My Soul to Steal

22

AFTER ANOTHER MOSTLY sleepless night and an early breakfast spent watching Harmony stitch the gash on my dad’s head, I held my breath as I walked into the school on Tuesday morning, half-afraid of what I’d find. I knew better than to believe that yesterday’s campus chaos had faded into the ether.

I was right.

I’d made it halfway to my locker when the door to the girls’ bathroom flew open and slammed against the wall right in front of me. I lurched out of the way as two bodies stumbled into the hall and collided with a stretch of lockers, ringing the metal doors like a gong. Hair flew, too wild and fast for me to identify either of the fighters as I scrambled out of the immediate impact zone.

A crowd formed quickly—a living boxing ring—as each girl tore at the other’s hair and clothes, clawing at exposed skin. They screeched and grunted, a primal racket of pain and rage, punctuated with just enough profanity-riddled half sentences for me to understand the cause.

They were fighting over a guy. Someone’s boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or stupid, unwitting crush.

A couple of teachers came running to break up the fight, already haggard before eight in the morning, and as I bypassed the action, I noticed two of the school’s larger coaches hauling a boy apiece down the hall in my direction. The student on the left had a split lip and a black eye. The one on the right was bleeding from a head wound and a totally crunched nose.

In spite of their injuries, it was everything the coaches could do to keep them apart.

“Did you hear?” Emma asked, when I finally slid into the seat next to her in algebra.

“About the fights in the hall? Caught the live show and nearly got flattened. It’s like going to school in a war zone.”

“Not that.” Emma looked just as put together as always, in spite of her interrupted sleep. Obviously middle-of-the-night ice cream was the cure for dark under-eye circles. “They took Coach Peterson away in handcuffs this morning. The custodian caught him trashing Rundell’s office, shouting that he would have been the head football coach if Rundell hadn’t married the superintendent’s daughter.” Emma leaned closer to me, not that it mattered. Everyone else was busy passing the same news. “I swear, Kaylee, the entire school’s gone insane!”

Yeah. Including the teachers, which was a new development.

By third period, there had been four more fights and another teacher removed from school grounds, for undisclosed reasons. Whatever she’d done, she’d done in the teachers’ lounge, and the rest of the staff wasn’t talking. Which left us to interpret her crimes as we saw fit. And there was no shortage of rumors.

After third period—my free hour—I headed across the deserted gym toward the cafeteria, but stopped short when I heard a screech from the girls’ locker room. “Sophie, no!”

I dropped my books on the polished wood floor and raced for the locker room, then threw open the door and froze in surprise at what I saw.

In one hand, Sophie held a huge pair of metal scissors with jagged blades. The ones she’d been using for her Life Skills project—pinking shears, Aunt Val had called them. In the other hand, my cousin held a thick chunk of Laura Bell’s long, shiny brown hair.

Laura was bawling hysterically, her face already red from the effort, one hand clutching the back of her scalp.

“I’m…I’m so sorry!” Sophie screeched, her hand shaking violently, and a second later, she burst into tears, too.

“Give me that!” I jerked the scissors from her grasp by the closed blades, then spun Laura around to assess the damage. The center section of her hair had been clipped so close to her head I could see scalp showing through.

Great. A half-bald beauty queen. Laura was going to need therapy—I could already tell.

“Go to the office and have them call your mom,” I said, unsure if Laura could even hear me over her own snot-strangled tears. “I’m sure they can get you some kind of emergency salon appointment. Or something.”

Not that there was anything they’d be able to do for her, short of shearing the rest of it to match.

Laura wiped tears from her face with one sleeve, then wandered out of the bathroom in a traumatized daze, rendered virtually useless by a bad haircut. Not that I couldn’t sympathize.

“Sophie, what the hell?” I demanded, as soon as the door closed, but my cousin just stood there, clutching a handful of her best friend’s hair.

“I don’t know!” she screeched, her words so painfully high-pitched I wanted to slap both hands over my ears. Maybe she was part bean sidhe, after all… “She was working on her hair, going on and on about being Snow Queen, and I just kept thinking that she never should have won. Then I just…snapped, and the next thing I know, I’m holding half her hair, and she’s screaming, and all I can think is that it should have been me. It would have been me, if you hadn’t trashed my dress. I didn’t even get to compete after that!”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed in sudden understanding. And fury.

