Before I Wake

7

“BUT HOW COULD he have died before you saw him?” Em whispered from across the table. She was trying to get caught up before Jayson arrived and we’d have to either table the discussion or move it elsewhere.

“I don’t know,” I said, screwing the top back onto my bottle of water.

“The list of things we can’t make sense of is extra-long and twisty today,” Tod said. He’d shown up with two boxes of pizza while I was still in the bathroom, but if any of the teachers realized he wasn’t a student, he’d have to leave. Or at least pretend to leave.

“Are you sure you saw him last night?” Em asked, and Nash shook his head, staring at the slice of pizza lying untouched on a napkin in front of him. Tod had brought his favorite—pepperoni and mushrooms—but whatever appetite he’d had and whatever tolerance he’d been willing to extend to his brother had expired the moment he found out Scott was dead.

“I’m not sure,” Nash said. “I don’t remember it very clearly.”

“Okay, but we know what we saw,” Tod pointed out. “Kaylee and I saw and spoke to him in the hospital, more than twelve hours after the newspaper says he died.”

“Ohh,” I breathed as a piece of the puzzle fell into place. “He wasn’t packing to be released. Someone else had started boxing up his things. Because he died.”

“Can a hellion possess a dead body?” Sabine asked around a mouthful of pizza

Tod shrugged. “Before today, I would have said no.”

Emma frowned and glanced around the quad, on the lookout for Jayson. “Okay, but even if that’s possible, are you seriously suggesting that Avari possessed a body in the hospital morgue, dressed it in its own clothes, walked it across the street to the mental-health center, broke into the adolescent ward, then waltzed into Scott’s room, and no one noticed?”

Sabine scowled, but before she could defend her theory, Nash pushed the pizza box toward the middle of the table and exhaled. “Can we please stop referring to Scott as a dead body?”

No one bothered to point out that the description was accurate. This was just the latest in a series of losses that had begun shaping Nash’s life long before I met him.

“Sorry,” Em mumbled, and for about a minute, no one spoke.

Then the silence got the better of Sabine and she turned to Tod. “Okay, then, was he scheduled to die yesterday? Can you ask your boss?”

“Don’t have to,” Tod said as Luca made his way across the quad toward us. “Lakeside is in my zone, because it’s attached to the hospital, and Scott died during my shift. If his death was scheduled, I would have been the one reaping his soul. At the very least, I would have known about it.”

“Okay, Sophie’s calmer now, but they’re still sending her home,” Luca said, sliding onto the bench next to Sabine. “She’s in the office waiting for her dad, because school policy says that if she’s not fit for class, she’s not fit to drive, and they won’t let me take her home because I’m not a relative.”

Emma blinked at him in surprise, then glanced at the rest of us in turn. “Who’s this?”

I gestured to her with one hand and him with the other. “Emma Marshall, Luca Tedesco. Em is my best friend. Luca is a necromancer, and my coreclamationist. Or whatever. He’s also Sophie’s new boyfriend.”

“Necro-what?” Emma asked.

Sabine reached across the table to claim a half-eaten crust from Emma’s napkin. “He’s a metal detector for dead stuff.”

Em glanced at Luca, her eyes wide in either interest or fear. “Like ghosts?”

“No, like the undead.” He gestured at me and Tod. “And the recently dead. But once someone’s been dead for more than a few days or is buried more than a few feet deep, my accuracy suffers.”

“That is both creepy and fascinating,” Sabine said. Then she gestured to him with the half-eaten crust. “I like him. Not sure why he’s wasting his time with the pole dancer, though.”

Tod laughed out loud and I groaned. “Sophie takes ballet and jazz. She’s not a pole dancer.”

“There’s more money in pole dancing,” Sabine insisted.

“Actually, Sophie takes ballet and lyrical dance. She quit jazz last year,” Luca said, and every single one of us glanced at him in surprise. “What?” He shrugged. “She listens to me talk about dead people and soccer.”

I shook my head, trying to draw my thoughts back into focus. “Okay, what are the possibilities? About Avari and Scott, not Sophie?”

“Scott’s dead, and Avari’s possessed his corpse,” Nash said, each word short and clipped, as if they actually hurt to pronounce. As far as I could tell, he had yet to actually make eye contact with his brother.

