Before I Wake ss-6

by Rachel Vincent

  My hands were shaking again, and my heart was pounding like it hadn’t since the night I died. “You’re not coming with me?”

  Madeline shook her head. “Since you’re new, under normal circumstances, I’d go to observe and help out where I can. However, I have a meeting with the head of my old district in five minutes, wherein I plan to beg for some emergency manpower.”

  I nodded slowly, and a cold numbness blossomed in my stomach, then began to spread. On my own. I was going to be on my own. If I died, there’d be no witness to tell my friends and family what happened to me.

  “Kaylee, listen to me,” Madeline said, and I forced my eyes to bring her back into focus. “If this goes badly, run. We need the thief, but we need you worse. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah.” Tod had said the same thing the night before. I turned to Luca and could hardly hear the words coming from my own mouth. “Where am I going?”

  “Second floor of the mall. East end.” He shrugged, and I was relieved to realize he looked as stunned by all of this as I was. “That’s where the body is, anyway, though someone may have found it by now.”

  I nodded. Then I concentrated on the mall and blinked out of the quad before I could lose my nerve.

  Three miles was too far for me to go in one shot, at least without more practice, so I had to stop twice on the way, but I still arrived at the east end of the mall just seconds after I’d left school.

  The mall was pretty quiet in the middle of a weekday, when most people were still at work and school, but the indoor playground was crowded with toddlers and their mothers, the gossip and giggles floating up to me from the floor below. Two elderly ladies race-walked past without seeing me, their arms pumping, sneakers squeaking on the floor. Other than that, I saw only a handful of shoppers carrying bags, most of them women in their thirties, and the occasional man in a suit, who’d stopped at the mall for lunch.

  None of them looked like a murderer, which forced me to admit that I had no idea what a murderer looked like. The police had thought Nash looked like a killer, but he was innocent. Tod killed people for a living—only those whose time was up—and no one would ever know, just from looking at him. If they could’ve seen him. Mr. Beck could have been a movie star, but he was guilty as hell. And if we were being really nitpicky about the definition, I was a killer, too.

  So the only thing I could be certain of as I scanned the faces around me, glad I was incorporeal so no one could see me clutching the heart-shaped amphora hanging from a chain around my neck, was that no one had found the body yet. There wasn’t a security guard or an EMT in sight.

  As I walked, heading toward the department store at the very end of the mall, I let a thin ribbon of my bean sidhe wail leak from my lips, satisfied that no one else could hear it when a Sears employee walked right past me with a large fountain drink in hand. Any disembodied soul should have been pulled toward the sound, and I, in return, should have been pulled toward the soul. But I felt nothing.

  Was I too late? Had the thief already taken his stolen soul and fled?

  Frustrated, I stopped at the end of the mall, in front of the cornerstone department store, and crossed both arms over my chest, scanning the few shoppers for something—anything—that stood out. I was just about to admit defeat and return to Madeline empty-handed—secretly relieved at not having found the monster that would most likely have stolen my soul and ended my afterlife—when someone stepped out of the back hall that housed restrooms, storage, and the mall’s security office.

  My gaze probably wouldn’t have snagged on the girl for very long, if hers hadn’t already snagged on me. She shouldn’t have been able to see me, yet she was looking right at me. And she looked familiar. Eerily, thoroughly familiar—every single part of her, including her short, sparkly dress, sequined sandals, and her long, reddish blond hair.

  Familiarity bled into recognition, and chills shot through me, settling into my fingers and toes, reverberating the length of my spine. I’d never actually met her, and I’d only seen her once, but I would have recognized her anytime, anywhere, even if she weren’t still wearing the clothes she’d had on the night I saw her. The night I predicted her death. The night she died on the floor of the bathroom at Taboo, the eighteen-and-over dance club where Emma’s sister worked.

  Heidi Anderson. Her death was the very first prediction I’d ever been able to verify, and that led to my discovery of my bean sidhe heritage, which threw me and Nash together as a couple and brought my father home from Ireland. Heidi’s death had changed my life and set into motion the events that had led to my death. Which was how I knew for a fact that I couldn’t possibly be seeing what I was seeing.

