Before I Wake

by Rachel Vincent

  Em was sniffling, tears pouring down her face, but her chin was stiff. Resolute. She was so much braver than I’d ever suspected. Braver than I’d ever been.

  My hands curled into fists. “Don’t touch her!”

  “Pay attention, now,” Belphegore said, her featureless, black-orb eyes trained on me. “We’re going to play a game. All you have to do is catch the soul. Then we’ll move on to the bonding.”

  “No!” I shouted when she reached for Emma. Em screamed.

  Invidia snapped her neck with one hand.

  Em crumpled to the ground and the scream that tore from my throat had no equal. Sophie, Lydia, and Luca slapped their hands over their ears. Even the hellions winced. The canvas overhead flapped, stirred by the power of my voice. Tree branches shook in the distance, and several fat purple fruits dropped to the ground.

  Still screaming, I fell to my knees at Emma’s side. I checked for a pulse, but there was none. I felt for breath, but she wasn’t breathing. Her beautiful brown eyes stared up at the yellowish Netherworld sky through the ripped canvas, but they had no focus.

  Emma was dead. Not undead, like me. She was gone, her life stolen, her lifeline aborted without a second thought from the hellion who’d ended it. And with her, I’d lost a part of myself that could never be replaced. Emma was my other half. The sister I’d never had. The cousin I’d always wanted. We’d shared every triumph, every failure, and every secret.

  I’d promised I would protect her. Instead, I’d gotten her killed.

  I held Emma’s head in my lap and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Tears filled my eyes and poured over. Inside my head was a maelstrom of grief and fury that couldn’t be expressed by either thought or word. I was made of pain and loss.

  Luca let go of one ear to stare at his hand, and distantly I noticed that it was smeared with blood, more of which dripped from his ear.

  Jaw clenched in fury, Tod took something from his pocket and handed it to Nash, but I couldn’t see what it was through my tears, and I doubted Nash could, either. Neither of them were bothered by the female bean sidhe’s wail. They heard only the song I sang for my best friend’s soul.

  I would have screamed for Emma forever. I would have screamed for her soul until the earth crumbled beneath us both, just to keep from losing her. But Belphegore knelt in front of me and clamped her smooth, hard hand over my mouth.

  “Nicely done,” she said in the sudden, deafening silence. “But you cannot install what hasn’t yet left the corpse.”

  In my grief and outrage, it took me a minute to understand. I’d screamed so fast and so loud for Emma that her soul didn’t have a chance to leave her body. I’d suspended it in place, still inside her.

  But the moment my scream ended, her soul began to rise. Belphegore opened her mouth and inhaled, and Em’s soul began to float toward her.

  My heart hurt. My head hurt. My throat hurt. My entire existence was pain and bleak darkness. Em could not die.

  But it was too late. She was already dead. And even if the hellions would let me put her soul back in her body, there was no guarantee she’d ever regain consciousness. Her neck would still be broken, her body irreparably damaged.

  So this time I screamed for her soul. Belphegore wouldn’t get it. Neither would Avari or Invidia. No part of the Netherworld would have Emma, or any of the rest of my friends.

  I sang for Emma’s soul, and when I held my amphora out, her soul slid into the heart around my neck like it was always meant to be there. It wasn’t. But at least she was safe there. Even if they took the amphora, they couldn’t destroy it, and they couldn’t remove her soul from it.

  “Wonderful!” Belphegore clapped her flawless hands, her perfect lips curled into a forgettable smile. “Now bind her soul to me. Pull her out of your little heart and—”

  “No.” I laid Emma’s body gently on the ground and stood, clutching the amphora in my fist, glaring at the world through fresh, furious tears. “Hell, no. You’re not getting her. You’re not getting any of us. You can kill every single one of them, and I’ll put every single soul in here, where you can’t touch it.”

  Sophie and Lydia cried harder behind me, and Luca tried to comfort them both through his own shock.

  “And if we kill you?” Avari demanded. The hellions stood in front of me now, all in a row, united in their shared rage. In power so strong it radiated from them in waves that stung my skin.

