Authors: Rachel Vincent
“Fine,” I said, and my cousin gave me a grim smile of thanks.
“You can come with me, but not until you learn how to control that wail of
yours. You don’t have to unleash it at full volume, you know.” Saying that
reminded me that Harmony wasn’t there to teach Sophie like she’d taught me. I
wasn’t entirely sure I could do her lessons justice.
“You can come with me, too,” Sabine said. “But the first time
you do something stupid or put either of us in danger, I’m dragging you back
here.”
“That won’t happen.” Sophie looked slightly less thankful for
Sabine’s concession than she had for mine.
After that, we took up a collection and Emma ordered dinner for
those who needed it while Sabine took a shift searching in the Netherworld and I
tried to teach Sophie what I knew about the one
bean
sidhe
ability she’d inherited.
Turns out my cousin’s big mouth was more practical than I’d
ever given it credit for.
Chapter Fifteen
Sabine’s shift took longer than it should have, because
she couldn’t blink from place to place in the human world, nor could she become
invisible to humans like Tod and I could. Which meant that she had to actually
drive partway to the hospital to pick up the search where Tod had left off, and
she had to be away from onlookers when she crossed over, so no one would see her
disappear.
She was still gone when the Chinese food delivery arrived, and
Sophie and I took a break so she could eat.
I left my cousin at the kitchen table with Luca and Emma
scooping rice and chicken from cartons onto paper plates. Then I headed into the
back of our small house in search of Tod and Nash.
Halfway down the hall, I heard them, one whispered masculine
voice, then the other in answer, coming from my room. I stopped breathing so I
could hear them better, torn between the knowledge that I shouldn’t be
eavesdropping and the relief that for the first time since Nash and I had broken
up, the Hudson brothers were alone in the same room and they weren’t
fighting.
It was a moment I wanted to treasure. Definitely a moment I
didn’t want to spoil. So I listened, just for a minute.
“The truth, Tod. You think she’s still alive?” Nash’s voice was
low and strained. He was worried.
“Yeah, I do. I think Brendon would do just about anything to
protect her.”
“He’s just one man.”
“Yeah, but he’s a smart man, and a big man, and a man who’s
been around for more than a century and a half. He’s also a man who has every
reason in the world to want to get both himself and our mom back here as soon as
possible.” Tod paused, and I pictured him shrugging, though all I could see was
my mostly closed door. “Anyway, if she were dead—if either of them were—Avari
would want us to know. He’d want to feed from our suffering.”
“We’re suffering just from not knowing where they are. Or
how
they are.”
“But not like we would if we knew they were dead. Not knowing
allows room for hope, and Avari can’t feed from worry and hope like he can feed
from true pain.”
I snuck closer until I could see Nash through the gap between
my door and its frame. He sat on the end of Emma’s bed, leaning forward with his
elbows on his knees, the toes of his shoes resting on the ground.
“Maybe they’re dead and he just doesn’t know it.” Nash’s gaze
followed Tod as the reaper paced the rug in front of him, like he had energy to
burn. Worried, angry energy. “Maybe one of those man-eating freaks killed them
and
ate
them, and Avari hasn’t told us because he
doesn’t know.”
Tod stopped pacing and sat on the edge of my desk. “I think
it’s dangerous to assume there’s anything Avari doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know what we’d be willing to do to get our mom
back.”
“Of course he does. Anything. The same thing Kaylee and Sophie
would be willing to do to get their dads back. That’s what Avari’s counting
on.”
“He’ll use our parents against us.”
“Yup.” Tod nodded. “He’ll use us all against one another if he
gets the chance.”
“Do you think he’s found them?”
“No.” Tod didn’t hesitate. “But he wants to find them almost as
badly as we do.”
Nash exhaled slowly. “What do you think he’ll do with
them?”
“There are too many possibilities to even guess at.”
Tod was perfectly capable of an educated guess, but listing all
the horrible ways our parents could die—or suffer for eternity—wouldn’t help
anything.
“Think he’ll kill them?”
“Maybe.”
“Worse?”
“Maybe.”
For a moment—a very long moment—Nash was silent. Then he looked
up, and his next words sounded fractured with pain. “We’re never going to see
her again. You know that, right? She’s gone. She’s dead, or she’s wishing she
were dead, and she’ll never be back.”
