My Soul to Steal

14

THAT TIME, I DIDN’T sit up in bed. I pulled the covers over my head like a child, half convinced I was still dreaming. That if I peeked into the room, she would be there waiting for me, that half-rotted perversion of my mother, demanding her life back before I could squander the rest of it.

I stayed like that until I got dizzy from breathing my own used oxygen, and when nothing crawled toward me, when the air never putrefied in my nostrils, I finally pushed back the covers and sat up.

My room looked normal. The door was still closed, but unlocked in spite of paranoid warnings from both Nash and Tod. My comforter was spotless, my knee still clean.

My mother had never stood in this room. She hadn’t stood anywhere in more than thirteen years, and deep down I knew that even if she could come see me, she would never demand my life for the privilege.

My mother didn’t want me dead. But I was afraid I’d wasted her gift. And Sabine obviously knew that.

With that realization came the blazing fury I needed to thaw my icy fear. But there would be no more sleep for me that night. Sabine had done her job very, very well.

“ANOTHER BAD DREAM?” Alec asked, as I tiptoed past the couch on my way to the kitchen. “That’s the second one this week.”

Third, but who’s counting?

“Don’t you ever sleep?” I demanded, without slowing.

He tossed back the blanket and sat up. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

“I slept,” I insisted, heading straight for the coffeepot. “Now I’m done. Just getting an early start.”

The couch springs creaked behind me. “It’s four-thirty in the morning.”

I knew that, with every exhausted bone in my body. “Thus the word early.”

“You couldn’t have slept more than two hours.”

The kitchen floor was cold on my bare feet, and I wished I’d remembered my slippers. “What are you now, a math major?” Or my dad?

“You’re doing one hell of a Sophie impersonation this morning.” Alec had only met my cousin once, and that was more than enough. “What’s wrong?”

After staring at the remnants of the previous day’s coffee, I decided making a fresh pot would be too much trouble and opted for a soda from the fridge instead. I popped the tab as I sank into my dad’s chair across from the couch, where Alec now sat watching me in nothing but the gym shorts he slept in.

I took a long drink, then met his fatigued, bloodshot gaze. “Sabine’s at it again. Or still at it. Or whatever.”

“Nash’s ex?” Alec rubbed the top of his head with one broad hand. “What’s she doing?”

“The usual. Bullying her way into my head and sending nightmares. This has to stop.”

“What’s the big deal?” Alec shrugged smooth, dark shoulders. “They’re just dreams, right? So shake it off and go back to sleep.”

I blinked at him, trying to decide whether or not to take him seriously. “They’re not just dreams, Alec. They’re renderings of my own fears, ripe with life force for her to suck. She’s a mara, remember?”

Alec’s eyes widened, and he sat straighter on the couch. “Sabine’s the mara? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did tell you!”

Alec shook his head firmly. “The other night, you said you dreamed she made out with your ex, then tonight you said you knew a mara. But you never mentioned that the mara and Sabine are the same damn person!”

I set my can down and frowned at him. “Okay, you seriously need to get more sleep. I told you she was a mara last night. In the kitchen, remember?”

Alec looked startled—truly frightened, just for an instant—then his entire expression seemed to simply shut down, like when the power fails and the whole neighborhood goes dark. “Last night?” he repeated, cradling his head in his hands. “Would this have been in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah. While you were working your way through a box of my dad’s cupcakes.”

He exhaled slowly, then mumbled beneath his breath, “That’s what he meant about the cupcakes…”

“What?” I leaned forward and studied his face when he finally looked up. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just…sleep deprived, I guess. I barely remember last night. So…Sabine’s a mara? For real?”

“Welcome to the conversation.” I turned my head slowly back and forth, stretching out the cramp in my neck. “She’s been exploiting my fears to try to scare me away from Nash.”

“Wow.” Alec whistled and leaned back with his arms crossed over his smooth, bare chest. “That’s messed up. I mean, that’s bordering on Netherworld-level torture. At least, of the psychological variety.”

I picked up the can and took another sip, willing the caffeine into my system. “Yeah, she’s not exactly warm and fuzzy.”

“So what’re you gonna do? You can’t just let her walk all over you.” Alec looked more awake, and I started to relax a little, now that he was sounding like himself again.

“I know. I thought I had it all taken care of, after I smacked her, and Nash said—”

“Wait, you hit someone?”

