Before I Wake

18

“WHY CAN’T EVERYONE stay at our house?” Sophie’s voice greeted me from the direction of the living room the moment Tod, Nash, and I appeared in my empty bedroom. “We have more space and better accommodations, and squinting at this tiny television is giving me a migraine.”

“You’re not going to be watching TV, you’re going to be sleeping,” my uncle Brendon said, and I realized the party had grown since I’d left.

“Or you could be unconscious,” Sabine said. “I could make that happen.”

“What the hell?” I muttered on my way down the hall, with Tod and Nash right behind me.

“Kaylee…” My dad pulled me into a hug as soon as I stepped into the living room. “Are you okay?”

“No.” That question was starting to sound pointless. Would any of us ever be okay again? “What’s going on?”

“We’re circling the wagons a little more thoroughly. If Avari can get to Alec, he can get to anyone else.”

“So we’re just going to camp out in Kaylee’s living room until…? Until what?” Sophie demanded, glaring at the room in general from the center cushion of the couch. “Hellions are immortal, remember? He’s not going to be done screwing with us until we’re all dead. Permanently,” she added with a contemptuous glance at me and Tod.

“This is just until we figure out how to keep hellions from crossing over,” my uncle said from the kitchen doorway. “And you’re not all going to stay here. The guys will stay at Nash’s. Harmony already okayed it.”

The barrage of objections was loud and unanimous.

“What are we, twelve?” Sabine scowled and crossed her arms over her chest. “This isn’t a junior-high dance, and frankly, dividing us down the gender line reeks of sexism. And if that isn’t enough to change your minds, I’ll be forced to point out that Nash is of age, and I have my legal guardian’s permission to stay at his house.”

“But you don’t have Harmony’s,” my dad said, and Sabine’s glower seemed to dim the whole room.

“I think we should all stay together,” Sophie said, glancing less than subtly at Luca, who heartily agreed with her. “If our strength is in numbers, why would we divide?”

“To keep us from grouping into pairs, right?” Sabine said, glancing from my father to my uncle, then back. “But let me point out that if you separate the guys from the girls, you’ll be awake all night trying to make sure no one sneaks in or out. Whereas if you let us all stay here, we have no reason to go anywhere else. And it’s not like anything’s going to happen with us all stuck in one room, anyway,” she pointed out. And in the end, it was Sabine’s unprecedented show of logic that won the case.

My dad glanced at Sophie’s dad, who shrugged. Then my father sighed. “Fine. But this is a strategic maneuver, not a slumber party. Everyone will be fully dressed in modest nightclothes. And there will be no ingesting anything that didn’t come from my kitchen, no sharing sleeping bags, and no complaining when at least seven of us have to share the shower in the morning. Speaking of which, I call the first shower.”

No one argued.

Luca and Sophie followed her dad back to their house to grab extra air mattresses and sleeping bags, then came back without him. Having never died or been to the Netherworld, Uncle Brendon didn’t qualify for hellion possession and he had to be at work at eight in the morning. Sophie was happy to leave him behind.

I was happy that staring at Luca distracted her from complaining about my small house, small TV, and small bathtub.

While they were gone, Tod went to check in at the hospital—he’d missed the last third of another of Mareth’s shifts to help me with Alec—and Em closed my bedroom door and plopped onto the bed next to me. “Is it true about Alec?” she asked, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Avari got to him?”

I nodded. That much was true.

“How? What about Falkor?”

“Avari killed him. I don’t have the details. All I know is that hellions being able to cross over changes everything. No one’s safe.” And the people I knew and loved were practically walking around with targets on their backs.

“I have a really bad feeling, Kay. Like I should be looking over my shoulder. But that’s pointless, because suddenly evil looks like our friends. How can we fight it if we don’t even know it’s there?” But I had no answer for her. She picked at a thread on my comforter for several seconds, then finally looked up. “Is it going to be like this forever? I mean, now that they know how to cross over, what’s to stop them from doing it any time they want?”

“Us, Em. We’re what’s going to stop them. I don’t know how yet, short of reclaiming every resurrected soul they have. That may be what this comes down to, and if so, this will be an ongoing battle. But it’s not your battle. I’ll do everything I can to keep you out of it.” She’d suffered enough, just because she was my friend.

“It is my battle.” She blinked, and the first two tears rolled down her cheeks. “Avari made it my battle when he possessed me, and poisoned my boyfriend.” Doug had died of a frost overdose back in December, just days after Scott was arrested and hospitalized. “He made it my battle when he killed my friend.” She sniffled, and I had to brush away more tears of my own. “Alec. Do you think…?” She blinked again and wiped mascara from beneath her eyes with both hands. “Do you think he suffered?”

