Before I Wake

3

“HEY, WHAT ARE you doing here?” Tod said, taking my hand as I sank into the waiting-room chair next to him. “Rough day at school?”

“Mandatory counseling. And I got mobbed in the hall between first and second period.”

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “You’d think they’ve never seen a murder victim returned from the dead to reclaim the souls of the fallen and grant them eternal rest.”

“Well, when you say it like that…”

“Just give them some time, Kaylee. Eventually you’ll be old news again, and life will go back to normal.” Tod shrugged. “Except you won’t actually be living it.”

“Not helping.” There was a time when I’d thought it would be nice to be noticed. To stand out, like Emma or Sophie. Now I stood out, but for all the wrong reasons. Anonymity was a luxury I’d never expected to miss.

I ran my thumb over the back of Tod’s hand. Just touching him made me feel more…real. More there. More alive. I pulled him closer for a kiss and my heart beat faster when his lips touched mine. My pulse raced, and I suddenly remembered what it had felt like the first time we’d kissed, not in my head, like a mere memory, but in my entire body. Like I was reliving it. Like I could go back to that moment, the most alive I’d ever felt before or since, and live in it for eternity.

For a second, I almost forgot I was dead. And that he was dead. And that we were surrounded by sick people in the waiting room of the local hospital.

Then someone coughed and a baby started crying. Reality roared back into focus, and it was such a disappointment that my chest ached from the loss of something I hadn’t really had in the first place.

Why did I feel so disconnected from everything around me? How could I look the same, but feel so different? Empty, like a shell. A Kaylee-shell, still me on the outside, but hollow on the inside. I’d thought that going back to school—seeing friends and classmates, and even teachers—would help me fill the void. I’d thought that if I could stuff the shell of my former self with the pieces of my former life, everything could go back to the way it was.

I’d thought my death could be just a blip on the radar of my life, over and done with in short order. I should have known better, just from being with Tod. His death wasn’t a blip. It was the defining moment of his existence. His death—how, why, and when he’d died—had shaped him. Defined him.

What did my death say about me? That I was a victim? That I wasn’t strong enough to protect Nash like I’d protected Emma and Sophie?

“Hey.” Tod squeezed my hand to draw me out of my thoughts. “I think death looks good on you.” He took my other hand and his fingers wound around mine, my arm stretched over the chair rail between us. “I look forward to the day when I won’t have to share you with roving bands of high-school gossip mobs.”

“That day could be today,” I admitted. “I don’t want to go back.” But I didn’t have any choice. I’d begged and bargained for the chance to pretend I was still alive, and now that I’d gotten that chance, I had to uphold my end of the deal. I had to keep up with appearances.

“It’ll get better,” Tod said, and his next blink was too long. “So, did you see Nash?”

“Only in passing. I doubt he’ll be offering an olive branch anytime soon.”

“You could make the first move,” Tod suggested, running his thumb over the back of mine.

“Yeah, if I could get him to speak to me. How is he?” During both rounds of recovery from addiction to frost—Demon’s Breath, to those in the know—Tod had checked in on his brother regularly, though Nash never saw him.

“I can’t get very close to him anymore. That damn dog barks every time I show up, and Nash starts yelling for me to get out.”

Nash’s dog, Baskerville, was Styx’s littermate.

“Nash isn’t going to forgive me,” Tod said. “Not yet, anyway. But he might forgive you. He still loves you, Kaylee.”

Something in his voice made my heart hurt, and I hated that I liked that. Feeling anything was so rare lately that even pain had become interesting.

“You’re not worried about me and Nash, are you?” I asked, ducking to catch his gaze. “Because—”

“No.” He put one finger over my mouth, then replaced it with his lips, and that kiss went deeper and longer than would have been appropriate in a hospital, if anyone could have seen us. And when he finally pulled away, his gaze met mine, and everything that kiss had said was still echoing in his eyes, in fierce cobalt swirls of emotion so bold and confident it couldn’t possibly be shaken. “I’m not worried about you and Nash. I’m worried about just Nash.”

“Me, too.”

“Did something happen?”

“Something happened, but not because of Nash. I had my first reclamation this morning,” I said, wishing we weren’t separated by the arm of the chair between us. “Rogue reaper. Sort of a trial run, before they send me on the job they brought me back for.”