My fingers clenched around the cold, damp can. “Why does everyone sound so surprised by that?” But Alec only raised both brows at me. “Okay, I’m not exactly a prizefighter. But she had it coming. And anyway, after that, Nash said she promised to stay out of my dreams. Obviously she was lying. Or else he was.”

“Which do you think it is?”

I took a long drink to avoid answering. “I honestly don’t know. The truth is that I haven’t been able to catch Sabine in a lie so far—she’s frighteningly blunt—but Nash has lied to me repeatedly. How sad is it that I can trust his serial-killer ex-girlfriend better than I can trust him?”

“Killer…” Alec said, like he was tasting the word. “You really think she killed those teachers?”

“I don’t know. She’s openly confessed to everything else she’s done, so why wouldn’t she admit to this, if she’s guilty? It’s not like the police are going to arrest her for dream-stalking, right? So maybe it’s not her.” I shrugged and let my head rest on the back of the recliner. “But I don’t have any other suspects. And anyway, you said it yourself—a mara’s the most likely suspect.”

Alec frowned. “Yeah, but that was before I knew you were talking about someone you go to school with.”

“What does that matter?”

He shrugged, obviously hesitating. “It’s one thing to say that a certain species theoretically fits the bill for what you’re looking for. But that doesn’t mean that the one member of that species you actually know is definitely the killer. You can’t go blaming someone of murdering your teachers without more proof than that, Kaylee.”

I flinched. “Too late.”

Alec blinked. “Please tell me you did not accuse a mara—to her face—of killing someone. A mara who’s already not crazy about you.”

“Um…yeah. I did.”

“Damn.” He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I can’t decide whether you’re brave or stupid, Kaylee. No wonder she’s playing dreamweaver in your head.”

My scowl deepened. “She was doing that already. Besides, this makes sense. She’s the only one with motive and opportunity.”

Alec leaned forward again and shook his head, eyeing me solemnly. “You watch too much TV. Nothing’s ever that cut and dried in real life. Especially when your suspects aren’t even human.”

I scooted to the edge of my chair, irritated. Why was I the only one who could see what Sabine was really capable of? “She’s trying to scare me into backing down, from both Nash and this investigation.”

“She wants you to give up on a boyfriend you’re not sure you want back, and an investigation that consists entirely of a list of supernatural creatures scribbled on a phone message pad? Sorry, Kay, but it doesn’t sound to me like she’s the one lacking logic.”

Wow. When he put it like that, the whole thing sounded so…insubstantial. And really, really pathetic. Still… “If you were a cop investigating a murder, wouldn’t you be most interested in the suspect with a criminal record?”

Alec perked up again. “Wait, Sabine has a record? You didn’t tell me that.”

“Yes I did!” I set my Coke on the end table and studied him more closely. “You seriously need to start paying better attention. I know you’re still getting readjusted to the human world, but your memory has so many holes we could strain noodles through it.” And this was more than simple forgetfulness. I could tell from the way he refused to look at me, and from the tense line of his shoulders.

A chill developed at the base of my spine and began working its way up slowly. “What’s going on, Alec?”

Alec took a long, slow breath, and only after several seconds of silence did he finally meet my gaze, deep brown eyes practically swimming in fear. “Something’s wrong, and I think I’m starting to understand what’s going on. I need to tell you something, but I need you not to freak out on me, okay?”

Why were people always telling me that?

The chills traveled up my spine and into my arms, where chill bumps burst to life. “Telling me not to freak out pretty much guarantees that I will freak out….”

“Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Here’s the deal… My memory of the past few days doesn’t just have holes in it. It has hollows. Big, gaping blank spots.”

Uh-oh. “How big is big?”

Alec leaned back on the couch and scrubbed his face with both hands. “Scary big. I wake up and have no idea how I got wherever I am. I can’t remember what I was doing. It’s very…unsettling.”

I would have gone with “bizarre and terrifying.” But then, I hadn’t spent the past quarter century surrounded by true terror.

“When did this…?” I began, then my voice faded into silence when the rest of what he’d said sank in. “Wait, you said you ‘wake up’ and have no idea what’s going on. So…this happens when you go to sleep?”

The fear churning in my stomach put a bad taste in my mouth. Something strong and foul. Something distressingly familiar…

“Yeah. It’s him, Kaylee.” Alec’s dark gaze held mine captive. “Avari’s possessing me.”

