My Soul to Keep

15

NASH’S ADMISSION SHATTERED my fragile composure, splintering my thoughts like jagged shards of ice. For a moment, I could only stare at him, in shock so complete my whole body went numb—and not from the cold. Then the truth of his statement sank in. I spun around and stomped toward my car, anger and confusion raging inside me like two storm fronts about to collide.

“Kaylee, wait!” His words weren’t what stopped me. It was the anguish in his voice, the crack on the last syllable, that made my feet pause and my hands clench dangerously around the unnaturally cold balloon.

Forcing my grip to relax, I turned slowly, struggling to unclench my jaw so I could speak. “This is what nearly got me killed yesterday, Nash.” My voice was low and hoarse from both the winter air and the raw, holding-back-tears ache in my throat. “What can you possibly say to make me feel better about that? To make it okay that you’ve been taking the same shit Doug and Scott are taking, and lying to me about it?”

The bitter wind stung my face, almost as painfully cold as the balloon stiffening my fingers, and when he didn’t answer, I turned and headed for my car again. But this time his feet pounded on the sidewalk after me. “Kaylee, stop!”

Instead, I broke into a jog. Emma started to open her door, but I shook my head, telling her I was fine. And to stay in the car.

“It was an accident, Kay! Give me a chance to explain.”

I whirled on him so fast he skidded to a halt, surprised by my sudden, furious stand. “You accidentally took a lethal inhalant native to another reality? How is that even possible, Nash? You just happen to breathe in at the wrong time?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, as if it were that simple, and I could only blink, unsure whether or not to take him seriously. Or if it even mattered. Even if he had inhaled unintentionally, what was he doing close enough to a hellion to breathe in its used air? Beyond that, what was he doing in the Netherworld in the first place?

“Can we go somewhere and talk?” Nash’s voice was steady now, though his hands trembled visibly, even when he crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’m not leaving Emma alone, with Doug inside replenishing his stock. Are you going to help me get rid of the dealer, or don’t you care if the rest of your friends wind up sharing a padded room with Scott?”

Nash flinched, and I almost felt guilty when I recognized the devastating regret etched in every line on his face. “Everett’s gone, Kaylee,” he said, remorse riding each word. “I told him to get out, or I’d call in a personal favor from a reaper.” Nash forced a halfhearted grin, trying to evoke one from me, but I clung to my stony expression. “Let’s go in and talk. Please.”

I shook my head. “I’m not taking Emma back in there.” I’d already seen what withdrawal from frost could do.

“Fine. Let’s talk here.” Nash shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to me, but I stepped back. I didn’t want his coat or his borrowed warmth. Not knowing he’d been lying, and that he could be one missed fix away from hearing Scott’s shadow man.

“You’re shivering. Take the jacket.” He shoved it at me again, and this time I gave in. I didn’t want to hear his excuses, but I needed to hear everything he knew about Demon’s Breath, and I was nearly frozen solid.

Nash reached for the balloon so I could put his jacket on, but I twisted harshly, angling it away from him. “Like I’m going to give this to you.”

His eyes widened, irises swirling in pain and disappointment. But he had no right to look hurt; I was the one with a grievance.

I jogged back to my car, where Emma still watched us from the back window, and pulled open the front passenger’s door.

“Are you gonna dump him?” she asked as I set the balloon on the leather seat.

“I don’t know, but I have to talk to him. I need you to stay here until I get back. And don’t mess with the balloon, okay? Don’t even touch it.”

Emma shrugged. “It creeps me out, anyway.” She crossed both arms over the thin tee she’d borrowed. “But I need to go back in and check on Doug. He could be in there singing like the Chipmunks by now.”

I shook my head and gave her a half smile. “Nash got rid of Everett before he could sell anything.”

“Good. I’m going back in.” Emma reached for the door handle, but I shook my head again.

“Em, I need you to trust me. The party’s not safe anymore.”

She hesitated. “Is this bean sidhe business?” We’d used that phrase to refer to anything involving the Netherworld that I couldn’t fully explain to her. Considering that Nash and I had brought her back from the dead, she was usually pretty willing to let it go at that. For which I was unspeakably grateful.

I nodded and she frowned, but settled back into her seat. I dug in my pocket, then held out the key to the rental. “Here. Start the engine and turn on the heat. I’ll be back in ten minutes, then we’ll get some ice cream and a DVD.”

“Fine. But I get to pick the movie. And the ice cream.”

I forced a grin. “Deal.”

She leaned over the seat and started the engine as I headed back to Nash, tossing my head toward the small winter garden to the left of Doug’s house. I’d seen several thickly bundled couples on lawn chairs around the covered pool out back, but the enclosed side yard was deserted. And thanks to the music still thumping from the house, the chances of us being overheard were minimal.

