“You’re Nash’s brother. And a
grim reaper?
” She blinked again, and I readied myself for hysterics, or fear, or laughter. But knowing Emma, I should have known better. “So you, what? Kill people? Did you kill me that day in the gym?” She clenched the headrest, her expression an odd mix of anger, awe, and confusion. But there was no disbelief. She’d seen and heard enough of the bizarre following her own temporary death that Tod’s admission obviously didn’t come as that much of a surprise.
Or maybe Nash’s Influence was still affecting her a little.
“No,” Tod shook his head firmly, but the corners of his mouth turned up in amusement. “I had nothing to do with that. I do kill people, then I reap their souls and take them to be recycled. But only people who are on my list.”
“So, you’re not…dangerous?”
His pouty grin deepened into something almost predatory, like the Tod I’d first met two months earlier. “Oh, I’m dangerous….”
“Tod…” I warned, as Nash punched his brother in the arm, hard enough to actually hurt.
“Just not to you,” the reaper finished, shrugging at Emma. “I see you all the time, but you’ve never seen me, because Kaylee said if I got too close to you, I’d suffer eternity without my balls.”
“Jeez, Tod!” I shouted, my anger threatening to boil over and scald us all.
The reaper leaned closer to Emma and spoke in a stage whisper. “She’s not as scary as she thinks she is, but I respect her intent.”
Em looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and I rolled my eyes at Tod. “Do you have to be so difficult?”
He shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “You wanted me to show her, so I showed her. Now ask her if we can borrow her car so I can get back to my part in the plan.”
“Borrowing a car
was
your part of the plan, and we are not taking Emma’s.” Even if she was willing to lend it to us, I wasn’t willing to ask. I wanted as little contact between her and the Netherworld as possible.
And I was already regretting asking Tod to show himself.
“Wait, why do you need my car?” Emma glanced from Tod to Nash, then to me.
“Kaylee’s dad took her keys,” the reaper said.
“We don’t need your car.” I glared at Tod. “Though, we really appreciate you taking us to Nash’s house. Assuming you’re not completely freaked out by all this.”
“Oh, I’m totally freaked.” Emma smiled slowly, and I wondered how deep her shock went. “But I asked, right? Besides, this isn’t much weirder than you and Nash bringing people back to life. Not really.” As if she were trying to convince herself. “And it’s much better than listening to you talk to people who aren’t there. Or yell at me.” She raised one brow at me. “You were yelling at him, not me, right?”
“Yes.” I returned her hesitant smile easily. “We yell at Tod a lot.”
“I can see why. So…” She glanced at all three of us again. “You need to borrow my car?”
“Yes,” Tod said, just as Nash and I said, “No.”
“Look.” Tod turned a dark look my way. “Everyone I know is dead, and has no use for a car. Except Mom, and she needs hers to get to work tonight. So either you let me take one, let me get your keys back from your dad, or we borrow Emma’s car. Those are the options.”
“What about Addy?” I demanded, before Emma could break in and volunteer her car. And that’s exactly what she would have done. I recognized the gleam of curiosity in her eyes, and I knew that if we used her car, she’d insist on coming with us. And that could not happen. “You can’t tell me Addy doesn’t have a car.”
“She doesn’t.” Tod scowled, and I got the distinct impression he was a little irritated with his pop princess. “She never got her license, because there’s always someone else around to take her wherever she wants to go. Which poses a whole new problem. If we can’t get some time alone with her, whether or not we can find a car won’t matter.”
“Who’s Addy?” Emma asked.
“No one.” I glared at Tod to keep him from contradicting me. “Just some girl Tod has a crush on.”
“It’s not a crush,” he spat, as if the word burned his tongue. “I’m trying to save her life.”
“Not really her
life,
” I corrected, when Emma’s brow wrinkled in worry. She knew that each life had a price, and I couldn’t let her think we were willing to kill some likely innocent bystander to save Tod’s girlfriend. “We’re trying to save her soul.”
“What’s wrong with her soul?” Emma asked Tod, having obviously come to the conclusion that he was her best source of information.
The reaper shrugged. “Nothing. She’s just not actually in possession of it. At the moment.”
“Whoooa…” Emma sank back into her seat slowly, her expression bleak, and I realized that somehow she understood the gravity of what she’d just heard, though she wasn’t privy to the whole story. And if I had my way, she wouldn’t be. “I get off at eight. My car’s yours after that.”
