Before I Wake

12

“YOU KNOW, IF we’d done that a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been a very good candidate for a virgin sacrifice.”

Tod rolled onto his side facing me, and that one stubborn curl fell over his forehead. “I always knew my sexual prowess has the power to save lives.”

“You can turn anything into an ego boost, can’t you?”

“I have a healthy sense of my own worth. But I have an even better sense of yours.”

“Aww…” I pulled him down for another kiss and chose to ignore what neither of us was saying. Losing my virginity earlier might have saved me from Mr. Beck, my incubus math teacher, but it wouldn’t have saved me from death. My time was up.

The irony there was that Tod’s wasn’t. Nash was living out his brother’s lifeline, and he had no idea what Tod had given up for him.

“Well, as much as I hate to leave—and I truly hate to leave—I have a fatal aneurism scheduled for 3:14—” He started to sit up, and I pulled him back down.

“No, don’t go… .”

“I’ll be back, I swear. Not even death could keep us apart.” He grinned over his joke and I rolled my eyes.

“Do you take anything seriously?”

“Only you. I take you seriously. Everything else goes down better with a joke—the verbal equivalent of a spoon full of sugar.” He gave me another kiss, then sat up and started pulling his clothes on. “You should get dressed, too. How much longer do you think Madeline’s going to wait for a report?”

Crap. I glanced at the clock to see that it was just past three in the afternoon. School was out, which meant Em would be coming with my books. And Tod was right about Madeline. “Come back when you get a break?” I said, stepping into my underwear.

Tod pulled me up and wrapped his arms around my bare waist. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” His grin faded and the colors in his irises went still. “Kay, you have to tell Madeline what happened at the mall. All of it. There’s no way any of us can fight Avari in the human plane if we don’t all know exactly what we’re up against.”

“But Levi…”

“Things have changed, Kaylee. This isn’t just about reaper-on-reaper violence anymore, and he’ll understand that he can’t afford to lose anyone who’s been up against Avari before.” But the doubt I saw in his eyes worried me. “Call Madeline. And you should spend as much time with Emma as you can. Avari’s gone after her before, so she’ll probably be high on his list this time.”

“So will Nash. Fortunately, he and Sabine made up, so she won’t let him out of her sight.”

“Good. I’ll check on them, too, just in case.” Tod kissed me one last time, then he disappeared and I was alone in my room, in my underwear.

I grabbed my jeans from the floor and dug my phone from the pocket as I sank onto the edge of the bed. Instead of calling Madeline, I texted her, both because I didn’t really want to hear her voice and because if she was going to not-live in the twenty-first century, she might as well learn to use the technology.

I’m fine. Got the soul. We need 2 talk. My house. 1 hr.

After that, I pulled my jeans on, then slid my phone back into my pocket, and I was buttoning a clean shirt when the doorbell rang. Styx followed me to the front of the house, where Em stood on my porch, holding my backpack. I opened the door and she marched inside, then dropped my bag into a chair.

“I was worried about you. Why didn’t you come back to school?” Her eyes narrowed and I could practically hear her focus zoom in on me like a long-range camera. “Why is your hair all tangled? And why is your shirt buttoned wrong?”

Was it? Crap.

I looked down and started fixing the buttons, and when I headed for the kitchen, Em followed me. “And…now you’re blushing and running away…!” She cornered me next to the fridge, and her grin was huge. “You weren’t working! You skipped school to sleep with Tod!”

“I was working.” I squeezed past her and pulled two bottles of water from the fridge. “I had to stab someone and that really freaked me out, and he was trying to make me feel better, and I wanted to feel something that wasn’t scary, and painful, so…”

Her brows rose in amusement. “And losing your virginity wasn’t scary or painful?”

“Well, there was a little pain, but that’s a whole different—” I stopped and scowled when I realized she was kidding. “Why do they call it losing your virginity, anyway? It’s not like I don’t know where I left it.”

Em’s brows rose. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t. So? Details?” She hopped onto the counter and cracked the lid on her bottle.

I shrugged. “There was a hellion, and a dead woman, and a knife, and a triple helping of trauma.”

Em frowned. “Sex, Kaylee. Details about you and Tod, not the demon slaying.”

“So glad you’re keeping things in perspective.” I leaned against the fridge and sipped from my bottle. It worried me that she didn’t seem surprised or bothered by the hellion part of the story. That was probably a sign she was spending too much time with me.

