CHAPTER 17. Over the next few minutes, details filtered back to us through the crowd, now thankfully focused on the other side of the room

Over the next few minutes, details filtered back to us through the crowd, now thankfully focused on the other side of the room. The girl was a junior. A cheerleader named Julie Duke. I knew the name and could call up a vague image of her face. She was pretty and well liked, and if memory served, more friendly and accepting than most of the other pom-pom-wavers.

When Julie still had no pulse several minutes after she collapsed, adults began herding the students toward the doors, almost as one. Nash and I were allowed to stay because we were Emma’s ride, but the teachers wouldn’t let her leave until the EMTs had checked her out. However, Julie was the top priority, so when the medics arrived, the principal led them directly to the cluster of people around her.

But it was too late. Even if I hadn’t already known that, it would have been obvious by their posture alone, and the un-hurried way they went about their business, and eventually wheeled her out on a sheet-draped gurney. Then a single EMT in black pants and a pressed uniform shirt walked across the gym toward us, first-aid kit in hand. He examined Emma thoroughly, but found nothing that could have caused her collapse. Her pulse, blood pressure, and breathing were all fine. Her skin was flushed and healthy, her eyes were dilating, and her reflexes were…reflexing.

The medic concluded that she’d simply fainted, but said she should come to the hospital for a more thorough exam, just in case. Emma tried to decline, but the principal trumped her decision with a call to Ms. Marshall, who said she’d meet her daughter there.

When I was sure Sophie had a ride home, Nash and I followed the ambulance to the hospital, where the triage nurse put Emma in a small, bright room to await examination. And her mother. As soon as the nurse left, closing the door on his way out, Emma turned to face us both, her expression a mixture of fear and confusion.

“What happened?” she demanded, ignoring the pillows to sit straight on the hospital bed, legs crossed yoga-style. “The truth.”

I glanced at Nash, who’d pulled a rubber glove from a box mounted on the wall, but he only shrugged and nodded in her direction, giving me the clear go-ahead. “Um…” I croaked, unsure how much to tell her. Or how to phrase it. Or whether my still-froggy voice would hold out. “You died.”

“I died?” Emma’s eyes went huge and round. Whatever she’d expected to hear, I hadn’t said it.

I nodded hesitantly. “You died, and we brought you back.”

She swallowed thickly, glancing from me to Nash—who was now blowing up the disposable glove—and back. “You guys saved me? Like, you did CPR?” Her arms relaxed, and her shoulders fell in relief—she’d obviously been expecting something…weirder. I considered simply nodding, but no one else would corroborate our story. We had to tell her the truth—or at least one version of it.

“Not exactly.” I faltered, raising one brow at Nash, asking him silently for help.

He sighed and let the air out of the glove, then sank onto the edge of Emma’s bed. I sat in front of him and leaned back against his chest. I’d barely broken physical contact with him since singing to Emma’s soul, and I wasn’t looking to do it anytime soon. “Okay, we’re going to tell you what’s going on—” However, I knew when he squeezed my hand that he wasn’t going to tell her every thing, and he didn’t want me to either. “But first I need you to swear you won’t tell anyone else. No one. Ever. Even if you’re still living ninety years from now and itching to make a deathbed confession.”

Emma grinned and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like I’ll be thinking about the two of you when I’m a hundred and six and breathing my last.”

Nash chuckled and wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned into his chest, and his heart beat against my back. When he spoke, his breath stirred the hair over my ear, softly soothing me, though I knew that part was meant for Emma. Just in case.

“So you swear?” he asked, and she nodded. “You know how Kaylee can tell when someone’s going to die?” Emma nodded again, her eyes narrowed now, fresh curiosity shining in them, edged with fear she probably didn’t want us to see. “Well, sometimes, under certain circumstances…she can bring them back.”

“With his help,” I added hoarsely, then immediately wondered if his own involvement was one of the parts Nash wanted to keep to himself. But he kissed the back of my head to tell me it was okay.

“Yes, with my help.” His fingers curled around mine, where my hand lay in my lap. “Together, we…woke you up. Sort of. You’ll be fine now. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, and the doctor will probably decide you passed out from stress, or grief, or something. Just like the EMT did.”

