With All My Soul (6 page)

“They’re close enough now...” I pulled him toward me, and I
could see that he was trying to resist a smile. To stay mad, to emphasize his
point.

“That’s not gonna work.”

I went up on my toes to kiss him, and he groaned. “Do you
really think this is appropriate on school grounds?”

“Nope.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “And I happen to
know there isn’t an appropriate thought running through your head right
now.”

“Or any other time.” Tod pulled me close and held me so tight
my ribs almost hurt, but I didn’t want him to let go. Ever. “Just promise me
you’ll be more careful.”

“I promise.”

“So...” Tod tried on a grin, and I bent to pick up Em’s
textbook from where he’d dropped it. “What did Tall, Dark, and Evil want?”

“The usual. Devour my soul. Mutilate my corpse. Dissect my
psyche. Just another day in the most dangerous high school in the country. Of
its size.” I nudged Marco’s arm with my foot. “Can you help me get him to the
nurse? He’s going to wake up with several unexplained injuries, and I don’t want
to be in the room when he starts asking questions.”

* * *

That night, Tod, my dad, and I made a conscious effort
to keep our own emotions in check, so we wouldn’t accidentally trigger Emma’s
as-yet-uncontrollable syphon ability. Which wasn’t so much an ability at that
point as a constant trial.

I think we did pretty well. Until around ten-thirty, when Em
was doing homework on her bed and Tod and I were stretched out on my bed, not
doing my homework. After about ten minutes of what I would categorize as
PG-rated not-quite-adult content, she threw a balled-up pair of socks at us and
said if we didn’t go away she would jump my boyfriend herself.

Evidently we weren’t very good at keeping
those
emotions in check. And since I did
not
want my best friend syphoning anything quite that intimate, we
took the party to Tod’s place.

Tuesday morning, Emma was in much better spirits. We picked up
coffee on the way to school and met Nash and Sabine in one corner of the
cafeteria, as far from the breakfast eaters as we could get.

“Here.” I passed out lattes, and Em snatched a napkin dispenser
from an empty table.

“What’s the occasion?” Sabine looked suspicious. I couldn’t
blame her. We’d reached an understanding—she could have Nash, and I could never
again touch him, for any reason whatsoever, so long as we both shall live. Which
isn’t as bad as it sounds. Nash and I had made serious strides toward actual
friendship, which was more than I could say for him and his brother. Sabine and
I would never be like sisters, but we had definitely reached something akin to
friendship.

And that was good, considering that the alternative always
seemed to involve her trying to kill me, with little regard for the fact that I
was already dead.

“I need some information.” I took the lid off my cup and blew
over the top of my latte. “From Nash.”

“What’s up?” He dumped a packet of sugar into his open cup,
then realized he had nothing to stir with.

“I need you to make a list of everyone you know who tried
frost, back when Doug was, um, distributing to your teammates.”

Emma flinched at the mention of her ex, and I felt guilty all
over again. Both of her most recent boyfriends had died because of me and my
otherworldly complications.

“I don’t have a list.” Nash scowled at the powder that refused
to mix with the foam on top of his coffee. “In fact, I don’t know a single name
for sure. I didn’t even know Doug was using, until that party. The night he hit
your car.”

“You don’t have a single name? Seriously? Not even an educated
guess?”

He shrugged and put the lid back on his cup. “I can tell you
who I saw him with at that last party, when his dealer showed up.”

“Was Marco Gutierrez one of them?”

“Yeah.”

“Good enough.” I pulled a notepad from my bag and pushed it
across the table toward him. Em added a pen. “Write down all you can remember.
Please.”

“Is this about what happened with Marco yesterday?” Sabine
sipped from her cup while Nash scribbled on the notepad.

“Yeah. He was just possessed, so it was pretty easy to get rid
of Avari, but I’d like to avoid a repetition. Or at least see it coming ahead of
time.”

“So, where do we stand with Sophie and the liquid envy?” Em
cradled her cup in both hands.