  “If you kill me, you will never, ever get what you want.”

  Avari opened his mouth to make another threat, and Tod shouted over him. A single word that approached the power and volume of my own voice.

  “Now!”

  He charged Avari, and from the other side, Nash charged Belphegore. Both hellions screamed, then bent at odd angles, reaching for something behind them. When they turned, still reaching in vain, I understood. The hilt end of my broken dagger protruded from the center of Avari’s back, where he couldn’t reach it. The blade end was stuck in Belphegore, where she couldn’t reach it.

  Only Invidia remained unhurt, and she was so confused by the chaos and competing demands from Avari and Belphegore for her help that for a moment she turned in circles, paralyzed by indecision.

  Nash rushed around Belphegore and pulled Luca off the bench. I held Emma’s arm while each of the boys grabbed one of my wrists, and right before I blinked us into the human world, I realized that Thane was gone, but I had no idea when he’d left.

  A minute later, Tod appeared next to us beneath the human-world pavilion, with both Lydia and Sophie.

  I dropped onto the ground with Emma’s hand clutched in mine, and though the others stood around me, I saw nothing but Em. Until Nash picked her body up and her hand slid from my grip. He carried her toward the cars, while Luca herded the other girls and Tod pulled me to my feet. I walked, but I didn’t see where I was going.

  I didn’t care.

  After only a few steps, Lydia collapsed and I blinked, jarred out of my own shock. Tod and I knelt next to her. She was still breathing. She still had a pulse. But her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

  “We have to go,” Tod said, sliding one arm behind her shoulders to pick her up. “They’ll cross over as soon as they get the blades out and heal.”

  “No, they won’t,” Thane said, and I jumped, startled, to find him behind us. “I cleaned out their stockpile, during your convenient distraction.”

  “Their stockpile?”

  “The restored souls. I took them all. Including mine.” He took off his glasses, and I was oddly relieved to see that he had both pupils and irises again. “Can’t have them coming after me, now can I? And the restored souls will fetch one hell of a price somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

  Before I could demand that he turn the souls over to the proper authority, his gaze fell to Lydia, lying motionless on the ground. “I couldn’t get hers, though.”

  “What? Her soul? Where is it?”

  “In the Nether. Here. Everywhere. She was syphoning Emma’s pain when Emma died, and part of her soul went with Emma’s.”

  “Part?” I wrapped my hand around the heart hanging against my sternum. It was unnaturally warm.

  “The rest dissipated.”

  “So she’s…empty?” Tod said, staring at Lydia, and his hand curled around mine, around the amphora, like he would help me protect it.

  Thane nodded. “I’ve only seen that a couple of times—a living body with no soul. She’ll be dead in minutes.”

  “If she doesn’t get a soul…” Tod said, his gaze holding mine. Challenging it. There was a choice to be made, and I had to make it.

  I nodded. I understood.

  I could save Emma. Part of her, anyway. And I could save part of Lydia. Nothing would be the same. But at least life would go on. I owed it to them both to try.

  Nash laid Emma on the ground next to Lydia.

  I closed my eyes, but I could still see them in my head and I could feel everyone watching me. Sophie wa
s still sniffling, clutching Luca’s arm. Nash held Emma’s limp hand. Tod was waiting, and he was ready, too. Once I withdrew Em’s soul from the amphora, I’d need a male bean sidhe to help guide it into another body.

  I sang out to Emma’s soul, and when it came out of the amphora, Tod helped me guide it into Lydia’s body. Then we waited.

  At first, nothing happened, and I didn’t know whether to be horrified or relieved by the thought that I’d done it wrong. That Emma’s suffering would end with her life.

  Then Lydia opened her eyes. They weren’t blue, like they should have been. They were brown. Emma-brown.

  “Kaylee?” Emma said with Lydia’s voice, blinking those familiar brown eyes at me. “What happened? Where are we?” She sat up, and everyone moved back to give her space. “Why do I sound weird? Why am I so pale?” she demanded, staring at Lydia’s forearm, stretched out in front of her.

