Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (21 page)

“The plan—” I said, and people gathered around while I filled Harmony in “—if you’re up for a return trip to the Netherworld this soon, is for you and Sabine to take Uncle Brendon and Nash to get my dad while I distract Avari. By pretending to turn myself in.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “That doesn’t sound even
remotely
safe.”

I shrugged. “It’s the Netherworld. ‘Safe’ doesn’t really apply.”

“And how are you planning to keep Avari from keeping you? What good would it do us to rescue your father but lose you in the process?”

“We’re not going to lose her,” Tod said. “I’m going with her.”

“Yes, and neither of you will have any of your undead abilities once you’re there, other than the ability to cross over on your own.”

“That’s all we need,” I insisted. “As soon as we’re sure you guys have my dad, we’ll just come home.”

Harmony’s blond brows rose in skepticism, and her resemblance to her elder son was almost uncanny. “And you really think it’ll be that easy?”

“No. Nothing’s ever easy anymore. Besides, my plan has facets. Components, even.”

“Well then, let’s hear them,” Uncle Brendon said.

“We know better than to expect my dad to be alone, so to buy you time to...kill things, or distract things, or whatever it takes, I’ll keep Avari busy by negotiating my surrender.”

“Negotiating requires give-and-take,” Sabine pointed out. “You really think he’ll be willing to give anything? Isn’t
taking
everything kind of his thing?”

“He doesn’t have to actually give up anything. I just have to keep him talking, even if all he says is no, over and over. I’m not really surrendering, remember, so it doesn’t matter whether he gives in to my demands.”

“I don’t get it.” Sophie frowned at me in confusion. “Why would he negotiate with you at all? Why not just...take you?”

“He would if he could,” Tod explained. “But Kaylee’s even harder to catch now than when she was alive. To take her soul against her will, he’d have to physically remove it from her resurrected body, which will be hard to do, because she’s not just going to stand there and let him have it. She’s undead
and
she’s a
bean sidhe.
She can cross back into the human world whenever she wants.”

“But he kept Thane’s soul, right?” Em said. “And Thane could cross over, too.”

“Yes,” I said. “But Thane was unconscious when he was delivered to Avari.” By Tod, who’d broken reaper law by turning on one of his own to keep Thane from making my last days miserable. “By the time he woke up, he was already missing his soul. If Avari physically catches me, I have no doubt that the first thing he’ll do is knock me out so he could take my soul and replace it with his own breath. Like he did with Thane.” Demon’s Breath could sustain my body, in absence of my soul, allowing Avari to torture both parts of me separately. And possibly simultaneously.

“But he knows that’s not going to happen,” Nash said, and Sabine nodded in agreement. “Which is why he’s trying to make you hand over your soul voluntarily?”

“Yup.” I glanced around at each of them. “And he’ll take any and all of your souls, too, if he gets the chance. Which is why I’m going to stall him while you guys look for my dad. I don’t want any of you anywhere near Avari.”

Uncle Brendon looked unconvinced. “And if he sees through your delay tactic?”

“Then I’ll play on his greed and on the envy that will inevitably accompany it when he finds out I kissed Ira.”

Harmony glanced at Tod in question, then back at me. “Ira?”

“Hellion of wrath,” I explained. “He wanted a taste of my anger in exchange for telling me where my dad’s being held.”

Sabine smirked. “Kaylee makes friends everywhere she goes.”

“Whatever. It was a completely disgusting, totally platonic mistake and I don’t want to talk about it. Ever. Are we ready?”

“What about us?” Sophie motioned to Luca and herself. “I can cross over.”

“No,” her dad said. “You’re staying here.”

For a second, I thought Sophie might argue. But then she closed her mouth and I realized she was relieved. She would have come with us, if we’d let her, and that actually meant something to me. But she was just as happy to stay in the human world, out of danger.

Relatively speaking.

“Obviously, Emma and Luca will have to stay, too,” Harmony added. She got no arguments.

“Okay, let me change into something more appropriate for a descent into hell.” Uncle Brendon glanced down at the suit he wore, then up at Tod. “This would go faster if you give me a lift.”

