Chapter 21

AuntVal’s shriek had yet to fade from my ears when Sophie’s legs collapsed beneath her. As she fell, she smacked the back of her head on the edge of an end table. She hit the floor with a muffled thud, and blood trickled from her hair to stain the white carpet.

Neither of her parents saw. Uncle Brendon was scanning the bright room obsessively, as if the reaper might be hiding behind an armchair, or in one of the potted plants. Aunt Val still stared at the ceiling, shouting for Marg to appear and explain herself.

As if reapers hailed from above.

But the moment Sophie died, her soul song forced itself from my throat, and I nearly choked, trying to hold it back out of habit.

Aunt Val noticed me retching and whirled around to look for her daughter. “No!” she screamed, and I’d never heard a human voice come so close to my own screech until that moment.

She dropped to her knees on the floor. “Wake up, Sophie.” She stroked loose blond curls back from her daughter’s face, and her fingers came away smeared with blood. “Marg, fix this! This wasn’t the deal!”

“Sophie!” Uncle Brendon joined his wife beside his daughter’s lifeless body, as Nash and I looked on in horror, too shocked to move. Then my uncle looked at me over his wife’s shoulder, but I couldn’t understand what he wanted. I was too busy holding back the scream.

Nash dropped into a squat by my chair and took my hands, his gaze piercing mine with quiet strength and intensity. “Let it out,” he whispered. “Show us her soul so we can guide it.”

So I sang for Sophie.

I sang for a soul taken before its time, for a young life lost. For childless parents, and for a girl who would never get to decide who and what she wanted to be. For my cousin, my surrogate sister, whose quick tongue would never be tempered by age and experience.

As I screamed, the lights dimmed, though I could see no noticeable difference in any one bulb. The entire room began to gray, like the gym had earlier, and I glanced hesitantly around the room, suddenly terrified of finding dark, misshapen creatures skulking around my own house.

There were none to be found. I was clearly seeing the Netherworld, but it was…empty, somehow.

But even more disconcerting than that was the sound. Or rather, the absence of sound. While I sang, I heard nothing else around me, as if someone had pushed the mute button on some cosmic remote control. After a few seconds, I couldn’t even hear myself scream, though I knew from the fire in my throat and lungs that I was, in fact, still screeching at the top of my inhuman lungs.

Nash stayed with me, his fingers linked through mine on the arm of the dining-room chair, completely unbothered by the ungodly screech clawing its way from my mouth. My father stood still, staring at my cousin’s soul, a pale, pink-tinged amorphous shape hovering several feet above her body, bobbing like a kite tethered to the ground in a brisk wind.

Her soul had risen higher than Emma’s had, and some part of me understood that that was my fault. Because Nash had to prompt me to release the wail for Sophie.

Uncle Brendon stood with his arms stiff at his sides, his hands fisted, exposed forearms bulging with great effort. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined it looked like Nash’s, when he’d guided Emma’s soul: red and tense, and damp with sweat.

Aunt Val had collapsed over her daughter, crying inconsolably now. She was the only one in the room who couldn’t see Sophie’s soul, and some distant part of me found that unbearably tragic.

Uncle Brendon’s shoulders fell, and he turned to me in exhaustion. “Hold her,” he mouthed, and I nodded, still screaming. I would do my best, but my throat was still sore from singing Emma’s song that afternoon, and I wasn’t sure how long I could hold on to Sophie.

My uncle gestured to my father. I didn’t catch all of what he said, but the gist of it was clear: he couldn’t do it alone. For some reason, he couldn’t budge his daughter’s soul.

My dad nodded, and they both turned back to Sophie, working together now.

Aunt Val knelt with her hand on her daughter’s sternum, facing the rest of the room. But she wasn’t looking at any of us. She was talking, evidently, to the room in general. Her face was splotched with tears, and flushed with both grief and guilt. I couldn’t understand much of what she said, but I made out two words based on the familiar motion of her lips.

“Take me.”

And then I got it. She was talking to the reaper—Marg—begging her to spare Sophie’s life in exchange for her own.

