My Soul to Steal

11

AT 4:23, SOMEONE KNOCKED on my front door. I’d just pulled a bag of popcorn out of the microwave and was about to do some research online, trying to dig up dirt on Sabine. Looking for anything that would make Nash and Tod take my suspicions seriously.

At first, I hesitated to answer the door. What if it was my own personal Nightmare, come to kick my teeth in when Tod wasn’t there to stop her? But I shrugged that off. The last thing I needed was something else to be afraid of, and the truth was that in spite of her record, in-your-face violence didn’t seem to be Sabine’s style. She was much more likely to sneak in at night and make me dream she beat the crap out of me. Then had victory sex with Nash. Or something equally violent and crude.

Still, I peeked through the front window, just in case, and sucked in a surprised breath. Nash. I should have guessed from the fact that I hadn’t heard a car pull up.

My heart beat a little harder when I opened the door, but I didn’t invite him in.

He didn’t smile. “Did you really hit Sabine?”

“Yeah.” I went back to my homework on the couch and he followed me in, pushing the door shut at his back.

“Why?”

I lifted both brows at him and pulled open the popcorn bag from its corners. Fragrant steam puffed up onto my face. “The more logical question might be why I waited so long.”

Nash sighed and sank into my father’s chair while I dumped popcorn into a bowl on the coffee table. “She wouldn’t tell me why.”

I faked shock. “I thought you two told each other everything? How could she keep a secret from her soul mate?”

Nash frowned, but looked more frustrated than angry. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just ask Tod.”

“What makes you think he’ll talk?”

“He’ll tell me if he thinks it’ll help you, or piss her off.”

“They sounded pretty chummy this afternoon. All dark and morbid together.”

Nash shrugged. “He likes you better.” He pulled off his jacket and laid it over the arm of the chair. “Please tell me, Kaylee. What the hell happened in third period?”

Tod and I had left for Chick-fil-A before the lunch bell rang, specifically to avoid Nash and Sabine. We’d texted Em to meet us at the restaurant. I was now considering eating out every day, just to avoid another confrontation. With either one of them.

I shook salt over the popcorn, avoiding his gaze. “She told me she was going to sleep with you. Not a huge surprise—I know what she wants—but it was the way she said it. She’s so sure I have nothing to offer you, and she has everything you can’t resist.”

“And you believe her?”

I closed my laptop and finally looked at him. “I don’t know what to believe. You told her things about me. You had no right to talk about me when I wasn’t there.”

“I wasn’t telling her about you. I was telling her about me. You just happen to be a big part of my life. And, unfortunately, a big part of everything I’ve screwed up lately. Kaylee, what I want from her and what I want from you are two completely different things.”

“Could you be more vague?” I crunched into the first bite of popcorn, but found it tasteless.

“I want you the same way I’ve always wanted you.”

“The way you used to want her?” He’d love Sabine once—for real—but claimed to have gotten over her. If he was lying, wouldn’t he eventually realize he wanted her back? And if he was telling the truth, did that mean he could get over me just as easily as he’d gotten over her?

“Yeah,” he said, and I had a moment of panic until I realized he was answering the question I’d actually voiced, not the ones playing over and over in my head. “But now she’s just a friend.”

“Have you told her that?”

“I tell her all the time.”

I pushed the bowl away, my appetite suddenly gone. “She seems to be selectively deaf.”

“Well, she’s stubborn, and she definitely knows what she wants.” He paused, and I looked up to find him watching me. “I wish I could say the same about you.”

I closed my eyes, trying to draw my thoughts and a tangle of emotions I couldn’t even describe into some kind of coherent stream. I knew what I wanted. But Sabine was right—I was scared to be with Nash while he was still fighting cravings, because if he gave in, even just once, the Netherworld would have him again. And if it had Nash, it would also have a piece of me. But I couldn’t tell him to his face that I didn’t have absolute faith in his recovery.

So I said nothing, and there was only silence. Painful, tense silence, like a wire wound so tight it would soon snap and lash us both. And finally Nash spoke, staring at the hands he clasped loosely between his wide-spread knees.

“Kaylee, do you even want me back? Because if you don’t, and I make her go, I’ve lost both my girlfriend and my best friend.”

“She’s your best friend now?” How was that even possible? She’d only been here for three days! That was an insanely short period of time for everything that had changed!

“She’s my best friend again. In case you haven’t noticed, the other candidates have vacated the position,” he snapped, and for just a moment, I saw a glimpse of the bitter, brittle pain he’d kept bottled up since Doug’s death and Scott’s descent into madness, buried beneath his own dark cravings and wavering willpower. “And as you pointed out, Tod’s barely speaking to me.”

