Before I Wake

21

“OH, SHIT,” NASH breathed, and Emma stiffened in my peripheral vision.

“That’s Sophie’s mom?” Luca said.

“Yeah. She traded her life for Sophie’s last September,” Nash said, and I have to admit, I bristled.

“But it was Val’s fault Sophie died in the first place.” I didn’t want my aunt’s last-minute attempt to abort her own evil scheme to be confused with my mother’s genuine sacrifice on my behalf. They were two entirely different women. “And, no, that’s not Sophie’s mom. That’s a demon wearing her soul.”

“Speaking of…” Em said, and I glanced up again to see Sophie round the corner of the trail, calling after her mother.

“Sophie, no!” I glanced at Nash. “Stay with Em. Please.” Then I took off with Luca, headed for my cousin. “Sophie, that’s not your mom!” I yelled again, and Sophie stopped, startled, wiping tears from her shell-shocked, tear-reddened face.

“I know, but…”

Aunt Val crossed her arms over her chest and studied me without even looking back at Sophie. “You must be Kaylee.”

I slowed to a stop ten feet away, but Luca ran past the hellion and hugged Sophie so tight he actually lifted her from the ground as he pulled her away from the hellion.

“And you would be…?” I couldn’t tear my gaze from my aunt’s imposter. She wasn’t Sophie’s mom. Intellectually, I knew that. But there was something about the way she moved Aunt Val’s body, like she knew it. Like she truly identified with the soul she wore. And suddenly I understood. “Belphegore.” The hellion of vanity who’d offered my aunt eternal youth and beauty.

“Who else?” Aunt Val’s mouth smiled, not too wide, not too much teeth. Just like she’d smiled in real life, to maximize the illusion of kindness and minimize wrinkles.

“She has my mom’s soul,” Sophie sobbed, clinging to Luca’s hand when he finally let her go. “Don’t let her cross over.”

I frowned at the hellion in confusion.

“The younger Miss Cavanaugh has just been informed that when I cross back into the Netherworld, her mother’s soul will dissipate into the ether, scattered throughout both worlds for as long as it takes the soul to pull itself back together again. And that could take centuries.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like purgatory,” Tod said, and I whirled around to find him standing on my left. I started to reach for him, then stopped when I saw who stood next to him, her arm linked possessively through his.

Addison Page. She looked just like she had the day she’d died. Beautiful long blond hair and bright blue eyes. She had everything my aunt had ever wanted and gave it all up for fame and fortune in exchange for eternity at Avari’s mercy.

Whatever your weakness, there’s a hellion to exploit it.

“Is that…?” I said, and Tod nodded stiffly, his jaw clenched in fury. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Avari,” I said, but my greeting felt more like a curse.

“Always a pleasure, Miss Cavanaugh,” the hellion said with Addy’s voice, and seeing him wear Addison bothered me more than any other form he’d ever taken—except for Alec’s. Avari glanced around at the rest of us through Addy’s wide blue eyes. “We appear to be missing a couple of guests… .”

“Guests?” I asked, but instead of answering, Avari disappeared. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded, but the only one who could have answered—Val/Belphegore—only smiled.

“Kaylee, I am so sorry,” Tod said as I stepped into the embrace he offered. “She—he—showed up the second you, Em, and Jayson crossed over, and he said you’d be fine. He gave his word.” And hellions couldn’t lie. “But he said if I went after you, he’d cross over, too, and Addy’s soul would…dissipate.”

Before I could ask what the hell that meant, or what the somehow-unified hoard of demons wanted, Emma shrieked behind us, and Nash’s shout of outrage echoed hers. I turned toward the pavilion just in time to see Addison grab Emma’s arm and disappear with her. Before I could even think to run toward them—not that that would have helped—Addison/Avari reappeared next to Val/Belphegore, Emma’s arm gripped tightly in her fist.

Em was crying, one hand pressed to her still-bleeding stomach. “What—?” she started, begging me with her gaze to explain.

