With All My Soul (8 page)

Now she was carrying the inhuman child of a serial rapist and
murderer. The daily reminder of even what little of that she understood must
have been hell.

“Yeah. I died.” I stared at the floor for a moment, pushing
back remembered terror, blazing pain, and the overwhelming memory-scent of my
own blood. “I’ve been faking life ever since. There was a whole cover-up and
everything.”

“I don’t... How is that possible? If you’re really dead, why
are you still here?
How
are you here?”

“The how part is a little complicated. The short version is
this—there are lots of things out there you don’t know about. Things you’ll
never
know about, if you’re lucky. Most of those
things are dangerous and scary. I’m neither, I hope. But I am dead. I can make
my heart beat, but it doesn’t do that on its own, and when it doesn’t pump
blood, I get cold. Not refrigerator-cold, but cooler than the natural body
temperature. I don’t have to eat, but I can if I want to. I can get hurt, and if
I do, I heal really slowly, because my body isn’t as alive as it used to
be.”

Though in some ways, I was more alive than I’d ever been.
Thanks to Tod.

“And you can...disappear?”

“Yeah. That’s one of the convenient aspects. The downside is
that I’ll never age, which means I’ll never get to live in one spot for very
long.” At least, not visibly. “And I’ll never grow up or have children.”

Traci looked so sad that I wished I’d left that last part
off.

“But there’s more.” I sat in my chair again, and Emma scooted
hers closer. “The night I died was the night you got pregnant. Do you remember
that?”

Traci flushed with the memory. “But I never told
anyone...?”

“I know because the father of your baby is the man who killed
me.”

“How the hell did you know that?” She leaned forward so far I
was afraid she’d fall off the couch. “I never told anyone who he is. Not even my
mom. I couldn’t, after I found out what he did to you.”

“He told me.” Beck had wanted me to know exactly what he’d done
to Traci, and that it was all my fault, and that he would do the same to Sophie
and Emma if I put up a fight while he killed me and stole my soul for his unborn
son.

Traci’s gaze lost focus. “It was so weird. I’d never even met
him, but the moment I saw him on the front porch, I wanted him. I didn’t
want
to want him—he was a total stranger—but I
couldn’t help it. Then I saw him on the news and heard what he’d done, and after
that, I couldn’t tell anyone....” Her eyes filled with tears, and her hand
spread over her stomach.

“Traci, Mr. Beck wasn’t human,” Harmony said, and I envied the
control she had over her voice. How she was able to sound calm and soothing,
when surely she was as affected by Traci’s trauma as Em and I were. “He was a
predator and a parasite. What he did to you wasn’t your fault. In fact, it had
nothing to do with you—you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Her tears fell. “I was at
home!
”

“I know.” My heart ached for her, but the terrifying truth was
that sometimes home
is
the wrong place. It certainly
was for me the night I’d died. “Unfortunately, it gets worse. Traci, if your
child is what his father was, there’s a really good chance you won’t survive
this pregnancy. So...you have to make a decision. We’ll give you all the
information we have, but the choice is yours.”

Thank goodness. I’d had to make several impossible decisions
recently, but nothing like the one Traci was facing. I’d never had to decide the
fate of a child.

“Wait...” She scrubbed her face with both hands, like she was
trying to wake herself up, and Harmony handed Traci her teacup. Traci pushed
hair back from her face, then drained the rest of her tea, though it must have
been cold by then. “What was Mr. Beck? What is my
baby?
”

The cool thing about disappearing before someone’s eyes is that
they tend to believe anything you say afterward, which cuts down on a lot of the
time I would normally have spent trying to convince someone that humans are not
alone in the world.
Either
world. Traci had taken
the expressway to all things supernatural. For me, that was kinda nice.

For her, it was understandably traumatic, and the more of the
truth she heard, the worse that would get.

“Beck was an incubus,” Emma said. “That’s basically a sex
demon.”

“A
sex demon?
” Traci stared at the
coffee table like it might contain a translation of that phrase that was easier
to stomach. “I had...” She swallowed thickly. “With a demon?”

“Actually, an incubus is just one of several kinds of psychic
parasites. This kind happens to feed on...desire.”