Sabine’s smile looked almost euphoric. Which kinda scared me.
“I gave her the first dose this morning, in her coffee. Had to dump in extra
sugar to cover the taste.”

“Half a drop?” Em said. “Because Kaylee went bat-shit crazy on
a full drop.”

“I did not—”

“Yeah. Half a drop, as instructed.” Sabine spoke over me. “But
I’m telling you, this whole thing would be much more entertaining—and would go a
lot faster—if you’d let me really dose her.”

“No. I know you enjoy your work, but the object isn’t to drive
her nuts.”

Sabine huffed. “Speak for yourself.” Then she shrugged. “At
least I’m getting a decent bedtime snack out of this.” Because she was feeding
from Sophie’s relevant fears as part of the process.

Em chuckled, staring into her cup. “I can’t believe you put
real sugar in her coffee. She’d kill you if she knew it wasn’t calorie-free
sweetener.”

“Here.” Nash slid the notepad back to me. “That’s all I can
remember.”

I glanced at the list. “That’s only three names.”

He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “If I had more, I’d give
them to you.”

“Thanks.” I turned to Em. “What about you? Did you see Doug
hang out with anyone in particular?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Half the school. But I never even saw
him with a balloon.” Which is what they’d used to store frost in. Which was kind
of...my idea. Though I’d never intended to contribute to the ease of drug
trafficking when I’d thought of it.

“Hey, Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute?” I twisted in my
chair to see Chelsea Simms holding a green paper folder.

“Sure.” I shoved the notepad into my bag, picked up my coffee,
and stood. “I’ll see you guys at lunch.” Sabine, Nash, and Emma nodded, and I
followed Chelsea into the hall.

She opened the folder as we walked in the general direction of
our first-period math class, then pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to
me. “I just wanted to show you this.” It was a screen print from some kind of
layout program. “It’s for her memorial page in the yearbook.”

In the center was a candid shot of Emma at a football game,
from the fall semester. Her cheeks were red from the cold and she wore a green
scarf; her thick, golden hair was flying over her shoulder in the wind. She
looked happy.

She looked alive.

In that moment, I understood what Emma had lost, beyond her
family, her clothes, her car, and the future she’d always assumed she’d have.
She’d lost
herself.

I’d met Emma in the third grade, and in all the time I’d known
her, I couldn’t remember her ever lacking confidence or self-esteem before I’d
exposed her to truths about the world no human should have to deal with. She’d
always known who she was and where she fit into the world. She’d known what she
wanted to do with her life—even if that changed on a monthly basis—and exactly
what she was capable of.

She had none of that now, and even if I spent my entire
afterlife trying to make that up to her, I could never give her back what she’d
lost. Ever. The best I could do was help her adjust to the life she had now.
Show her that she still had her friends, and that this new life could still be a
good one.

But I couldn’t do that with Avari always two steps behind us. I
couldn’t honestly tell her that life was still worth living if we were always
looking over our shoulders to evade death and eternal torture. I had to get rid
of Avari and the rest of the hellions not just to avenge Em’s death, and those
who’d gone before her, but to make sure that the life she had left was more than
just the constant struggle to hold on to it.

“Do you think she’d like it?” Chelsea asked, and I realized
we’d stopped walking several doors away from our classroom. And that my hand was
clenched around the printout, my knuckles white from the strain.

“Yeah. It’s beautiful. I think she’ll love it.”

Chelsea gave me a confused look, and it took me a second to
realize I’d referred to Em in present tense. Again.

“I mean, if she were still here. Which she’s not, obviously.
Because she died. But if she hadn’t, I have no doubt that Emma would
love
this yearbook memorial page.”

Chapter Six

“I hate it.” Em set the memorial page printout on the
picnic table and pinned it with her soda can.

“Hate what?” Nash put his tray down, Sabine set hers next to
it, and they sank onto the bench across from me and Em.

“My yearbook memorial page.”

“That’s what Chelsea wanted to show me this morning.” I leaned
across the table and took an apple wedge from Nash’s tray. I wasn’t hungry, but
if I never ate anything at lunch, people would start to notice, and he rarely
bothered with the fruit anyway.

