I wasn’t sure whether that made him sweet or naive.
“So…who collects it?” I asked, not surprised to see my brow crinkle in the mirror. “Can just any reaper kill a fellow reaper and take her soul?”
Tod shrugged, and suddenly looked completely invested in the conversation—a relative rarity for him. “In theory, yes. But that would be a really good way to piss off your coworkers. So we usually leave that to managers and Dark reapers, like Libby.”
The rain had started to slow, so I dared a little more pressure on the gas pedal. “Does it work the same way it does with humans?”
“As far as I know. Though, reaper souls are much rarer than human souls, so I’ve never actually seen it done.”
“What are you getting at, Kaylee?” Nash asked, as I put my blinker on to pass an old pickup in the right lane.
“I was just curious,” I said, not yet willing to mention the kernel of an idea sprouting slowly in my head. “Do you know how to get to Addison’s mom’s house?” I asked Nash, and when he nodded, I eyed Tod in the mirror. “Go find Levi. We’ll meet you there as soon as we can.”
He nodded, then disappeared.
I drove as fast as I could without risking an accident or police intervention, and when we got to Hurst, Nash gave me directions to her neighborhood. Which is where we got lost. The roads in Addison’s subdivision wound around in interconnected circles and cul-de-sacs, several of which seemed to share variations of the same name. And all the houses looked the same, especially in the dark.
My ten-thirty curfew came and went while we wandered the neighborhood, trying to call Addy the whole time, but she never answered her phone. Finally, Nash suggested I let him drive while I took a peek into the Netherworld to see if I could give him a general direction from there. Reluctantly—very reluctantly—I agreed.
In the passenger seat of my own car, as a late-night mist still sprayed my windshield, I called up the memory of Emma’s death, forcing myself to relive it one more time. I told myself I was doing a good thing. Trying to save the soul of a thirteen-year-old girl who had no idea what she was getting herself into, rather than simply exploring my own abilities.
It didn’t help.
Summoning my own wail was still one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do, probably because I didn’t really want to remember how Emma had looked when she’d died. How her face had gone blank, her eyes staring up at the gym ceiling as if she could see straight through it and into the heavens.
Though, she actually saw nothing at all….
That did it. The wail began deep in my chest, fighting to break free from my throat, but I held it back. Swallowed most of it, as Harmony had taught me. What came out was a soft,
high-pitched keening, which buzzed in my ears and seemed to resonate in my fillings. And finally a thin gray haze formed over everything, in spite of the fact that there was very little light to filter through it. To reflect off of it.
Since I was just peeking into the Netherworld, rather than going there, my vision seemed to split as one reality layered itself over the other. It was a bit like watching a 3-D movie without the proper cardboard glasses. The images didn’t quite line up.
And the Netherworld—rather than being lit by what paltry moonlight shone in the human plane—was illuminated by a ubiquitous white glow from above, similar to the way the lights of a city in the distance reflect off low-lying clouds in the dark. This light was indistinct and somehow cold, and seemed to blur the world before me, rather than to truly lighten it.
However that was par for the course, at least as far as I could tell. I’d never been able to see very far in the Netherworld, which gave me the impression that if I took one step too many, I’d fall into some huge, gaping pit, or step off the edge of the world. That thought, and the cool, hazy light, made me want to step very carefully. Or to close my eyes and shake my head until the Netherworld disappeared altogether.
But I resisted the urge to deny the Netherworld, though every survival instinct I had groaned within me. I’d never find Regan and Addy in time if I didn’t look in both worlds.
“What do you see?” Nash asked. Because he could hear my keening, he would have been able to see into the Netherworld with me, if he’d wanted. But someone had to drive.
I couldn’t answer him—not while I was holding back my wail. So I shrugged, and squinted into the distance, turning
slowly in my seat. At first there was nothing but the usual gray fog, paler toward the sky, and the eerie impression of movement just outside my field of vision.
As Harmony had explained, human private residences didn’t exist in the Netherworld, so when I peeked into it, Addy’s neighborhood was suddenly overlaid with a second, similar series of gravel streets and walkways, which ended in nothing. And some darkly intuitive part of my mind insisted that the gravel was really crushed bone. Though, from what sort of creature I couldn’t begin to imagine….