“This is your fault. I would have been Snow Queen if you hadn’t ruined everything, like you always do! Luck of the Irish, my ass. You’re like an agent of darkness. I swear, you have horns growing under all that stringy hair.”

“Sounds like you found the family resemblance.” I scowled and stepped closer to her, and Sophie backed up until her hip hit the sink. “I ought to cut your hair to match hers, and if you open your mouth one more time, that’s exactly what I’ll do.” With that, I dropped her shears into the big covered trash can and stomped out of the locker room, leaving Sophie to her guilt and tears.

I was almost out of the gym—Sophie had yet to emerge—when a familiar voice shredded my remaining self-control like wood through a chipper.

“So you actually died, and she just…let it happen?”

Sabine. My pulse spiked with irritation. What the hell was she doing?

“Well, I don’t think she could have stopped it…” another, softer voice said, and my anger was a white-hot ball of fury flaming in my gut. Emma. Sabine had Emma, and they were talking about…things they shouldn’t be talking about.

“But you don’t know for sure, right? I mean, you don’t actually know what she’s capable of, do you? All you really know is that she’s not human and she screeches louder than a police siren. Right?”

I spun silently, trying to pinpoint the voices, but the gym looked empty.

“Yeah, I guess…” Em finally answered, and confusion slowed her words, like the first drink of the night.

“Don’t you ever worry about the next time? I mean, being best friends with a bean sidhe should come with hazard pay, right? You’re always in the line of fire, thanks to her.”

“Actually…yeah. Something went down last night, and she and Alec wouldn’t tell me what. Again.” She paused as I crossed one corner of the basketball court quietly. “But everything turned out fine.”

“But what if it hadn’t? What if you’d become collateral damage again? Do you ever worry that she might…”

“Just let me die?” Emma asked, and I could hear the fear in her voice. My blood boiled. Sabine was goading her, reading and manipulating her fears with every word, but the actual fears were all Em’s. Things she’d never told me about.

“Yeah,” Emma continued. “Kaylee and Nash can’t save someone without letting someone else die. One of these days, it’ll be my time to go, and I’m afraid that Kaylee will just…let it happen. Or that they’ll save someone else and end up killing me by accident.”

“It could definitely happen,” Sabine said, as I rounded the edge of the bleachers to see her smiling at me over Emma’s shoulder. She’d known I was there the whole time. My hands curled into fists and my jaw clenched so hard my whole face ached.

“Sabine, what the hell are you doing?” My voice sounded lower and darker than I’d ever heard it.

“Just getting to know Em a little better.”

Emma was watching me now, a familiar edge of irritation in her narrowed eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me Sabine isn’t human? And don’t tell me this is more bean sidhe business—she’s not a bean sidhe. And why do you and Alec have Netherworld secrets now? Are you just using any excuse to lock me out of your life?”

I raised a brow at Sabine. Clearly I was late to the conversation—Em had obviously confided several fears.

Sabine only shrugged and grinned, so I turned back to Emma, my arms crossed over my chest.

“Did she tell you what she is?”

“More than you told me. She’s a mara.”

I nodded. “And did she tell you what that means?”

Emma frowned. That’s what I thought. “She’s a Nightmare, Em. Literally. She reads people’s fears and exploits them for her own entertainment.” Or nutrition. I was still a bit fuzzy on that detail. “And that’s what she’s doing to you right now. Exploiting your fears.”

And that’s when it hit me. The school chaos. The fights and jealousy. They had nothing to do with Avari—what did he care if a few kids got arrested or expelled?

It was Sabine. All of it. I’d heard her talking to Sophie and Laura about the Snow Queen title last week. She’d chatted with the basketball team at lunch. And now she was moving in on Emma. She was feeding from their fears and insecurities. And it had to stop.

