At the edge of the couch, he knelt and pulled his pendant over his head. Tucking it safely away, he braced for what lay beneath her apparent innocence as their connection sparked to life.
“What are you waiting for?”
Nathaniel blinked at the unexpected question. Marked souls exhibited various levels of awareness. It wasn’t impossible for hers to recognize what his arrival meant.
She reached through their bond and spoke again.
“Get it over with.”
His fingers rested above her spine, and he imagined the fabric gave beneath his hand. He shook his head. Forget Saul—he must have had too much to drink. Marks didn’t talk back, and the spiritual couldn’t touch the physical. Hadn’t he just proved as much with his earlier collection?
Ignore her, do the job, then go home. Maybe when this was over, he’d ask Bran about taking some time off. Get his head on straight. The past several months had scoured his already-frayed nerves. The more he thought of it, the better he liked the idea. He doubted Delphi would care.
Forcing his mind back to the task at hand, Nathaniel returned his attention to his sleeping mark. He sank his hand deep… with resistance.
She tensed and sucked in a hard breath.
“Just do it so I can wake up.”
Her bizarre thoughts confused him, so he blocked her out and began his search. Her breathing turned shallow and her heart accelerated.
Nathaniel’s fingers contacted the tendril of awareness nestled behind her heart. It felt strange. Slick but not in the way he’d come to expect. Almost like… silk.
He snatched his hand back. “It can’t be.” Jumping to his feet, he leaned over her, staring. Flushed pink from sleep instead of pale from the cold, he recognized her face.
With a much lighter touch, he located the root of her soul. It strained to escape him, the same as before. He slid his hand down its length and found a coarse patch marring its silken texture.
“It hurts.”
She stirred on the couch.
He withdrew his hand and swiped it down his face. Heaven help him, it was the same woman who had consumed his thoughts since he left her by the roadside months ago. What he had meant as a gift had damned her. His spirit was stained with his guilt and his sins. Where their souls meshed, his had tainted hers over time.
She would be barred from Aeristitia now. Only Dis accepted souls like his, like
theirs
, which meant she was Hell bound.
“Thank you,”
her mind murmured to his.
“I was getting tired of dying.”
His chest constricted. He chanced communication with her, uncertain why or how it would work.
“What do you mean?”
Her thoughts grew irritated. If he pushed much harder, she would wake.
“I want to sleep.”
She snuggled under her blanket and deeper into the couch cushions.
“I’ll let you rest if you answer a question for me.”
The mental equivalent of a sigh brushed through his mind.
“All right.”
“Why did you say you’re tired of dying?”
“Because you’ve killed me every night since—”
“—the accident.”
He completed her thought and lapsed into stunned silence.
She burrowed into the blanket until only the crown of her head remained visible. He reached out to stroke her hair, amazed to feel the gentle waves fanned across the seat cushion.
Though his pendant enabled his physical form to hold on to spiritual matter once freed from its host, the spiritual should only ever contact the spiritual. In this form, he shouldn’t have been able to touch her, yet he could. The caress soothed him, another unexpected facet of their bond.
What horrors she must have witnessed. All because he hadn’t let her soul follow its charted course.
Now what to do? Whether natural order, his tarnished soul, or a higher power was to blame, her end had come.
If Nathaniel didn’t collect her soul, Delphi would throw him into the hottest pit in Hell and pass her collection to the next harvester.
Bran was also a consideration of Nathaniel’s, because Bran’s mortal half put his soul in as much jeopardy as hers had been. Nathaniel acted as his tether, and love for his nephew promised Bran’s soul the journey home his would never make again.
“Still here?”
Her words slurred from sleep. Their bond hummed between them, unbroken by her death.
“For a few more minutes.”
He reached for her again, caught himself, and dropped his hand. He remembered her skin as soft and cold, but now it glowed warm from sleep.
Before he gave in to temptation, to touch, he donned his pendant and left her to the peaceful dreams he owed her.
His life, and her death, had just gotten more complicated.
The vague recollection of something peculiar about last night drifted along the edge of Chloe’s thoughts. Her dream had been different somehow, but the one time she wanted to recall the details, they were hazy.
