My Soul to Keep

21

“MS. CAVANAUGH, how delightful to find you here.” The hellion paused, glancing around the room again through Emma’s eyes. “Wherever here is.”

I shuddered beneath a bolt of near-paralyzing terror, then exhaled silently in relief. If he didn’t know where he was, he probably didn’t know who he was in. Which surely meant it would be hard for him to ever take Emma over again.

But then Em’s eyes narrowed as Avari stared through them at a framed photo on the dresser: a shot of me and Emma standing in front of my new-to-me car, on the day I’d gotten it. “Well, isn’t my proxy clever?” Avari crossed the room in Emma’s bare feet, hips swinging in the exaggerated motion of a man who isn’t used to wielding them. His gaze flicked to the mirror behind the picture and his eyes widened in lecherous appreciation. “And doesn’t he have the most exquisite taste?”

Seeing Avari in her was a thousand times worse than watching Alec interact through Emma’s body. I couldn’t stand it. How was I ever going to look her in the face again?

“Get out!” I whispered through clenched teeth, my hands curling into powerless fists at my sides. Avari ignored me and reached for the picture with one of Emma’s delicate, graceful hands. “Don’t touch that!”

His gaze flicked my way in surprise and I choked on my next breath, shocked and disturbed by how unlike Emma her own eyes could look. “What would you rather I touch?” Avari asked, his smooth, sinister words violating her throat just as brutally as his presence desecrated her existence. “This?” The thin hand changed directions and Emma’s fingers splayed across her flat stomach, thumb brushing her sternum, pinkie tucking beneath the elastic waistband of her pj pants.

“Or this?” Avari’s voice deepened suggestively, and the hand slid up Emma’s torso to lift her left breast through the thin cotton of her nightshirt.

My pulse pounded so fast and hard my vision started to go dark. “Get out of her, now!” When Avari turned back to the mirror, unbothered by my powerless protest, I glanced at Tod for help, but he could only shrug and press one finger against his lips in a “shhhh” gesture, reminding me not to give away his presence. He couldn’t control Avari any more than I could, but if the hellion found out the reaper was helping me, he would take his anger out on Nash, and on Addison’s soul.

“Oh, nooo…” Avari ran Emma’s hand down her side and over the generous curve of her hip, cocking it to one side for a better view in the mirror. “I like this one. Truly lovely. She is definitely worth the effort of exploration.”

My jaws ached from being clenched, but I forced my feet to remain still. There was nothing I could do to hurt Avari without hurting Emma, and I wasn’t sure what abilities, if any, Avari brought with him to the body he possessed. Knowing my luck, if I tried to throw a punch—not that I even knew how—he’d freeze me where I stood, or do something worse than groping with Emma’s borrowed hands.

“How could I not have noticed her before? She feels familiar….” Both of Emma’s hands slid around her hips to cup her backside as Avari’s gaze traveled down in the mirror. “But not obviously so. How did Alec ever find her…?” Avari blinked, then turned from the mirror to meet my furious gaze through narrowed eyes. “I do love a resourceful proxy.” But the hard, angry line of Emma’s jaw said that wasn’t entirely true. Alec had been up to something without Avari’s knowledge, and the hellion was pissed. “And Alec has always been exactly that.”

“How long have you…had him?” I asked, stalling for time as my brain whirred almost audibly, grinding in search of some way to get rid of the hellion.

Avari tilted Emma’s head to one side, as if surprised by my interest. And suspicious of it. “Oh, two or three decades,” he finally said. “And he has proven most useful.” Yet that little twitch of irritation was back. “Even when he doesn’t intend to.” Emma’s body stepped closer to me, one hip cocked, one side of her mouth curved up in a lewd grin. “For instance, you are a hard child to get in touch with. Though I must say you aren’t particularly difficult to get inside of…”

Rage and horror battled within me as Emma’s borrowed gaze swept the length of my form before finally returning to my eyes. I had the sudden urge to cover what little flesh my clothes didn’t hide, and couldn’t help wondering what the hellion had done with my body when he’d occupied it. And how often that had been.

If I actually got Nash back alive, he was going to tell me every single thing that happened while I was literally out of my own mind—or I’d kill him myself. And based on Tod’s angry, narrowed eyes, he was thinking something very similar.