Nash followed me through the gate and latched it behind us. “You want to sit?” He gestured toward one of the ornate stone benches in front of a line of tall evergreen shrubs.

I sat, and the cold seeped instantly through my jeans and into my skin. “The gum?” I eyed him frankly and was pleased to see him flinch.

“Covers the scent,” he admitted, squinting in the harsh glow from a ground level floodlight.

My heart ached in disappointment, though I’d guessed as much, and I shifted on the cold, hard bench. “The chilly hands?” He nodded again, swallowing thickly, and I sucked in a painfully frigid breath before continuing. “And you didn’t want to tell our parents…”

“I messed up—”

“You kept Scott’s balloon, didn’t you?” I demanded, vaguely frightened by the flat, hopeless quality of my own voice.

“You weren’t trying to help him. You were getting your fix for free.”

Nash looked miserable. “Kaylee—”

“Weren’t you?” I stood, anger pulsing through my veins, scorching my soul with each excruciating beat.

“Yes. But it was a weaker concentration than what I’m—” he shook his head and corrected his phrasing “—what I was getting. Mine comes in red balloons, and the black one wasn’t really enough to…”

“Enough to do the job?” I could hear disgust in my voice.

“How long?” I asked, but he only frowned, confused. “How long have you been lying to me?”

His eyes closed, and the stark shadow cast behind him slumped as his shoulders fell. “A month.” He opened his eyes and stepped out of the light to watch me closely, like he was looking for something specific in my expression. “It happened when we crossed over, Kaylee. In a way, you started it.”

“What?” We’d actually crossed into the Netherworld several times, but I had no memory of exposing either of us to Demon’s Breath. “You’re blaming me for this?”

“No.” He sighed. “I’m just frustrated by the irony. The balloons were originally your idea. Remember?”

I did remember. I sank onto the bench again and barely felt the cold this time as shock roared through me like a roll of thunder.

I remembered thinking the balloon idea was a stroke of genius—a simple, innocent storage solution for a toxic, hard-to-transport substance. I remembered feeling like an enabler when we’d brought three balloons full of the Demon’s Breath stored in Addy’s lungs as payment for information from a desperate fiend. We’d taunted him with them, denying his need until he gave us what we wanted. I’d never felt so slimy in my life.

And then one of the balloons had popped, and…

Oh, no. One of the balloons had popped in Nash’s face. He’d coughed and choked—because he’d accidentally inhaled.

And I hadn’t even noticed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I heard the sob in my voice, and it seemed to warble in time with the unsteady rhythm of my heart.

Nash sank onto the bench next to me and stared at his hands in his lap. “I didn’t realize what had happened at first, and by the time I started feeling it, you were dying from Crimson Creeper venom. What was my stupid contact buzz compared to your life and Addy’s soul?” He shrugged again, as if choosing my problem over his was no big deal. “But I couldn’t fight it, and by the time you got better, I was hooked. It just snowballed from there.”

Stunned, I let my head fall into my hands, my mind now as numb from shock as my nose was from the cold. How could I not have known? How could I have seen him nearly every day, and not noticed what was going on?

But that was just it. I’d barely seen Nash in the month after he was exposed, other than a few minutes between classes and half an hour at lunch. I’d been grounded on a massive scale, unavailable to him when he’d needed me most. When it was my fault he was exposed in the first place. I’d dragged him to the Netherworld, and I’d made Addy blow up those balloons.

Focus, Kaylee. There would be time to feel guilty later.

“You should have told me,” I groaned, staring up at him again. “I could have helped you.”

He shrugged, shoving chapped, clenched fists into his jeans pockets. “I thought I could quit on my own, and you’d never have to know.”

“I had a right to know!” I swiped the back of one frozen hand across my dripping nose. “I told you every secret I have—even the ones I wish I could forget—because I thought I could trust you.” My hands clenched around nothing, as if I could wring the composure I needed from the air. “But you were lying the whole time. Why, Nash?”

“Because I didn’t want you to know!” He stood and stomped across the concrete tiles, staring into the hedges before turning to face me, gesturing helplessly with one cold-reddened hand. “I can’t fight it, Kaylee. I don’t even want to fight it.” He blinked, and his irises churned with fervor—with desperation for something I couldn’t offer—and an ache settled deep into my chest like a bad cold.

“It feels like the whole world is buzzing, and when you come down from it, everything feels flat and colorless, and all you want to do is get that feeling back. Even before the withdrawal sets in, you’ll do anything to get that feeling back, because as long as it lasts, nothing’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if you forget something, or lose something. Or if you fail someone. Nothing’s wrong and everything feels good, and you never want it to end. Okay? I didn’t want you to know that I don’t ever want it to end….”

He sank onto the bench across from mine as his last tortured sentence trailed into silence, but for the thumping bass from the house behind me.