“You’re gonna be around long enough to slay hundreds of demons—” the thought of which made me sick “—but you only lose your virginity once. So, spill.”

But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t done going over it in my head and I didn’t feel like sharing the memory just yet. Even with my best friend. “It’s kind of private, Em.”

“Bullshit. I told you everything about my first time.”

“Yeah, but you may remember that I didn’t actually ask you to.”

Emma frowned, and I realized I’d hurt her feelings. “Fine. Forget it.” She set her bottle down and hopped off the counter, and I had to chase her across the living room.

“Em, wait. I’m sorry.” I grabbed her arm and she stopped and turned to face me. “I want to tell you. I just… I don’t want to spoil the memory by talking about it. If that makes any sense.”

Her eyes widened and she studied my face. Then she smiled. “Wow. I didn’t think talking about my first time could possibly make it worse than it already was.”

“What do you mean?”

She laughed, but there was a bitter edge to the sound. “There’s not much you can do to further ruin a memory consisting of staticky radio music, the backseat of a Camry, and a three-minute mistake.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Em… .”

She waved my apology off. “Forget about mine. I want to hear about yours. Whatever you want to tell me.” She reclaimed her water from the kitchen and we sank onto the couch facing each other, and I realized that she’d been waiting for this for more than a year. Since the night of the Camry and the boy who’d barely spoken to her afterward.

I made a mental note to tell Tod how wonderful he was every single time I saw him, for the rest of our afterlives.

“So…?” she prompted, leaving the details up to me.

“So…he’s beautiful.” I couldn’t stop smiling, and my stomach was doing flip-flops over just the memory of the past hour of my life, so blessedly different from the hour before that.

Em rolled her eyes. “I know. Everyone who’s ever seen him knows. The Hudsons have freakishly good genes. What else?”

“I love him. Like, to-the-end-of-time love him. Is that silly? Because I’ve truly lost all perspective. Is it naive of me to think he’ll be the only one. Like, ever?”

Em laughed. “Could you have imagined this moment a year ago? You’re up to the hilt of your magical dagger in demon guts one minute, then ready to vow forever to an angel swinging a scythe the next.”

“He doesn’t actually have a scythe, you know.”

“My point stands.”

“So, have I lost it? Am I crazy for even mentioning forever?”

Emma shrugged. “Normally I’d say that’s the postcoital euphoria talking, but considering that the two of you are facing eternity together, I think you’re feeling exactly what you’re supposed to be feeling.” Emma shrugged. “That said, I don’t think you understand how this is supposed to work. Your details are adorable and sweet. Like, diabetic-coma sweet. But I’d really appreciate anything in the neighborhood of time, place, or position.”

“Position?” I could feel my face flame.

“Never mind. Time and place, then.”

“Um, right before you got here. My room.”

Em glanced around, suddenly paranoid. “Is he still here?”

“No, he had to go back to work, and I still have to meet with Madeline, so…”

“You want me to go?”

“No, I want you to stay. I told you Thane’s back, right?” I said, already hating the change in subject, and she nodded. “Well, he’s not alone. Avari’s here, Em.”

“Here, as in…?”

“In the human world. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he killed a woman at the mall, and—” My phone beeped from my pocket, and I pulled it out to find an incomprehensible text from Madeline.

T&# at you3.

I was still frowning at the screen when she materialized in my living room, and Styx started growling from his perch in my father’s chair. “I apologize, Kaylee, but there doesn’t appear to be enough buttons on my phone to actually type a complete sentence, and I don’t see the point of text messaging, when we could just as easily speak on the phone or in person.” She stopped when she noticed Emma, who obviously could neither see nor hear her. But she could see me staring at an empty spot in my living room, and she’d been around long enough to know what that meant.

“Tell her to leave,” Madeline said, crossing both arms over her chest, phone still clutched in one hand. “We have business to discuss.”

“Emma’s involved in that business, so she stays.”

“This is not up for negotiation, Ms. Cavanaugh.” Madeline always used my last name when she was frustrated with me. Which was most of the time.

“Unless you’ve recruited a new extractor in the past couple of hours, I don’t see that you have much of a choice. You need me. We need each other. And Emma is involved, so she gets to hear everything I get to hear.” Until and unless I decided that knowing too much would put her in more danger than she was already in.

