With All My Soul (32 page)

“Nash?”

He blinked, and his eyes swirled with confused, surprised
twists of brown and green. I took a step toward him, and he studied me. Like he
didn’t dare believe the signals his eyes were sending him.

So I closed the distance between us on my own, then went up on
my toes to hug him.

He felt...different. Bigger. More solid.

Healthy.

Slowly, his arms closed around me. His hug tightened steadily
until I couldn’t have breathed if I’d needed to. He shook in my arms, and his
tears soaked into the shoulder of my shirt.

“It’s okay,” I said with what little breath remained in my
lungs. “It’s okay, Nash.”

When he finally let me go and wiped tears from his face, I
wanted to hug him all over again.

“You know, there are easier ways to make an ex get over you,
Kay. You didn’t have to fake your own death. Again.”

I laughed through my own tears, and I hugged him again. Then I
escaped into the kitchen to pull myself together while I poured soda into the
cups, hoping they wouldn’t see how surreal this was for me. Four hours earlier,
I hadn’t known my own name. I’d forgotten this world existed. I’d been lost in a
hell from which there should have been no mistake.

And now...

I turned and found them all watching me, so I took a long drink
from my cup to buy time. To think of what to say.

Tod’s hand slid into mine, and he smiled. Without saying a
word, he told me that everything was okay. That everything would come back to
me, in time. That the world may have moved on without me, but he hadn’t.

And that’s when I realized what I wanted to talk about. The
world had moved on without me, but ignoring that fact wouldn’t help me adjust to
it. I had to hit it head-on.

“You all look so different!” I couldn’t get over it. “So,
college and life? How are things?”

“Things are good,” Emma said. “I have a boyfriend.”

“The necromancer? I heard!”

Her smile was like sunlight emerging from the clouds as she
grabbed a cup for herself from the drinks lined up on the counter. “His name’s
Chad. He knows who I really am and how I...got here.” In Lydia’s body,
obviously. “He knows the truth, and it didn’t scare him away.”

“It’s kinda hard to scare a necromancer.” Tod set cups in front
of Nash and Sabine when they settled onto bar stools across the counter from us.
“They’re like reapers, but with less purpose.”

“He has purpose!” Em gave Tod a good-natured shoved. “He’s an
ed major. He wants to teach.”

“Not at Eastlake, I hope.” I smiled, trying not to feel lost in
a conversation about someone I’d never met. “I hear that place is
dangerous.”

“Not since you...died.” Nash frowned at the counter for a
moment. “When you left, all that other stuff...it just...stopped.”

“Not because you were the cause of it,” Tod clarified,
squeezing my hand. “You weren’t. The hellions left Eastlake because you paid to
make them go away.” His grin returned. “You didn’t just clean up the school, you
made a down payment on a miracle—a
mara
with an
education!” He made a grand gesture toward Sabine, and she laughed.

“Yeah.” The
mara
tossed dark hair
over her shoulder. “It turns out that without hellions stalking you constantly,
school’s not that big of an obstacle. Still boring as hell, though.”

“She has a three-point-four GPA.” Nash wrapped one arm around
her, and I could see the pride in his eyes. “And she’d have a four-point-oh if I
could talk her into actually attending most of her classes.”

Sabine shrugged. “Waste of time when you already know the
material. We’re nearly done now, though. Two more finals, then we graduate in
two weeks.”

My chest ached again, and before I could process how thoroughly
they’d all moved on without me, and why that bothered me, despite how happy I
was for them all, the front door creaked open again and I turned to find Sophie
standing in the doorway, frozen in place. Staring at me like she’d seen a
ghost.

Luca nudged her inside, then closed the door at their backs.
“Told ya so,” he leaned closer to say into her ear. I laughed. Of course he’d
known. He’d probably felt me the moment I crossed back into the human world.

“Creepy-ass necromancers,” I said with a grin, and he stepped
around my cousin to give me a hug.

“
So
glad you’re back,” he said.
“Work sucks without our best reclamationist.”

“You’re still working for Madeline?”

He nodded, and his grin widened. “As are you. Aunt Madeline
says she wants you back on the job by the end of the week. Also, she says,
‘Welcome back.’”