For nearly a minute, Emma was silent, taking it all in. I was afraid that even under Nash’s careful Influence, she might freak out, or start laughing at us. But she only blinked and shook her head. “I died?” she asked again. “And you guys brought me back. I knew I should have had that little digital health meter installed over my head, so I know when I’m about to drop.”

I smiled, relieved that she could see the humor in the situation, and Nash laughed out loud, his whole body quaking against my back. “Well, with any luck, we’ve unlocked infinite health for you,” he said.

Emma smiled back briefly, then her face grew serious. “Was it like the others? I just collapsed?”

“Yeah.” I hated having to tell her about her own death. “In midsentence.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” Nash said before I could answer. I let his response stand, because technically it was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. And because I didn’t want Emma mixed up in anything that involved a psychotic, extra-grim, female reaper.

She thought for a moment, her fingers skimming the white hospital blanket. When her hand bumped the bed’s controller, she picked it up, glancing at the buttons briefly before meeting my gaze again. “How did you do it?”

“That’s…complicated.” I searched for the right words, but they wouldn’t come. “I don’t know how to explain it, and it’s not really important.” At least as far as Emma was concerned. “What matters is that you’re okay.”

She pressed a button on the controller, and the head of the bed rose several inches beneath her. “So what happened with Julie?”

That was the question I’d been dreading. I glanced at my lap, where my fingers were twisting one another into knots. Then I shifted to look at Nash, hoping he had a better, less traumatizing way to explain it than simply “She died for you.”

But evidently he did not. “We saved your life, and we’d do it again if we had to. But death is just like life in some ways, Em. Everything has a price.”

“A price?” Emma flinched, and her hand clenched the controller. The bed lowered beneath her, but she didn’t even notice. “You killed Julie to save me?”

“No!” I reached out for Emma, but she scooted backward into the pillow, horrified. “We had nothing to do with Julie dying! But when we brought you back, we created a sort of vacuum, and something had to fill it.” Which wasn’t exactly true. But I couldn’t explain that there shouldn’t have been a price for her life without telling her about bean sidhes, and reapers, and other, darker things I didn’t even understand yet myself.

Emma relaxed a little but didn’t move any closer to us. “Did you know that when you saved me?” she asked, and again I was surprised by how insightful her questions were. She’d probably make a much better bean sidhe than I will.

Nash cleared his throat behind me, ready to field the question. “We knew it was a possibility. But your case was an exception, of sorts, so we hoped it wouldn’t happen. And we had no idea who would go instead.”

Emma frowned. “So you didn’t get a premonition about her death?”

“No, I…” Didn’t. I hadn’t even thought about it until she asked. “Why didn’t I know about her?” I asked, twisting to look at Nash.

“Because the reason for her death—” meaning the reaper’s decision to take her “—didn’t exist until we brought Emma back. Which proves Julie wasn’t supposed to die either.”

“She wasn’t supposed to die?” Emma hugged a hospital pillow to her chest.

“No.” I leaned into Nash’s embrace and immediately felt guilty because she’d just died, yet had no one to lean on. So I sat up again, but couldn’t bring myself to let go of his hand. “Something’s wrong. We’re trying to figure it out, but we’re not really sure where to start.”

“Was I supposed to die?” Her gaze burned into me. I’d never seen my best friend look so vulnerable and scared.

Nash shook his head firmly on the edge of my vision. “That’s why we brought you back. I wish we could have helped Julie.”

Emma frowned. “Why couldn’t you?”

“We…weren’t fast enough.” I grimaced as frustration and anger over my own failure twisted at my gut. “And I sort of used it all up on you.”

“What does that mean—” But before she could finish the question, the door opened, and a middle-aged woman in scrubs and a lab coat entered. She carried a clipboard and led a very flustered Ms. Marshall.

“Emma, I believe this woman belongs to you?” The doctor tucked her clipboard under one arm, and Ms. Marshall brushed past her and rushed to the bed, where she nearly crushed her youngest daughter in a hug.

Suddenly the bed lurched beneath us, and Nash and I jumped off the mattress, startled. “Sorry.” Emma dug the controller from beneath her leg, where it had fallen.