Madeline scowled, and a week ago, that alone would have made me give in. But not anymore. Not now that I understood just how many people’s lives were at stake.

Finally, she nodded and perched on the edge of an armchair, and I knew Em could see her when she jumped a little. “Madeline, this is Emma Marshall. Em, Madeline.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Madeline said, though she sounded anything but.

Em nodded. “Thanks for letting me join your reindeer games.”

“Excuse me?” Madeline said, but before I could explain, the doorbell rang.

I peeked through the window to find Nash and Sabine on my porch, and Luca on the sidewalk behind them. “Great. The gang’s all here,” I said, pulling the door open.

The necromancer followed Nash and Sabine inside, and suddenly my living room was crowded. Styx decided we’d exceeded the maximum capacity defined by the fire code and started growling at everyone, so I had to put her in the backyard.

“Luca told us you left for an extraction, then never came back,” Nash said, eyeing me like I might be secretly broken as I closed the back door.

“I told them you were here with Tod, and that you were fine,” Luca added.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Nash said. Sabine groaned and pushed my front door shut. “What?” he demanded, scowling at her. “This morning she insists that all we have is one another, but this afternoon she won’t answer my calls. How am I supposed to take that?”

“I didn’t get any calls,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket again. But there they were. Three missed calls and two voice mails. All from Nash. All between twenty-five and thirty-two minutes earlier. When I was otherwise occupied, and wouldn’t have noticed an explosion in the living room, much less my phone buzzing from the pocket of my pants. On my bedroom floor.

I flushed, and Sabine’s gaze narrowed on me. “Sorry,” I said. “It was on silent. I didn’t hear it ring.”

“This is not a high-school social,” Madeline said. “Your friends will have to leave.”

“They don’t call them that anymore, Aunt Madeline,” Luca said, and it was obvious that only he and Emma could see and hear her.

Madeline frowned. “Friends?”

Luca laughed. “No, socials. They’re called dances now.”

“Wait a minute, aunt?” I said. “You’re his aunt?”

“What the hell is going on here?” Sabine demanded, glancing at those of us she could see.

“Okay, that’s it!” I stood in the middle of the room and glanced around until I was sure I had everyone’s attention. “We are now operating under a full-disclosure policy. Everyone in this room knows who and what I am, and they all have experiences or skills that could come in handy. So, Madeline, show yourself.”

“Ms. Cavanaugh, this is completely inappropriate… .”

I turned on her, and my temper got the better of me. “I’m an eleventh-grade girl who was murdered in her own bed by a mystical dagger-wielding incubus posing as a math teacher, about an hour before I was resurrected in order to extract stolen souls from monsters for the rest of my unnatural life. What part of that led you to assume anything I do or say will be appropriate by traditional standards?”

Madeline gaped at me for a second. Then she blinked and nodded. “A valid point.”

“Good. Then make yourself visible and introduce yourself to the rest of your crew.”

“My crew?”

“What crew? What the hell is going on here, Kaylee?” Nash asked.

I could tell the minute Madeline appeared to the room in general, because both Nash and Sabine focused on her instantly. “Madeline, this is Nash Hudson. You saved him from going down for my murder. And this is Sabine Campbell, his…Nightmare.” I wasn’t sure how else to explain their relationship. “Madeline is my boss in the reclamation department. And evidently Luca’s aunt. That part’s new to me.”

“Great-great-aunt,” Madeline supplied. “I was originally recruited for my own abilities as a necromancer, but they turned out not to extend into the afterlife—evidently being dead interferes with one’s ability to detect the dead. When I realized we would need the skills I lost, I brought my nephew on board, because his mother didn’t inherit the gift. It seems to skip random generations.”

“My parents think I’m at some fancy boarding school, on a soccer scholarship,” Luca added with a conspiratorial smile.

“So, what kind of crew is this, and why do you need us on it?” Sabine asked.

“It’s the reclamation department,” I said, just as Madeline said, “I don’t need you.”

“The hell you don’t,” I snapped. “Luca and I are all you have left, and we’re not going to be enough against Avari, especially now that he’s figured out how to cross over. You’re going to need everyone you can get, and everyone in this room except for you and Luca has survived an encounter with Avari, which puts them at the top of a very short list of people who can help you.”

And that’s when the room exploded into chaos and questions.

