My Soul to Keep

25

MY HEAD THROBBED in time with the stitched gash on my right arm, and my heart ached like never before. Of all the trouble I’d walked into since finding out I was a bean sidhe, nothing compared to this. To the abduction of a couple hundred teenagers right through the front door of our own school. Disappearances the human authorities would never be able to understand, much less solve.

And we were the only ones who could stop it.

“If he’s planning some kind of forced migration, why bother bringing Nash and your dad over?” Addison asked as Tod guided us subtly toward the right edge of the crowd. Suddenly, standing directly in front of the lampades didn’t seem like such a good idea.

“For more power.” Alec rubbed his arms, fighting chills from the bitterly cold breeze. “I thought he was just being greedy, which makes sense, and is probably half-true. But he needs every bit of power he can get—as well as what he’d hoped to get from Kaylee. He’ll have to pour energy into Lana and Luci to keep them alive while they hold the doorway open.”

“Would Nash and my dad survive that?” I asked, rubbing my own chill bump–covered arms.

“No. And neither will they.” Alec nodded toward the lampades. “Though I doubt they know that.”

“So, how do we stop it?” I asked. “Take away their flashlights?”

Alec shook his head. “The flashlights are just focal points—decoys to fool the humans. The lampades shed their own light, and you can’t extinguish it without killing them.”

Which I wasn’t ready to do yet, no matter how much of a threat to humanity they represented. Because despite everything they’d done, Lana and Luci were being used by Avari just like Nash and my father were, and death seemed like an unfair penalty for that. Especially considering they’d probably die, anyway, if Avari got what he wanted.

“What if we take the girls?” I asked, still looking for an alternative to murder.

“Take them where?” Tod ground his teeth in frustration, his fingers linked through those on Addy’s good hand. “It’s not like you can just cross over with them. They’re in both places at once.”

“Can’t we just…chase them away from the doorway? And maybe separate them?” I propped both hands on the waist of Sophie’s gown, wishing I weren’t dressed like a china doll during what might turn out to be the last moments of my life. “If they’re not together—and at the threshold—they won’t be able to open this door, right?”

“Well, not the big door Avari’s counting on,” Alec agreed.

“So that might work, at least long enough to get Nash and your dad out of here. Which will rob Avari of the power he needs to make this work.”

“If we’re gonna do it, we better do it now,” Tod whispered as the buzz of the crowd around us faded into an eerie quiet. Almost as one, the audience turned toward the school doors, clearly readying themselves for the main attraction—a building full of food, ready to be harvested. “Because we’re about to lose our chance.”

We turned, too, to avoid standing out, as badly as it nauseated me to be standing among the wolves, waiting for the sheep to be slaughtered. Or eaten. Or slurped up. Or whatever.

“We should do this from our world,” I said, so softly I could barely hear myself. “To keep Avari from interfering.”

“I’m on it.” Tod squeezed Addy’s good hand again, then met my gaze, speaking softly through one corner of his mouth. “I’m gonna grab one of the walking Lite-Brites, then I’ll be back to help with Nash and your dad. Will you be okay here?”

I nodded, careful not to let my uncertainty show. “Yeah. I’m good. But work fast.”

An instant later, Tod was gone.

A moment after that, one of the lampades let out a piercing scream, and Lana was suddenly pulled off her feet by…nothing we could see. The effect was bizarre, and reminded me of a scene in an old slasher movie, where a teenager stuck in a nightmare is hauled up her bedroom wall by an invisible evil force.

Lana fell backward, smashing the front door open, then disappeared from sight.

The crowd around us roared in surprise and outrage, shouts varying from high-pitched squeals to rumbles low enough to reverberate deep within my bones. There were even several protests I seemed to hear in my head, rather than through my ears.

A minute later, as several dozen representatives from the mob raced toward the stunned and abandoned Luci, Tod reappeared at my side, wearing the biggest Cheshire cat grin I’d ever seen outside of Alice in Wonderland.

