Chapter 5

"Okay, Kaylee, focus…." Harmony Hudson, Nash's mother, leaned forward on the faded olive couch, licking her lips in concentration as she watched me. She wore jeans and another snug tee, her blond curls pulled into the usual ponytail, a few ringlets hanging loose around her face. Harmony was the hottest mom I'd ever personally met. She looked thirty years old, at the most, but I'd seen her blow out her birthday candles a month earlier.

All eighty-two of them.

"Close your eyes and think about the last time it happened," she continued, and I sucked in a lungful of the fudge-brownie-scented air. "The last time you knew someone was going to die."

And that's where I lost my motivation. I didn't want to think about the last time. It still gave me nightmares.

Pale brows dipped low over Harmony's bright blue eyes—exact copies of Tod's—and her dimple deepened when she frowned. "What's wrong?"

I stared at the scarred hardwood floor. "Last time was…with Sophie and Aunt Val."

"Oh…" Harmony's eyes took on a familiar glint of wisdom, which, at first glance, seemed at odds with her youthful appearance. She was there when the rogue reaper killed my cousin and tried to take her soul. She saw my aunt give her life instead of Sophie's—a last-minute act of courage and selflessness that had gone a long way toward redeeming her in my eyes.

Until I'd learned that the other souls she'd sold to Belphegore would be tortured for eternity along with my aunt's. Now I was leaning decidedly toward the Aunt-Val-deserved-what-she-got school of thought.

Harmony watched emotions flit across my face, but as usual, she reserved her own judgment. That was why I liked her. Well, that, and the fact that she always had fresh-baked goodies ready to be devoured after our how-to-be-a- bean-sidhe lessons. "Okay, then, pick a different time. Just think back to any death premonition. One that was less traumatic."

But the truth was that they were all traumatic. I'd only known I was a bean sidhe for six weeks, and so far every premonition I'd ever suffered through had thoroughly freaked me out. And every wail was largely uncontrollable.

Thus the lessons.

"Okay…" I closed my eyes and leaned against the soft, faded couch cushions, thinking back to the most memorable premonition—other than that last one.

Emma.

My best friend's death had been unbearably awful, made even worse because I'd known it was coming. I'd seen Em wearing the death shroud for at least two minutes before she collapsed on the gym floor, surrounded by hundreds of other students and parents, gathered to mourn a dead classmate.

But I chose Emma's death to focus on because hers had a happy ending.

Okay, a bittersweet ending, but that was better than the screaming, panicking, clawing-my-way-out-of-the-Nether-fog ending most of them had. I'd suspended Emma's soul above her body with my wail to keep it from the reaper who'd killed her, while Nash had directed it back into her body. Emma had lived.

But someone else had died instead. That was the price, and the decision we'd made. I'd felt guilty about it ever since, but I'd do it all over again if I had to, because I couldn't let Emma die before her time, no matter who took her place.

So two months later I sat on Nash's couch beside his mother, picturing my best friend's death.

Emma, in the gym, several steps ahead. Voices buzzing around us. Nash's arm around my waist. His fingers curled over my hip. Then the death shroud.

It smeared her blond hair with thin, runny black, like a child's watercolors. Streaks smudged her clothes and her arms, and the scream built inside me. It clawed at my throat, scraping my skin raw even as I clenched my jaws shut, denying it exit.

As in memory, so in life.

The scream rose again, and my throat felt full. Hot. Bruised from the inside out.

My eyes flew open in panic, and Harmony stared calmly back at me. She smiled, a tiny upturn of full lips both of her sons had inherited. "You've got it!" she whispered, eyes shining with pride. "Okay, now here comes the hard part."

It gets harder?

I couldn't ask my question because once a bean sidhe 's wail takes over, her throat can be used for nothing else until that scream has either burst loose or been swallowed. I couldn't swallow it—not without Nash's voice to calm me, to coax my birthright into submission—and I wasn't willing to let it loose. Never again, if I could help it.

This lesson was on harnessing my wail. Making it work for me, rather than the other way around. So I nodded, telling Harmony I was ready for the hard part.

"Good. I want you to keep a tight rein on it. Then let it out a little at a time—like a very slow leak—without actually opening your mouth. Only keep the volume down. You want to just barely hear it."

Because the whole point was for me to be able to see and hear the Netherworld through my wail, without humans noticing anything weird. Like me screaming loud enough to shatter their minds. But that was easier said than done, especially considering how much time I'd spent trying to hold back my wail. Evidently suppressing it completely and letting just a little leak through were two very different skill sets.

But I tried.