“Who and what is Avari?” Madeline asked.

“What do you mean, he can cross over?” Nash demanded, looking more scared than I’d seen him in a long time.

From Sabine: “Why are you and Luca all she has left?”

Em said, “What about Tod? Can’t he help? And his boss? What’s his name?”

“Okay, one thing at a time.” I wanted to bury my head in my hands. Or curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head. Instead, I took a deep breath and sat on the arm of my father’s chair. “I don’t want to have to repeat this, so everyone get comfortable and listen up.”

“Em’s right,” Sabine said from the kitchen as she helped herself to a soda from the fridge. “If we’re looking for people who’ve survived run-ins with Avari, shouldn’t we wait for Tod? And Alec. He’ll be more help than anyone else, right?”

“You’re right. Call Alec.” I nodded to Emma and she started scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “Tod already knows. Madeline can talk to Levi after we’re done here, and I’ll hit up my dad and my uncle when they get home from work.”

Madeline made a stuffy humphing sound. “Ms. Cavanaugh, this isn’t how we at the reclamation department operate.”

I raised one brow and eyed her boldly. “As of right now, we are the reclamation department, and if you don’t jump on board, we’ll carry on without you. Frankly, at this point, you’re the one with the least to offer.”

Madeline fumed visibly, and Sabine laughed out loud. “Damn. Death looks good on you, Kay!”

I ignored her and crossed the room to speak to Madeline in semiprivacy while Emma spoke to Alec on the phone and Nash and Sabine filled Luca in on some basics of dealing with hellions—most of which were no longer relevant, now that Avari could cross over. “Look, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I think we need to face facts here. Your people are dead because they didn’t know what they were up against. We do, and that still may not be enough to protect us, but we’re the best shot you have at saving more lives than you can even imagine. Including your nephew’s.”

Madeline stared into my face, studying me. Looking for something worth putting her trust in. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for or just finally truly understood that we were all she had. Either way, she nodded, hesitantly. Then she blinked, and I saw a new fortitude building on her face. And this time when she nodded, she meant it.

While we waited for Alec, Emma and Sabine filled Madeline and Luca in on Avari—all stuff Alec already knew—while Nash and I listened in growing discomfort. It was an odd conversation, at best.

“He’s kind of obsessed with Kaylee,” Em said, by way of an opener.

“With her soul,” Sabine corrected. “Because it’s all purer-than-thou, with her being both a martyr and a virgin.”

I flinched, and Sabine noticed Emma’s sudden silence. The mara’s focus narrowed on me and her brows rose. I groaned inwardly. She knew. Why did she have to be bitchy and perceptive?

“But, um…” Em said when Nash glanced from Sabine to me and frowned. “Avari likes to spread the pain around. He’s possessed me and Sabine, and Nash was addicted to his breath for a while. Then again for another while…” Her words faded into uncomfortable silence when Nash tried to obliterate her with only the power of his glare.

“Alec was his servant in the Netherworld for a quarter of a century,” Sabine said. “And Tod did this whole drug-trafficking gig for him—”

Madeline frowned, like she was trying to keep it all straight. “Tod is the undead boyfriend?”

“He had no idea what he was carrying,” I interjected. “And he had a really good reason.”

“A mule should always know what he’s carrying,” Sabine insisted, and I wanted to smack her a little more than usual.

“Okay, clearly you all have very complicated relationships,” Madeline said, effectively calling a truce for us all. “But the point seems to be that the hellion in question has had quite a bit of contact with you. I appreciate your willingness to help us deal with him.”

“What happened to the others?” Nash asked. “The rest of the department?”

“I suppose the truth is the least that I owe you all.” Madeline sighed and glanced at her hands before meeting his gaze again. “Until a couple of months ago, the reclamation department had no real presence in this district, because we weren’t needed. But then we got word of an incubus in the area. That happens from time to time. They tend to frequent the same haunts, and we knew that if he was breeding, he’d need a soul for his son. So I was transferred here along with three extractors. As you probably all know, we didn’t have a chance to deal with the incubus—Kaylee did that for us. But by then, we’d discovered another problem. Something else had settled into the area and was making unscheduled kills and collecting the souls.”

“Avari?” Emma said.