“Emma, no.” I shook my head, one hand gripping the side of my headrest, but she only shook hers back at me. “Thanks, but…”
“You need the car. Take the car. Don’t let some poor girl lose her soul because you were too stubborn to drive a loaner.”
I sighed and closed my eyes briefly before giving in with a short nod, despite my better judgment. “Thanks, Em.”
“You’re welcome.” Her smile grew, and her eyes glinted with mischief eerily similar to what I usually saw in Tod’s. “And you’re buying your own gas. Unless you let me tag along…”
“No.” I smiled, to soften the blow. “It’s too dangerous. And if you argue, I won’t take your car.”
“Yeah, I figured. Okay, let’s go. I have to be at the Cinemark by four.” Emma straightened in her seat and started the car again. “Though, how I’m supposed to serve popcorn for four hours after this, I have no idea….”
“H
EY
,
COME ON IN
.”
Harmony Hudson held the front door propped open for us before we’d even made it out of the car. “What’s wrong with Emma?”
Nash glanced back at her as he crossed the dead grass, and I followed his gaze to find Emma looking a little dazed as she locked her car, as if what she’d learned had finally truly sunk in. The reaper had disappeared entirely.
“She just met Tod.” I stepped into Nash’s dark, warm living room and dropped my bag on the floor by the couch.
“Aah…” Harmony smiled knowingly as Emma stepped onto the porch. “You’re going to need some processed sugar. Come on in and have a cookie.”
Emma didn’t even try to resist. She’d had enough of Harmony’s treats to know better than to turn down the offer, even though she was already running late for work, thanks to our short detour.
Harmony closed the front door and followed us into the kitchen, where we gathered around the island and a plate of still-warm chocolate cookies, glittering under the fluorescent lights with a sprinkling of granulated sugar.
“I swear, Harmony, if you don’t stop baking, I won’t be able to fit in my own car. Assuming I ever get it back.” I let my backpack slide to the floor while I bit into the cookie, surprised to discover a sweetened-peanut-butter center. “I’m sorry my dad bugged you last night,” I said around another mouthful. “He totally overreacted.”
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to check in with him every now and then, to keep him from worrying.” Nash’s mom reached across the island to smack her son’s shoulder. “You, too. You have a cell phone for a reason.”
Nash shrugged and avoided answering by shoving an entire cookie into his mouth. But I felt obligated to answer.
“He’s my dad. He’s going to worry no matter what I do.” And part of me was grateful that he was concerned over something legitimate, rather than something stupid, like the lead content of my shampoo bottle. But the other part of me couldn’t quite escape the irony. For the past thirteen years, he hadn’t even known when my curfew was, and now he’d gone all father-of-the-year.
Before Addy’d called, we were on track to get home before anyone expected us. If I’d known what was going to happen, I’d have called my dad, even if only to make up a reason I’d be late. But after Addy’s call, things had moved so fast I’d honestly forgotten I had a cell, much less a curfew.
“Mmm,” Emma groaned around her first bite, and I swear her eyes nearly rolled back into her head. “Can I take one for the road?”
Harmony beamed and immediately began rooting through one of the island drawers. “I’ll pack several for you.”
Emma left five minutes later, armed with a paper bag of
peanut-butter-surprise cookies and a private promise to meet us in Nash’s driveway at midnight. His mom would already be at work, and surely my dad would be asleep by then. Assuming I didn’t wake him sneaking out of the house.
With Emma gone, Harmony sent Nash to his room with a plateful of cookies and a strong suggestion that he take advantage of the privacy to do some homework.
When his Xbox whirred to life a minute later, we shared an eye roll. Nash would leave his homework until the last possible moment, and likely only half finish it. And he’d still manage straight Bs. If he’d ever actually applied himself, he could probably have been valedictorian.
Harmony poured soda over ice in two glasses, then gestured with a nod of her head for me to grab a couple of cookies on our way into the living room. “Your dad knows you’re here, right?” She sipped from her glass as she walked backward through the swinging door, to hold it open for me.
“Yeah. These lessons were his idea. He says arming myself with information is the best way to avoid trouble. Or something like that.” A fact I’d reminded him of when he threatened to make me come straight home from school.
With any luck, he wouldn’t guess that the knowledge I was about to arm myself with could get me into more trouble than he could possibly imagine.
Hopefully it would be enough to get us all out of trouble, too.