Emma stepped forward again, and I answered with another step back, my pulse racing, my jaws clenched so hard I was half-afraid my teeth would crack. “How many times?” I whispered, trying to showcase my anger while hiding my terror.

He took another slinky step toward me, wearing my best friend’s body like a slut wears spandex. And this time when I backed away, my thighs hit the edge of the desk. I had nowhere left to go, unless I was willing to let him follow me through the rest of Emma’s house. Which I was not.

“How many times have I been in you?” Avari asked, leering at me with Emma’s wide, brown eyes, and I flinched over his phrasing. My skin crawled just thinking about him being on the inside of my flesh, breaching the most sacred of my boundaries: that which defined my soul.

“Several,” the hellion answered at last, and his next step put him—put them—less than a foot away. “And I must say it’s a genuine pleasure.” Emma’s body leaned forward and her cheek skimmed mine, my pulse roaring in my ears.

“Each…” Her lips brushed my jaw, and I swallowed thickly.

“…and every…” Her hot, damp breath puffed against my earlobe, and I closed my eyes, trying not to breathe.

“…time.” Avari’s last word stirred the sensitive hairs on my neck, just below my ear, and I swallowed the whimper caught in my throat.

I opened my eyes, and over Emma’s shoulder I saw Tod standing with his fists clenched, his face flushed in fury, jaw bulging as he silently ground his teeth.

Then the hellion stepped back, smiling through Emma’s pouty mouth, and her eyes took on a lecherous glint so disturbing and disorienting that my whole body shuddered. “But as much fun as I’ve had playing teenage bean sidhe—once when your boyfriend didn’t even realize you’d stepped out of your body…”

Rage raced through my veins so fast and hot I thought I would combust. What the hell had he done! What had he made me do? And did Nash really think it was me doing…whatever Avari had done with my body?

“…I have yet to find a good way to communicate with you. Though we came so close with your classmate the other day.” Confusion must have shown through my mounting fury, because as Avari turned, running one of Emma’s slim fingers over the desktop, he lifted one of her artfully arched brows and continued. “How is your arm, by the way?” Her loaded gaze traveled to the bandaged bulge beneath my right sleeve.

Understanding slammed into me like a hammer to my skull. It all came back to Avari. All of it.

Nash was right. Avari was Scott’s shadow man. He was the hallucination Doug had seen in his passenger’s seat. He was the hellion selling its breath to Nash. Avari had possession of Addison’s soul. He’d bribed Tod and Everett into delivering and disseminating his toxic byproduct. He was holding Nash captive in the Netherworld. And Avari was organizing the Liminal Celebration, which would conveniently coincide with our Winter Carnival.

How could I not have seen it earlier? All roads led back to Avari. And for some reason, he’d been trying to get in touch with me.

“What do you want?” I demanded, suddenly sure I’d finally asked the right question.

Avari wrapped one of Emma’s arms around the shoulder-high post at the foot of her bed and swung her around to face me, exposing a smooth strip of skin at her waist. “You.” The hellion’s voice went deep and dark, and sounded surreal coming from Emma’s still-pink mouth. “I want you. And if you cross over right now, you have my word that I will send your boyfriend back to your world.”

From my left, near Emma’s closet, Tod shook his head frantically, and it was all I could do not to look directly at him and clue Avari in to his presence. But I didn’t need to see Tod to know what he was thinking. Avari might send Nash back, but there was no telling when, where, or in what condition he would arrive.

Or in how many pieces.

“Why me?” I asked, ice-cold dread surging through my veins in place of blood. “Don’t you have enough proxies, or servants, or snacks running around?”

“There are never enough proxies.” Of course. I almost forgot I was talking to a hellion of avarice. “But that is not my interest in you.” Emma grinned, easily the most genuine expression Avari had twisted her features into yet. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to cross over so we can have this conversation in person.”

I shook my head firmly and crossed my arms over my chest. “Not going to happen.”

“Even to save your boyfriend?”

