Before I Wake

5

“SO, DID THAT creep you out as much as it creeped me out?” I asked, flopping down on my bed on my stomach.

Tod sank into my desk chair and rolled it forward until his knees touched the mattress. “Maybe more. Why would Thane work for Avari, if he’s free to leave the Netherworld?”

Styx growled at him from the foot of my bed, then settled into my lap when I clucked my tongue at her and patted my leg. “I think the bigger question is what is he doing for Avari, other than the obvious?” Reaping unauthorized souls.

“What is who doing for Avari?” my father asked, and I looked up in surprise to find him standing in my bedroom doorway. But I could tell from the way his gaze flitted over the room that he couldn’t see either of us. “The disembodied voice and the growling guard dog gave you both away, so you might as well show up for real.”

“Sorry.” I concentrated on the physical plane��on truly being there—and my father’s gaze finally landed on me. “I didn’t realize I was only half-there.”

“It takes some practice,” Tod said, and I knew that he’d become fully corporeal, too.

“So, what’s going on with Avari?” My father leaned against the door frame, not truly in my room, but clearly stating his intent to be involved in whatever we were up to. And since he’d overheard part of what I’d thought was a private conversation, we’d have to let him into the loop. Otherwise, he’d ask Madeline next time he saw her, and we’d be screwed.

I glanced at Tod and found just a hint of frustration and fear swirling in the cerulean depths of his eyes. “Thane’s back, and Avari appears to be pulling his strings.”

My father frowned. “Thane’s back? From the dead? Again?”

Tod nodded. “He’s like the Rasputin of reapers. He’s evidently impossible to get rid of. But don’t worry,” he said, turning to lay one hand over mine on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to handle this.”

My father’s forehead furrowed. “And by handle it, you mean…?”

“I’m going to ask Levi for help.” Tod met my gaze. “Madeline told you to let the reapers police our own, right?” he asked, and I could only nod. “I’m hoping Levi can deal with Thane before anyone else sees him and reports his return. That way he can’t carry out whatever nefarious task Avari put him up to and neither Levi nor I will get in trouble for dealing with him through unsanctioned means like last time.”

“How would Levi deal with him?” I asked, and my dad looked just as interested in the answer.

“I assume he’d…end Thane. The only way to do that—that I know of—is to take his soul. I’ve seen Levi do it several times,” Tod said, and my chill bumps were back.

“I’ve seen it, too,” I said, and the memory was enough to make my hands shake. “I saw him take yours, and he’ll do it again, if Madeline forces his hand.” I sat up on the end of the bed and met my father’s heavy gaze. “You can’t tell Madeline about Thane.”

My father frowned. But then he nodded.

“I started this, and I’ll finish it,” Tod said, still watching me. “There’s no reason for you to put yourself in any danger.”

“I agree,” my father said.

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m not submitting to a vote. I have every reason to get involved in this,” I insisted. “First, I am not going to spend eternity alone,” I said, glaring Tod into silence when he started to argue. “Second of all, Thane has a grudge against all three of us, one of whom he could still kill.” I aimed a pointed glance at my father, who looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “And anyway, you and Levi are going to need help finding Thane, and I happen to know someone who can sense the dead.”

“The necromancer?” Tod frowned. “How do you know you can trust him?”

I shrugged. “Madeline trusts him.”

“But I don’t trust her.”

“Neither do I,” my father added. “She doesn’t really care about you, Kaylee. She only cares about what you can do for her and the reclamation department.”

“That’s because she’s my boss, not my guidance counselor.” I exhaled slowly in frustration. “Look, we don’t have much time and we don’t have many resources, and Luca is too great an asset to ignore just because you don’t trust Madeline.” I focused on Tod. “Come meet him tomorrow at lunch?”

“Okay, but if he brings a Ouija board, I reserve the right to mess with anyone who can’t see me.”

