If I Die

14

“So, I’m meeting Mr. Beck after school today,” Emma announced, a bottle of Coke halfway to her mouth.

“No you’re not,” I said, and Sabine choked on a laugh.

Em set her bottle on the picnic table and glared at me. “Does the phrase, ‘You’re not the boss of me,’ mean anything to you?”

“Nope. Nothing.” But I softened my hard line with a smile.

“Nothing what?” Nash slid onto the bench seat next to me with a tray full of chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes and Em turned to him, like she’d just discovered an ally.

“Mr. Beck’s tutoring me after last period today…” she began, and Nash looked at me over a spoonful of potatoes.

“You really think that’s a good idea?”

“Why are you asking her?” Em demanded, and Sabine just watched, enjoying the show.

“Sorry.” Nash dipped a chicken nugget into a puddle of gravy and glanced at me again with his brows raised. “I wasn’t sure how much…?”

“She knows everything. About Beck…” I qualified, when his brows rose even higher. I’d given Em the basics before first period, hoping to arm her with knowledge. But I still hadn’t decided what to tell her about Thursday. I didn’t want her worrying about me for the next two days, but I didn’t want my death to take her by surprise, either.

“Okay, look, it’s not like you’re swimming in options here,” Em pointed out, as Nash shoved the entire nugget into his mouth. “You guys need me. Sabine can’t get close to him and even if Kaylee’s math grades were bad—and they’re not—she’s not exactly seducible.”

Sabine laughed so hard she nearly inhaled a corn chip.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

The mara cleared her throat, eyes still watering. “She means that you’re a solid, respectable seven on a scale of ten. But Beck’s gonna be looking for an eleven.” Sabine shrugged while I glowered at her. “That, or your ironclad virginity’s a deal-breaker.”

“That’s not what I meant…” Emma started, but I was too furious at the mara to listen to anything else until I’d had my say.

“Shut up!” I snapped at Sabine, and they all three stared at me in surprise, not because Sabine didn’t deserve it, but because I rarely let her have it. “Just shut the hell up until you have something helpful to say. I’m trying to do something really important here before I…” I trailed off with a glance at Emma. “Before anyone else gets hurt. And I’m sick of Sabine taking cheap shots at me. I’m sick of school, and bells, and classes that don’t matter. I’m sick of waiting for the inevitable.”

My voice was rising, and people from other tables were starting to look, but I couldn’t stop. There were too many things taking up space in my head, and the only way to relieve some of the pressure was to let them spill out of my mouth. And spill they did….

“I’m pissed off about all the things I’ll never see and do, and I’m furious about the fact that I don’t have time for anything I want to do, because I have to spend seven hours a day here, learning things I’m not going to use just in case I get a chance to do what really needs to be done. And even if I manage to actually do that, no one’s ever going to know about it. Which shouldn’t matter. This isn’t about me anyway, right? But the selfish part of me wants to be remembered for doing something good. Something important. But in the end, I’ll just be gone, and the world will go on like I was never here, and I won’t even be around to be pissed off about that.”

Sabine and Emma gaped at me, and on the edge of my vision, my cousin Sophie stood from her table and stomped into the cafeteria, probably mortified by the spectacle I’d made of myself, and of her by extension.

Screw Sophie.

Nash slid one arm around my waist and started to whisper something in my ear, but before he’d said more than my name, someone started clapping. I looked up just as Thane appeared on the bench across from me, next to Emma.

Startled, I yelped and jerked away from the table. Nash tried to catch me, but I fell over the bench and landed on my back on the grass, stunned and out of breath.

Laughter echoed all around me, but I barely heard it. Em and Sabine stood to make sure I was okay. Nash pulled me to my feet and brushed grass from my back, but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying, because when Emma sat, Thane scooted closer to her. So close that if he’d been corporeal, she’d have felt his warmth against her arm.

