Authors: Rachel Vincent
I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
“It’s not funny.” He frowned, and even his frown was beautiful.
“It was torture.”
“I’m not laughing. I’m just feeling very, very lucky.”
“Is it possible that this liquid envy has some kind of osmosis
effect? Like maybe it’s leaking out through your pores, and I’m breathing most
of it in? Because I’m reliving the worst envy of my entire existence, and you
seem just fine.”
I shrugged. “I have nothing to be jealous of.”
His pale brow rose again, and I realized I’d accidentally laid
down a challenge. “I’m perfectly covetable, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I’m grateful every single day for the fact that
you’re invisible to everyone else most of the time, so I’m the only one looking
at you.” And I looked at him a lot. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever
seen. “So I don’t have to beat girls off of you.”
“Would you?” He looked intrigued. “Would you fight for me?”
“Would you make me?”
“No. There will never be anyone else for me, Kay.” He grinned
that evil reaper grin, and I knew what was coming before the words even left his
tongue. “But there were a few
before
you....”
“La la la!”
I covered my ears and
squeezed my eyes shut, pretending I couldn’t hear him. But the seed had already
taken root in my brain.
He pulled one hand away from my ear. “How are we supposed to
evaluate the strength of this essence of envy if you refuse to explore your own
jealousy?”
I opened my eyes and dropped my other hand. “Fine. Point
taken.” But I didn’t have to like it. “How many?”
He frowned again. “How many what?”
“How many girls? Before me?”
His frown deepened. “That’s not what I was getting at. It’s not
a competition....”
“I know. It can’t be a competition, because I can’t compete.
Because I’ve never been with anyone but you. But you can’t say that, can you?”
He flinched and I felt sorry for him for a second. Just
one
second. “How many, Tod?”
“I think we’re losing track of the point, here.”
“Addison? Were you with her? Like,
with
her?”
I saw it in his eyes, and my chest ached like I’d been punched.
Like someone had tried to rip my heart out through my rib cage. “She was your
first.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to swallow, but my throat didn’t want
to work right.
“Kaylee.” His hands slid down my arms, and my eyes flew open
again.
“What is it with you Hudson boys and your first loves? She was
a rock star. A TV star. And she would have burst right out of any
one
of my bras. How the hell am I supposed to compete
with that?”
“You’re not. Addison’s dead, Kaylee. Not just dead.” Because
I
was dead, and
he
was dead. “She’s
gone.
” Her soul had been
disintegrated and scattered throughout both worlds two weeks before, and it
could take centuries for it to slowly reform.
“I know, and I’m sorry about that, but honestly, I’m a little
less sorry than I was a second ago.”
His eyes widened, and he looked...surprised.
Crap.
What the hell was I saying?
Addison had never been anything but kind to me. She’d put herself between me and
Avari so I could escape the Netherworld, and she’d suffered horribly for it.
Of course
I was sorry she was gone. But...
“Her memory. Sabine was right. You can never really compete
with the memory of a tragically deceased lover.”
“You don’t need to compete.” He lifted my chin so that I had to
look into his eyes. “I love you, Kaylee. I love you like I have never loved
anyone else. Like I will
never
love anyone
else.”
I knew that, but... “After her?” I didn’t want to know, but
suddenly I
had
to ask. “After Addy? How many? Were
they pretty? Were they...good?”
His eyes flashed in panic. “Okay, you see that this is the envy
talking, right, Kay?”
“I know.” But I didn’t care. “How many, Tod? When you touch me,
how many other girls are you remembering?”
“None. Look at me.”
I looked at him, but I could hardly see him through tears. When
had that happened?
“When I touch you, I’m not thinking about
anyone
but you. When I look at you, I can’t remember what any of the
others looked like. When I hear your voice, I can’t even remember their
names.”
“Really?” My tears fell, and he wiped them away with his bare
hands.
“Really. Compared to you, they’re all nameless. Like...Thing
One and Thing Two. And Thing Three. And...okay, that’s not helping.” His gaze
searched mine, and his forehead furrowed. “This sucks. How can I help?”
“I don’t...” But I did know. “I think I need you to kiss
me.”
His features relaxed, and his grin came back slowly, like he
expected me to change my mind. When I didn’t, he pulled me into his lap, and I
tucked my legs around him. “My pleasure.”
He kissed me, and my hands slid behind his neck. I wanted to
devour him. I really did. And the beauty of being dead and in love is that you
don’t have to come up for air.