Sabine unscrewed the top on a bottle of flavored water from the
vending machine. “What’s wrong with it?”

Emma rotated the page beneath her can so they could see it.
“The layout is simplistic and too symmetrical, the quote they picked says
nothing about me, and I’d complain that the picture’s too small, except that
it’s a horrible shot of me anyway.”

“What are you talking about? You look great!” I frowned,
studying her. “Are you channeling someone’s anger again?”

“Not that I know of. Anyway, I’m not mad. I just hate that
picture.”

“Oh, that may be my doing,” Sabine said around a bite of
cheese-slathered corn chip. “Em’s afraid she’ll never look that good, so I
thought this might be a good time to amp up her insecurity and vanity by feeding
that fear. Tastes pretty good, too.” She washed her bite down with a gulp of
water. “Want me to stop?”

“No. It’s fine.” Em sat with a pout and turned the printout
over, so she couldn’t see her own face. Her own former face. And suddenly I felt
bad for showing it to her. I’d thought it would make her feel better to know how
much people cared. How much they missed her. Instead, I’d reminded her of what
she’d lost. Again.

“Your dad snuck out of my house at two this morning,” Nash
said. I glanced up in confusion to find my cousin and her necromancer boyfriend
only a few feet away, carrying their lunch. Sophie looked sick.

“Whoa, really?” Luca glanced from Nash to Sophie, who scowled
and dropped her tray on the table so hard that her orange bounced into a plastic
cup of cottage cheese. “This is the man who threatened to make sure I could
never sire children if he ever caught me at your house past nine o’clock?”

“The very same.” Sophie sat and started scraping cheese off her
orange with a plastic spork. “And that wasn’t an idle threat. Turns out I also
have three older half brothers—like,
way
older—who
would cut off anything you let dangle if they knew half of—”

Luca put a hand over her mouth, and I swear he looked suddenly
pale. “Well, then let’s not tell them.” He frowned and dropped his hand. “Wait,
what do you mean,
it turns out
you have older
brothers?”

She shrugged. “My dad couldn’t tell me about them until I knew
he was a
bean sidhe,
because they’re in their
sixties but they look, like, twenty-five. Like they could be my uncles. But they
all have grandkids.”

“Wait a minute.” Sabine scowled at Nash, and the sun seemed to
fade a little. “I can’t stay the night at your place, but Sophie’s dad can? How
is that fair?”

“How’s what fair?”

Tod appeared out of nowhere and sat next to me on the bench. He
slid one arm around my waist, and it took all the self-control I had not to lean
over and kiss him. Which I couldn’t do without looking crazy to the hundred or
so other students in the quad who couldn’t see him.

Em leaned forward to fill him in. “Your mom’s sleeping with
Sophie’s dad, and Sabine thinks—”

“Whoa...” Tod clamped both hands over his ears. “I don’t ever
need to hear that sentence again. No need to finish it, either.”

“At least we agree on something,” Nash mumbled, ripping the
crust from a slice of cafeteria pizza.

Sabine planted both palms flat on the table. “My point is that
it isn’t fair that he can come and go as he pleases—no pun intended—”

Everyone at our table groaned in unison, and Nash looked more
than a little nauseated.

“—but—and I am not kidding—
I
now
have a nine o’clock curfew. Seriously. Nine o’clock! I am a creature of the
night! You can’t impose a curfew on a living Nightmare! What am I supposed to do
for the ten hours after lockdown?
Maras
only need
four hours of sleep. Who the hell is he to tell me when I can and can’t leave
the house?”

“Your legal guardian.” Sophie sank her thumbnail through the
skin of her orange and began to peel it. “Officially, as of eleven this morning.
He called to tell me when he finished Influencing the juvenile court judge over
brunch. I was supposed to tell you, but you know.” She shrugged. “I didn’t.”

