My Soul to Take

by Rachel Vincent

  “How do you know?”

  I leaned into Nash, smiling innocently as my father’s jaw tightened. “Nash’s friend Tod is a reaper.”

  My father’s brows rose in surprise, and for a moment he forgot to scowl. “Your friend’s a reaper?”

  Nash shrugged. “I knew him before he…died.”

  Dad leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, eyes narrowed. “And this reaper told you the girls weren’t on his list?”

  “They weren’t on any list,” I said, drawing his scrutiny from Nash. “Tod’s boss thinks there’s a reaper out there poaching souls to be sold in the Netherworld. Or something like that.”

  Uncle Brendon froze in the doorway, holding two steaming, fragrant mugs. “Someone’s selling souls in the Netherworld?” He and my father exchanged twin looks of horror and dread before turning back to us. “What do you know about the Netherworld?”

  “Just that there is one, and that some of the locals are hot for human souls.” I shrugged, trying to set them both at ease. “But that doesn’t really matter to us, right? Tod’s boss said he would take care of it.”

  The relief on my uncle’s face was as thick as the tension in Nash’s posture. “Good. The reapers should take care of their own problems. It really isn’t bean sidhe business.”

  Frowning, I scuffed the toe of my shoe into the carpet. “Except that this psycho reaper tried to take a bean sidhe’ s best friend. That kind of makes it my business.”

  Uncle Brendon scowled and looked ready to argue, but my father spoke before he could. “Did people see you bring Emma back?” he asked, cradling his steaming mug as if for warmth.

  Nash sat straighter, eager to defend me. “No one knew what was happening. Em had just collapsed, and everyone thought Kaylee was freaked out over that. And once Emma sat up, they all thought she’d just fainted.”

  That was mostly true, though rumors were already circulating that Emma’s heart had actually stopped for a minute. The lady who took her pulse had probably started them. Not that I could blame her. The poor woman would probably need therapy.

  But then, so might I. And maybe Emma.

  My father shrugged, eyeing his brother sternly. “Sounds like no harm was done.”

  “Except for Julie,” I muttered, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

  My father paused with his mug halfway to his mouth. “She’s the exchange?”

  “Yeah.” And though I knew in my heart that Julie’s death wasn’t our fault, I couldn’t escape the guilt that tightened my chest and made my whole body feel heavy.

  Uncle Brendon sank into the other armchair and shook his head in regret. “This is why you have to stay out of reaper business. That poor girl would be alive right now if you two had just left things alone.”

  “Yeah, but Emma wouldn’t.” My free hand gripped the arm of the couch. “And we had no way of knowing for sure she’d take another one. Tod said there shouldn’t be any penalty for saving a life that shouldn’t have been taken in the first place.”

  “She?” My father slowly lowered his mug onto its coaster. “Do I even want to know how you know the reaper is a woman?”

  I shifted uncomfortably on the couch and glanced at Nash, but he shrugged, leaving it up to me. So I made myself meet my father’s gaze. “We…kind of saw her.”

  Uncle Brendon sat straight in his chair, every muscle in his body tense. “How?”

  “She just showed up.” I shrugged. “When they were doing CPR on Julie. She was at the back of the gym, behind most of the crowd, and she smiled at us.”

  “She smiled at you?” My father frowned. “Why would she show herself on purpose?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” my uncle said. “The reapers will take care of their own. We should stay out of it.”

  For a moment, I thought my father would argue. He looked almost as angry as I was. But then he nodded decisively. “I agree.”

  “But what if they can’t find her?” I demanded, Nash’s hand still clasped in mine.

  My father shook his head and leaned back in his chair, crossing both arms over the front of his sweater. “If you two can find her, the reapers can find her.”

  “But—”

  “They’re right, Kaylee,” Nash said only inches from my ear. “We don’t even know who the reaper will go after next. If she does it again at all.”

  She would. The moment she’d smiled at me, I’d known she wasn’t finished. She would take another girl soon, unless someone stopped her. But no one else seemed willing to try.

