My Soul to Steal

5

AT FIRST, I JUST sat there. Stunned. Staring at Mr. Wesner’s desk. And before I could ask for details, a crowd had formed around us, everyone looking at Emma.

“Wesner’s dead?”

“He died here?”

“No way,” one of the girls from the pom squad—Leah something or other—insisted. “I was here early to sell raffle tickets, and I didn’t see anything. No police. No ambulance. No body. It’s just a stupid rumor.”

Em shook her head and gestured for silence. “It’s true. I heard Principal Goody telling Mr. Wells in the office when I went in for a late slip. One of the custodians came in at six this morning to let a repairman into the cafeteria before breakfast, and he found Mr. Wesner. Right there.” She pointed at the desk again, and every head pivoted, all voices silenced now, except for Emma’s.

“Goody said the custodian called her, and the ambulance was already here by the time she got here at, like, dawn. They took him before any of us got here, but they’re still in the office scrambling for a sub.”

“Damn,” someone said from behind me, and while I watched, the same stunned, vaguely frightened expression seemed to spread from face to face.

“How’d he die?” Brant Williams asked, clutching the back of my chair.

Emma shrugged and glanced at the desk again, and again, all eyes tracked her gaze. “I don’t know. A stroke or something, I’m guessing. He was probably here all night.”

“Ugh. That is so morbid,” Chelsea Simms said, yet never paused in the notes she was taking for the school paper. But I couldn’t help wondering if they’d actually let her run the story. “This whole year has been morbid,” Leah added, eyes round and a little scared, and everyone else nodded.

You have no idea….

Ironically, Mr. Wesner’s stroke, or heart attack, or whatever, was the only normal death our school had experienced so far. Yet it was the one that most creeped people out.

Before anyone could ask any more questions, Mr. Wells, the vice principal, came in and officially announced Mr. Wesner’s unfortunate, unexpected demise, then said that he’d be watching the class until a substitute could be found.

Wells seemed disinclined to dig through Mr. Wesner’s desk for his lesson plan, though, so he gave us a free period. Which meant we were free to spend the period imagining Mr. Wesner slumped over the desk our vice principal obviously didn’t want to sit behind.

“Can you believe this?” Em whispered, scooting her desk closer to mine. “Yesterday he was fine, and today he’s dead. Right here in his own classroom.”

“Weird, huh?” And I couldn’t help wondering why Tod hadn’t told me someone was scheduled to die at my school, just as a courtesy. If I’d been there when it actually happened, I’d have been compelled to sing—or scream—for his soul.

“And sad. Makes me feel bad about not bothering with homework for most of last semester. Do you think he was grading midterms when he died?”

I frowned when I realized she was serious. “Emma, your test did not give him a stroke.”

“I think you underestimate my incomprehension of sign, cosign, and tangent,” she said, obviously trying to lighten the mood. And failing miserably. Her eyes narrowed as she watched me. “Everyone else is completely weirded out by this. Why isn’t this freaking you out, Kaylee?”

I could only shrug. “It is. It’s just that…” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to her. “I’ve seen a lot of death in the past few months, and every bit of it has been weird and wrong. After all that, it’s actually kind of good to know that Mr. Wesner died at his own time and that his soul isn’t being tortured for all of eternity. For once, death worked the way it was supposed to, and honestly, that’s kind of a relief.” Even if it did happen at school.

“I guess I can understand that,” Emma said at last. But I had my doubts. “Okay, enough of this. I’m depressing myself.” Emma shook her head, then forced her gaze to meet mine. “So…what were you going to say earlier?”

My news didn’t seem quite as catastrophic as it had before I’d found out my algebra teacher died, but the very thought of Nash and Sabine alone at his house still made my blood boil. “Nash spent most of the night with Sabine.”

“With her? Like, with her, with her?”

I shrugged. “He says they were just talking, but she’s on the prowl, I swear. She actually reminded me that Nash and I broke up. Like that gives her some prior claim or something.”

“Well, yeah, technically. You’re both his exes now, so…” Em hesitated, obviously wanting to say something I wouldn’t want to hear. “Does he seem interested in her again?”

“His mouth says no, but his eyes… His irises churn like the ocean every time I say her name. There’s definitely something still there, but I can’t tell exactly what it is. It’s strong, though. And she was spewing innuendo like some kind of gossip geyser, saying how great it is that Nash’s mom works nights. She’s making up for more than just lost time. Plus…” I felt like an idiot, saying it out loud, but it was the truth. “She’s creepy.”

“What do you mean, creepy?”

I scratched at a name carved into the corner of my desk. “I don’t know. She gives me chills. I think there’s something wrong with her. And Nash knows about it, whatever it is. He told me he’d talk to her. Like, he’d take care of her. I think she’s seriously unstable.”

Em raised both brows at me, and I rolled my eyes. “I know, that sounds hypocritical coming from me.” Usually I was hypersensitive to references to mental instability, because I’d spent a week locked up in the mental health ward a year and a half ago. “I don’t mean she’s crazy. I mean she’s…unbalanced. Dangerous. She’s a criminal, Em.”