A second later, Sophie squealed as Belphegore jerked her out of Luca’s grip with a single brutal tug. Then she shoved Luca closer to me and Tod. “You three stay put,” she said with my aunt’s voice. “One move from any of you while we’re waiting for the last player in this little game, and the humans will die in a great deal of pain.”

Sophie whimpered and Emma moaned, in both pain and fear, as behind us, Nash’s footsteps thumped to a stop next to Tod. “What the hell?” he demanded, but I was just as confused and horrified as he was by the parade of demons wearing faces from our past.

Belphegore ignored him and focused on Luca. “I can see what you’re thinking, necromancer. You think you can bring them back if they die, but they won’t be the same, will they? Do you really think either of them would appreciate your particular talents?”

Luca shook his head slowly, eyes narrowed in anger while most of the rest of us looked on in confusion.

“What’s up with all the dead people?” Nash stage-whispered.

“Aunt Val is Belphegore and Addison is Avari,” I said. “And when they cross over, the stolen souls will dissipate, doomed to wander both worlds for centuries, trying to coalesce. Or something like that.”

My explanation didn’t seem to help. “I’m assuming Kaylee didn’t invite the hellions to her birthday party, so the object of this little gathering would be…?”

“We’re still waiting for the big reveal,” Tod said. And as much as I hated waiting in ignorance, the alternative—suffering in ignorance—seemed infinitely worse.

“Sorry I’m late,” Thane said as he appeared in our midst, sunglasses sliding down the end of his nose. Before I could yell at him for what was obviously a betrayal of the deal we’d struck, he tugged on the hand he held and a waif of a girl with stringy blond hair stumbled forward.

“Lydia?”

“Kaylee?” Lydia’s eyes were wide and scared. Her clothes were dirty and her skin was pale. Where had Thane found her? Had she been living on the street?

“What the hell does this have to do with Lydia?” I demanded, but instead of answering, Avari looked around through Addison’s eyes at the group he’d assembled, then nodded his approval.

“If you want answers, you know how to get them,” he said with Addy’s voice. At her nod, Thane disappeared with Lydia in tow, and Belphegore disappeared with Sophie. And just like that, Aunt Val’s soul was gone, disintegrated and distributed across both worlds like dust scattered in an explosion for however long it would take all the bits to coalesce so she could be given a final rest. Or doomed to torture once again.

“Wait!” Tod shouted, and Avari turned to him with Addison’s wide-eyed look of expectance. “You said you wouldn’t cross if I didn’t go after Kaylee! You can’t go back on your word!” That no-lie rule was to hellions in the Netherworld what physics was to humans in our world—a law that could not be broken.

“No, what I said was that if you went after Kaylee, I would cross over. And that was no lie.” With that, the Addison-monster disappeared with Emma, and Em’s scream echoed even after her body was gone.

Tod shouted, a wordless expression of rage and despair. Addison was gone. We’d failed to save her. Again.

Then, for a single, tense second, Tod, Nash, Luca, and I stared at one another in shocked silence. Luca was the first to break it. “We’re going after them, right? We have to go after them!” But he couldn’t cross on his own, and neither could Nash.

“Yes, of course,” I said, closing my eyes. Trying to think. “But rushing in would be suicidal.”

“It’s not like we have any choice!” Luca cried. “They have Sophie and Emma. And…that other girl.”

“It’s a trap,” Nash said, running one hand through his mussed brown hair. He looked like he wanted to hit something, but all the bad guys had disappeared.

“How do you know?” Luca demanded.

“Because everything Avari does is a trap, and I’ve been caught in a couple of them.”

“They took our friends so we’d follow them into the Netherworld. Right where they want us,” Tod explained. “They’re looking for resurrected souls, like me and Kaylee.”

“You don’t know that,” Nash said. “Maybe this time they want Sophie and Emma and…”

“Lydia,” I supplied.

“Right,” he said. “Why would they bring Lydia here, when Sophie and Emma would have been plenty of bait on their own? The hellions brought them here for more than that.”