“Um, we’re gonna go,” I said, backing toward the door. “My dad’s supposed to get in tonight, and I really need to talk to him.”

“Your dad’s coming home?” Still tight within the embrace, Emma pushed a poof of her mother’s hair aside so she could see me, and I nodded.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. ’Kay?”

Emma frowned as her mother settled onto the bed, but nodded when the doctor held the door open for us. She would be fine. For better or worse, we’d saved her life, at least for now. And with any luck, she wouldn’t catch another reaper’s eye for a very, very long time.

Ms. Marshall waved to me as the door closed in front of us, and the last thing I heard was Emma insisting that she would have called, if she still had her phone.

Our footsteps clomped on the dingy vinyl tile as we passed the nurses’ station, heading for the heavy double doors leading into the ER waiting room. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, and I was exhausted. And the tickle in my throat reminded me that I still sounded like a bullfrog.

I’d barely finished that thought when a familiar voice called my name from the broad, white corridor behind us. I froze in midstep, but Nash only stopped when he noticed I had.

“I thought you might want something warm for your throat. Sounds like you really wore it out today.”

I turned to find Tod holding a steaming paper cup, his other hand wrapped around an empty IV stand.

Nash tensed at my side. “What’s wrong?” he asked. But he was looking at me rather than at Tod.

I glanced at the reaper with my brows raised. Tod shrugged and grinned. “He can’t see me. Or hear me unless I want him to.” Then he turned to Nash, and I understood that whatever he said next, Nash would hear. “And until he apologizes, you and I will carry on all of our conversations without him.”

Nash went stiff, following my gaze to what he apparently saw as an empty hallway. “Damn it, Tod,” he whispered angrily. “Leave her alone.”

Tod grinned, like we’d shared a private joke. “I’m not even touching her.”

Nash ground his teeth together, but I rolled my eyes and spoke up before he could say something we’d all regret. “This is ridiculous. Nash, be nice. Tod, show yourself. Or I’m leaving you both here.”

Nash remained silent but did manage to unclench his jaws. And I knew the moment Tod appeared to him, because his focus narrowed on the reaper’s face. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” Tod let go of the IV stand and ambled forward, holding the steaming cup out for me. I took it without thinking—my throat did hurt, and something hot would feel good going down. I sipped from a tiny slit in the lid and was surprised to taste sweet, rich hot chocolate, with just a bit of cinnamon.

I gave him a grateful smile. “I love cocoa.”

Tod shrugged and slid his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans, but a momentary flash in his eyes gave away his satisfaction. “I wasn’t sure you’d like coffee, but I figured chocolate was a sure thing.”

A soft gnashing sound met my ears as Nash tried to grind his teeth into stubs, and his hand tightened around mine. “Let’s go, Kaylee.”

I nodded, then shrugged apologetically at Tod. “Yeah, I should get home.”

“To see your dad?” The reaper grinned slyly, and whatever points he’d gained with the hot chocolate he lost instantly for invading my privacy.

“You were spying on me?”

A door opened on the right side of the hallway and an orderly emerged, pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair. They both glanced our way briefly before continuing down the hall in the opposite direction. But just in case, Tod lowered his voice and stepped closer. “Not spying. Listening. I’m stuck here twelve hours a day, and it’s ridiculous for me to pretend I don’t hear stuff.”

“What did you hear?” I demanded.

Tod looked from me to Nash, then glanced at the nurses’ station at the end of the hall, at the juncture of two other corridors. Then he nodded toward a closed, unnumbered door on the left and motioned for me and Nash to join him.

I went, and Nash followed me reluctantly. Tod made an “after you” gesture at the door, but when I tried to open it, the knob wouldn’t turn. “It’s locked.”

“Oops.” Tod disappeared, and a moment later the door opened from the inside. The reaper stood in a small, dark storage closet lined with shelves stacked with medication, syringes, and assorted medical supplies.

I hesitated, afraid someone might walk in and catch us. A reaper could blink himself out of trouble, but bean sidhes could not. But then light footsteps squeaked toward us from one of the other hallways, and Nash suddenly shoved me inside and closed the door behind us.