“That possibility should be easy enough to verify or eliminate,” Sabine said.

“How?” Em asked.

“Go look in the casket. If the body’s there, then Avari obviously doesn’t have it,” the mara said, and she actually looked sorry when Nash flinched.

I glanced at Tod, and he shrugged. “Okay,” I said. “One of us should be able to handle that. Other possibilities?”

“He’s not really dead?” Em said. “He faked his own death, like on a soap opera.”

Sabine’s brows rose. “Or he’s undead. Something like the two of you.” She waved the pizza crust at me and Tod.

I turned to Luca. “If you saw him, you could tell us whether or not he’s alive, right?”

Luca nodded. “And if he’s close enough, I could sense and track him. But I should probably admit I’ve never intentionally faced a walking corpse.”

Sabine burst into laughter, drawing stares from the surrounding tables.

“You’re sitting next to two of them,” Nash said, too low for anyone outside our circle to hear.

Luca glanced at me and Tod, whom he’d met while I was with Sophie, then turned back to Nash with a shrug. “Yeah, but they’re the good guys, right? I’ve never picked a fight with anything out to steal my soul.”

Nash looked at Tod then, for the first time since he’d sat down, and I knew the fragile peace had met its end, at least for the moment. “Good is a relative term, and souls aren’t the only things worth stealing.”

“Something can’t be stolen if it doesn’t truly belong to you in the first place,” Tod insisted, but Nash stood and walked away from us all without a word, just as Jayson stepped into the quad.

“How come he’s always leaving?” Jayson asked, sliding onto the bench seat next to Emma. “I’m starting to take it personally.”

“Don’t,” Sabine said. “He doesn’t like you enough to care whether or not you’re here.”

After school, I blinked into my room—being dead was saving me a fortune in gas—and dropped my backpack on my bed. I scruffed Styx’s fur and let her pretend to attack my fingers—if she’d wanted to, she could have bitten them clean off—then headed into the kitchen for a soda.

I wasn’t thirsty. But if I hadn’t been dead, I would have finished at least one can of Coke before I even considered starting my homework, and lately it felt like observing the old routines was the only way to stay sane.

I was three steps into the living room when I heard Harmony’s voice, and when I looked up, I saw her sitting at the kitchen table with my father, cradling a cup of hot tea in one hand. I started to say hi, but then she finished her sentence and I realized they could neither see nor hear me.

“I’m sorry, Aiden. You have my word that he’s clean. Sobriety is harder to enforce. But I’m trying, and I think he is, too. He’s just having a really hard time right now.”

“I know. But that’s not the biggest problem involving your sons and my daughter.”

Harmony frowned into her mug and closed her eyes for a second, like she was steeling herself for more bad news. “What now?”

“Tod and Kaylee are getting…physical,” my dad said, and I could feel my invisible cheeks flame. He’d left work early and called Harmony over just because I’d said the S-word? Seriously?

Harmony burst into laughter, and my father’s expression of confusion must have mirrored my own. “They’ve always been ‘physical,’ Aiden. That’s how this whole thing started, remember? With a kiss?”

My father’s frown deepened into a formidable scowl. “No. I mean they’re getting intimate.” He said the word like it hurt coming out, and the fire behind my face raged on.

Harmony nodded and studied his expression, sipping from her mug, and it looked like she was trying to decide on the right response before she opened her mouth. I’d always admired that about her. “Okay,” she said finally. Then she set her mug down. “And you really think that two teenagers contemplating sex is worse than Nash showing up drunk on your doorstep?”

My father blinked. Then he blinked again. “First of all, Tod’s not a teenager—”

“And Kaylee’s not a child,” Harmony pointed out, and I wanted to hug her. Except that would have been the most awkward spyfail in history.

“Doesn’t this bother you at all? They’ve only been together for a month. Doesn’t that seem a little…fast?”

Harmony wrapped her hands around her mug on the table, but didn’t pick it up. “How long were you and Darby together before you…?”