I had a vague plan for how to get Harmony to teach me what we needed to know, and to make her think it was her idea. Reverse psychology. It only works on preschoolers and adults.
“We could just skip today’s lesson and gorge on junk
food instead.” I sank onto the couch and set the napkin-wrapped bundle of cookies on the coffee table. “We don’t have to tell my dad.”
The shades of blue in Harmony’s irises churned languidly, and her frown looked impossibly cute for an eighty-two-year-old woman. But then again, she was holding up remarkably well for an octogenarian. “Kaylee, you need to learn about your
bean sidhe
heritage and your abilities. I’d hate for you to stumble into something by accident later, like you did with Belphegore.”
“Oh, I won’t. Not now that I know what I am. And it’s not like I’m ever going to use any of this, right?” I shrugged, but inside I flinched from her hurt look. “I mean, I already know how to hold back my wail, and that’s all I really need, right?” I hated feigning disinterest in what she had to show me, when I was really very curious. And I hated it even worse that I sounded ungrateful for her help. But Addy’s and Regan’s souls depended on making Harmony want to teach me something my father wouldn’t approve of. Something she’d normally never show me.
“You never know, Kaylee.” She drank from her glass again, probably to hide her disappointment, which had virtually erased the deep dimples from her cheeks. “Emergencies happen, and you might need to know how to go to the Netherworld someday, instead of just peeking into it.”
I frowned, showcasing my hesitance as I chewed my last bite of cookie. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
She shrugged and pushed up the sleeves of her snug lilac sweater. “Unsupervised, yes. But the risk would be pretty minimal if we cross over from here.”
“Because human houses don’t exist in the Netherworld?” I was thinking of what she’d told me on Sunday.
“That’s true, but Netherworlders do have homes of their own, and if you cross over without knowing where you’ll come out, you could wind up somewhere you don’t want to be.”
I was betting that was a pretty big understatement.
“Can’t we just peek in and see what’s here on the Netherworld plane?”
“Kind of.” Harmony sat straighter; she was perking up now that I was openly curious. “When you peek into the Netherworld from here, or vice versa, you’re seeing the two realities layered, one over the other. That can be really confusing if you aren’t used to mentally sorting out what you’re seeing. You could easily overlook something important. Or dangerous.”
“So, how do you know it’s safe to cross over from your house?” I asked, then let my brows rise in eagerness. “You’ve done it, haven’t you? Where would we wind up?”
Harmony set her glass on the end table, then met my gaze frankly. “Yes, I’ve done it. I had to cross over when we first moved here, to make sure it was safe in case of an emergency. I still do it periodically, to make sure nothing’s changed.”
“What could change?”
She shrugged. “The landscape there evolves, just like ours does, based on the needs of the populace.”
“So, is it safe?”
She smiled, obviously enjoying my interest. “Yes, it’s safe. Comparatively speaking, anyway. This spot in the Netherworld—” she spread her arms to take in her entire house “—is…unoccupied. But, Kaylee, things are different there. It’s
like a warped reflection of our world. Everything is skewed, like the world kind of
shifted
after everything was built.”
I knew exactly what she meant, though I’d never actually been to the Netherworld, because I’d seen the things that lived there. They were skewed, too. Disproportionate, like images stretched or squished in carnival mirrors. I could only imagine what their surroundings must look like.
And I only
wanted
to imagine. But my imagination wouldn’t get the Page sisters back their souls. Or get me out of my house if my father didn’t go to bed at a decent hour…
“Have you ever crossed over from my house?” My heart thumped painfully as I said the words. She’d see through my question. She’d know what I was up to. She’d tell my dad, and it would all be over. Addy would die soulless, and Regan would follow her sister, whenever her time came.
But Harmony only cocked her head to one side, frowning at me as the unpleasant possibilities occurred to her. “Only once. Why?”
I thought quickly, and went with a half truth. “It creeps me out to think that someone else—some weird Netherworld family—could be living in an alternate version of my house. What if I have one of those emergencies and have to cross over? I’d rather know what I was getting into before I actually get there. To make sure it’s safe.” I quoted her own words back to her, and Harmony’s bright blue eyes darkened for a moment, before clearing like the sky after a summer storm.
I admired her control. Her perseverance. Harmony had picked herself up and pieced her life together twice, after the deaths of both her husband and her oldest son, and she still found enough of herself to share with people who needed
her. To protect both me and Nash, and by extension, Emma, Addy, and Regan.
