"An hour." Her lips moved in profile against the white wall as she turned to half face him. "Any longer, and you risk much."
"What do you do with it?" I asked—I couldn't help it—and Libby froze in midstep. She pivoted slowly to look at me, and I saw time in her eyes. Years of life and death, and existence without end. The shivers in my hands became tremors echoing the length of my body.
I should not have drawn her attention.
"Who is this?" Libby faced Tod again.
"A friend. My brother's girlfriend." He nodded toward Nash, who stood tall beneath her hair-curling, nerve-crunching scrutiny. Then Libby whirled on one booted heel and marched on.
Cool relief sifted through me, and only then did I realize Tod hadn't given her either of our names. Nash had practically beaten that precaution into him; it was never wise to give your name to Death's emissaries. Though, if a reaper wanted to know your name, it was easy enough to find, especially in today's world. Which is why it was also unwise to catch a reaper's attention.
Sirens warbled outside the stadium then, and another gaggle of official-looking people rushed down the hall toward the stage, but Libby didn't seem to notice them. "There are places for proper disposal of Demon's Breath. In the Nether," she added, as if there were any question about that.
"If a reaper wanted to get into that—collecting Demon's Breath instead of souls—how might he get started?" Tod asked as we followed Libby around a sharp white corner, her feet silent on the slick linoleum.
"By surviving the next thousand years." Her accent grew sharper, her words thick with warning. "If you still live then, find me. I will show you. But do not try it alone. Fools suffer miserable deaths, boy."
"I won't," Tod assured her. "But it was awesome to watch."
Libby stopped, eyeing him with a strange expression caught on her features, as if she didn't quite know what she intended to say until the words came out. "You may watch again. I will return in five days."
"For more Demon's Breath?" I asked, and again her creepy green gaze slid my way, seeming to burn through my eyes and into my brain.
"Of course. The other fool will release hers on Thursday."
"What other fool?" Tod demanded through clenched teeth, and I glanced at him, surprised by his sharp tone. His brows were furrowed, his beautiful lips thinned by dread.
"Addison Page. The singer," Libby said, like it should have been obvious.
Tod actually stumbled backward, and Nash put a hand on his shoulder, but it went right through him. For a moment, I was afraid he'd fall through the featureless white wall. "Addy sold her soul?" Tod rubbed one hand across his own nearly transparent forehead. "Are you sure?"
Libby raised her brows, as if to ask if he were serious.
"When?"
"That is not my concern." The reaper slid her slim, dark hands into the pockets of her coat, watching Tod with disdain now, as if her hunch that he wasn't yet ready to collect Demon's Breath had just been confirmed. "Mine is to gather what I come for and dispose of it properly. Time marches on, boy, and so must I."
"Wait!" Tod grabbed her arm, and I wasn't sure who was more surprised—Libby or Nash. But Tod rushed on as if he hadn't noticed. "Addy's going to die?"
Libby nodded, then disappeared without so much as a wink to warn us. She was just suddenly gone, yet her voice remained for a moment longer, an echo of her very existence.
"She will release the Demon's Breath by taking her own life. And I shall be there to claim it."
3
"ADDY SOLD HER SOUL." Tod's voice sounded odd. Distant. I think he was in shock. Or maybe that was just an echo from the empty hallway.
If a voice isn't audible in the human range of hearing, can it echo?
"Um, yeah. Sounds like it," I said. The very thought sent chills through me, and I rubbed my arms through my sleeves, trying to get rid of the goose bumps.
"She's gonna kill herself." Tod's eyes were wide with panic and horror. I'd never seen him scared, and I didn't like how fear pressed his lips into a tense, thin line and wrinkled his forehead. "We have to stop her. Warn her, or something." Tod took off down the hall, and Nash and I ran after him. If we didn't keep up, he'd disappear through a wall or something, and we'd never find him. At least, not in time to finish arguing with him.
"Warn her of what? That she's going to kill herself?" Nash's shoes squeaked as we rounded a corner. "Don't you think she already knows that?"
