My Soul to Steal (20 page)

My only idea—some of that weird Netherworld dreamless-sleeping herb Harmony had given Nash while he was sick—was shot down before I’d even fully expressed it. Nash said that the herb would keep Sabine from giving me nightmares—she can’t mess with dreams that aren’t there—but wouldn’t even slow Avari down. He didn’t need us to dream; he only needed us to sleep.

And I already knew from experience that the internet had
nothing about hellions. At least, not about real hellions. There was plenty of info on comic book and video game hellions. But nothing of use, unless I had an enchanted sword hanging from my belt or a gang of mismatched but powerful superheroes at my back.

And even then, there were no guarantees.

I was staring at my Betty Boop phone message pad—still blank—when the doorbell rang. Surprised, I dropped my pen and pad on the coffee table and crossed the room to glance out the front window, where I found Tod standing on the porch, his hands behind his back.

Huh. Weird.

I pulled open the door and looked up at him. “What’s with the doorbell?”

He grinned, and a blond curl fell over his forehead. “Just tryin’ on some manners.”

“Why? Who died?” I meant it as a joke, but when his smile faded, I frowned. “Please tell me no one died….”

“Well, I’m sure someone,
somewhere,
died. But no one I know.” He hesitated, and I stared at him, still trying to figure out what the reaper was doing on my porch. “Can I come in?”

I shrugged and stepped back to clear the way. “You don’t usually ask permission. Or use the door. So…what are you delivering today—pizza or death?”

“Both, actually.” He pulled his arms out from behind his back as he stepped over the threshold, and his right hand held a grease-stained medium pizza box. “Pepperoni for you now, and a fatal aneurism to the woman in room 408, in about ten hours.”

“Thanks.” I took the box and closed the door behind him, a
little disturbed that I was only a little disturbed by the mention of his night job. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. I need to talk to you, and I was hungry.”

Okaaay…
“What do we need to talk about?” I set the pizza box on the coffee table and flipped open the lid to find the pie still steaming and gooey with cheese.

But instead of flopping into my dad’s favorite chair, Tod stood in the middle of my living room, watching me like he wasn’t sure what to do next. “Are you alone?”

“Not as alone as I was a minute ago,” I said, and at that, he cracked a smile—but a small one. “What’s up, Tod? Is something wrong?”

“We need to talk about Nash. And Sabine.”

I dropped onto the couch and grabbed a slice of pizza, then gestured for him to help himself. “Pizza isn’t enough to get me to talk about Sabine. You should have brought chocolate.” I chewed my first bite as he sank onto the opposite end of the couch, but made no move on the pizza. “She broke into my car this morning and wouldn’t get out, so I had to take her to work with me. Then she left my car unlocked, like a tribute to suburban crime statistics.”

Tod’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “You’re lucky she didn’t take a bat to it.”

“So I hear. That girl is seriously damaged.”

“I know. She came to see me after she left the theater.”

“At work?”

“Yeah. She’s hurting, Kaylee.”

“I know. Now explain the part where that’s my fault.”

“It’s not. But she’s not the only one. I talked to Nash after that.”

I frowned and swallowed another bite. “You have too much
free time. Two jobs, yet you’re never at either of them. I’m in the wrong line of work.”

He shrugged and glanced at the pizza, but didn’t take a slice. “I have a lot of ‘driving’ time to kill, so I stopped by home—” by which he meant
Nash’s
home “—on the way to a delivery address.”

“Convenient.”

“Yeah.” He frowned. “It almost makes up for the whole walking corpse thing, huh?”

“Anyway…”

“Anyway, Nash is in bad shape, Kaylee. On Friday, he had been reunited with a good friend and was a couple of steps from getting back together with his girlfriend. Today he has neither one of those.”

“He has me,” I insisted. “We kinda made up. He even came over last night.”
Or early this morning…

“Yeah. You ‘kinda’ made up. In the sense that he’ll drop everything to come running when you call, but you still haven’t forgiven him enough to deal with his problems. Which means that he’s still alone in every way that counts. And being alone is really hard on his willpower.”

I made myself swallow another bite. “By willpower, are we talking about resisting certain Netherworld addictive substances, or certain willing ex-girlfriends?”

“I’m talking about frost, Kaylee. Demon’s Breath. He can’t do this on his own, and Mom and I can’t be there all the time. Especially now that I have two jobs.”