Sabine’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened, no doubt ready to
spew several inventive and highly entertaining threats aimed at Sophie, but
before she could say anything, Luca cleared his throat and smiled at Emma. “Your
hair looks nice today. All smooth and shiny.”

“Thanks.” Em’s eyes lit up, and her smile made me want to smile
back. It was a very nice change from the previous day’s lunch.

Sophie glared daggers at her. “Keratin treatment and some
Frizz-Ease. It’s not rocket science.”

I glanced at Sabine in silent question, and she nodded. She was
amplifying Sophie’s fears to heighten her envy of...anyone Luca so much as
looked at.

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” a new voice said, and we all turned to see
a sophomore whose name I couldn’t remember standing at the end of our table,
holding a slip of paper out to me. “Are you Kaylee Cavanaugh?”

“Yeah.” As if she didn’t know. Everyone in school knew who I
was. Everyone within a
hundred-mile radius
knew who
I was. I was the girl stabbed in her own bed by her evil math teacher. Not that
most people knew Mr. Beck was
actually
evil, instead
of just your average psychotic pedophile.

“They want you in the counselor’s office.”

Crap.
“Okay. Thanks.” I took the
slip of paper from her—my official summons—and when the sophomore walked away, I
turned back to the rest of the table. “I completely forgot my appointment.”
Turns out that when you’re nearly fatally stabbed, then lose your best friend in
a freak park-swing accident less than a month later, the school guidance
counselor likes to keep tabs on you.

“Want me to come?” Tod ran his hand up my back, over my shirt.
“If you keep her busy, I could convert the filing system from ‘alphabetical’ to
‘most deserving of psychiatric help.’” He leaned closer, and I knew no one else
would hear whatever came out of his mouth next. “I’ve been meaning to make some
special notations in Nash’s file anyway. Imagine the level of help he could
receive if they knew the root of his recent academic decline was a deep-seated
fear of the letter
Q.
”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And though everyone else at the
table looked curious, no one asked what Tod had said. They were finally starting
to learn. “Thanks, but it’s hard enough to take grief counseling seriously
without you singing ‘Living Dead Girl’ at the top of your lungs behind the
counselor’s back.”

“You mock
one
grief counselor, and
you’re branded for life,” he mumbled. “Er...afterlife. I have a shift at the
pizza place this afternoon, but I’ll pop in when I get a chance.” Tod kissed my
cheek—the most we could get away with while only one of us was invisible—then
disappeared. I grabbed my bag, said goodbye to my friends, then headed for the
counselor’s office.

Our school had two counselors, one for the first half of the
alphabet and one for the last half. During lunch, the waiting room they shared
was nearly empty.

“You can go in,” the student aide said when the outer door had
closed behind me. “She’s been waiting for you.”

Because I was eighteen minutes late.

I trudged into Ms. Hirsch’s office, trying to summon an
expression appropriate for someone who’d just lost her best friend. Nuance was
important. My grief had to fall somewhere between “sobbing, devastated heap” and
“Emma who?” I knew from experience that either of the extremes would only get me
sentenced to more counseling.

“Hey, Ms. Hirsch. Sorry I’m late.” I closed the door, then
slouched into one of the chairs in front of her desk. But Ms. Hirsch only
watched me from across the desk.

I set my bag on the floor and stared at my feet for a second,
riding out the silent treatment—was that supposed to pressure me into talking on
my own? But when I looked up, she was still watching me. No,
studying
me. Like she’d never seen me before.

“Ms. Hirsch? You okay?” Was she in shock? Was
I
going to have to counsel
her?

“You’re smaller than I expected,” she said. Only she said it
with someone else’s voice. She said it with a
man’s
voice, deep and smooth, and...
rich,
somehow. And
totally out of place coming from Ms. Hirsch’s slim, delicately curved feminine
form.

She was obviously possessed, presumably by a hellion, but I
didn’t recognize the voice.