"Maybe not." Tod stopped when the hallway ended in a T, glancing both ways in indecision. "Maybe whatever's supposed to drive her to suicide hasn't happened yet." He looked to the left again, then took off toward the right.
"Wait!" I lunged forward and grabbed his arm, relieved when my hand didn't pass right through him. "Do you even know where you're going?"
"No clue." He shrugged, looking more like his brother in that moment than ever before. "I know where her dressing room is, but I don't know how to get there from here, and I can't just pop in without losing you two."
I didn't want to know how he knew where her dressing room was, but considering how often he'd gone invisible to spy on me, the answer seemed obvious.
"Yeah, physics is a real bitch." Nash rolled his beautiful hazel eyes and leaned with one shoulder against the wall like he had nowhere better to be.
"You don't have to wait for us." As cool as it would have been to meet Addison Page, telling a rising star that she was going to end both her career and her life in less than a week was so not on my to-do list. "I think I'm going to sit this one out." I propped my hands on my hips and glanced at Nash to see if he was with me, but he and Tod wore identical, half amused, half reluctant expressions. "What?"
"I'm dead, Kaylee." Tod stopped in front of the first door we'd come to, his hand on the knob. "Addy came to my funeral. I can't show up in her dressing room two years after I was buried and tell her not to kill herself. That would just be rude."
I laughed at his idea of post-death etiquette, pretty sure that "rude" was a bit of an understatement. But I sobered quickly when his point sank in. "Wait, you want us to tell her?"
"If she sees me, she'll freak out and spend the last days of her life in the psych ward."
I bristled, irritated by the reminder of my own brief stay in the land of sedatives and straitjackets. "It's called the mental health unit, thank you. And we are not going to go tell your famous ex-girlfriend to lighten up or she'll be joining you six feet under. That would be rude."
"She wouldn't believe us, anyway," Nash said, crossing his arms over his chest in a show of solidarity. "She'd probably call Security and have us arrested."
"So make her believe you." Tod gestured in exasperation. Like it'd be that easy. "I'll be there to help. She just won't be able to see me."
I glanced at Nash and was relieved to see my reluctance still reflected in his features. As much as I wanted to help—to hopefully save Addison Page's life—I did not want to be taken from her dressing room in handcuffs.
And my dad would be soooo pissed if he had to bail me out of jail.
But before I could even contemplate how bad that would be, something else sank in….
"Tod, wait a minute." He let go of the knob when I stepped between him and the door, but his oddly angelic frown said he wasn't happy about it. "How do we know this will even work? I mean, say she believes us and decides not to kill herself. Won't she just die of some other cause next week, at the same time she would have killed herself? If her name's really on the list, she's going to die one way or another, right? You can't stop Libby from coming for her, and frankly, I think you'd be an idiot to even try."
Nash and Tod had explained to me how the whole death business works right after I found out I was a bean sidhe, during the single most stressful week of my life. Evidently people come with expiration dates stamped on them at birth—much like food in the grocery store. It was the reapers' job to enforce that expiration date, then collect the dead person's soul and take it to be recycled.
As far as I knew, the only way to extend a person's life was to exchange his or her death date for someone else's, to keep life and death in balance. So if we saved Addison Page's life—which, as bean sidhes, Nash and I could technically do—someone else would have to die in her place, and that someone could be anyone. Me or Nash, or some random, nearby stranger.
As much as I wanted to help both Tod and Addison, I was not willing to pay that price, nor would I ask someone else to.
Tod blinked at me, and while his scowl remained in place, his sad eyes revealed the truth. "I know." He sighed, and his broad shoulders fell with the movement. "But I haven't actually seen the list yet, so I'm not going to worry about that right now. What I am going to do is try to talk her out of suicide. But I need help. Please, guys." His gaze trailed from me to Nash, then back.
Nash frowned and leaned against the wall beside the door again, striking the I-cannot-be-moved posture I recognized from several of our own past arguments. "Tod, you're the one who says it's dangerous for bean sidhes to mess in reaper business."