She’d fallen asleep with her book in hand, and the same awareness of being in a dream had blanketed her. A small taste remained of the usual death and violence, but she’d also dreamed about sorrow. She’d woken lonely, aching from the loss of something she couldn’t put a name to.
As if she had found something she’d been searching for, and the rush of relief, belonging, was heady. Then she awakened to the same empty bed, in the same room from her childhood, and whatever she imagined she had found proved as insubstantial, as elusive, as always.
She gave in with a sigh. She lacked the time to overanalyze this morning. Besides, this dream would give her something new to tell her therapist. She could imagine how that session would go.
She could imagine Dr. Carmichael smiling at her coolly. “Has anything changed since your last appointment, Chloe?”
“It’s odd you should ask. That nightmare man I’ve been dreaming about? You know, the one who tortures me the second my eyes close? Well, it’s like this… I don’t think he’s all bad. I think what he’s doing makes him sad, and he takes that out on me. What do you think about that?”
Yeah. Dr. Carmichael would have a field day with her diagnosis—a patient who experienced Stockholm syndrome with the voice inside her head.
But the man of her nightmares seemed so real, so terrifyingly
there
. Shoving a hand in her pocket, she took comfort from the sliver of pill wedged in the bottom seam. The grainy remains of the other half still soured her tongue, but it was progress. Half was better than whole.
Her dreams might spin out of her control, but she would master her waking hours. The accident had made her aware of how fleeting life was, and she wanted to live hers to the fullest. She wanted to be a glass-half-full kind of person. An optimistic, embrace-the-moment kind of woman her father would be proud of, instead of one who wore her smile like a shield and hid behind it. It would take time for her to work her glass up to full from, well, empty, but she would get there.
Dressed and ready to start her day, Chloe took the stairs down to her store. She spotted Neve on the porch, holding something and waiting to be let inside. “Hey, come on in.”
“You sound chipper this morning.” She reached inside a paper bag and shoved something warm into Chloe’s hand. The smell of fresh baked blueberry muffins drifted up to tickle her nose.
“I slept last night.” She scooted aside while eyeing the bluish and splotchy muffin.
“You rebel, you.” Neve bit into her own muffin as she headed toward the register.
After peeling down the paper cup, Chloe nibbled tentatively until she got a mouthful of the kind of pure bliss that screamed homemade. “You made these?”
A frown tugged at Neve’s mouth. “What gave me away?”
“The taste did.” Chloe took another bite. “This is delicious.”
“Thanks. I bake when I get nervous.” She offered a weak smile. “I don’t have much in the way of a kitchen at the moment, but one day I’ll show you what a good case of nerves can do to me.”
Chloe could sympathize. The soothing weight of a hardback calmed her almost as much as the mental escape hidden between the pages. Some sources of comfort were irreplaceable.
“Shoot.” Neve fumbled her muffin, and it crumbled on impact with the hardwood floor.
Something in her expression made Chloe think she didn’t believe in the five-second rule. “Is there anything—” A shrill ring interrupted her. “Let me grab that right quick.” Leaning over the counter, she answered the phone. “McCrea—”
The same breathy voice from the day before cut her off. “You won’t believe it.”
“Mrs. Marshall?”
“They’re
married
.” Her wail of despair rattled Chloe’s eardrums.
“I’m… sorry?” She gave a concerned Neve an apologetic smile.
“You would think even if she had no respect for her father, or
me
, she would have at least considered you.”
“I…” Chloe didn’t know what to say to that.
“It’s all right to be upset, really. Beth knows you can’t even feed yourself. She left you high and dry, and her father and I are appalled by her behavior.”
Chloe’s cheeks burned. Even if it was easier to heap blame than acceptance at this point, she wished her name hadn’t cropped up. She had a good idea of how her patrons viewed her, and she didn’t need the reminder they saw her as the shopkeeper who was nice, but…
“It’s fine, really.” She made all the proper placations. “I’ll take an ad out in the paper. There are plenty of high school students looking to earn a little extra cash.” That much she could count on. “I’ll find a replacement. Tell her I wish her all the best.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Mrs. Marshall said. A heavy sigh huffed in Chloe’s ear. “I suppose this was inevitable, what with graduation and all. I just wish she had given us a bit more notice.”