“So, did you kick ass?”

I grinned, indulging in a moment of pride over the fact that I’d actually gotten the job done. First time. “There was both the kicking of ass and the taking of names. One name, actually.”

Tod’s pale brows rose. “I take it this is a name I might know?”

My moment of pride ended in a cold wash of fear and confusion. “Thane.”

His brow furrowed. “Thane, the lovable, brand-new reaper I’ve never met, who means none of us any harm? Please say you mean that Thane… .”

“Nope, the other one. Thane, the reaper who killed my mother, then came back for me thirteen years later. He’s back, Tod. He killed a doughnut-shop owner this morning, then just kind of hung around waiting to be caught, like he knew someone would come for him. He was surprised to see me, though, and he looked terrified when I took the soul from him.”

“Did you tell Madeline?” Tod asked, his irises noticeably still.

“No, I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

His frown deepened. “Kaylee, either Avari let Thane go, or Thane escaped. Either way, something’s wrong. You have to tell her.”

“No!” That came out louder than I’d intended, and if I’d been audible, everyone in the E.R. waiting room would have been staring at us. “I’m not spending eternity here without you. No way.”

His fingers tightened around mine. “That’s not what I want, either, but we can’t just let Thane keep killing.”

“I know, but there has to be a way I can get rid of him without losing you. I think we should start at Lakeside.” The psychiatric unit attached to the hospital we sat in at that very moment.

“With Scott?” Tod’s irises were swirling now, reflecting his emotions as he started to understand my plan.

“Yeah.”

Scott Carter, one of Nash’s best friends and Sophie’s—ex?—boyfriend, had gone insane when addiction to Demon’s Breath left him with a hardwired mental connection to Avari, the hellion whose breath he’d huffed. The very same hellion Tod had given Thane to. If anyone knew how and why Thane was back on the human plane, Avari would.

Getting him to tell us would be the hard part.

“Okay,” Tod said finally. “We’ll go see Scott tonight, but for now, I need to get back to work. These sick people aren’t going to kill themselves, you know.”

I fought a smile, more relieved than truly amused. “Your sense of humor is so morbid.”

“Says the dead girl. See you at lunch?”

“Yeah. It’ll probably be you, me, Em, and her human boyfriend, though, so it might be kind of awkward.” He could show himself to just me and Em, but it would be easier for Em to pretend not to see him if she actually couldn’t see him.

Tod scowled. “Fine. But if I have to stay invisible the whole time, I can’t promise to be on my best behavior. There’s no telling what I might do… I mean, if no one else can see me, anyway, why bother with clothes at all?”

I laughed, trying to disguise the sudden curious heat settling into my face. “Well, that ought to spice up the lunch period.”

“That’s a game two can play, you know,” he said, his gaze wandering south of my collarbones.

“Except that I won’t be invisible,” I pointed out as he leaned over the chair arm between us to drop a kiss on my neck, and my heart thumped a little harder, a sensation I’d taken entirely for granted when I was still alive.

Tod groaned against my skin. “Remind me again why we’re going to lunch, when neither of us needs food?”

“I’m having trouble remembering at the moment,” I whispered when he sat up and the heat in his eyes burned straight through my own. “Something about pretending to be alive…”

“How’s that working out?”

“It feels less like pretending at the moment.” With my heart beating on its own. My skin tingling from just the possibility that he might touch me again. But that would stop when I went back to school. I’d have to concentrate on the appearance of life—a pulse, regular breaths, physical presence—and everything would suddenly be immeasurably harder.

Everything that came naturally to everyone else would be a constant effort for me. So much to remember. So much to hide. So much to lose.

Suddenly keeping up with appearances didn’t seem worth the work.

“You won’t have to pretend forever,” Tod said. “One more year of high school, and then you can do whatever you want. Universities don’t hold students captive, so you could pop on and off campus at will, if you want to go to college. Or we could just…hang out.”

“Forever?” The very concept of forever—of time without end—was too daunting to truly contemplate. Doing nothing for a millennia of spare time—even nothing with Tod—didn’t seem possible. Surely I’d lose my mind.

