CHAPTER 20. “Sophie?”My father stood and turned toward her without a single glance my way

“ Sophie ?” My father stood and turned toward her without a single glance my way. “Wow, you look just like your mother, except for your eyes. Those are Brendon’s eyes—I’d lay my life on it.” If he’d looked at me, he’d have seen her fate. I was sure of it. But he didn’t look.

Even Nash was watching my cousin.

Fear and adrenaline sent a painful jolt through my chest, and I gripped the edge of the countertop. “Sophie…” I whispered with as much volume as I could muster, desperate to warn her before the panic kicked in for real. But no one heard me.

Sophie picked herself up with more grace than I’d ever wielded in my life, brushing off the front of the dark, slim dress she’d worn to the memorial. “Uncle Aiden.” She pasted on a weary smile, to match red-rimmed eyes, polite even in the grip of grief. “And Nash. Two of my favorite men in the same room.”

For once, I barely registered the flames of jealousy her claim should have lit within me, because the inside of my throat had begun to burn viciously. Yes, I often wanted to shut her up, but not permanently.

“Dad!” I rasped, still clinging to the countertop for support, but again, no one noticed me.

Except Sophie.

“What’s wrong with her?” My cousin clacked into the dining room in her dress shoes, hands propped on narrow, pointy hips. “Kaylee, you look like you’re gonna throw up in your…What is that?” She eyed the half-used brick of Velveeta. “Mac and cheese?”

Nash turned to me so fast he nearly lost his balance. “Kaylee?” But I could only watch him, my jaws already clenched against the wail for my cousin’s soul. “Again?” I nodded, and he pulled me close, already whispering words I couldn’t concentrate on, his rough cheek scratchy against mine.

“Kay?” My father whirled toward me a second behind Nash, and a look of horror slid over his features when he recognized the look on mine. He followed my gaze to my cousin slowly, as if afraid of what he’d see. “Sophie?” he asked, and I nodded, gritting my teeth so hard pain shot through my temples. “How long?”

I shook my head. I’d had no idea my ability came with a built in time gauge, much less how to use it.

“Brendon!” my father shouted, his focus locked on me.

Sophie flinched, then stepped forward to see me better, leaning over the back of a dining-room chair, her eerily shadowed forehead wrinkled in confusion.

Nash was still whispering to me, holding me tight with his back to the stove. His lips brushed my ear, his words gliding over me with a soothing breath of Influence, helping me hold the panic in check. I breathed deeply, trying to hold back the looming wail as I stared over his shoulder, my focus glued to my oddly darkened cousin.

“What’s going on?” Sophie gripped the high back of the chair in both hands, and her gaze met mine. “She’s freaking out again, isn’t she? Mom keeps that shrink’s number around here somewhere.” She started toward the kitchen, but my father put out one arm to stop her.

“No, Sophie.” He glanced toward the hall and shouted, “Brendon! Get out here!” Then he turned back to his niece. “Kaylee will be fine.”

“No, she won’t.” Sophie shook her head and tugged her arm from his grasp, green eyes wide. Her concern felt genuine. I think she was actually afraid for me. Or maybe afraid of me. “I know you’re worried about her, but she needs serious help, Uncle Aiden. Something’s wrong with her. I told them this would happen again, but no one ever listens to me. They should have let that doctor give her shock therapy.”

“Sophie…” My dad’s shoulders tensed, his expression caught between fear and anger. He was going to set her straight—except that Nash beat him to it.

“Damn it, Sophie, she’s trying to help you, and you…” He whirled on her, eyes churning furiously. But the moment he stepped away from me, the panic descended in full force. I pulled him back by one arm, and Nash’s look of surprise melted into understanding, and he resumed whispering, as if he’d never stopped.

Footsteps pounded down the hall and I opened my eyes to see Uncle Brendon stumble to a halt in the middle of the living room. He looked from me to my dad, then followed my father’s gaze to Sophie. As I watched, my uncle’s features crumpled in an agony so complete, so encompassing, that I could barely stand to see it.

For several seconds, no one moved, as if afraid that the slightest twitch would draw the reaper out of hiding and bring about the inevitable conclusion. Sophie glanced from one of us to the next in total confusion. Then my father sighed, and the soft sound seemed to reach every corner of the wide-open living area. “Are you okay?” he asked, and I nodded unsteadily. I wasn’t the one facing death. Not yet, anyway.

“What’s going on?” Sophie demanded, shattering the quiet like a gunshot at a funeral. But no one answered. She was the source of all the trouble, yet no one even looked at her. For once, everyone was looking at me.