The line crackled into silence as their conversation faltered.
“Do you have an address for her?” Chloe grabbed a pen and a stack of sticky notes. “I’d like to send her a little something to celebrate her marriage.” The quiet grew tense. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
Appeased, Mrs. Marshall rattled off an address similar to the one where she’d mailed Beth’s paychecks. She must be living on the Jenkins farm, at least for the time being. With that out of the way, talk dried up again, and this time, she had nothing left to say.
“Well,” Chloe said at length. “I appreciate the call. I’m sure everything will work out given time.”
“You’re kind to think so. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, the next time I need a book or something.” She paused. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” In other words, Beth had been the only thing they had in common. With her gone, there was nothing left for them to talk about. Their short-lived, quasi-friendship ended with a sharp click and the steady hum of disconnection.
Feeling depressed despite herself, she turned her attention back to Neve, who was scraping a fuzzy adhesive smear from the countertop with her thumbnail.
When she glanced up, her eyes held a question for Chloe. She ought to have known she could play normal for only so long.
She’d lasted twenty-four hours longer than expected.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Ask me.”
Her new employee gave her a look that said she was weighing what she wanted to know against what she thought Chloe’s reaction to being asked might be. She licked her lips and must have decided it was a safe enough topic to broach.
“I heard what you said about placing an ad.” She went back to picking at the old tape line. “I thought yesterday went well. I mean, if there’s something you’d like me to improve on, I will.”
“No, it has nothing to do with you.” Chloe rushed to assure her. “Yesterday was great—
you’re
great. This is something else entirely.”
Neve exhaled and lifted a hand over her heart. “Is it anything I can help with?”
“I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “I paid a local high school student to help me out two days a week. She did my grocery shopping and ran errands for me. Paid bills and shipped orders, that kind of thing.” She pointed toward the phone. “That was her mom calling. Yesterday Beth ran off and married her boyfriend.”
“Been there, done that.” Neve brushed her fingernails against her pants. Shaking her head, she didn’t expand on her thoughts. “If it’s just two days a week, I can help out. I mean, if you don’t mind.” Her voice lowered. “I could use the money.”
Relief made Chloe light-headed. “If you want it, the job’s yours.” She felt a happy dance coming on. She wouldn’t have to live on takeout after all.
“I have, um, a couple of obligations at home.” Neve fidgeted. “What will the hours be like?”
“I can let you work half shifts on those days.” Having the store to herself for a couple hours every week was no hardship for Chloe. “That way, you’d still get off around the same time.”
Her hand, and all pretense of cleaning, dropped. “That would be great.”
After checking her watch, Chloe asked, “I know this is short notice, but Beth left me hanging yesterday. Do you think you could swing shopping today if I let you go after lunch?”
“No problem.” A red tinge spread across Neve’s cheeks. “I can probably cover the bill, but I’d need to be paid back today.” She cleared her throat. “Or maybe tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I have a rechargeable gift card tied to Donor’s Grocery. You can use it.”
“Great.” Neve’s relief was palpable. “That would work much better for me.”
“Let me grab my purse, and I’ll give you my list and the card.” She dashed to the office and back, then dug out her notepad. When she pulled out the list, a crisp prescription sheet stuck to its back. A refill Dr. Carmichael had left with her last week. One Beth wasn’t around to fill.
“I forgot to mention one more thing. Beth also handled my prescription refills.” She tapped the paper across her palm. “Do you think you could drop this off at the pharmacy?”
“Sure.” Neve shrugged. “Just tell me where it is.”
“It’s in the front of Donor’s Grocery, so you won’t have to make two stops. Ask for Miss Pat and tell her you’re my new aide.” She glanced away. “Because the pills are narcotic, she’ll have to fax me some paperwork to have you added to the authorized list of people able to make the pickup for me.” Her hand shook when she held out the paper. “Is that okay?”