“You don’t have to worry about that.” She handed me the cookie she had yet to taste, as if a little sugar really could make everything all better. “The Netherworld is much more sparsely populated than our world,” she continued as I bit into the cookie. “So it’s not like every house here represents a house there. If you crossed over from home, you’d find overgrown fields, with buildings in the distance, in the direction of our downtown district. Very similar to what you’d see if you crossed over from here.”
Good.
I kept chewing to disguise my exhalation of relief.
“But, Kaylee, that doesn’t mean you should try it.” She was solemn now, blue eyes glittering with urgent warning. “The Netherworld is dangerous, especially for
bean sidhes
, and you should never go there unless you literally have no other choice.”
I could only nod. “But if I needed to? If I had that emergency?” I paused and met her eyes, letting mine shine with equal parts eagerness and careful dread. As if I wanted the knowledge but hoped never to have to use it. Which was totally true; my fear was real enough to pass scrutiny. “You said it works just like peeking, right?”
“Yeah.” She held her glass in both hands and leaned back against the arm of the couch, looking easily a quarter of her actual age with one foot tucked beneath her slim leg. “The difference is in the intent. If you call your wail on purpose, like you learned to do on Monday, but with the intent of going to the Netherworld, rather than just peeking in, you’ll cross over.” She set her glass down again and sat straighter, as
if to underline the importance of whatever she was about to say. “It’s frighteningly simple, Kaylee. The most important thing to learn is how
not
to go, when you just want to peek, because once you’ve crossed over that first time, your body remembers how. And sometimes it seems like
it
wants to be there, even if you don’t.”
Okay,
that’s
scary.
I shivered with a sudden surge of fear that left chills the length of my arms.
“Which is why we’re not going to try it.” Harmony leaned back again, and her usual pleasant smile was in place. “I think theoretical knowledge is enough for now.”
I found myself nodding, even though I really needed the actual experience. “Once you’re there, do you get back the same way? By wailing with the intent to go home?”
Harmony nodded. “But, Kaylee, this knowledge is for emergencies only. I can’t emphasize that enough.” I nodded, but she continued. “Do not go sightseeing in the Netherworld. You practically shine with youth and vitality, and that will attract…people. Netherworlders.”
Aaaand, it gets even creepier….
“Don’t worry.” I exhaled and smiled to set her at ease. “I don’t go around looking for danger.” Yet somehow, it always seems to find me….
“I know.”
She drank the rest of her soda and we sat in silence for nearly a minute, listening to the canned fight sounds from Nash’s room. Then, though I was more on edge than I wanted to admit by what I’d already learned, I played my last card, desperate for that remaining piece of information.
“Since you checked to make sure it was safe to cross over
from here, my dad probably did the same thing, right? Crossed over from our house to make sure it’s safe?”
Harmony grinned like I’d just asked her to explain the difference between boys and girls. “Not exactly,” she said, still smiling. “Your dad can’t cross over on his own.” Which I’d already known, thanks to Tod. “So I took him. Humans and male
bean sidhes
can’t cross over without a female
bean sidhe’s
wail.”
“Oh,” I let my eyes widen in surprise and concern. “What if we have an emergency and we both need to cross over? How can I do that? Take him with me?”
I didn’t think she’d answer. I truly didn’t. And she probably wouldn’t have, if not for the obvious guilt she felt over having scared the crap out of me with the knowledge that I might someday have to abandon my father in a burning building because he can’t cross over.
“You just have to be holding on to him when you cross over, and he’ll come with you. That’s the same way it works with whatever you’re holding or wearing. Which is what keeps you from showing up naked in the Netherworld.” Harmony grinned at her own joke, and I forced a laugh to let her know I wasn’t totally freaked out.
“You two about done?” Nash asked, and I looked up to find him watching us from their short, dark hallway. He glanced pointedly at his watch, then at me. “It’s nearly four-thirty. What time are you supposed to be home?”
“My dad’ll probably call to check on me soon. You know, to make sure I’m not having any fun or acting like a teenager.” I stood and picked up my backpack, and Harmony stood, too. She got the message.
“Go easy on your father. He’s pretty new at this.”
“I know.” But that was his fault. He’d had the past thirteen years to reestablish his role in my life after my mother died, and so far, late was proving to be only marginally better than never. “Walk me home?” I asked Nash, already headed for the door.