  Heidi was dead, yet there she stood. Then she started walking. Toward me. She could clearly see me, even though I was sure I’d done the invisibility thing right this time.

  I backed up, eyes wide, still clenching the heart around my neck, and still she came, smiling that creepy dead-girl smile, long hair swishing behind her with every step. I retreated until my spine hit the wall and there was nowhere left to go unless I blinked out of the mall. But I couldn’t do that. Someone was dead, and a soul had been stolen, and Heidi’s presence couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Was she a ghost? Was there any such thing? I made a mental note to ask Tod or Luca when this was over and I wasn’t staring into the eyes of a dead girl. It takes one to know one, right? So was she like me? Was she undead? If so, where had she been for the past seven months? She wasn’t a reaper. Not a local one, anyway—Tod would have told me if she were. And she definitely didn’t work for reclamation.

  “Kaylee, right?” Heidi said, and her voice wasn’t familiar, because I’d never heard her speak. “We almost met once. Do you remember?”

  I nodded, my insides cold from shock, my hands shaking at my sides.

  “Oh, you’re trembling!” Her smile brightened, but her gaze was cold. “Is that fear or guilt?”

  It was actually confusion and terror, but admitting that seemed unwise, so I started with something more basic. “Are you real?”

  “As real as you are.” She reached for my right hand, then held it in both of hers. Her hands were warm around mine, and undeniably solid.

  “How…?” She was dead. I knew she was dead. Was she the corpse Luca had sensed? If so, what was she doing here? Was this a trap?

  I couldn’t make sense out of all the possibilities, and I couldn’t make sense out of her.

  “You’re asking the wrong question. How doesn’t matter,” Heidi said, and she laughed when I pulled my hand from her warm grasp. “What should matter to you is why. Ask me why.”

  I blinked, but no words came out. I was drowning in shock and horror, followed closely by a devastating confusion.

  “Okay, I’ll say your lines, but just this once.” Heidi cleared her throat and closed her eyes, and when they opened again, she frowned at me in a mask of bewilderment obviously meant to mimic my own. “Why are you here, Heidi, when we both know you died months ago?” she said in a falsetto that sounded nothing like me.

  “I’m so glad you asked,” she continued in her normal voice. “I’m here because of you, Kaylee. Also, not coincidentally, I’m dead because of you. I wasn’t supposed to die, and you failed to save me, just like you failed to save all those other girls. Just like you failed to save the woman propped up on a toilet in the bathroom. I left the stall open. Someone will find her soon, and they may never know her death was your fault, but I’ll know it. And you’ll know.”

  I was breathing too fast, and I wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but I couldn’t make it stop. Luca had only sensed one corpse, and if there was a dead woman in the bathroom, she had to be what he’d felt. Which meant Heidi wasn’t dead.

  How could she not be dead?

  “You can’t hyperventilate anymore, but I appreciate the drama. Very angsty. But even if you could pass out, this would all be here waiting for you when you wake up. Me. The woman in the bathroom—a ran
dom, innocent soul, plucked in its prime. And she’s only the start. Every life I take will be on your shoulders. You couldn’t stop it then, and you can’t stop it now. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and scream for their souls. Isn’t that right, little bean sidhe?”

  I don’t know if it was the way she called me a “little bean sidhe” or the way her gaze narrowed on me, her mouth open slightly, like she could taste my fear on the air. Either way, in that moment, I realized I wasn’t talking to Heidi Anderson.

  I never had been.

  “Avari,” I whispered. “You’re the soul thief?”

  Heidi threw her head back and laughed. She sounded like a girl, but that look in her eyes, that brutal mirth in response to my pain—that was all hellion. “That shall be my new epithet,” he said, abandoning the borrowed teen-speech pattern altogether. “Avari, thief of souls. I like it. Although, ‘devourer’ has more of a menacing undertone. But we can work on the details later.”

  I blinked, resisting the urge to shake my head in denial. This made no sense. But then, neither did my existence.