“When were you ever there?”

“I was around. He just didn’t know it. But I’m not gonna let my brother start using again.” He looked right into my eyes then, and I saw a hint of true turmoil flicker in the cerulean depths of his eyes. Turmoil and…something else. Something
even more aching and suppressed. “Being alone and in pain makes everything harder to resist, and right now Nash is hurting because he knows you can’t forgive him. And he’s resisting something that already has a hold on him. He’s fighting the undertow, Kaylee, and he needs your help.”

Nash hadn’t said anything to me about that. He didn’t talk to me about his cravings or the lingering effects of withdrawal, because he knew I wanted nothing to do with that part of his life.

“You think I should forgive him?” Like it was just that easy.

Tod blinked and met my gaze. “I think you should give him up. You need to let Sabine have him.”

“I
NEED TO WHAT
?”
Tod was kidding. He had to be.

The reaper held two hands up in a defensive gesture. “Okay, just hear me out before you start yelling, okay?”

I nodded, because the truth was that I could barely speak, much less yell. My vocal cords were paralyzed by shock. Which almost never happens to a
bean sidhe
.

“Kay, you and Nash are no good for each other,” Tod said. I tried to interrupt, but he spoke over my inarticulate mumble. “You know it, even if you won’t admit it. He needs you, but you don’t need him.”

“That’s not true.” I shook my head, emphasizing my denial. “I do need him. I needed him last night.”

“No, you didn’t. He said that by the time he got there, you’d already expelled the hellion, tied up the host, and cut your dad loose, all by yourself. You’re so strong, and smart, and you never hesitate when something needs to be done, and that’s all…amazing.” Tod’s irises sparked with a sharp twist of bright blue before going suddenly still. “But Nash needs to be needed. You both
want
each other—even a dead man
could see that—but you’ve changed, and he has nothing to offer you anymore, and eventually you’re going to realize that on your own. But probably not before you’ve wasted years of your life—and his—with the wrong guy.”

My chest throbbed like one big bruise, like my heart was trying to pound its way out through my ribs. But above that steady beat of pain, my indignation roared, drowning out everything else, demanding to be heard.

“What gives you the right to tell me who I shouldn’t be with? What, you think being a few years older than me means you know everything?”

Tod’s irises pulsed with a quick beat of anger, then went still when he got control of them. “No. But I think being dead for a couple of those years gives me a perspective most people don’t have. I know how short life really is, and I can see things you and Nash don’t understand yet. Like, maybe there’s someone better out there for him. And maybe there’s someone better for you.”

I dropped my half-eaten slice of pizza into the box and stared at him in disbelief. “Being dead doesn’t qualify you to play matchmaker between my boyfriend and his
ex
-girlfriend. Maybe she’s an ex for a very good reason.”

“Or maybe she’s an ex because my death got in the way of their relationship. Maybe they never should have been separated. And then you two never would have met, and this whole thing would have played out differently.”

Shocked silent, I could only blink for several seconds, as what he was really saying sank in. “Then he wouldn’t be an addict, right? Because if he’d never met me, he would never have been exposed.” I could barely breathe through the sting in his words.

“No.” Tod reached for me, looking both stunned and
confused, but I pulled away from him. “Kaylee, I swear that’s not what I meant. I’m not even sure how you got that out of what I was trying to say…”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I just meant that if you and Nash had never met…” He stopped and closed his eyes, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “If you hadn’t met, you wouldn’t have to deal with letting each other go now.”

“I’m not letting him go.”

“If you give a damn about him, you will. As bad as it probably hurts to think about this right now, Nash and Sabine are right for each other. Maybe more so now than they ever were before, because now they need each other. They’re both messed up pretty bad, but together, their two halves make a whole, while the most you and Nash are ever gonna add up to is one and a half.”

“One and a half?” I repeated, like a brain-damaged parrot. I heard what he was saying, but I just couldn’t believe that some manipulative, antagonistic, dream-pirate could possibly be better for Nash than I was.

Tod nodded solemnly. “It’s an improper fraction. Sad, but true.”

“Actually, it’s a mixed number,” I said, slowly going numb as his words continued to sink in. “Fourth-grade math.”

“Whatever.” He glanced down, then met my gaze again and let me see a sad little swirl of color in his eyes. “My point stands, and I have to side with Sabine on this one. If you really care about him, you have to let her have him. That’s the only way either of them are ever going to be whole. If you try to keep Nash for yourself, you’ll only ever really have half of him.”