I don’t know how long we sat there kissing, tangled up in each
other and nearly desperate for more, but I know we didn’t stop until Emma came
in to get ready for bed. And I only know when that happened because she
pretended to gag in the doorway.
“I can’t even see you, but I know what you’re doing.”
“No, you don’t,” Tod said to her, his lips still pressed
against mine. “We’re still dressed.”
I laughed and concentrated on being visible on the human
plane.
Em sank onto the edge of her bed, and I climbed off Tod’s lap.
“Better?” he said, and I nodded, my face flaming.
“Sorry. That was intense.”
“That?” Em waved one hand at the two of us, grinning. “Or the
test dose?”
“Both,” Tod and I said in unison. He was only partly kidding
when he continued, “Tell Sabine to give Sophie a
half
dose.”
Chapter Four
“So? Do we have any classes together? Let me see....” I
pulled Emma’s new schedule from her hands as the office door swung shut behind
us. “Crap.” I scanned the schedule again, hoping I’d misread. “There are only a
couple hundred juniors in this school. How can we only have one class
together?”
French. With Mrs. Brown. The only class “Emily Cavanaugh” and I
shared was Em’s least favorite.
She leaned in to whisper, staring out at a sea of faces she’d
known most of her life, none of whom recognized her. “If we were going to make
up my age anyway, why the hell didn’t we go with eighteen instead of seventeen?
Or twenty-one. That would have been nice.”
“You have to finish high school, Em.”
“Why? What’s the point?”
I’m sure there were several dozen good answers to her question,
but I couldn’t think of any of them in that moment; I didn’t want to be there,
either. So I gave her a little taste of the motivation I was clinging to.
“Justice. This is where Avari and the other hellions hang out, remember? Invidia
could be exactly where we’re standing right now, on the other side of the world
barrier. She could be sniffing us out as we speak. How are you going to draw her
into a trap if you’re not here?”
“Valid point. But frustratingly ironic. They hang out here to
be close to us. To feed from our emotions. And now that I don’t have to be here
if I don’t want to, I’m stuck here
anyway,
to stay
close to them.”
“Welcome to my afterlife. Where’s your first class?”
Emma studied her new schedule as we ambled aimlessly down the
hall, and I tried to ignore the stares focused on us—no, focused on
me.
I didn’t figure out what the whispers were all
about until some idiot underestimated his volume.
“I can’t believe she came to school today. Her best friend’s
been in the ground less than twenty-four hours, and she doesn’t even look
upset.”
Oh.
They’d expected me to still be
mourning Emma, which had never occurred to me because Emma was standing right
next to me. It had been much easier to pretend to grieve during the week and a
half before she’d come back to school, when we were still waiting for the police
to release her body so we could bury her. Without her next to me, I’d had no
trouble remembering that she was supposed to be dead.
“Two-oh-four.” Em looked up from her schedule and frowned. “I’m
headed upstairs. See you at lunch?”
“Yeah.” At least that much hadn’t changed.
First period math was weird without Emma. The stares continued
all the way through class, and I actually had to do math during the last five
minutes of class, when we were supposed to be starting our homework, since I had
no one to whisper with.
But there were plenty of people whispering about me.
I was the center of attention when I’d secretly died, yet
somehow I was still the center of attention now that Em had secretly lived. I
couldn’t win for losing.
“Hey, Kaylee.” Chelsea Simms sat next to me—uninvited—at my
empty lunch table in the quad, and I silently cursed myself for showing up
early.
“Hey.” I had no third period class, so I usually spent the hour
there, knowing that if Tod had a break at work, that’s where he’d look for
me.
Chelsea pulled a notebook from her bag. “Do you mind if I ask
you a few things about Emma? I’m working on a memorial article for the school
paper.”
Oh, yeah. Journalism was also third period. Just my luck.
“Sure.”
She frowned, studying my expression. “If this is a bad time, I
can...?”
“No, go ahead. I don’t mind talking about Em. Feels like I’m
keeping her memory alive.”
How’s that for
quotable?
“Great. Em was a junior, right?” Chelsea said, and I nodded.
“And she had two sisters?” Another nod, and I noticed that though her notebook
was open, she wasn’t taking notes. Whatever she really wanted to ask obviously
required courage she hadn’t yet worked up.
“And...was she a good student?”
I turned to face her directly, looking right into her eyes.
“Chelsea, just ask whatever you really want to know. Otherwise, this sounds like
it’ll take all day.”