“Fair enough. You talk to Levi tonight and, in the morning, I’ll see if Luca can pinpoint the rogue reaper again—he doesn’t even know who Thane is, much less that that’s who he spotted yesterday.”

“I love a woman with a plan,” Tod said, and my father scowled.

“Good, ’cause there’s more. Avari and Thane know that the best way to get to us is through our friends and family, and they know where to find everyone we care about. So we need to keep tabs on everyone. Tod, can you keep an eye on Nash and your mom?” I figured Sabine would be wherever Nash was.

Tod nodded, and I turned to my father. “If you can check on Uncle Brendon and Sophie, when she’s at home, I’ll keep up with Emma and with Sophie while she’s at school.”

My dad nodded, and I breathed a little easier. Literally. I felt better having a plan, even if that plan was vague and full of holes.

When Tod went to work and my father went to bed, I spent an hour trying to dig up enough interest to get through my chemistry homework, but chemical formulas and equations seemed no more important at one in the morning than they had twelve hours earlier, and every time my mind wandered, I found Scott, or Thane, or Avari, haunting me from my own memories.

After a solid half hour spent tapping my pencil on the page and twisting the amphora heart on its chain around my neck while Styx snored on my pillow, I closed my textbook and admitted defeat. School no longer felt relevant, because I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t need most of what I learned there.

Even if I decided to go to college, what would I do with my degree? Assuming someone would be willing to hire a doctor, or a lawyer, or a physical therapist who looked sixteen, I wouldn’t be able to hold any one job for very long, because it wouldn’t take people long to notice that I wasn’t aging. And it would take a very patient boss to overlook all the times I’d have to take a long lunch or an unauthorized hour off to hunt down a stolen soul.

Suddenly my future was looking long and boring. And frustrating beyond reason. And I’d only been dead a month.

What if the boredom and sense of futility got worse? What if I eventually lost my humanity and wound up like Thane, so bored I was willing to hurt people just to entertain myself? To break up the monotony of day after day and night after night of nothing.

If that were to happen, would I know it was happening? Would I even care? Once my friends and family were all gone, would I even have a point of reference for what humanity and normalcy look like? What they feel like? Would Tod and I be enough to keep each other sane and human enough to care about each other? To care about anything?

I closed my eyes and rolled over on my bed, trying to purge the litany of fears and useless questions marching through my brain, but I couldn’t get rid of them because I had nothing to replace them with except more fears and useless questions.

What if Luca couldn’t find Thane?

What if Levi wouldn’t help us deal with him?

How would I protect my friends and family from a hellion willing to use them to get to me?

The questions played through my head like a song list on repeat, but I had no answers, and after a while, the questions themselves stopped making sense. And when I looked up, I realized I’d been staring at the amphora in my hand for forty-seven minutes, without moving. Without breathing. Without even blinking.

My eyes and my throat were dry, but the really weird thing was that I had no urge to stretch or find a new position. Or to move at all. I could easily have sat there doing and thinking nothing for another forty-seven minutes or longer.

The even weirder thing was that that thought didn’t bother me. It didn’t scare me, though I knew it should have. I felt like a bear in hibernation, minus all the sleeping. I’d just…shut down.

That had happened before. Always at night, when I was alone. When there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. It hadn’t scared me then, either, but the next day, in retrospect, it always did. And it would again.

I was trying to decide whether or not to get up and find something worth doing, on general principle, when I heard a thud from outside. I froze and listened, and heard it again.

I was on my feet in an instant, racing down the hall in my bare feet. I grabbed a knife from the butcher block in the kitchen and fought memories of sharp metal, warm blood, and excruciating pain as I headed slowly for the door, telling myself I couldn’t die twice. Er, three times. I was halfway there before I remembered that I could make sure no one heard my footsteps.

Being dead takes a lot of practice.

At the door, I peered through the peephole, but saw nothing but my empty front yard, damp from a steady drizzle of spring rain. But then I heard another thud, this time followed by a familiar groan. I set the knife on the end table next to my father’s recliner and pulled the front door open.