“Entertaining as always, Kaylee…” Thane said. “If I ask nicely, will you scream for me when it’s time?” Then he disappeared and my hands shook at my sides as the rest of the quad roared back into focus, now that the reminder of my own mortality had gone.

And there, leaning against the brick wall across from my table, stood Tod, scowling furiously at the spot where Thane had just been. He met my gaze and held it for just a second, then blinked out of sight.

“Kaylee, are you okay?” Emma asked, as I sank onto the bench seat again.

“Yeah.” I ran my hands through my hair to tame it, and debated hiding behind it instead. People were still staring. I could feel them.

“What was that all about?” she asked, while Sabine just watched me, without her usual smirk for once.

“Nothing. Sorry. I’m just stressed about Beck and I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Em looked unconvinced. “Maybe you should go home for a nap,” she suggested. “I’m sure Nash could talk them into letting you check out.” Every now and then his Influence actually came in handy.

“I don’t have time for a nap. I’m fine.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have time?”

Crap. Get it together, Kaylee. “Are you seriously going to see Mr. Beck after school today?” I asked, and for a second, she looked thrown by the change of subject.

Then Emma nodded. “If you’re done bossing me around.”

I exhaled, long and slow, then met her gaze. “Em, I’m just trying to protect you. But if the threat of pregnancy, infertility and death isn’t enough to give you second thoughts about playing bait…I guess I can understand that.”

My dad had been trying to protect me from the Netherworld ever since he’d come back from Ireland, and I’d sidestepped every effort he’d made, because my own safety—hell, my own life—didn’t seem worth protecting if I wasn’t willing to risk it for something important. If Em felt the same, who was I to stand in her way?

“But I’m sure as hell not going to leave you alone with him.” She had no resistance to his lascivious charm, and her intentions would melt into memory once he unleashed the onslaught of lust she wasn’t prepared to resist, no matter how hard she dug her heels into the dirt. In fact, he may already have started. Was that why she was insisting on playing bait? To stay close to him? “So I don’t have time for a nap.”

“Thanks.” Em looked relieved, in spite of her bravado. “You three aren’t the only ones pissed off about what he did to Danica, and I may not be able to cross into the Netherworld or make people do whatever I say, but I do know a thing or two about fending off wandering hands. But I do have one question before I totally commit to this, my first supersecret spy mission,” Em said, her eyes sparkling with good humor. “Did we ever find out for sure about the possible forked penis?”

I stared at the clock for most of last period, waiting for the hands to move, but they seemed sluggish at best, and by the time class ended, I’d had as much French as I could take. When the bell finally rang, Emma stood so fast her chair skidded on the floor and she was in the hall before the ringing echo faded from my ears. She was definitely eager to get to Mr. Beck’s room, and her unbridled enthusiasm made me very, very nervous. I tried to follow her, but Mrs. Brown stepped in front of me before I made it to the end of the aisle.

“Miss Cavanaugh, this is the second day in a row you haven’t had your homework.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I glanced into the hall and could just see Emma’s blond ponytail bouncing out of sight. “Can we talk about this later? I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“We can talk about this now.” Mrs. Brown reached for the door like she’d close it, trapping me. “You know I have a zero-tolerance policy for missing assignments, and I don’t think you’ve missed one all year until this week. Is something wrong, Kaylee?”

“No, everything’s great. Really. It’ll never happen again, but I have to go now. I’m late for…something.” Mrs. Brown called my name, but I was already out the door, clutching the shoulder strap of my bag, forcing my way against the flow of traffic toward the parking lot. I dodged every familiar face for fear of another delay, and when the hall finally cleared, I jogged left around the corner—just as Mr. Beck pulled his door closed.

Crap. I’d hoped to beat him there, so I could hide in the storage closet and keep an eye on Emma. The plan felt a little juvenile, but Nash and Sabine knew where we were, just in case something went wrong.

But now the door was closed, and I couldn’t get in without being seen. Unless…

I set my bag on the floor in the hall and dug my phone from my pocket to text Tod.