My father’s irritation paled beneath the new flush creeping into his cheeks. I’d rarely seen him embarrassed, and I’d never seen him blush before. Ever. “That’s not the point.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Harmony smiled. “That’s what I thought. Yes, Kay and Tod have only been together for a month. And maybe I do think that’s too fast, even if that thought could reasonably be considered hypocritical, coming from either of us. But that’s not our decision to make.”

“The hell it isn’t. She’s a child.”

“No, she’s days away from her seventeenth birthday.” Which was the age of consent, in Texas. “And she’s dead. As is he. I don’t think adolescent norms apply here, Aiden. Not anymore.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”

“No.” Harmony let go of her mug to take my dad’s hand, and he looked at her in surprise. She looked…scared. “Aiden, don’t chase him away. Please. I know you only want to protect her, and I want the same thing for Tod, but they’re good for each other. I promise you that. And if you chase him off because you’re afraid of letting your little girl grow up, then what do either of them have left? Eternity alone?”

“Harmony—” he said, but she talked over him and refused to let go of his hand.

“I wish you could have seen him last year. He was a different person. No longer the boy I lost, but not yet the man Kaylee found. He was…indifferent. He was slipping away. Your daughter changed that. He needs her. And she needs him. I don’t think you could keep them apart forever, but even a few years alone in the afterlife could be enough to change them both. If you ruin this for them, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. But they’ll regret it for eternity.”

My father closed his eyes.

“Eternity is a long time to be alone, Aiden.”

Finally he squeezed her hand and met her gaze across the table. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything but let them set their own pace. You don’t have to condone anything. You don’t even have to change your open-bedroom-door policy. Just…let them figure things out for themselves. Please.”

I stopped breathing so I wouldn’t miss anything. I was too nervous to move closer, even though they couldn’t see or hear me.

My dad inhaled deeply. Then, at last, he nodded. And I snuck back to my room, reeling from what I’d just heard.

Checking Scott’s coffin turned out to be impossible, because he didn’t have one yet. After a little digging in the online versions of the local newspapers, I’d figured out which funeral home his parents had chosen, but after a glance around the place—incorporealty has its advantages—I discovered that the body wasn’t scheduled to be picked up until the next day.

Scott was still at the hospital morgue.

That night, I made up for the morning’s chaos with a tray of fast-food tacos in front of the TV with my dad. I had to pretend to be surprised by the brownies Harmony had brought over. Fortunately, he seemed no more inclined to discuss her visit than I was to ask about it.

After dinner, I made sure he saw me doing my homework for a couple more hours, then I made sure he didn’t see that Tod was in my room when he went to bed. My dad had agreed not to stand between us—though I wasn’t supposed to know that—but he hadn’t changed any of the rules.

“You know what tonight is?” I said when Tod settled into the big bean-bag chair in the corner of my room. That was the only place he could sit without giving away his presence with the loud creak of springs or the squeal of metal.

Tod tugged me down into his lap, facing him, and his hands settled at my waist. “What is tonight? And by the way, whatever it is, it can’t top this.” He pulled me down for a kiss and I lingered there, enjoying the moment.

“Tonight is take-your-girlfriend-to-work night,” I whispered into his ear as his hand slid beneath my shirt and splayed across my back. “So… You should take your girlfriend to work.”

“Why would my girlfriend want to spend all night in the company of the sick and dying?”

“She wouldn’t.” I kissed my way up his neck, and he craned his head to give me better access.

“Should I assume the lure is a certain attractive young dead man?”

“Yup. Scott Carter’s in the morgue. But maybe after I’ve made sure he’s resting in peace, I’ll come visit you, too.”

His hands slid higher and we settled deeper into the bean bag. “Change your mind about playing doctor?”

“No, but I hear candy-striper uniforms are pretty cute.”

“We don’t have candy stripers.” Tod frowned. “Why don’t we have candy stripers?”

“Emma was a candy stripper for Halloween. I thought I might borrow her costume for next year, but I doubt it’ll look the same on me as it did on her.” I shrugged. “Maybe after we’re done in the morgue I could try the costume on, and you could help me decide whether or not it fits… .”

Tod’s eyes widened, and his irises swirled in tight twists of blue “Well, I don’t see that I have much choice, considering that’s part of Reaper Law.”

“There’s a Reaper Law?”

