Before I Wake

1

I WAS A virgin sacrifice. And yeah, it’s just as creepy as it sounds. I died on a Thursday, at twenty-seven minutes after midnight, killed by a monster intent on stealing my soul. The good news? He didn’t get it. The bad news? Turns out not even death will get you out of high school… .

I’ve always hated Mondays, but this particular Monday, a beautiful day in late April, seemed ready to deliver its very own brand of hell. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror at seven-thirty in the morning, staring at myself, trying to decide exactly how alive I should look. In the movies, people are always faking their own deaths, but I couldn’t think of anyone else—real or fictional—who’d faked survival. I’d have to blaze this trail all on my own.

How pale would a person look twenty-nine days after being stabbed to death? That would depend on the severity of the wound, right? On the number of organs injured? On the amount of blood lost? Since no one at school knew any of those details, they wouldn’t know if my performance was off. So I could play the part however I wanted. Right?

No one had to know that my pale skin and sweaty palms were really the result of a colossal case of first-day-back nerves.

My stomach churned as I stared at my reflection, wondering how I could possibly feel so different, yet look exactly the same as I had before I died, except for the new scar. Exactly the same as I would look next year, and the year after that, and a decade after that, and for as many centuries as my afterlife lasted.

“Kaylee! Breakfast!” my father called from the kitchen.

“I’m dead, Dad,” I called back, dropping my hairbrush into the drawer. “I don’t eat anymore.”

A minute later, my father appeared in the doorway in a grease-splattered T-shirt and jeans, frowning at me. “You don’t have to eat. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I think you’d feel a lot better if you had something warm in your stomach.”

I turned and leaned against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest. “That’s not really how it works.”

“No arguments. I made pancakes and bacon. I want you at the table in five minutes.”

I sighed as his footsteps retreated toward the kitchen. He was trying. I wasn’t sure what he was trying, but he was serious about it.

I crossed the hall into my room for a pair of shoes and blinked in surprise at the empty space at the center of my room, where the bed used to be. It had been four weeks since we’d gotten rid of the ruined mattress and sheets, and I still wasn’t used to the new purple quilt that had replaced the blue comforter my psychotic math teacher had bled out on.

After my death, I’d avoided my room for nearly a week until my father figured out what I’d been too embarrassed to tell him—that I couldn’t go in there without seeing it all in my head. Reliving my own death.

That night, he and Tod had rearranged every piece of furniture I owned until my room was unrecognizable. That was three weeks ago, and I still couldn’t get used to seeing my bed against the wall, my desk slanted across one corner of the room. But this time when I glanced into that corner, I couldn’t help but smile.

Tod sat in my desk chair, his curls golden in the glow from my bedside lamp, his eyes as blue as the ocean, the one time I’d seen it. Styx was curled up on my bed, asleep, paying the reaper no attention whatsoever. Half Pomeranian, half Netherworld guard dog, she was the fiercest, most dangerous six pounds of frizzy fur and pointy teeth I’d ever seen, other than her littermates. She was also a living, breathing, growling security system, bred to warn me when danger approached on either side of the world barrier.

It had taken her weeks to understand that growling at Tod wasn’t going to get rid of him.

Tod’s brother—my ex—was wrestling with that same conclusion.

Tod stood as soon as he saw me, and I couldn’t resist a smile, in spite of the nerves still twisting my insides into knots.

My arms slid around his neck and delicious, tiny little sparks shot up my spine as his hand settled at my waist, and I secretly marveled at the fact that I was allowed to touch him whenever I wanted.

This was still new, me and Tod. Our relationship was only a month old, yet somehow, he was the only thing that still seemed to fit, since my death. Going through the motions in the rest of my life—an ironic term, if I’d ever heard one—now felt like trying to fit into clothes I’d outgrown. Everything was uncomfortable, and too tight, and not as bright as I remembered.

But Tod was the same. Only better.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work? Eventually Levi’s going to notice that you keep skipping out,” I said when I finally had to let him go. Levi, his boss, had a soft spot for Tod, but in their line of work, leniency could only go so far. Tod was a reaper—more than two and a half years dead, but perpetually nearly eighteen. He worked the midnight-to-noon shift at the local hospital, reaping the souls of those scheduled to die on his watch.