@ SCHOOL. NEED UR HELP

Tod always answered instantly, probably because unless he was reaping a soul or actually delivering a pizza, he had nothing else to do. But this time, when Emma needed us both, he was out of reach.

I stood on my toes to peek through the window in Beck’s classroom door just in time to see him gesture toward the rolling chair behind his desk. Emma smiled up at him, then sat, and he pushed the chair forward. Then he leaned over her shoulder, pointing at something in the textbook open on his desk.

I wanted to vomit. He hadn’t done anything overtly evil, but just being alone in a closed classroom with a female student was borderline inappropriate, and out of character, based on what Farrah had told us about his determination to maintain the appearance of propriety.

Beck was getting desperate. He was rushing things. And based on the stoned-out-of-her-mind expression on Emma’s face—she was watching him, not the book—she was falling for it. Falling for him. Even knowing what he’d done to Danica and Farrah, and countless other girls our age.

Beck looked up, and I ducked beneath the window, heart pounding, fingers crossed that he hadn’t seen me. The hallway was empty, but it probably wouldn’t be for long, and Tod still hadn’t responded. Sabine and Nash were in the quad, waiting for word from me. Not that they could help. I needed to borrow reaper abilities, and in the absence of those, my own were the next best thing.

But that wasn’t saying much.

Throat tight with dread, I stepped into the middle of the hall, glancing back and forth to make sure I was alone. So far so good.

I didn’t want to cross into the Netherworld. And I especially didn’t want to cross over in my school, which I knew for a fact to be Avari’s new base of operations, unless something had changed in the past six weeks. But I wasn’t going to hang Emma out to dry, even knowing that crossing into the Netherworld could mean forfeiting my last two days of life.

Fortunately, with no mental patient yelling at me and no hospital aide shouting for security, I might just be calm enough to put aside fears of my own demise long enough to focus on one from my past.

Sucking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and thought back to the last death I’d seen—the last soul I’d sung for. Other than Danica’s baby, that was Mrs. Bennigan, who’d died in her classroom the day after Mr. Beck’s predecessor had died at his desk. While she’d breathed her last, I’d hidden outside with Nash, trying to hold back the song my body demanded I sing for her. The song that now echoed inside of me, in memory of her.

The clawing pain in my throat was both familiar and welcome, because with it came the first thin tendrils of sound—a muffled version of the fabled bean sidhe wail—which wanted to burst forth full-strength from my mouth. But this occasion called for stealth on both sides of the world barrier, so I swallowed all but a soft, high-pitched whine which resonated in the windowpane in the door to my left. It was a sound no human could have made, but it was quiet enough to go unnoticed.

A second after my wail began, the gray fog rolled in out of nowhere. The Nether-fog was liminal—a visual representation of the barrier between worlds—and while I stood in it, I wasn’t fully present in either the human world or the Nether. I was caught between, kept company by only the slithering, skittering creatures crawling through that fog, their very presence a constant warning to move on, in one direction or the other.

I took one step away from the wall, and with a single thought of clear intent echoing in my head—I intend to cross over—the fog around me dissipated and the Netherworld came into startling, horrifying focus.

The first glimpse is always the worst—until you blink, and see it all for a second time, and you realize it’s not going to go away with just a click of your heels.

The building around me hadn’t changed. Because it was heavily populated during the school year, Eastlake High bled through into the Netherworld almost exactly as it existed in the human world. The real difference lay in what the Nether did with that building.

In the Netherworld version of Eastlake’s math hall, the walls were crawling with Crimson Creeper, a mass of slithering, dark green vines sprouting red-edged variegated leaves every couple of inches. The vines were carnivorous, of course, and they’d snatch anything edible within reach, which was why I’d crossed over in the middle of the hall. But the real danger was the thousands of needle-thin, titanium strong thorns. One prick would inject a predigestive poison to begin dissolving the victim’s organs from the inside out. And all the vine had to do then was coil around the body and wait for its liquefying meal to soak in like plant fertilizer.