"And that knowing when they're going to die only makes a human's last days miserable," I added, perversely pleased by the chance to throw his own words back at him.
Tod shrugged. "I know, but this is different."
"Why?" Nash demanded, his gaze going hard as he glared at Tod. "Because this time it's an ex? One you've obviously never gotten over…"
Anger flashed across the reaper's face, mirroring his brother's, but beneath it lay a foundation of pain and vulnerability even he could not hide. "This is different because she sold her soul, Nash. You know what that means."
Nash's eyes closed for a moment, and he inhaled deeply. When he met Tod's gaze again, his held more sympathy than anger. "That was her choice."
"She didn't know what she was getting into! She couldn't have!" the reaper shouted, and I was floored by the depth of his anger and frustration. I'd never seen him put so much raw emotion on display.
"What was she getting into?" I glanced from brother to brother and crossed my own arms, waiting for an answer. I hate always being the clueless one.
Finally Nash sighed and turned his attention to me. "She sold her soul to a hellion, but he won't have full use of it until she dies. When she does, her soul is his for eternity. Forever. He can do whatever he wants with it, but since hellions feed on pain and chaos, he'll probably torture Addison's soul—and thus what remains of Addison—until the end of time. Or the end of the Netherworld. Whichever comes first."
My stomach churned around the dinner we'd grabbed before the concert, threatening to send the burger back up. "Is that what happened to the souls Aunt Val traded to Belphegore?" Nash nodded grimly, and horror drew my hands into cold, damp fists. "But that's not fair. Those girls did nothing wrong, and now their souls are going to be tortured for all of eternity."
"That's why soul-poaching is illegal." Tod's voice was soft with sympathy and heavy with grief.
"Is selling your soul illegal, too?" A spark of hope zinged through me. Maybe Addison could get her soul back on a technicality!
But the reaper shook his head. "Souls can't be stolen from the living. They can only be given away or sold by the owner, or poached after death, once they're released from the body. There's a huge market for human souls in the Netherworld, and what Addy did was perfectly legal. But she had no idea what she was getting into. She couldn't have."
I didn't know what to say. I couldn't decide whether I was more horrified for those four innocent souls or for my aunt, who'd given up her own soul to save her daughter's. Or for Addison Page, who would soon suffer the same fate.
"We have to tell her." I looked into Nash's eyes and found the greens and browns once again swirling, this time with fear and reluctance, based on the expression framing the windows of his soul. "I couldn't live with myself if we didn't at least try."
"Kaylee, this is not our responsibility," he said, his protest fortified with a solid dose of ordinary common sense. "The hellion already has her soul. What are we supposed to do?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we could help her break her demon contract, or something. Is that possible?"
Nash nodded reluctantly. "There are procedures built in, but Kaylee, it's way too dangerous…." But he knew he couldn't change my mind. Not this time. I could see it on his face.
"I can't walk away and leave her soul to be tortured if there's anything I can do to help. Can you?"
He didn't answer, and his heavy silence frightened me more than the thought of the hellion waiting for full possession of Addison's soul. Then he took my hand, and I exhaled deeply in relief. "Lead the way, reaper," he said. "And you better hurry. With Eden dead, Addy probably won't stick around for the finale." The previous shows had each closed with a duet from Addison's forthcoming album.
With Nash's warning in mind, we wound our way through the backstage area, Tod popping into locked rooms and side hallways occasionally to make sure we were on the right track. He also popped into Addison's dressing room twice, to make sure she was still there.
The closer we got, the more people we saw in the halls, and they were all talking about Eden's onstage collapse. She'd been rushed to the hospital moments after we left the stage, and though the EMTs had been giving her CPR and mouth-to-mouth when they left, no one seemed to think she would live.
Which we already knew for sure.
Thanks to the badges around our necks, no one tried to throw us out, or even ask where we were headed, so when we finally made it to Addison's dressing room, I couldn't help thinking the whole thing had been too easy.