Nash sat on the top step, leaning against the porch railing, a squarish glass bottle loosely held in one hand. His clothes were wet, his hair plastered to his head.

“Nash, what the hell are you doing here?”

He looked up, like he was surprised to see me. At my own house. “I’m drinking on your porch. Care to join me?” He held the bottle of whiskey up and I shook my head, then stepped out of the house and closed the door behind me, so my dad wouldn’t hear him. “Why are you drinking on my porch?”

“The lawn’s too wet to sit on.”

“That’s because it’s raining. Give me that.” I pulled the bottle from his grip. “Did you walk here? You’re soaked.”

He laughed, but the sound was harsh. Half choked. “My mom frowns on driving drunk.”

“Your mother frowns on being drunk. Come dry off and I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“You need to go home. Come on.” I tried to pull him up but he was too heavy, so he pulled himself up, using the porch railing for balance. Standing, he stared down at me, his eyes half focused in the porch light. He blinked, too drunk to hide the swirls of confusion and longing in his irises. Then he leaned down like he’d kiss me.

I stepped back and put my empty hand on his chest, my heart aching for him. For me. For all four of us, and the ties twisting us together. “No. Don’t do this, Nash,” I said, and his next exhalation seemed to deflate him.

I stepped over the threshold and held the door open for him, and he trudged inside, dripping on the floor. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Working.” I pushed the door closed and set his whiskey on the half wall between the kitchen and living room, then dug a clean hand towel from a drawer in the kitchen. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“In bed.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah,” he said, and I caught my breath, surprised by the hollow feeling in my chest—an unexpected residual ache. “That’s what you wanted, right? You want me with her, so I can forget about you?”

I handed him the towel and he blotted his face with it, but his gaze never left mine. “I just want you to be happy, Nash.” And clean. And stable.

“Yeah, well, that ship’s sailed.” He stood dripping on the tiled entry, still watching me. “Tell me it hurts, Kaylee. Tell me it hurts, just a little bit.”

I exhaled slowly and took the towel when he handed it back. “It hurts. More than a little.” It hurt to see him, knowing that I’d played no small part in making him into what he’d become. It hurt a lot. “Go dry off in the bathroom. I’ll get you something to wear.” My dad’s clothes would be big on him, but at least he’d be dry and dressed.

“I don’t want to wear your dad’s clothes. He hates me.”

“You’d rather wear mine?”

Nash scowled, but took off his shoes, stumbled over his own feet, and headed for the bathroom.

I pawed through the dryer for a pair of my dad’s drawstring jogging shorts and the smallest T-shirt I could find. When I knocked softly on the bathroom door, Nash opened it wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Here.” I handed him the clothes and he took them, then just stood there, watching me.

“Why did you do it, Kaylee?” he asked, and I put one finger over my lips, warning him to be quiet. I couldn’t mute his voice like I could mute mine.

But I didn’t know how to answer his question. I wasn’t even sure what he was asking—I’d done so many things I wasn’t proud of, most of them to him. “Get dressed, and we’ll talk. But then you have to go home.”

He closed the bathroom door, and I waited in my bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame. A minute later he emerged in my father’s shorts, the drawstring cinched around his narrow hips. The T-shirt lay on the closed toilet lid behind him. I stood, blocking the door to my room, and he stepped so close I could smell the rain on his skin. “Aren’t you gonna let me in?” he whispered, staring straight into my eyes.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” For many reasons. Two of which were Tod and Sabine.

“I just want to understand, Kaylee. Don’t you think you at least owe me an explanation, considering you framed me for your murder?”

How the hell was I supposed to say no to that?

I stepped back and let him in, and Nash glanced around my room like he hadn’t been there in years. And that’s kind of what it felt like. The past month felt like an eternity—so much had changed in such a short period of time that I couldn’t even hold all the facts in my head without getting a little dizzy.