“I think he was caught by surprise, and it was over quickly. I think that’s the only way it could go down.” His eyes had only focused on me for a second. And as grateful as I was that Alec didn’t suffer for long, I hated it that the last thing he saw and knew—his very last thought—was that he’d been murdered by a friend.

By midnight, Sabine, Nash, Emma, Luca, and Sophie were all sprawled out in my living room, taking up every bit of available floor space as well as the couch and my dad’s recliner. I stood in the hall for a minute, listening to them whisper to one another like they were camping out under the stars. Their whispers were sad, and angry, and scared, but those were things they shared, even in the worst of times—and this night definitely qualified. But I couldn’t share those with them. Even if I were to clear a place for myself on the floor next to Em, I wouldn’t be one of them. Not anymore. Not knowing what I’d done.

“You okay?” Tod asked, and I looked up to find him leaning against the wall next to me, his light features shadowed in the dark hallway.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to be okay again,” I said, and when his arms wrapped around me, I laid my chin on his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “I’m not like them anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, rubbing my back with one hand. “But you can still be with them.”

“How? How am I supposed to pretend that prom, and graduation, and college are still the most important things in the world when I can’t close my eyes without seeing Alec on the floor in a pool of his own blood?”

“You aren’t. You’re not supposed to pretend with anyone in there, and you’re not supposed to pretend with me. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re the luckiest dead person I’ve ever met. You have so many people who love you and know what you’re going through.”

“They don’t know. How could they?”

“They may not understand everything you’re feeling, but they know about your job and your afterlife, and they want to be there for you. Which means you can be yourself with them, whether being yourself means sitting through classes you hate, or ranting over the injustice of the afterlife in general. The point is that you have people to talk to.”

He was right. “What do you have?”

“I have you. That’s all I need.” He tugged gently on my arm and I let him pull me into my bedroom, where we stretched out side by side on the bed. Fully clothed, on top of the covers, to keep my father from having a meltdown.

“Thank you for what you did for me today.”

Tod shrugged. “What’s a little crime-scene tampering between immortal lovers?”

“Not that. I’m still not sure that protecting me is a valid reason to cover up a crime—”

“We’ll agree to disagree on that… .”

“—but it means the world to me that you were willing to go to such lengths to protect me. But I’m talking about your room. The bath. A place to crash. Clean clothes. You even picked out my underwear—”

“Truly my pleasure.” He dared a naughty grin.

“—and what you said…” I didn’t have the words to tell him how grateful I was. So I kissed him. It was a sad kiss, more comfort than heat, but there was strength in it. There was strength in him, and when I was with him, I felt like I was stronger, too. Like I might actually get through this.

“Thank you. I didn’t think I’d ever fall asleep again, but evidently I needed that nap.”

“That was less sleep than shock-induced shutdown. Your head needed time to catch up with your heart, and you needed someplace private to let that happen. I’ve been there.”

“Kaylee?” my dad said, and I glanced up to see him standing in the doorway, his gaze aimed at us, but unfocused. “It worries me when I can see body-shaped dents on your bed, but can’t see the bodies making them.”

“Sorry.” I sat up, then concentrated on making myself corporeal as Tod sat up next to me. “Fully clothed. As per orders.”

“Thanks for doing your part to keep your father sane.” He came in and sank into my desk chair. “I think you need some more furniture. More places to sit that aren’t the bed.” He was kidding—mostly—but when I couldn’t make myself smile or remind him that I was as grown as I was going to get, his focus narrowed on me in concern. “Are you okay? About Alec?”

“No,” I said, and fresh tears filled my eyes as Tod rubbed my back. “Can you close the door, Dad? I need to tell you something.” I could make sure that only he and Tod heard me, but my confession still wouldn’t feel private with the door standing wide open.

My dad closed the door, then sank onto the bed next to me, and his eyes swirled with concern. “What’s wrong, Kaylee?”

“I killed him.” The words burst from my mouth on the front edge of a sob, like they’d been waiting there all along. The room lost focus beneath my tears and as I stared at my hands in my lap, sniffling, trying to get myself under control, drops trailed down my cheeks to fall on my jeans.

My dad pulled me into a hug, and more of my tears soaked into his shirt. “No, Kaylee, you freed his soul and stopped Avari from wearing him like a costume.” He ran one hand over my hair, smoothing it against the back of my shirt. “You did your job, and I know it was hard, but if Alec were here, he’d thank you.”