And that’s when everything changed. The feel of the room abruptly shifted, as if all the angles had changed, the proportions recalibrated. It was like watching a movie with the screen ratio all messed up.

A slim, dark figure appeared in the middle of the weird-looking living room, only feet from my father and uncle, across the room from Sophie’s body.

I recognized her instantly from Meredith’s memorial. Marg. She still wore the same long black sweater, cut to accentuate her slight figure, and soft ballet-style slippers, now half-sunk into my aunt’s thick pile carpet.

The reaper spared me a glance and frowned, then dismissed me and turned toward Aunt Val. I could see only a sliver of the reaper’s face now, but that was plenty. “Are you sure?” she asked, her voice like molten metal, smooth and slow-flowing, but hot enough to singe at a touch.

I was so surprised to hear her that I almost stopped singing, and Sophie’s soul began to drift toward Marg. Then Nash squeezed my hand and my voice strengthened. Sophie’s soul steadied once more.

The reaper didn’t seem to notice. She was watching my aunt, who was saying something else I couldn’t hear. I could only hear Marg, which meant the reaper hadn’t forgotten about me—that for some reason, she wanted me to hear what she was saying.

Aunt Val nodded firmly in response to the reaper’s question, her lips moving rapidly.

The reaper studied her for a moment, then shook her head, and what little I could see of her mouth curved into a slow, malicious smile. “Your soul will not suffice,” Marg said, her voice trailing over me with an almost physical presence. “You promised Belphegore young, beautiful souls, and like your body, your soul is aging and blemished. She will not accept it.”

My aunt was speaking again, gesturing angrily, and her husband flinched all over at something she said, fists still clenched in effort. Again I desperately wished I could hear both sides of the argument.

“We reached no agreement on the specific souls to be harvested,” the reaper said, and chills popped up on my arms. Just listening to her was going to kill me. “I have collected the first four, in spite of piddling interference from your young minions—”

Minions? She did not just call me a minion!

“—and I’ll have the fifth when I tire of this game. I will have your money, Belphegore will have her souls, and you will have youth and beauty like you never imagined.”

Youth? Aunt Val had hired a reaper to poach innocent souls in exchange for her youth? Could anyone truly be so vain?

Aunt Val was shouting now, the veins standing out in her slim neck. But Marg only laughed. “I am in possession of four young, strong souls, and while I hold them, half a dozen bean sidhes couldn’t take this one from me.” To demonstrate, she waved one hand in the air, palm up. Pain ripped through my chest, and Sophie’s soul rose a foot higher in spite of my song and the efforts of my father and uncle to guide it.

Nash stood then, and added his best to the group effort, his face flushing with the strain.

Sophie’s soul bobbed, then sank slightly, but would go no farther.

The reaper whirled around then, turning her back on my aunt to focus her fury on me and Nash. “You…”

I shook harder with each step she took toward me, and my voice began to warble. I was losing it, and once the wail faded, there would be no soul for the men to guide.

“Something is…” Her sweater flared out at the sides as she walked, giving her a larger, more intimidating presence than her small frame should have carried. Then her eyes narrowed as she studied me from mere feet away, while my heart tripped its way through a few more terrified beats. Her slow smile returned. “You live someone else’s life. Belphegore would surely love a taste of your borrowed life force. If you want to see the next day’s sun, shut your mouth and release that soul. Otherwise, your family will watch me feed you your own tongue before I take your soul in place of hers.”

Her depraved smile broadened, and the sight of such normal, even white teeth in such a vicious face sent chills through me. “And you will die in perfect silence, little one. There is no one left to sing your soul song.”

“I will sing for her.” The voice was soft and lyrical, and as eerie in the odd silence as the reaper’s was. My head swiveled toward the source.

Tod stood in front of the closed front door. His feet were spread for an even stance, hands fisted at his sides, jaw clenched in fury. He looked ready to do battle with the devil himself, but Tod’s voice didn’t match the one I’d heard.

Someone stepped out from behind him, and my pulse raced in hope. Harmony Hudson. Nash’s mother. And she looked pissed.