Tod and Nash started to argue, but I cut them off, beyond grateful that Nash was clean and sober. I’d almost forgotten how smart he could be. “Nash has a point,” I said. “Any one of them would have been enough bait. And if the hellions just wanted us in the Netherworld, Invidia would have kept me there earlier, and Avari would have let you cross after me.”

Tod nodded, grudgingly conceding the point.

“It doesn’t matter whether they want us here, or there, or in the next damn galaxy. They. Have. Sophie. Take me, or I’ll find my own way to cross,” Luca said, brown eyes blazing in fury and fear. I had no idea how he’d get himself there, but I didn’t doubt he could do it.

And his determination to save my spoiled, bitchy cousin was so damn sweet I almost wondered if I’d judged her too harshly all my life. Almost.

I glanced at Tod, and he nodded. Then Nash nodded. We were in agreement.

“Okay,” I said. “But we can’t cross here—this is where they’ll be expecting us. And don’t forget that Tod and I don’t have any undead abilities in the Netherworld. We can cross back over, and I assume we can function as bean sidhes, but no invisibility, inaudibility, or blinking from one place to the next. Understand? No shortcuts.” That thought terrified me beyond reason, especially considering that I’d been to the Netherworld a dozen times before I even had any undead abilities.

“I don’t care.” Luca glanced around the clearing. “Where should we cross?”

I looked around, thinking of my brief visit to the Nether minutes earlier. “Away from the water and out of the sand. Um… Over there. Beneath the trees.”

“You guys meet us there,” Tod said, one hand on my arm to catch my attention. Nash scowled, but when I didn’t object, he led Luca out of earshot. Tod stared down at me, his eyes swirling with nerves. “Kaylee, this isn’t going to end well. It could be worse than what happened with Alec, and I need you to promise me that if this goes bad, you’ll run. Just get the hell out of the Netherworld. I’ll be right behind you with Nash and anyone else I can reach to cross over with.”

“No. This is all or nothing, Tod. I’m not coming back without everyone.” What good would my afterlife be if I had to live it knowing I’d let my best friends die?

Tod exhaled slowly, obviously frustrated. “Fine. But I had to try.”

“And I love you for it.” I took his hand, and we blinked over to the trees just as Nash and Luca got there. “Ready?” Tod asked, and everyone nodded.

I sucked in one last deep lungful of human-world air and took Luca’s hand while Tod took Nash’s forearm. Then we crossed.

The Netherworld version of the tree limbs we stood beneath were heavily laden with fat, knobby purple fruit and long, thin leaves with serrated edges. Luca reached up like he’d touch one, then thought better of it. He was smarter than I’d been during my first trip to the Netherworld. Then I remembered that he’d been there before, with Sophie. Which was good. Experience counts for a lot in the Netherworld.

Uncommon sense counts for even more.

“Over there,” Tod said, and I followed his gaze to see Sophie, Lydia, and Emma, obviously terrified and in tears, sitting in a row on a concrete picnic bench that had bled through intact from the human world. Nothing else from the human park still stood in the Netherworld, except for the pavilion, its canvas covering ripped and flapping in a breeze that smelled faintly of the rot from the lake. The park wasn’t frequently or highly populated enough to bleed through in much detail.

In front of the bench, the three hellions stood arguing. I couldn’t make out every word, but the gist was clear. They were arguing over which hellion would get which girl. Belphegore wanted the pretty one—not sure if she meant Emma or Sophie—Invidia was jealous of whichever one Belphegore wanted, and Avari insisted that he would get the first choice, because he’d pulled the entire plan together.

But that was bullshit. He wanted first choice because he was a hellion of greed, and if he could possibly get away with taking all three of them, he would.

They argued like cartoon bad guys, but the hellions were omnipotent, damn near omnipresent, and immortal, as far as we could tell. Their only weaknesses were the character flaws they embodied and fed from. They couldn’t be hurt with anything originating from our world, and as far as I knew, they were impervious to most of the dangers the Netherworld had to offer.

We were in way over our heads.

