With All My Soul (7 page)

“Oh, I think it might, if you knew what I had to offer.”

“No.”
Never make a deal with a
hellion.
That’s the first thing they tell you in “Surviving the
Netherworld 101.” Or it would be, if such a class existed. Hellions love to
bargain, but they never agree to a deal if they’re not getting the better end of
it. The
vastly
better end.

That
other
end tends to leave
humans dead, or dying, or injured, or addicted. Or worse.

“There’s nothing I want from the evil incarnation of anger.”
Nothing I was willing to pay for, anyway.

“Belittling my existence with understatement doesn’t change the
facts. I am much more than an ‘incarnation of anger.’” Ms. Hirsch sat straighter
and pinned me with a gaze too steady and merciless to come from anything other
than a hellion. “I am in the clench of every fist. I am the hot thrum of blood
rushing through your veins. Every thud of knuckles against flesh is the cry of
my true name. I am the glint of rage in your ex’s eyes, the livid grinding of
his teeth. My pulse is the wave of anger washing over the crowd. The swing of a
corpse from the noose. The final twitch of a man murdered in revenge. I know
you, Kaylee Cavanaugh. I know you very, very well, and I can give you what you
want most in the world. What no one else can give you.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” I insisted, with less
certainty this time, but repeating that didn’t make it true.

“Really? Not even justice for everything they’ve taken from
you? For everyone they’ve killed? For everything they’ve cost your friends and
family?”

Oh, crap.

The hellion smiled slowly with Ms. Hirsch’s perfectly glossed
lips. “You want Avari, Invidia, and Belphegore to pay for what they’ve
done.”

My chill bumps were back, and this time they felt like small
mountains. I sucked in a breath I didn’t truly need and tried to swallow my fear
and unease. I tried to bury that traitorous spark of interest piqued within me
by his words—that soft voice whispering that it wouldn’t hurt to hear him out.
Just to see what he was offering...

Because that
would
hurt. I
knew
better. Hellions don’t hand out free samples. But
I couldn’t help wondering....

“And you’re going to do that for me?” Surely sarcasm disguised
my curiosity. “Why would you conspire against your own kind?”

“My kind?” He actually laughed, and laughter looked nothing on
him like it looked on the real Ms. Hirsch. “Avari is no more my kind than a
garden spider is your kind. We inhabit the same world, but he would stomp on me
with no more thought than you’d give to stomping on that spider.” He leaned
forward, pinning me with a familiar brown-eyed gaze. “I would stomp on him, too.
Then I would grind him into the dirt beneath my heel, just like you would, if
you were capable of exacting justice on your own.”

“Hellions don’t deal in justice.” That was too noble a concept.
“You’re talking about revenge.”

Ira shrugged. “That’s just as well, because justice isn’t
really what you want.” He leaned forward again, and his gaze intensified, as if
he were looking for more than he could possibly find in my face. Behind my eyes.
“Your wrath is graceful. Has anyone ever told you that? Your anger has the bold,
sweet overtones of blind rage, but the delicate tang of self-righteousness,
because you actually think you’re after justice. But that’s not true, is it? You
know there is no justice to be had. Hurting those who’ve hurt you and yours
cannot undo what’s been done. Nothing can bring the dead back to life or unscar
the wounded. But you still want to hurt them, don’t you? You still want to kill
Avari in cold blood for what he’s done to you. That, my sweet, vengeful little
flame, is revenge, not justice.”

I blinked, mentally denying everything he’d said. “So, I’m
getting ethics lectures from demons now?” That was new.

“You misunderstand.” His smile was back. “I stand in full
support of your thirst for vengeance. I would gladly feed it to you drop by
decadent drop. I would see you nourished and strengthened by the taste of blood
spilled in anger. Of course, that offer comes with a price....”

“We’re done here.”

He rolled Ms. Hirsch’s eyes. “And sanctimony rears its ugly
head again. You are in denial, child. You won’t be satisfied until you get what
you crave, and that can’t happen until you admit to yourself what it is you
truly want.”

“You’re wrong.” Hellions couldn’t lie, but they could be wrong.
Way
wrong. “I’m not looking for revenge. I want
justice
for Emma and Alec, and everyone else
Avari has hurt or killed.”

“And for yourself? Don’t you want this ‘justice’ for what he’s
done to you? For commandeering your body? For putting possessed hands on you?
For making you the instrument of your friend’s death? For abducting your loved
ones? You
seethe
with anger, little flame. You
practically glow with it. And some of that ire feels very, very personal.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My pulse whooshed
in my ears, which rarely happened now that I was dead. He was wrong. He had to
be. “Get out of Ms. Hirsch. Now.”