“Of course. ‘A reaper is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous…’” He shrugged. “It gets boring after that. But this situation is clearly covered under the ‘helpful’ category.”

I rolled my eyes. “I think that’s the Boy Scout law.”

“They took it from us. But they left out all the good stuff. The point is that I am both honored and obligated to take an early peek at your Halloween costume. A thorough peek. A good long look, just to be safe. Don’t want to be accused of shirking my duties.”

I laughed. This wasn’t like me. I hadn’t even dressed up on Halloween, and now I was considering it for purely recreational purposes, because everything I’d enjoyed before I died—books, movies, music—had lost most of its appeal. It all seemed pointless, and those long hours between the time Tod went to work and the time my alarm clock went off for school had become almost unbearable.

The old wasn’t working, so I needed to try something new.

“Tell Em we won’t need the costume for very long. And tell her I owe her. And—”

I arched both brows at him in amusement. “I’m not telling her any of that. Just come with me to ID the body, and afterward, we’ll take a break from all the morbid for a few minutes of teenage normal.”

“On what planet is it normal to prance around the hospital in a sexy Halloween costume with your undead boyfriend?”

“I won’t be prancing, and I’m only considering trying it on at all because no one else will see me. Besides, normal is a relative term. And I desperately need some normal.”

Tod frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just… I feel so good when I’m with you. I feel alive, and normal, and real. But then you go to the hospital every night, and my dad goes to bed, and I can’t sleep, and I start feeling like I’m all alone, and that feeling gets stronger and stronger. It feels like the air around me is heavy, and it takes too much effort to breathe, much less move. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to watch anything. I don’t want to eat anything. I’m alone with my thoughts, and my head feels like a radio playing at top volume, while everything else around me is just…dead. It happens every night, several hours before dawn, and when it’s time to go to school in the morning, I’ve forgotten why I ever wanted to go back in the first place.”

“That’s pretty normal, Kaylee,” Tod insisted. But I could see concern swirling slowly in his eyes. “You’re still adjusting to being dead. When I was new at this, I noticed that in the middle of the night, when work got really slow, I kept forgetting to breathe. Which should be no big deal. I don’t need the air, anyway, right?” he said, and I nodded. I knew where this was going. “Except it is a big deal, because when I’m not breathing, I feel extra-dead. And the dead don’t fit in here.” He spread his arms to indicate the entire human world.

“Exactly. But last night, with Nash and Sabine here, none of that happened. I had a problem to think about, and someone to talk to—even if it was Sabine—and that 3:00 a.m. melancholy never came. In the morning, I didn’t even think about skipping school. I just got dressed and went, because I felt alive again, and that’s what living sixteen-year-olds do. I felt almost normal for the first time since I was brutally stabbed to death in my own bed.”

“The first time?” Tod frowned, and I realized what I’d said.

“You don’t make me feel normal. You make me feel amazing, like I’m more alive now than I was back when my heart beat on its own.” I leaned down to kiss him, and he leaned back in the bean bag until we were almost horizontal.

“This is my very favorite moment.”

“Ever?” I said, staring down at him, watching the blues in his irises swirl.

“Ever. Of every moment I’ve ever not-lived through, this one is the best.”

My heart beat faster and the endorphins felt wonderful, yet not as good as Tod felt beneath me, his chest firm under my hand, his fingers warm beneath the hem of my shirt. I leaned down to kiss him and his hand slid farther up my back.

Then my father cleared his throat behind me, and I froze. “Tod, go to work. Kaylee, go to bed.”

“He can’t see me,” Tod whispered against my chin. “Can he see you?”

“Nope. He can’t hear me, either.” I didn’t dare move, for fear of confirming what was surely only a hunch for my father at the moment. And somehow, sharing that moment of stillness and silence with Tod made me feel closer to him than ever.

My father sighed. “It’s suspiciously quiet in here, and there’s a Tod-shaped dent in the bean bag. For the sake of both my sanity and my temper, I’m going to pretend I can’t tell that you’re in his lap, so could you pretend that this is still my house and you are still my daughter, and I’m within my parental rights to kick your boyfriend out after 11:00 p.m.?”