Wood creaked as Tod lifted his very corporeal weight from my
desk, and a second later he sat next to Nash on Em’s bed. “I’m not going to let
that happen.”
Nash laughed, a harsh sound that carried disbelief but no real
hostility. “I get that you think you’re all badass, with the undead thing you’ve
got going on, but it’s been nearly three years. The mystique has worn off, and
we all know the truth. Reapers don’t save people—they kill people. Besides, if
she dies in the Netherworld, there’s nothing you can do.” Nash stood, headed for
the hall, walking backward, and I scurried away from the door. “I appreciate
what you’re trying to do, but I’m not the little brother anymore. You don’t need
to coddle me. The truth is that if Avari wants Mom dead, there’s nothing either
of us can do to stop that. Especially you. No offense, but you couldn’t even
save Kaylee, and she was in the human world. Hell, she was in
your
reaping zone.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I pushed my bedroom door open.
“Food’s here.” Nash turned, eyes wide with surprise, but Tod looked like he’d
known I was there the whole time. He studied me, and I realized he was trying to
figure out if I agreed with Nash. If I thought he’d failed me when I’d died.
“Sabine’s not back yet,” I said. “Do you think you could go check on her?”
Tod nodded, almost reluctantly, then stood and slid one hand
behind my head and into my hair. The goodbye kiss he gave me lingered, and it
tasted like sorrow. “Be back in a few.” Then he disappeared.
When he was gone, I closed the door at my back, then leaned
against it. Nash’s brows rose. “What are you doing?”
“We need to talk.”
He frowned. “Is it opposite day? ’Cause I think that’s my
line.”
“I wish you could trust him as much as I trust him.” I let go
of the doorknob and sat on the edge of my desk, where Tod had been moments
earlier. “It would mean the world to him to look at you just once and not see
contempt and suspicion.”
“Wow, seriously? I kinda thought he was lucky that I’m speaking
to him at all, considering...what you two did behind my back. That’s not exactly
the kind of thing that inspires trust.”
Granted. And we were obviously never going to be done paying
for that. “But you trust me?”
Nash sat on my bed and thought in silence for a minute. “Yeah,
actually, I do.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We were together for so
long....”
“Six months. We were together for six months, about a quarter
of which I spent grounded.” Since neither of us had to sleep, I’d actually spent
more time with Tod in the month and a half we’d been together than I’d spent
with Nash during our entire half year as a couple. “But you and Tod have been
brothers your whole lives. Why would you trust me but not him? Especially
considering that
I’m
responsible for everything you
blame him for. I kissed him, Nash. Not the other way around.
I
kissed
him.
”
“I know. But...” He exhaled in frustration. “I understand why
you would do that.
I
messed things up between you
and me. Looking back, I’m surprised it took as long as it did for you to bail on
me—”
“I didn’t
bail.
I—”
He held up one hand. “I know. Just let me finish. My point is
that I practically pushed you toward him, so I can’t really blame you for your
part in this. But I never pushed
him
toward
you.
He went after you all on his own.”
“But he didn’t,” I insisted. “And he wasn’t going to. If I
hadn’t kissed him, he’d probably still be watching from the sidelines, holding
everything inside because he’s your brother. Because he cares about you. Because
he wants to protect you, even from himself.”
“Oh, that’s such
bullshit!
” Anger
flashed behind Nash’s eyes, and I saw him struggle to control it. Which meant
more to me than he could possibly imagine. “I’m sorry, but you’re wearing
rose-colored glasses, Kay. You think that just because you have a heart of gold
everyone else must, too, but that’s not—”
“I don’t have a heart of gold.” Lately it felt more like I had
a heart of steel. Like full-body armor was the only way I could protect the
muscle that didn’t always beat anymore but always felt bruised.
“Yeah, you do. What you don’t see is that Tod would do anything
for you because he loves you, but he’s not like that with everyone else. He’s
not like that with
anyone
else.”
“You’re wrong. He’s not perfect—none of us are—but he’d do
anything for the people he loves, and you’re one of them.”