Except when he was delivering pizza. And helping me pretend I was still alive.

“I had a break and I thought you might be nervous this morning. So I brought you this.” He handed me a paper cup of coffee, and I took a cautious sip. Caramel latte. My favorite, and the only edible thing I still seemed to crave since my unfortunate demise. “And this.” He spread his arms, showing off a physique even death couldn’t mar, and I wanted to touch him some more. Then some more after that. “I figure one or the other will make you feel better.”

“Both. They both make me feel better.” I pulled him close for a kiss, then didn’t want to let him go. “I don’t wanna go back to school today.”

“So don’t. Come hang out with me at work.” Tod dropped back into my desk chair and swiveled to face me while I knelt to grab my sneakers from beneath my bed. “We can play naughty dress up with the hospital gowns and rearrange the supply closets.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? What if they can’t find some important drug or equipment in an emergency?”

Tod shrugged. “Nobody’s gonna die without my help, anyway, so what’s the harm?”

The harm? Potential brain damage. Paralysis. And all kinds of other nonlethal catastrophes. Fortunately, his grin said he was kidding, so I didn’t have to go through with the lecture.

“Kaylee!” my dad shouted, and Tod sniffed in the direction of the hall.

“Is that bacon?”

“And pancakes.” I shoved my foot into the sneaker and tugged on the laces to tighten it. “He thinks I should start my first day back at school with a healthy breakfast. I think he’s been spending too much time with your mom.” In addition to being an amazing amateur baker, Harmony Hudson was the only fellow female bean sidhe I knew.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Tod said. “Breakfast is my third favorite meal of the day.”

“Not today.” Standing, I tugged him closer so I could slide my hand behind his neck, my fingers playing in the soft curls that ended there. “I think he needs some father-daughter time.”

As grateful as my father was for everything Tod had done to try to save my life, he’d had his fill of houseguests for a while. Tod and I had spent nearly every waking moment together since my death, and for two people who didn’t need sleep, that was a lot of moments, even with his jobs and my training standing in the way.

“Oh, fine. Enjoy your pancakes and homework.”

“Thanks. Enjoy your sick people. Will I see you at lunch?”

The blues in his irises swirled like cobalt flames, and something deep inside me smoldered. “You’ll be the only one who sees me. You don’t need to eat, anyway, right?”

“Oh, now I don’t need to eat… .”

He pulled me close again, and that kiss was longer, deeper. Hotter. Touching Tod made me feel more alive than anything else had since the moment my heart stopped beating.

“Kaylee, please come eat something!” my dad yelled, and Tod groaned in frustration. He held me tighter for just a second, then stepped back and let his hand trail down my arm slowly. Then he was gone, and for a moment, I felt empty.

That was a scary moment, but one I couldn’t quite shake. I’d thought that being dead-but-still-there would feel a lot like being alive, but I was wrong. I felt like I was out of sync with the world. Like the planet had kept spinning while I was gone, and now that I was back, I couldn’t catch up.

I grabbed my latte and headed for the kitchen, where I dropped into my chair at the card table we’d been meaning to replace with a real one since my dad had moved back to town seven months ago. The plate in front of me held four pancakes and—I swear—half a pound of bacon. Fried, not microwaved, as evidenced by the grease splattered all over the stove and adjacent countertop. My dad was serious about this traditional home-life thing.

It was kinda cute.

My father pulled out his own chair and started to hand me one of the coffee mugs he held, but then he noticed the latte, and his smile slipped a little. “Tod?”

“Yeah, but he’s gone. He was just trying to help.”

He set both mugs in front of his own plate and picked up his fork. “I’m going to assume the steaming cup of Starbucks means he wasn’t here all night?”

Translation: Your undead boyfriend is supposed to be gone by eleven so you can pretend to sleep.

“He works nights, Dad.” But we both knew that didn’t mean anything, when the commute was instantaneous.

For the first couple of days after my death, my father had tried to stay up all night to make sure there were no unauthorized visits, and I didn’t bother to point out how futile his efforts were. If Tod and I didn’t want to be seen or heard, we wouldn’t be. Both reapers and extractors—my official new title with the reclamation department—had selective visibility, audibility, and corporeality. Basically, we could choose who saw and heard us, and whether or not we existed physically on the human plane.