I swallowed thickly. Crossing over into Avari’s hands was not my only chance to get Nash back, but that didn’t make it any easier to say what came next. In fact, the words stuck so firmly in my throat that I had to clear it just to speak. “I don’t want a boyfriend who cares more about his next fix than about me.” The tears in my eyes were authentic, but with any luck, he’d attribute them to the emotional loss of my boyfriend, rather than to the crippling pain born from my knowledge that I was betraying Nash, and maybe damning his soul.

“And I certainly don’t want one who lets you step into my body without even telling me I’m being worn like a used condom.”

Surprise and amusement glittered in Emma’s eyes, and Avari almost looked…satisfied. As if he were pleased to discover something he actually respected in me.

Which sent an even stronger chill through me.

“Is that a no?”

I nodded slowly, as if the decision were difficult for me. As if I weren’t planning to come later, on my own terms. With backup. “A very firm no.”

I had an instant to hope I hadn’t just made a very big mistake, then Avari smiled cruelly with Emma’s lips. “In that case, I hope you said a very firm goodbye to your boyfriend.”

Emma’s eyes closed and her legs folded beneath her. She collapsed to the carpet with a single soft, feminine exhale, and I dropped to my knees beside her as her eyes fluttered open once. Then twice. Then they flew open again and stayed open, focusing on me sluggishly.

“Kaylee?” she asked in her own voice, and relief flavored my next breath, as if the very air tasted better now that Avari had left the building. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and glanced at Tod, who now knelt on her other side, though she clearly could neither see nor hear him. “I went to the bathroom, and when I got back you were on the floor. Did you roll off the bed?”

And now I’m lying to my best friend…

Emma frowned and propped herself up on both palms. “I don’t think so.” Then her gaze narrowed on my blouse before trailing to my jeans, and I knew I’d messed up. Em was smart and she knew I had secrets. “You were sleeping in your clothes?”

I sighed and shot her a crooked smile, scrambling to think on my feet. “I was hoping Nash would call and we’d make up.”

“You were going to go over there in the middle of the night?” Her own smile snuck up on me, and I was surprised to realize that our fight had bothered her, too.

“Yeah. But he didn’t call.” And my next trip to see Nash would involve much more than a mile-and-a-half drive through suburban Texas.

“He will.” Emma pushed herself to her feet. Her eyes were already trying to close, and her next words were stretched through a lion-size yawn. “And everything will be okay. Because Nash loves you, and that’s all that matters. Right?”

I nodded as Em sank back onto the bed, and I couldn’t help wishing that, for once, things really were that simple.

“HEY, DAD,” I SAID into my phone, then covered the mouthpiece to thank the waitress pouring ice water into my glass.

“You’re up awfully early after a sleepover,” my father said, relief obvious in his voice. This time I couldn’t blame him for worrying, even though I’d left voice messages several times throughout the night to tell him I was okay. And still in the human world.

“It doesn’t count as a sleepover if you don’t sleep,” I said, stifling a yawn. “But Emma was nice enough to help me stay awake all night.” Which was technically true. After seeing her body taken over by two different Netherworld entities, I couldn’t have slept if I’d wanted to. “We watched movies and ate ice cream.”

Across the table, Tod rolled his eyes, apparently feeling cheated by the lack of slumber party clichés. After all, what were a couple of teenage possessions compared to the half-naked pillow fight he’d hoped for in reward for staying the rest of the night with us—invisibly—just in case I fell asleep. Or Avari reappeared.

Not that my dad needed to know about either the reaper or the hellion. I saw no reason to worry him, since even the noblest of intentions on his part would only get him trapped in the Netherworld. Or worse.

Tod nodded in thanks when the waitress set a glass of orange juice in front of him. I’d refused to talk to him if he didn’t go completely corporeal at the restaurant.

Over the line I heard the clink of glass-on-plastic as the coffeepot bumped the rim of my father’s travel mug. “I’m about to leave for work.” Which he had no choice but to do, even in the middle of a bean sidhe crisis, if we wanted to be able to make next month’s rent. And honestly, the only thing I could think of worse than being wanted by a hellion was being homeless and wanted by a hellion. “I don’t want you alone today. You need rest, and it’s not safe for you to sleep alone right now.”

A very odd statement coming from my father… But I knew what he meant.

“I’m fine, Dad. I’m being careful.” Whatever that meant…I was too tired at the moment for much coherence.