And what a bizarre wonderland we’d fallen into…

“Where is she?” I stood on my toes to yell into his ear as the shouts around us reached a brain-numbing crescendo.

“In the utility closet by the art room. I had to knock her out, but that should hold her for a while. Let’s find Nash and your dad, then get the hell out of here before Avari puts Humpty Dumpty back together again.” Then his gaze met Addison’s and regret took over his face. He took her hand as if to apologize for leaving her, but she only smiled and shook her head.

“Go find your brother. We knew this would end sooner or later, and I’m grateful for the time we had. The time you gave me.”

Tod nodded, then squeezed her hand and turned to follow me and Alec as we raced toward the other side of the school, hidden in plain sight among the outraged crowd. Alec was fast, and as the proxy’s head disappeared into the crowd ahead of me, my foot came down on something thick and lumpy. I lost my balance when whatever I’d stepped on was jerked out from under me, and a horrific, bleating roar trumpeted over my head. My right foot snagged in the hem of Sophie’s dress and one hand went automatically to my ear to protect my hearing, while the other flew out in front of me to keep my face from hitting the asphalt.

But before my palm could hit the ground, someone hauled me to my feet, tearing the dress with a dull thread-popping sound. Tod pulled me back, pressing me into his own chest as the creature on our right drew himself up to a terrifying height. Gray, leathery wings beat at his back, stirring the heavy skirt of Sophie’s dress as his tail—which I’d obviously stepped on—whipped around his legs to lash my ankles.

“I’m so sorry!” I cried as Tod backed us swiftly away from the beast whose grayish cheekbones were literally sharp enough to slice the flesh from his face. The creature roared again and knelt like a bull about to charge. But then his massive right wing clipped the shoulder of the hairy fellow at his back, and both Netherworlders exploded into sudden violence like two giant cats with claws bared.

Tod and I raced away, thrilled to realize we didn’t represent a big enough threat to keep the beast’s attention.

Ahead, Alec’s brown curls bobbed through the crowd, and we followed him, Tod occasionally pulling me out of the path of another stampeding monster. We didn’t stop to catch our breath until we rounded the corner of the building. The empty span of gray grass—representing the quad in my version of the school—was still unoccupied and relatively peaceful, at least until the Netherworld residents discovered that the building had more than one entrance.

I led Tod and Alec to the cafeteria door, and we frantically searched every classroom, peering in through the windows of the locked doors and ducking around corners whenever footsteps headed our way, be they heavy, lumbering thuds or sharp, quick scuttles.

The first floor was deserted, except for the closet where Tod had stashed the unconscious lampade, so we ran up the wide staircase and repeated the search again, racing from room to room. And finally, through the rectangular window in the last door on the right, I spotted my father, slumped over a warped and dented metal teacher’s desk, still in the flannel shirt he’d worn to work.

My heart leaped into my throat and I struggled to breathe around it as I twisted the knob desperately. But it wouldn’t turn, nor would the door budge. “Dad!” I shouted, begging him frantically to wake up and let us in. To help us help him. But he didn’t move, and only once I’d forced myself to go still and concentrate could I see that he was still breathing.

“Here, let me try.” Tod pushed me aside with one outstretched arm, and I remembered that he couldn’t walk through walls in the Netherworld. Alec and I stepped back, and the reaper exploded into motion. His foot flew, connecting with the door just beneath the knob with an echoing crack of wood. But the door didn’t open, so Tod backed up and tried again, this time letting loose a heartfelt grunt as his leg shot out.

That time more wood splintered and the door swung open with the metallic groan of little-used hinges. I rushed past Tod and dropped onto my knees on the floor next to my father. “Dad?” I ran one hand down his ruddy, stubbly cheek. His eyes didn’t open, but he moaned, and his head fell to one side. “I think he’s okay.” I glanced up at Tod and laid one hand on my father’s shoulder. “I’m going to cross over with him, but I’ll be right back.”