“But he loves me.” I felt like I’d just turned in a hundred circles and the room wouldn’t stop spinning.

Then Tod put his hand on my arm, and the world went still.

“Yeah. He does. And it’ll hurt like hell for him to get over you. But he
will
get over you. And she’ll help make that happen.”

“What if I don’t want him to get over me?”

“Then you’re being selfish.” Tod leaned back and ran his hand through his hair again. “Kaylee, you’re never going to be able to truly forgive him for what he did, and honestly, I don’t know that you should. But my point is that if you can’t forgive him, he won’t be able to forgive himself. Which means that as long as the two of you are together, he’s going to be living with this, trying to make up for it and failing over and over again, because he has nothing left to offer you. Do you really want to watch him suffer like that?”

I shook my head, not in answer, but in denial and confusion. “Being with Sabine won’t fix that. She can’t undo it, and she can’t make me get over it.”

“No, but she can help him forgive himself. Your relationship with Nash was all shiny and clean, but it’s tainted now. It’s like a stain you can never wash out. A constant reminder. But their relationship…well, it was messed up from day one, so that’s kind of their status quo. It’ll work between them, Kaylee. If you let it.”

I could only stare at him in mounting shock and pain. And when my anger reached its crest, my temper exploded. “What is
wrong
with you?” I demanded. “How can you stand there and tell me that two people who love each other shouldn’t be together? That I should just shove him into the arms of his slut of an ex-girlfriend and call it a day?”

“This is the truth, Kaylee.” Tod put his hands up, palms out, in another defensive gesture. “You can’t get mad at me for telling the truth.”

“Oh, yes, I can.” I stood and flipped the pizza box closed, then slammed my hand down on it for good measure. “Get out.” I picked up the smooshed box and shoved it at him.

“Kaylee…”

“Just go away, Tod. I have enough to worry about without adding ‘taking stupid advice from a dead guy’ to the list.”

Tod blinked at me, and the smallest cobalt tremor of emotion rippled through his irises before he regained control. Before I could interpret what I’d seen. Then he sighed and blinked out of the room, pizza box and all.

Alone in my house again, I sank onto the couch and buried my head in my hands, my fingers pressed into my eyes so hard that red spots formed behind my eyelids. I refused to let the tears fall. Tod was wrong. So what if I didn’t need Nash anymore? Wanting him was enough.

But as I lay awake that night, listening to Alec snore in the recliner he was now handcuffed to, doubt ate at me, one vicious bite at a time.

What if Tod was right? What if wanting Nash wasn’t enough?

B
Y
M
ONDAY MORNING
, exhaustion had become my state of normalcy. Even with Alec well secured, none of us had gotten much sleep for fear that Avari would possess my dad and tear up the house looking for keys to the cuffs Tod had commandeered from the local police station’s supply room. For our safety, neither Alec nor I knew where my dad had hidden the keys.

But beyond all that, I was afraid that if I let myself sleep
deeply enough to actually get any rest, Avari would find me again in my dreams. And lying awake only gave me more time to obsess over dead teachers, vengeful hellions, and a boyfriend who may or may not be better off with a walking Nightmare than with me.

Thanks to another largely sleepless night, I pulled into the school parking lot just five minutes before the final bell and had to park near the back, both my scattered thoughts and flagging energy focused on finding Emma, so I could ask for advice about Nash. I was halfway to the building when a scream ripped through the parking lot, and all random snatches of conversation ended in startled silence. Heads turned toward the human but obviously agonized wail, now accompanied by other enraged shouts, and the sickening thunk of some blunt instrument into solid flesh.

I shouldn’t have gone; I didn’t really want to know. But horror and curiosity are overpowering lures on their own, and together, they’re virtually irresistible. So I found myself in the thin flow of bodies streaming toward sounds of anger and pain, fully aware that there was probably nothing I could do to stop whatever was happening.

When the crowd stopped moving, I elbowed my way to the front, then sucked in a sharp breath when what I saw sank in.

In the main aisle, Trace Dennison, one of the basketball team starters, clutched a golf club in both hands, huge feet spread for balance, cheeks flushed in obvious outrage. He pulled the club up over his head, and the crowd around me gasped.