“Right. I almost forgot that stealing your brother’s girlfriend
is the best way to strengthen that fraternal bond,” Nash said. I started to
object, but he held one hand up again to stop me. “I know. I have to get over
that, and I
am
getting over it. I’m getting over
you,
anyway. But he’s my brother. We share the
same parents. The same blood. He was willing to
die
to keep from reaping your soul, but he wasn’t even willing to keep his tongue in
his own mouth to keep me from getting dumped. That tells me exactly how much I
mean to him.”
I exhaled slowly and sank into my desk chair, one foot on the
floor to keep it from turning.
Don’t say it, Kaylee.
It wasn’t my place. I had no
intention
of saying it
until the words just fell out of my mouth.
“You died, Nash.”
He kind of tilted his head, like he hadn’t quite heard me.
“What?”
“You died, when you were sixteen. In a car wreck. Hit head-on
by a drunk driver who forgot to turn on his headlights. Your heart stopped
beating. You stopped breathing. I know you probably don’t remember all of that,
but I’m assuming you remember at least
part
of
it.”
“Is this a joke? That’s how
Tod
died. I broke a few ribs, but I was fine. See?” He spread his arms, like that
would prove he was right and I was wrong, and I only stared up at him, waiting
for him to understand. For him to
let
himself
understand what was surely already starting to sink in.
“No.” He shook his head a little too hard, and his thick hair
looked like a crazy brown halo for a second. “Kay, no,
Tod
died. It nearly killed our mom. It nearly killed
me.
It was my fault, because I went out when I was
grounded and my ride got drunk, so I called Tod. If it weren’t for me and that
stupid party, he wouldn’t have been on the road that night, but he still would
have died, because it was his time. He was on some reaper’s list.”
“No,
you
were on the list. And you
died, just like you would have died even if your drunk friend had been driving
instead of Tod. But lucky for you, Tod
was
driving.
He was there when you died, and he was there when Levi showed up for your
soul.”
“No.” Nash stared at his hands, lying limp in his lap. “No, no,
no...”
“Do you know what it takes to become a reaper, Nash?” He didn’t
look at me. He was still trying to see the truth in his own empty palms. “It
takes a sacrifice. To even be considered for a position as a reaper, the recruit
has to be willing to exchange his death date with someone else’s, without
knowing about the possibility of being granted an afterlife.”
“You’re serious?” His irises were a
storm
of browns and greens, twisting too fast for me to interpret.
“This is real? You’re saying Tod really...?”
“I’m saying that when you died, your brother started shouting
for the reaper to show himself. He demanded to be taken in your place. He died
way before his time so you could live. So that you could go on and make
something of your life.”
“My fault...” Nash closed his eyes, and I could no longer see
the tangle of shock and regret swirling in his irises. “All this time I’ve been
telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, because he would have died anyway. But
it really
is
my fault. I got him killed.”
“No, you didn’t. It was his choice, and I would bet you the
rest of my own afterlife that if he had the chance, he’d do it all over
again.”
Nash’s eyes flew open, and now the emotion in them was
clear—heartbreak. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he didn’t want you to feel guilty. The same reason he
made your mom and me promise not to tell you, either.” And I’d just broken that
promise. Damn it.
“My mom knows?”
I nodded. “She’s known almost from the beginning. I just found
out last month.”
Nash looked devastated. Confused. Almost...fragile. “Why are
you telling me, if he didn’t want me to know?”
“I probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to. I think that’s
the first promise to him that I’ve ever broken, and I swear it’ll be the last.”
Tod deserved better than a girlfriend who couldn’t keep her word. “But you
needed to know what he’s given up for you. You need to know that he does care
about you, more than you can possibly imagine. We both do. And he would
never
have tried to come between you and me, though
goodness knows he had several chances.” Sabine had even tried to convince him to
work with her to break us up, and he’d refused. “Because he doesn’t want to hurt
you.”
For nearly a minute, Nash sat unmoving on the end of Emma’s
bed. Staring at the carpet. His heart must have been pounding, because I could
see his pulse jump on the side of his neck, even when everything else was so
incredibly still.
Then he met my gaze from across the room. “I’m supposed to be
dead. Tod’s supposed to be alive.”
“No. There’s no more ‘supposed to be,’” I insisted. “It is what
it is, for both of you. This is what he wanted. For you.”
“But he didn’t graduate. He didn’t go to college. He didn’t
even get a senior year of high school. He gave those to me instead, and what did
I do with them?”