I’d never seen Belphegore in her own skin before, but I wasn’t surprised to see that she was unspeakably beautiful, as a hellion of vanity ought to be. What did surprise me was that the moment I turned away from her, I couldn’t remember what she looked like. Not because she wasn’t beautiful—she was—but because she was so generically flawless that no one feature stood out enough to be remembered. She was average height, with skin that could have belonged to any human ethnicity. Her hair was neither short nor long, and neither light nor dark, but seemed to change slightly every time my gaze returned to her.

Was beauty so impossible to define? So pointless that it couldn’t be accurately remembered? What must it feel like to be the most beautiful creature in all of existence, but be forgotten the moment you leave the room?

Was that how Aunt Val had felt?

Luca was the first to ask the obvious question, pulling me from my own thoughts. “What do the demons want them for?”

The moment he spoke, all three hellions turned to look at us, like they’d been expecting us all along. And, of course, they had been. Avari disappeared, then reappeared close enough to whisper in Luca’s ear. “Why don’t you join us and find out?”

Before we could answer—or think, or plan, or run—he grabbed Luca and disappeared again, then reappeared beneath the pavilion, where he shoved Luca onto the bench next to Emma.

“Okay, plan?” I whispered, glancing from one Hudson brother to the other.

Nash huffed. “We probably should have come up with one before we crossed over.”

“It’s not like we had notice or anything,” Tod said.

“Only two of us can cross,” I said, eyeing our friends on the bench. “Even if we could get to them, I don’t know how many I can take at once.” And the hellions could probably hear every word we were saying.

“Maybe you should go get help?” Tod whispered.

“Your mom?”

“No!” both Hudson brothers said.

“Levi, or Madeline,” Tod suggested.

“The more, the merrier,” Avari said, and somehow, his voice came from right next to me, though he hadn’t left the pavilion. “Bring Madeline. I haven’t yet made her acquaintance.”

“No!” Emma shouted, with what may have been the last of her strength. “Don’t bring Madeline. Avari needs her.”

Tod and Nash both glanced at me, and I knew what they were thinking. What could unite three hellions who hated one another, and why the hell would they want Madeline?

Thane slapped Emma, and she gasped, then kicked him in the shin, still holding her side with one hand. He pulled his hand back to hit her again, but Luca stood and shoved Thane back, glaring silently, and the reaper actually stayed back. Tod wasn’t the only member of the undead unnerved by the necromancer.

Sophie was sniffling quietly. Lydia looked paralyzed with fear and pain, and I realized she was syphoning some of Emma’s pain. Neither of them would last long like that.

“Come on.” I wasn’t sure what the hellions were up to, but we couldn’t help anyone from fifty feet away. I marched down the slight incline toward the pavilion and both Tod and Nash followed me.

“—don’t need Madeline,” Thane was saying when we got within earshot. “I told you, she can do it.” He looked pointedly at me.

“I can do what?” I asked.

“You lying, traitorous bastard,” Tod spat, but Thane only shrugged.

“We do what we have to do to survive. You promised to try to recover my soul if I helped you. Avari promised to give it back if I helped him. The difference is that he can’t lie, and you can. I had to go with the sure thing.”

“Is this a trade?” I asked Avari. “You want me? Fine. I’m here. I’ll trade myself for all four of them,” I said, glancing at my friends lined up on the bench.

“Oh, we’re way beyond a simple trade,” Belphegore said. “Avari can no longer afford to keep you for himself, and these four meat sacks are all necessary for our little project.” She waved one hand at the bench and its occupants.

“But we are not unreasonable,” Invidia said. “If you do what we ask, we will let both of your little men go free.” She gestured at Nash and Tod.

“Hell, no,” Tod spat, just as Nash said, “No way.”

“We don’t even know what they want yet,” I said, without taking my attention away from the hellions. And Thane.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tod growled. “They don’t get you.”

“They don’t get any of us. What do you want?” I asked Avari again.

“You may have noticed that we’ve learned how to cross into your world,” he began, and I nodded. They’d gone to great pains to make sure I knew that. “The problem is that our current method of transportation requires a new human soul for each trip. We would like a more efficient way to utilize our resources. You help us, and both Hudsons will go free. You have my word.”