Sounds cool, I know, but it comes with a hell of a price.

My dad set his fork down and I caught a rare glimpse of the concern swirling in his eyes. “I’m worried about you, Kaylee.”

“Don’t be. Nothing’s changed.” But that wasn’t true, and even if it had been, it wouldn’t have set him at ease. My life wasn’t exactly normal before I died, and death had done nothing to improve that.

“You don’t eat. You hardly ever talk anymore, and I haven’t seen you watch TV or pick up a book in days. I walk into your room, and half the time you’re not there, even when you’re there.”

“I’m working on that,” I mumbled, swirling a bite of pancake in a puddle of syrup. “Corporeality is harder than it looks. It takes practice.” And concentration.

“Are you sure you’re ready for school? We could give it another week.” But he seemed to regret the words as soon as he’d said them. Another week off would mean another week of me sitting around the house doing nothing when I wasn’t training as an extractor, and that’s what was worrying him in the first place.

“I need to go. They all know today’s the day.”

“They” were my teachers, classmates, and the local television stations. I was big news—the girl who’d survived being stabbed by her own math teacher. My father had stopped answering the home phone, and we’d had to change my cell number when someone leaked it to the press. They all wanted to know what it was like to nearly die. To kill the man who’d tried to kill me. They wanted to know how I’d survived.

None of them could ever know the truth—that I hadn’t survived. That was part of the deal—allowing me to live my afterlife like my murder had never happened. Protecting my secret meant keeping up with schoolwork and work-work, in addition to my new duties extracting souls from those who shouldn’t have them.

“If anything goes wrong, I want you to call me,” my father said, and I nodded. I wasn’t going to tell him that if anything went wrong, I could blink out of school and into my own room before he could even get to his car in the parking lot at work. He knew that. He was just trying to help and to stay involved, and I loved him for it. For that, and for the pancakes, even if I had no real desire to eat them.

We both sipped our coffee, and I noticed that his appetite seemed to have disappeared, too. Then he set his mug down and picked up a strip of bacon. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this Friday… .” He left the sentence hanging while he took a bite.

“What’s this Friday?” I asked, and my father frowned.

“Your birthday, Kaylee.”

For a moment, I could only blink at him, mentally denying the possibility, while I counted the days in my head. Time had lost all meaning over the past month. Tod said that was normal—something about absent circadian rhythms—but it didn’t seem possible that I could have forgotten my own birthday.

“I’m turning seventeen…” I whispered.

Except that I wasn’t. The anniversary of my birth would come and go, but I’d still be sixteen and eleven-twelfths. I’d be sixteen and eleven-twelfths forever—at least physically. I would always look too young to vote. Too young to drink. Too young to drive a rental car, should that urge ever strike. And none of those limitations had ever seemed more pointless. What did it matter?

What did any of it matter, anymore?

“So, who do you want to invite to the party?” My dad picked up his mug and sipped, waiting for my answer.

I frowned. “I don’t want a party.” Very few people knew I hadn’t really lived, and of those, Nash and Sabine—my ex and his ex—currently hated me for framing Nash for my murder. I’d had no choice, and I’d accepted the duties of my afterlife mostly to unframe Nash—if I wasn’t dead, he couldn’t have killed me. But I couldn’t blame him for hating me.

Still, even if Nash and Sabine both came, there wouldn’t be enough of my real friends to constitute a party, and I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone else.

“So, what do you usually do on your birthday?” He didn’t know the answer to his own question because he’d left me with my aunt and uncle—his brother—after my mother died. I’d only had him back for seven months.

He regretted leaving me—I knew that for a fact—and that regret was infinitely heavier for him, now that I was dead.

“Em and I usually rent movies and binge on junk food.” But that wouldn’t work this year. I’d never had a boyfriend on my birthday before, and I’d never had a father on my birthday before. And I’d certainly never been dead on my birthday before.

My dad looked so disappointed I wanted to hug him. So I did the next best thing. “Fine. A party. But a small one. Friends and family only.”

He gave me half a smile. “Decorations?”