I’d been stuck by an infant vine once, and the pinprick scars around my ankle were a lasting reminder never to tangle with it again.

Unfortunately, lengths of the vine crisscrossed the open doorway, blocking the Netherworld version of Beck’s classroom, beginning a couple of inches from the ground. I couldn’t get to the closet, where I’d planned to cross back over, without getting rid of the vines. And every minute I wasted in the Netherworld was a minute Emma was alone with Mr. Beck and his incubus charm.

For one long moment, I stood still, listening for evidence of any Nether-life. When I heard nothing immediately threatening, I jogged down the hall, careful to avoid twisting vine feelers and to peek into open classrooms before I passed by them. I turned right at the corner and ran past the foreign language labs and into the science wing, and only released the nervous breath I’d been holding when I saw that one of the three chemistry labs was open and free of Creeper vines, except for one stretching across the top corner of the doorway.

The usual stools were missing from the lab, but the high, black-topped lab stations were still there, and so far unmolested by the Netherworld population and plant life. I opened several drawers and pawed through piles of useless pencils, erasers, pens, rulers and the occasional stirrer without finding anything useful. All the good stuff was locked in the cabinets at the back of the room.

But when I glanced up, I realized that the padlocks hadn’t bled through from the human world. Did that mean the supplies weren’t there, either?

Conscious of the clock ticking steadily in my head, I raced across the room and threw open the first cabinet—then grinned like a fool at the full shelves.

I pulled on a pair of thick neoprene gloves from the third shelf, then pawed through a series of Bunsen burners and test tubes before stumbling upon a basket full of scissors on the far right. I grabbed the biggest pair I could find, then tugged a pair of goggles into place over my eyes, just in case. Then I ran, my sneakers silent on the linoleum. I was several feet from the hallway intersection when a familiar voice spoke from a classroom to the left, and I froze in terror.

“I believe this is the second such gift you’ve brought me,” Avari said, and tiny icicles formed in my veins. “One might think you were paying tribute. Or trying to appeal to my mercy.”

“Can’t appeal to what doesn’t exist,” a second voice said, and my chill bumps sprouted chill bumps. Tod. No wonder he hadn’t answered my text; cell phones don’t work in the Netherworld.

“Mmm,” Avari said, as I tiptoed toward the hallway juncture. “You are not quite as foolish as you appear.”

“What’s that, the evil version of a compliment?” Tod said, and even though I couldn’t see him, I could picture the sarcastic lift of one eyebrow, based on nothing but his tone of voice. “Are we buddies now?”

Avari made an unpleasant noise in the back of his throat. “I retract my last statement.”

“Whatever. Just…take him, so I can get out of here.”

“This isn’t what you offered, and I don’t yet have what you asked for.”

“This is worth more than I offered, and I no longer need what I asked for. Which means you’re getting the better end of the deal. And you should do whatever you’re going to do before he wakes up, or you’ll never be able to keep him here.”

What the hell were they talking about? Who had Tod brought to Avari? Why would he make a deal with the hellion who’d made it his life’s goal to possess me, body and soul?

I stood in the middle of the hallway junction, exposed and vulnerable from four different directions, should anyone step out of a classroom. And I probably looked like an idiot in lab gloves and goggles, carrying a giant pair of scissors. But I couldn’t decide which way to turn. I could go right, and cross over to watch out for Emma. Or I could go left, and sneak a peek at whoever Tod had delivered into the third room on the right.

I’d be safer in the math classroom, and Emma would be safer with me there. But I couldn’t quite escape the brutal curiosity pulling me to the left—did this have something to do with me?—even though my exchanged expiration date meant nothing in the Netherworld. Here, I could die anytime, by any means. Or I could suffer eternity at Avari’s hands instead, and wish for death until the end of time.

I knew I was making a mistake, even as I turned left and took those first steps, rolling my feet for a silent approach, glad I’d worn sneakers instead of clunky flats.