“You moved everything,” he said, making an obvious effort not to slur the words.

“Yeah. I couldn’t… This is where I died. It was…” I swallowed thickly and glanced at the floor. “I needed a change.”

He sat on my bed and Styx glanced at him in disinterest, then went back to sleep. Nash stared at his hands while I hovered near the doorway, uncomfortable in my own room. “I’ve been thinking about everything, trying to make sense out of what happened, but I can’t do it. Everything was fine, and then…” He looked up at me, frowning, like something horrible had just occurred to him. “He gets to touch you now?”

“Everything wasn’t fine, Nash.”

He kept talking, like he hadn’t even heard me. “He gets to kiss you, but I don’t? I don’t understand how we got here, Kaylee.”

“Nash—”

“I know the facts. I can sit here and list everything that happened, every mistake either of us made, but when I do the math—I add it all up over and over—it never works out like this in my head.”

“I know. The longer I think about any of it, the less sense it makes, and I’m sorry about that.” I’d lost count of how many times I’d apologized. “I don’t like how we got here, but this is where we’re supposed to be.” I sat in my desk chair and rolled it closer to the bed. “We’re supposed to be friends, Nash. Can’t you feel that? We were too close for too long to be anything less, but we can’t be anything more. Not anymore.”

“Because of Tod.”

“No.” I shook my head, desperately hoping he’d understand what I was trying to say. “Because of me. Because of you. Because we tried to make it work, but we couldn’t. We tried so hard we nearly destroyed each other, and that’s not what love is supposed to do, Nash. It’s supposed to lift you up and make you feel whole, even if it hurts sometimes.”

Nash exhaled slowly, still staring at his hands, then he looked up and met my gaze, and the vulnerability swirling within his nearly killed me. Again. “Tod makes you feel like that? Whole?”

I nodded. “More whole than I’ve felt since…ever.” At least since my mother died and my father left.

Nash’s forehead furrowed and his jaw clenched, like he was holding back words he knew better than to say. Then he met my gaze, and I could see the raw pain in his, unshielded, thanks to the whiskey. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be that for you, Kaylee. I really wanted to. I wanted to be good enough for you. I wanted to deserve you, and in a way, it was easier after you and he…” His jaw clenched again, then the words tumbled out in an emotionally charged, drunk free fall, and his gaze begged me to understand. “After I saw you with him in the hall. Because you’d messed up, and I thought that if you weren’t perfect, you could understand why I wasn’t, either, and we could fix things. But that was when I thought it was just one kiss, and—”

Nash stopped and glanced at the floor, and when he looked up at me, there were tears standing in his eyes. “If I hadn’t been high that day in the parking lot—if I hadn’t started using again—would this have turned out differently? Would you have given us another chance?”

My own tears answered his, and I rolled my chair closer to the bed. “No, Nash. Please don’t ever think that. As bad as that afternoon was, you and I had already broken up, and Tod and I were already together.” I sucked in a deep breath, then said the only thing I could think of that might help him understand. “He died for me, Nash. He refused to reap my soul, so Levi had to take his.” An unemployed reaper was a dead reaper. “That’s the way it goes.”

Nash’s eyes widened, and he frowned. “Then how is he—”

“I had to bargain for his afterlife.”

“And for my release…?”

“Yeah.” I leaned back in my chair and relaxed a little. “I owed you at least that much, and I’m sorry that Madeline has no pull in the court of public opinion.”

Nash huffed, and I could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Yeah, me, too.”

“You know, if you didn’t openly hate me—if we hung out like we used to—the rumors that you stabbed me would die pretty damn quickly. I’d never hang out with my attempted murderer.”

He thought about that for a moment, and when his eyes closed, I thought he’d fallen asleep sitting up, until they opened again. “I could do that. We could try the friendship thing, if that’s the best I’m gonna get. But I can’t hang out with him.”