“Don’t you at least want to know the price for your vengeance?
It may be less than you think. I’m feeling generous.”

“No. Get out.” I turned and headed for the door.

“You’ll be back, little flame, and I’ll be waiting. When you’re
ready to deal, you may summon me. You have my word that I will answer. You need
only bleed and use my name.”

I fled the office as fast as I could go without running. I left
Ms. Hirsch in the hands of a hellion, not because I didn’t know how to evict him
without being expelled for attacking a staff member—though that was true—but
because I was scared to listen to him anymore. I couldn’t hear one more loaded
word from the hellion of wrath, because deep down, part of me wondered if he
might be right.

And that wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer. Not yet,
anyway.

On my way back from the counselor’s office, I was texting Tod
to fill him in when I looked up and realized I’d wandered down the wrong hall. I
was standing in front of the nurse’s office, which reminded me of Marco. Because
that’s where we’d left him the day before—unconscious in one of the two empty
patient rooms.

I should check on him.
And I would
check on Ms. Hirsch, too. But I just couldn’t bring myself to hit my guidance
counselor in the head, even to expel a demon.

I ducked into the bathroom, glanced around to make sure it was
empty, then let myself fade from all human sight. Then I blinked into nearly two
dozen different classrooms until I finally found Marco Gutierrez in a fourth
period senior AP English class. Another jock with a brain. Which meant he was
too smart to inhale unfamiliar substances from balloons just because some idiot
like Doug Fuller handed it to him.

Marco looked okay. He was wide-awake and taking notes on
Heart of Darkness,
which—based on the title
alone—sounded like a good reason to dread senior English. I had plenty of
darkness already without reading about someone else’s.

A glance at the clock over the whiteboard told me most of the
period was over, and I now had an unexcused absence for English. So I decided to
wait and talk to him after the bell. One minute before class ended, I blinked
into the hall, checked for onlookers, then willed myself back into human sight.
When the bell rang, I stood outside his class, and when Marco appeared, I fell
into step beside him.

“Hey, Marco, can I talk to you for a second?”

He glanced at me in surprise. I couldn’t blame him. We’d never
said more than three consecutive words to each other, and none of those had been
since Nash and I had broken up, officially severing any connection I had to the
baseball team.

Finally he shrugged. “If you can walk and talk at the same
time. I can’t be late for statistics.”

“So, I kinda just wanted to check on you. I heard you were sick
yesterday? Or hurt?”

Marco frowned and stopped in the middle of the hall, and the
steady flow of traffic parted around us. “Look, I don’t care what you’re into,
or how many starting players you have left on your list, but I’m not into that
kind of thing. I have a girlfriend, and I like her, and I’m not gonna...”

My horrified expression must have made an impression. If not
that, my sudden inability to form a coherent reply obviously did the trick.

“Wait, that’s just some stupid rumor, isn’t it? That you’re
working your way through the baseball starting lineup?”

“
Yes,
it’s a rumor! I guess.” I
hadn’t actually heard that one. “A totally fallacious and false rumor, that’s
completely unfounded in truth!”

“Sorry. I would never have believed it, except I know you were
with Nash. And there was that thing with Scott. And there was talk about Doug.
And someone saw you dancing with Brant Williams. And that guy you made out with
in the hall after school.” That was Tod. And the only part of what he’d heard
that was true. “So it did kind of look like you were...interested.”

“Well, I’m not! There was never a thing with Scott or Doug. And
I was never
with
Nash. Like that. Why, did he say
we...?”

“No. Not to me, anyway. But we all just assumed, because you
were with him for so long.”

“Well,
un
assume!”

“Done.” He smiled, and he looked friendly. Like he might not be
such a bad guy. Which meant he definitely didn’t deserve to be possessed by a
hellion or knocked out by my undead boyfriend. “So, you’re really just checking
on me?” He started walking again, and I kept up.

“Yeah. I saw you in the nurse’s office, and you didn’t look so
good.”

“That’s what I hear. I don’t know what happened. I dozed off in
third period, and the next thing I know I’m lying on a table in the nurse’s
office with a cold pack on my head and another one on my...lower. The nurse said
she found me there, and no one even saw me go in.”

“So...you’re okay?”

“Except for the part where my dad wants me to see a shrink. He
says blackouts are a sign of a more serious underlying problem.”

I gave him as confident and reassuring a smile as I could
muster. “You’re not crazy. Just...don’t fall asleep in school anymore.”