Madeline nodded. “Evidently. But we didn’t know that at the time. I sent my extractors after him one at a time, and none of them ever returned. We lost two men before Kaylee died, and I started to panic. That’s why we needed her so badly.”

“Because she’s a bean sidhe?” Nash asked.

“Yes. When I found out that a female bean sidhe had killed the incubus but lost her own life in the process, I…made some emergency phone calls and arranged to have her restored so I could ask her to join us. We were hoping her unique abilities would give her the edge my other extractors obviously lacked. I only had one left by then, and even though the soul thief kept killing, I held my last extractor back, so he could help run things while I trained Kaylee. Then she proved herself in a dry run—” when I’d been sent to the doughnut shop after Thane “—so I sent my last man after the serial soul thief two days ago. He never came back. Now Kaylee and Luca are all I have left.”

“No, you have all of us,” Nash said. “There’s no way we’d let Kaylee do this alone. Neither will Alec or…my brother.”

Em nodded eagerly, and Sabine rolled her eyes at the room in general. “Yeah. I’m all about the greater good. But it’s gonna cost you some snacks. I’m starving.” She got up to help herself to my kitchen, and I followed to keep her from making a mess I’d get stuck cleaning up.

“There’s popcorn in the cabinet over the bar,” I said, pointing. “And there’s fruit in the fridge.” But Sabine didn’t even glance in either direction.

“So, was it all you hoped it would be?” she asked, soft enough that no one in the living room could hear.

“What are you talking about?” But I knew. And she knew I knew.

She stepped so close I wanted to back up, but I was already leaning against the counter. “You know, the only thing worse than a self-righteous virgin is a self-righteous fake virgin.”

“I’m not faking anything.” I pulled a bag of popcorn from the cabinet and unwrapped it, then practically threw it into the microwave and pressed some buttons so the noise would cover yet another discussion I really didn’t want to have with Sabine. “I’m saying it’s none of your business.”

“Does Nash know?”

I sighed heavily, wondering if it was too late to take the fifth. “You know he doesn’t. And you can’t tell him.” I took a large salad bowl from the dish drainer and set it next to the microwave.

“He needs to know, Kaylee.”

“The hell he does! Are you trying to hurt him?”

She exhaled slowly, like she was the one fighting for patience. “I’m trying to pull off the Band-Aid and expose the wound so it can heal.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Yes, you do. You ripped Nash’s heart out, and instead of dealing with the gaping hole in his chest, he just slapped a bandage over it, so he wouldn’t have to see the wound.”

“A bandage?”

“Denial. He was avoiding both of you, so he wouldn’t have to think about it, and now he thinks he can pretend to be happy with your friendship, and if he plays his cards right and stays clean, you’ll realize Tod was just a temporary comfort and everything will go back to the way it was. You and I both know that’s not going to happen, but he refuses to see it. But he won’t have any choice if he knows that after all those months when you barely let him touch you, you gave it up to his brother after a month.”

Anger clouded my judgment and defeated my determination not to have this conversation with her. “Why do you have to make it sound like that? And who the hell are you to question my timing or my relationship with Tod? You can’t possibly understand what he and I have been through or what he means to me.”

“I’m not questioning anything,” Sabine insisted. “And maybe I can’t understand all the specifics of your weird-ass, undead relationship, but I do understand what he means to you. And Nash needs to understand that, too. Which is why you have to tell him.”

“Are you insane?” I demanded, and when the microwave beeped, I pulled out the full bag and threw another one in, then pressed more buttons, again for the noise. “Nash is only a month past a relapse, and he’s just now speaking to me again. He still won’t be in the same room as Tod. And you want to tell him I slept with his brother. Which is none of your business or his, for the record.”

“Yes, it is. Whether you like it or not, the four of us are all tangled up, Kaylee. And we always will be. Nash loves me, but he loves you, too, even though you’re in love with his brother. Whom he currently hates, but can’t get rid of. And you’re the first girlfriend I’ve ever had. Can you see those threads, all tied in a knot?”

“I’m not your friend, Sabine.” How could I be, after she’d stalked my dreams and given me nightmares, then tried to sell me to Avari so she could have Nash for herself?

She looked hurt for a second, then that familiar obstinacy was back. “Then why did you try to help me with Thane the other night? Nash loves me, and he just stood there, at first, but you tried to come to my rescue. Tod had to hold you back.”