“What about you? What do you want?” In all the conversations we’d had in the past month—spilling secrets, doubts, wants, and hopes—it had never occurred to me to ask that.

“I have what I want.” His hand squeezed mine again, but it felt like he was squeezing my heart. “There’s plenty of time to figure the rest out. Hopefully it’ll go something like this… .”

He leaned in for another kiss, and it took every single bit of willpower I had to pull away from him, when what I really wanted to do was climb into his lap, and bury my hands in his hair, and make a private spectacle of us both. I’d never had an urge so strong, and the reasons to resist were suddenly frighteningly vague.

Oh, yeah. Work. And school.

“I thought you had souls to reap…” I whispered, staring into the desire swirling in his eyes, wondering if he could see mine reflected back at him.

“They’ll wait.”

“I’m trying to do the mature thing here.” I groaned when he pulled me close again.

“I’m not.”

“Why do I always have to be the one who says ‘stop’?” I demanded, my voice little more than a moan.

“You don’t. In fact, at this point I’m considering a petition to have that word stricken from the English language.” His grin was almost lazy, the gleam in his eyes an effortless challenge. “If I did, would you sign?”

“No fair. If there was a pen in my hand right now, I’d sign whatever you put in front of me.”

“Good thing I’m not a hellion.”

He was kidding, but thinking about Avari accomplished what I’d lacked the willpower to do on my own. Playtime was over.

“I better get back. But I’ll see you at lunch?”

“Yeah, but I might be late. I want to check in at work after my shift and see if anyone else has spotted Thane.”

“Okay.” I gave him another quick kiss, then blinked out of the hospital and into a bathroom in the food court across the street from school, where I picked up a bag full of burgers and fries. Then, just for fun, I blinked into Emma’s third-period art class, careful that no one else could see or hear me, and leaned over her shoulder.

“Lunch is on me.”

Em yelped, and when she jumped, she accidentally painted a long yellow line across the canvas she’d been working on. Everyone looked up, and Em apologized, mumbling something about a bee buzzing around her head, then glared at me before turning back to her painting. “Not funny,” she breathed, like she was talking to herself.

“Sorry,” I said. But it was kind of funny, and laughing felt good, even if no one else could share the moment of levity with me. I understood then why Tod had stayed near his family after he died. The living bring out what life remains in the dead. I was drawn to my friends and family, and when I couldn’t be with them, the world—my entire afterlife—felt so much emptier in their absence.

I blinked into the empty quad and sat at the picnic table Em and I had shared with Nash and Sabine until the week I’d died, and since no one was watching, I concentrated on pulling myself onto the physical plane right there in the open. Then I munched on fries from my bag until the bell rang.

Unfortunately, I’d failed to factor my new infamy into my lunch plans.

The first few people who entered the quad with lunch trays glanced at me, then sat at their own tables and stared while they ate. The gawking wasn’t polite, but it wasn’t truly invasive, either, so I could deal. Then the quad started to fill up and more people stared, upping the ante with a little obvious gossip. But before long, people I actually had classes with—the ones who’d known who I was before Beck stabbed me—started asking if they could join me.

Most of them sat without waiting for an answer.

To their credit, they were outwardly polite. Most asked how I was feeling and several offered to help with my makeup work. One idiot even asked me to the prom. I could only stutter in response.

When my table filled up before Em and Jayson arrived, I started to panic again. I was sick of questions, and stares, and friends who hadn’t been my friends before. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I just wanted to disappear.

And as soon as I had that thought, it started to happen. I could feel it—I could feel myself slipping out of the physical plane—and it took all of my concentration to remain visible. I propped my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands, chanting to myself silently.

I want to be here. I want to be here. Iwanttobehere. But that wasn’t true, and it didn’t help.

Unfortunately, the rest of the table mistook my concentration for pain and everyone started asking me if I was okay. If there was something they could get me. Someone even tried to pull my hands away from my face to make sure I was still conscious. Evidently I’d stopped breathing.

“All right, back the hell off!” a familiar voice shouted as I jerked my arm free from whoever’d pulled it. I looked up to see Sabine staring down the boldest of my new “friends.” I knew by the almost liquid depths of her black, black eyes that she was unleashing their own fears on them, literally scaring them away.

