my chest
aching, and I had to remind myself that four years was a long time, and they
were only human—mostly. And that I’d
left
them, and
they’d thought I was
dead,
and they had had every
right to move on. To at least
try...

Tod’s eyes widened, then he laughed and pulled me closer. “Not
like that. Emma has a boyfriend. A necromancer friend of Luca’s. They’ve been
together almost three years now.”

“The guy in the picture on her dresser?” They looked happy in
the photo. They looked...normal. Emma deserved some normal.

“Yeah. He’s a good guy, and he loves her, and he knows how to
handle the occasional syphon meltdown. But even if none of that were true...”
Tod put a hand on each of my arms and looked right into my eyes. “You have my
heart and soul, Kaylee Cavanaugh, and that never changed, even when I thought
you were gone. Em and I are just friends. There was never anyone else. Which
means that all of this—” he stepped back and spread his arms with a grin I’d
missed like I would miss my own heartbeat if I never felt it again “—went to
waste for four very long years.”

“Well, that’s all over now. An ego like that deserves to be
stroked.” I ran my hands over his chest and stood on my toes to whisper in his
ear, “Or at least humored.”

“Humored, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll take what I can get. For
now...”

I pulled his head down for a kiss and didn’t let him go until
an engine rumbled to a stop out front, and my heart stopped with it. “They’re
here.” One of them, at least. I’d only heard one car.

I raced to the front window and peeked through the gap in the
drapes to see an unfamiliar vehicle in the driveway. The driver’s door opened,
and I hardly recognized the man who stepped out. He had Nash’s artfully mussed
hair, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses. And he
was...bigger.

My heart ached. Each beat seemed to bruise me from the inside
out.

Nash had grown up, like Tod and I never would. Mental math told
me he was twenty-two now, and though I could see it, I couldn’t truly believe
it.

The passenger’s-side door opened and a headful of long,
straight, dark hair appeared over the roof of the car. A second later, Sabine
rounded the front bumper and slid her hand into Nash’s, and I’m sure my eyes
nearly bugged out of my head.

She’d grown up, too, and she was
gorgeous,
in a mature, collected way the teenage
mara
I’d come to thoroughly tolerate had never been.
And she looked...happy. Even with all the eyeliner she still wore and a familiar
pair of guys’ khakis hanging low on the swell of her hips.

“This is
bizarre,
” I whispered, and
Tod’s hand settled at my lower back.

“I guess it must be, seeing it all of a sudden like that.” He
shrugged. “They grew up.”

“And they’re...okay? They’re good?”

“Yeah. Better than I would have expected.” His arm slid around
my side and pulled me close again, just as the rear door of the car opened, and
my breath caught in my throat.

Emma.

Lydia’s body had grown up, too, and Em now wore it like it was
her own. She’d cut her thin hair, and it looked healthier than I’d ever seen it,
bouncing on her shoulders in light brown waves. Her arms were tanned, and she’d
finally figured out how to dress a body with no curves to speak of—a dilemma I
remembered well.

I was still watching her walk up the sidewalk when Nash knocked
on the door, then opened it and came in without waiting for the key Em had dug
from her purse. “Hey, Peter Pan? You in here?”

Sabine followed him inside, and I could tell by the way their
gazes passed over us, then settled on the cups of ice lined up on the kitchen
counter that they couldn’t see either of us yet. I hadn’t gone spectral on
purpose. Evidently—subconsciously, at least—I wasn’t ready to be seen.

“Kay?” Tod said, and they didn’t hear that, either. “You
ready?”

I nodded, and I only realized that was the truth at the very
last second.

Tod cleared his throat. Nash and Sabine turned our way just as
Em stepped into the house.

For a moment, shocked silence reigned.

Nash took off his sunglasses, and his hazel eyes were as wide
and still as I’d ever seen them. Emma dropped her purse, and Styx skittered away
from the falling debris. Sabine’s mouth widened in a stunning smile. She was the
first to believe her eyes, and, somehow, that didn’t surprise me.

“Kay?” She crossed the room in an instant and threw strong arms
around me, while I tried to ignore the fact that she’d grown at least two inches
taller since I’d last seen her. She towered over me now, and was only a couple
of inches shorter than Nash. “Are you real?”

Tod laughed. “I’ve been asking her that for the past three
hours. She’s real. Solid and thoroughly functional.”

“Well then.” Sabine let go of me and grinned. “I guess we know
how they spent the past three hours, instead of alerting anyone else to the
miraculous resurrection.” She shrugged. “Not that I blame you. If it were me and
Nash, we’d still be sequestered.”

Obviously
some
things hadn’t
changed....

“I—I don’t...” Em stuttered, and as soon as Sabine stepped
back, Emma was there. She’d grown, too, but that put her at exactly my height,
and I hugged her so tight I could almost hear her ribs groan. “How...?”

“She didn’t die. Levi lied.” Tod still sounded less than
pleased by that, and I couldn’t blame him.

“I asked him to,” I clarified, without letting go of Emma. I
couldn’t let her go. I wasn’t ready. And based on the strength of her hug,
neither was Em. “I knew that if you guys knew what I was planning, you’d come
after me.”

“Come after you
where?
” Sabine
frowned, and I could tell by the suspicion dripping from that one question that
she’d figured at least part of it out.

“The Netherworld.” Tod told them the part I couldn’t make
myself say out loud. “She turned herself in. Which sounds really
asinine
until you hear about the out clause she built
into her deal with Avari. That part’s really brilliant.”

“You turned yourself in? To
Avari?
”
Emma shuddered even as she said his name, and I could see all the questions she
obviously wanted to ask hiding just below her surprise and confusion. “You were
there the whole time? So you’ve been...? He’s been...?” Horror washed over her
face in slow motion as comprehension surfaced. As she realized where and how I’d
spent the past four years. And
why
I’d spent
them.

“
Damn,
Kay,” Sabine whispered.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tears formed in Emma’s eyes.
“
How
can you be
okay?”

“I made a deal with Ira. I gave him everything I couldn’t
handle....” Mostly massive amounts of pain and rage. “And that left me with
my...um...sanity.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but no one bought
that.

“Ira. Damn.” Sabine tossed long, dark hair over her shoulder.
“I haven’t heard that name in years. And you actually talked a hellion of wrath
into sucking the crazy right out of you?”

“It was mutually beneficial. And Ira’ll be munching on Avari’s
fury for centuries. That’s really why he agreed to the whole thing.” I blinked
and shook my head, mentally changing the subject. “Enough about the Netherworld.
We’re done with that now.” I’d put myself through hell for four years to make
damn sure of that. “I want to talk about you guys! You’re all...grown!”

Emma laughed. “Yeah. I guess so. You missed prom.
Then...everything else.”

“You’re in college?” Tod had told me that, but I wanted to hear
it from her.

“Yeah. I’m a junior at A&M. But they’re about to graduate.
Both of them!” She gestured to Sabine and Nash, and when my gaze fell on Nash
again, it stuck there. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t said a word. He was still
staring at me in shock, and his sunglasses lay on his left foot, where he’d
dropped them.