“Well, then, you need to find a better friend.” I stood and stomped into the kitchen with my bowl of popcorn. “Someone who won’t try to carve me out of your life or feed from your friends’ fear.”

Nash followed me. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“You’re not asking the right one.” I set the bowl next to the sink and turned to face him. “Do I want you back? Yes. Desperately. Even though part of me thinks I shouldn’t. But wanting you isn’t enough anymore. I need to know that it’s not going to happen again. Any of it.”

“You don’t trust me.” He crossed his arms over his chest, the line of his jaw tight.

“And she says I never will, right?” I demanded, and Nash nodded. “Do you even realize what she’s doing? She’s telling you I’ll never be able to trust you, while she’s tempting you to betray my trust. She’s engineering her own predictions.”

“Is she right?”

“I don’t know!” I crossed the kitchen to throw away my popcorn bag, determined to keep space between us, because when I got close to him, it was hard to remember what I was thinking, even without his Influence. When he was close, all I wanted to do was hold him and remember how that used to feel. How it could still feel, if I could at least forgive, even if I never truly forgot. “You have to earn trust, and you don’t do that by hanging out with your ex-girlfriend until all hours of the night.”

Nash leaned against the tiled peninsula, watching me. “I wish you would stop thinking of her as my ex and start thinking of her as my friend.”

“I wish she would do the same!” I whirled on him and threw my hands in the air, exasperation practically leaking from my pores. He looked miserable, and I was pretty sure I looked crazy, so I took a deep breath and forced my voice back into the realm of reasonable.

“Okay, look.” I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what I had to say next. I didn’t want to do it this way—I’d wanted to wait until I had some kind of evidence—but waiting no longer seemed to make sense. “This entire conversation is probably pointless, anyway.”

He frowned, hazel eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I think she killed them, Nash. Mr. Wesner and Mrs. Bennigan, and Mr. Wells. Your ‘best friend’ is a murderer.”

“No.” Nash shook his head without hesitation, and I almost felt sorry for him. It must be hard to surface from such a sea of denial and finally breathe the bitter truth.

“What, she didn’t tell you that, either? Maybe she’s the one who can’t be trusted.”

He crossed the kitchen toward the breakfast table in one corner and pulled out a chair with his brows raised, asking me to sit with him. I nodded reluctantly and sank onto the seat he’d offered. He took the one on my left. “Kaylee, Sabine didn’t kill them. I know it’s weird, three teachers dying so close together, and it’s definitely suspicious. But she had nothing to do with it. Why would you even think that?”

“Because maras suck the life force out of people while they dream.” I was frustrated and half-embarrassed by my lack of proof, but thoroughly convinced I was right. “Sabine shows up at Eastlake, and suddenly three teachers are dead. And they all died in their sleep. It’s not a huge leap in logic.”

“Okay, but it’s not a slam dunk, either. Sabine doesn’t kill people. Why would she, when she can get plenty of energy from a single nightmare? She doesn’t even have to feed every night.”

“Well, she has been. She’s fed from me two nights in a row, and she gave Chris Metzer a nightmare during third period today. That’s what started our whole confrontation.”

Nash nodded too many times, like his brain was only a word or two ahead of his mouth. “Okay, yeah, she told me about Metzer.”

She had? Why would she admit that?

“But that doesn’t mean she killed anybody. She didn’t do it, Kaylee. I…” He rubbed his forehead, and I was pretty sure I’d given him a headache. “I wish you knew her like I know her. You’d understand then. She likes people to think she’s tough—and maybe she is. But she’s not a murderer. She’s not even really a fighter. The fights she’s been in were all self-defense.”

All? How many had there been?

“Nash, my dad knows about the teachers.” About Mr. Wesner and Mrs. Bennigan, anyway. “And he’s looking into their deaths. Something’s obviously wrong—I had to tell him. And I’m gonna have to tell him about Sabine, too.”

“Wait.” Swirls of color exploded in Nash’s irises and he grabbed my hand, squeezing it on the tabletop. “Don’t tell him about her. Please, Kaylee. If you think she did it, he will, too, but I swear on my soul that she didn’t do this.” He looked so desperate, so heartbroken, and my chest ached at the reminder of how much he cared about her. “Just give me a couple of days, and I’ll prove it.”

“How are you gonna do that?” I pulled my hand gently from his grasp, and he suddenly looked lost, clearly grasping at mental straws.

“Hospital records,” he said finally. “I’ll make Tod get them for me. That’ll prove they all died of natural causes.”

