Chapter 9

Ileaned forward, angling my knee to avoid the gearshift, more curious than I wanted to admit as I waited for the rest of it. But he twisted to peer out his window. “My legs are getting stiff. Let’s walk.” He pushed his door open without waiting for my reply.

“What?” I demanded, leaning over the console to watch as he stretched in the parking lot, muscles bunching and shifting as he pulled both arms over his head. “You’re going to keep me in suspense?”

“No, just in motion.” I groaned with impatience, and he ducked into the car to grin at me. “What, you can’t walk and talk at the same time?” Then his grin widened and he slammed the door in my face. I had no choice but to follow.

Automatic lights flared to life as I stepped onto the concrete, bathing the entire lot, the adjacent, deserted playground, and part of the pier in a soft yellow glow. I circled the car and gave him my hand when he reached for it. “Fine, I’m walking. Start—”

Nash kissed me, one hand gripping the curve of my left hip, and the rest of my sentence was lost forever. When he finally pulled away, he left me breathing hard and craving things I could barely conceptualize. His gaze met mine from inches away, and I noticed that his irises were still swirling in the soft yellow light overhead. Or maybe they were swirling again.

Suddenly his eyes didn’t seem so strange. And neither did my fascination with them. “So…your eyes?” I whispered when I could speak again, making no move to step back. “Is that part of what male bean sidhes do?”

“My eyes?” He frowned and blinked. “The colors are swirling, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.” I leaned closer for a better look, and since I was so close, anyway, I kissed him back, sucking lightly on his lower lip, then delving deeper. Exhilaration shot through me when he groaned and gripped my waist with both hands. His hands started to slide lower, and I only stepped back when I got scared by the realization that I didn’t want him to stop.

“Um…” I cleared my throat and shoved my hands in my pockets, then finally looked up to find him watching me. “Your eyes are beautiful,” I said, desperate to bring the conversation back on track. “But don’t they kind of clue people in? That you’re…not human?”

“Nah.” He brushed a chunk of dark hair from his forehead and grinned. “It only happens when I’m experiencing something…um…really intense.” I felt myself flush, but he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “A bean sidhe’s eyes are like a mood ring you can’t take off. But you can’t read your own, and humans can’t see it at all. Just other bean sidhes.” His held my gaze with an intense look of his own. “Yours are doing it too. More shades of blue than the ocean, swirling like a Caribbean whirlpool.”

Oh, lovely. My flush deepened until I thought my cheeks would combust. He could see what I was thinking—what I wanted—in my eyes. But I could see what he wanted too….

“Tell me the rest of it.” I turned toward the park with my hands still in my pockets. I wanted to know everything—but mostly I wanted to change the subject.

Nash stepped over a parking bumper and caught up with me in two strides. “Human lore says that when a bean sidhe wails, she’s mourning the dead, or the soon-to-be dead, but that’s not the whole story.” He glanced up to study my profile. “I’ve seen you hold back your wail twice. What do you remember about the time you let it go?”

I flinched at the memory, reluctant to revisit the event that landed me in the hospital. “It was horrible. Once I let it go, I couldn’t pull it back. And I couldn’t think about anything else. There was this feeling of total despair, then this awful noise that felt like it just erupted from my throat.” I stepped over a landscape timber, then onto the thick bed of wood chips carpeting the playground, and Nash followed. “The scream was in control of me, rather than the other way around. People were staring, and dropping purses and shopping bags to cover their ears. This little girl started crying and clinging to her mom, but I couldn’t make it stop. It was the worst day of my life. Seriously.”

“My mom says the first time’s always rough. Though it doesn’t usually get you locked up.”

That’s right; his mother was a bean sidhe too. No wonder she’d stared at me. She probably knew I had no idea what I was.

When we got to the heart of the playground—a massive wooden castle full of towers, and tunnels, and slides—Nash stepped beneath a piece of equipment and reached up for the first monkey bar beam. “Were you watching the pre-departed when he actually…departed?”

I raised an eyebrow in dark amusement, trying not to stare at the triceps clearly displayed beneath the snug, short sleeves of his tee. “Pre-departed?”

He grinned. “It’s a technical term.”

“Aah. No, I wasn’t looking at anything.” I sank onto a low tire swing held up by three chains, rocking back and forth slowly, trying to forget the words even as I spoke them. “I was trying to make the screeching stop. Mall Security called my aunt and uncle, and when I couldn’t stop crying, they took me to the hospital.”

Nash let go of the bar and settled onto the rubber-coated steps of a nearby slide, watching me from a couple of feet away. “Well, if you’d looked at the other guy, you would have seen the deceased’s soul. Hovering.”

“Hovering?”

“Yeah. Souls are fundamentally attracted to a bean sidhe’s wail, and as long as it lasts, they can’t move on. They just kind of hang there, suspended. You remember sirens in mythology? How their song could draw a sailor to his death?”