“Shit,” I whispered, and Tod laughed out loud.

I could feel my face flame as I crawled off his lap and stood, and only then did I let my father see me. He may have known what we were doing, but that didn’t mean he needed to see it.

“Sorry,” I said as Tod stood behind me, and when my dad’s gaze focused on him, I knew he was visible, too.

“Sorry, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Tod said, and at first, I didn’t think my dad was going to answer.

Then he took a deep breath and his gazed narrowed on Tod. “I’ve been avoiding this conversation for a while now, because considering the circumstances, and the fact that my daughter is technically dead, it seems a little ridiculous for this to even be an issue. But she is still my daughter. So here goes…”

He took another deep breath, and I wanted to interrupt—to somehow stop what we all knew was coming—but I didn’t want to make the whole thing any more awkward than it already was.

“I like you, Tod. There was a time when I couldn’t have pictured myself saying that, but I know what you went through for Kaylee, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you refused to reap her soul, knowing what that would cost you. But none of that changes the fact that if you were still alive you’d be, what? Twenty?”

Tod nodded, and I squirmed.

“That’s still a kid, by bean sidhe standards, but twenty is considered fully grown in the world we live in, and Kaylee’s not even seventeen. Under normal circumstances, I would have already contemplated a dozen different ways to make sure your body never surfaces. Now, I’m not saying I’d kill any other twenty-year-old who touched my daughter. But I’d probably let the fantasy play out in my head. Just food for thought.”

I wanted to let myself fade from sight. Permanently.

“She’s not a kid anymore, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Tod said.

“I know.” My father nodded. “But she’ll always be my little girl, and I expect you to respect that fact, at least while you’re in my house. Okay?”

To his credit, Tod only hesitated for a second. “We didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“I know that, too.” My dad crossed his arms over his chest. “Now please go to work.”

Tod nodded and gave me an awkward hug, and neither of us bothered pointing out that his shift didn’t start for another half hour. “See you in, what, an hour?”

I nodded, and Tod disappeared.

“Why will he see you in an hour?” My father settled into my desk chair as I sank onto the bed, trying to pretend the past few minutes never happened.

“Because according to the newspaper, Scott Carter died around twelve hours before we saw him possessed by Avari, and even considering all the impossibilities that make up my own afterlife, I can’t figure out how that’s possible. So I need to go verify that he is indeed dead. By one definition or another.”

“Any particular reason you have to be the one to do that?”

I shrugged. “Through no choice of my own, I’m a central figure in this madcap little adventure, and I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. My homework’s all done. See?” I pointed to the stack of books on the desk behind him. “And I’m not gonna let Tod take all the risks by himself. He’s already died for me once.”

My father sighed. “Being dead doesn’t make you invincible, Kaylee.”

“I know. It hasn’t made Tod invincible, either, which was kind of my point.” Death hadn’t made me stronger, or smarter, or faster, except for that whole blinking in and out thing. It had also failed to improve my stealth, as we’d all just discovered. “But being dead makes it much easier for me to get in and out of restricted spaces.”

“Somehow, that fails to comfort me.”

“Sorry. But I’ll be fine. I’ll be with Tod. He’s a good guy, you know.” He just hides it under all the sarcasm and curls.

“I know. I also know that he would do anything to be with you, and that kind of limitless devotion tends to snub caution in favor of action, and that is enough to scare a poor father to death.”

“I don’t get it.” How could devotion to each other be bad?

“Kaylee, I know what I would be willing to do to protect you, and I see the same kind of commitment in him when he looks at you. There is nothing—no one—he wouldn’t be willing to go through for you.”

“That’s mutual, Dad. I’d do the same for him.”

“I know.” He blinked, and his eyes stayed closed so long I thought he might be praying. “That’s the scariest part of all.”

When my dad went back to bed, I texted Emma. One word.

Incoming…

Her response came a minute later—OK—and I blinked into her room just as she turned on her bedside lamp. Toto, another of Styx’s littermates, started growling less than a second after I arrived. Evidently being dead made me suspect.

“It’s twelve-thirty in the morning, Kay,” Emma grumbled, sitting up in the bed in a purple polka-dot pajama top. “Some of us actually have to sleep.”