I wondered what I’d see if I were actually in the Netherworld. What would the homes look like? Could I go in one? Would I want to?
“Well?” The urgency in Nash’s voice reminded me of the ticking clock. I squinted into the fog again and this time made out a series of darker-than-normal shapes in the ever-present gray spliced into our world. Shapes that weren’t moving. Or at least, weren’t moving
away.
I pointed to my right, and was surprised when my hand smashed into the glass of my own window. Though I still sat bodily in the human world, my senses were so intensely focused on that other world that I’d become oblivious to my physical surroundings. The car didn’t exist in the Netherworld, where I seemed to float over the road alone, in an invisible chair.
Weird.
Nash turned the wheel in the direction I’d pointed, and vertigo washed over me as I moved along with a vehicle I could only see and feel on one plane. In one reality.
Double weird.
Evidently I get carsick in the Nether-reality.
As we drew closer, the shapes became a little more distinct. Two tall forms, and one small. Small, like a little girl. A young teenager, maybe.
Crap.
Regan had already crossed over.
A little more of my wail slipped out, and I was surprised all over again when the echo of my voice bounced around in the car, rather than rolling out to points unknown. Nash followed my finger, and I had to slap a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting when the car tilted up suddenly, and he slammed my gearshift into Park. We were in a sharply sloping driveway, only feet from those three dark figures now.
The driver’s side door opened, and cold air swirled around me. A moment later, my door opened, and Nash helped me out of the car by one arm. Icy mist settled on me, rendering me instantly damp and cold, and distantly I wished I’d worn a jacket.
Nash’s lips brushed my ear. “Let it go…” His words slid over me like warm satin gliding over my skin. I felt myself relax, even as the largest of those gray figures turned to walk away. “We’re here now, so just let it go.”
I let the wail fade, and the grayness melted from my vision, leaving me with a scratchy throat and haunting images lingering behind my eyes. And a crystal-clear view of a large brick house with a stone facade around a bright red front door, illuminated by a series of floodlights.
Parked on the street in front of the house was a plain black limousine—if a limo can ever be considered plain—with the engine still running, the driver half asleep behind the wheel. That would have been a remarkable sight on my street, but in Addy’s neighborhood, it was probably commonplace.
Nash dashed toward the house, and I sprinted after him,
without taking time to truly reorient myself in the human world. I tripped over the front step, but he caught me with one hand, already twisting the knob with the other.
It opened easily. Dekker and the reaper obviously weren’t expecting company. Fortunately, Addison was.
We rushed through the tiled foyer into a large, plush living room, where John Dekker held Addison Page by her upper arm, his other hand gripping an expanding file folder closed with a built-in rubber band.
Was that Regan’s contract? Excitement surged through me like an electrical charge. Could the hellion’s name really be so close?
An instant later, two female figures appeared in the center of the floor, holding hands.
The taller form I assumed to be the rogue reaper. The other was Regan Page. I recognized her from the ads for her new tween drama. Except that on TV, she had crystalline blue eyes only a couple of shades darker than her sister’s.
Now her eyes were solid white orbs, shot through with tiny red veins, as if the whites had absorbed her pupils and irises.
Despair crashed through me, heavy and almost too thick to breathe through. My hand tightened around Nash’s. We were too late. She’d sold her soul, and the brief, dark-’n’-blurry glimpse I’d gotten of the hellion who took it wasn’t enough to let me identify him, much less find him.
I’d failed—again—and another girl had lost her soul.
“R
EGAN
…” A
DDISON MOANED
, staring into her sister’s featureless eyes, slowly shaking her head. Her own eerie, fake-blue eyes filled with tears and her hands began to tremble.
“You made the right choice,” Dekker told Regan, flashing that famous, million-dollar smile. The caps that launched a thousand amusement park rides. His grandfather would have been proud. “You’ll be rich and famous for the rest of your life.”