Warmth flooded me, and I was surprised to realize how good that
made me feel. There was still a place for me, even if that place wasn’t at
college with Nash, Sabine, and Emma.

Besides, A&M wasn’t that far away. Especially with my
two-second commute.

“Kaylee?” Sophie’s voice sounded strange. Fragile. “I guess I
shouldn’t be surprised, considering all the weird shit I’ve seen in the past
four years. But I have to admit...I didn’t believe Luca when he said you were
back.”

She hugged me, and I was a little relieved to realize she
hadn’t changed as much as the others. Of course, she was the youngest, though
still older than me, now. “And hey, don’t worry about your hair. We can fix
that. Three hours at my salon, and no one will ever know your poor head spent
four years in that dry Netherworld air.”

I laughed out loud.

The next hour was surreal. They asked a dozen questions I
didn’t want to answer about my time in the Netherworld, and I missed Alec more
than ever. He would have understood my silence.

When it became obvious that I’d rather listen than talk,
everyone seemed eager to oblige. I heard about classes, and parties, and
schoolwork, and new cars, and new jobs, and new friends. I laughed at stories I
didn’t completely understand and sympathized with disappointments I couldn’t
really imagine. It seemed impossible that so much could have changed in the
human world, when I could still remember my last day there like it was
yesterday.

But I’d missed a lot of yesterdays.

We were digging into huge slices of birthday cake—Tod insisted,
since I’d missed four birthdays—when another car pulled into the driveway.

My fork froze inches from my mouth. I dropped it onto my plate
and was halfway to the door when it opened on its own. Harmony took one look at
me, and her jaw dropped open so fast I was afraid it was going to fall off her
face.

“Oh, my...”

I folded her into a long-overdue hug and only then noticed the
firm bump between us. The one growing in her belly. I stepped back and glanced
at her round stomach in surprise. “Are you...?” The rest of the words got stuck
in my throat, and she nodded, beaming at me.

“It’s a girl.”

“We were going to call her Kaylee,” my uncle said, and I looked
up to find him in the doorway, watching me through damp, shiny eyes.

Uncle Brendon gave me my millionth hug in the past hour, and
only once I’d let him go did I notice that the gold band on his finger matched
the one on Harmony’s. “Why didn’t anyone
tell
me?” I
demanded, turning on the rest of my friends and family with a grin that probably
spoiled my angry act.

Sophie laughed. “Dad would have killed me if he missed the look
on your face. So...I’m going to be a big sister. Weird, huh?”

“Beyond weird.” I turned back to Harmony. “Wow! So, when are
you due?”

“Three months. We’re excited! And your old room at Brendon’s
will be the nursery.”

“Speaking of babies...” Em stepped forward with her phone and
showed me a picture of a laughing toddler with her sister’s eyes and my old math
teacher’s wavy brown hair.

I took the phone from her and stared at the picture. “Oh, Em,
he’s adorable!” Her nephew was so cute, in fact, that though I would have sworn
it was impossible, I wasn’t creeped out by his resemblance to the man who’d
murdered me.

“Yeah. And he never would have survived without you. Without
the soul you gave him.”

I’d left instructions in my goodbye letter, begging Harmony to
help them install the soul in the baby when he was born. “What’s his name?”

“I suggested Damien,” Tod said while Em showed me how to scroll
through the latest pictures on her phone—a leap in technology I’d missed during
my sabbatical in hell. “But no one listened.”

“Caleb. He’s very sweet but quite a handful.”

“Have you searched his head for a birthmark in the form of
three sixes?”

Emma shoved Tod again, and I got the impression that was a joke
he’d told in infinite variations. I didn’t get it.

“Most little boys are...challenging,” Harmony said. “Including
the two of you.” She smiled at both her sons.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s the big...?”

I froze at the sound of my father’s voice, and when it faded in
surprise, I turned to find him staring at me.

“Kaylee?” His voice cracked, and disbelief dripped from the
fracture. I smiled at him while my heart thundered in my chest. “Is that you?
Are you real?”

Tod laughed again. “We’ve been asking her that all day.”

My dad practically floated across the room toward me, and only
once his arms were wrapped around me did I realize he was wearing a flannel
plaid shirt I’d been trying to get him to throw away for months before he’d
disappeared into the Netherworld.