“No.” I sniffled and blinked tears from my eyes, but more came to replace them. “Avari wasn’t wearing his soul, he was wearing Alec’s skin.” My words came out in staccato bursts, punctuated by half-choked sobs. “Alec was just possessed, and I killed him.”

“She didn’t know,” Tod said as my father reached for the box of tissues on my nightstand without letting go of me. “Neither of us did. He manipulated her. It wasn’t her fault.”

I shook my head, drowning in guilt. Choking on grief. “I should have known.” My fist clenched around a handful of my father’s shirt, and I couldn’t let it go. “He was my friend. I should have been able to tell the difference between my friend and a demon.”

“No, Kaylee, don’t do this to yourself.” My dad pulled away from me so he could see my face, and when I tried to wipe my cheeks with my bare fingers, he pressed a tissue into my hand. “This is what he wants.” My father’s whole face was twisted with pain, for me. For Alec. For all of us caught up in Avari’s carnival of lies and torment. “He wants you to suffer.”

“I want me to suffer.” I blotted my face with the tissue, then wadded it into a ball I couldn’t stop squeezing. “I should have known better, Dad. With hellions, the truth hides in what they don’t say.” Since they couldn’t outright lie, they’d become masters of implication and manipulation. “He never actually said Alec was dead.” I’d gone over everything Avari had said a dozen times since I’d woken up in Tod’s bed. “I should have known better.”

“Kaylee, Avari has spent hundreds—maybe thousands—of years perfecting the art of misdirection. And he had more than a quarter of a century to learn how to imitate Alec in particular.” My dad ducked to catch my gaze. “There’s no way you could have known. There’s no way anyone could have known.”

But that didn’t help. As badly as I wanted to let them comfort me, their words held no weight. I’d killed him. I should have known better. The guilt was mine to bear, and neither of them had the power to absolve me of that.

“Kaylee.” Tod looked blurry through my tears, and I wanted to touch him, but that wouldn’t be fair. Alec would never touch anyone again, and that was my fault, so I didn’t deserve comfort. “Alec wouldn’t blame you for this, so you have no right to blame yourself. Give credit where it’s due. Avari did this. He used you and your dagger just like he used Alec’s body. I understand why you feel guilty, and I know that’s going to be hard to overcome. But what you should feel is anger. This wasn’t a tragic accident. It was a crime, committed not by you, but by Avari. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to make him pay for that.”

I nodded. I was ready. “How? How do you hurt a hellion?” It was the age-old question, without answer for who knew how many thousands of years.

“Let’s start by starving him,” Tod said. “He feeds from pain, and yours is his favorite flavor. So cut him off. Turn your pain into anger, and he can’t feed from it. You have a responsibility to make sure that Avari’s not profiting from his crime.” He shrugged and summoned a small, crooked smile. “Anger’s more productive, anyway.”

I couldn’t help but notice my father’s look of surprise. And respect. And a tiny ray of hope shined through the clouds thick on my emotional horizon. I wanted my dad to love Tod as much as I did. Just not in the same way.

“Okay?” Tod said, and I nodded. Letting go of the pain would be much harder than embracing the anger, but he was right. Avari didn’t deserve even a taste of my grief over Alec.

I took another tissue and wiped my face, and my father looked at Tod, fresh worry twisting in his irises. “How much trouble are we looking at from the police?”

“None, hopefully.” Tod met my dad’s gaze boldly. “I took care of it. They’ll never know she was there.”

“Thank you.”

I tossed both tissues in the trash and glanced at the time on my alarm clock. It was after midnight. “You’re late for work,” I said, and Tod shrugged.

“Levi’s taking this shift for me, to give me a break.”

I had no words to express my relief. I didn’t want to be awake all night, alone, even for the few hours Sabine would actually sleep. “Will you stay?” I turned to my dad. “Can he stay the night? Please? We’ll leave the door open, I swear.”

My dad actually chuckled. “Considering everything that’s conspired to take my little girl away from me in the past few weeks, I have to admit I’m thankful that you’d actually ask for permission. Of course he can stay. But I’m going to hold you to that open-door promise.” He was looking at Tod then, not me.

Tod nodded.

A few minutes later, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and froze in surprise when I heard my dad and Tod talking in the hall. Curious, I pressed my ear against the crack between the door and its frame, careful not to let the wood creak.

“I hate it when she cries,” my father said, his voice low and soft, and difficult to hear.

“Me, too,” Tod said. “Nothing makes me feel more helpless. I’d kill anyone who tries to hurt her, but I can’t save her from herself.”

“You’d kill for her?” My father’s voice was still. Deliberate. This was a test, and I didn’t know the right answer. But Tod didn’t hesitate.