I took a deep breath, then faced my best friend, without letting Sabine out of my sight. “Em, I swear I’m not going to let you die. No matter what. Your life is definitely a priority, so you can stop worrying about that.” I closed my eyes, weighing pros and cons in my head, then met Emma’s suspicious gaze again. “And I’m going to tell you everything. I promise.” It wasn’t fair for me to keep her in the dark—I, of all people, should have known that. “But right now, I have to deal with the mess Sabine’s gotten us all into. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria, okay?”

Without waiting for her answer, I grabbed Sabine by the arm and hauled her across the gym. She just laughed and let me pull her. “Where are we going?”

“To find Nash.” If anyone could reason with an out of control mara, it would be our mutual ex. Her one true love, according to Tod.

My anger burned even brighter at that thought.

“Oh, good!” she said, as I hesitated in the middle of the basketball court, debating the shortcut to the quad through the cafeteria. But pulling Sabine through a crowd of students she’d already worked into some kind of fear-fed frenzy would be a very bad idea. So I turned right and headed for the gym exit. “But you should probably know he’s not speaking to me.”

“Fortunately, he is speaking to me.”

“So, what, you’re gonna tattle on me for telling Emma I’m not human? That wasn’t your secret to keep, Kaylee. Totally my call. And if blowing my own cover happens to poke holes in your credibility…well, we’ll call that a big fat bonus!”

“You are such a bitch.” I shoved open the heavy exterior door and pulled Sabine into the parking lot, then took an immediate left, circling the building toward the quad.

“That’s hardly breaking news.”

“Yet the headlines just keep coming.” I tightened my grip on her arm. The quad was in sight by then, but I saw no sign of Nash. In fact, all the tables were empty, which was weird, considering we were ten minutes into lunch.

“Okay, this has been real fun,” Sabine said, as I stopped next to the first empty table. She jerked her arm from my grasp and faced me, her goading grin gone, true anger flashing in her eyes. “But if it isn’t gonna get Nash to talk to me, I’m done with this.”

She started to stomp off toward the cafeteria, but I grabbed her wrist. “Get back here.” Nash would have been so much better at talking some sense into her, but since he wasn’t there, it was up to me.

Sabine jerked her arm away again. “The novelty of your badass act is wearing off quickly.”

And suddenly I realized that the lack of a crowd was as much disadvantage as advantage—she probably wouldn’t hesitate to punch me if there was no one around to see it. “How could you pull Emma into this? She has nothing to do with your sad little obsession with Nash.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “I didn’t hurt her. I barely even got a taste of her fear. And as for my disclosure, you of all people should know how scary it is when you don’t understand the world around you. I would have thought you’d want to spare your own best friend from such painful ignorance.”

I couldn’t fault her logic and I’d already decided to tell Emma everything. But even if Sabine’s argument was sound, her intentions were not. She’d been using an innocent bystander to piss me off, and it worked. “Just leave Emma alone.”

“I don’t answer to you about anything, Kaylee. Including my dinner plans.”

Fresh flames of rage licked at my skin; I felt like I was standing too close to a bonfire, and if I didn’t back up, I was going to get roasted. And I was fine with that—so long as Sabine got singed, too. “You cannot just go around feeding from people! You’ve turned this school into a war zone, and people are getting hurt.”

Sabine rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you I didn’t kill those teachers. And I’m not responsible for how a bunch of human sheep deal with the loss of a couple of shepherds.”

“They’re people, not sheep!” Even if they did tend to follow the herd and stand around bleating uselessly at times… “And no matter what you call them, you don’t have the right to turn them against one another and get people thrown in jail, or sent to the hospital!”

Sabine frowned. “Okay, you can’t even see sanity from where you’re standing. I had nothing to do with any of that.”

“Right.” I stepped closer, shoving my fear of a broken jaw—or worse—to the back of my mind. “I heard you talking to Sophie and Laura the other day, and today Laura’s missing a chunk of hair from the back of her head.”

“Sophie sheared her BFF?” Sabine looked genuinely surprised—like she didn’t already know. “Wow. Good one…”

“Shut up. Laura’s bad hair day is the least of what you’ve done. Jeff’s car. Derek’s broken arms. Coach Rundell’s trashed office. Cammie’s torched mold spores… This school is the only safe, normal thing in my life, and Eastlake does not deserve to go down like this!”