  My father turned to his brother, his thoughts hidden by a calm facade. “How are your girls?” he asked, and just like that, the subject was closed.

  “They aren’t taking this very well.” My uncle heaved a heavy sigh. “Sophie’s out with her friends. The girl who died yesterday was on her dance team, and the rest of the squad is spending every waking moment together, like some sort of perpetual wake. And Val…She got a quarter of the way through a bottle of brandy this afternoon, before I even knew she’d opened it. I put her to bed about an hour ago to let her sleep it off.”

  Wow. Maybe Aunt Val needed to go see Dr. Nelson.

  “I’m sorry, Bren.”

  Uncle Brendon shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, but the tense line of his shoulders said otherwise. “She was always pretty high-strung. Sophie’s the same way. They’ll be fine once this all blows over.”

  But it wasn’t going to blow over, and I couldn’t be the only one who knew that.

  Uncle Brendon stood and picked up his mug. His every movement spoke of exhaustion and dread. “I’m going to check on my wife. Val got the guest room ready for you this morning. If you need anything else, just ask Kaylee.”

  “Thanks.” When Uncle Brendon’s bedroom door closed, my father stood and faced Nash, obviously expecting him to stand too. “Nash, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for how you’ve helped my daughter.”

  Still stubbornly seated, Nash shook his head. “I couldn’t have done anything without her there to hold the soul.”

  “I mean what you did for Kaylee. Brendon says your dose of truth probably saved her from a serious breakdown.” He held his hand out, and Nash floundered for one awkward moment, then stood and accepted it.

  “Dad…” I started, but he shook his head.

  “I messed up, and Nash picked up the slack. He deserves to be thanked.” He shook Nash’s hand firmly, then let go and stepped back, clearing an obvious path to the front door.

  I rolled my eyes at his less-than-subtle hint. “I agree. But Nash is staying. He knows more about this than I do anyway.” I slipped my hand into his and stood as close to him as I could get.

  To my surprise, though he looked irritated, my father didn’t argue. His gaze shifted from me to Nash, then back to me, and he simply nodded, evidently resigned. “Fine. If you trust him, so do I.” He backed slowly toward his chair and sat facing us. Then he inhaled deeply and met my steady gaze. I was ready to hear whatever he had to say.

  But the real question was whether or not he was ready to say it.

  “I know this all should have come out years ago,” he began. “But the truth is that every time I decided it was time to tell you about your mother—about yourself—I couldn’t do it. You look so much like her….”

  His voice cracked, and he glanced down, and when he looked at me again, his eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

  “You look so much like her that every time I see you, my heart jumps for joy, then breaks all over again. Maybe it would have been easier if I’d kept you with me. If I’d seen you every day and watched you develop into your own person. But as it is, I look at you and I see her, and it’s so damn hard…”

  Nash squirmed, and I stared at my hands as my father looked around the living room, avoiding our eyes until he had himself under control. Then he sighed and swiped one arm across his eyes, blotting tears on a sweater too thick to be truly necessary in September.

  Crap. He was actually crying. I
didn’t know how to deal with a crying father. I barely knew how to deal with a normal one.

  “Um, anyone else hungry? I didn’t get any supper.”

  “I could eat,” Nash said, and I was sure he’d picked up on my need to break the tension.

  Or maybe he was just hungry.

  “Is macaroni and cheese okay?” I asked, already halfway out of the room by the time he nodded. Nash and my dad followed me through the dining room and into the kitchen, where I knelt to dig a bag of elbow pasta from the back of a bottom cabinet.

  I’d thought I was ready. That I could deal with whatever he had to say. But the truth was that I couldn’t just sit there and watch my father cry. I needed something to keep my hands busy while my heart broke.

  “You can cook?” My father eyed me in surprise as I pulled a pot from another cabinet, and a block of Velveeta from my uncle’s shelf in the fridge.