“Yeah…?” And that image did nothing to ease the apprehension now swelling inside me like heartburn.

“It’s like that. Except the people are already dead. And they aren’t usually sailors.”

“Wow.” I put my feet down to stop the tire from rocking. “I’m like flypaper for the soul. That’s…weird. Why would anyone want to do that? Suspend some poor guy’s soul?”

Nash shrugged and stood to pull me up. “Lots of reasons. A bean sidhe who knows what she’s doing can hold on to a soul long enough for him to prepare for the afterlife. Let him make his peace.”

I frowned, unable to picture it. “Okay, but how peaceful can it possibly be, with me screaming bloody murder?”

He laughed again, and I followed him up the steps to a wobbly bridge made of wooden planks chained loosely together. “It doesn’t sound like screaming to the soul. Or to me either. Your wail is beautiful to male bean sidhes.” Nash turned to look at me from the top step, his gaze soft, and almost reflective. “More like a wistful, haunting song. I wish you could hear it the way we hear it.”

“Me too.” Anything would be better than the earsplitting screech I heard. “What else can I do? Tell me the parts that don’t make me want to dig my own ears out of my skull.”

Nash pulled me onto the bridge, which rocked beneath us until I sat in the middle with my legs dangling over the side. “You can keep a soul around long enough for him to hear the thoughts and condolences of his friends. Or say goodbye to his family, though they can’t hear him.”

“So I’m…useful?” My pitch rose in earnest hope.

“Totally.” He settled onto the next plank, facing my profile with one leg hanging over the edge of the bridge and the other arching behind me.

My smile swelled, as did the warmth spreading throughout my chest, slowly overtaking my unease at the very thought of suspending a human soul. I wasn’t sure whether this blossoming peace stemmed from my newfound purpose in life—and in death—or from the way Nash watched me, like he’d do anything to make me smile.

“So what can you do?”

“Well, my vocal cords aren’t as powerful as yours, but a male bean sidhe’s voice does carry a kind of…Influence. A strong power of suggestion, or projection of emotion.” He shrugged and draped one arm over the rope railing, leaning back to see me better. “We can project confidence, or excitement. Or any other emotion. A bunch of us together can urge groups into action, or pacify a mob. That one was big during the witch trials, and public panics of old.” He grinned. “But mostly, we just relax people when they’re nervous, or upset.” Nash shot me a meaningful look, and I sucked in a startled breath so big I nearly choked on it.

“You calmed me, didn’t you? In the alley behind Taboo.”

“And behind the school, this afternoon. With Meredith…”

How could I not have realized? I’d never been able to control the panic before, without putting distance between myself and…the pre-deceased.

I blinked back grateful tears and started to thank him, but he spoke before I could get the words out. “Don’t worry about it. It was cool to finally get to show off.”

“And there’s more, other than the Influence?”

He nodded, and the bridge rocked as he leaned forward, eyeing me dramatically. “I can direct souls.”

“What?” Chill bumps popped up beneath my sleeves, in spite of the unseasonably warm evening.

Nash shrugged, like it was no big deal. “You can suspend a soul, and I can manipulate it. Tell it where to go.”

“Seriously? Where do you send it?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept.

“Nowhere.” He leaned back against the rope and frowned. “That’s the problem. Your skills are useful. Altruistic, even. Mine…? Not so much.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s only one place to send a disembodied soul.”

“The afterlife?” I folded one leg beneath the other and twisted to face him, trying not to be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities he was throwing at me.

He shook his head as a cicada’s song began in the distance. “A soul doesn’t need me for that.”

And suddenly I understood. “You can put it back! Into the body.” I sat up straight and the bridge swayed. “You can bring someone back to life!”

Nash shook his head, still somber in spite of my growing enthusiasm, and stood to pull me up. “It takes two of us. A female to capture the soul, and a male to reinstate it.” His hand found my hip again, and the heat behind his gaze nearly scorched me. “We could be amazing together, Kaylee.”

My cheeks blazed.

Then the reality of what he was saying truly hit me, like a blast of cold air to the face.

“We can save people? Reverse death? You should have told me that part first!” A tingly exhilaration blossomed in my chest, and at first I didn’t understand when he shook his head.

But then my excitement withered, replaced by a cold, heavy feeling of regret. Of mounting guilt. “So not only did I fail to warn Meredith, I let her die, when we could have saved her. Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t stop the flash of anger that realization brought. Meredith would still be alive if I’d known how to help her!

“No, Kaylee.” Nash tilted my chin up until I saw the dark regret swirling in his eyes. “We can’t just go around shoving souls back into dead bodies. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t even warn someone of his own death. It’s physically impossible, because you can’t do anything else while you’re singing a soul’s song. Right?”

I nodded miserably. “It’s completely consuming….” Though I still couldn’t imagine that horrible screech sounding like the song he’d described. “But there has to be a way around that.” I sidestepped him on the wobbly bridge and took the steps two at a time. My mind was racing and I needed to move. “We could work out some kind of signal or something. When I get a premonition, I could point, and you could go warn the…um…pre-deceased.”