  “I couldn’t save you,” I whispered, and those four words held more shame than I’d known I could feel. I’d promised I wouldn’t let her die. Then I’d failed her. “This was the best I could do. But I swear on my afterlife that they’ll pay, Em. All three of them.”

  Avari wanted my soul, but he was going to get a hell of a lot more than that. He was going to get pain. And loss. And justice. He was going to get vengeance in kind for every soul he’d stolen. For every friend he’d taken from me. This time I would feed from his pain, and with any luck, it would hurt worse knowing that he’d put into motion his own downfall.

  Avari had woken me up and given my afterlife purpose. He’d awakened my rage.

  Emma had given me reason to use it.

  * * * * *

  Kaylee’s revenge is coming.

  Don’t miss the final story!

  A special treat from Rachel Vincent

  A Day in the Afterlife of Tod

  (pre-IF I DIE)

  A Day in the Afterlife of Tod

  8:00 a.m.—Another cup of coffee. Pecan caramel, this time. I’ve tried every flavor of creamer the cafeteria has. The coffee still sucks.

  8:54 a.m.—These E.R. chairs were manufactured in the seventies. I swear cave men were more comfortable sitting on logs and rocks. That’s it. I’m filing that requisition form today. Eight months of practicing the attending physician’s signature is about to pay off… .

  9:47 a.m.—Rush-hour traffic collision. Crushed sternum. Splinters of bone sticking through his skin. Two punctured lungs. Death is a mercy. Hey, is that coffee on his shirt? Smells good. Wonder what kind of creamer he uses?

  10:38 a.m.—Third period. Kaylee has no class this period. I have no one to kill. Coincidence, or fate?

  11:54 a.m.—Six minutes left on my shift. I will not go to the school after work. I will not go to the school after work. I will not go to the school after—

  12:22 p.m.—Lunch in the quad. Nash is having pizza. I don’t care if I never see another slice of pizza. Kaylee’s wearing that blue shirt again. That one that matches her eyes. She looks tired. I will not show myself to her at lunch. I will not show myself to her at lunch. I will not show—

  12:24 p.m.—Nash’s pizza tastes as bland as it looks. But since I already took a bite, he said I should just take the rest of it. Wonder what would happen if I took a nibble on Kaylee…?

  1:48 p.m.—Wonder what would happen if I switch the labels on some of the bottles in the chemistry lab’s storage closet? Ooh! Or I could test the acidity of the toilet-bowl water with these litmus strips. I’m betting it’s acidic… .

  2:36 p.m.—Seriously, why do they still teach history in school? If it’s going to repeat itself, anyway, can’t we just catch it the next time around?

  3:02 p.m.—School’s out. Only nine more hours to kill until there will be actual people to kill. Er, reap.

  4:22 p.m.—Large pepperoni and sausage. There in thirty minutes, or your money back. Minus the fifty-second commute, and the actual delivery leaves me twenty-five minutes to pop over to Mom’s house for a brownie.

  4:26 p.m.—Kaylee and Nash are trying to swallow each other whole. I suggested they eat the brownies instead. Nash threw one at me. My appetite is gone.

  4:40 p.m.—There’s never anything good on TV. At the hospital, they only play news and cartoons. And not the good cartoons. The ones where animals dance around and some little girl with a big head counts in Spanish. Ayúdame!

  4:41 p.m.—If Nash and Kaylee are going to make out instead of watching the movie, they should just hand over the remote.

  4:42 p.m.—The remote slid down between them on the couch, and I am not going after it.

  4:43 p.m.—I wonder if there’s any reasonable way to reinterpret the phrase “Get the hell out of here, Tod” to mean “Please stay and help us maintain the PG rating on this hormonal train wreck.” Maybe if I rearrange the letters…

  5:58 p.m.—Dude. Do NOT answer the door in your underwear. No two-dollar tip is worth that. Now I’m going to have to find something prettier to purge that mental image. Mangled bunny roadkill should do the trick.

  7:00 p.m.—Is it time to reap souls yet?

  7:01 p.m.—Seriously, has time stopped moving? Is this what eternity feels like?