Sudden anger flamed behind the icy blue rings of Addy’s contact lenses, blazing through her weaker emotions like kindling. She ripped her arm from Dekker’s grasp and pulled Regan away from the reaper. “Is the hellion still there?” she demanded, her focus shifting between me and Nash as she held her sister’s thin arm with a granite grip. “If we destroy her contract, will that kill the deal?”
“No!” Regan tried to twist away, and Dekker followed Addison’s gaze to me and Nash, standing at the edge of the room like freshmen at the prom.
“Who are they?” he asked calmly, clearly speaking to his female colleague, though he looked at us.
The reaper sneered but looked like she really wanted to hiss.
“Bean sidhes,”
she spat.
“Friends,” Addison said. “I…invited them.”
Dekker dismissed us at a glance and turned back to Addy, flipping open his folder so we could all see that it was empty. Because, as Tod had discovered, demon paperwork was kept in the Netherworld. “It doesn’t work like that, Addison.” Dekker shot her a smug, patient smile. “Hellion contracts are indestructible by human means. Like fireproof, Kevlar paperwork. And if Regan invokes her out-clause before she has a pedestal to fall from, her willpower and decorum will corrode until she wouldn’t recognize a good decision if it ran her over on the street. You’ll likely be an aunt in a couple of years, and I’m sure the brat’s father will be a convict, or a dealer, or something equally prestigious.
“Regan’s flaws will be exploited and magnified, and because her sister’s famous, her every stumble will be front-page news.” He paused, and his eager brown eyes seemed to spark with a little extra oomph. “Oh, and any tendencies toward addiction—something she might have inherited, for example?” His raised eyebrows said Dekker was more than familiar with Ms. Page’s fondness for prescription drugs. “Well, let’s just say they’ll be awfully hard for a new, disgraced teen mother to resist….”
Regan stared at Dekker in growing horror, and rage flushed Addy’s cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted, while her sister’s head whipped back and forth in denial. “She’s not taking the out-clause.”
“Why not?” Regan demanded, but Addy turned to me without answering her.
“Is the demon still there? I want to talk to him.”
“He’s gone,” I said, remembering the largest of the three dark figures I’d seen in the Netherworld. The one who’d walked away as I let my wail fade.
“Take us,” Addy demanded softly. “We’ll find him.”
“No.” Nash shook his head firmly. “You can’t go there, and neither can Kaylee. It’s not safe.”
“Neither is this!” Addison shoved her sister forward, and Nash flinched as his gaze found Regan’s newly empty eyes.
“What’s happening?” Regan shouted, tears filling her eyes. “Who’re they?” She waved one arm at me and Nash, then her bewildered gaze slid back to Dekker. “Why is he threatening to wreck my life?”
Dekker crossed his arms over his chest, the empty folder flat against his side. “I’m not threatening you. I’m simply stating facts. You’ve signed a contract, and you’ll be expected to stand by your word.”
“She had no idea what she was signing,” Addy said. “You didn’t tell her the truth.”
“I never lied,” Dekker insisted calmly.
“What are you guys talking about?” Regan demanded, more bewildered than truly scared.
“We’re talking about
this!
” Addison whirled her sister around until she faced a mirror hanging on the wall above a beige couch. “Look!”
Regan looked, and her eyes went anime-wide. But though her cheeks flushed bright red, no color returned to her eyes. That beautiful blue was gone, along with her soul.
“What…?” Regan started to step closer to the mirror for a better look, then changed her mind and stepped back
instead, shaking her head slowly in denial. Then she whirled on John Dekker and his reaper with a rage and confusion almost equal to her sister’s. “What’s wrong with my eyes? How can I see if I don’t have eyes? You didn’t say anything about this.”
“It was in the fine print.” The reaper crossed her arms over a gaunt, black-clad chest, contempt glittering in her normal gray eyes. “You are old enough to read, aren’t you?”
Dekker laid one hand on her forearm, and the reaper seemed to fold into herself, as if he’d just jabbed her off button. “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.” His voice was calm and smooth, but it had nothing on Nash. “It’s a side effect of the process. And we have an easy fix for this, don’t we, Addison?”
