Fortunately, the room—some kind of break room, with a coffee bar and a couple of vending machines—was empty.
I stayed incorporeal, so that if I saw anyone coming before I was spotted, I could step through a door and into another room. Where I had an equal chance of being seen, come to think of it.
Reaper headquarters was not a good place for a dead girl to hang out.
The hall outside the break room was empty, but I could hear voices coming from several of the rooms that opened into the hall. The plaques outside the doors read things like “The West End” and “Downtown” and “DFW.” As near as I could tell, those were zones of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, each of which had obviously been assigned an office and probably a crew of reapers.
Would a rookie like Tod have an office?
The door at the end of the hall—at the northwest corner, unless my navigation was off—was a door marked “Administration.”
Bingo.
I tiptoed down the hall, my heart pounding from nerves, like it had when I was still alive, until I realized that the more suspicious I looked, the greater my chance of being identified as a trespasser. But if I walked through the hall like I belonged there, maybe anyone who saw me would assume I was a reaper.
After all, who’d be stupid enough to break into reaper headquarters?
Well, me, obviously. But I tried the confidence approach anyway, and I stuck with it even when my pulse began to race like it hadn’t since the day I’d died. I walked past two open doors, through which I caught glimpses of reapers at work. Or on break. I couldn’t really tell the difference, since no one was swinging a scythe or donning a long black cape.
The other rooms were empty, and when I got to the end of the hall, I walked right through Levi’s door, trusting that Luca was right. That the boss wasn’t home.
When I saw the empty room, I actually exhaled with relief. Then I jogged across the good-size room and snatched the letter opener from its obviously custom-made wooden stand.
The moment my hand touched the metal, I knew Madeline had been right. It hummed against my flesh, more a feeling than a sound—the soul trapped inside calling out to me.
With the letter opener in my left hand, I held the broken dagger in my right, ready to make the switch. Until I realized I had no idea how to do that. Calling the soul from its current home should be easy, but leading it into the dagger? I wasn’t sure how to do that. Normally, the soul would be attracted to the dagger on its own, because hellion-forged steel seems to call to displaced souls. But both the letter opener and my dagger were made of the same material, and I had no male bean sidhe around to help guide the soul.
Nor did I have time to stand around and think for very long. So, with my mouth closed, to keep most of the volume in, I let just a thin ribbon of my bean sidhe wail leak from my throat, calling to the displaced soul. That used to be a very difficult task for me. I’d only known my true species for eight months, and since then I’d learned what I could do mostly through trial and error. And a little trial by fire. And a lot of help from Harmony, the only other female bean sidhe I knew.
She’s the one who’d taught me to call for a soul without letting loose the full power of my scream, which humans found painful, at the very least.
After less than a second, the soul within the letter opener began to leak out in a thin stream of foglike substance, attracted to the muffled version of my soul song. But I still had no idea how to get it into the dagger. I tried waving the severed blades through the ethereal stream of...soul, but nothing happened. My rough chopping motions sliced through the disembodied soul, which flowed right back together afterward.
Finally, when I heard footsteps outside Levi’s office, and my pulse began to race in panic, I set the letter opener back on its stand and backed away from it, still singing softly for the soul. It followed me, trailing out from Levi’s “conversation piece” until it hung in the air. When the soul, the dagger, and I were all as far from the desk as we could get without walking through the door, I let my wail fade into silence.
The soul hung in the air for just a second, and when I held the dagger up near it, the soul soaked into the hellion-forged steel on its own. To my immense relief.
I was about to blink out of reaper headquarters and into my room to wake Emma up and tell her the good news, when I heard voices headed my way through the door. Very familiar voices...
“Any leads?” Levi asked, and my heart nearly ruptured my sternum in an attempt to flee my body. If I didn’t leave immediately, I would get caught. But before I could go, Tod answered his boss’s question.
“No, but I still have a few more people to talk to. Have any of the souls turned up yet?”
“No. He’s either selling them outside our district, or he’s holding on to them. I’ve alerted the managers of all the closest districts, but no one’s seen or heard from him so far.”
They were talking about Thane. They had to be. Tod was tracking him. Was that why he’d been out of reach so much recently? Why hadn’t he told me he was hunting down my mother’s murderer? My murderer. I would have helped!
But then, that’s probably exactly why he hadn’t told me. To keep me from putting myself in danger. Tod never stood in my way, but he didn’t go out of his way to show me new risks I could take, either. And I couldn’t really blame him for that.
When the footsteps got too close to Levi’s office, I blinked out reluctantly, wishing I could have heard the rest of the conversation.
In my room, I set the broken dagger on top of my dresser, then turned on my bedside lamp and shook my best friend’s shoulder.
“Em. Wake up.”
“Mmmm?” Her eyes fluttered open, then closed, then opened again. She pushed thin brown hair back from her face and sat up slowly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I sank onto the edge of my own bed, facing her. “Nothing new, anyway. I got it.” I couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear. “I got a soul for Traci’s baby.”