  “It’s just pasta. Uncle Brendon taught me.” He’d also taught me to hide the occasional bag of chocolate behind his stash of pork rinds, which Aunt Val would never touch, even to throw away in a frenzied junk food purge.

  My father sat on one of the bar stools, still watching as I turned the burner on and sprinkled salt into the water. Nash settled on a stool two down from him and crossed his arms on the countertop.

  “So what do you want to know first?” My dad met my gaze over the cheese I was unwrapping on a cutting board.

  I shrugged and pulled a knife from a drawer on my left. “I think I have a pretty good handle on the whole bean sidhe thing, thanks to Nash.” My father cringed, and I might have felt guilty if he’d ever made any attempt to explain things himself. “But why did Aunt Val say I was living on borrowed time? What does that mean?”

  This time he flinched like I’d slapped him. He’d obviously been expecting something else—probably a technical question from the How to Be a Bean Sidhe handbook, my copy of which had probably gotten lost in the mail.

  My father sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “That’s a long story, Kaylee, and one I’d rather tell in private.”

  “No.” I shook my head firmly and ripped open the bag of pasta. “You flew halfway around the world because you owe me an explanation.” Not to mention an apology. “I want to hear it now.”

  My father’s brow rose in surprise, and more than a hint of irritation. Then he frowned. “You sound just like your mother.”

  Yeah, well, I had to inherit a backbone from someone. “Wouldn’t she want you to tell me whatever it is you have to say?”

  He couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d punched him. “I honestly don’t know. But you’re right. You’re entitled to all the facts.” He closed his eyes briefly, as if gathering his thoughts.

  “It all started the night you died.”

  19

  “WHAT?” MY HAND fisted around a cube of cheese, and it squished between my fingers. My pulse pounded so hard in my throat I thought it would explode. “You mean the night Mom died.”

  My father nodded. “She died that night too. But you went first.”

  “Whoa…” Nash leaned forward on his stool, glancing back and forth between me and my father. “Kaylee died?”

  My dad sighed, settling in for a long story. “It was February, the year you were three. The roads were icy. We don’t get much winter weather in Texas, so when it does come, no one quite knows how to handle it. Including me.”

  “Wait, I’ve heard all this before.” I dumped the pasta into the now-boiling water, and a puff of steam wafted into my face, coating my skin in a layer of instant dampness and warmth.

  “You were driving, and we were broadsided by another car on an icy road. I broke my right arm and leg, and Mom died.”

  My father nodded miserably, then swallowed thickly and continued. “We were on our way here, for Sophie’s birthday party. Your mother thought the weather was too bad, but I said we’d be fine. It was a short trip, and your cousin adored you. The whole thing was my fault.”

  “What happened?” I asked, my cheesy hand forgotten.

  My father blinked slowly, as if warding off tears. “There was a deer in the road. I wasn’t going that fast, but the road was icy, and the deer was huge. I swerved to avoid it, and the car slid on the ice. We wound up sideways in the road. An on-coming car smashed into us. Near the rear on the passenger’s side. Your car seat was crushed.”

  I closed my eyes and gripped the countertop as a wave of vertigo threatened to knock me over. No. My mother had died in that accident, not me. I’d been pretty banged up, but I’d lived.

  I was living proof of that!

  My eyes opened, focusing on my father instantly. “Dad, I remember parts of that. I was in the hospital for weeks. I had two casts. We still have pictures. But I’m alive. See?” I spread my arms across the countertop to demonstrate my point. “So what happened? The paramedics brought me back?”

  The truth was looming, a great, dark cloud on my mind’s horizon. I could almost see it, but I refused to bring it into focus. Refused to acknowledge the coming storm until it broke over my head, drenching me with a cold, cruel wash of the answers I’d thought I wanted.

  I no longer wanted them.

  But my father only shook his head. “They didn’t get there in time. The man driving the other car was a doctor, but his wife hit her head on something, and he was trying to wake her up. By the time he came to help us, it was all over.”

  “No.” I stirred the pasta so hard boiling water slopped onto the stovetop, hissing on the flat burner.