“No shit. That all you wanted?” He stopped walking outside his
next class, and I was dimly aware that mine was all the way across the building
and up a floor.

“Yeah. Oh, wait.” I stepped closer and lowered my voice,
uncomfortably aware that anyone who saw us would assume the rumors about me were
true. One of the rumors, anyway. “I also wanted to ask you a question.” He
nodded, so I continued, “I heard that back before he died, Doug gave you a
sample of this stuff he had. The stuff in the balloon.”

“Frost?” he asked. When I nodded, his expression darkened and
he motioned for me to follow him closer to the lockers, out of the main stream
of traffic. “Stay away from that shit, Kaylee. They say it can’t be detected in
a drug test, but everyone else I know who’s tried it is dead now. That can’t be
a coincidence.”

“Everyone?” So, he didn’t know Nash had used, too?

“Yeah. There were some other guys who wanted to try it at
Doug’s last party.” Right before he’d died. “But then Nash threatened to kick
the shit out of the guy with the balloon bouquet if he didn’t get lost, and that
night Doug died. I haven’t seen any balloons since. And the more time that
passes, the happier I am about that. You shouldn’t—”

“I’m not,” I assured him. “I was just...curious. Thanks,
Marco.”

I sped off into the thinning crowd before he could say anything
else, and the one time I looked back, he was still staring after me, looking
thoroughly confused.

Chapter Seven

“Are you girls ready?” Long blond curls fell over
Harmony’s shoulder as she twisted in the driver’s seat to glance at Emma, then
met my gaze in the rearview mirror.

“I will
never
be ready for this.”
Em stared through the windshield at her house. Her former house. Which held her
former room and all her former stuff. Even her former dog, Toto, who was still a
dog but no longer hers. “Let’s get it over with.”

Harmony laid one hand on her arm. “We’re sure your mom’s still
at work?”

“Yeah.” I leaned forward between the front seats. “I called to
verify, and she said Traci would be here to let us in.”

“That’s her car.” Em pointed to the dusty Chevy parked in front
of us in the driveway.

“Okay. I just need one of you to ask for a drink.” Harmony
pulled the keys from the ignition and leaned to one side so she could slide them
into her pocket, and again I was struck by how young she looked—thirty years
old, at the most. You’d never know from looking at her that her sons were
eighteen and twenty. Well, Tod
would
have been
twenty, if he’d lived. “I’ll take care of the rest,” she continued. “If you’re
sure you’re up to this.”

“No choice.” Em unbuckled her seat belt, and her hand trembled
with the motion. “We can’t afford to put it off any longer.”

I unbuckled my own belt, one hand on the door handle. “If it’s
too much for you—if she gets upset and you can’t control the syphoning—just let
me know, and we’ll get you out of there.” She had been through so much already,
and my heart ached at the thought of what lay ahead for her and for Traci. A
decision no woman should ever have to make. A choice no human could ever
anticipate.

Another devastating decision neither of them would be facing if
they’d never met me.

I was a disease, infecting everyone I came into contact with,
and the rot spread too fast to be contained. I went around with my scalpel,
excising the infected bits of tissue—operating on lives and memories I didn’t
have the right to slice up—but the only way to truly stop the infection was to
cut off the source.

To excise
me.

I’d been struggling to clean up my own mess for so long that I
could no longer tell if continuing to fight made me brave or selfish.

“Thanks. I’ll be fine, though.” Em opened her door and got out
of the car, and when I stood, still trying to gather my thoughts, I was
surprised for the dozenth time by the fact that I could almost see over her
head. In her own body, Emma had been taller than I was.

Traci answered the door on the second knock, and the first
thing I noticed when she let us in were the bags beneath her eyes. She’d looked
tired at Emma’s funeral, but I’d attributed that to the stress of losing, then
burying, her sister. But now, I couldn’t deny that it was more than that.

It was the pregnancy.

Traci, Emma’s middle sister, was pregnant with my murderer’s
child. And, like nearly everything else that had gone wrong over the past few
months, that was my fault. Mr. Beck had been looking for me when he’d found
her.

“Hey, Kaylee. It’s good to see you.” Traci pulled me into a hug
with too-thin arms, and I had to stop myself from blurting out how sorry I was
for what she was going through, and how I’d do anything for a cosmic do-over.
For the chance to take it all back.

Instead I swallowed apologies she wouldn’t understand and
returned her hug. “Thanks.” I was careful not to squeeze her too hard. She
hardly had any belly yet, and she looked like she’d blow over in a light breeze.
“This is Harmony Hudson, Nash’s mom. And this is my cousin Emily. They came
to...help. Moral support.”