Nash caught up with me, already shaking his head again. He caught my arm and pulled me to a halt, but let go when I stiffened. “Even if you could warn someone, it wouldn’t change anything. It would just make the poor guy’s last moments terrifying.” I started to shake my head, but he rushed on. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Kaylee. You can’t stop death.”

“But you just said we could.” I leaned against the side of a green plastic twisty-slide, frowning up at him. “Together, we could have saved Meredith. Maybe even Heidi Anderson. Doesn’t it bother you that we didn’t even try?”

“Of course it does, but saving Meredith wouldn’t have stopped her death. It would only have prolonged her life. And reanimating someone whose time has come carries serious consequences. And believe me, the price isn’t worth paying.”

“What does that mean?” How could saving someone not be worth the price?

Nash’s gaze burned into me, as if to underline the importance of what he was going to say. “A life for a life, Kaylee. If we’d saved Meredith, someone else would have been taken instead. Could be one of us, or anyone nearby.”

Ouch.

I sank onto the rubber mat at the base of the slide, my eyes closed in horror. Okay, that was a high price. And even if I’d been willing to pay it myself, I had no right to make that decision for an innocent bystander. Or for Nash. Yet I couldn’t let the issue go. No matter what he said, no matter how logical the arguments, letting Meredith die felt wrong, and I couldn’t stand the thought of ever having to do that again.

Nash sighed and sank onto the mat with me, his arms propped on his knees. “Kaylee, I know how you feel, but that’s the way death works. When someone’s time comes, he has to go, and you’ll only drive yourself crazy looking for loopholes in the system. Trust me.” The anguish in Nash’s voice resonated in my heart, and I ached to touch him. To ease whatever grief lent such pain to his words.

“You’ve tried, haven’t you?” I whispered. He nodded, and I leaned over to let my mouth meet his, lingering when the contact shot sparks through my veins. I wanted to hold him, to somehow make it all better. “Who was it?”

“My dad.”

Stunned, I leaned back to see his face, and the hurt I found there seemed to leach through me, leaving me cold with dread. “What happened?”

Nash exhaled slowly and leaned back against the side of the slide. Light from the streetlamp above played on his hand when he rubbed his forehead, as if to fend off the memory. “He fell off a ladder trying to paint the shutters on a second-story window and hit his head on some bricks bordering my mom’s flower bed. She was pruning the bushes when he fell, so she saw it happen.”

“Where were you?” I spoke softly, afraid he’d stop talking if my voice shattered his memories.

“In the backyard, but I came running when she screamed. When I got there, she was crying, holding his head on her lap. There was blood all over her legs. Then my dad stopped breathing, and she started singing.

“It was beautiful, Kaylee.” His words grew urgent and he sat straighter, like he was trying to convince me. “Eerie and sad. And there was his soul, just kind of hanging above them both. I tried to guide it. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had to try to save him. But he made me stop. His soul…I could hear it. He said he had to go, and I should take care of my mom. He said she would need me, and he was right. She felt guilty because she’d asked him to paint the shutters. She hasn’t been the same since.”

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I had to take the next one. “How old were you?”

“Ten.” His eyes closed. “My dad’s was the first soul I ever saw, and I couldn’t save him. Not without killing someone else, and he wouldn’t let me risk my own life. Or my mom’s.” He opened his eyes to stare at me intently. “And he was right about that too, Kaylee. We can’t take an innocent life to spare someone who’s supposed to die.”

He’d get no argument from me there. But…“What if Meredith wasn’t supposed to die? What if it wasn’t her time?”

“It was. That’s how it works.” Nash’s voice held the conviction of a child professing belief in Santa Claus. He was a little too sure, as if the strength of his assertion could make up for some secret doubt.

“How do you know?”

“Because there are schedules. Official lists. There are people who make sure death is carried out the way it’s supposed to be.”

I blinked at him, eyes narrowed in surprise. “Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately.” A breeze of bitterness swept across his face, but it was gone before I was even sure it was there in the first place.

“That sounds so…bureaucratic.”

He shrugged. “It’s a very well-organized system.”

“Every system has flaws, Nash.” He started to disagree, but I rushed on. “Think about it. Three girls have died in the same area in the past three days, each with no known cause. They all just fell over dead. That’s not the natural order of things. It’s the very definition of ‘unnatural.’ Or at least ‘suspicious.’”

“It’s definitely unusual,” he admitted. Nash rubbed his temples again and suddenly sounded very tired. “But even if they weren’t supposed to die, there’s nothing we can do about it without getting someone else killed.”

“Okay…” I couldn’t argue with that logic. “But if someone isn’t meant to die, does the penalty for saving him still apply?”

Nash looked shocked suddenly, as if that possibility had never occurred to him. “I don’t know. But I know someone who might.”