“Take me, too.” Alec’s voice trembled, and for the first time I saw true fear shining in his greenish eyes. “Please. You don’t need me anymore.”

“You’re not going anywhere until we find Nash,” I insisted, folding my hand around my father’s. I almost felt guilty, knowing that if we left Alec, he’d probably be punished like Addy had, or worse, for his part in my father’s escape. But as callous as it sounded, even after everything he’d done, Nash meant more to me than any stranger. Even a stranger who’d helped me find my father. “I’ll be right back.”

Before either the proxy or the reaper could protest, I closed my eyes and called forth my wail with practiced speed, trying not to think about the fact that the more often I crossed over, the harder it would be to stop myself from doing that very thing by accident. As my recent dream-shrieking had shown me.

The odd cacophony from outside faded into a more familiar, benign, excited buzz. I opened my eyes to find myself standing in one of the Spanish classrooms, surrounded by empty desks and travel posters from Spain, Mexico, and South America. My father sat beside me, and as soon as I was sure he was still breathing, I stood and dug my cell phone from my pocket, only mildly relieved to be in the relative safety of my native reality.

I dialed by memory, and the familiar electronic tone rang in my ear. “Kaylee?” Uncle Brendon said, his voice thick with tension. “Are you okay? Did you get them back?”

“I got my dad, and I need you to come get him out of here. He’s in the last classroom on the right, on the second floor. The door’s open.”

“You’re at the school?”

I rushed across the room and twisted the lock to open the door. “Yeah, and I have to go back for Nash and Alec, or Avari’s going to use the lampades to open a big doorway into the Netherworld, and everyone here’s going to walk right through it.”

“No, that’s impossible. Kaylee, Sophie’s there.”

“I know. I’m wearing her dress.”

“What?” Over the line, I heard a door slam, then an engine purred to life. My uncle was already on his way. “Kaylee, you have to get her out of there.”

“I can’t, Uncle Brendon. I have to go back for Nash and Alec. Call Sophie and tell her to go home. And tell her I’m sorry about her dress.”

“Wait, Kaylee, who’s Alec—?”

But I hung up without answering, then kissed my unconscious father on the cheek and summoned my wail to cross over one more time.

In the Netherworld classroom, Alec had his hands curled around clumps of dark curls on either side of his skull, as if he were about to rip them out. Tod stood in the doorway, staring down the hall in case anyone else showed up. “Okay, let’s go find Nash,” I said, and both heads whipped in my direction.

“You came back…” Alec said, relief and disbelief warring for control of his wavering voice.

“Of course I came back. You think I’d leave Nash here?” The proxy frowned, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Or you? Let’s go!”

But we’d only made it halfway down the hall when a sudden unanimous roar of triumph from outside made my blood run cold in my veins. I grabbed two thick handfuls of white satin skirt and ran into the nearest classroom and over to the row of windows set into the outside wall, which—thanks to the H-shaped footprint of the school—looked out over the broad front lawn.

I yanked on the dusty pull-cord dangling in front of my face and the aluminum blinds ratcheted up, shining the dying, anemic light from outside into the dark classroom. The crowd gathered in front of the school had nearly doubled since we’d come inside. And every single bizarre, misshapen face was turned toward the broad front porch, where three familiar figures now stood.

In the center was a tall, darkly elegant male form who could only have been Avari, the host of the night’s twisted jamboree. And on either side of him stood a glowing, white-clad female figure.

Avari had found the missing lampade, and the night’s festivities were back on schedule.

As if to punctuate that fact, Alec suddenly doubled over, arms wrapped around his middle like his guts were being twisted from within. “He’s drawing power from me. It’s too much, too fast, without a supplement from your dad.” The proxy gasped, and struggled to stand in spite of obvious pain. “He’s feeding them, and it’s going to kill me. And your boyfriend.”