“Nash—”

“Kaylee, he’s my brother, and he stabbed me in the back. I know you’re an only child, so you can’t really understand, but I can’t… I can’t see the two of you together. Not yet.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “I guess that’s fair. But I think you should talk to him, even if I’m not there. You don’t understand how much he loves you.”

“And stealing my girlfriend was supposed to show me that?”

“He didn’t steal me, Nash.” And frankly, I was getting tired of being talked about like a car or a piece of jewelry with no free will of its own. Like I’d had no choice in the matter. “I made a decision. I’m sorry about the way it happened, but I’m not going to change my mind.”

His eyes closed again. His next words were slurred with both alcohol and sleep, and I wondered if he’d even heard what I’d said. “Can I stay? It’s raining… .” He laid down on his side without waiting for my answer, and Styx scooted closer to him for warmth.

I sighed. Then I unfolded the blanket at the foot of the bed and pulled it up to Nash’s shoulders, and his eyes popped open. He grabbed my arm and his gaze gained coherent focus, just for a second. “I saw Scott tonight,” he said, and shock raced through every nerve ending remaining in my undead body.

“What? When did you see him?” But Nash’s eyes were closed. “Where did you see Scott?” I shook his shoulder, but he was out cold. “Nash!” I shook him again, and his eyes opened, but didn’t truly focus on me. “Where did you see Scott?”

“Out…side…” Then he closed his eyes and started snoring.

“Outside?” Tod said, before I’d even realized he’d arrived. “Outside where?”

“I don’t know. Here? His house? Somewhere between?” I pulled two sodas from the fridge and kicked the door shut. “He walked all the way here, so he could have seen Scott anywhere. Assuming he really saw him at all.” I shrugged and handed him one of the cans. “I mean, he’s drunk. Who knows what he really saw?”

“It was Scott.” Tod accepted the can I gave him and popped the top. “I stopped by the hospital on my way here to check, and his room’s empty. I guess that’s why his stuff was half packed when we were there earlier.”

“So, what, they let him out? Can they do that?”

“I don’t know.” Tod gave me an apologetic shrug. “You’re kind of the resident expert.”

“Don’t remind me.” But I couldn’t argue. “I got out when Uncle Brendon Influenced my doctor into signing the papers. But I wasn’t hearing voices and cowering from every shadow. I can’t imagine any doctor worth the paper his degree’s printed on letting someone like Scott out of the hospital.”

Before Tod could reply, something tapped the front door three times, and I crossed the room to peer through the peephole. “What the hell is he doing here?” Sabine demanded as soon as I pulled the door open. She pushed past me into the living room in a pair of jeans and a snug black tank top, without bothering to wipe her bare feet on the mat.

“The usual,” Tod said. “Self-destructing in slow motion.”

I shot a frown at him. “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said to Sabine, staring out into the dark after her, just in case. But I found nothing out of place except for her car, which was parked on the wrong side of the street, in front of the neighbor’s mailbox.

“My guess is probably better.” She dropped her keys on the coffee table and headed for the hall, ignoring Tod when he called after her.

“He passed out, Sabine. You may as well let him sleep it off.”

“So, what?” I said when she’d disappeared around the corner. “They let Scott out—for no reason I can think of—and he heads straight for Nash’s house?”

“Or for yours,” Tod said. “We don’t know where Nash saw him.”

“Do you think he’s still possessed?”

“How much did he drink? He’s out cold,” Sabine said, rounding the corner into the living room again to eyeball the half-empty bottle of whiskey. “Who’s possessed?”

“It’s a long story.” I sank onto the couch next to Tod and folded my legs beneath me.

Sabine shrugged. “It’s not like anyone here’s missing out on sleep.” Maras only needed around four hours a night, and Sabine had already gotten nearly that much before I called and woke her up.

“Okay, but hold it down.” We were trying not to wake my father up, and I couldn’t mute her voice—much to my own frustration. “There’s this guy named Scott who used to go to our school—”

“Scott Carter?” Sabine interrupted. “The frost junkie?” When I could only stare at her in surprise, she rolled her eyes. “Nash’s my best friend, Kaylee. We talk.”