“Sorry. I need to borrow something and I wanted to check on you.”

“Why?”

“Because Avari knows who you are and where you live.”

“Yeah. That’s why Toto’s here.” She patted the bed and Toto jumped onto it, then curled up in her lap, a fierce little ball of fur with sharp teeth and small, dark eyes that watched me closely.

“Yes, but we don’t understand what we saw when we talked to Scott last night, which means we don’t know what kind of restrictions Avari has in this form. For all we know, Toto may not even recognize him as a hellion.” And even if he did, if Avari had a physical presence in the human plane, what was to stop him from bashing in the poor dog’s head just to shut him up? What good was an early warning system when it couldn’t prevent the thing it was warning you about?

“Would it creep you out if I pop in a couple of times during the night to check on you?”

Emma frowned. “Yes. But do it, anyway. I’d rather be creeped out than possessed or dead. No offense to recently departed.”

I smiled. “None taken.”

“So what did you want to borrow?”

“Okay, promise you won’t laugh…”

She threw the covers back and crawled to the end of the bed. “No way. Spill.”

“Do you still have your Halloween costume from last year?”

Her brows rose in interest. “The candy stripper? Yeah, I think it’s still in there.” She was already halfway across the room, headed for the closet. “Why?”

“It’s kind of a bribe.”

“For Tod?” She glanced at me as she pulled the closet door open, and I nodded. “Not that I don’t totally approve of the intent, but I doubt you’d have to bribe Tod into doing anything for you.”

“Okay, then, it’s a reward.”

“Wow. Somebody must have been a very good boy.” She dug into the clothes hanging in her closet, all the way at the back, on the right.

“It’s probably a stupid idea. I just thought…” But I couldn’t explain what I’d thought, and I wasn’t sure I should. I didn’t want her to know about the emptiness that swelled inside me in the middle of the night, when I was all alone. I didn’t want her to know that giving into the emptiness was so much easier than fighting it, and that the only way I’d found to fight it was to keep living. Keep being a student, and a friend, and a daughter, even when sometimes those roles no longer seemed to fit.

Being with Tod was the only thing that still felt natural, and…

“You just thought what?” Emma pulled the costume from the back of the closet and held it up, still on the hanger.

“I just thought that with all the death, and the demon possessions, and the evil teachers, and stuff, we should try to have fun whenever and wherever we can. Even if all we have is a few stolen moments in an empty hospital room. Does that sound stupid?”

“I think it sounds beautiful.” She frowned. “What do you think that says about me?”

“That you spend too much time with me.” I studied the costume critically, eyeing the short red-and-white-striped skirt and the very low, heart-shaped neckline. “I’m going to look like an idiot in that.”

“You’re gonna look great. If living dead boy doesn’t have a pulse already, he will when he sees you in this.”

“Thanks, Em.”

“No problem. Now get out of here so I can get some sleep,” she said. I took the hanger from her, but before I could blink out, her eyes widened. “Oh, don’t forget the tights!” She pulled open the top drawer of her dresser and started rooting in it, and when she turned around again, she held a pair of lacy white costume tights with tiny red crosses embroidered all over. Then she looked at me and frowned. “On second thought, tights get in the way and they’re too easy to rip. I’ll just keep them.”

“Em, your tights are safe. I’m not planning to…go that far. Tonight.” Nor was I entirely clear on how that possibility would be a threat to her tights.

She rolled her eyes. “As the poster child for unplanned sex, I wholly recommend spontaneity. As the product of unplanned sex, I wholly recommend protection. Not that that’s a problem for you. Either way, the tights stay here.”

“Wait, does that mean you’re planning my spontaneous sex?”

“Someone has to.”

“But if you plan it, how is it spontaneous?”

“You’re already overthinking it. You’re not supposed to do that until afterward.”

“I wish someone would give me a list of the rules…” I mumbled.

“There are no rules. Except the one that says you have to go away so I can get some sleep.” She climbed into her bed, rolled onto one side, then pulled the covers over her shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll overthink the whole thing together. In great detail.”

“No! No detail. There won’t be anything to talk about!” I insisted. But she was already asleep. And for just a second, I envied Emma more than anyone else in the world.