“Tod, do something!” I insisted, panicked, unable to tear my gaze from the spectacle outside. “Whatever it takes to stop them from opening that doorway.”

The reaper glanced from my desperate, earnest expression to the spectacle outside, to the now-pallid proxy, then back to me. “I’m not leaving you here, Kaylee.”

“I’ll be fine. I have Alec, right?” I insisted, and the proxy nodded halfheartedly, his face now waxy with pain. “We’ll cross over as soon as I find Nash. Now go, or none of us will get that chance!”

After another moment’s hesitation, Tod nodded, then disappeared from the Netherworld just as a sudden swell of bright light from the ground drew an eerie “Ahhh…” from the crowd below, and a low groan from Alec. And while all eyes were focused on the light shining from the front of the school, a sudden, darker movement in the opposite direction caught my gaze.

Something was moving in the crowd. Something headed steadily away from the lampades, while everyone else was easing gradually toward them.

I squinted against the painful glare of living light and finally made out Addison’s long, half-head-full of straight blond hair, the other half of which had been singed from her scarred, pink skull. And just behind her, being pulled along by her good hand, was a form I would have recognized anywhere, in any reality, even hunched over in obvious pain.

Nash.

“There he is!” I cried, my voice approaching dog-whistle pitch. I pointed with one finger pressed to the cold window glass, and Alec’s pained gaze followed mine as he clutched the windowsill for balance. “See? Heading for the tree at the back of the crowd?” The one we’d huddled beneath only a quarter of an hour earlier.

Alec nodded and stifled a moan. “I see him.”

Unfortunately, while Addison was pulling him away from the Netherworld crowd and Avari’s new pets, she was also pulling him away from us, and I wasn’t sure we could get to them in time. Not without being noticed.

But we had to try.

“Come on!” I hiked up Sophie’s dirt-smudged skirt and pulled Alec out of the room and down the hall, fervently hoping he wouldn’t trip, or collapse entirely. At the top of the staircase, I paused and glanced back at him with one finger pressed to my lips in the international—and hopefully cross-reality—symbol for “shhhh.” Then I took the stairs as softly as I could in sneakers, my hand tight around his.

From the bottom step, I could see Avari and the brightly glowing lampades clearly through the glass front doors, and my pulse raced as I paused to stare for a moment, desperately hoping they couldn’t hear my heart pounding in my chest louder than a jackhammer through concrete.

“What are you doing?” Alec whispered pulling me weakly away from the front entrance. “Is there another way out of here?”

I blinked as tears filled my eyes to defend them from the bright light still forming red circles behind my eyelids. “Yeah. The gym.” One arm around his waist now, I led the way down the hall and through the double doors into the gym. I half carried him across the deserted wooden floor—absent of any basketball court makings—and paused at the closest exit while I crossed my mental fingers.

Then I pushed the door open slowly, just enough to peer outside.

The excited mass mumblings from the crowd swelled immediately, but there wasn’t a single creature in sight on this side of the building. Glancing back, I nodded at Alec, then pushed the door open far enough for us to slip through—snagging the hem of Sophie’s dress on something sharp once again. I tugged the material free and held the door open for Alec, then let it close gently.

Now came the hard part; we had to sneak across the school yard, around and behind the crowd, just like Addison had, without getting caught. And it might have worked—except that all hell broke loose at that very moment.

Suddenly the powerful shine from the front door dimmed into a dull glow, and the crowd’s excited mumblings shifted into fresh cries of outrage. Tod had done his job. Unfortunately, he was now hauling Luci away from the school and around the human-world version of the crowd toward us, drawing all eyes our way.

“Come on!” I shouted, and took off toward the tree, pulling Alec behind me. Fortunately, with the hellion no longer feeding his pets, the proxy grew steadily stronger until he was running on his own.

We were ten feet from the tree when Avari stepped out from under the branches, one hand wrapped cruelly around Addison’s scorched arm, the other around Nash’s. My heart nearly burst through my chest in terror and surprise.