“No, man, wait!” Derek Rogers, the captain of the basketball team, leaned against a dusty blue four-door car, clutching his left arm to the big
E
on the front of his green-and-white
letter jacket. His face was ashen beneath a smooth, dark complexion, his jaw clenched in pain, and he held his right arm over his head in defense against the golf club ready to swing at him again.

“Whoa, Trace!” Two of the other team members stepped out of the crowd, palms up in identical defensive gestures, intense, cautious gazes trained on Trace. “What are you doing? Put the club down!” the first player said, nervously running one hand through a head full of soft brown waves.

Trace didn’t even seem to hear him.

The second player—Michael something?—moved in boldly, while around me, the entire crowd seemed to stop breathing. “Dennison, do
not
make me kick your ass. Put that thing down before I shove it someplace graphic.”

Trace never even turned. Instead, he gripped the golf club—a putter?—like a baseball bat, and as we watched, frozen in horror and anticipation, he swung overhead again, grunting with effort and with what sounded like primal rage.

Michael lunged for the club and missed. Derek shouted. Onlookers sucked in sharp breaths. And over all that, I heard the muted thud of impact and the crunch of breaking bone.

Derek’s shouts became high-pitched screams, and his right arm fell to his side, useless.

Tears blurred my vision, but shock held me in place. I didn’t know what to do.
No one
seemed to know what to do, except Michael, who looked determined to put this insanity to an end, despite the obvious danger to himself.

“You’re crazy!” Derek shouted between pain-filled gasps, edging down the length of the car and away from the club as Trace lifted it again.

“Trace…” Michael said, hands outstretched now, and Trace whirled on him, club held high. The crowd shuffled backward
as one, but Michael didn’t seem to notice. “What’s the problem, man? What’s this about?”

“He’s my problem,” Trace said through clenched teeth, glancing over at Derek, who’d clenched his jaw shut—probably to keep from screaming—clutching both ruined arms to his chest. “Seventeen point average and an MVP nomination doesn’t mean you walk on water. If he wasn’t such a ball hog, maybe people’d realize there’s more than one man on the court!”

A ripple was working its way through the rapidly growing crowd—a single capped head sticking up above most of the others. Coach Rundell and both security guards stepped into the clearing as Trace started to turn back to Derek, already pulling the club high again, ready for another swing. Michael must have seen them, because he moved closer to Derek, dragging Trace’s gaze with him, distracting him from the newly arrived authorities.

Coach Rundell wrapped one meaty hand around the neck of the club and neatly plucked it from Trace’s grip, jerking him backward in the process.

When Trace turned, his face scarlet with rage, the security guards each grabbed one of his arms.

“Call an ambulance,” Rundell growled, after one look at Derek’s misshapen right arm, obvious even beneath his thick jacket sleeve. The younger of the two guards pulled a portable radio from his belt and spoke into it, passing along the coach’s orders to the attendance secretary as they hauled a belligerent Trace Dennison toward the building. But by then, at least a dozen students were already dialing 9-1-1 directly.

Rundell helped Derek out of his jacket carefully, but the senior screamed as the sleeves slid over his arms. “Oh, shit,” Rundell said. Derek’s arms were both obviously broken, but
his right sleeve was torn and oozing blood, the white end of a bone sticking up through both flesh and stained material.

“Okay, let’s get you inside.” Coach waved Michael forward to help him get Derek to the school building, both basketball players towering over the shorter, thicker football coach as several other teachers arrived and began to disburse the onlookers.

“Hey, Coach!” another voice called from the crowd, and I turned to find a freckled sophomore member of the golf team holding up the club Rundell had dropped, a long black golf bag hanging from his opposite shoulder. “Can I have this back now?”

Rundell stopped and turned toward the kid, and Derek groaned. “What was Trace doing with it?”

The kid shrugged. “He grabbed it right out of my bag and just started swinging.”

“Well, I think it’s evidence now. Have your dad call me.” Rundell held out his hand, and the kid jogged forward to hand him the club, then the coach marched toward the building with one hand on Derek’s shoulder.

“What happened?” Emma asked from behind me, and I turned to see her rounding the car on my right.

“Trace Dennison went homicidal, and now the basketball team’s down two starters. He broke both of Derek Rogers’s arms.”

“Damn.” Emma whistled as we headed toward the building.

“Yeah. It was pretty brutal.” I was oddly relieved to realize that even after everything I’d seen in the Netherworld, human-on-human violence still truly bothered me.