My pulse spiked and chill bumps popped up on my arms, but
beneath that an angry flush began to build inside me. I knew I should be
scared—I was sitting across my guidance counselor’s desk from a hellion I
couldn’t identify—but since my untimely death, I’d discovered that there was a
limit to my capacity for fear. I could only be threatened, stalked, intimidated,
manipulated, possessed, and actually killed so many times before I began to
acclimate to the constant state of fear. Before terror lost its punch, like a
scary movie watched too many times.

Anger, though... My capacity for anger at the Netherworld and
at the host of Nether-creatures that had turned my afterlife into a living
hell...that seemed to know no limits.

Much like hellions themselves.

My hands clenched around the arms of the chair. “Who the hell
are you?”

Ms. Hirsch’s left brow arched. “You don’t know?” At the sound
of his voice, that warmth inside me spread, not comforting, but seditious. Like
a fierce flame burning within me, demanding action.

“Should I?” The fact that he couldn’t use her voice probably
meant he hadn’t been in her body often enough to learn how to work all the gears
and levers. Hopefully, he’d
never
been in her body
before. I hadn’t even known she was eligible for possession....

“Not officially, but I’m a big fan of your work.”

“My work?” I should have been terrified, but what little fear I
felt wasn’t because my guidance counselor had been possessed, or because whoever
was possessing her had obviously known when and where he could get to me through
her. I was scared for Ms. Hirsch. Of what he might do to her—or make her do to
herself—if he didn’t get whatever he wanted from me.

Ms. Hirsch’s head bobbed and a strand of red hair—her bangs
were long and trendy—fell across her forehead. “You’ve managed to thoroughly
piss off not one but
three
of my most reviled
associates. And to survive their anger.” He frowned with my guidance counselor’s
pink mouth. “Sort of.”

Every word he said stoked the fire inside me until the flames
of my anger grew hotter, taller, licking the inside of my skin like they wanted
to burst free and roast the world.

I knew what he was doing. He was feeding my anger. Nurturing
it, like fertilizing a garden until the veggies are ready to harvest. And
devour.

The worst part was that whoever this hellion was, he knew
exactly who
I
was, and that I wasn’t—strictly
speaking—alive. And he knew who my enemies were. But I didn’t need to be told
that when dealing with hellions, the enemy of my enemies was definitely
not
my friend.

“Who are you and what do you want?” The longer I sat there, the
angrier I got. He’d hijacked Ms. Hirsch’s body. He’d subpoenaed me from my lunch
period like I had nothing better to do than be ordered around by a monster from
another world! “Never mind. I don’t care who you are or what you want. Get the
hell out of my counselor’s body, or I’ll take you out myself.”

I stood and picked up the large, jagged chunk of pink quartz
Ms. Hirsch used as a paperweight and hefted it, silently threatening to bash his
hellion brains in.

“Nice. Decent buildup from irritation to anger, with a flare of
true rage on the end. How long have you been harboring so much hatred, Kaylee?
You were only a blip on my radar a few months ago, but now you’re a blinking
light too bright to ignore.”

What the hell? I glared down at him, confused. Was the hellion
actually trying to counsel me? Was this some kind of demon identity crisis?

“Oh, and you
do
understand that if
you bash me over the head with that rock, your counselor will be the one who
wakes up with a headache. Right? If she wakes up at all.”

Crap.
I
did
know that. Blazing anger did nothing to help my logic.

The twitch at one corner of her mouth looked suspiciously like
amusement. “If we’re going to be any use to each other, you’ll have to learn to
think through your anger.”

I desperately wanted to know what he was talking about, but I
knew better than to ask. I needed to cruise
below
hellion-radar, not actively engage it.

“My name is Ira, incidentally.” He leaned back in Ms. Hirsch’s
chair and crossed her slim legs, and the ease with which he moved told me that
even if he wasn’t familiar with her particular body, this wasn’t his first time
in human form. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a hellion of wrath. And
I’ve been
itching
to make your acquaintance of late.
I think we can help each other out.”

“Not gonna happen.” I remained standing, but I put the rock
down. I couldn’t hurt Ms. Hirsch, which Ira obviously knew.