Stupid hellion powers!

To my horror, Nash didn’t seem to know who held him. Or even where he was. I’d never seen him like that before. His eyes were focused on nothing, and as I watched, they actually rolled back into his head. He was as high as the international space station. Nash would be no help in his own rescue.

“I knew you’d show up eventually,” Avari said, and a soft crackling drew my gaze to the ground at his feet, where a thin, delicate layer of ice was now spreading toward us over the gray grass.

“It’s too late,” I said, drawing my gaze back up to his.

“You’re missing a lampade, and you can’t open a doorway of any size without both of them.”

“Not yet.” The hellion nodded formally in concession, and the layer of ice thickened, obscuring the gray ground it covered. “But the summer equinox is only six short months away, and I’m sure we can find some way to amuse ourselves until then. Since we’ll all be here together…”

Alec squeezed my hand and tugged me backward, his cold fingers trembling in mine. “Cross over!” he hissed, without taking his eyes from the hellion.

Avari shook his head slowly, confidently, wrinkling the collar of his starched white shirt. “She won’t go without this one.” He jerked ruthlessly on Nash’s arm, hauling him upright hard enough to make me flinch. “Loyalty is her weakness. It renders her predictable and tells me just where to aim. If only the rest of your world were so feeble… Ahhh, but then where would be the fun?”

“Kaylee, cross!” Alec begged, tugging on my arm, but I shook my head again.

“I won’t leave him here!”

“You won’t have to,” Addison said. And before I could register her intent, she jerked her arm free from the hellion and spun around behind him, screaming in pain when the sudden movement split her crusted skin. Blood streamed down her torn flesh, and when Avari reached for her, his fingers slipped in the crimson streaks. Addison’s screams hit all new notes as more raw skin tore when she tried to run.

As the hellion’s hand closed around the charred remains of her hair, she shoved Nash with an agonized grunt. He stumbled forward. Alec and I raced toward him. Nash fell to his knees, and we knelt beside him.

“Take him!” Addy screeched. I expected to find her trying to pull Avari away from us. But instead, she clung to him, her fingers barely clasped around his torso, and as I watched, as his fury grew, a thin, bluish film of ice traveled over her, freezing the blood that flowed from her new wounds. “Now!” she screamed.

Avari gave a mighty snarl and threw his arms away from his body, literally breaking her hold. Her scarred forearm shattered and fell to the ground in several gruesome, frozen chunks.

Addison screamed again, holding her severed arm up as her broken body thudded to the ground. I’d seen all I could stand.

My heart pounding, I grabbed both Nash and Alec, then closed my eyes. My wail that time was for Addison, whose pain had only begun at her death, and who would endure it for eternity, or until Avari died. Neither of which seemed imminent.

As my throat began to sting and burn, the imprisoned cry scraping my flesh raw, Avari’s roar of fury faded from my ears, and the unnatural cold of the Netherworld became a benign December wind, stinging my bare arms and shoulders above the ruined pageant gown.

On my left, Alec dropped onto the frozen grass and burst into tears of relief. He knelt on his hands and knees, sucking in breath after frigid breath as if he’d never tasted anything sweeter than normal, everyday air.

Nash sagged on his feet, his stare as heartbreakingly vacant in the human world as it had been in the Netherworld. He didn’t seem to know we’d crossed over at all.

Harmony would know what to do for him. Surely she’d know how to bring back the Nash who’d first asked me to dance three months earlier, even if he never again remembered how that moment felt.

Exhausted, I sank onto the freezing ground next to him and lay on my back in Sophie’s dress. I barely felt the cold on my bare shoulders, or the grass that tangled in my hair. All I could think was that I was alive. We all were. Except for Addison, and though it bruised my soul to admit it, there was nothing else I could do for her.

The tree branches overhead were skeletal in the human world, devoid of weird spiky pods, and beyond, I saw a vast, clear sky full of blessedly familiar constellations. We were alone on our side of the gray fog, because the human crowd had gathered on the front lawn of the school, kids and adults alike waiting in a long line to enter the building.

