My Soul to Take (24 page)

“You will not take my daughter!” she shouted, inches from the reaper’s face. “So you either take me now, or you’re going back one soul short of the bargain!”

Marg’s lips curled back in fury as I inched forward, the skillet still gripped in both hands. She glanced up at Sophie’s soul, and her dark eyes blazed in fury to find that it was gone and that Sophie was now breathing, though still unconscious.

Marg stared up at my aunt then, terror fleeting across her features. Whoever this Belphegore was, Marg clearly didn’t want to disappoint her. The reaper considered for less than a full second, then she nodded. “Your soul won’t fulfill the deal you made, but it will pay for your arrogance and vanity.” And just like that, Aunt Val slumped forward onto the reaper, her eyes already empty and glazing over.

But Aunt Val’s body hit the carpet, because Marg was gone.

I blinked, staring at my aunt in shock, and carefully lowered myself to the floor, to keep from falling flat out.

“Kaylee, are you okay?” Nash’s fingers curled around my left hand, reminding me that I still clutched the cast-iron skillet in my right. Startled by what I’d done with it, now that it was all over, I dropped the skillet at arm’s length, and it hit the carpet with a muffled thud.

“I’m fine,” I croaked. “Considering.”

Uncle Brendon stomped past me to kneel at Sophie’s side. He took her pulse and exhaled in relief, then felt around her head, near where she’d banged it on the end table. Then he picked her up in both arms and laid her on the couch, heedless of the blood her hair smeared across the white silk.

Aunt Val would have had a fit over the mess. But Aunt Val was dead.

With Sophie’s safety assured, her father dropped to the floor beside his wife and repeated the same steps. But this time, there was no sigh of relief. Instead, my uncle scooted backward on the seat of his jeans until his back hit the side of the couch, his hair brushing Sophie’s arm. Then he propped his elbows on
his knees and cradled his head in his hands. His whole body shook with silent tears.

“Brendon?” my father said, laying one warm hand on my back.

“How could she do this?” his brother demanded, looking up at us with red-rimmed eyes. “What was she thinking?”

“I don’t know.” My dad let go of me to kneel at his brother’s side.

“It’s my fault. Living with us is too hard for humans. I should have known better.” Uncle Brendon sobbed, swiping one sleeve across his face. “She didn’t want to grow old without me.”

“This is not your fault,” my dad insisted, clasping his brother’s shoulder. “It’s not that she didn’t want to get old without you, Bren. She didn’t want to get old at all.”

My aunt Valerie had made a deal with a hellion, and cost four innocent girls their lives. She’d lied to us all, and had nearly gotten her own daughter killed. And she had blasted a hole the size of a nuclear crater through our family’s core.

But when the time came, she’d given her own life in exchange for her daughter’s without a second thought, just like my mother had. Did that make her sins forgivable?

I wanted to say yes—that a mother’s selfless sacrifice was enough of a good deed to erase her past sins. But the truth wasn’t so pretty.

My aunt’s death wouldn’t bring back Heidi, or Alyson, or Meredith, or Julie. It wouldn’t repair whatever psychological damage her loss caused Sophie. It wouldn’t give Uncle Brendon back his wife.

The truth was that Aunt Val’s sacrifice was too little, too late, and she’d left those she loved most to deal with the aftermath.

“H
ERE
, K
AYLEE
. This will help your throat.” Harmony Hudson set a small cup of honey-scented tea on the table in front of me, and I leaned over it, breathing in the fragrant steam. She started to head back into the kitchen, where the scent of homemade brownies—her favorite form of therapy—had just begun to waft from the oven, but I laid one hand on her arm.

“I would have lost Sophie if you weren’t here.” My voice was still hoarse, and my throat felt like I’d swallowed a pinecone. And the shock was finally starting to pass, leaving my heart heavy and my head full of the terrible details.

Harmony smiled sadly and sank into the chair next to mine. “The way I hear it, you’ve done more than your fair share of singing today.”

I nodded and sipped carefully from the cup, grateful for the soothing warmth that trickled down my throat. “But it’s over now, right? Belphegore can’t leave the Netherworld, and Marg won’t come back, right?”

“Not if she has any sense. The reapers know who she is now, and they’ll all be looking for her.” Harmony glanced to her left, and my gaze followed hers to the living room, where my aunt had died, my cousin had been restored, and I’d whacked a psychotic grim reaper with a cast-iron skillet.

Weirdest. Tuesday. Ever.

The paramedics had been gone for less than half an hour, and the thick white carpet still bore tracks from the wheels of the stretcher. They’d rolled Aunt Val out draped in a white sheet, and Uncle Brendon and Sophie followed the ambulance to the hospital, where she would get stitches in the back of her head, and her mother would be officially pronounced dead.

Sophie didn’t understand what had happened; I’d known that from the moment she regained consciousness. But what I hadn’t anticipated was that she would blame
me
for her mother’s
death. My cousin was technically dead when Aunt Val made the bargain that had saved her daughter’s life, and Sophie didn’t remember most of what she’d seen before that. All she knew was that her mother had died, and that I’d had something to do with it. Just like with my own mother.

She and I had more in common now than we ever had—yet we’d never been further apart.

“How did you know? About all of this?” I asked Harmony, waving toward the living room to indicate the entire disaster. But she only frowned, as if confused by the necessity for my question.

“I told her.”

Startled, I looked up to find Tod sitting across from me, his arms folded on the table, a single blond curl hanging over his forehead. Harmony smiled at him, letting me know she saw him too, then rose to check on the brownies.

“How did you do it?” I brought the teacup to my mouth for another sip. “How did you guide Sophie’s soul? I thought you were a reaper.”