“You did? How?” Em was wide-awake now. She tossed back her covers and crossed her legs beneath her on the mattress. “Where is it?”
I pointed at my dresser. “It’s in the dagger. I kind of...took it from Levi’s office. He doesn’t know yet.” I was hoping he wouldn’t figure out the incubus soul was missing for a very long time, and that when he did, I wouldn’t be the first suspect to come to mind. Hopefully lots of people were envious of his “conversation piece.”
Em stared at the dagger, which was thin in profile from across the room. “How? Whose soul is it?”
“That’s the best part. It’s Beck’s. Traci’s baby can inherit his father’s soul! No one else has to die so he can live!”
But Em’s expression fell suddenly, and I knew what she was thinking, because I’d had a very similar thought. “Until he needs to feed.” She suddenly seemed much less sure of what we’d agreed to without Traci’s emotions there to syphon. “How many will die then?”
“None.” I kicked off my shoes and folded my feet beneath me. “I can’t let that happen. I’m hoping Traci’s baby will be like Sabine, in a way.” In several ways, actually. More ways than I really cared to think about. “He’ll have to learn to eat without killing, but first he’ll have to learn to control his charm long enough to find girls who actually, legitimately want to be with him. Maybe if we help Traci raise him—teach him—he’ll be able to control his appetite like Sabine does. Maybe even better than Sabine does.”
Maybe he wouldn’t have to actually touch anyone to feed....
Tod didn’t think that was much of a possibility, but he hadn’t called it an impossibility, either. And I was personally acquainted with more living, breathing impossibilities than I could count at the moment. My very existence was one of them. As was Tod’s. And it was worth a shot, if we were willing to make sure the teen incubus didn’t accidentally hurt anyone while he was learning his limits.
“So...how do we...make it happen? How do we get the soul from
your dagger into the baby?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think we can do that until he’s actually born. Very shortly after he’s born. And I’m really hoping that Tod and I—” or my dad or Nash or my uncle “—can just install the soul in him, like we did for you.”
Maybe it would be that easy.
Please let it be that easy...
“So, can I tell Traci?”
“No! She doesn’t remember any of what we told her, remember? We’ll have to make another disclosure, without Harmony’s forget-me water, later on. Closer to the birth. For now, no one else needs to know about this. But I had to tell you. I couldn’t let you worry about your nephew’s soul for the next six months or so.” Especially considering that she was still going to be worrying about her sister’s health that whole time.
* * *
Wednesday at school was blissfully uneventful—for the first time all week, no hellions showed up at Eastlake. Sabine seemed to be playing nice for once, only feeding Sophie’s and Emma’s fears as necessary, careful not to take things too far, at least that I could tell.
Tod showed up early for lunch, so we had some alone time in the quad, visible to no one, while we waited for the rest of the group to show up. And I realized as we ate that it had been nearly twenty-four hours since the Hudson brothers had been intentionally snippy with one another.
Maybe their relationship was starting to heal.
With that thought on my mind and a relatively peaceful day behind me, I went home right after school, feeling additionally fortunate that the theater where I worked most afternoons had given me a couple of weeks off to mourn Emma, who’d worked there, too.
Maybe I could get Emily hired.... That would be at least one part of Em’s life that I could give back to her.
Emma had stayed after school to meet with the guidance counselor—something to do with being a new student—and Sabine and Nash had promised to give her a ride home, so I had the house to myself for the first time in weeks.
I was reaching for the remote control, intending to scroll through the menu for an action movie, when my gaze caught on the blinking red light on our answering machine.
Weird. We hardly ever used the home phone, because both my dad and I had cell phones. Even Em had a new one, on our family plan.
I dropped the remote on the coffee table and crossed the room. That’s the problem with answering machines and home phones—you have to actually get up to go use them. I pressed the button, and my dad’s boss started speaking, asking if he was okay and why he hadn’t called in sick. Or answered his cell.
I tried not to panic. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that my dad might skip work, considering everything he’d been through recently. Everything I’d put him through. It wasn’t much like him not to at least call in sick, though.
“Dad?” I pressed the button to save his boss’s message, then glanced into the kitchen to confirm that it was empty. That he wasn’t lying on the floor having a heart attack or convulsion. He was still relatively young for a bean sidhe, but you never know....
“Hey, Dad? Are you here?” I checked the garage, the bathroom, and even my bedroom before heading into his room at the end of the hall. The last room in the house.
My father’s bed was made. His curtains were closed. His clothes were folded and still sitting on the chair in the corner, where I’d left them that morning—I felt bad about him getting stabbed by a demon, so I was doing more chores than usual, but I drew the line at putting his clothes in his dresser.
I was about to leave the room when I noticed my dad’s cell phone lying on his pillow. I picked it up and pressed a button to wake up the screen, then froze. Staring. I couldn’t think past the horror of what I saw on the screen. My father’s cell phone background had been changed to a picture of him, bound and evidently unconscious, sitting on the floor of a room I didn’t recognize. Propped up on his lap was a sign written in unidentifiable and strangely gloppy ink—please let it be ink—in handwriting I didn’t recognize.