“What about them?” I asked, glancing at the full bench again.

“Unfortunately, they are all part of the permanent solution. As are you.”

“No.” Tod grabbed my hand and started to haul me backward, and when I pulled free, he stood at my back, quietly fuming, strung so tight I could hear his teeth grinding.

“What do you want?”

“You and the necroanima will bind my life force with a resurrected soul already in my possession.”

One of the reapers he’d snatched? And what the hell was a necroanima? Were they talking about Luca?

“Then you will install both in the body of this young woman—” Avari gestured to Lydia “—so that I can come and go from your world at will. There is one for each of us.”

“What?” I frowned at the hellion. “I don’t even know what that means. You want to live in Lydia’s body? Forever?”

“Of course not.” He frowned like my guess was preposterous. “Only until her body wears out. Then I will select another.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Nash asked. But no one had an answer.

“You will do as I instructed,” Avari said. “I will have a reusable body to use in the human world, and your men will go free. Or… I will kill every single one of you and feast on your souls for eternity.”

“That’s not possible!” I insisted. “And even if it were, I can’t do that. I reclaim souls, not reinstall them.”

“You can do both,” Invidia insisted. “Just like Madeline.”

“Madeline?” I asked, and Luca’s gaze fell to the ground and stayed there. I was missing something.

“Madeline reinstalled your soul,” Avari said. “After her nephew reanimated your body.”

“What? Luca can’t reanimate dead people! He just finds them.”

“Of course he can.” Belphegore laughed out loud. “What did you think the anima part of necroanima meant?”

“I don’t know what any of that means! He’s a necromancer. Right? Luca?” I demanded, and finally he met my gaze.

“Over here, they call me a necroanima. Which is technically more accurate. Madeline was afraid that knowing too much would put you in danger, so she wouldn’t let me tell you what I can really do. Or what you can do.”

“I can install souls? Into corpses?” As a bean sidhe, I’d only been able to help put them back into their own not-yet-truly-dead bodies.

He nodded. “All extractors can.”

“But you’re more special than that, aren’t you?” Avari reached out to touch my cheek, and Tod pulled me out of reach. After that, I didn’t want to let his hand go. But I did, because I couldn’t afford to look weak.

“How? How am I more special?” And why the hell was I the last to know?

“It takes the combined skills of both an extractor and a bean sidhe to bind a human soul to a non-human life force,” Avari said. “There hasn’t been one of those—one of you—in nearly a century, by the human calendar.”

“What does that mean? It’s actually possible?” I asked Luca, because even though Avari couldn’t lie, I didn’t trust him.

“In theory,” Luca said. “It’s never been done with a hellion, but it was done once with a lesser Nether-creature, so he could cross over and give testimony. The binding was done by a restored female bean sidhe. Just like you.”

No. No. Where the hell was my copy of History of the Nether? Shouldn’t that have been issued to me upon my death?

“That is the only reason I let your necroanima leave the Nether when he and your cousin crossed over by mistake,” Avari said. “So that he could reanimate you. If you’d stayed dead, I would have lost your soul.”

“You…?” Avari had planned this. Probably from the moment Thane showed him how to cross into the human world.

“Okay.” I turned back to Avari, fighting to maintain focus. “But even if I wanted to help you—” and I didn’t “—I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

“I think you’ll figure it out. Let’s practice the installation first. All you need is the proper…motivation.” Belphegore hauled Emma off the bench and shoved Luca down when he tried to pull her back. “This one is your… What is the word? The one you care about. Your friend?”

Em was sniffling, tears pouring down her face, but her chin was stiff. Resolute. She was so much braver than I’d ever suspected. Braver than I’d ever been.

My hands curled into fists. “Don’t touch her!”

“Pay attention, now,” Belphegore said, her featureless, black-orb eyes trained on me. “We’re going to play a game. All you have to do is catch the soul. Then we’ll move on to the bonding.”

“No!” I shouted when she reached for Emma. Em screamed.

Invidia snapped her neck with one hand.