“I…” I had no good answer for that. “Fine. I didn’t want you to get hurt. But if you want to call yourself my friend, you should know that position comes with boundaries.”

Sabine frowned. “I’m no good with boundaries.”

“Yes, and the ocean is damp. Can we be done with the understatements now?”

“I’m just trying to help Nash move on.”

“Bullshit. You’re not thinking about what’s good for him. You’re thinking about what’s good for you.”

“I am what’s good for him!” The microwave dinged, then went silent, and she lowered her voice, but not the intensity of her argument. “I’m the only good thing he has left until he starts speaking to his brother and trusting his mother again. But he won’t see that as long as he thinks there’s a chance for the two of you. He knows you were waiting for the ‘right’ time to break the world’s most damage-resistant hymen and if he finds out that time came and went without him, he’ll know the two of you are truly over. And he really needs to know that, Kaylee.”

I hate it when she’s right.

“He does need to understand that we won’t be getting back together,” I finally admitted. “But what Tod and I do in private is not up for discussion. I’ll think of some other way to show Nash. And, Sabine, if you really want to be my friend, you’ll respect that.” I dumped both bags of popcorn into the bowl and left her in the kitchen to think about that.

Alec knocked on the door as I set the bowl on the coffee table, and four different people yelled for him to come in. To my house.

“Hey, Kaylee,” he said, pulling me into a hug as Luca closed the door behind him. “How’s Death treating you?”

“No better than life did.” I hugged him back, treasuring one of the few uncomplicated relationships I had. Alec was my friend, and that line was blessedly unblurred by attraction, jealousy, or any feelings of neglect or betrayal. Alec was a drama-free safe zone.

He laughed. “I meant Tod. You know, death with a capital D?”

“Ah. More death humor. Never gets old.” I let him go and grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Tod’s great.” I wanted to say more, but Nash was listening, and I didn’t want him to think I was rubbing anything in his face.

“Who’re they?” Alec whispered, less-than-subtly tossing his head toward Madeline and Luca.

I reached up and turned him by his shoulders to face them both, then cleared my throat to catch everyone’s attention. “Madeline is my boss at the reclamation department. She helped me cover up my own murder and clear Nash’s name. And Luca is her great-great-nephew. He’s a necromancer, which means he sees dead people.”

Alec frowned. “Like that kid in the movie?”

“Not really. But close enough,” Luca said, crossing the room to shake Alec’s hand. “No ghosts, but I see the undead, even when no one else does, and I can sense corpses until they’re preserved or start to rot.”

Alec shook his hand. “No offense, man, but that’s creepy.”

I rolled my eyes. “This, coming from a psychic parasite.”

“Half,” Alec insisted. “Half-psychic parasite. My mother was human.”

“Okay, so everyone knows everyone else now, right?” I said, and heads all over the room nodded.

“Don’t you wanna call in Tod before we get started?” Alec said.

“He’s filling in for a missing reaper at the hospital, but he’ll be here when he can. He already knows all this, anyway.”

“Missing reaper? Is that what this is about?” Alec sank onto the couch and I sat between him and Emma.

“No,” Madeline said, just as I said, “Yeah, in part.”

“Maybe start from the beginning?” Alec suggested. “For those of us just joining the party?”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and did a mental search for the beginning of the story. “For those who may not know this, Madeline recruited me specifically to help hunt and take out a serial soul thief—”

“I call him Cap’n Crunch,” Luca interrupted, and was rewarded with a roomful of frowns. “You know. Because he’s a cereal thief?”

“Wouldn’t that make him more like the Cookie Crook?” Alec said, then shrugged at all the blank stares. “Am I the only one who remembers breakfast food from the eighties?”

“You’re the only one who remembers anything from the eighties,” Nash said, and Madeline frowned.

“That’s the wrong kind of ‘serial’ entirely, and we do not have time for anecdotal tangents. Kaylee, please continue.”

Sabine muttered something bitter and profane beneath her breath, and Nash laughed.

“Anyway…” I said. “The serial soul thief turned out to be Avari. Also, he is now officially a serial killer, which is how he comes by the souls ready to be stolen.”

“So, how’s he getting them into the Netherworld?” Alec asked. “Sounds like you’re actually looking for whoever’s working for him.”

“Nope. You know how they say old dogs can’t learn new tricks? Well, they’re wrong. Avari’s figured out how to cross over.”