“Nice to meet you.” Traci shook Harmony’s hand, then motioned
for us to come in. Then she turned to shake her sister’s hand without a single
sign of recognition. “Kaylee can show you Emma’s room. Take whatever you want to
remember Emma by. Mom, Cara, and I have already been through it all and taken
what we wanted. What means the most to us.”

Em’s eyes watered. Traci didn’t notice.

“How are you?” I said, instead of leading everyone to Em’s
room. Traci was leaning against the doorframe. I was afraid she might fall.

“Um...I’m having a rough first trimester.” She let go of the
doorframe and sank onto the arm of the couch. “Emma told you about...the
baby?”

Actually,
I’d
told
Em
about the baby, weeks before Traci had even known
she was pregnant.

When Mr. Beck had come to Emma’s house looking for me and my
best friend, he’d found Traci instead. What he’d done to Em’s sister might not
have been rape by any human legal definition, but I couldn’t think of it any
other way. Mr. Beck was an incubus. He’d
made
Traci
want to sleep with him. She didn’t know it, but she’d had no choice.

If her baby was a boy—an incubus—the pregnancy would probably
kill her. All signs were pointing toward that already. And if the pregnancy
didn’t kill her, the child’s birth almost certainly would.

We hadn’t really come so I could take something to remember Em
by. We’d come to help Traci.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. Harmony looked like she
had plenty of suggestions, but I knew she wanted to wait until Traci’d had
something to drink.

“No, thanks, hon. I’m fine. Just tired.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Emma asked a second before I
would have. “I could use a soda, if you have any.” She knew they had some. All
her mother ever drank was Dr. Pepper. Pretending to be unfamiliar with her own
house must have been killing her.

“Sure.” Traci stood. “Just give me a minute.”

“You don’t look like you feel good,” Harmony said, right on
cue. “If you don’t mind, I can get everyone a drink while the girls go through
Emma’s things.”

Traci only hesitated for a second. Then she sighed and sank
onto the couch again. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

Harmony disappeared into the kitchen while Em and I headed to
her room and Traci stayed on the couch.

“She looks sick,” Em whispered to me in the hall.

I nodded. “We’re going to help her.” But Traci’s health would
come with a price only she could pay.

Emma’s room was a mess. There were open cardboard boxes on the
floor, photos missing from the walls, and clothes draped over the back of Em’s
desk chair. Her bed was unmade, too, but that had nothing to do with her death.
The bed probably looked just like it had when she’d woken up after her last
night in it.

I was halfway across Emma’s room when I realized she’d stopped
in the doorway. “You okay?” I called over my shoulder.

“This is weird. They’ve already started packing stuff up,” she
whispered. “Like they can’t wait to get rid of me.”

“That’s not it.” I pulled her inside and mostly closed the
door, to keep Traci from overhearing. “Nash said his mom did the same thing
after their dad died, then after Tod died, not because she wanted to forget
about them, but because it hurt too much to look at everything that reminded
them of what they’d lost.”

Her chin quivered. She didn’t look like she believed me.

“They’re packing this stuff up because they miss you, Em. Not
because they’re glad to be rid of you. Besides—” I glanced into several of the
open boxes “—most of these are still empty. Grab one and pack up what you
want.”

For a couple of minutes, I went through the clothes in her
closet, looking for anything that might still fit, while she went through what
little remained on her shelves. Her mom and sisters had claimed everything but
some elementary school soccer medals, a participation trophy from the one year
she’d tried middle school cheerleading, and the first-place ribbon from
fourth-grade field day, when we’d won the egg toss.

“Is that all you want?” I set the shirts I thought Em could
still wear in the box she was using, on top of the medals and several pictures
of the two of us, dating all the way back to third grade.

Emma shrugged. “They took most of the good stuff. And I think
I’m happy about that. I don’t need stuff to remember myself by, right? I’m still
here. And I
want
them to remember me.”

She had a valid point. And she seemed to be in good spirits,
considering.

“Any luck with my jeans? Or some shorts? It’s already getting
warm outside.”

“The pants are a total loss. Sorry. You just don’t have the
hips for them anymore. Maybe a couple of skirts, though....”

We were going through the last of her clothes when Harmony
called us from the living room. “Girls? I think she’s ready.”

My heartbeat was a hollow thump my chest suddenly felt too
small to contain.

Em looked as nervous as I felt. We put down the clothes and
filed into the living room, where Harmony now sat next to Traci on the couch. Em
and I took the two armchairs facing the couch at opposite angles.