“Can you hear me, hon?” she asked, and I nodded, so grateful for her presence that I didn’t think to question how she’d known she was needed. “Your voice is fadin’, but I can sing all night.” She faced Marg then, and seemed to stand taller. “You’re not leaving with her soul. Or the other one’s either,” she said, glancing at Sophie’s soul where it still bobbed sluggishly in the air over her body.

Marg hissed like an angry cat, mouth open, teeth exposed, and for a moment I thought she’d swipe at Nash’s mother with a set of retractable claws. Then she seemed to collect herself. “You’ll fare no better than the child,” Marg purred, slinking toward the entryway slowly. “It will take more than three of your men to steal from me while I hold four strong souls in reserve.”

“How ’bout four men?” Tod said through clenched teeth. He glanced at me, then at Nash, who nodded, giving him the go-ahead for something I didn’t understand. Then Tod closed his eyes in concentration, and Sophie’s soul bobbed a bit lower.

My eyes widened. Tod was a reaper. Yet he was very clearly helping the others guide Sophie’s soul.

Marg’s eyes went dark with fury, and she whirled to face Sophie, clearly intent on taking her before she lost her chance.

And that’s when my voice died.

“No!” I croaked, but no sound came out.

Yet no sooner had my scream faded from the air than true sound came roaring back to me, as if my ears had popped from a change in pressure. And the first thing to greet them was the most beautiful, ethereal music I’d ever heard in my life.

Nash’s mom was singing for Sophie.

All four of the men were tugging on my cousin’s soul now, with Harmony’s song binding it. But Marg was pulling on it too. Sophie’s soul began to rise again, and this time it edged toward the reaper, her arms spread to receive it.

“Marg, please!” Aunt Val shouted. “Take me. My soul may not be young, but it’s strong, and you can’t have Sophie!”

“You can’t save her….” Marg sang, and, glancing around, I saw that she was right. With four souls in reserve, she was too strong for even four male bean sidhes. Ironic, considering how small and frail she looked….

Wait. She was frail. My dad had said reapers had to take on physical form to interact with their surroundings. Which meant Marg had the same physical weaknesses as the reaper who’d tried to take me. The reaper my father had punched…

My head spinning, throat throbbing, I ran into the kitchen. I glanced at the knife rack, then shook my head. I didn’t know if I could stop her with one blow.

But I could whack the crap out of her.

I pulled open the cabinet beneath the oven and dug around for the old cast-iron skillet Uncle Brendon used for corn bread, then lugged the pan out and raced through the dining room. I passed Nash, Harmony, and Tod, and had already pulled the skillet back for a blow when I came even with my father.

Marg must have heard me coming, or seen some sign of it in my aunt’s face, because she turned at the last minute. The pan hit her in the shoulder, rather than the head, so instead of knocking her unconscious, I simply knocked her down.

But she went down hard. Her hip hit the floor with a thud, shaking the end table two feet away.

I couldn’t suppress a grin of triumph, even as a vicious ache rebounded up my arm from the blow I’d landed.

For a moment, the reaper lay stunned, glossy black waves spread around her head, arms splayed at her sides. On the edge of my vision, I saw Sophie’s soul sink smoothly toward her body. Then Aunt Val let loose a shriek of rage and launched herself across the floor. I’d never seen her look less graceful or poised—and I’d never admired her more.

She landed on Marg’s slim hips, straddling her, hands grasping the reaper’s shoulders. Her eyes were wild, her hair nearly standing on end. She looked crazy, and I had little doubt that if she wasn’t there yet, she would be soon.

“You will not take my daughter!” she shouted, inches from the reaper’s face. “So you either take me now, or you’re going back one soul short of the bargain!”

Marg’s lips curled back in fury as I inched forward, the skillet still gripped in both hands. She glanced up at Sophie’s soul, and her dark eyes blazed in fury to find that it was gone and that Sophie was now breathing, though still unconscious.

Marg stared up at my aunt then, terror fleeting across her features. Whoever this Belphegore was, Marg clearly didn’t want to disappoint her. The reaper considered for less than a full second, then she nodded. “Your soul won’t fulfill the deal you made, but it will pay for your arrogance and vanity.” And just like that, Aunt Val slumped forward onto the reaper, her eyes already empty and glazing over.