“Really?” I lifted one brow and crossed my arms over my chest. “So…what would the autopsy report say about someone who was drained by a mara?”

Nash frowned as my point sank in. “Probably heart failure.” Which was ultimately the cause of any death. “Fine. But I’ll find a way to prove it. Just don’t tell him about her yet. If he thinks she’s dangerous and that I’m hanging out with her, he’ll never let me see you again. Give me a couple of days. Please, Kaylee. I don’t want to lose you.”

“You don’t want to lose her.”

He took my hand again, and I let him, against my better judgment. “I don’t want to lose either of you.”

“What about your mom?” I asked. “My dad will ask my uncle and your mom for help looking into this, and your mom knows Sabine’s back, right?”

“Yeah, but she knows Sabine—she’d never bring her up as a suspect. But if you do, your dad will believe you.”

I thought about it and finally nodded. Why not? When he couldn’t find any proof that Sabine hadn’t murdered Wells, Bennigan, and Wesner, he’d have to finally face the truth. And surely he couldn’t possibly still want her once she’d been outed as a murderer. Right?

“SO, HOW’D IT GO?” I asked, as Alec closed and locked the front door.

“Oh, you know. Popcorn, soda, candy, scalding-hot butter-flavored oil.”

“Not that.” I smiled from the couch. It felt good to be talking about something normal. Something other than addict ex-boyfriends, Nightmare ex-girlfriends, and dead teachers. “The interview.”

“Oh!” Alec’s eyes gleamed like onyx, and I was amazed how different his eyes could look from Sabine’s, considering they were nearly the same color. “I got it! I start third shift next week. I gave my notice at Cinemark tonight.”

“Awesome! Third shift, though? That’s gonna suck.”

He shrugged on his way into the kitchen. “I’m not sleeping at night, anyway. How much worse can sleeping in the day be?”

“Yeah, I guess. We’ll miss you at the theater, though.”

Alec grabbed a Coke from the fridge while I gathered up my homework, preparing to vacate his makeshift bed. He looked tired. “You’ll get over it. You don’t wanna work with an old man like me, anyway, right?” He grinned, but I couldn’t help wondering how much of that was for show.

“Oh, stop it. You may be forty-five on the inside, but outside you’re a very young, very hot nineteen, and you have nothing but good things to look forward to.”

“Especially with the new job,” my dad added, and I whirled to see him standing in the living room doorway, holding a half-eaten apple.

“Hey, why didn’t you tell me he got the job?” My dad had been home for hours and had sat through an entire half a pizza and my recap of the vice principal’s death without leaking a word of their good news.

“That’s Alec’s announcement. And don’t call him hot.”

I rolled my eyes, but smiled, shoving my folded chemistry homework into the textbook. “I’ll leave you two coworkers to celebrate. I’m going to bed.”

“So early?” My dad ducked his head to glance at the clock over the stove in the kitchen. It was just past ten-thirty.

“I’m a growing girl. I need my sleep.” Actually, I was going to get in bed with my laptop and try again to dig up some dirt on Sabine.

“Common sense looks good on you,” my dad declared, as I brushed past him and into the hall.

“Well, apple doesn’t look good on you,” I said, glancing at the tiny clump of white stuck on his stubble. “Use a napkin.” I smiled, then went into my room and closed the door. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting under the covers with my computer on my lap when Tod appeared in the middle of my floor.

“Crap!” I jumped, startled, and nearly dropped the laptop.

“Sorry.” Tod reached out to steady it with one hand, then sat on the edge of my bed.

“What are you doing here?” I closed my laptop and set it on the bedside table. “My dad will kill you if…”

He laughed. “The longer I’m dead, the less threat that carries.”

“What’s going on, Tod?”

He exhaled and reluctantly met my gaze. “I wasn’t spying on them. I swear. Not this time, anyway. I went over there looking for my mom. I thought she had tonight off.”

“I’m guessing you were wrong?” I was also guessing we were talking about Nash and his ex, and my stomach twisted at the thought.

“Yeah. My mom was leaving just as Sabine pulled up.”

“What does this have to do with me?” I already knew they were hanging out, and hopefully Nash was making good on his promise to make her back off.

“I think you should see this.”

“Why?” My heart thumped in my throat, and I had to swallow it to speak. “Are they…?” ’Cause I didn’t want to see that. Ever.

“It’s not what you think. They’re just talking. But I think you need to see them together to understand their relationship. To understand why he won’t let her go. Because if you take Nash back, I don’t think you’ll be getting just him.”

“Tod, I don’t wanna…”

“Trust me, Kay.”