My Soul to Steal (22 page)

A
FTER ANOTHER MOSTLY
sleepless night and an early breakfast spent watching Harmony stitch the gash on my dad’s head, I held my breath as I walked into the school on Tuesday morning, half-afraid of what I’d find. I knew better than to believe that yesterday’s campus chaos had faded into the ether.

I was right.

I’d made it halfway to my locker when the door to the girls’ bathroom flew open and slammed against the wall right in front of me. I lurched out of the way as two bodies stumbled into the hall and collided with a stretch of lockers, ringing the metal doors like a gong. Hair flew, too wild and fast for me to identify either of the fighters as I scrambled out of the immediate impact zone.

A crowd formed quickly—a living boxing ring—as each girl tore at the other’s hair and clothes, clawing at exposed skin. They screeched and grunted, a primal racket of pain and rage, punctuated with just enough profanity-riddled half sentences for me to understand the cause.

They were fighting over a guy. Someone’s boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or stupid, unwitting crush.

A couple of teachers came running to break up the fight, already haggard before eight in the morning, and as I bypassed the action, I noticed two of the school’s larger coaches hauling a boy apiece down the hall in my direction. The student on the left had a split lip and a black eye. The one on the right was bleeding from a head wound and a totally
crunched
nose.

In spite of their injuries, it was everything the coaches could do to keep them apart.

“Did you hear?” Emma asked, when I finally slid into the seat next to her in algebra.

“About the fights in the hall? Caught the live show and nearly got flattened. It’s like going to school in a war zone.”

“Not that.” Emma looked just as put together as always, in spite of her interrupted sleep. Obviously middle-of-the-night ice cream was the cure for dark under-eye circles. “They took Coach Peterson away in handcuffs this morning. The custodian caught him trashing Rundell’s office, shouting that he would have been the head football coach if Rundell hadn’t married the superintendent’s daughter.” Emma leaned closer to me, not that it mattered. Everyone else was busy passing the same news. “I swear, Kaylee, the entire school’s gone insane!”

Yeah. Including the teachers, which was a new development.

By third period, there had been four more fights and another teacher removed from school grounds, for undisclosed reasons. Whatever she’d done, she’d done in the teachers’ lounge, and the rest of the staff wasn’t talking. Which left us to interpret her crimes as we saw fit. And there was no shortage of rumors.

After third period—my free hour—I headed across the deserted gym toward the cafeteria, but stopped short when I heard a screech from the girls’ locker room. “Sophie, no!”

I dropped my books on the polished wood floor and raced for the locker room, then threw open the door and froze in surprise at what I saw.

In one hand, Sophie held a huge pair of metal scissors with jagged blades. The ones she’d been using for her Life Skills project—pinking shears, Aunt Val had called them. In the other hand, my cousin held a thick chunk of Laura Bell’s long, shiny brown hair.

Laura was bawling hysterically, her face already red from the effort, one hand clutching the back of her scalp.

“I’m…I’m so sorry!” Sophie screeched, her hand shaking violently, and a second later, she burst into tears, too.

“Give me that!” I jerked the scissors from her grasp by the closed blades, then spun Laura around to assess the damage. The center section of her hair had been clipped so close to her head I could see scalp showing through.

Great. A half-bald beauty queen. Laura was going to need therapy—I could already tell.

“Go to the office and have them call your mom,” I said, unsure if Laura could even hear me over her own snot-strangled tears. “I’m sure they can get you some kind of emergency salon appointment. Or something.”

Not that there was anything they’d be able to do for her, short of shearing the rest of it to match.

Laura wiped tears from her face with one sleeve, then wandered out of the bathroom in a traumatized daze, rendered virtually useless by a bad haircut. Not that I couldn’t sympathize.

“Sophie, what the hell?” I demanded, as soon as the door
closed, but my cousin just stood there, clutching a handful of her best friend’s hair.