She blinked, surprised, then nodded. “Okay.” She sat straighter
and actually picked up her pen, ready to write. “Do you really think it’s a
coincidence that Emma Marshall and her boyfriend died on the same day? Just one
day after Brant Williams died in his car, here on campus?”
I swallowed, trying to hide my own surprise. Obviously our
classmates were just as suspicious as the police had been, but I hadn’t expected
anyone to actually ask that question. And I certainly hadn’t expected anyone to
expect
me
to have an answer.
“Do I think it’s a coincidence?” I bought time to think by
repeating the question. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t see how it could be
more than that. They died at different times, in different places, in different
ways.” Sort of. Neither Brant nor Jayson had any obvious cause of death, so the
coroner had labeled them both with the generic “heart failure.” Which wasn’t
exactly common in teenagers.
“Were you there when Emma died?” Chelsea asked, her gaze glued
to me. Watching closely for my reaction.
“Yeah. A bunch of us were. We took the day off for my
birthday.” The tears in my eyes were real—I was lying, but the truth was no less
traumatic. “We were just goofing off on the swings. At the lake. But Em went too
high.” I sniffled. “She was showing off. Then she let go and just... She just
fell out of the swing. She landed on her back, but she must have hit her head
first, and...”
I stopped there, with another sob. A real one. Picturing Em’s
actual death helped. Seeing Belphegore’s hand on her neck. Hearing the gruesome
crack. Seeing Emma crumple to the ground.
In my memory, it all happened in some kind of horrible slow
motion. That was the only way I’d gotten through the police interview, and I’d
seen no sign that they doubted any of my story.
Their suspicion had come later, when they started calculating
the death toll.
“It must have been horrible,” Chelsea said, and I realized that
my tears were like a shield between us. A line of defense she wouldn’t cross. At
least, not now. Not at sixteen. Though I had no doubt she’d someday dial up the
pressure on some poor lying politician, unfazed by tears.
“It was.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She stood, stuffing her notebook and pen into
the front pocket of her scuffed denim backpack. “Kaylee, I just want you to know
that...we stopped the presses on the yearbooks. They’d already started printing
them, but when we told them about Brant, and Jayson, and Emma, they agreed to
reprint at no additional charge. So...the yearbooks will be late, but she’ll
have a memorial page. They all will.”
“Thank you. That means a lot.” I hadn’t even known Chelsea was
on the yearbook staff.
The lunch bell rang as she walked away, looking more frustrated
and confused than she had before she sat down. I knew exactly how that felt.
Two minutes later, Sophie appeared in front of me and slapped a
newspaper down on the picnic table. “Have you seen the headline? I would have
missed it if my dad didn’t still read the news in print.”
Luca set his tray down and sat across from me, but Sophie was
obviously too riled up to relax. She hadn’t bought a lunch, either.
“Headline?” I glanced at the paper and had to read it upside
down. “‘Eastlake High Named Most Dangerous School of Its Size in the
Country.’”
Sophie nodded, eyes wide, brows furrowed.
“Wow.”
“Look at the picture,” Luca said, his burger halfway to his
mouth. So I looked.
Beneath the headline was a black-and-white shot of...us. Me,
Nash, Sabine, and Emma, in Lydia’s body. It was taken at her funeral. The
caption read, “Teens Mourn Yet another Lost Classmate.”
I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped that Lydia’s parents
wouldn’t see that photo.
“Do you see that?” Sophie demanded, like I was refusing to
look. “We’re the most dangerous school in the country.”
“Of our size,” Luca added, looking up at her. “Don’t you want
something to eat?”
“How could I possibly digest anything with that staring back at
me?” She waved one hand at the paper still lying on the table.
“What’s wrong?” Nash asked as he and Sabine settled onto the
bench next to Luca.
“What’s
wrong?
We’ve just surpassed
inner-city alternative schools all over the country as the most dangerous school
in the U.S.”
“Of our size,” Luca added again. “I’m sure there are way more
dangerous schools out there with several thousand students.”
Nash laughed, and Sophie turned on him. “This isn’t funny! All
the other schools on this list are plagued by gang violence and organized
crime.” She lowered her voice and leaned over the table. “We’re the only one
overrun with demons.”
“How do you know?” Sabine plucked a fry from Nash’s tray.
“What?” My cousin finally sank onto the bench.