Keeping my lips sealed, I opened my throat a tiny bit, forcing my jaws to relax. That's where the whole thing went downhill. Instead of that little leak of sound Harmony had mentioned, the entire wail ruptured from my throat, shoving my mouth open wide.

My screech filled the room. The entire house. My whole body hummed with the keening, a violent chord of discordant sounds no human could have produced. My head throbbed, my brain seeming to bounce around within my skull.

I closed my eyes. I couldn't take it.

Cold, smooth fingers brushed my arm, and I opened my eyes again to find Harmony speaking to me. The room around her had become a blur of colors and textures, thanks to my inability to focus on it. Her pretty face was twisted into a constant wince of pain from the shards of steel my scream was no doubt driving into her brain. Male bean sidhes hear a female's wail as an eerie, beautiful soul song. They crave the sound, and are pulled toward it. Almost seduced by it.

Female bean sidhes hear it as it is. As humans hear it. As a titanic racket loud enough to deafen, and sharp enough to shatter not just glass, but your ever-loving sanity.

Harmony glanced at her living-room window, the glass trembling in its frame. Because we shared a gender and species—though I was fuzzy on exactly how the whole thing worked—I could hear her words through my own screaming, but they sounded like they came from within my own head.

Calm down. Take a breath. Close your mouth….

I snapped my jaws shut, muffling the sound, but not eradicating it. It buzzed in my mouth now, rattling my teeth, and still seeped out like a moan on steroids. But I could hear her normally now.

"Breathe deeply, Kaylee," Harmony soothed, rubbing my arms until goose bumps stood up beneath my sleeves. "Close your eyes and draw it back in. All but that last little bit."

I let my eyelids fall, though that small effort took a lot of courage, because closing my eyes meant blocking her out and embracing my own private darkness. Being alone with the ruthless keening. With the memory of Emma's death, before I'd known it would be temporary.

But I did it.

"Okay, now pull it back. Deep inside you. Picture swallowing your wail—forcing it down past your throat into your heart. You can set it free in there. Let it bounce around. Ricochet. The human heart is a fragile thing, all thin vessels and delicate pumps. But the bean sidhe heart is armored. It has to be, for us to survive."

I pictured my heart with iron plating. I forced my arms to relax, my hands to fall into my lap. I listened to my wail as it seeped from my throat, forcing myself to hear each inharmonic note individually. And slowly, painfully, I drew them back into myself. Forced them down into my center.

I felt the wail in my throat, in reverse. It was tangible, and the sensation was eerie. Downright creepy. It was like swallowing smoke, if smoke were sharp. Prickly, as if it were bound in thorns.

When I'd swallowed all but the thinnest, most insubstantial thread, I felt a smile spread slowly from the corners of my mouth to my cheeks, then into my eyes. I heard only a ribbon of sound, so faint it could have been my imagination. My shoulders slumped as an odd peace filtered through me, settling into each limb. I'd done it. I called up my wail when I needed it, and restricted it on my own terms.

I opened my eyes, already grinning at Harmony. But my grin froze, then shattered before my gaze had even focused.

Harmony smiled back at me, curls framing her face, her dimples piercing cheeks that should have been rosy with good health and good cheer. But now they were gray. As was everything else. A hazy, foglike filter had slipped over my vision while I was modifying my wail, like my eyes had been opened farther than should have been possible.

The Nether-fog. A veil between our world and the Netherworld.

A female bean sidhe 's wail allows her—and any other bean sidhes near enough to hear her—to see through the fog into both the human world and that other, somehow deeper one simultaneously. Or to travel from one to the other.

My head turned, my eyes wide with horror. I wanted to learn about the Netherworld, but had no interest in going there!

"Kaylee? It's okay, Kaylee. Do you see it?" Harmony's words were smooth and warm like Nash's, but bore none of the supernatural calm his could carry. Harmony and I shared a skill set, and while Nash's voice could soothe and comfort human and bean sidhe alike, ours summoned darkness, and heralded pain and death.

Nash and I were two sides of the same weird coin, and I didn't like wailing without him.

My heart galloped within my chest, skipping some beats and rushing others, unable to find a steady rhythm. My palms dampened with sweat, and I rubbed them on the threadbare couch cushions, both to dry them and to anchor myself to the only reality I understood. The only truth I wanted any part of.

"Kaylee, look at me!" Harmony stroked my hand as she leaned to the side to place herself in my field of vision. "This is supposed to happen. I'm right here with you, and everything is fine."