“You’re not fine, Kaylee.” His mug clunked against the countertop. “You can’t function on so little sleep, and you’re only going to make yourself sick by trying.”

“So what do you suggest?” I asked as the waitress set a plate of chocolate chip pancakes on the table in front of me. Sugar would keep me awake, right? I thanked her, then pushed the melting scoop of butter around with my knife.

My dad sighed. “I don’t know. We’re still working on it. Can you stay with Nash or Harmony? As little as I trust that boy in some respects, I do trust him to wake you up if you start screaming.”

Unfortunately, hanging out with Nash wasn’t an option, unless I was willing to cross into the Netherworld and hand over my soul for the privilege. And I couldn’t stay with Harmony without having to explain her son’s absence. So maybe Emma, once Tod went to work…?

“Yeah,” I said around a sweet, chocolaty mouthful. “Don’t worry, I won’t be alone.”

“Okay, I have to go.” He paused, and I heard doubt and concern in the short silence. “I’ll call to check up on you, so answer your phone when it rings. And I’ll see you tonight.”

“Count on it,” I said, desperately hoping I wasn’t jinxing myself with that one.

I hung up my phone and slid it into my front pocket, then looked up to find Tod eyeing my pancakes. “Do you want something? Do reapers even need food?” To my surprise, he was already halfway through his juice, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing him actually eat.

“We don’t need it, just like we don’t need sleep, but all the same pleasure sensors are still there and functioning. Including taste buds,” he clarified when I grinned with one raised brow.

“Unfortunately, the reaper gig doesn’t pay in human currency, so I’m perpetually low on funds.”

Oh. Now that I understood.

“Here. This is more than I need, anyway.” I pushed my plate to the center of the table, and handed him a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware. “I can’t eat with you drooling like a starving child.”

“Thanks.” He dug in, and I watched, amused by the thought that Death had a sweet tooth.

“So, I assume I’m not the only one who isn’t buying this Winter Carnival/Liminal Celebration coincidence, right?” We hadn’t been able to talk it through before, with Emma around—or even dozing.

Tod swallowed his first bite, nodding. “There’s no way they’re unrelated. My guess is that Avari’s planning a big Netherworld feast to take advantage of such a large concentration of human energy when the boundary between the worlds is so thin. They’ll be able to soak it all up with minimal effort in the hour surrounding dusk.”

I nodded, chewing my own syrup-soaked bite. “But surely that’s not all there is to it. I mean, really? A big picnic? That’s Avari’s master plan? That makes him sound about as dangerous as Yogi Bear.”

Tod shrugged. “Yeah. If Yogi were a soul-sucking, body-stealing, boyfriend-snatching, damned-soul-torturing evil demon from another world. Besides, what else could he be planning?”

“I don’t know. But the winter solstice happens every year, and Alec said this was their first festival in decades. Why? What’s different about this year?” I took another bite, chewing while I waited for an answer neither of us had. “Whatever it is, we need to know before we get there. Are you supposed to see Addison today?”

Tod nodded and dropped his fork on the plate. “Yeah. But if I refuse to take the shipment afterward, Avari’s going to know something’s up.”

I shrugged and cut another bite. “So take it. Just don’t deliver it to Everett. We’ll figure out how to get rid of it after we’ve gotten Nash out of there.”

Tod frowned, a bite hovering halfway to his mouth. “Kaylee, we don’t even know if Alec is going to show up, now that Avari caught E.T. phoning home. For all we know, he’ll have his proxy locked up even tighter than Addison, and we’ll cross over into this massive chaos swarming with freaks ready to chew our eyeballs and slurp up our intestines.”

I felt my brows arch halfway up my forehead. “Eyeballs and intestines? You’ve been crossing over every day for a month. Has anyone even looked twice at your soft tissues?”

“No, but I was there working for Avari.” He leaned closer to whisper over the table. “Or maybe it’s because I’m dead, and even most Netherworlders won’t eat dead meat. But you’re not dead and you don’t have permission to be there. So it’s your soft tissues we should be worrying about.” He shrugged when I swallowed thickly, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over the tee stretched across his well-toned chest. “I just thought you should know what you’re getting into.”