“You don’t want him? Fine,” Tod said, when Avari made no reply. “I know a couple other hellions who will appreciate the value you’re passing up.”

“Leave him,” Avari said at last. “But I offer nothing in exchange, other than the safe passage you’ve already negotiated for yourself. It has not escaped my notice that I am doing you a service by taking him. But indulge my curiosity for one moment before you go,” Avari said, as I peeked cautiously into the first open doorway, careful to avoid the tendrils of Creeper vine curling around the door frame. The desks and chairs inside were stacked in a bizarre, complicated arrangement, like a pyramid of Cirque du Soleil gymnasts about to topple, but the room itself was blessedly empty. “How does this benefit our lovely Addison?” the hellion continued. “You’ve neglected to negotiate for time with her, and it’s much too late now….”

“This has nothing to do with Addy,” Tod snapped, and the pain in his voice echoed deep within my own chest.

“Some imbecilic human sage once said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and though I must confess to absolute incomprehension of the very concept of ‘heart’ it appears to me that you fall under a contradictory philosophy. With Addison out of your sight, she is clearly also out of your mind. Which is fitting, because since you last saw her, she’s been mostly out of her own mind, as well…”

Don’t listen to him, Tod, I thought, as I crept past the second door, now only feet from the room where they both stood, along with whoever Tod had dragged into the Netherworld. True or not, he’s only saying it so he can feed from your suffering. If I’d learned anything since discovering my nonhuman heritage, it was that pain of any kind was the currency of choice in the Netherworld.

“There’s nothing else I can do for Addy,” Tod said, an angry undercurrent threaded through his voice now. “You’ve made sure of that.”

“And you’ve moved on quite readily. I know precisely what bringing me this tribute does for Ms. Cavanaugh, and by extension, what it does for you.”

I froze at the sound of my name, less than a foot from the open doorway. My heart beat frantically, and I was afraid to breathe for fear of missing the next words spoken.

“What do you care, so long as you’re well fed?”

Avari actually laughed. “I will be better fed from your pain when you understand how futile this noble deed is. You know this won’t change anything, don’t you, reaper? This won’t even delay the inevitable. Your heroic gesture is rendered completely useless by the irony of poor timing and inexorable fate. She will die—right on time—without ever knowing about your failed attempt to save her.”

My heart leapt so high I could practically taste it on the back of my tongue.

I dared a long, silent inhalation to keep from passing out, but that didn’t stop the building from spinning around me. Confusion, anticipation and a strange plummeting feeling deep in my stomach kept me off balance, my very existence hinging on whatever words would come next.

And when Tod finally spoke, I realized my world might never stop spinning at all.

“This isn’t about saving her,” he said, his voice strong and steady, even though he was powerless in the Netherworld. “I know my limitations. This is so that bastard can’t ever put his hands on her again. So her last moments won’t be spent in terror. This is about making damn sure his face won’t be the last thing she ever sees.”

He? I took that last step forward, pulse roaring like the ocean in my ears, heedless of the danger for one moment as desperate, blinding curiosity overwhelmed every need I’d ever felt. Tod stood in the middle of the bare floor, facing the half of the room I couldn’t see. And when I saw what lay at the reaper’s feet, still waiting to be claimed by the hellion, understanding clicked into place in my head, like someone had thrown the breaker in my skull.

Thane. Unconscious and crumpled like a feed sack on the floor, one eye swollen and black above the massive blue bruise his cheek had become.

But even with that new information, I still had no real answers to the questions I couldn’t even properly form through the haze of gratitude and amazement now swirling around me like the Nether-fog. Tod had found Thane, knocked him out, dragged him into the Netherworld and given him to Avari to dispose of. Or maybe to feed from.

All to make my last days as peaceful as possible. Was he even going to tell me?