But Aunt Val’s body hit the carpet, because Marg was gone.

I blinked, staring at my aunt in shock, and carefully lowered myself to the floor, to keep from falling flat out.

“Kaylee, are you okay?” Nash’s fingers curled around my left hand, reminding me that I still clutched the cast-iron skillet in my right. Startled by what I’d done with it, now that it was all over, I dropped the skillet at arm’s length, and it hit the carpet with a muffled thud.

“I’m fine,” I croaked. “Considering.”

Uncle Brendon stomped past me to kneel at Sophie’s side. He took her pulse and exhaled in relief, then felt around her head, near where she’d banged it on the end table. Then he picked her up in both arms and laid her on the couch, heedless of the blood her hair smeared across the white silk.

Aunt Val would have had a fit over the mess. But Aunt Val was dead.

With Sophie’s safety assured, her father dropped to the floor beside his wife and repeated the same steps. But this time, there was no sigh of relief. Instead, my uncle scooted backward on the seat of his jeans until his back hit the side of the couch, his hair brushing Sophie’s arm. Then he propped his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. His whole body shook with silent tears.

“Brendon?” my father said, laying one warm hand on my back.

“How could she do this?” his brother demanded, looking up at us with red-rimmed eyes. “What was she thinking?”

“I don’t know.” My dad let go of me to kneel at his brother’s side.

“It’s my fault. Living with us is too hard for humans. I should have known better.” Uncle Brendon sobbed, swiping one sleeve across his face. “She didn’t want to grow old without me.”

“This is not your fault,” my dad insisted, clasping his brother’s shoulder. “It’s not that she didn’t want to get old without you, Bren. She didn’t want to get old at all.”

My aunt Valerie had made a deal with a hellion, and cost four innocent girls their lives. She’d lied to us all, and had nearly gotten her own daughter killed. And she had blasted a hole the size of a nuclear crater through our family’s core.

But when the time came, she’d given her own life in exchange for her daughter’s without a second thought, just like my mother had. Did that make her sins forgivable?

I wanted to say yes—that a mother’s selfless sacrifice was enough of a good deed to erase her past sins. But the truth wasn’t so pretty.

My aunt’s death wouldn’t bring back Heidi, or Alyson, or Meredith, or Julie. It wouldn’t repair whatever psychological damage her loss caused Sophie. It wouldn’t give Uncle Brendon back his wife.

The truth was that Aunt Val’s sacrifice was too little, too late, and she’d left those she loved most to deal with the aftermath.

“Here, Kaylee. This will help your throat.” Harmony Hudson set a small cup of honey-scented tea on the table in front of me, and I leaned over it, breathing in the fragrant steam. She started to head back into the kitchen, where the scent of homemade brownies—her favorite form of therapy—had just begun to waft from the oven, but I laid one hand on her arm.

“I would have lost Sophie if you weren’t here.” My voice was still hoarse, and my throat felt like I’d swallowed a pinecone. And the shock was finally starting to pass, leaving my heart heavy and my head full of the terrible details.

Harmony smiled sadly and sank into the chair next to mine. “The way I hear it, you’ve done more than your fair share of singing today.”

I nodded and sipped carefully from the cup, grateful for the soothing warmth that trickled down my throat. “But it’s over now, right? Belphegore can’t leave the Netherworld, and Marg won’t come back, right?”

“Not if she has any sense. The reapers know who she is now, and they’ll all be looking for her.” Harmony glanced to her left, and my gaze followed hers to the living room, where my aunt had died, my cousin had been restored, and I’d whacked a psychotic grim reaper with a cast-iron skillet.

Weirdest. Tuesday. Ever.

The paramedics had been gone for less than half an hour, and the thick white carpet still bore tracks from the wheels of the stretcher. They’d rolled Aunt Val out draped in a white sheet, and Uncle Brendon and Sophie followed the ambulance to the hospital, where she would get stitches in the back of her head, and her mother would be officially pronounced dead.

