Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (58 page)

“What the hell?” Thane tried to step forward, but his shirt and pants were glued to the huge, strong stalk, which hardly bent beneath his efforts. He tried to turn his head, and his right cheek caught three more sticky blobs, holding his head at an awkward, painful-looking angle.

Tod burst into laughter and glanced at me. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Yeah. Totally.”
Best accident ever
. “You were taking too long with the duct tape.”

“What
is
this?” Thane demanded, arching his back for a better view of the room, and I noticed that the lashes edging his right eye were caught in a dewdrop of their own. He was well and truly stuck. To a plant. He could probably still blink out of the florist’s shop, but the deadly greenery would go with him.

“As near as I can tell, that is a giant sundew.” Tod chuckled again, and I realized he wasn’t just amused, he was
delighted
. I hadn’t seen him so happy since before Kaylee died. For the third time. “The harder you struggle, the more tightly you’re caught.”

Thane went still, and seemed to kind of hang there, suspended from the plant, one foot folded at an awkward angle just inside the case, the other wedged inside the edge of the big pot. “For how long? When will it let go?”

I ducked into his limited field of vision to catch his gaze. “When have you ever known a predator to let go of its prey?”

Thane’s eyes widened and panic washed over him. “Get me out. Get me out, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

“Oh,
now
you want to talk.” Tod set the duct tape on the nearest table, and Thane rolled his eyes upward, trying to meet my brother’s gaze. “Fine. You start talking while I find some scissors. Where did you meet with these harpies?”

“Here.” Thane squirmed, trying to watch Tod as my brother opened more drawers and cabinets in his halfhearted search for a blade.

“Here, where?” I asked. “Here in Midlothian? Here in the U.S.? Here in Texas?”

“Here in Texas,” Thane said. “South. Somewhere near Austin.”

I nodded encouragingly. “Were they from Austin?”

“How the hell would I know that? They have wings. They could have come from anywhere.”

“No, they came from the Netherworld. They’re not native to our world, and they can’t fly during the day without being seen.” Tod closed a cabinet drawer and turned to pick up a pair of pruning shears from the table they’d been lying on all along. “So they’d probably only fly at night. Which means they couldn’t have come from more than a few hours away.”

I blinked at my brother, impressed. Then I turned on my own detective skills. “How many were there? Did you get any names?”

“Two,” Thane said, as Tod waved the shears in his face for motivation. “They wore long dark coats, with slits cut in the backs. When they flew off, their wings slipped right through the holes and spread out like bat wings.”

“Names?” I repeated.

Thane tried to shake his head, then winced when more of his hair got caught in the dewdrops. “If I heard them, I don’t remember.”

“Think harder.” Tod opened the shears. “Here’s a little inspiration.” He clipped the spine stuck to Thane’s eyelashes, and when the reaper blinked, the sticky blob bobbed with the movement.

“Troy,”
Thane said at last. “The guy was named Troy. The girl had red hair, but I didn’t get her name.” His eye rolled more freely, untethered. “You realize I just pulled a miracle out of my ass for you, right? There’s no reason on earth I should remember that damned name.”

“Troy stole from you.” Tod’s voice was too cold and dead to come from anyone but a reaper. “I can’t believe you ever forgot his name in the first place.”

“What did it look like?” I said, while the reapers glared at each other. “The amphora with Darcy’s soul in it.” Only hellion-forged steel could hold a human—or
bean sidhe
—soul, but it could take the shape of anything from a weapon to a...well, a balloon weight.

I’d asked the question, but Thane responded to Tod. “Cut me loose, and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell us, or we won’t cut you loose,” I countered.

“We’ll meet you halfway.” Tod snipped the spines stuck to Thane’s face, and he could turn his head a little, now limited only by the dewdrops buried in his hair. Three amputated spines stuck up from his right cheek, like grotesque beard stubble.

“It was in a dragon charm, about two and a half inches long, with a ruby for its eye.”

“Charm, like for a necklace?” I asked.

Thane nodded, and a spine near his head suddenly...twitched. It was a small movement, but Tod and I both jumped back, startled.