Sabine was a Nightmare. For real. Though the politically correct term was mara, the old-fashioned one fit better, in my opinion. She could read people’s fears and weave nightmares from them, then feed from her victims in their sleep.

Creepy? Yeah. Especially when she’d tried to use her mara abilities and appetite to scare me away from Nash. But in that moment, in the quad, I was more than grateful for the rescue from someone I’d considered my nemesis a few short months earlier.

“Thanks,” I said when the last of the vultures was gone, and when I looked up again, Nash stood behind Sabine. Watching me. It killed me that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling, though I completely understood why he would control the telltale swirling in his irises around me now.

“Bastards have no self-respect,” Sabine muttered as the last of the crowd dissipated. “Even I don’t feed off the weak or the injured.”

I decided not to waste my breath telling her I was neither weak nor injured—physically, anyway. “Will you stay and eat with me?” I asked, glancing from Sabine to Nash, who closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then met my gaze again. “I brought burgers.”

Free food was usually enough to tempt Sabine, but Nash was another story.

“Is he here?” Nash asked, and I realized that was the first time I’d heard his voice since the day I died.

“He” was Tod, of course.

“Not yet, but you could stay till he gets here. Or you could just stay. You have every right to hate us both, but this doesn’t have to be…” Words failed me when the thought behind them trailed into nothing.

“Doesn’t have to be what, Kaylee?” Nash demanded softly. “Awkward and painful? Because if you know of some other way for me to view the fact that my brother stole my girlfriend, who then framed me for her murder, I’m willing to listen.”

But I didn’t. That was all true, and trying to defend either of us would only have made Nash angrier.

He started to turn away, and I stood, hyperaware of all the eyes watching us. “Please, stay,” I said, and he stopped. “Please, just… Maybe we could start again?” I said, so that only he and Sabine could hear. “I know we can’t erase everything that went wrong between us, but maybe we could kind of turn the page and start on a fresh one. Tabula rasa.”

Nash glanced at Sabine, who shrugged, then they both sat. And I realized I had no idea what to say. My plan ended with begging them both to sit with me, because I hadn’t really expected that to work.

“Um, Em and her boyfriend will be here any minute, which will probably put an end to genuine conversation, but… How are you?” I asked, pulling burgers from the grease-stained bag. His recovery from frost addiction had suffered a recent relapse and Harmony had said that kicking the habit a second time was even harder, because withdrawal was more severe.

“Do you even eat anymore?” Nash asked, ignoring my question entirely.

“I don’t have to, but, yeah, I can.” I handed him a burger and a carton of fries, and Sabine helped herself to the bag, impatient as always. “Nash, I’m so sorry.”

“You already said that,” Sabine said, folding the wrapper back from her burger. “You said it a lot, actually. Which supports my theory that apologies are basically pointless. They don’t fix anything, right? That’s why I rarely bother.”

“An apology isn’t a Band-Aid,” I insisted. “It’s an expression of regret.”

“Not that that matters.” Nash’s voice was deep and angry. He hadn’t touched his food. “Half these assholes still think I stabbed you, Kaylee. How is it that I stayed away from you, just like you told me to, yet I still wound up arrested and charged with killing you?”

“I didn’t have any choice.” That was the truth, and I needed him to believe that worse than I’d ever needed anything from him. “Beck said he’d rape and kill Em and Sophie if I didn’t cooperate. I couldn’t let that happen. He’d already hurt so many.” The memory chilled me, which made it hard to keep my heart beating, in a body that was already reluctant to cooperate. “But I fixed it. I told the police you weren’t even there.”

“You got the charges dropped, but you can’t take back what you did,” Nash insisted, and he was right. “I was convicted in the court of public opinion the minute they handcuffed me and threw me in the back of the police car. In front of my mother. How are you going to undo that?”

“I don’t know.” Tears burned at the back of my eyes and I fought to keep them from falling. I hadn’t even known I could still cry, but there they were, and suddenly I felt just as powerless in death as I’d been in life. “I’ll tell people. I’ll say whatever you want. I’ll…I’ll do an interview for the school paper, if that’ll help. Chelsea’s been bugging me to—”

“Forget about it.” Nash picked up his burger and tore half the wrapper from it, but he looked like the thought of eating made him sick. “Just don’t talk about it, and maybe this’ll all go away. Eventually.”