The sign read, “Come and find me.”
On the edge of the photo, less than a foot from his shoe, was a familiar green vine. I zoomed in on the photo to be sure. To confirm my worst fear.
Sure enough, the serrated edges of the leaves on that vine were bloodred. The thorns between the leaves were very thin and at least an inch long. Crimson creeper only grows in one place.
The Netherworld.
My shock lasted for about a minute and a half. Then there was another fraction of a moment when I wondered how on earth Avari had gotten to my father in the human world. But then I realized that “how” didn’t matter. There would probably always be some minion with crossover potential willing to do the hellion’s bidding for a price.
Avari’s return to active-threat status was inevitable, and it always would be until we managed to turn the other hellions against him. But my plan obviously wasn’t working fast enough.
Fear chased away my shock, and hot on its tail was a blinding fury unlike anything I’d ever felt. Avari and his hellion colleagues had already taken so much from me and from my friends and family. They weren’t going to get my father, too.
Well, they weren’t going to get to keep him, anyway.
Uncle Brendon was the first person I called. His phone rang in my ear three times, then Sabine answered. “Hey, Kaylee, what’s up?”
“Why the hell are you answering my uncle’s phone?” I could hear the anger in my voice. It echoed back at me over the line and from every corner of my own house. I regretted it—for once, Sabine wasn’t the problem—but I couldn’t control it.
“Whoa, rein it in. Just ’cause we’re friends now doesn’t mean you get to raise your voice at me.”
“Sorry. I just... Where’s Uncle Brendon?”
“He’s kinda tied up with Sophie right now.”
“Well, untie him. It’s an emergency.”
“Those must be going around. We’re at the police station.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“Why do you assume I did something?”
“Because you have an arrest record and two convictions? Because no one knows how or if you paid for your car? Because you tried to sell me and Emma into eternal torture in the Netherworld?”
“You know, eventually you’re going to have to get over that. But you make a valid point.”
“I made several valid points.”
“Whatever. Sophie slashed some chick’s tires in the parking lot, and the school cop caught her walking away from the scene with a pair of scissors in her hand. Rookie mistake.”
“Why on earth would Sophie slash someone’s tires?”
“Because the girl who owns the car hit on her boyfriend. And she mighta...kinda...been overwrought with jealousy.”
“Any chance you had something to do with that?”
“I might have told the car owner in question that Luca was looking to...expand his social circle. And there’s a slight chance I might have been a bit overzealous in my amplification of your cousin’s worst fear—which, at the moment, is losing everyone she loves. Including Luca.”
“Sabine! I swear, every time I think you’re turning into a decent person, you do something to prove me wrong.”
“I was trying to expedite the process. I had no idea she was capable of vandalism. But I have to say, I’m a little impressed. Which is why I let her dad and the cops think I slashed the tires, then made her carry the weapon. He’s in there right now trying to influence us out of here.”
“You took the blame because you’re impressed that my cousin committed a crime?”
“Yeah. And I might be feeling a tiny bit of something similar to but definitely not the same as...guilt. Kind of.”
I groaned into the phone and sank onto the couch again, with my elbows on my knees, my forehead resting in my free hand.
“Is Luca there, too?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a public spectacle. Sophie’s totally humiliated, and
Luca can’t convince her that it’ll be all right. And she’s refusing to tell him why she did it.” Sabine made a wet chomping noise in my ear, and I realized she was chewing gum. At the police station. Like being there was no big deal. “So, what’s the emergency? What’d you need?”
“Backup. When you guys get out of there, come straight here. And bring my uncle.” I hung up before she could ask why, and I had to admit, hanging up on Sabine felt kinda good.
Next I called Harmony. She didn’t answer her phone either, which was really weird. Harmony always answered her cell except when she was working, and her shift at the hospital didn’t start until eleven. It was only four in the afternoon.
I dialed Tod next. When he didn’t answer, either, I got so frustrated I nearly threw my phone at the wall. Where the hell was everyone? Well, Em was still at school, but she wouldn’t be able to help me locate my father anyway. Neither would Nash, but...there was no one left to call.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hey.”
“I am so glad you answered your phone.” I pushed hair away from my face and leaned back on the couch, suddenly hating the empty house I’d been thrilled with ten minutes earlier.
“You...are?” I could hear the confusion in his voice and the road noise in the background. He was in a car.
“Yeah. I can’t get a hold of anyone else. Where are you going?”
“I’m picking up Emma in Sabine’s car. Bina’s at the police station with—”
“I know. I just talked to her.”
“Didn’t you just say people aren’t answering their phones?”
“She answered my uncle’s. Hey, have you talked to Tod today?”
His silence stretched over the wireless line between us, and I realized I’d said the wrong thing. I was getting really good at that. “Is that all you want? You called me looking for Tod?”