A chill shot down my spine in spite of the hot coffee warming my belly. “Which is why I need you to keep your eyes and ears open while you’re with Addison,” I said. “We need to know what happened to Alec, and where they’re keeping Nash, and what kind of shape he’s in, in case Alec isn’t there to help us. We also need everything you can find out about this Liminal Celebration And even if you can manage all that, I have a feeling we’ll be walking into a very unpleasant surprise tonight.”

“Agreed.” Tod mopped up a puddle of syrup with the last bite of pancake. “But I’m not making any promises on this spy mission. It’s not like I have free rein of the Netherworld.”

I hadn’t assumed he did, but… “Don’t you do half of your job there? I mean, isn’t that where you take the souls to be recycled?”

Tod’s brows shot up, and I couldn’t tell if he was amused or horrified by that thought. “To the Netherworld? No. If I took souls there, they’d be eaten, instead of recycled. Reapers have access to the Netherworld by virtue of being dead, Kaylee. Not as an employee benefit.”

Ohhhh… I felt my face flush at my own stupidity. “So, where do you take them?”

“I can’t tell you that.” And that time, his grin looked genuine. “Company policy. And as for my business in the Netherworld, I pop into Avari’s office—the one we were in when Addy died—and he brings her in. We get an hour, most of which I spend talking to her, to keep her mind from slipping under the strain of constant torture and abuse.”

“She has a mind?” I couldn’t wrap my own mind around that one, though I couldn’t imagine why he would visit her if she didn’t. “But she’s dead.”

“So am I.” Tod set his fork on my empty, syrup-smeared plate. “You have to stop thinking of death as the end of everything. Yes, in most cases the soul is recycled, but if that doesn’t happen, there are a bunch of ways to be dead, with or without a body, a memory, and a soul. Addy has everything but her body, and I’m not even missing that, as you may have noticed.” He spread his very corporeal arms for emphasis and almost smacked some poor waitress carrying a huge tray of food.

“I know. But how does Addy have her soul if she sold it to Avari?”

“She and her soul have been reunited in the Netherworld, but he actually owns it. Thus the constant torture.”

“Oh.” I made a mental note to keep my mouth shut about things I didn’t understand. And to let Tod go invisible whenever he wanted—though I would never have believed it, he actually caused less trouble that way. “Just keep your ears open while you’re there, okay?”

Tod nodded reluctantly, and I understood his frustration. The only special skills a reaper could use in the Netherworld were his actual soul-harvesting ability and the ability to cross back over, which made sense, now that I knew he didn’t work there. He couldn’t go invisible, or walk through walls, or project his voice to only select occupants in a room.

He’d be practically human, and he didn’t look very pleased by the thought.

“What about you? What are you going to do?” He glanced to the left, at a clock hanging over the door into the commercial kitchen. “We still have nine hours to kill. Eight, if you want to get there early.”

Which I did, for obvious reasons.

“I’m going to see if I can crash at Emma’s. It’s okay to tell her about my sleeping issues, right, since they have nothing to do with the Demon’s Breath epidemic or Nash being missing?”

But Tod shook his head slowly. “Kay, I think you should stay away from Emma for a while.”

I frowned, my nearly empty mug of heavily doctored coffee hovering in front of my mouth. “Why?” We could keep an eye on each other. Her, for the demons in my dreams, and me for the demons in her body. “I need to know if Avari possesses her again.”

Tod leaned forward with his arms crossed on the table, eyeing me intently. “I know, but the truth is that if you’re with her, that’s much more likely to happen. Emma is a very convenient direct line of communication to you. But if you’re not with her, no one can talk to you through her.”

So the best way to protect Emma was to stay away from her.

Well, crap. Looks like I’m on my own today.

Tod glanced at the table for a moment before meeting my eyes. “I’ll have a little time between visiting Addy and going to work.” And he would have to work at least a half shift, because an unemployed reaper was a dead reaper, and a dead reaper was no good to anyone. “So I’ll pop in then and you can take a nap.”

I couldn’t stifle the yawn that came at the very thought of sleep. “Thanks.” A nap sounded sooo good. Assuming I could keep myself in my own world long enough to enjoy it.