Sophie didn’t understand what had happened; I’d known that from the moment she regained consciousness. But what I hadn’t anticipated was that she would blame me for her mother’s death. My cousin was technically dead when Aunt Val made the bargain that had saved her daughter’s life, and Sophie didn’t remember most of what she’d seen before that. All she knew was that her mother had died, and that I’d had something to do with it. Just like with my own mother.

She and I had more in common now than we ever had—yet we’d never been further apart.

“How did you know? About all of this?” I asked Harmony, waving toward the living room to indicate the entire disaster. But she only frowned, as if confused by the necessity for my question.

“I told her.”

Startled, I looked up to find Tod sitting across from me, his arms folded on the table, a single blond curl hanging over his forehead. Harmony smiled at him, letting me know she saw him too, then rose to check on the brownies.

“How did you do it?” I brought the teacup to my mouth for another sip. “How did you guide Sophie’s soul? I thought you were a reaper.”

“He’s both,” Nash said from behind me, and I turned just as he followed my father through the front door, pulling his long sleeves down one at a time. He and my dad had just loaded Aunt Val’s white silk couch into the back of my uncle’s truck, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the bloodstains when he and Sophie got back from the hospital. “Tod is very talented.”

Tod brushed the curl back from his face and scowled.

Harmony spoke up from the kitchen as the oven door squealed open. “Both my boys are talented.”

“Both?” I repeated, sure I’d heard her wrong.

Nash sighed and slid onto the chair his mother had vacated, then gestured toward the reaper with one hand. “Kaylee, meet my brother, Tod.”

“Brother?” My gaze traveled back and forth between them, searching for some similarity, but the only one I could find was the dimples. Though, now that I thought about it, Tod had Harmony’s blond curls….

And suddenly everything made a lot more sense. The pointless bickering. Nash knowing Tod “forever.” Tod hanging out at Nash’s house. Nash knowing a lot about reapers.

How could I not have seen it earlier?

“A word of warning…” Harmony gave me a soft smile, but then her focus shifted to my father. “You have to watch out for bean sidhe brothers. They’re always more than you bargain for.”

My dad cleared his throat and glanced away.

An hour later, the Hudsons had gone, and my father stood across from me at the bar, chewing the last bite of a brownie I’d had no appetite for. I set his empty saucer in the sink and ran water over it.

He slid one arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I let him. He still knew no more about me and my life than he had an hour earlier—that much hadn’t changed. But everything else had. Now he could look at me, no matter how much I resembled my mother, and see me, rather than her. He could see what he still had, rather than what he’d lost.

And he was going to stay. We’d probably fight over curfews and get on each other’s nerves, but at least those things felt normal. And I needed a good dose of normal after the week I’d just had.

I sighed, staring down at the running water, too exhausted and dazed in that moment to even realize I should turn it off.

“What’s wrong?” Dad reached around me to turn off the faucet.

“Nothing.” I shrugged, then turned with my back to the sink. “Well, everything, really. It’s just that I’ve only met three adult bean sidhes so far, and all three of you are…alone.” Tragically widowed, in fact. “Do bean sidhes ever get happy endings?”

“Of course they do,” my father insisted, wrapping one arm around my shoulders. “As much as anyone else does, at least.” And to my surprise, he didn’t look the least bit doubtful, even after all he’d been through. “I know that doesn’t seem possible right now, considering what you saw and heard tonight. But don’t judge your future based on others’ mistakes. Not Valerie’s, and certainly not mine. You’ll have as much of a happy ending as you’re willing to work for. And from what I’ve seen so far, you’re not afraid of a little work.”

I nodded, unsure how to respond.

“Besides, being a bean sidhe isn’t all bad, Kaylee.”

I gave him a skeptical frown. “That’s good to hear, ’cause from where I’m standing, it looks like a lot of death and screaming.”

“Yeah, there’s a good bit of that. But…” My father turned me by both shoulders until I stared up at him, only dimly registering the slow, steady swirls of chocolate, copper, and caramel in his eyes. “We have a gift, and if you’re willing to put up with the challenges that come with that gift, then every now and then, life will toss you a miracle.” His eyes churned faster, and his hands tightened just a little on my arms.