“In a heartbeat.” There was a moment of silence, and I peered through the crack, desperately trying to see them, but I couldn’t even see their shadows. “Mr. Cavanaugh, I know this isn’t the future you wanted for Kaylee, and I know I’m not who you wanted for her. And I’m not even going to pretend to think I’m good enough—I know I’ve made mistakes, and I’m probably going to make more. But I love her with every single cell in my body. She’s the reason my heart beats—literally. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. There’s no one I’d put ahead of her. And I will never, ever leave her, as long as she wants me. Kaylee’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. She can make it through eternity on her own. But I swear on my soul that as long as I’m here, she’ll never have to.”

Fresh tears filled my eyes, and my heart ached like it no longer fit inside my chest. I wanted to throw open the door and tell him I felt the same way. Exactly the same. But those words weren’t meant for my ears. He was talking to my dad, and as hard as it was to respect his intent instead of rushing into the hall to kiss him harder and longer than he’d ever been kissed, in either his life or his afterlife, I took a deep breath instead.

But I wasn’t noble enough to stop eavesdropping.

“Tod…” my dad began, and my breath caught in my throat. Please don’t ruin it, Dad… .

“I don’t need your acceptance to be with her,” Tod said, like he’d read my mind. “She wants me, and that’s enough for me. But if you don’t disapprove of the two of us together, it would be really nice to hear that someday.”

My dad cleared his throat. “The world lost something when you died, Tod, and I know that wasn’t easy for your family. But the world’s loss was Kaylee’s gain. I hope the two of you have the forever her mother and I never got.”

“I will do my damnedest to make sure of that.”

“I know you will.”

My tears spilled over, and when I sniffled, the sudden silence from the hall made my heart jump. I turned on the faucet to hide my sniffles and remind them that I was only a door away. Then I finished brushing, and when I emerged from the bathroom, the hall was empty and my dad’s bedroom door was closed.

Tod was in my desk chair when I shuffled into my room in my Grinch slippers. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough. You were cute.”

He scowled. “I am not cute. I am the dreaded Grim Reaper. People fear me, you know. There’s a whole song about it.”

“Only because they don’t know about the dimples. People don’t fear a man with dimples.”

“Levi’s a nine-year-old with red hair and freckles, and you’d have to be crazy not to fear him.”

“I have been called crazy a few times.”

“Seriously. What did you hear?”

I turned and gave him a secretive smile. “I heard you ask my dad for his blessing to be with me, in your own way.”

Tod covered his embarrassment with a heated glance at the tank top and shorts I slept in. Back when I used to sleep. “You should have heard the things I didn’t ask his blessing for… .”

“What things would those be?”

“Things we’re not allowed to do under his roof.” He stood and I let him pull me close, and little sparks shot through my stomach, like they had the very first time we’d kissed, and I hoped that it would always be like this. That every time either of us lost something or someone, we’d still have each other, and that would be enough to make forever worth shooting for.

“Is that why you got a roof of your own?” I teased, watching the lazy swirls of contentment in his eyes, and beneath those, the tighter, faster coils of blue that said how badly he wanted me, in every possible sense of the word.

“Well, that, and so I’d have somewhere safe to plug in my cell phone. Someone turned it in to the lost-and-found at the hospital last week.”

“Mr. Hudson, if you can’t keep up with your own cell phone, how is my father supposed to trust you not to lose his only daughter?”

“Are you suggesting I clip you to my waistband, like a phone?”

“I don’t think I’d fit.”

“Let’s give it a try.” He lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around him, glad no one else could hear us, because we needed this. This one moment of happiness in the midst of so much pain and fear. “Feels like a good fit to me,” he said, and the heat in his eyes made me burn inside, all over, but instead of putting out the fires, I wanted to stoke the flames.

I kissed him, feeding from his mouth as he walked us toward the bed, and I knew in that moment that I would never need another sustenance. Tod was more than enough, and he was all I wanted. And I wanted all of him.

He lowered me to the bed, and my heart raced, and only when he stood to pull his shirt off did I realize we were no longer in my room. Or anywhere else in my house. I propped myself up on my elbows and lifted both brows in question, and Tod shrugged with a wicked smile. “I respect your dad too much to do this under his roof, but I love you too much not to continue this under my own.”

“We promised not to…” I started, but then he crawled onto the bed with me and I ran my hands over his stomach. I couldn’t help it.

“You promised. I never promised. Besides, I told him I’d probably make more mistakes. But my hands are in the right place.”

“Heart,” I corrected. “Your heart’s in the right place.”

“Yeah, but my hands are in an even better place.”

And so they were.