I propped myself up on one elbow to see that the front doors had opened. And not one of the carnival-goers was disappearing into a painfully bright void. Tod had done his job. Sort of.

A sudden commotion from our left drew my attention, and I glanced up to find the reaper running toward us, fully corporeal, dragging Luci the lampade—in her human guise—across the frozen ground. Two school security guards ran several feet behind them, overweight and panting, their cheeks flushed by the cold. Tod stopped beneath the tree branches and abruptly dropped Luci’s arm, his eyes swirling with both relief and pain at having left Addy. Then he shot one worried look at Nash and blinked out of existence, hopefully having returned to the hospital to finish his aborted shift.

Assuming he had a job to return to.

“Where’d he go?” The security guard stumbled to a stop in front me. He was bent in half, wheezing with both hands propped on his knees.

I stood, brushing my hands on the ruined skirt of Sophie’s dress. “Where’d who go?” I asked, my eyes wide in innocence as the astonished lampade gaped at me.

The guard scowled, thick forehead furrowed. “The…boy. Who was pulling her…”

“There’s no one here but us,” Alec said, wiping tears of joy on his sleeve. He looked like he’d almost laughed himself to death.

“Are you okay?” the other guard asked Luci, and she could only nod, no doubt stunned by events on both sides of the gray fog, which she could see simultaneously.

“I’m f-fine,” she stuttered, her voice high and clear.

“Thank you.”

“Let us know if he shows up again,” the first guard said, then the pair waddled off toward the carnival again, shaking their heads in confusion. When they were gone, the motley members of our odd gathering could only eye one another warily, bean sidhe, former proxy, and lampade each equally stunned by our near capture.

“He’ll send us after them again,” Luci said finally, glancing briefly at Nash as if he held no interest to her at all. As if she didn’t care one way or another which world he occupied.

“Yeah, but if you take Nash and my father back to Avari—if you give him anyone else strong enough to power his little human generator—you may as well put a gun in your mouth. And your sister’s, too.”

Luci frowned, and I realized I had truly captured her attention for the first time. “What does that mean?”

“He would have killed you both,” I said as I pulled Nash closer with one arm. He came willingly, but made no move on his own. “Avari was going to bleed you both until you died powering his pedestrian bridge to nowhere. And he still will, if you give him a chance.” I held Nash tight as he began to chatter, his freezing skin leaching the warmth from my own.

Luci only blinked at me, her stunned expression edged by distrust. “You’re lying.”

I shrugged. “Fine. Believe what you want. But we both know Tod could have killed you if he’d wanted to. Twice. And I’m sure he was tempted, considering you kidnapped his brother. But he didn’t so much as bruise your arm dragging you away from certain death. What does that tell you about who means you harm and who doesn’t?”

Luci’s frown deepened, and true fear flitted across her face. But she hadn’t so much as glanced at Nash in regret, and had yet to ask about my father.

“Look, I don’t care where you go or what you do, so long as you stay away from us. And if you want to live, you should get your sister and stay away from Avari, too.”

And finally, Luci nodded. She was still nodding when Alec and I walked off with Nash wobbling between us.

“Kaylee Cavanaugh, you bitch!” A shrill voice called as I pulled open the front door of my rental car minutes later.

“That’s a six-hundred-dollar gown, and you ruined it! What the hell are you doing in my dress?” Sophie demanded, flanked by two other Snow Queen contestants in long formal gowns, while she still wore jeans and an angora sweater beneath a pink quilted down jacket.

“Saving the day,” I said, closing Nash’s door as Alec settled himself into the backseat. I crossed in front of the car and sank into my own seat, tucking the voluminous, ruined skirt in around my legs. “You’re welcome.”

Then I slammed my door and drove off, leaving Sophie and her friends to stare after us in astonishment.