No-no-no-no-no! But I couldn't speak as long as that last thread of sound still trailed from me. I could only glance around in panic at the fog layering Nash's house like a coat of dust too fine to settle. It hung in the air over Harmony's battered coffee table and old TV, darkening my world, my vision, and my heart.

My pulse raced, and each breath came faster than the last. I knew the pattern. First came the gloom, then came the creatures. I'd seen them before. Beings with too many or too few limbs. With joints that bent the wrong way, or didn't bend at all. Some had tails. Some didn't have heads. But the worst were the ones with no eyes, because I knew they were watching me. I just didn't know how….

Yet no creatures appeared. Harmony and I were alone in her house in the human world, and somehow alone in the Netherworld.

With that realization came the calm I craved. My tension eased, and my wail faded, thoughts of Emma's death melting into my memory to be used again when they were needed. Or better yet, forgotten.

The haze cleared slowly, until Harmony came into focus. Her hair looked more golden than ever, her eyes much brighter than I remembered in contrast to the drab shades of gray that had covered her moments earlier. "You okay?" she asked, forehead pinched with worry.

"Yeah. Sorry." I rubbed both hands over my face, tucking my own limp brown strands behind my ears. "I knew it was coming, but it still scared the crap out of me. I don't think I'll ever get used to that."

"Yes you will." She smiled and stood, motioning for me to follow her into the kitchen. "It gets easier with practice."

That's what I was afraid of.

Harmony waved an arm at the round breakfast table, and I pulled out a ladder-back chair with clear finish chipping off the back and one missing rung while she headed for the oven. The timer blinking above the stove was counting back with thirty-eight seconds to go, and it never failed to amaze me how Harmony always knew when it was about to go off. That timer had never once interrupted one of our lessons, and none of her treats had ever come out over-or underdone.

Unlike the cookies I'd baked two nights earlier.

"There's soda in the fridge." She slid her hand into a thick glove-shaped pot holder and pulled the oven door open.

"How 'bout milk?" I like milk with my chocolate.

"Top shelf." She pulled a glass pan of brownies from the oven and slid it onto a wire cooling rack on the counter. I took a short glass from the cabinet over the sink and filled it with milk, then sat at the table again while she poured one for herself.

"So, explain to me why I needed to learn to do that?" I sipped from my glass, suddenly grateful for cold, white milk, and all things normal and this-worldly.

Harmony shot me a sympathetic smile as she slid the carton onto the top shelf of the fridge, then swung the door shut. "It's mostly to help you learn to control your wail. If you can manipulate it on your own terms, you should be able to avoid screaming your head off in front of a room full of humans."

Because humans tend to lock up girls who can't stop screaming. Trust me.

"But other than that, it's helpful to be able to peek into the Netherworld when you need to. Though, I wouldn't suggest trying it unless you have to. The less you're noticed by Netherworlders, the easier your life will be."

She'd get no argument from me on that one. But I was curious on one point….

"So…why were we alone?"

"While you were wailing?" Harmony crossed the linoleum toward me and pulled out the chair next to mine while I nodded. "Well, first of all, we weren't really there. We were just peeking in. Like watching the bears at the zoo through that thick glass wall. You can see them and they can see you, but no one can cross the barrier."

"So the Netherworlders could see us?"

"If anyone had been there, yes." She sipped from her glass again.

"So how come no one was there?"

"Because this is a private residence. Those only exist on one plane or the other. Only large, public buildings with heavy traffic exist in both worlds."

"Like the school?" I was thinking of all the weird creatures I'd seen when I peeked into the Netherworld from the gym, the day Emma died. "Or the mall?" That one brought even worse memories…

"Yeah. Schools, offices, museums, stadiums…Anywhere there are lots of people most of the time."

I frowned and took another sip of my milk as a new worry occurred to me. "How would I actually go there?"

"You wouldn't." Harmony's blue eyes were suddenly dark and hard, as if the sky had clouded over. They didn't swirl, because she had more than eighty years' experience hiding her emotions, but I could tell she was worried. "Kaylee, you have no business in the Netherworld."

Let's hope you're right.

"I know." I smiled to set her at ease. "I just want to make sure I don't wind up there accidentally, practicing what I learned today."

She relaxed at my explanation, and the light flowed back into her eyes. "You won't. The difference between looking through the glass and stepping through it is all a matter of intent. You have to want to go there to be there."

"That's it?" I frowned as she stood and rummaged through a drawer, clanging silverware together in search of something. "Have desire, will travel?" It couldn't be that easy. Or that scary.

"Well, that and the soul song."

Of course. I felt the tension in my body ease, and I took another short sip of my milk, saving the rest to wash down my brownie.