Tod nodded, and Brendon leaned over to kiss Harmony one more time. Sophie was still fake gagging when he and Tod disappeared from the kitchen.

Harmony rounded the counter and poured herself a mug of coffee. When she looked up again, she caught me smiling. “What?”

“I just... Don’t listen to Sophie and Nash. I think you two are cute together.”

“Me and Brendon?” Her sudden flush had nothing to do with the hot coffee.

“Yeah. You obviously make each other happy, and it’s good to see someone happy right now, when everything else seems so...dire.”

I wondered if Tod and I looked as cute together as she and my uncle looked. My opinion was no doubt biased, but I was pretty sure we were damn near lethally adorable.

“Well...thanks, Kaylee.”

“Also, thanks for going out with Sophie’s dad instead of mine. It would have been
beyond
weird for my dad to be dating my boyfriend’s mother.”

Harmony choked on her coffee, and I took the mug while she coughed. Then she gave me a small frown. “Kaylee, your father and I were never serious. Not even before he met your mom.” She leaned against the counter, her gaze unfocused with the memory. “Actually, Brendon and I weren’t very serious back then, either. We went separate ways
years
before I met my husband and Brendon met Valerie.”

“Well, however it happened, I wish it could happen to my dad.” He’d had as rough a time the past few months as I had, and he had no one to talk to about everything that had gone wrong. No one but his brother and daughter, anyway, and that wasn’t the same at all.

Harmony motioned for me to follow her to the table, where we both sat, and I began to wish I had poured myself a cup of coffee. “Kaylee, I don’t think your father’s going to be ready for something like that for a very long time.”

“Long time by human standards or
bean sidhe
standards?”

She set her mug down. “Has no one explained to you about why your father took your mother’s death so hard?” She blinked, then rephrased. “Well, of course, he took his wife’s death hard, and it’s no wonder, considering how she died. But has anyone explained to you why he’s still taking it hard, more than thirteen years later?”

“I don’t...” I hesitated, thinking back about everything my aunt and uncle had ever told me about my parents and about my mother’s death. There wasn’t much. “You know, people don’t exactly line up to explain things to me. So...what have I missed?”

“Kaylee, your parents were soul mates.”

I smiled at the thought and wished I could remember more about my mother. “I know he thought so, too.”

“No.” Harmony smiled, like I’d said something that amused her. “I don’t mean that they liked each other a lot, or even that they were destined to be together. Destiny is more of a faerie tale than most people think
bean sidhes
are.”

“So then, what does that mean, soul mates? You’re saying that’s some kind of real thing?”

“Very real.” Her smile was back. “Your father and mother were so very much in love that some small part of their souls melded.”

“Melded?” That sounded more like metalwork than love.

“Yes. He carried a bit of hers, and she carried a bit of his.”

“Seriously?” I said, and she nodded. “What does that have to do with her death?”

Harmony’s smile faded, and her eyes went so uncharacteristically still that I hadn’t realized I was seeing emotion in them until she hid her thoughts from me entirely. “Your mother’s soul wasn’t so much reaped as stolen, and because it wasn’t turned in to the proper authorities, your father never got that bit of his own soul back. Likewise, he still carries a part of your mother’s with him. He is quite literally lovesick, and he won’t be able to truly let her go until her soul finds rest and his is made whole again.”

The sudden deep ache in my chest caught me by surprise. My father missed my mother so much that he was actually sick from the loss. His soul was incomplete. He might never get over her, and she...

My mother...

That ache deepened until I almost couldn’t stand it. “So, we know for sure, then, that she’s not resting in peace?”

Harmony nodded slowly. Sadly. “I’m sorry, Kaylee. I didn’t realize you didn’t understand that.”

I’d had no idea. “So, they’re both still suffering. Together.”

“Yes. Your father’s soul isn’t his own, and he won’t be able to move on from her death until it’s intact again. And, obviously, the same goes for your mother.”

I sat there staring at nothing. Stunned. My parents were soul mates. Literally. They carried a part of each other, and neither of them would have peace until their souls were whole again and my mother was finally at rest.