“What?” Thane demanded. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

A second spine moved, then a third, and suddenly I could see the pattern. They were moving
toward
Thane. Slowly closing in on him. A second later, the top of the huge green stalk itself moved—the smallest of motions—bending toward the top of the reaper’s trapped head.

The plant was slowly curling up around him.

“What the hell is happening?” Thane demanded, and Tod made a strange choking sound in his throat, obviously as horrified as I was.

“Um... The plant seems to be...eating you.”

“It doesn’t have a
mouth
,” Thane snapped. “So how can it
eat
me?”

“Those ‘dewdrops’ will slowly dissolve your flesh and absorb the nutrients,” my brother explained. “Though I can’t imagine how nutritious you could possibly be, considering that you’re rotten to the core.”

“Cut me loose!” Thane shouted, as several more spines slowly curled forward to adhere to his left arm. The reaper waved his still-untethered forearm desperately. “I told you everything I know. Cut me out of this thing!”

I glanced at Tod, and he aimed an exaggerated shrug at Thane. “I would, but Levi’s kind of pissed at me right now for skipping work. He might be more inclined to forgive and forget if I hand over the fugitive he’s been hunting for over two years.”

“You promised to cut me loose if I told you about the harpies!” Thane shouted, and I was amazed at the transformation in him. From psychotic rogue reaper to whining baby in under ten minutes. And all it took was a man-eating plant.

Tod rolled bright blue eyes. “
You
promised to uphold reaper law and only reap those souls assigned to you. Which lie do you think Levi’s more likely to forgive?”

Finally Thane turned to me, desperation thick in his voice. “You’re going to let him do this? You’re not murderers. Neither of you. The guilt will eat you alive.”

Tod laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll even give us heartburn.” He turned to me with a brief, cobalt twist of satisfaction shifting in his irises. “I’ll be right back for you. Just stay put.”

I nodded and sat on the edge of one of Angie’s tables, spinning the shears with my finger stuck through one of the handles. “Say hi to Levi for me.”

My brother didn’t seem to hear me. He was staring right into Thane’s eyes. “You should never have come near Kaylee.”

“Maybe
you
never should have come near Kaylee. She let herself die to protect
you
. Maybe if you’d—”

Tod swung one more time, and his fist crashed into the side of Thane’s skull with a deep thud. “Never gets old,” he said, shaking out his hand, post-blow. My brother squatted in front of the unconscious reaper, wrapping one arm around the base of the huge plant pot and his opposite hand around Thane’s bare wrist, careful to avoid the sticky spines.

Then they both disappeared.

Tod

Levi’s office was empty when I got there, and Thane was still unconscious—both elements of the best-case scenario playing out in my head. The duct tape and notepad I found in my boss’s bottom desk drawer were the icing on my vigilante justice cake.

One piece of the tape went over Thane’s mouth, in case he woke up before Levi returned. The second piece attached the note I wrote to the front of his shirt. I actually considered stapling the paper to his chest, but was afraid that the pain would wake him up.

Levi,

Please find the attached rogue reaper, neatly bound in this Netherworld plant for your convenience. I hope he helps balance the scales tipped out of my favor by my recent absence.

Tod

P.S. Don’t touch the dewdrops.

P.S.2. Please don’t fire me today. I have yet more badassery to perform.

With the note taped to his chest, I arranged Thane and his giant potted plant on the rug in Levi’s office, facing the door, where my boss would be sure to see my gift as soon as he came in. Then I pressed Thane’s forearms to the sides of the huge stalk, to affix them to the sticky spines, further immobilizing him, just in case. I stepped back to admire my handiwork, and the whole thing looked so bizarrely awesome I couldn’t resist taking a picture. Which I texted to both Levi and Nash. Then I blinked out of the office and back into Angie’s floral shop to pick up my brother.

* * *

The sun was going down by the time we got back to Mom’s house, and Sabine was there waiting for us, eating the last of the butterscotch blondies my mother had made the night before. “Why are you here?” I said, when she offered Nash a bite, but skipped over me.

“Same reason I’m always here. Your mom and Brendon are at my house, actively triggering my gag reflex.”