Harmony finally pulled a knife from the drawer, followed by a long, thin metal spatula. She ran the knife across the glass dish, cutting the brownies into large, even squares.

"Harmony?"

"Hmm?" She slid the spatula under the first square and lifted it carefully out of the pan and onto a small paper plate. She liked baking but hated doing dishes.

"How can someone live without a soul?"

"What?" Harmony froze with a brownie crumb halfway to her mouth, the spatula still in her other hand. "Why are you…? What's going on, Kaylee?" Her eyes narrowed, and I felt guilty for making her worry.

I decided to tell her the truth. Part of it, anyway. "Nash and I saw Eden's concert last night in Dallas, remember?"

"Of course." Fear drained from her features again, and she scooped an extra-large brownie onto the second plate, then carried them both to the table, without forks. The Hudsons ate their brownies the proper way—with their fingers. My aunt would have thrown a fit, but I was enjoying being converted.

"I saw that on the news this morning." She set one plate in front of me, then sank into her chair with the other, smaller square. Her eyes brightened as the next piece of the puzzle slid into place. "Are you saying Eden died without her soul?"

I nodded, then chewed, swallowed, and washed the first rich bite down with a sip of milk before answering. "It was weird. She dropped dead right there on the stage, but I thought she'd just passed out, because there was no premonition. No death shroud. No urge to wail. But Tod said she was dead, and sure enough, a few seconds later, this weird, dark stuff floated up from her body. Too dark and heavy-looking to be a soul."

"Demon's Breath, probably." Harmony took another bite, licking a crumb from her lip before she chewed.

"That's what Tod said." I twisted my half-full glass of milk on the table. "That Eden sold her soul to a hellion."

She shrugged and brushed a ringlet back from her forehead. "That's the only explanation I can think of. A soul can't be taken from a living being. It can be stolen after a person's death—" or murder, as with Aunt Val's victims "—or it can be given up willingly by its owner. But then something else has to take its place, to keep the body alive. Usually, that something else is Demon's Breath."

"But I thought a person's soul is what determines his life span. If Eden's was gone, how did the reapers know when she was supposed to die?"

Harmony held up one finger as she swallowed, and I bit another huge, unladylike bite from my brownie. She wiped her lips on a paper towel, already shaking her head. "A person's soul doesn't determine how long he or she lives. The list does."

"So…where does the list come from? Who decides when everyone has to die?"

Harmony raised one brow, like she was impressed. "Now you're asking the good questions. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for that one. But maybe that's a good thing…."

I frowned, twisting my used napkin into a thin paper rope. "What do you mean?"

"No one actually knows who makes out the list. No one I know, anyway." She sipped from her cup before continuing. "Maybe the Fates traded in their thread and scissors for a pen and paper. Maybe the list comes from some automated printer in a secure room none of us will ever see. Maybe it comes straight from God. But there has to be a reason we don't know the specifics, and frankly, I'm pretty blissful about that particular nugget of ignorance."

"Me, too." I wasn't exactly eager to see whoever plotted my lifeline; I'd kind of drawn the short straw on that one. Though, it was very likely I'd live longer than I would have as a regular human.

"All we really know is that upsetting the balance between life and death is not an option. Somebody has to die for every entry on the list. Fortunately, there's a little wiggle room for special circumstances." Harmony hesitated, then met my eyes before continuing. "Which is how your mom was able to trade her death date for yours."

I cleared my throat and swallowed my last bite, trying to swallow my guilt along with it. I was supposed to die when I was three, but my mother took my place. I hadn't known the truth about her death until I discovered my bean sidhe heritage and my family was finally forced to tell me everything. Despite their insistence that what happened to my mom was not my fault, the fact was that if it weren't for me, she'd still be alive.

Guilt was inevitable. Right?

"Considering the sacrifice your mom made for you, I find it hard to understand how Eden—or anyone else for that matter—could possibly see her own soul as acceptable currency. As payment for something else."

I shrugged and dropped my wadded-up napkin on my empty plate. "I don't think she understood what she was getting into. Humans don't know about any of this."

"They're supposed to know, before they sign the contract. Hellion law requires full disclosure. But who knows if the poor fool actually read her contract before signing. What a waste." Harmony shook her head in disappointment and pushed the rest of her brownie toward me. "So much potential, squandered. For what, do you know?"

I shook my head, staring at her plate. I'd lost my appetite.

My best guess would be that Eden sold her soul for fame and fortune, but I didn't know for sure. All I knew for certain was that she was probably regretting that decision now, and that if we couldn't get Addison's soul back in four days, she would suffer the same fate.

I would not let that happen.