  9:10 p.m.—Kaylee’s practicing conjugating irregular verbs for a French test tomorrow. I said I’d check the verb chart for her, but this stupid language has more sounds than letters, and I’m not sure I even remember how to conjugate English verbs.

  9:24 p.m.—I have no idea what she’s saying, but it’s hot.

  11:05 p.m.—Sabine suggests we play Guess Whose Life Sucks Worse. I can’t lose this one. I’m not even alive.

  11:14 p.m.—New game. Guess Whose Love Life Sucks Worse. It’s a tie. A big, pathetic tie.

  1:00 a.m.—An hour into my shift, and no one’s died yet. Is it possible to be bored to death if you’re already dead?

  3:42 a.m.—Massive cranial and spinal trauma from head-on collision. A cause of death near and dear to my heart. Now we’re talkin’…

  5:19 a.m.—The guy in room 434 looks tired. He looks done. We both know this is the last room he’ll ever see, and he’s ready to end it. He deserves a merciful, peaceful death in his sleep. But he’s not scheduled to go for another four days. Poor guy. Sometimes I wish I was the boss.

  7:43 a.m.—Hit-and-run at an elementary school crosswalk. She can’t be more than eight years old. I hate my job.

  8:00 a.m.—Parents crying in the waiting room. They don’t know yet. I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t have to see her last moments. I wish I didn’t have to be her last moments. I’m sick of white walls and endings. The only thing that doesn’t end in this place is me. I don’t end. I just go on, and on, swinging that scythe glued to my hand. There’s no rhythm to the strokes. Few see death coming, and even those who do see death don’t see me. Because there is no me. Not anymore. Always the reaper, never the reaped. Soon that won’t bother me. Soon I won’t care. Emotional death follows physical death at a different pace for each reaper. I’ve put it off for more than two years, but it’s inevitable.

  It would take a miracle to keep me alive on the inside.

  When I was a kid, my mom said that everyone gets one miracle. She said the trick is recognizing your miracle from a distance, so you’re ready when it arrives. I’m watching. I’m waiting.

  I’m ready for my miracle.

  Keep reading for an excerpt of My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent!

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks first of all to my husband, who puts up with the mental fog I walk around in midbook.

  Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for endless advice and patience.

  Thanks to everyone at Harlequin Teen, for everything done behind the scenes to make this book happen. That is truly an enormous list.

  Thanks to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who made this book possible.

  And a special thanks to Karen Shangraw, who brought Kaylee’s guidance counselor to life.

  The Netherworld—a terrifying, hidden world full of reapers,
hellions and countless other mythical monsters out to possess the body and soul of teenage bean sidhe (banshee) Kaylee Cavanaugh. Find out how it all began with the first titles in Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series.

  My Soul to Lose (prequel novella)

  My Soul to Take

  My Soul to Save

  My Soul to Keep

  My Soul to Steal

  Reaper (book 4 prequel novella)

  If I Die

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  1

  “COME ON!” EMMA whispered from my right, her words floating from her mouth in a thin white cloud. She glared at the battered steel panel in front of us, as if her own impatience would make the door open. “She forgot, Kaylee. I should have known she would.” More white puffs drifted from Emma’s perfectly painted mouth as she bounced to stay warm, her curves barely contained in the low-cut shimmery red blouse she’d “borrowed” from one of her sisters.

  Yes, I was a little envious; I had few curves and no sister from whom to borrow hot clothes. But I did have the time, and one glance at my cell phone told me it was still four minutes to nine. “She’ll be here.” I smoothed the front of my own shirt and slid my phone into my pocket as Emma knocked for the third time. “We’re early. Just give her a minute.”

  My own puff of breath had yet to fade when metal creaked and the door swung slowly toward us, leaking rhythmic flashes of smoky light and a low thumping beat into the cold, dark alley. Traci Marshall—Emma’s youngest older sister—stood with one palm flat against the door, holding it open. She wore a snug, low-cut black tee, readily displaying the family resemblance, as if the long blond hair wasn’t enough.

  “’Bout time!” Emma snapped, stepping forward to brush past her sister. But Traci slapped her free hand against the door frame, blocking our entrance.