Good to know. I’d assumed they’d skipped straight to body language.

“How much do you know?” Tod asked.

“Nash and two friends got hooked on frost—breath from Avari, the hellion I met in the cafeteria.” The time she’d tried to sell me out so she could have Nash to herself. “Doug died, Scott went insane, and because Nash isn’t human, he got off with withdrawal and total abandonment from the one person who should have been there for him, no matter what.”

“I didn’t… That’s not…” I gave up trying to explain that I hadn’t abandoned Nash, and that frost wasn’t what broke us up. “What matters now is that Scott’s out, and Nash says he saw him tonight.”

“Okay, why are the two of you talking about a visit from an old friend like that’s worse than Nash being passed out in her bed. Which we’re going to discuss later, by the way.” Her dark-eyed glare narrowed on me. “You could have at least given him a shirt, Kaylee.”

“Like you’re an expert on when it’s appropriate to wear a shirt,” I snapped, thinking of the time she’d pulled hers off and jumped Nash, with me in the next room, and Sabine bristled.

“This seems headed into girl-fight territory,” Tod said. “Should I make popcorn?”

I elbowed him in the ribs and glared at the mara. “The point is that Scott shouldn’t be out of the hospital. He wasn’t just a little unbalanced, Sabine. He suffered permanent brain damage from the frost, and Avari sent him enough visual and auditory hallucinations to make sure there was no doubt about his mental instability.”

“So, how’d he get out?”

“We’re not sure,” I admitted. “But he was half packed when we saw him tonight, so it looks like he was actually released.”

Sabine frowned. “You saw Scott tonight?”

“Sort of. We went to see if he’d ask Avari some questions for us, but when we got there, he was possessed, so we wound up dealing with Avari directly.”

“Well, then, it sounds like you’ve answered your own question.”

Tod glanced at me in question. “Is it just me, or is she making even less sense than usual?”

Sabine rolled her eyes again. “You knew he was possessed because he wasn’t acting like himself, right?” she said, and we both nodded. “So couldn’t he have been possessed long enough to convince the doctors that he’s all cured off the crazy?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, and I was pleased to see that Tod looked no more convinced.

“He was bat shit when we saw him a couple of months ago,” he said.

“Yeah, but for all you know, Avari could have been playing all sane and healthy during his doctors’ appointments for a while, right?” Sabine said.

I was far from convinced, but I didn’t have any better explanation. “Either way, if Nash saw Scott tonight, chances are good that what he really saw was Avari, wearing a Scott-suit. And if he went after Nash, he could go after anyone else. We need to stick together when we’re not at home. Pairs, at the very least,” I said.

“I call Nash,” Sabine said, glaring at me, and I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t want your boyfriend. Not like that.” And assuming he remembered anything we’d said before he passed out, Nash and I may have just made major strides toward an actual, healthy friendship.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Sabine said, and the thin thread of pain in her voice drew my focus her way.

“But I thought… He said…”

Sabine turned to Tod. “How long does she have to be dead before the naivety wears off?” Before he could answer, she turned back to me. “Only a virgin thinks sex means that much, Kaylee,” she said, and Tod’s hand tightened around mine before I could argue with her. She was lying. Sex with Nash meant something to her, even if she wouldn’t admit it, but Tod didn’t want me to call her on it.

Sabine had never lied to me before. Not even when she was trying to break up me and Nash.

She heaved a bitter sigh and scrubbed both hands over her face. “He’s sleeping with me, but look where he winds up the minute I fall asleep.” Her open-armed gesture took in my entire house.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I insisted. “He probably came here on autopilot. Out of habit.”

“No, Kaylee,” she said as I clung to Tod’s hand, feeling awkward and helpless in the face of her obvious angst. “You’re his choice. I’m the habit.”