“Kaylee?”

I jumped, then turned toward the new voice to see the guy I’d collided with in the hall earlier, staring down at me like he was determined to have his say. “Look, I’ve had a rough day, and I can’t handle any more gawkers or gossipmongers, so if that’s what—”

“I’m Luca Tedesco. Madeline told me to introduce myself.” He smiled and stuck his hand out, and for a moment, I could only stare at it, as what he’d said sank in.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Instead of taking the hand he offered, I scooted over to make room for him on the bench. “You’re the necromancer?” I whispered, unable to hide my surprise. After what Madeline had said, I’d expected small, shy, and awkward, not tall, dark, and gorgeous.

Although, hadn’t I once been even more surprised when a certain rookie reaper turned out to be tall, blond, and beautiful?

“The new guy’s a necromancer?” Sabine said, and I enjoyed a rare glimpse of her surprise.

“Yeah.” Luca sat and glanced around the table, instantly at ease with a group of people he’d never met before. “So, I assume your friends are…?”

It took me a second to realize what he was asking, but Sabine caught on quickly. “I think ‘friend’ is kind of an iffy descriptor at the moment, but your necro-talk isn’t going to freak out a mara and a bean sidhe. I’m Sabine Campbell and this is Nash Hudson.” She placed one hand on her own chest, then gestured toward Nash.

“A mara and a bean sidhe. Wow.” Luca took a fry from the carton I offered him. “Madeline said I’d be in good company here, but I assumed she was just trying to con me into moving.”

“Who the hell is Madeline?” Sabine asked as Nash alternately stared at me, then Luca.

“She’s my boss in the reclamation department. Our boss, I guess,” I said with a glance at the new guy. “Luca and I are going to be working together.”

“So, how do you know Kaylee?” Luca asked, and I could tell from Sabine’s evil grin that I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Oh, Nash used to not-quite-sleep with her, and I hung around to reinforce the ‘not quite’ part. But I’ve been relieved of duty on that front, since Kaylee dumped him for his brother in a nasty public spectacle. It was quite the scandal, even for those of us who saw it coming.”

Nash frowned, but didn’t argue. “Okay, what the hell is a necromancer?”

“He sees dead people,” Sabine said, favoring Luca with a rare smile. “Like that kid in the movie, right?”

Luca shrugged. “Sort of. Only without the ghosts. I mostly sense the recently dead and the restored. Like Kaylee. And like that reaper this morning.”

Nash stiffened. “Tod?”

Luca shrugged and glanced at me in question, and I winced over the verbal quicksand he had no idea he’d just stepped into. “I don’t know. Was the reaper named Tod?”

“Um, no. It was someone else.”

Nash relaxed a little, but Sabine frowned at me. As usual, she was too perceptive for her own good. And way too perceptive for my good. “Someone you know? Do you know another reaper?”

I looked up to find all three of them staring at me, waiting for the answer to a question I desperately didn’t want to answer in front of Luca, at least until I could be sure he wouldn’t tell Madeline.

“He was a rogue, right?” Luca said. “He killed that guy in the doughnut shop?”

“Yeah, he…wasn’t Tod,” I finished lamely, while Nash and Sabine stared at me. “I reclaimed the soul, though. Madeline has it.”

“Luca?” a familiar voice called from across the quad, and I looked up to see my cousin Sophie crossing the grass toward us, her gaze holding steady on the necromancer. That look was comfortable. Familiar. She didn’t even glance at the rest of us. “Did you get lost?”

Luca smiled like he knew her, and another layer of weird settled onto my life. “Nope. I braved the great divide to introduce myself to your cousin.” His arm slid around her waist when she stopped at the end of our table, and my mouth actually dropped open. “Turns out we’re going to be working together.”

“Wait, you two know each other?” My voice sounded kind of funny. Stunned. Sophie knew the necromancer. She knew him well enough to accept his arm around her.

“Yeah,” Sabine said, and I realized that neither she nor Nash looked surprised. “If by ‘know each other’ you’re referring to their liberal and frequent exchange of saliva in public, and who knows what other fluids in private.”

“You’re dating Sophie?” I said, gaping at Luca in confusion and disbelief. Could the world get any weirder?