“Lust,” Emma corrected, her voice sharp enough to sting. “Don’t
sugarcoat it. She needs to know what really happened.” Em turned to her sister.
“He came here that night looking for us, and he found you instead.”

“Why would he be looking for you here?” Traci’s frown deepened.
“Who
are
you?”

Emma groaned, frustrated by the reminder that her own sister
still didn’t recognize her. “Who I am doesn’t matter. The point is that he was
mad that we stood him up, and he took that out on you, and I’m so sorry. He
raped you, Traci.”

“No...” She shook her head, confusion momentarily overridden by
denial that bruised me all the way to my soul. “I wanted to....”

“You didn’t have any choice,” Harmony said softly, and I could
have hugged her for stepping in. Em and I...we were in over our heads. I didn’t
know how to explain the truth to Traci without further upsetting her. “He made
you want to. It’s as much a violation of your will as of your body. There’s
nothing you could have done any differently.”

“No.” She shook her head again and swiped tears from her cheeks
in one determined motion. “That’s not how it happened. I—”

“Traci.” Emma reached for her hand, but her sister pulled away
from the touch she didn’t recognize, and my heart ached for Em. “Under what
other circumstance would you have opened the door for a perfect stranger, then
invited him straight to your bed?” Fresh tears swelled in Traci’s eyes, and her
sister continued, “The only difference between Mr. Beck and half the men in
prison for assault right now is that he violated you on multiple levels. Which
makes me wish Kaylee could kill him all over again. And that I could help this
time.”

Traci stared at the floor, her gaze unfocused, one hand still
spread over her stomach. I wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. Or
how well she was handling what she’d already heard.

Hell, I wasn’t sure how well
I
was
handling it.

“So the baby...?”

“Your baby is almost certainly an incubus,” Harmony said. “So
we need to discuss the best way for you to...survive.”

Traci blinked, then frowned, and my heart ached as I watched
her struggle to bring Harmony into focus through pain, confusion, and the
Netherworld contaminate in her system. “Why wouldn’t I survive?”

“Because incubus babies are notoriously hard for human women to
carry. They...” Harmony only hesitated for a moment, but I could see how much
she dreaded speaking the necessary truth. “Well, they drain their mothers, from
the inside out.”

Em set her soda on the coffee table and ran one hand through
her hair. She seemed surprised when there was less hair than she remembered.
“Then, when they’re born—
if
they’re born—they have
no soul of their own, and if there isn’t one ready for the baby, it’ll take the
mother’s soul. Unless she’s human.”

“Even if she’s human,” Harmony clarified, to my horror and
confusion. “A human soul can’t support an incubus baby for long, but that’s no
help to a mother who’s already passed away for want of a soul by the time her
baby dies. Usually the father spends most of the gestational period hunting for
a non-human soul for his child, but in this case, there’s no father.”

“May he rot in hell for all of eternity,” Em added.

“I don’t...” Traci shook her head, like she was trying to clear
cobwebs from her mind. “That’s a lot of information about something I’m not sure
I understand.” She glanced from one to the other of us in mounting fear. “What
does all that mean?”

Harmony exhaled slowly. “It means that if you manage to carry
the baby to term and deliver it, at birth he will take your soul, which will
kill you. Then, when your soul fails to support him long-term, the baby will die
anyway.”

Em met her sister’s gaze with a wide-eyed, urgent one of her
own. “So, basically, the only way for you to survive an incubus pregnancy is for
your baby...not to.”

Traci nodded. Then she stared at her hands, sitting idly in her
lap, obviously thinking. Hard. When she finally looked up, I was impressed by
how calm she seemed, and I wondered how much of that was because of what Harmony
had put in her drink. “So, what are the chances that the baby is actually an
incubus? I mean, I’m human, so the baby could be human, too, right?”

I nodded, but Harmony shook her head. “Traci, hon, your baby is
an incubus. I can tell that from looking at you. At how sick you are. You’re
sick because your baby is sharing your soul at the moment, just like it’s
sharing your blood and everything you eat. All of that puts a huge strain on
you, and, frankly, you’re older than anyone I’ve heard of who’s successfully
delivered an incubus.”

“But I’m only twenty-two.”