“No.” I shook my head vehemently, even though denial wasn’t really an option. “No, no, no. He can’t.” I made myself put my can down before I could crush it and drench myself in cold soda.

Alec stared back at me from the couch. He looked so vulnerable suddenly. Younger than his nineteen-year-old body, and much younger than his middle-aged mind and soul. “Nothing else makes sense.”

“Neither does this,” I insisted. “It can’t be Avari. He doesn’t have the strength. Not without you there to supply extra power.”

For years, the hellion had used Alec like a walking snack, drawing energy and nutrition from him to fuel his own evil projects and ambitions. But without Alec at his disposal, Avari shouldn’t have enough energy to possess someone in the human world. At least, not so often or for any serious length of time.

Alec sighed, and the weight that sound seemed to carry was unimaginable. “At this point, I’m assuming he’s found a new proxy. I can’t think of any other way this could be possible.”

My head felt like it was about to explode. “You’re saying Avari took over your body just to gossip with me and snag some snack cakes? No.” He was wrong. He had to be. “Alec, you talked to me. Both of those times, you spoke, and it was your voice, not Avari’s. That would have been impossible if he were possessing you.”

Alec shook his head slowly. “No, that would have been impossible if he were possessing you. Or Emma, or Sophie, or anyone else he doesn’t know very well. But I’ve spent the past twenty-six years with him, and he’s been drawing power from me the entire time. He’s intimately familiar with my physiology, and it makes sense that he’d know how to work my voice box, along with the rest of my body.”

No. Damn it, no!

I was breathing too fast and had to focus to keep from hyperventilating. This cannot be happening. Avari could not have been so close to us—inside Alec—without us knowing! Not now that I knew the signs. The voice was the giveaway. He wasn’t supposed to be able to use his puppet’s voice!

“This doesn’t make any sense, Alec. Why would he burn so much energy just to chat with me and eat some refined sugar? He didn’t even tell me what he was doing, so he couldn’t have been feeding off my fear and anger. Why would he go to all this trouble, then not take credit for it?”

Alec didn’t answer. He propped his elbows on his knees and let his head hang below his shoulders, and all I could see of him then was the rapid rise and fall of his arched back while he breathed too fast and too hard.

“Alec? What are you not telling me?” Because it was obvious by then that there was more. Maybe much, much more.

But he didn’t answer.

I left my chair and settled onto the couch next to him, laying one hand on his warm arm. “Alec?” I couldn’t decide whether to be mad at him for holding back or sympathize with the obvious pain of whatever he was going through.

Finally he sucked in a shaky breath and looked up. “I think I killed your teachers, Kaylee. I think Avari used me to kill them. And I don’t know how to make him stop.”

My living room suddenly seemed a little darker. I couldn’t think. I could barely even breathe. Too many thoughts were flying through my head—too many questions—and I couldn’t focus on any one in particular.

“Alec…” I stared at the floor, willing both the carpet and my thoughts to come into focus. “Why… What…” I stopped, took another deep breath, then started over. “How is that even possible? They all died in their sleep, from what we can tell. Tod said there were no marks on them.”

When Alec just stared at his feet, I continued, desperate for some concrete information to keep from imagining things were worse than they really were. If that was even possible. “Are you saying Avari can… I don’t know. Are you saying he can use his own abilities through you, when he’s in your body?”

I couldn’t think of a more frightening possibility. Knowing a hellion had been in control of my body was terrifying. But if he could make me kill people, using powers I shouldn’t even possess…

There were no words to describe the depth of the horror weighing me down in that moment.

“No,” Alec said at last, dragging his gaze up to meet mine. But my relief was fleeting. “He can’t use his abilities outside of the Netherworld, even when he possesses me. But he can sure as hell use my abilities.”

“What?” My stomach tried to hurl itself up through my chest and out my mouth. “What abilities?”

I’d suspected Alec wasn’t human when he’d first contacted me—by possessing Emma from the Netherworld—but so far, he’d shown no nonhuman traits. Nor had he mentioned any.

I stood and backed away from Alec slowly, giving in to the single most logical moment of self-preservation in my entire life. “Please tell me you’re human, Alec. I need you to tell me you’re human right now. Tell me you haven’t been hiding something that big from me and my dad for two weeks.”