Tod crossed his arms over a plain white T-shirt. “Just bind him, or lock him up, or do whatever it is you do to keep people here.” Because reapers could cross over anytime they wanted. “I’m done with you both.” Tod shoved Thane with his foot, and the unconscious reaper rolled onto his back, revealing another dark bruise on the right side of his face, disappearing beneath his hairline.

I stifled a gasp, but Tod must have seen my hand fly to my mouth in his peripheral vision, because he looked at me, then immediately returned his attention to the half of the room I couldn’t see.

For one long, terrifying moment, I was afraid Avari had seen his glance into the hall and figured out what it meant. I stepped away from the doorway, and when no one emerged to rip me limb from limb, I let myself breathe again. A little.

“Our business is concluded,” Avari said, and Thane’s feet—all I could still see of him—slid across the floor and out of sight. “Unless you’re willing to present my offer to Ms. Cavanaugh. One century of life in the Nether, untouched in both body and mind, in exchange for her soul.”

“She’d rather die than be your ward in hell,” Tod spat, and in my heart, I cheered.

“Two centuries. You could be with her every day. I’ve seen her lifeline, reaper, and in the Nether, it could stretch into forever. You could greet eternity together…”

“You will never have her,” Tod said, and as his footsteps thumped across the floor toward me, Avari’s reply echoed in my head, so soft I wondered if he’d actually said it out loud.

“We share that misfortune, reaper…”

A second later Tod was in the hall, taking my arm above the rubber glove, and that same fog rolled over my feet before I could protest. Before I could do anything but close my eyes. When I opened them an instant later, I stood in the human world, in the middle of the hall, staring at Tod in amazement, my heart still pounding from our narrow escape.

I pulled my arm from his hand just as a group of girls in Eastlake softball uniforms came around the corner carrying equipment bags and duffels. Several of them laughed at my chemistry safety gear, but I hardly noticed. And when Tod reached up to pull the goggles from my face, I only vaguely realized that meant they could see him, too.

“Why are you dressed like a mad scientist?” he whispered, dropping the goggles on the floor between us.

“Why did you give Thane to Avari?” I countered, as he pulled my first neoprene glove off slowly, as if baring my hand meant more than it should have.

“I think you know why.” He took the scissors from my other hand and slid them into his pocket, and when his gaze met mine, he let me see the blues swirling madly in his irises. “I think you heard most of that.”

“You made a deal with him to get rid of Thane?”

“The deal was for evidence against Thane.” Tod pulled my remaining glove off. “If I could find one of the souls he was supposed to have turned in, we’d have proof that he sold it instead. Avari was going to see if any Thane’s recent reapings had turned up in the Netherworld.”

“In exchange for what?”

Tod dropped the second glove on the floor at my feet, but his gaze never left mine. “There’s this guy in the county jail, waiting for his trial. I reaped the soul of the girl he killed. I saw what he did to her. If anyone deserves eternity at Avari’s hands, it’s him.” Tod shrugged. “Now the courts will get that bastard, and Avari gets Thane’s older, more powerful soul.”

My head was still spinning. I could hardly wrap my mind around it all. “When did you set all this up?”

“In Scott’s room, at Lakeside.” He glanced at his feet for a minute, then back at me. “I was there when you came into his room, negotiating with Avari through Scott.”

I blinked, stunned. Scott had been talking to someone else! “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tod’s brows dipped low over bright blue eyes. “I didn’t want you to know about any of this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t fix anything. Avari’s right—I can’t save you. But I saw Thane tormenting you at lunch, and I couldn’t wait for evidence that may never come through. That psychotic bastard shouldn’t be anywhere near you, and he damn well shouldn’t be the last thing you ever see.” He glanced at the gloves lying between us on the floor, and when he looked up again, the fierce ache in my heart swelled until I thought it would burst, and that falling feeling was back, like I might never regain my balance. So I did the only thing I could think of to bring the world back into focus and make sense of the waves of confusion lapping at me from all sides. I stood on my toes and wrapped my arms around his neck.

Then I kissed Tod.