“I know. That’s why I’m not doing it.” Sabine shrugged. “I could if I wanted to, but I kinda like it here. The food sucks, but I’m passing with minimal effort and I have friends…” She gestured to me, and my mouth actually dropped open.

“I am not your friend.”

She gave me an infuriatingly good-natured roll of her dark eyes. “I think the definition of ‘friendship’ is open to a little interpretation from the fringe groups, Kaylee.”

I crossed my arms. “It’s really not.”

“Whatever. My point is that none of that stuff is my fault.”

I shook my head, thoroughly disgusted. “I saw you talking with half the people who’ve gone psycho!” And there was no telling how many private conversations I’d missed.

“Yeah. I was reading their fears. For later.” The mara uncrossed her arms and shrugged. “A girl’s gotta eat.” She sat on the edge of the nearest table, leaning forward with her palms against the wood. “I’ve been in your head. I’ve been all over your boyfriend. And I was messing with your best friend in the gym. But I didn’t hurt anybody. And I didn’t do any of that crazy shit you’re talking about.”

“And I should believe you because you’re just such a joy to be around?”

“Think about it, Kaylee. This isn’t fear-based. From what I can tell, all these newly converted psychos are running on pure jealousy, and that’s just not palatable for a mara, no matter how hungry I get.”

Crap. I hadn’t thought of that. But then, she couldn’t directly benefit from making Em distrust me, either, and that hadn’t stopped her.

“Fine. So you’re doing it for fun.”

Sabine’s grin was back, and I wanted to slap it off her face. But I wasn’t stupid enough to indulge that impulse. Again. “Well, there’s definitely a slapstick sort of lowbrow entertainment value involved in watching your school fall apart at the seams. But a few laughs aren’t worth the effort it would take to orchestrate something like this myself. And anyway, my nightmares aren’t just food—they’re art. I take pride in that. But this isn’t art, Kaylee.” She spread her arms to take in the school around us. “This is nothing but…chaos. And as much as I enjoy upsetting the balance of your sad little existence, believe it or not, I don’t thrive on chaos.”

Chaos…

She was right. Maras don’t thrive on chaos—but hellions do.

Yet the violent frenzy all around us didn’t feel like Avari’s work—jealousy wasn’t his medium—and the only suspect that left was Sabine, no matter how artfully she wielded logic against me.

“So, what, you expect your pristine record to speak for itself? You’ve been arrested at least twice, expelled from two different schools, and were handed off from one foster family to the next for years. I think that says pretty clearly what you’re capable of.”

Sabine’s eyes narrowed and darkened. She stood and stepped closer, putting her face inches from mine, and for the first time, I notice that she was at least a couple of inches taller than I was. And now thoroughly pissed. “You Googled me?”

I shrugged. “I thought I should know what I was dealing with.”

“Then you should have asked me,” she growled through clenched teeth. “I got expelled the first time for punching a teacher who called me stupid in front of the whole class. He had it coming, and everyone knew it. Which is why he got fired and never pressed charges. I got expelled the second time for breaking into some stuck-up bitch’s locker to take back the cell phone she stole from my jacket pocket and used to send dirty emails to the entire school from my account.”

“You really expect me to believe that?” Her story actually made sense, and I might really have believed it—if she hadn’t spent every moment since we’d met trying to make my life miserable. Logic said that I probably wasn’t her first victim.

“I don’t care what you believe. But just in case you still have a brain cell functioning behind that inch-thick skull, listen up. I’ve never lied to you, Kaylee. Not once. I may not always say what you want to hear, but it’s always the truth.”

With her last word, the first wave of fear slammed into me, so cold and strong I had to fight to suck in a breath. She’d opened her mental gates, and now the full force of the terror maras emanated naturally was washing over me in wave after bitter wave. “It’s your version of the truth,” I insisted, taking an involuntary step back when the black weight of my own fear threatened to drive me to my knees. “And that’s about as reliable as a politician’s promise.”

“Well, how ’bout a few truths you can trust?” She stepped forward again, and again I stepped back, watching shadows twist in her eyes, the silent reflection of every fear I’d ever felt. “Nash belongs with me, whether he knows it or not. You were nothing but a fleeting curiosity, and he’s already started getting over you.”