There was a second of darkness, then something clicked and light bathed us from a bare bulb overhead. Nash had found the switch. “Okay, spit it out,” he snapped. “I do not want to explain to Kaylee’s father why we were caught in a locked hospital storage room full of controlled substances.”

“Fair enough.” Tod leaned with one shoulder against a shelf along the back wall, giving me and Nash as much room as possible—which was about a square foot apiece. “I was waiting on a guy with a knife wound to the chest. Should have been short and simple, but I stepped out to take a call from my boss, and by the time I got back inside, the doc had brought him back three times. You know, with those shock paddle things?”

“So you let him live?” Nash sounded nearly as surprised as I was.

“Um…no.” Tod frowned, blond curls gleaming in the un-filtered light. “He was on my list. Anyway, when I finished with the stab victim, I came out to the lobby for a cup of coffee and heard you talking.” He was looking at me now, and completely ignoring Nash. “So I followed you into your friend’s room. She’s hot.”

“Stay away from…her,” I finished lamely, remembering at the last minute that it wasn’t wise to give out my friends’ names to the agents of death. Not that the reaper couldn’t find it on his own anyway. And not that Death didn’t already have Emma’s name on file, after that afternoon.

Tod rolled his eyes. “What kind of reaper do you think I am? And anyway, what fun would killing her be?”

“Leave her alone,” Nash snapped. “Let’s go.” He turned and grabbed the handle, then threw the door open fast enough that if anyone from the nurses’ station had been looking, we’d have been caught for sure. Surprised, I hurried after him and barely heard the storage closet close behind me. We were nearly to the double doors when Tod spoke again.

“Don’t you want to know about the phone call?” He only whispered, but somehow his voice carried as if he’d spoken from an inch away.

I stopped, pulling Nash to a sudden halt. He glanced at me in confusion, then in mounting irritation, and I realized with a jolt of shock that once again he hadn’t heard Tod—and that I shouldn’t have either. The reaper was at least twenty feet away, still in front of the closet.

“The call from your boss?” I whispered experimentally, to see if Tod could hear me.

The reaper nodded, smiling smugly.

“What did he say?” Nash growled softly, angrily.

“Come on.” After a quick look to make sure none of the nurses were watching, I nearly dragged him down the hall and back into the closet behind Tod. “Why should we care about your communication issues with your boss?” I asked aloud, to catch Nash up on the discussion.

“Because he has a theory about the off-list reaping.” Tod’s grin grew as he leaned against the left-hand shelf, and a small dimple appeared in his right cheek, highlighted by the stark light from overhead. How could I not have noticed that before?

“What theory?” Nash asked. Apparently he could hear Tod again.

“Everything costs something. You should know that by now.”

“Fine.” I huffed in frustration and ignored Nash when his hand tightened around mine. “Tell us what you know, and we’ll tell you what we know.”

Tod laughed and pulled a plastic bedpan from the shelf, peering into it as if he expected a magician’s rabbit to hop out. “You’re bluffing. You don’t know anything about this.”

“We saw the reaper when Emma died,” I said, and his smile faded instantly. He dropped the bedpan back onto the shelf and I knew I had his attention. “Start talking.”

“You better be telling the truth.” Tod’s gaze shifted between me and Nash repeatedly.

“I told you, Kaylee doesn’t lie,” Nash said, and I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t include himself in that statement.

Tod hesitated for a moment, as if considering. Then he nodded. “My boss is this really old reaper named Levi. He’s been around for a while. Like, a hundred fifty years.” He crossed his arms over his chest, getting comfortable against the back wall of shelves. “Levi said something like this happened when he first became a reaper. Everything was a lot less organized back then, and by the time they figured out someone was taking people not on the list—they wrote the whole thing by hand back then, can you imagine?—they’d already lost six souls from his region.”

“You’re serious?” Nash wrapped one arm around my waist, and I let him pull me close. “Or are you just making all this up to impress Kaylee?”

Tod shot him a dark scowl, but I thought it was a totally valid question. “Every word of this came straight from Levi. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him yourself.”

Nash stiffened, and muttered something about that not being necessary.

“So why were they dying?” I asked, drawing us back on subject.

The reaper’s eyes settled on me again, and he lowered his voice conspiratorially, blue eyes gleaming. “Their souls were being poached.”