“I don’t know!” she screeched, her words so painfully high-pitched I wanted to slap both hands over my ears. Maybe she was part
bean sidhe,
after all… “She was working on her hair, going on and on about being Snow Queen, and I just kept thinking that she never should have won. Then I just…snapped, and the next thing I know, I’m holding half her hair, and she’s screaming, and all I can think is that it should have been me. It
would
have been me, if you hadn’t trashed my dress. I didn’t even get to compete after that!”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed in sudden understanding. And fury.

“This is
your
fault. I would have been Snow Queen if you hadn’t ruined everything, like you always do! Luck of the Irish, my ass. You’re like an agent of darkness. I swear, you have horns growing under all that stringy hair.”

“Sounds like you found the family resemblance.” I scowled and stepped closer to her, and Sophie backed up until her hip hit the sink. “I ought to cut your hair to match hers, and if you open your mouth one more time, that’s exactly what I’ll do.” With that, I dropped her shears into the big covered trash can and stomped out of the locker room, leaving Sophie to her guilt and tears.

I was almost out of the gym—Sophie had yet to emerge—when a familiar voice shredded my remaining self-control like wood through a chipper.

“So you actually died, and she just…let it happen?”

Sabine
. My pulse spiked with irritation. What the hell was she doing?

“Well, I don’t think she could have stopped it…” another, softer voice said, and my anger was a white-hot ball of fury
flaming in my gut.
Emma
. Sabine had Emma, and they were talking about…things they shouldn’t be talking about.

“But you don’t know for sure, right? I mean, you don’t actually know what she’s capable of, do you? All you really know is that she’s not human and she screeches louder than a police siren. Right?”

I spun silently, trying to pinpoint the voices, but the gym looked empty.

“Yeah, I guess…” Em finally answered, and confusion slowed her words, like the first drink of the night.

“Don’t you ever worry about the next time? I mean, being best friends with a
bean sidhe
should come with hazard pay, right? You’re always in the line of fire, thanks to her.”

“Actually…yeah. Something went down last night, and she and Alec wouldn’t tell me what. Again.” She paused as I crossed one corner of the basketball court quietly. “But everything turned out fine.”

“But what if it hadn’t? What if you’d become collateral damage again? Do you ever worry that she might…”

“Just let me die?” Emma asked, and I could hear the fear in her voice. My blood boiled. Sabine was goading her, reading and manipulating her fears with every word, but the actual fears were all Em’s. Things she’d never told me about.

“Yeah,” Emma continued. “Kaylee and Nash can’t save someone without letting someone else die. One of these days, it’ll be my time to go, and I’m afraid that Kaylee will just…let it happen. Or that they’ll save someone else and end up killing me by accident.”

“It could definitely happen,” Sabine said, as I rounded the edge of the bleachers to see her smiling at me over Emma’s shoulder. She’d known I was there the whole time. My hands
curled into fists and my jaw clenched so hard my whole face ached.

“Sabine, what the hell are you doing?” My voice sounded lower and darker than I’d ever heard it.

“Just getting to know Em a little better.”

Emma was watching me now, a familiar edge of irritation in her narrowed eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me Sabine isn’t human? And don’t tell me this is more
bean sidhe
business—she’s not a
bean sidhe
. And why do you and Alec have Netherworld secrets now? Are you just using any excuse to lock me out of your life?”

I raised a brow at Sabine. Clearly I was late to the conversation—Em had obviously confided
several
fears.

Sabine only shrugged and grinned, so I turned back to Emma, my arms crossed over my chest.

“Did she tell you what she is?”

“More than
you
told me. She’s a
mara
.”

I nodded. “And did she tell you what that means?”

Emma frowned.
That’s what I thought
. “She’s a Nightmare, Em. Literally. She reads people’s fears and exploits them for her own entertainment.” Or nutrition. I was still a bit fuzzy on that detail. “And that’s what she’s doing to you right now. Exploiting your fears.”

And that’s when it hit me. The school chaos. The fights and jealousy. They had nothing to do with Avari—what did he care if a few kids got arrested or expelled?

It was Sabine. All of it. I’d heard her talking to Sophie and Laura about the Snow Queen title last week. She’d chatted with the basketball team at lunch. And now she was moving in on Emma. She was feeding from their fears and insecurities. And it had to stop.