My parents
had
to be the most romantic couple in history, which would have been mind-blowingly cool...if their love story didn’t have the most tragic ending ever.

Chapter Thirteen

We stood in pairs, holding hands in front of Lakeside, the mental-health ward attached to the hospital where Tod and Harmony both worked, one to treat people, the other to kill them. Holding hands was the only way Harmony and Sabine could keep my uncle and Nash invisible.

Tod and I just...didn’t want to let go.

“I hate this place,” I said, and Tod squeezed my hand. “Something tells me it’ll only be worse on the other side of the world barrier.”

Again, no one argued.

“So, what?” Nash said, staring up at the three-story building. “We cross over first, then head into the basement? Or we blink into the basement, then cross over?”

In truth, there were risks either way. “I vote for blinking in, then crossing over, because once we cross over, there can be no blinking.”

“Good point,” my uncle said.

I let go of Tod and held my hands out to Nash and Uncle Brendon, while Tod took his mother’s hand and Sabine’s. A second later, we all six stood in the basement of the mental health building, and I wished I’d thought to bring a flashlight. If the basement had ever been in common use, I couldn’t tell from the dripping water, dank smell, and almost total absence of light.

Sabine pulled her cell phone from her pocket and turned on a flashlight app, but I realized quickly that I didn’t want to see any of what she was showing me, even in the human world. With some additional light from our cell phones, we found the largest room of the basement—there were only a few of them—and decided that would be the best place to cross over. Even if my dad wasn’t actually in that room, if Avari had an audience, or even just a few current victims to play with, he’d probably like room to spread out.

Ira hadn’t actually told me that Avari was
with
my dad at Lakeside, but planning for anything less than the worst-case scenario would have been foolish.

We split into our pairs again and agreed that Tod and I would cross over first, to capture Avari’s attention. Then the other pairs would cross over in two different areas of the basement, to increase their chances of finding my dad quickly. Instead of walking around in the Netherworld version of the basement, as soon as they’d determined that a room didn’t contain my father, they would cross back to the human world, go to another room, then cross over and search again. That would surely decrease the chances of them being caught.

Sabine and Nash had instructions to cross back to the human world immediately if they ran into something they couldn’t handle or if either of them got hurt. Tod and I were given the same instructions, but I dismissed them immediately. I had no plans to leave the Netherworld without my father.

My uncle seemed to realize that. He pulled me aside and took both of my hands, staring straight into my eyes, though he couldn’t possibly have seen them very well in the dark basement. “Kaylee, please be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

Nash laughed out loud.

“Okay, I always
try
to be careful.” But the truth was that “careful” doesn’t always get the job done. If you’re not willing to risk everything you have and everything you are for those you love, what’s the point in living? Er, in my case, not living? My afterlife wouldn’t be worth having without my friends and my family, and I wasn’t going to let Avari take any more of them from me. From the rest of us.

“Just...don’t do anything heroic, okay?”

I nodded. I had no plans to take crazy risks. I just wanted my dad back.

My uncle must have seen some of that in my eyes, because he turned to Tod next. “If this goes bad, get her out of there.”

Tod nodded. “Count on it.”

He and I took up a position near the outermost wall of the large basement, not so close to the cinder blocks that anything growing on them could reach for us, but close enough that we were unlikely to suddenly appear in the middle of a crowd. Or a piece of furniture.

My palms were starting to sweat. Tod took my hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay, Kaylee,” he whispered. “One way or another.”

I let him cross us both over so I wouldn’t risk losing touch with him in the process.

When I opened my eyes in the Netherworld, I was nearly blinded. Not that the light was that bright, but after the darkness of the human-world basement, any light shining in my eyes was a shock to my system. I stood as still as possible while my eyes adjusted, clutching Tod’s hand, and the first thing I noticed when I could see again was that the light was
dancing.
Shadows jumped and stretched. Light flickered over grimy cinder-block walls, odds-and-ends furniture, and an assortment of bizarre creatures sitting, standing, and lounging all over the large room.