“No. But you can get a cake. Chocolate, with cream cheese frosting. And I get a corner slice.” If my appetite ever came back, I planned to eat whatever the hell I wanted, for the rest of my afterlife. Calories mean nothing to the dead. “And I wouldn’t turn down a couple of presents.”

“Done.” He gave me a real smile that time, and I was relieved to see it. “I’m sorry I missed all the other birthdays, Kay.”

I shrugged. “You didn’t miss much.”

My dad opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak, a tall woman in a brown suit skirt appeared in the kitchen in sensible low heels, her short brown hair perfectly arranged. “Jeez, Madeline.” My dad half choked, then gulped from his mug to clear his throat. “Ever hear of knocking?”

Madeline raised one perfectly arched brow at him. “Mr. Cavanaugh, I’m doing you a courtesy by letting you see and hear me at all. If that isn’t good enough for you, I can appear to Kaylee alone.”

Madeline was my boss in the reclamation department—she was the one who’d okayed the cover-up that hid my death and kept Nash from going down for my murder. She was also the only department member I’d met so far. My dad didn’t like her. She hadn’t bothered to form an opinion of him one way or another.

“It’s fine. Would you like some coffee?” He held up the untouched mug he’d fixed for me.

“This is not a social visit, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Madeline turned to me, arms crossed over her white blouse. “Kaylee, there’s some question about whether or not you’re ready to begin work on your own as an extractor. Four weeks is a rather short training period, we admit, but the soul thief you were restored to deal with has killed again, and we can’t let this continue if there’s any chance you’re ready to take him or her on now.”

A dull knot of fear blossomed deep in my stomach and I fed it with doubts about my own abilities because I knew I should be scared. I would be, if not for the pervasive numbness that settled deeper into me with each day of my afterlife.

“Wait a minute—who is this thief, and why does Kaylee have to be the one to stop him? No one ever bothered to explain that to me. After all, I’m just her father.”

Madeline focused her steely stare at him. “We don’t know who or what the thief is, Mr. Cavanaugh. That’s part of what we need Kaylee to find out. But we’ve already lost two agents chasing him, and frankly, because she is a bean sidhe, Kaylee is our best bet at the moment.”

I was far from sure I could actually do what she wanted, but I couldn’t find any flaw in her logic. As a female bean sidhe, in life, I’d been a death portent. When someone near me was close to death, I got the overwhelming need to wail for the departing soul. But what that wail really did was suspend the soul. Capture it. With the help of a male bean sidhe—Tod, Nash, my uncle, and my dad all qualified—I could reinstate that soul and save the life of its owner. But at great cost. To preserve the balance between life and death, when one life was saved, another would be taken.

Madeline had brought me back from the dead and recruited me in hopes that my bean sidhe abilities would help me succeed where the other extractors had failed. I desperately hoped she was right, because the alternative was the end to my afterlife. A final rest, as she called it.

“And you want me to do this today? Face this thief?” That fear inside me swelled until I felt cold on the inside, like ice was forming in my stomach.

“No. We don’t know the thief’s current whereabouts. But we need to know you’re ready whenever we find him, so today is a trial run, to see how you perform on your own.”

“But the target is real?” my father asked, and I was starting to wonder if I even needed to be here for this discussion of my afterlife.

“Very real.” Madeline met my gaze. “Our necromancer has pinpointed a reaper Levi can’t identify, which means this reaper isn’t from his district.” Tod’s boss was familiar enough with his own employees to recognize their restored souls from a distance. “We suspect he’s a rogue and we think he’ll strike very soon. When that happens, I’ll come for you, and you will go extract the stolen soul from him. Do you understand?”

“No.” In fact, I wanted to curl up in my bed and hide under the covers. “If you know he’s there, why not go get him now?”

“Because he hasn’t stolen any souls yet.”

“So you’re just going to let someone die?”

Madeline scowled. “If we were to apprehend him now, we’d never know for sure the reaper is a rogue and we’d lose this opportunity to see you in action, on your own. Whatever life this reaper takes doesn’t outweigh our opportunity to stop the thief you were restored to deal with. To put it in terms you’ll understand, that’s like swatting a fly, but letting the hornet live.”

“Those aren’t terms I understand! What if yours was the life he was going to take?” I shoved my plate away and stood. I’d found something else that could beat back the numbness—anger. “Who are you to decide what one life is worth?”