“Her” house was actually Brendon’s, because he’d been her foster father for the last few months before her eighteenth birthday. Sabine was twenty now, and long since old enough to move out, but because her personal economic philosophy scoffed at paying for something she could have for free—like room and board—she’d probably stay on until he kicked her out. Or until Nash got a place of his own and became even more eligible for mooching.

Since my mom spent most of
her
time at Brendon’s, where she would officially live, after the wedding, we’d effectively traded her for Sabine.

It was not an even trade. Sabine doesn’t bake.

“So, how’d it go?” she said, as I pinched a corner from the last untouched blondie on the plate.

Nash’s eyes practically glowed when he answered. “Any day you catch a rogue reaper with a man-eating plant is a good day!”

“Oooh, details!” Sabine said around a mouthful of butterscotch.

Nash and I filled her in, and when I got to the part where a giant sundew plant tried to devour Thane alive, Sabine and Nash traded meaningful looks.

“What?” I frowned, suspicious.

Sabine shrugged. “I haven’t seen you smile in at least a year.”

I plucked a forgotten butterscotch chip from the plate on the coffee table. “It’s not every day you get to feed your arch-nemesis to carnivorous produce.” They grinned at each other again, and I frowned. “Was this whole thing just to make me smile? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to dress Nash in a tutu?”

“This is about bringing peace to Darcy Cavanaugh’s soul, and we’re not done yet,” Nash said. “Now we have to track down the harpies and hope they haven’t—”

“Harpies?” Sabine sat straighter on the center couch cushion. “What harpies?”

“The ones who stole Darcy’s soul from Thane a few years ago,” Nash said.

She frowned. “Why would harpies want a human soul? They typically want nothing they can’t enjoy in some form of debauchery. Unless it’s shiny. They do like their shinies.”

“Her soul was suspended in a charm made of hellion-forged steel,” I explained.

“Ah. Shiny.” Sabine nodded. “How many were there?”

“Two. A redhead, name unknown, and a guy harpy named Troy. Did you know there are guy harpies?” I glanced from my brother to his girlfriend. “How weird is that?”

“No weirder than guy
bean sidhes
,” Nash insisted, and I had to concede the point.

“A harpy named Troy?” Sabine scowled, obviously stuck on that point. “You’re sure he said Troy?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I
know
a harpy named Troy. How many of those could there be?”

“Seriously?” I pushed the empty plate aside and sat on the coffee table, where I could see them both better. “Does your Troy live near Austin?”

“He’s not
her
Troy,” Nash said. Then he turned to Sabine with a frown. “He’s not
your
Troy, right?”

Sabine snorted. “Not even if he were the last harpy on earth. I met him when I was looking for
you
.”

Sabine was in corrective custody when I died. My mom moved within days of my death, trying again to outrun her grief, and Nash lost contact with Sabine. When she was released from custody, she spent nearly two years tracking him down and manipulating her way into a foster home in his school district—only to find Kaylee standing at his side.

Neither of us had been very happy about
that
situation.

“And yeah, they live in Niederwald,” Sabine continued. “South of Austin. But there’re more than two of them.”

“Can you put us in touch with them?” Nash asked.

“I don’t think they have cell phones. Or
any
phones. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be glad to hear from me. I kind of...disabled a couple of them.”

“Disabled?” I wasn’t really surprised. Sabine makes an impression everywhere she goes.

The
mara
nodded. “I might have...ripped one of Troy’s wings half off his back.”

I gaped at her, and Nash blinked. “Barehanded?”

Sabine shrugged. “What? He deserved it. He tried to eat Emma.”

“Whoa, what? Em was there?” I could totally picture Sabine wreaking havoc in a flock of harpies, but Emma? “When was this?”

“A long time ago. Back before you and Kaylee cursed her to life as a brunette and a psychic syphon.”

“That wasn’t our intent.” The memory made me ache deep inside, but I didn’t want to let it go. Memories were all I had left of Kaylee, and the pain that came with them was exquisite. “The supernatural traits came with Lydia’s body. So did the hair color.” I scrubbed both hands over my face, forcing myself to refocus on the present. “I haven’t seen her in a while. How’s she adjusting?”