And please make me believe it…

Alec remained seated; I think he understood that if he stood, I’d lose what little control I was still clinging to. And that I’d shout for my dad. “I couldn’t tell you, Kaylee. I didn’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“It’s a little late for that now, so why don’t you just lay it out for me?” I backed around the coffee table and across the room. “What are you?”

Alec sighed and glanced at the couch pillow, like he’d like to rip it to shreds, or maybe clutch it to his chest. “It’s a long story.”

“It’s not like I’m going back to sleep.” I sat in the chair again and picked up my soda just to have something to hold.

“My mom’s human,” he began finally. “Avari caught her half a century ago and used her as a proxy for several years. While she was there, she fell in love. Not with him…” Alec said, anticipating my disgust before I could even ask the question now burning on the end of my tongue. “With someone else. With my father. He helped her sneak away from Avari for short periods of time, usually by distracting him with some plaything newer and shinier than my mom.”

My stomach churned harder. “Your dad gave Avari other people to…eat? Or whatever?”

“Not always people. Hellions’ interests are very broad and…” But he stopped when he read the horror surely clear on my face. “He did it for my mom. To spare her. To be with her.”

And I realized with a start that I could understand that, even if I couldn’t excuse it. Tod had done something very similar to be with Addison, after she’d died with her soul in Avari’s possession, dooming herself to eternal torment for the hellion’s pleasure.

I nodded for Alec to go on.

“Anyway, when she got pregnant, they both realized that my mom had to get out of the Netherworld, and that Avari could never know about me. If he got his hands on a half-breed—a potential proxy who could feed him much more and much longer than a human ever could—he’d be too powerful to fight, and my mom would never get out. So my dad arranged for someone who owed him a favor to ferry her back to the human world. They never saw each other again, and I was raised here, like a human.”

“She didn’t tell you?” A pang of sympathy rang through me at that thought. I’d been raised the same way, in total ignorance of who and what I really was, and of what my differences truly meant. Of what I could really do.

“Not until I was nearly grown and my differences began to manifest. She told me then because I needed to know how to control myself. How to keep from hurting anyone accidentally. Her big mistake was contacting my father for advice. She sent him messages through the friend who’d gotten her out of the Netherworld, but that put her on Avari’s radar again. He got to the messenger before my dad did that last time, and…well, I don’t know if he threatened him or paid him or what. But somehow he convinced the messenger to bring my mother to him, instead of delivering her message. And once Avari had her, it didn’t take him long to find out about me.”

“How did he get you?” I asked, my voice so low I could barely hear it. Avari had done the same thing to Nash, and to my dad, and it terrified me to know that he had the resources to take anyone he wanted from our world into the Netherworld, any time he wanted.

In fact, I might never sleep again, knowing that.

“He told me I could trade myself for her. He swore he’d send her back here the minute I turned myself over to him.”

“Did he?” My heart beat so hard I could barely hear him over it. And I was afraid I already knew the answer.

“Yeah. But what he neglected to mention was that she was already dead. He used her up in one gluttonous energy binge, and when I crossed over, he sent her body back to the human world.”

Alec’s jaw tensed, and I knew without asking that if he hadn’t already had years to mourn his mother, he might have broken into tears right then. “I didn’t get to go to her funeral. I don’t know where she’s buried. I don’t even know who found her. All I know is that if I have any relatives left, I can’t go see them, because I haven’t aged since the day she died. And knowing what Avari’s been doing with my body…I can’t put the rest of my family—whatever’s left of it—in danger. You and your dad are all I have here. And if I can’t make Avari stop possessing me, I’m going to lose you, too.”

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to put my arm around him and comfort him like the brother I’d never had. Or like an uncle, considering our age difference. But I couldn’t do that, because he was right. If Avari had that much control over him, no one was safe. Least of all me and my father.

“How did he do it?” I asked. “How did he make you kill them? What are you, Alec?”

Alec looked up at me through shiny brown eyes. “I’m half hypnos.”

“What’s a hypnos?” I held my breath, waiting for his explanation, but couldn’t slow my racing pulse.

“Hypnos are minor Netherworld creatures that feed from the energy of sleeping humans through the barrier between worlds. Full-blood hypnos can’t cross into the human world, but obviously I can. I think Avari used me to suck your teachers dry in their sleep.” He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them so I could see his raging anger and guilt. “It turns out I’m even more useful to that hellion bastard here than I was in the Netherworld.”