“I am your boss.” Madeline didn’t even raise her voice, and it irritated me to realize she wasn’t as upset about this as I was. She wasn’t upset at all. “This serial soul thief is much more dangerous than a single rogue reaper, which makes the reaper an ideal trial run for you. Especially considering that we can track the reaper, thanks to our new necromancer.”

A necromancer, I’d recently learned, was someone who could see and communicate with the dead. Only see isn’t a precise term. It’s more of a sense than true sight. Though in my case, the literal interpretation also applied—a necromancer could see and hear me, even when I made myself invisible and inaudible to everyone else.

“When am I going to meet this necromancer?”

“Today,” Madeline said. “He started class at your school last week, and since it seems likely that the two of you will run into each other, we’d like you to keep an eye on him.”

“Your necromancer is a teenager?”

“I believe he’s in his junior year.”

“Is he alive?” my father asked. He thought the dead-to-living ratio of my friends and coworkers was high enough already.

“Both alive and human, Mr. Cavanaugh. He’s also a very polite young man.”

“They’re gonna eat him alive,” I mumbled, and my father chuckled. “Fine, I’ll keep an eye out for your necromancer, but I can’t promise that associating with me will do him any favors, socially.”

“Thank you, Kaylee,” Madeline said, and I glanced up in surprise over the courtesy. Not that Madeline was ever truly rude, she just wasn’t very…personable. “I’ll find you when and if this reaper turns out to be a rogue.”

With that Madeline disappeared, and my father sighed. “So much for a normal first day back.”

I dipped a strip of bacon in a pool of syrup. “Dad, I can count the number of normal school days I’ve had this year on one hand.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that.” He sipped from his mug, and I shrugged, but before I could reply, Madeline appeared in the kitchen again, and this time I nearly choked. “Change your mind about the coffee?” my dad asked, but she only shook her head.

“The reaper made a kill. It’s time to earn your keep, Kaylee.”

I swallowed the bite I’d nearly choked on then stood, nerves buzzing in my stomach like I’d devoured a swarm of flies, even though I knew what to do. I’d been practicing for a month. But… “I have to be in first period in twenty minutes.”

“Then work fast.” Madeline reached into the pocket of her suit jacket and pulled out what looked like a handful of metal, which she held out for me to take. I lifted what turned out to be a heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. It was pretty, in a sweet, dated kind of way.

“It’s heavy.” I frowned, trying to slide my fingernail into the edge seam. “And it doesn’t open.”

“That’s because it’s not a locket. It’s an amphora. This will hold the soul after you capture it. This was designed especially for you, to look like something a young woman would wear.”

“A young woman from what era?” I mumbled, slipping the chain over my head.

Madeline frowned. “Bring this back to me when you have the soul. Do not try to apprehend the rogue. It’s up to the reapers to police their own—we’re only concerned with the stolen soul he carries. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t looking to pick a fight on my first day, anyway. “Where is this reaper?”

“He killed someone at the Daylight Donuts shop three minutes ago. If you hurry, he might still be close. If you have trouble finding or identifying him, sing for the soul.”

“Okay, but—”

“Go, Kaylee.”

I glanced from Madeline to my father, who nodded reluctantly. So I closed my eyes and thought of the doughnut shop—fortunately, I’d been there a million times. When I opened my eyes, I stood in the middle of the small dining area. The shop was open, but empty, and a quick glance around revealed the body of the owner on the floor of the kitchen, still in his long white apron. But there was no reaper.

Panicked, I stepped through the locked back door of the shop and into an alley, my feet silent on the concrete because I was both invisible and incorporeal at the moment. I expected to have to wail for the stolen soul—hell, I half expected to be too late already—but there the reaper stood, near the Dumpster. Like he was waiting for me.

My breath caught in my throat, which would have been a problem if I’d actually needed to breathe. I recognized the reaper, even in those ridiculous sunglasses. I’d seen Tod give him to a hellion in the Netherworld to keep him from reaping my soul. Yet there he stood, alive and kicking—metaphorically speaking. The reaper who’d wanted me dead since the day he killed my mother, thirteen years ago.

Thane. Back from the dead. Again.