“You’re my miracle, Kaylee. Your mother’s too. She knew what she was doing that night on the road. She was saving our miracle. We both were. And as much as I still miss her, I’ve never regretted our decision. Not even for a second.” He blinked, and his eyes were full of tears. “Don’t you regret it either.”

“I don’t.” I met his gaze, hoping mine looked sincere, because the truth was that I was far from sure. What made me worthy of a life beyond what fate said I should have?

My dad frowned, like he saw the truth in my eyes, which were probably telling him more than my answer had. Stupid swirls. But before he could say anything, a familiar engine growled outside, then went silent.

Nash.

I glanced at my dad expectantly, and he scowled. “Does he always come over this late?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s nine-thirty.” Though admittedly, it felt more like two in the morning.

“Fine. Go talk to him, before he comes inside and I have to pretend I’m okay with that.”

“You don’t like him?”

My father sighed. “After everything he’s done for you, how could I not like him? But I see the way he looks at you. The way you look at each other.”

I smiled, as a car door closed outside. “What are you, ancient? Don’t you remember being my age?”

“I’m one hundred thirty-two, and I remember all too well. That’s why I’m worried.” A fleeting shadow passed over his expression, then he waved me toward the door. “Half an hour.”

Irritation spiked my temper. He’d been back for all of three hours, and was already making up rules? But I stifled a retort because even my father’s unreasonable curfew was better than being a long-term guest in my cousin’s home. Right?

Nash glanced up in surprise when I opened the front door.

He was on the bottom step, one hand on the rail. “Hey.”

“Hey.” I closed the door and leaned against it. “You forget something?”

He shrugged, and the slick green sleeves of his jacket shone under the porch light. “I just wanted to say goodnight without my mom looking over my shoulder. Or your dad.”

“Or your brother.” I couldn’t resist a grin, but Nash only frowned.

“I don’t want to talk about Tod.”

“Fair enough.” I stepped down to the middle riser and found my eyes even with his, though he stood one step below me. It was an oddly intimate pose; his body was inches from mine, but we weren’t touching. “What do you want to talk about?”

He raised one brow, and his voice came out hoarse. “Who says I want to talk?”

I let him kiss me—until my dad tapped on the window at my back. Nash groaned, and I tugged him down the steps and into the driveway, out of reach of the porch light.

“So you’re really okay with all this?” He spread his arms into the darkness, but the gesture included everything that had gone indescribably weird in my life over the past four days. “Most girls would have totally freaked out on me.”

“What can I say? Your voice works wonders.” Not to mention his hands. And his lips….

And again that ache gripped me, squeezing bitter drops of doubt from my heart. Would he be done with me in a month, once the novelty of kissing a fellow bean sidhe wore off?

“What’s wrong?” He tilted my chin up until my gaze met his, though I couldn’t see him very well in the dark.

I shoved my misgivings aside and leaned with my back against the car. “School’s going to be weird after this. I mean, how am I supposed to care about trig and world history when I just brought my best friend back from the dead, and faced down a grim reaper over my cousin’s poached soul?”

“You’ll care, because if you get grounded for failing economics, there won’t be any more of this…” He leaned into me, and his mouth teased mine until I rose onto my toes, demanding more.

“Mmm…That’s pretty good motivation,” I mumbled against his cheek, when I finally summoned the willpower to pull away.

“With any luck, there will be plenty of this, and no more of that.” He gestured vaguely toward the house. “That was an anomaly, and it’s over.”

A chill shivered through me at the reminder. “What if it’s not?” After all, Marg was still out there somewhere, and Belphegore was no doubt unsatisfied.

But Nash could not be shaken. “It’s over. But we’re just starting, Kaylee. You have no idea how special we are together. How incredible it is that we found each other.” He rubbed my arms, and I knew from the earnest intensity in his voice that his eyes were probably churning. “And we have long lives ahead of us. Time to do anything we want. Be anything we want.”

Time. That was the point, wasn’t it? Nash’s point. My father’s point.

Finally, I got it. My life wasn’t just my own. My mother had died to give it to me.

And no matter what happened next, I was damn well going to earn her sacrifice.