“Pathetic…” I spat, gasping for breath as the dark oblivion in her eyes swelled, threatening to swallow me whole. “You’re in denial, and it’s pathetic. And so are you. What, can’t you handle one little bean sidhe without channeling Freddy Krueger?”

Sabine’s brows arched high over black irises swimming around bottomless pupils. “You think I can’t rein it in?” Without waiting for me to answer, she closed her eyes, and a second later the dark cloud of fear lifted. I could breathe again, and even the sun looked a little brighter.

“Better?” she snapped, malice sharp in her voice and in her gaze. She’d pulled it in, but that only meant that the concentration of anger inside her had doubled. Sabine was an angry dog on a leash—if I kept goading her, she’d pull free, and next time she might not be able to control it. “I can play nice if that’s all you can handle, but that won’t change the facts.” She took another step, and this time when I backed up, my spine hit the corner of another picnic table. “If I’m in denial, why are you the one he gave up, memory by memory?”

“He had no other choice…” I made myself stand straighter and maintain eye contact.

“There are always choices. The truth is that you’re what he was willing to give up.”

“No.” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe that. I just…couldn’t.

“Oh, yeah? Then why is it he can’t remember what it felt like to kiss you for the first time, but he can relive every single time he touched me, whenever he wants? I’m still up there.” She touched her temple, eyes narrowed in fury, hand steady with conviction. “And I’m still in here.” She laid that hand over her own heart, and I felt mine crack a little. “And I’ve been other places you were too scared to go when you had the chance. And now it’s too late.”

I couldn’t breathe, and this time that had nothing to do with any fear leaking from her abusive, rotting soul. I couldn’t breathe because she was right. He’d given me up, but he’d kept her. All of her.

Why would he do that?

Sabine’s brows arched again, and she leaned down to peer into my eyes. “You get it now, don’t you? He can still feel that initial thrill from the very first time we touched.”

She ran her hand slowly down from my shoulder, and my chest felt like it was caving in. I jerked back, but she only laughed. “It was innocent, at first. Fresh and new. Exciting, like if my heart beat any faster, it’d explode. And he still feels that, every time he thinks about it.”

I shook my head and backed around the corner of the table.

“What does he feel when he thinks about you, Kay? You should ask him. Or I could just tell you. He feels nothing. You’re a big numb spot on his heart, and all he feels now when you’re around is guilt and pain. You’re killing him, and for what? So you can cling to something he didn’t care enough about to preserve? You should let him go so he can find peace.”

And with that, my anger flared to life again, incinerating doubt and self-pity. “I don’t know how to be any clearer about this. Nash doesn’t want you. Not like you want him. And getting me out of your way isn’t going to change that, because I’m not the obstacle in your path, Sabine. You’re standing in your own way.”

That one great truth strengthened me, and I stood taller, itching to show her what she refused to see. “You’re obsessed with him. And not even with the real Nash. You’re in love with the memory of someone you knew two and a half years ago, but you’re both different people now, and here’s the thing that’s killing you: he’s moved on. You want to believe that he never really got over you. That if you could just push me out of the way, he’d remember what the two of you had together. But you said it yourself, Sabine—he never forgot. He remembers exactly what it was like to touch you, and love you, and know you loved him back. And he still picked me.”

Sabine flushed bright red. Shadows swam over her eyes, and my skin prickled with the cold concentration of terror accumulating inside her, like a balloon, about to explode. Her right hand curled into a fist, and I braced myself for the blow. But before she could swing, the lunch room door burst open and students flooded the quad, carrying trays and drinks, and talking about whatever cafeteria disaster had cut our lunch time in half.

I wasn’t sure the sudden crowd would actually stop either her physical or psychological blows, but Sabine dropped her fist and glared at me like she could see right past my heart and into my soul. “You’re right,” she whispered, anger shining along with something deeper and more haunted in her eyes. “We’re not friends.” Then she spun around and stomped toward the building.

And the really weird thing was that as the rest of the lunch crowd spread out around me, I could only watch Sabine go, fighting a deep bruising ache in my chest, just like the one I felt every time I lied to my dad.