“I’m real.” I inhaled his scent, and fresh tears formed in my
eyes. “I am so sorry for everything I put you through.” I clung to him, crying
onto his shirt, burying my face in his shoulder.

My dad held me at arm’s length, staring at me through his own
tears. “Kaylee, what on earth could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“I lied to you,” I said, between sobbing hiccups. “And I
skipped school, and communed with evil forces, and drugged my boyfriend, and
went to the Netherworld without permission, and I’m about four years late for my
curfew. I totally understand if you want to ground me. With four years’ worth of
interest.”

My father laughed so hard his whole body shook, and tears
dripped from his chin. “Is that what it’ll take to keep you here?”

I shook my head. When he pulled me into another overdue hug, I
laid my head down on his shoulder. “You couldn’t get rid of me this time if you
tried.”

For at least a solid minute, we cried in each other’s arms,
unleashing four years’ worth of grief and pain and guilt.

When he finally let me go, I turned in a slow circle, looking
around at everyone I loved. Everyone I’d abandoned in an attempt to protect
them. The room blurred beneath my tears. “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t
believe you’re
all
here.”

“Um...” Sophie crossed her arms over a designer blouse and
arched both manicured brows at me. “Out of all the weird species, out-of-body
experiences, resurrections, and octogenarian pregnancies represented by the
occupants of this room right now, your presence is the thing most difficult to
believe.”

“Sophie...” Uncle Brendon said, but my cousin shook her
head.

“I have something to say, and I’m going to be heard.” She
turned to me again, and I braced myself for a well-meaning but offensive
critique of my hair, or my face, or the tee I’d borrowed from Tod, which hung
nearly to the cuff of my shorts. But instead, she smiled and glanced around the
room. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say...welcome home, Kaylee.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” I called through the closed
bathroom door, lifting acres of gold tulle. When I turned in front of the small
mirror, light caught the sequins on my bodice and reflected a thousand points of
light on the walls of Tod’s tiny bathroom.

“I’m sure. Come on out.”

“I feel stupid,” I moaned, pulling the door open, but my
complaint died on my tongue with one look at him. “But
you
look...” I stared at him for a second. Then I had to touch
him.

I ran my fingers over his gold tie, feeling the raised thread
pattern, then down the right side of the matching vest, half-hidden by his black
tux jacket. “You look
gorgeous.
”

“Okay.” He nodded hesitantly. “That’s a little feminine, as far
as compliments go, but I can’t argue with the general sentiment. I look great.
And so do you. Turns out gold is a good color for us both.” He made a spinning
motion with one finger, and I turned slowly to show off my dress. To show off me
in
my dress. The prom dress I’d never worn.

I felt simultaneously beautiful and foolish, twirling in what
little floor space there was between the unmade twin bed and the pile of
unfolded laundry. “Tell me again why we’re wearing four-year-old prom clothes,
alone in your bedroom?”

“We’re making up for lost time.” His arms slid around my waist,
and mine met behind his neck. “We’re going to do everything you missed while you
were gone. We’ll make up for every single lost moment. All of them.”

I looked into his eyes and got lost in them. “That could take a
long time.”

He started swaying, and I swayed with him, and it didn’t matter
that we didn’t have music, or friends, or punch, or a gym decorated with lights
and crepe paper. We had the only two things we needed for our private prom—each
other. And pretty clothes.

“I don’t care if it takes forever, Kaylee,” he said, and warmth
trailed down my spine to settle in a dozen pleasant places. “The universe
owes
us forever. And our eternity starts now.”

* * * * *

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Natashya Wilson and the rest of Harlequin
Teen for launching the Teen line with Soul Screamers and for supporting Kaylee
the whole way.

Thanks to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, for making things
happen.

Thanks to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, for untold hours
plotting, and whining, and planning over the phone. I hope we get to do all that
in person very soon.

Thanks to No. 1, who sees the crazy, frazzled writer my
official author photos hide well. Thanks for knowing when to offer coffee, when
to make fajitas, and when to back quietly away from the office door. You’ve made
this possible.

Thanks most of all to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for
guidance, support, enthusiasm, and—most importantly—for smiley faces in the
margins.