“Traci? You okay?” She frowned at her sister in concern. Traci
looked...confused.

“I feel weird. Tired.” She looked like she could fall asleep
where she sat.

I scooted to the edge of my chair to take the can of soda
Harmony offered me. Traci had a cup of what looked like hot tea. I peered into
it, but saw no trace of whatever Harmony had spiked it with. “So...how does this
stuff work?”

“‘This stuff’ is just water from a natural source in the
Netherworld. Water there has various properties, and this one—” she held up a
plastic vial, very much like the one Sabine kept her liquid envy in “—works like
an amnesic. Traci is sleepy, but her cognition is not impaired, so she can talk
to us just like she normally would. But she won’t remember anything that happens
in the next hour or so.”

“What about after that?” Em asked.

“She’ll probably fall asleep, then wake up here and only
remember that she took a nap.”

I glanced at Traci, who was watching us in mounting confusion.
“So we can tell her everything?”

Harmony nodded.

“
Everything,
everything?” Em
clenched the arms of her chair. “Like, about me?”

“If that’s what you want to do.”

Emma didn’t look sure, and I was hyperaware that the clock was
ticking. So I started. “Traci, we have some things to tell you, and most of them
are going to be hard for you to believe. But don’t worry about that, because
you’re not going to remember this anyway.” We only needed her to understand long
enough to make a very difficult decision.

Traci focused on me sluggishly. “This feels like a dream.”

“Are you sure that stuff won’t hurt the baby?” Em asked.

Harmony smiled and leaned back on the couch, still facing Emma.
“I’m sure. It’s really just water. And the baby’s way too young to worry about
memory loss.”

“What does this have to do with my baby?” Traci laid one hand
across her mostly flat stomach.

“Okay. Here goes....” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath,
then swallowed my own nerves and uncertainties and met her gaze. “Traci, there’s
a better than average chance that your baby isn’t human.”

Traci blinked. Then she laughed kinda sluggishly. “Have you two
been drinking? It’s, like, three in the afternoon.” She seemed to have forgotten
Harmony was even there.

“No.” Em gripped the arms of her chair. “Your baby’s not human,
but that’s okay, ’cause Kaylee’s not, either. In fact, she’s dead.”

“Who are you again?” Traci frowned at her.

“We’ll get to that in a minute.” I stood. “Traci.” She turned
to see me and suddenly seemed more drunk than tired. “I’m a
bean sidhe.
Most people call us banshees, but whatever you know
about banshees is probably wrong. Incomplete, at the least. Also, like she said,
I’m dead.”

There were probably a million better ways to tell her what she
needed to know and a million people better prepared than I was to deliver the
news—like Harmony—but we were short on time and on volunteers Traci knew well
enough to trust.

“You’re dead.” It wasn’t a question. Yet she obviously didn’t
understand. “And you’re a banshee.”

“I know it sounds weird. I didn’t believe it at first either.
But I can prove it. At least, I can prove the part about being dead. Are you
ready?”

“Sure.” She shrugged listlessly, then crossed her arms beneath
a well-endowed chest, obviously humoring us. “Knock yourself out. Be as dead as
you want to be. ’Cause we haven’t had enough of
that
around here.”

Valid point.

I caught Traci’s skeptical gaze and held it. Then I let myself
fade from sight. I didn’t actually go anywhere, but they couldn’t see me.

As soon as I started to fade, Traci sat up straight. She didn’t
look sleepy anymore.

“What the
hell
just happened?” She
turned to Em and Harmony. “Did you see that? Did she just disappear?”

Em nodded solemnly. “She does that now. A lot. Because she’s
dead.”

“How did...? When did she...?” Traci closed her eyes and shook
her head, then opened her eyes to stare at the spot where I stood, though she
still couldn’t see me.
“What?”

“Remember the night I got stabbed?”

Traci actually jumped. Her gaze flitted over the room but
couldn’t find me until I let myself reappear. “You got stabbed, and now you can
do that?” She waved a hand in my general direction. “So you’re saying...you
died? When you got stabbed by...?”

She couldn’t say the name of the man who’d fathered her child
and stolen my life.

I couldn’t blame her. And for the first time, I thought about
what that whole thing must have been like for her. What it must
still
be like. I was all over the news for weeks—the
girl who’d survived being stabbed by her teacher. What most people didn’t know
was that I hadn’t really survived.

What even fewer people knew was that before Mr. Beck had gotten
to me, he’d gotten to Traci Marshall, who’d had no choice about what they did
together, though she didn’t know her will was being subverted.