Luca shrugged. “We haven’t been on an actual date yet—she’s suffered a recent family tragedy, in case you haven’t heard,” he said, brown eyes sparkling in amusement. “But—”

“You work with Kaylee?” Sophie demanded, before he could finish his sentence, like she’d just recovered the gift of speech, after our mutual shock.

“We just now officially met, but, yeah.”

“I assume you’re not talking about scooping popcorn at the Cinemark….”

“My other job,” I whispered. How much had I missed in just a month? “I don’t understand. You hate all things weird and potentially dangerous. No offense—” I glanced at Luca “—but necromancy definitely qualifies.”

Sophie’s expression frosted over, like it used to when I bought an off-brand pair of shoes or went out without fixing my hair. Like she was thoroughly disappointed in me. “That’s specist, Kaylee. Specism is just as bad as racism. Maybe worse. I thought you’d have a little more compassion than that, considering you’re neither human nor alive.” Her voice dropped into a fierce whisper on the last few words, and I could only stare at her in astonishment as her hand slid into Luca’s and she tugged him up from his seat. “Come back over here, where people appreciate you for who and what you are.”

“Great to meet you, Kaylee and friends,” Luca said, slowly walking backward while Sophie tried to pull him away from us.

When they were gone, I turned back to Nash and Sabine. “Is it just me, or did the earth suddenly do an about-face in its rotation? ’Cause that’s what that felt like.”

“That was definitely weird,” Nash agreed, and the fact that he hadn’t argued with me made me unreasonably happy.

“No one over there even knows who or what he is,” Sabine pointed out, staring at Luca as he sat with Sophie and her friends like he’d known them all his life.

“How does Sophie know?” I asked, and she shrugged.

“They already seemed to know each other when he started school.” Sabine leaned closer to me from across the table. “But enough about necro-boy and the dancing queen. You lied about the reaper,” she whispered. “You knew him. Spill.”

I sighed, then concentrated to make sure they were the only ones who would hear my next words. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Luca, but it was Thane. We thought he was gone, but now he’s obviously back.”

“Thane, the reaper who killed your mom?” Nash asked. “The reaper who killed you? Where did you think he’d gone?”

I blinked at Nash, surprised. I’d assumed someone—Harmony?—had filled him in on how I died, but I was obviously wrong. “Nash, Thane never got the chance to reap my soul. Tod fed him to Avari. Which is why we thought he was gone.”

“Tod gave him to the hellion of greed?” Sabine said, and I could hear admiration in her voice. “Bold. Risky. Dramatic. I approve.”

Nash scowled, and I could practically feel the progress we’d made toward friendship slipping away. “Why the hell would he do that? It obviously didn’t save your life.”

“He wasn’t trying to save me,” I said. “He was trying to make sure Thane wouldn’t be the one to end my life, when the time came. Because he was…kind of…stalking me. And threatening my friends and my dad. He was there that day you and I fought about Tod. In my kitchen.” I didn’t want to remember that. But Nash had a right to know. “He was asking me questions while we were arguing, and it was impossible to hear you both at once. You thought Tod was there. Do you remember?”

He did. I could tell. “Thane was stalking you? He was there with us, and you didn’t tell me?” His voice was soft and angry. His irises were too still. “Exactly how long have you been lying to me, Kaylee?”

“I was trying to save your life. He said he’d kill you if I told you he was there.”

“Maybe you should have let him. Maybe then—” Nash bit the rest of his sentence off, but I had no trouble finishing it in my head. “I can’t do this with you, Kaylee. Not yet.” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands. Then he stood and headed for the cafeteria, without another word or a look back. Sabine only hesitated long enough to grab another burger for the road, then she jogged after him, leaving me alone at my table, in the middle of lunch.

“What was that all about?” Em asked, and I looked up to find my best friend and her new boyfriend, Jayson Olivera, staring after Nash and Sabine.

“History. Secrets. Drama. You know, the usual.” I pushed the fast-food bag toward them as they sat. “So, tell me what I missed.” Having been abandoned by a necromancer, a mara, and an angry male bean sidhe in the past five minutes alone, I could sure use a dose of normal. At least until my undead boyfriend showed up.