“Is it Sophie?” Uncle Brendon asked, walking slowly toward us, as if it hurt to move. His voice was barely audible over the unvoiced scream already reverberating in my head. I nodded, and his eyes closed as he inhaled deeply, then exhaled. “Are you sure?” He had to open his eyes to see me nod again, then the line of his jaw hardened. “Will you help me?” he asked, pain twisting his features into a mask I barely recognized. “I swear I won’t let her take you.”

Unfortunately, after my father’s story, I wasn’t sure Uncle Brendon would have any control over who the reaper took instead. Any reaper who would reap a soul not on the list wouldn’t think twice about taking the bean sidhe who got in her way. Or everyone else in the room, for that matter.

But I couldn’t just let Sophie die, even if she was a royal pain in the butt most of the time.

“What are you all talking about?” My cousin glanced at each of us in turn, like we’d all lost our minds, and sanity was getting lonely. “What’s going on?”

Uncle Brendon crossed the living room in four huge steps and motioned to his daughter to join him on the couch. She went reluctantly, and he pulled her down onto the center cushion. “Honey, I have to tell you something, and I don’t have time for the long, gentle version.” He took Sophie’s hands, and my chest ached with what could only be the splintering of my heart.

“You’re going to die in a few minutes,” he said. Sophie frowned, but her father rushed on before she could interrupt. “But I don’t want you to worry, because Kaylee and I are going to bring you right back. You’ll be fine. I’m not sure what’ll happen after that, but what I need you to know is that you’re going to be just fine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Confusion pinched Sophie’s fine features into a scowl, and I could see panic lurking on the edge of her expression. Her world had just ceased making sense, and she didn’t know what to do with information she couldn’t understand. I knew exactly how she felt. “Why would I die? And what on earth can Kaylee do about it?”

Uncle Brendon shook his head. “We don’t have time for all that now. I don’t know how long we have, so I need you to trust me. I will bring you back.”

Sophie nodded, but she looked terrified, as much for her father as for herself. She probably thought he’d gone over the proverbial deep end and was now drowning in it. She glared at me over his shoulder, as if I’d somehow contaminated him with my mental defect, but I couldn’t summon any irritation toward my cousin—not with her moments from death.

“Noooo.”

Every head in the room swiveled toward the hall, where Aunt Val now stood, clutching the door frame as if that were the only thing holding her up. “It wasn’t supposed to be Sophie.”

“What?” Uncle Brendon stood so fast the motion made me dizzy. He stared at his wife in dawning horror. “Valerie, what did you do?”

Aunt Val? What did she have to do with grim reapers and bean sidhes? She was human!

Before my aunt could answer, a fresh wave of grief rolled over me and I staggered on my feet. Nash caught me before I hit the dining-room table and lowered me carefully into one of the chairs. It wouldn’t be long now.

Sophie started to tremble then, and the very sight of her sent tremors through my own limbs. Anguish racked me from the inside out. My heart felt too big for my chest. My throat burned like I was breathing flames.

But beyond the physical pain of holding back Sophie’s soul song, I felt my cousin’s loss intensely, though the reaper had yet to strike. It was like watching my own hand laid out on a chopping block, knowing the woodsman was coming for it. Knowing I’d never get it back. And it didn’t matter that we’d never been close. I wasn’t in love with my feet either, but I didn’t want to lose them.

“Mom?” Sophie squeaked, shifting her weight from one side to the other as she hugged herself. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, honey,” Aunt Val said from the middle of the living-room carpet, her focus darting all over the place, like a junkie on a bad trip. “I won’t let her take you.” She paused, without ever looking at her daughter, and threw her head back as far as it would go, blond waves cascading down her back almost to her waist.

“Marg!” she shouted, and I flinched. My hands gripped the chair arms as I tried to regain my control after she’d nearly shaken it lose. “I know you’re here, Marg!”

Marg? I hadn’t told Aunt Val about seeing the reaper, or that she was, in fact, female. And I hadn’t even known the reaper’s name. Until now.

And suddenly I understood. Aunt Val knew the reaper’s name because she had hired her.

No! Denial and devastation pinged through me. I couldn’t believe it. Aunt Val was the only mother I’d known for the past thirteen years. She loved me, and she certainly loved Sophie and Uncle Brendon. She would never do business with a reaper, much less bargain with the souls of the innocent.

But the drinking, and the questions…She’d known all along why the girls were dying!

“This wasn’t part of the deal!” my aunt screamed, hands clenched into fists, shaking in either fear or fury. Or both. “Show yourself, you coward! You can’t do this!”

But that’s where she was so very wrong.