“Poached?” I twisted to glance at Nash with one brow raised, but he only shrugged, his mouth set in a hard line. “Why would anyone steal souls?”

“Good question.” Tod fingered a box of disposable thermometer covers. His grin widened, and I was reminded of the way movie-goers sometimes cheer during murder scenes, secure in the knowledge that they’re seeing fake blood and movie magic. “There’s not much use for detached souls in this world….” The reaper left his last word hanging, and a sick feeling twisted deep in my stomach.

“But there is in the Netherworld?” I finished for him, and Tod nodded, evidently impressed that my newbie roots were no longer showing.

“Souls are a rarity on the deeper plane. Something between a delicacy and a luxury. They’re in very high demand, and every now and then a shipment goes missing in transit.”

“A shipment of souls?” A bolt of dread shot through me at the very thought. “In transit from where? To where?”

Nash answered, looking simultaneously pleased to know the answer and annoyed at having to provide it. “From here to where they’re…recycled.”

“Reincarnated?”

“Yeah.” Tod stood straighter and bumped his head on an upper shelf, then rubbed it as he spoke. “But sometimes a shipment doesn’t make it, so those souls aren’t passed on. They’re replaced with new ones, which is one of the reasons you’ll run into a brand-new soul sometimes.”

I made a mental note to ask later how one might identify a new soul. “So these poached souls are going to the Netherworld?” I asked, trying to simply stay afloat in the current of new information. “You mean Meredith, and Julie, and the others were killed so some monster in another realm could make a midnight snack out of their souls?” I gripped a shoulder-height shelf for balance as my head spun. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what I’d just said.

“That’s Levi’s theory.” Tod picked up a roll of sterile gauze and tossed it into the air, then caught it. “He said the last time this happened, they were being collected as payment to a hellion.”

My hand clutched the shelf and a protruding screw cut my finger, but I barely noticed because of the dark dread swirling in me like a dense fog. “A hellion?”

Nash exhaled heavily. “Humans would call them demons, but that’s not exactly right, because they have no association with any religion. They feed on pain and chaos. But they can’t leave the Netherworld.”

“Okay…” My pulse raced, and I flashed back to the gray creatures I’d seen during Emma’s soul song. Were those hellions? “Payment for what?”

The reaper shrugged. “Could be anything. Sometimes deals are struck. Under the table, of course. Levi’ll take care of it, as soon as he finds the reaper responsible.” He caught the gauze one more time and shrugged, having evidently given us everything he knew. Which was much more than I’d expected. “So…what about this reaper you saw?”

“Tell Levi he’s looking for a woman.” I shifted closer to Nash and accidentally bumped a shelf. Several boxes of medical tubing fell over, spilling their contents like clear plastic worms.

“A woman?” Tod’s eyes widened, and I nodded.

“Tall and thin, with wavy brown hair,” Nash said. “Sound like someone you know?”

Tod shook his head. “But Levi knows every reaper in the state. He’ll take care of it.” He hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to say the next part. “But he thinks you’re going to get your own souls poached before he can get everything back under control.”

“Is that what you think?” I wasn’t sure why his opinion mattered to me, but it did.

Tod shrugged, fingering his makeshift ball. “I’d say that’s a very real possibility. Especially if you keep wiggling your fingers in front of the tiger’s mouth.”

“We had no choice.” I bent to restack the boxes I’d spilled. “The tiger was about to eat my best friend.”

“You’re something else, Kaylee Cavanaugh,” Tod whispered, and I knew from Nash’s blank, angry expression that he hadn’t heard that part either, though he’d clearly seen the reaper’s lips move. “It could have been you, instead of that cheerleader. It might be, next time. Or it might be him.” His gaze flicked to Nash and back, and his irreverent expression darkened.

“Let Levi handle it,” he said. “If you won’t do it for me, or even for yourself, do it for Nash. Please.”

Tod looked truly scared, and I didn’t know what to make of fear coming from a grim reaper. So I nodded. “We’re out of it. I already promised my uncle.” I reached back for Nash’s hand as Tod nodded. Then he disappeared, still holding the gauze, and I was alone with Nash in the cramped closet.