  Nash’s hand landed softly on mine, though I hadn’t heard him move, and I looked up to meet his sympathetic gaze. “You died, Kaylee. You know it’s true.”

  My father nodded again, and when his eyes squeezed shut, two silent tears trailed down his stubbly cheeks. “I had to go in through the driver’s side and pull the whole car seat out. When I picked you up, you didn’t make a sound, even though your right arm and leg were bent all out of shape.” His eyes opened, and the pain swirling there held me captive. “I held you like a baby, and you just looked at me. Then your mom crawled out of the car and took your good hand. She was crying, and she couldn’t talk, and I could see the truth on her face. I knew we were going to lose you.”

  He sniffled and I stood still, afraid that if I moved, he’d stop talking. And even more frightened because part of me really wanted him to stop. “You died, right there on the side of the road, with snow melting in your hair.”

  “Then why am I still here?” I whispered, but I already knew the answer. “It was my time, wasn’t it?” I flicked on the faucet and held my hands under the warm water, scrubbing cheese from between my fingers as I eyed my father. “I was supposed to die, and you brought me back.”

  “Yes.” His voice cracked on that one syllable, and his face was starting to flush with the effort to hold back more tears. “We couldn’t stand it. She sang for you, and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I could barely see, I was crying so hard. But then I saw you. Your soul. So small and white in the dark. It was too soon. I couldn’t let you go.”

  I turned off the water and grabbed a towel from a drawer near my hip, dripping on the floor as I dried my hands, then leaned over the bar and stared at him. “Tell me how it happened.”

  He didn’t hesitate this time. “I made your mother look at me, to make sure she understood. I told her to take care of you. That I was going to bring you back. She was crying, but she nodded, still singing. So I guided your soul back into your tiny little body. You blinked at me. Then, with your first breath, you sang.”

  “I…sang?” The towel slipped from my fingers and landed silently on the tiles, but I barely noticed.

  “The soul song.” My father pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, as if to physically hold back tears, but his face was still wet when he looked at me again. “I thought it was for me. You needed your mother more than you needed me, and I was ready to go. But as I stood there holding you, the reaper showed himse
lf.”

  “He let you see him?” Nash interrupted from my side. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  My father nodded. “He stood in the grass, on the shoulder of the road. He smiled at me, with this creepy little grin, like he knew what I was thinking. I told him I was ready to go. I gave you to your mother, and you were still singing this beautiful, high-pitched song, like a bird. I felt so peaceful, thinking that the last thing I would hear was you singing my soul song.” He paused, and this time the tears actually fell. “But I should have known better, because your mother wasn’t singing with you.”

  I stared across the countertop at my dad, mesmerized, my supper forgotten.

  “The bastard took her instead.” My father’s fist hit the tile hard enough to shake the whole bar, and his jaw bulged with fresh fury. “He just looked at Darby, and she collapsed. I had to lunge for you, to keep you from hitting the ground when she fell.”

  “Kaylee, breathe,” Nash said, rubbing my back. At some point during the story, I’d stopped inhaling, and didn’t even realize it until Nash spoke.

  “She died because of me?” My hands fisted, and my fingernails bit into my palms.

  “No. Baby, no.” My dad leaned forward then, to look directly into my eyes. “She died because of me.” He took my hands and wouldn’t let them go, even when I tugged halfheartedly. “Because I insisted on going out. Because I swerved to avoid the deer. Because I wasn’t strong enough to make him take me instead. None of it was your fault.”

  But nothing he said could make me feel better. I was supposed to die, and because I hadn’t, my mother had. And even if she hadn’t, my father would have. Or maybe one of the people in the other car. The bottom line was that I was alive when I should have been dead, and my mother had paid the price.

  “So…borrowed time?” I twisted the knob on the stove to turn it off, and moved the pot onto a cold burner, acting out of habit, because I was numb with shock. “I’m living my mother’s life now? Is that what Aunt Val meant?”