“He’s both,” Nash said from behind me, and I turned just as he followed my father through the front door, pulling his long sleeves down one at a time. He and my dad had just loaded Aunt Val’s white silk couch into the back of my uncle’s truck, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the bloodstains when he and Sophie got back from the hospital. “Tod is very talented.”

Tod brushed the curl back from his face and scowled.

Harmony spoke up from the kitchen as the oven door squealed open. “Both my boys are talented.”

“Both?” I repeated, sure I’d heard her wrong.

Nash sighed and slid onto the chair his mother had vacated, then gestured toward the reaper with one hand. “Kaylee, meet my brother, Tod.”

“Brother?” My gaze traveled back and forth between them, searching for some similarity, but the only one I could find was the dimples. Though, now that I thought about it, Tod had Harmony’s blond curls….

And suddenly everything made a lot more sense. The pointless bickering. Nash knowing Tod “forever.” Tod hanging out at Nash’s house. Nash knowing a lot about reapers.

How could I not have seen it earlier?

“A word of warning…” Harmony gave me a soft smile, but then her focus shifted to my father. “You have to watch out for
bean sidhe
brothers. They’re always more than you bargain for.”

My dad cleared his throat and glanced away.

An hour later, the Hudsons had gone, and my father stood across from me at the bar, chewing the last bite of a brownie I’d had no appetite for. I set his empty saucer in the sink and ran water over it.

He slid one arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I let him. He still knew no more about me and my life than he had an hour earlier—that much hadn’t changed. But everything else had. Now he could look at me, no matter how much I resembled my mother, and see me, rather than her. He could see what he still had, rather than what he’d lost.

And he was going to stay. We’d probably fight over curfews and get on each other’s nerves, but at least those things felt normal. And I needed a good dose of normal after the week I’d just had.

I sighed, staring down at the running water, too exhausted and dazed in that moment to even realize I should turn it off.

“What’s wrong?” Dad reached around me to turn off the faucet.

“Nothing.” I shrugged, then turned with my back to the
sink. “Well, everything, really. It’s just that I’ve only met three adult
bean sidhes
so far, and all three of you are…alone.” Tragically widowed, in fact. “Do
bean sidhes
ever get happy endings?”

“Of course they do,” my father insisted, wrapping one arm around my shoulders. “As much as anyone else does, at least.” And to my surprise, he didn’t look the least bit doubtful, even after all he’d been through. “I know that doesn’t seem possible right now, considering what you saw and heard tonight. But don’t judge your future based on others’ mistakes. Not Valerie’s, and certainly not mine. You’ll have as much of a happy ending as you’re willing to work for. And from what I’ve seen so far, you’re not afraid of a little work.”

I nodded, unsure how to respond.

“Besides, being a
bean sidhe
isn’t all bad, Kaylee.”

I gave him a skeptical frown. “That’s good to hear, ’cause from where I’m standing, it looks like a lot of death and screaming.”

“Yeah, there’s a good bit of that. But…” My father turned me by both shoulders until I stared up at him, only dimly registering the slow, steady swirls of chocolate, copper, and caramel in his eyes. “We have a gift, and if you’re willing to put up with the challenges that come with that gift, then every now and then, life will toss you a miracle.” His eyes churned faster, and his hands tightened just a little on my arms.

“You’re my miracle, Kaylee. Your mother’s too. She knew what she was doing that night on the road. She was saving our miracle. We both were. And as much as I still miss her, I’ve never regretted our decision. Not even for a second.” He blinked, and his eyes were full of tears. “Don’t you regret it either.”

“I don’t.” I met his gaze, hoping mine looked sincere, because the truth was that I was far from sure. What made me worthy of a life beyond what fate said I should have?

My dad frowned, like he saw the truth in my eyes, which were probably telling him more than my answer had. Stupid swirls. But before he could say anything, a familiar engine growled outside, then went silent.

Nash.

I glanced at my dad expectantly, and he scowled. “Does he always come over this late?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s nine-thirty.” Though admittedly, it felt more like two in the morning.

“Fine. Go talk to him, before he comes inside and I have to pretend I’m okay with that.”

“You don’t like him?”

My father sighed. “After everything he’s done for you, how could I not like him? But I see the way he looks at you. The way you look at each other.”

I smiled, as a car door closed outside. “What are you, ancient? Don’t you remember being my age?”

“I’m one hundred thirty-two, and I remember all too well. That’s why I’m worried.” A fleeting shadow passed over his expression, then he waved me toward the door. “Half an hour.”

Irritation spiked my temper. He’d been back for all of three hours, and was already making up rules? But I stifled a retort because even my father’s unreasonable curfew was better than being a long-term guest in my cousin’s home. Right?

Nash glanced up in surprise when I opened the front door.

He was on the bottom step, one hand on the rail. “Hey.”

“Hey.” I closed the door and leaned against it. “You forget something?”

He shrugged, and the slick green sleeves of his jacket shone under the porch light. “I just wanted to say goodnight without my mom looking over my shoulder. Or your dad.”

“Or your brother.” I couldn’t resist a grin, but Nash only frowned.

“I don’t want to talk about Tod.”

“Fair enough.” I stepped down to the middle riser and found my eyes even with his, though he stood one step below me. It was an oddly intimate pose; his body was inches from mine, but we weren’t touching. “What do you want to talk about?”

He raised one brow, and his voice came out hoarse. “Who says I want to talk?”

I let him kiss me—until my dad tapped on the window at my back. Nash groaned, and I tugged him down the steps and into the driveway, out of reach of the porch light.

“So you’re really okay with all this?” He spread his arms into the darkness, but the gesture included everything that had gone indescribably weird in my life over the past four days. “Most girls would have totally freaked out on me.”

“What can I say? Your voice works wonders.” Not to mention his hands. And his lips….