Em crumpled to the ground and the scream that tore from my throat had no equal. Sophie, Lydia, and Luca slapped their hands over their ears. Even the hellions winced. The canvas overhead flapped, stirred by the power of my voice. Tree branches shook in the distance, and several fat purple fruits dropped to the ground.

Still screaming, I fell to my knees at Emma’s side. I checked for a pulse, but there was none. I felt for breath, but she wasn’t breathing. Her beautiful brown eyes stared up at the yellowish Netherworld sky through the ripped canvas, but they had no focus.

Emma was dead. Not undead, like me. She was gone, her life stolen, her lifeline aborted without a second thought from the hellion who’d ended it. And with her, I’d lost a part of myself that could never be replaced. Emma was my other half. The sister I’d never had. The cousin I’d always wanted. We’d shared every triumph, every failure, and every secret.

I’d promised I would protect her. Instead, I’d gotten her killed.

I held Emma’s head in my lap and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Tears filled my eyes and poured over. Inside my head was a maelstrom of grief and fury that couldn’t be expressed by either thought or word. I was made of pain and loss.

Luca let go of one ear to stare at his hand, and distantly I noticed that it was smeared with blood, more of which dripped from his ear.

Jaw clenched in fury, Tod took something from his pocket and handed it to Nash, but I couldn’t see what it was through my tears, and I doubted Nash could, either. Neither of them were bothered by the female bean sidhe’s wail. They heard only the song I sang for my best friend’s soul.

I would have screamed for Emma forever. I would have screamed for her soul until the earth crumbled beneath us both, just to keep from losing her. But Belphegore knelt in front of me and clamped her smooth, hard hand over my mouth.

“Nicely done,” she said in the sudden, deafening silence. “But you cannot install what hasn’t yet left the corpse.”

In my grief and outrage, it took me a minute to understand. I’d screamed so fast and so loud for Emma that her soul didn’t have a chance to leave her body. I’d suspended it in place, still inside her.

But the moment my scream ended, her soul began to rise. Belphegore opened her mouth and inhaled, and Em’s soul began to float toward her.

My heart hurt. My head hurt. My throat hurt. My entire existence was pain and bleak darkness. Em could not die.

But it was too late. She was already dead. And even if the hellions would let me put her soul back in her body, there was no guarantee she’d ever regain consciousness. Her neck would still be broken, her body irreparably damaged.

So this time I screamed for her soul. Belphegore wouldn’t get it. Neither would Avari or Invidia. No part of the Netherworld would have Emma, or any of the rest of my friends.

I sang for Emma’s soul, and when I held my amphora out, her soul slid into the heart around my neck like it was always meant to be there. It wasn’t. But at least she was safe there. Even if they took the amphora, they couldn’t destroy it, and they couldn’t remove her soul from it.

“Wonderful!” Belphegore clapped her flawless hands, her perfect lips curled into a forgettable smile. “Now bind her soul to me. Pull her out of your little heart and—”

“No.” I laid Emma’s body gently on the ground and stood, clutching the amphora in my fist, glaring at the world through fresh, furious tears. “Hell, no. You’re not getting her. You’re not getting any of us. You can kill every single one of them, and I’ll put every single soul in here, where you can’t touch it.”

Sophie and Lydia cried harder behind me, and Luca tried to comfort them both through his own shock.

“And if we kill you?” Avari demanded. The hellions stood in front of me now, all in a row, united in their shared rage. In power so strong it radiated from them in waves that stung my skin.

“If you kill me, you will never, ever get what you want.”

Avari opened his mouth to make another threat, and Tod shouted over him. A single word that approached the power and volume of my own voice.

“Now!”

He charged Avari, and from the other side, Nash charged Belphegore. Both hellions screamed, then bent at odd angles, reaching for something behind them. When they turned, still reaching in vain, I understood. The hilt end of my broken dagger protruded from the center of Avari’s back, where he couldn’t reach it. The blade end was stuck in Belphegore, where she couldn’t reach it.