  “What is this? First Scott and now Heidi? How are you possessing dead bodies?” I demanded, trying to find even one connection between the jumble of mismatched puzzle pieces in my head.

  Had he taken Scott’s corpse, then returned it to the morgue? Why didn’t Luca sense Heidi as a walking corpse? And how could Heidi possibly look exactly as I remembered her, seven months after she’d died? How was she still dressed the same?

  “You haven’t figured it out yet,” the Heidi-thing taunted. She put one hand on my shoulder and circled me slowly, trailing her hand across my back, then down my arm, and I could only shudder in revulsion. “The dead can’t be possessed, and even if they could, the real Heidi Anderson would not be fit for public viewing. She has long since started to decompose.”

  “Then what is this? How are you here?” Was this some kind of illusion? Was I dreaming? Sabine could design one hell of a nightmare, but she couldn’t manipulate the fears of the dead, so this couldn’t be her work.

  “I’ve learned a new trick. And I have a new toy.” Avari spread his borrowed arms and turned Heidi slowly, for my appraisal. “Isn’t she pretty?”

  “She’s not a toy.”

  “You’re right. She’s more like a pawn, and pawns exist to be sacrificed. Fortunately, your world is full of pawns.” Avari waved one arm at the shoppers ambling from store to store, but the gesture had greater meaning. Greater horror. His chessboard wasn’t the mall; it was the world. My world. “And I will use as many of them as it takes.”

  “They’re not pawns, they’re people,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “And you want to save them?” he asked. I didn’t bother to answer. “You can’t save them all, Ms. Cavanaugh. Even in your new state of being, you don’t have that kind of power. But you can save one. I will gladly accept your soul in exchange for the one I now carry—the woman in the restroom.”

  The dead woman was bait, chosen at random, to bring me to Avari. But why? “You want to trade my soul for hers?”

  “Precisely.” The Heidi-thing leaned forward until her cheek brushed mine, and my heart stuttered to a stop. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered into my ear, and I wondered what the shoppers would see, if one glanced at her then. Could they see her, and her malicious invasion of my personal space? Because they couldn’t see me. “I don’t think your noble streak runs that deep. I don’t think you’re willing to save a stranger’s soul at the expense of your own. Am I wrong?” She stepped back to look into my eyes, and hers were alight with vicious pleasure at my pain. “Will you suffer eternal torment in exchange for her peace?”

  My chest tightened painfully. “You say that like it’s the only option, but we both know there’s another way.” My hand curled around the amphora hanging from my neck and I clutched it, wondering how my predecessors had met their true end. Had their souls been stolen? Were they now suffering in the Netherworld?

  “Ah, the inevitable plan B.” Avari glanced at my fist, closed around the gold heart, and shook Heidi’s head slowly. “Like those who came before you, you are ill-equipped for the job. This isn’t as simple as taking a soul from a reaper. You’re going to need something more like this.”

  The Heidi-thing held her hand between us. Lying across her palm was a very familiar double-bladed dagger. I gasped, so shocked it didn’t occur to me to run, and I only survived the next few seconds because Avari made no move to kill me.

  I’d never carried a weapon before, and I’d only used one once. The night I killed my math teacher in self-defense. I knew that dagger by heart—after I was resurrected, it sat on my dresser for more than a month. Had he taken it from my room? When had he been in my room?

  Chills ran the length of my spine and settled into my bones. “This is mine,” I whispered in shock.

  The hellion in Heidi’s body looked distinctly amused. “That depends on how you define the concept of ownership.”

  “I killed the incubus who killed me with this,” I insisted. “That makes it mine.”

  The hellion’s manicured eyebrows rose. “I wrenched the metal from the ground and shaped it with my own hands, several of your human centuries ago, and it has been wielded by many other hands for many purposes since. But it always finds its way back to me eventually. Had I known yours was the soul that incubus intended to capture, I would never have sold him the blade.”

  Because Avari wanted my soul for himself.

  “Take it,” the hellion said with Heidi’s voice.

  I picked up the dagger in a horrified mental fog, vaguely aware that Avari could kill me anytime he wanted, dagger or no dagger. Was I supposed to use it against him? If so, why would he give it to me?