I could only stare at him, trying desperately to calm the storm of fear, disappointment, and anger lashing around inside me. “Nothing’s wrong when you’re on Demon’s Breath because nothing’s important.” And I wanted to be important. I wanted so badly to matter to him. To mean more than his next fix.

“Nash, it should matter to you that you let it go this far. That your habit got Scott locked up and nearly got me killed.”

“No.” Nash shook his head vehemently, his damp lashes glittering in the glare from the floodlight. “That had nothing to do with me. The guys have never even seen me with a balloon.”

I believed him. He was meeting my eyes too boldly to be lying, his irises swirling calmly with sincerity. But the coincidence was too…coincidental. He had to be connected, even if he didn’t know it.

I slid my frozen hands into my borrowed jacket pockets, and the right one curled around something cold and hard. I pulled out a weighted, black plastic balloon clip. “So, I’m assuming Everett is your supplier, too?”

Nash sighed. “Yeah. But I swear I had no idea he was selling to humans until Fuller actually said his name.”

Again, I believed him. But again, it didn’t matter. “He got to them through you. He must have. None of this makes sense otherwise.”

“No.” Nash shook his head, and I wasn’t sure which one of us he was trying to convince. “Everett doesn’t know my name, and I never gave him anyone else’s.”

I shrugged, a thin thread of panic tightening around the base of my spine, sending cold fingers across my flesh from the inside. “So, he followed you. He saw you at school and realized there’s an entire untapped market out there. A whole world full of spoiled, careless kids with more money than sense.”

“I don’t know. Maybe…” Nash finally conceded.

“What’s Everett’s last name?” I sank onto the bench again and hunched into Nash’s jacket, suddenly overwhelmed by the exhaustion I’d been holding back by sheer will and caffeine.

“I don’t know,” Nash said, and I raised both brows at him.

“I swear!” He shrugged defensively.

“Is he human?”

“Half. His mother’s a harpy.”

I bet that was a weird childhood. And his mixed blood certainly explained how he’d survived addiction long enough to turn a profit…. “What about those girls?”

Nash shrugged again, and dropped wearily onto the bench beside me. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before. Junkies, maybe?”

They didn’t look like junkies to me. But then, neither did Nash or Doug.

“How did you get hooked up with Everett?” My teeth had begun to chatter, and I had to concentrate to make myself understood. “How does one even find a Netherworld drug dealer?”

Nash exhaled, then stared at the white puff of breath, obviously avoiding my gaze. “I was referred to him.”

That sick feeling returned, churning the contents of my stomach mercilessly. “Referred?”

“You have to understand, Kaylee,” he began, turning suddenly toward me with a fevered look in his slowly swirling eyes. “You were still sick from the Creeper venom. We hadn’t even buried Addy yet, and I started feeling weak, like I had low blood sugar or something. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, but I didn’t know what was wrong until I started shaking and twitching, like that fiend, when he was desperate for a hit. I didn’t know what else to do. So I got Tod to cross over with me.”

“Tod took you to the Netherworld?” Normally nothing Tod did surprised me. He didn’t see things from the normal human perspective—or even the normal bean sidhe perspective—and his moral compass always seemed to point just to the left of north. But Tod would never intentionally hurt Nash. Or let him hurt himself.

“He didn’t know why,” Nash insisted. “He owed me another favor—don’t ask,” he added when I opened my mouth to do just that. “And I called it in, no questions asked. He crossed me over, then came back for me half an hour later.”

“So you, what? Tripped over Everett in the Netherworld?” I wiped my dripping nose on a tissue from Nash’s left jacket pocket. “Can half harpies cross over?”

“Not on their own. I don’t think Everett’s ever been there.” Nash glanced down at his lap, where his hands had nearly gone purple from the cold.

It took me a minute to understand. If he hadn’t crossed over to find a dealer…

I felt the blood drain from my face and I backed away from him on the bench. “Please tell me you didn’t go there looking for a hellion.” Sucking Demon’s Breath from a balloon was bad enough, but from the source?

Nash frowned, conflict written in every line of his face. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was desperate.”

“What hellion?” I demanded, so softly I could barely hear my own words. I only knew of two in the area—or the Netherworld version of our area—and was horrified by the thought of Nash going near either of them.

“I had to, Kaylee.” His voice pleaded with me to understand. “I thought I was dying. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Nash, who was it?”

“Avari,” he whispered.

My heart dropped into my stomach. A face flashed from my memory, along with a chill that had nothing to do with the seasonal temperature.

Avari was the demon of greed who’d made a bid for my soul when I was dying in the Netherworld. His icy voice haunted my nightmares, promising that he would one day feast from my suffering, even if he had to destroy everyone I loved to get to me.

Evidently he’d started with Nash.