Emma shrugged. “Tod says she did her time.”

“Yeah. A few months in a halfway house. I’d hardly call that paying for her crimes.”

“You don’t even know what her crimes are.”

“I’m guessing theft. She probably stole someone’s boyfriend.”

Emma laughed, and I gave in to a grin of my own. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Kaylee. Whatever they had can’t compare to what you and Nash have been through together. I mean, she’s human, right? How well can she possibly know him?”

I sat a little straighter. Emma was right. Sabine was a non-issue. I’d faced down two hellions in the past four months, not to mention assorted Netherworld monsters. Compared to all that, what was one stupid ex-girlfriend? Right?

BY LUNCHTIME, news of Mr. Wesner’s death had already been chewed up and regurgitated by the masses so many times that it bore little resemblance to the story Emma originally reported. In any other school, during any other year, a teacher’s death would have been a headline all on its own. But we’d already lost four students, and the yearbook’s In Memoriam page was getting regular updates. So while some of the snippets of conversation I overheard were flavored with either disbelief or morbid curiosity, most people sounded kind of relieved that life now made a little more sense than it had the day before.

After all, Mr. Wesner was pretty old and overweight enough that he’d wheezed with practically every breath. In a weird way, his death seemed to be giving people a sense of security, as if the world had somehow been shoved back into alignment with the natural order of things, wherein old, unhealthy people died, and young people talked about it over nachos and cafeteria hamburgers.

I paid for my food, then grabbed a Coke from the vending machine and made my way outside, where I found Nash sitting at a table on the far side of the quad. Alone. Again.

I felt bad for him. With the rest of the football team still reeling from their double loss, no one seemed to know what to say to the last surviving musketeer. But Nash’s solitude was a definite advantage to me. I headed his way, hoping Emma would be late again and that Sabine would walk off the edge of the earth so he and I could talk.

His eyes lit up when I sat on the bench across from him, and some of my tension eased. “Hey, did you hear about Mr. Wesner?” he asked. “Don’t you have him this year?”

“First period.” I twisted the cap off my bottle. “Em’s the one who broke the story.”

After that, he seemed at a loss for what else to say.

I knew exactly what I wanted to say—what I wanted to know—but I questioned the wisdom of actually asking. What’s that they say about beating a dead horse?

But after a few sips of my soda and a lot of awkward silence from Nash, my curiosity overwhelmed my common sense. “So…what’d she do?”

“What’d who do?” Nash asked, around a mouthful of burger.

“Sabine. What’d she get arrested for?”

Nash groaned and swallowed his bite. “Kaylee, I don’t want to talk about Sabine. Not again. Not now.”

“Well, you sure had plenty to say to her.” And in that moment, I hated Sabine for turning me into a paranoid, desperate shrew. Even more than I already half hated her for coming between me and Nash. But that wouldn’t stop me from asking what I needed to know. “How late was she at your house?” I’d never been there past midnight when his mom wasn’t home. If she was there after one, I was going to lose it. You don’t stay at your ex’s house alone with him past one in the morning to talk.

Nash exhaled, long and low. “Burglary and vandalism.”

It did not escape my notice that he’d answered my first question, rather than the latest one. Not a good sign.

“What’d she steal?” I took the top bun off my hamburger and squirted ketchup onto the naked patty, just to have something to do with my hands.

“Nothing, really.” Nash hesitated, poking his limp fries with a fork. “She took a baseball bat, but she didn’t actually leave with it.”

“What does that even mean?” I dropped the bun back onto my burger and tried to pin him with my glare. “She took something, but she didn’t really take it. What happened? She hit someone with it?” The poor, defenseless girlfriend of some guy she had a crush on, maybe?

“Not a person. A car. Thus, the vandalism charge.”

“She beat up someone’s car? Why?”

Nash dropped his fork onto his tray, exasperated. “Kaylee, that’s really her business. If you want to know any more, you’ll have to ask her.” He hesitated again, then met my gaze across the table. “Only don’t, okay? That’s all in her past, and she’s seriously trying to make a fresh start here. You wouldn’t want some stranger asking questions about your week in mental health, would you?”

Damn.

“Okay, fair enough. So long as she didn’t assault someone. I mean, if your ex hates me and is dangerous, you’d tell me that, right?”

Nash flinched, and my stomach pitched.

“What? I thought she just beat up a car?”

He set the remaining half of his burger down. “The assault charge came later, when she got picked up for violating probation.”

“She hit a cop?” My horror knew no bounds. Why on earth would he have ever gone out with a creepy, violent thief and vandal, much less slept with her?

“No!” He leaned forward and lowered his pitch when the cafeteria door opened behind me and new voices came into the quad. “Kaylee, you’re making this into a much bigger deal than it really is. Some asshole from our school in Fort Worth tried to make her do something she didn’t want to do. If she’d told me about it, I’d have taken care of him.”

The flash of pure fury in Nash’s eyes told me how badly he wished he’d had that chance.