“The younger, the better. Evidently,” I said. Which was why
Beck had posed as a high school math teacher—for virtually limitless access to
underage girls. The bastard.

“Okay.” Traci took a deep breath and stared at her hands. Then
she took another deep breath and looked up, her mouth set in a firm line. “I’m
not ending my pregnancy—I don’t care what kind of baby I’m carrying. I don’t
care who or what his father was. I care that this baby is
mine
and I want him. So...what do we do?”

Harmony frowned, and I recognized the worry lines in the center
of her forehead—the only sign that she might be older than the thirty-year-old
she looked like. She got those same lines every time she saw Nash and Sabine
together.

Emma exhaled heavily. “Trace, you’re not thinking this through.
If you try to have this baby, you’re going to die. That’s, like, ninety-nine
percent certain. You can’t do that to Mom and Cara. Not after the funeral.”

“Who are you?” Traci’s eyes flashed with anger, and in that
moment she looked so much like Emma—the old Emma—that I caught my breath. “I
don’t even
know
you!”

Em’s eyes filled with tears again. “Traci. It’s me.” She
waited, searching her sister’s face for some sign of recognition, and when she
found none, she turned to me, heartbreak drawn in every feature on her face. “I
thought she’d be able to see it, at least in my eyes.”

I got up to sit on the arm of Emma’s chair so I could put one
arm around her, hating how helpless I felt in the face of her pain. “Traci, this
is Emma. Your sister. She didn’t really die. Well, she did. But...it’s
complicated, and now she has a new body.”

Somehow, even as the words fell out of my mouth, that part
sounded much less believable than, “Hey, Traci, you’ve inadvertently taken on
the role of human incubator for a demon’s spawn.”

Traci blinked at me. Then her gaze hardened. “What is
wrong
with you? My sister—your best friend—
just died,
and I don’t care whether you can make
yourself disappear, or run at the speed of light, or fly to China with no
airplane, it is
never
going to be okay for you to
joke about that.”

“It’s true,” Harmony said. “There was an...accident. I’d
appreciate it if you don’t make us explain every little detail, because it’s
complicated, and we don’t have all night. What you really need to know is that
this is Emma. Your sister. Her death has been just as hard on her as it has been
on you and your mom and sister.”

“I can prove it,” Em said before Traci could start arguing or
get more upset. She leaned forward in her chair, obviously desperate to have her
say before her sister kicked us out. “I know things no one else but you and I
know. Like...I know what flavor bubble gum you stuck in Cara’s hair the night
before picture day when she was nine. It was that horrible watermelon flavor.
The kind that’s green on the outside and red in the middle. Only when you chew
it, it turns brown and looks as gross as it tastes. And I know about the time
you accidentally took nighttime cold medicine instead of daytime cold medicine
and you fell asleep in first period, and some jackass wrote all over your face
with permanent marker. I guess there’s probably a whole class full of people who
remember that, and Mom and Cara know, but why would any of them tell me? I know
because I was there while Mom tried to scrub four-letter words off your forehead
with rubbing alcohol, and I was with Cara when she went out to buy stage makeup
to cover up the ghost of the F-word on your cheek, when the alcohol didn’t work.
I saw you cry into the mirror every day for a week, waiting for the ink to wear
off.”

“Oh my...” Traci’s eyes were huge and her cheeks were pink, but
I saw no sign of doubt on her face now. “Emma?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” Em smiled bigger than I’d seen her smile since
the day she woke up in Lydia’s body. “Death sucks. I mean, I’m still alive, but
everything’s different, and I hate my new hair, and my old clothes don’t fit
now, and the world looks different when you’re only five foot two, and I don’t
have a car anymore, and... But I’m taking Toto with me. He’s all I have left
now.”

Traci stood so fast I got dizzy just watching. She launched
herself over the coffee table and threw her arms around Emma, squeezing her
harder than I would have thought possible, considering how frail the expectant
mother’s frame looked. “I can’t believe it. I don’t really understand what’s
happening here, but this is real?” She sounded half-choked, like she was
speaking through tears, and we all nodded. “I thought you were dead.” Traci
pushed Em away and held her at arm’s length, suddenly as furious as she’d been
relieved a moment earlier. “
I thought you were dead!
How could you do that? How could you let us think you
died?
”