Dekker glanced at the older Page sister, but she only glared at him, jaw clenched in vicious anger as he handed two small white boxes to her sister. “These are your prescription, I believe, and a virtual match to your own eye color. I’ll have new boxes hand-delivered every six months. These should last until then, but please be careful with them.” He winked his own nondescript brown eyes. “They aren’t exactly cheap.”
Regan’s empty eyes filled with tears again, and I couldn’t remember ever being scared of a crying eighth-grader before. But I was scared then. The incongruity of her very human tears with those distinctly
in
human eyes gave me chills in places I didn’t even know I could get cold. “Will they stay like this?” She turned hesitantly toward the mirror again, then away before she could possibly have really seen herself. “Why do they look so…empty?”
“Because they’re empty,” Tod said, and we all spun around at the sound of his voice. Tod stood near the kitchen doorway,
next to a small redheaded boy who barely came up to the reaper’s shoulders. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, and without your soul, there’s nothing for them to reflect.”
Dekker’s pet reaper went stiff on the edge of the room. Was Tod really that scary?
“Do you have another brother?” I whispered, standing on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “And did your dad have red hair?”
“That’s Levi,” he whispered back, and the little boy nodded politely at me, shrugging with his hands in the pockets of a baggy pair of khakis.
“Levi-the-reaper?” I asked, a little embarrassed when my voice went high with surprise. After all the truly weird stuff I’d seen since discovering I was a
bean sidhe
, a freckle-faced little-boy reaper shouldn’t have fazed me in the least. But it did. “Tod’s boss, Levi-the-reaper?”
“The one and only.” Levi shot me a disarmingly sweet smile. One his eyes didn’t match. Then he turned a ferocious glare on the rogue reaper. “Bana.”
She froze with that one syllable—her own name, spoken in a child’s high, soft voice—and her fingers twitched nervously at her sides. She looked like she wanted to run, but couldn’t.
“I wasn’t sure who to expect, but I must admit your name never occurred to me.” Levi strolled forward like a kid in the park, and I had the absurd thought that he should have been carrying a baseball bat on his shoulder, or a skateboard under one arm. He stopped several feet from Bana and her boss, and gave John Dekker only a fleeting glance, as if he didn’t recognize one of the most famous faces in the world.
Which struck me as especially ironic, considering the reaper’s apparent age.
“Who is this?” Dekker asked, but before Bana could answer—and I seriously doubt she would have—the boy pulled his freckled right hand from his pocket.
“Levi Van Zant. Senior reaper in this district. I’ve come to relieve Bana of her duties. And her soul.”
Bana’s arms went stiff in anticipation, and I realized she was trying to blink out of Addy’s house, and out of Levi’s reach. My breath caught in my throat. We were going to lose her. But did it even matter? We were too late to stop her from ferrying Regan to the Netherworld.
But despite her obvious effort to disappear, she remained fully corporeal.
And before I could release my breath—before Bana could even suck one in—Levi’s small hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. His fingers barely met on the back of her arm, but any doubt I had about the strength of his grip was put to rest with one look at her face, twisted in agony, as if his very touch burned.
“Bana, look at me.”
She tried to refuse. Her free hand clawed uselessly at the wall behind her, scratching the Sheetrock, resistance etched into the terrified, angry lines of her jaw and forehead. But she couldn’t resist. Nor could she blink out. Somehow, Levi was blocking her abilities. Guaranteeing her cooperation.
Would Tod ever have that power?
“Look at me, Bana.”
Her eyes flew open, and a cry leaked from her mouth. She looked straight into Levi’s green eyes, which seemed to…shine. To glow with a bright, cold light.
We watched, every one of us fascinated. Including Dekker,
but especially Regan Page, who was getting her first terrifying glimpse of the world she’d just entered. The world she’d sold herself to.
Bana’s shoulders slumped and her eyelids fluttered, as if they’d close. Levi’s grip on her arm tightened visibly. Dekker stepped back and the reaper went suddenly stiff. Her eyes opened again, but began to dull immediately. To simply…go dark.
And that’s when the panic hit. My heart pounded, bruising the inside of my chest. Sweat formed between Nash’s hand and mine. The cry rose in my throat, clawing me from the inside out, demanding an exit. An audience. Bana’s soul song wanted to be heard.