  The blood—both mine and Mr. Beck’s—had been scrubbed clean, but the hilt hummed in my palm with a familiar resonance, like a whispered echo of my own bean sidhe wail. Beck’s soul was still trapped inside, and it called to me every time I touched the hellion-forged steel.

  “I don’t understand…” I said, and my voice sounded hollow.

  “Yes, you do. You now hold the instrument that could have saved your predecessors’ lives. Surely you must have known this little confrontation could only end in violence.” Avari spread Heidi’s arms, offering her up for sacrifice. “Have it done, then. Slaughter the girl you failed to save.”

  He wanted me to stab her. Him. Them—or whatever. He wanted me to shove my knife through flesh he’d proven to be solid and warm.

  The dagger shook in my hand.

  Heidi was already dead. I wouldn’t be killing her. Intellectually, I knew that. But this wasn’t self-defense. This wasn’t even a fair fight, because for no reason I could understand, Avari wasn’t trying to kill me.

  “Ticktock, little bean sidhe. Kill me now, or the next blood I spill is on your hands. It might be her blood.” The Heidi-hellion glanced to the left, where a woman in a mall cop’s uniform walked past us in blissful ignorance. “Or his.” She nodded toward a boy not much older than me, in a fast-food restaurant uniform.

  “Why would you let me kill you?” I whispered, tightening my grip on the dagger. I had no choice. I couldn’t let Avari kill again, nor could I let him leave with an innocent soul.

  “Because you will suffer from this far more than I will,” Heidi whispered, and suddenly I understood. The hellion wouldn’t die just because his physical form did, but he would feed from my trauma. “Do it now, or I will take the small one.”

  I followed his gaze and horror swallowed me whole when I found a toddler holding her mother’s hand, clutching a star-shaped Mylar balloon in the other.

  “How many souls do you intend to reclaim today, Ms. Cavanaugh?” the Heidi-thing said, already inching toward the mother and child. “The choice is yours.”

  Stab Avari and capture the soul he’d stolen in the dagger he’d forged, or abandon that soul and let an innocent child die.

  There was really no choice at all.<
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  I sucked in a deep breath and swallowed a sob, tightening my grip on the dagger. I tore my gaze from the toddler and stared into Heidi’s eyes, trying to see Avari staring back at me. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I shoved the double blades deep into Heidi’s stomach. Warm blood leaked sluggishly onto my hand, slower than what had flowed from Beck’s chest, but just as warm, and red, and gruesome.

  Her eyes widened and she made a strangled sound of pain. “That truly hurts,” the hellion whispered, with a rare note of surprise. A silver bracelet slid down her arm as she grasped my shoulder for balance, hunched over my knife. “How extraordinary.”

  I couldn’t hold her up, so we both fell, and distantly I noticed that no one rushed to help her. As solid and real as she was, they couldn’t see her, just like they couldn’t see me.

  Heidi sprawled on the floor beneath me, her jaw clenched in pain, her gaze glued to mine as the hellion swallowed my agony, along with his own.

  I didn’t want to spill blood. I didn’t want to fight hellions. I didn’t want to watch people die.

  As I blinked through my own horrified tears, a colorless, shapeless haze leaked from Heidi and curled around the dagger, soaking into the hellion-forged steel like water pulled up into a sponge dropped into a puddle.

  Her soul. Or maybe the soul of the woman Avari killed.

  “Until we meet again,” the demon whispered with a dead girl’s voice. “And, Ms. Cavanaugh, next time it won’t be a stranger.”

  His words sent fresh terror through me as I watched, paralyzed by the true pain racking the hellion’s borrowed features. The last of the soul soaked into the dagger and Heidi began to fade from existence, like a shadow dying slowly with the rising of the sun. When she was gone, I still held the double-bladed knife, on my knees on the second floor of the mall.

  All that remained of Heidi Anderson was the blood on my knife and a dark bit of smoke where she’d lain, like the Nether-fog that constantly churned between worlds. And as I watched, breathing slowly through my own horror, that dark smudge of…something…began to fade into nothing, just like Heidi’s body had.