I was right. There was a security guard posted outside her door. He had a newspaper rolled up in one fist and biceps the size of cannons.
"Now what?" I whispered, bending for a drink from the water fountain twenty feet from the closed door.
"Let me make sure she's still alone," Tod said, and I flinched over how loud he was speaking until I realized no one else could hear him. "Then I'll get rid of the guard."
Before we could ask how he planned to do that, the reaper disappeared.
Nash and I strolled arm in arm down the hall, trying not to look suspicious, and I grew more grateful by the second that he'd come with us—because I would have done it even without him. The security guard wore sunglasses, though it was night and we were inside, so I couldn't tell whether or not he was watching us, but I would have bet money that he was.
Out of nowhere, a hand touched my elbow, and Tod suddenly appeared at my side. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and the guard's head swiveled slowly in my direction.
"Don't do that!" I whispered angrily.
"Sorry," Tod said. But he didn't look very sorry. "Her mom's in there with her now, but she's about to leave to call the car."
He'd barely spoken the last word when the dressing room door opened, and an older, darker version of Addison Page emerged. She nodded to the guard, then clacked off down the hall past us, without a word or a glance in our direction.
"Okay…" This time Tod whispered, as if setting the tone for the Acme tiptoe routine we were about to pull. "You guys duck into the bathroom around the corner. I'll draw the guard away while you sneak into Addy's room, then I'll pop in with you. Get her attention fast, and don't let her scream."
But something told me that would be easier said than done.
"I'm gonna kill you if this goes bad," Nash hissed as we followed the reaper around the corner toward the public restroom.
"It's a little late for that," Tod snapped. Then he was gone again.
I opened the door to the ladies' room to make sure it was empty, then waved Nash inside and left the door slightly ajar. While he looked around in awe at the cleanliness and the fresh flowers, I peeked through the crack, waiting for some all-clear sign from Tod.
We'd only been in the bathroom a few seconds when rapid footsteps clomped toward us from the direction of Addison's dressing room. Tod appeared around the corner, fully corporeal now, a wild grin
on his face, the security guard's newspaper tucked under one arm. The guard raced after him, but the poor man was obviously built for strength rather than speed, because Tod put more distance between them with every step.
"Get back here, you little punk!" the guard shouted, huge arms pumping uselessly at his sides.
Tod glanced at me as he passed the bathroom, and I could swear I saw him wink. Then he rounded the next corner, and the guard trailed after him.
As soon as they were gone, Nash and I jogged back to the dressing room, hearts pounding with exhilaration, afraid the guard would return at any moment. We stood in front of the door, hand in hand, and my pulse raced with nerves. Nash met my eyes, then nodded toward the doorknob.
"You do it," I whispered. "She doesn't know me, but she may remember you."
Nash rolled his eyes but reached toward the door. His hand hesitated over the knob for a second, then I saw determination—or was that resignation?—flash across his face. He twisted the knob and opened the door in one smooth motion, so brash I almost envied his nerve.
He stepped inside and pulled me in with him, then closed the door.
I braced myself, expecting to hear Addison scream for Security. Instead, I heard nothing and saw no sign of Addison Page.
But her room was awesome. A rack of flashy costumes stood against one wall, beside a full-length stand-alone mirror. Which was next to a vanity lit by several large, frosted bulbs. In one corner stood a small round table covered in an array of meats, cheeses, fruit, and bite-size desserts. And in the center of the room, a couch and two chairs were gathered around a flat-screen television hooked up to a PlayStation 3.
But no Addison Page.
Nash glanced at me with his brows raised in question, and I shrugged. Then jumped when the sound of running water drew my focus to an open door I hadn't noticed before. The dressing room had a private restroom. And Addison Page was in it.
"Is the car ready?" The singer stepped out of the restroom and crossed the floor toward her vanity, head tilted away from us as she pulled an earring from her left ear. Then she looked up and froze. For just a second, I thought she might actually scream. But then Nash spoke, and her features relaxed, just enough to hold true fear at bay.