I clenched my jaw against the wail, my mind whirring with questions.
A soul song for a reaper?
It made sense—she did have a soul—yet somehow I’d never expected to actually wail for a reaper. Did that mean that Nash and I could save her if we wanted to? But why would we want to? And if we did, would someone else be taken in her place? Did doomed reaper souls require an exchange?
Surely not. Tod had said reaper souls were much rarer than human souls, so if we were to save Bana, would another reaper have to die? Because one human soul wouldn’t be enough, would it?
The kernel of an idea I’d had earlier exploded in my head so violently it felt like my skull would split wide open. Because it wasn’t just an idea. It was an
idea.
The kind of idea that could change lives.
Or save souls.
My hand clutched Nash’s, and he tore his gaze from Bana to look at me in surprise, at almost the exact moment the scream leaked from my sealed lips. Just a sliver of sound at first, sharp and painful, but controlled. For the moment.
“Bana?” he whispered, hazel eyes wide, forehead crinkled.
I nodded and let another slice of sound slide from me.
Tod noticed then, and shot a questioning glance at Nash, who could only shrug. “You can make it stop, Kaylee,” he said finally, his lips brushing my ear, his peaceful Influence brushing my heart. “I’ve seen you do it. Bring it back. Hold it in.”
But I twisted away from him, shaking my head adamantly. I didn’t want to hold it in. I wanted to let it go. Let my shriek pierce every skull in the room and rattle the windows. And let it capture Bana’s filthy soul.
The rogue reaper was about to pay for her part in Dekker’s soul-trafficking ring, and I was going to personally wring the recompense from her.
Addy and Regan watched me now, rather than Bana and Levi, and their stares made me nervous. Broke my concentration.
I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them along with my mouth. Sharp spikes of sound burst from me, washing over the room like a wave of glass shards. Addy, Regan, and Dekker flinched as one, as their brains were pierced by the evidence of my intent. Their hands flew to their ears. Their eyes squeezed shut. Their noses wrinkled in displeasure bordering on pain.
Levi shuddered, but his concentration never faltered. Bana was in too much pain from the brutal removal of her soul to even notice what I was doing. But Nash and Tod each wore odd smiles, their faces almost slack in pleasure. They heard
my wail as a beautiful, eerie song, a melody without equivalent in the human world. A gift from the female
bean sidhe
, which only the males of our species could experience.
Even the undead males, apparently.
The panic ebbed inside me, riding the sliver of sound out of my core and into the room. With that pressure released, I was able to focus on my part in the plan I was forming. And to somehow communicate Tod’s part to him.
An instant later, the last ember of light died in Bana’s eyes, and her soul rose from her body. It looked exactly like a human soul—pale and formless. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it. Shouldn’t a reaper’s soul be different, somehow? And if it wasn’t, would my plan even work?
Only one way to find out…
I sang for her soul. Called to it, suspending it in the air like a thick fog as Levi let go of the dead reaper’s arm. He stepped back, and she collapsed on Addy’s plush living-room carpet, a tangle of bent arms and awkwardly twisted legs.
Dekker jumped away from his dead employee so fast he tripped over his own feet and would have gone down if not for the chair he grabbed for balance. If I hadn’t been screaming loud enough to rouse the dead, I’d have laughed. I wouldn’t have thought someone who dealt so closely with reapers and hellions would be spooked by a little death.
But despite my fleeting amusement, my plan was not funny. It was born of desperation and inspiration, and it would never work if Tod didn’t get on board. Fast.
Unable to take my eyes from Bana’s soul, I felt around on my left, reaching blindly for Tod’s arm. I found it, and pulled him forward just as Nash bent to whisper into my ear. That
was the only way I could hear him over my own wail, and I probably wouldn’t have heard a human voice. “What are you doing? She’s dead. Let her go. I’m
not
bringing her back.”
I shook my head vehemently, frustrated by my inability to communicate. When Tod’s head came into my field of vision, I shoved him toward Bana, pointing at her hovering soul with my free hand then at Tod. Specifically, at his mouth. I needed him to suck up her soul, like Libby had sucked up the Demon’s Breath.