“How do you know those other schools aren’t also infested by
hellions? I mean, the paper doesn’t say that’s what’s wrong with our school,
does it?” she asked, and Sophie shook her head reluctantly. “Then it may not say
what’s really wrong with those schools, either. For all we know, their ‘gang
violence’ could really be roving bands of gremlins, shaking down students for
their lunch money and handheld technology.”
“When something’s funny, you should let yourself laugh,” Nash
added. “Otherwise, you’ll just stay mad or scared, and those little frown lines
in your forehead will become permanent.”
Sophie’s eyes widened, and Sabine laughed out loud.
“Hey, Sophie!” Someone called from across the quad, and we all
looked up to see Jennifer Lamb crossing the grass toward us, holding a chemistry
textbook. “Can you give this to your cousin? She left it in class.”
“My cousin?” Sophie stood to take the book and glanced at me in
confusion, but before I could tell her it wasn’t my book, Jennifer
elaborated.
“Emily, right? She’s my new lab partner. Is she always
so...grumpy?”
Sophie’s hand clenched around the thick textbook. “She’s
Kaylee’s
cousin. On a completely different side of the
family.”
Jennifer frowned. “But her last name is Cavanaugh.”
Sophie turned to glare at me. “Great. You made her
my
cousin, too.”
I tried to hide a laugh while Jennifer backed away from us in
confusion.
Emma finally showed up nearly halfway into the lunch period,
about thirty seconds before I would have gone to look for her. “Today sucks!”
She dropped her bag on the table, and Luca had to snatch his tray out of the way
before his burger got smashed. “My new math teacher made me take some kind of
placement test, which made me late for English, so now my English teacher hates
me. My new lab partner is an idiot, and I spent half of lunch looking for my
damn chemistry book. And I
hate
cafeteria
hamburgers.” She collapsed onto the bench in a huff and leaned forward to put
her forehead on the table.
We stared at her in surprise. I think we all expected her to
sit up with a smile and jokingly demand a do-over day. When that didn’t happen,
I put one hand on her shoulder. “Em.”
“What?” She didn’t even look up.
Nash took her text from Sophie. “Your idiot lab partner brought
your chemistry book.”
Em sat up and snatched the book from him. “She probably stole
it. Sabotage. I had no idea we went to school with so many stuck-up little
bitches.”
A sick feeling swelled in the pit of my stomach. Something was
wrong. Something beyond the obvious.
Sophie’s brows rose. “As one of those stuck-up bitches, I have
to say, I’m a little offended.”
“Sometimes the truth hurts.”
I gaped at Em. She was going through something really
difficult—we all knew that—but she was still
Emma.
She was still loyal to her friends and relatively calm, unless she was defending
one of them, and generally a pleasant person to be around.
“Em, is something wrong?”
She turned on me, anger flashing in her eyes. “Weren’t you
paying attention?
Everything
is wrong. I’m too short
to see the whiteboard from the back of the class, and no one’s even said ‘hi’ to
me all day. And it’s
your
fault, Kaylee.
You
stuck me in this stupid twig body, and no one
notices twigs. When was the last time you saw a guy hit on a girl shaped like a
chopstick?” She frowned, then rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m asking the wrong
person, huh? Obviously the Hudsons like girls who look like
little boys.
That androgynous thing might work for you, but for me,
it’s a definite step
down.
”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I couldn’t think past
my shock and the sting of her words. I’d never seen her so angry.
And I was
not
androgynous!
“Sabine?” Nash looked as confused as the rest of us. “Are you
doing this?” He couldn’t be more specific without risking clueing Sophie in on
the fact that Sabine was intentionally manipulating fears. Again.
“It’s not me.” The
mara
looked like
she wanted to say more. “I can only mess with fear, and she doesn’t have any
right now.
None.
This tastes like anger to me.”
“
No
fear?” I said, and Sabine shook
her head.
No fear of not fitting in? Of standing out for all the wrong
reasons? Of having bombed the math placement test? Of being sucked back into the
Netherworld by the hellion who’d already killed her once? I’d never met anyone
who had
no
fear.
“You bet your ass it’s anger.” Emma shoved her chemistry text
into her bag. “What the hell do I have to be afraid of? I
should
be pissed off to be stuck in a second-rate body, in this
stupid-ass school, without my own clothes, and my stuff, and my car. Whose
brilliant idea was this, anyway? Yours?” The depth of anger in her gaze stunned
me. And scared me a little. “Sounds like something you’d do. Another pathetic
attempt to help that only makes shit worse.”