I took a deep breath, then faced my best friend, without
letting Sabine out of my sight. “Em, I swear I’m not going to let you die. No matter what. Your life is definitely a priority, so you can stop worrying about that.” I closed my eyes, weighing pros and cons in my head, then met Emma’s suspicious gaze again. “And I’m going to tell you everything. I promise.” It wasn’t fair for me to keep her in the dark—I, of all people, should have known that. “But right now, I have to deal with the mess Sabine’s gotten us all into. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria, okay?”

Without waiting for her answer, I grabbed Sabine by the arm and hauled her across the gym. She just laughed and let me pull her. “Where are we going?”

“To find Nash.” If anyone could reason with an out of control
mara,
it would be our mutual ex. Her one true love, according to Tod.

My anger burned even brighter at that thought.

“Oh, good!” she said, as I hesitated in the middle of the basketball court, debating the shortcut to the quad through the cafeteria. But pulling Sabine through a crowd of students she’d already worked into some kind of fear-fed frenzy would be a very bad idea. So I turned right and headed for the gym exit. “But you should probably know he’s not speaking to me.”

“Fortunately, he is speaking to me.”

“So, what, you’re gonna tattle on me for telling Emma I’m not human? That wasn’t your secret to keep, Kaylee. Totally my call. And if blowing my own cover happens to poke holes in your credibility…well, we’ll call that a big fat bonus!”

“You are
such
a bitch.” I shoved open the heavy exterior door and pulled Sabine into the parking lot, then took an immediate left, circling the building toward the quad.

“That’s hardly breaking news.”

“Yet the headlines just keep coming.” I tightened my grip on her arm. The quad was in sight by then, but I saw no sign of Nash. In fact, all the tables were empty, which was weird, considering we were ten minutes into lunch.

“Okay, this has been real fun,” Sabine said, as I stopped next to the first empty table. She jerked her arm from my grasp and faced me, her goading grin gone, true anger flashing in her eyes. “But if it isn’t gonna get Nash to talk to me, I’m done with this.”

She started to stomp off toward the cafeteria, but I grabbed her wrist. “Get back here.” Nash would have been
so
much better at talking some sense into her, but since he wasn’t there, it was up to me.

Sabine jerked her arm away again. “The novelty of your badass act is wearing off quickly.”

And suddenly I realized that the lack of a crowd was as much disadvantage as advantage—she probably wouldn’t hesitate to punch me if there was no one around to see it. “How could you pull Emma into this? She has nothing to do with your sad little obsession with Nash.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “I didn’t hurt her. I barely even got a taste of her fear. And as for my disclosure, you of all people should know how scary it is when you don’t understand the world around you. I would have thought you’d want to spare your own best friend from such painful ignorance.”

I couldn’t fault her logic and I’d already decided to tell Emma everything. But even if Sabine’s argument was sound, her intentions were not. She’d been using an innocent bystander to piss me off, and it worked. “Just leave Emma alone.”

“I don’t answer to you about anything, Kaylee. Including my dinner plans.”

Fresh flames of rage licked at my skin; I felt like I was standing too close to a bonfire, and if I didn’t back up, I was going to get roasted. And I was fine with that—so long as Sabine got singed, too. “You can
not
just go around feeding from people! You’ve turned this school into a war zone, and people are getting hurt.”

Sabine rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you I didn’t kill those teachers. And I’m not responsible for how a bunch of human sheep deal with the loss of a couple of shepherds.”

“They’re people, not sheep!” Even if they did tend to follow the herd and stand around bleating uselessly at times… “And no matter what you call them, you don’t have the right to turn them against one another and get people thrown in jail, or sent to the hospital!”

Sabine frowned. “Okay, you can’t even
see
sanity from where you’re standing. I had nothing to do with any of that.”

“Right.” I stepped closer, shoving my fear of a broken jaw—or worse—to the back of my mind. “I heard you talking to Sophie and Laura the other day, and today Laura’s missing a chunk of hair from the back of her head.”

“Sophie sheared her BFF?” Sabine looked genuinely surprised—like she didn’t already know. “Wow. Good one…”