Only Invidia remained unhurt, and she was so confused by the chaos and competing demands from Avari and Belphegore for her help that for a moment she turned in circles, paralyzed by indecision.

Nash rushed around Belphegore and pulled Luca off the bench. I held Emma’s arm while each of the boys grabbed one of my wrists, and right before I blinked us into the human world, I realized that Thane was gone, but I had no idea when he’d left.

A minute later, Tod appeared next to us beneath the human-world pavilion, with both Lydia and Sophie.

I dropped onto the ground with Emma’s hand clutched in mine, and though the others stood around me, I saw nothing but Em. Until Nash picked her body up and her hand slid from my grip. He carried her toward the cars, while Luca herded the other girls and Tod pulled me to my feet. I walked, but I didn’t see where I was going.

I didn’t care.

After only a few steps, Lydia collapsed and I blinked, jarred out of my own shock. Tod and I knelt next to her. She was still breathing. She still had a pulse. But her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

“We have to go,” Tod said, sliding one arm behind her shoulders to pick her up. “They’ll cross over as soon as they get the blades out and heal.”

“No, they won’t,” Thane said, and I jumped, startled, to find him behind us. “I cleaned out their stockpile, during your convenient distraction.”

“Their stockpile?”

“The restored souls. I took them all. Including mine.” He took off his glasses, and I was oddly relieved to see that he had both pupils and irises again. “Can’t have them coming after me, now can I? And the restored souls will fetch one hell of a price somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Before I could demand that he turn the souls over to the proper authority, his gaze fell to Lydia, lying motionless on the ground. “I couldn’t get hers, though.”

“What? Her soul? Where is it?”

“In the Nether. Here. Everywhere. She was syphoning Emma’s pain when Emma died, and part of her soul went with Emma’s.”

“Part?” I wrapped my hand around the heart hanging against my sternum. It was unnaturally warm.

“The rest dissipated.”

“So she’s…empty?” Tod said, staring at Lydia, and his hand curled around mine, around the amphora, like he would help me protect it.

Thane nodded. “I’ve only seen that a couple of times—a living body with no soul. She’ll be dead in minutes.”

“If she doesn’t get a soul…” Tod said, his gaze holding mine. Challenging it. There was a choice to be made, and I had to make it.

I nodded. I understood.

I could save Emma. Part of her, anyway. And I could save part of Lydia. Nothing would be the same. But at least life would go on. I owed it to them both to try.

Nash laid Emma on the ground next to Lydia.

I closed my eyes, but I could still see them in my head and I could feel everyone watching me. Sophie was still sniffling, clutching Luca’s arm. Nash held Emma’s limp hand. Tod was waiting, and he was ready, too. Once I withdrew Em’s soul from the amphora, I’d need a male bean sidhe to help guide it into another body.

I sang out to Emma’s soul, and when it came out of the amphora, Tod helped me guide it into Lydia’s body. Then we waited.

At first, nothing happened, and I didn’t know whether to be horrified or relieved by the thought that I’d done it wrong. That Emma’s suffering would end with her life.

Then Lydia opened her eyes. They weren’t blue, like they should have been. They were brown. Emma-brown.

“Kaylee?” Emma said with Lydia’s voice, blinking those familiar brown eyes at me. “What happened? Where are we?” She sat up, and everyone moved back to give her space. “Why do I sound weird? Why am I so pale?” she demanded, staring at Lydia’s forearm, stretched out in front of her.

“I couldn’t save you,” I whispered, and those four words held more shame than I’d known I could feel. I’d promised I wouldn’t let her die. Then I’d failed her. “This was the best I could do. But I swear on my afterlife that they’ll pay, Em. All three of them.”

Avari wanted my soul, but he was going to get a hell of a lot more than that. He was going to get pain. And loss. And justice. He was going to get vengeance in kind for every soul he’d stolen. For every friend he’d taken from me. This time I would feed from his pain, and with any luck, it would hurt worse knowing that he’d put into motion his own downfall.

Avari had woken me up and given my afterlife purpose. He’d awakened my rage.

Emma had given me reason to use it.