“But she’s stubborn—like someone else I know—and she wanted to handle it herself. So she pounded on his car with his own bat. She got probation for that, but a few months later she missed curfew and was picked up for violating her parole. While she was in the detention center, waiting to see the judge, some idiot picked a fight with her in the cafeteria. Sabine broke her jaw with a lunch tray.”

Words utterly deserted me. Concepts were even a bit iffy for a minute there. Then, suddenly, I couldn’t speak fast enough.

“She broke someone’s jaw with a lunch tray.” I leaned forward, whispering fiercely. “She hates me, Nash—I can see it when she looks at me—and in case you haven’t noticed, we all share a lunch period. Where there happens to be an abundance of lunch trays.”

“She’s not…” Nash stopped, closed his eyes, then started over. “She doesn’t hate you, Kaylee. She’s jealous of you. But she’s not gonna hit you. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t, because she knows that’d piss me off.”

“Exactly what part of that is supposed to make me feel better?” Though, honestly, hearing that she was jealous of me did make me feel a teeny, tiny bit better.

He shrugged, but still looked pale and miserable. “I’m just answering your questions. What more do you want?”

What did I want? I wanted Nash. The old Nash, who’d loved me and wanted to protect me, and had risked both his life and his soul to help me. But I didn’t know—couldn’t believe—he’d had time to truly get himself back together. I wanted Sabine to transfer back to wherever she’d come from. I wanted to turn back time and make things right again.

“This isn’t about what I want,” I said at last. When in doubt, change the subject. “This is about what she wants. She wants you, Nash. You know that, right? Or is there some kind of testosterone-powered mind shield that prevents you from seeing her for what she is?”

Nash frowned and let a moment pass in tense silence before he answered. “I know what she wants, Kaylee. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to get it.”

I should have been relieved. I should have been dancing on the table in joy. But something in his eyes said my celebration would have been premature. “She will if you keep letting her hang out in your room till two in the morning.” Please, please correct me. Say she wasn’t there that late.

But no correction came.

“You’re not going to stop hanging out with her, are you?” My voice held a numbing combination of anger and disbelief.

For a moment, he watched me, studying my expression. “Are you asking me to?”

Damn it, why is this conversation so hard? I didn’t have any right to tell him who not to hang out with! How pissed would I be if he told me to stop hanging out with Emma or Alec?

The answers were there, and they were clear, but I didn’t like them.

“Nash, I just… I can’t see any way for this to play out without one of the three of us—or maybe all three of us—getting hurt.” And possibly actually injured.

Nash exhaled heavily and stared at the table for several seconds before finally dragging his gaze up to meet mine. “Kaylee, I still love you, and I still want you back. I miss you like you wouldn’t believe, and I swear that not seeing you for the past couple of weeks—not even hearing your voice—hurt worse than the nausea and headaches combined. It kills me to sit here knowing I no longer have the right to lean over this table and kiss you. I want to be the first person you call the next time something goes wrong. I want to know that you’re eventually going to be able to forgive me. And I’m not gonna do anything to jeopardize that possibility.” He took a deep breath and held my gaze. “But Sabine needs me…”

“No…” I shook my head, but he spoke over me, refusing to be interrupted.

“Yes, she does. You may not like it or understand it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. And right now, I need her, too.”

“You need her?” My nightmare came roaring back like a train about to run me over, and suddenly I wondered if it was more premonition than dream. I summoned anger to disguise the deep ache in my chest. “In what way do you need her exactly, and do not tell me she scratches the right itch, or I swear I will walk away right now, and this time I won’t look back, Nash.”

He exhaled again and his features suddenly looked heavy, like he couldn’t have formed a smile if he’d wanted to. “I’m not sleeping with her, Kaylee. I swear on my soul.”

I would have been relieved by his admission—and the confirmation I saw in his slowly swirling eyes—but I was too confused to process much of anything in that moment. “Then why would you possibly need her?”

Nash closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Then he met my gaze over our forgotten lunches. “I’m two weeks clean, and every single day feels like starting all over. It never gets any easier, but yesterday truly sucked for me. Seeing you and not being able to touch you—hardly getting to talk to you… That made everything harder. Including willpower. Last night, I was one breath away from paying someone to cross me into the Netherworld.”

I opened my mouth to ask who he could possibly have hired as a Netherworld ferry, but he continued before I could.

“Don’t ask. There are places you can go. People—kind of—who will do it for the right price.”

Fresh chill bumps crawled over my skin, followed by a bitter wash of revulsion. I hated it that he even knew things like that.

“But my point,” Nash continued, “is that I was trying to talk myself out of it when she showed up on my porch. And we just talked. I swear that’s all that happened, but it was enough. She gave me something to think about, other than how badly I wanted a hit, or an hour alone with you.”

“So she’s a substitute for me?” Suddenly my throat felt thick and hot. Bruised by the words I made myself swallow. How was I supposed to trust the two of them alone together, knowing that? “That’s not fair, Nash. I can’t…”

“I know. You’re not ready to be alone with me, and I understand that. I deserve it. But I need someone, Kaylee. I need a friend. And in case you haven’t noticed, no one else is exactly beating down the door to talk to me right now.” His wide-armed gesture took in the entire table, still empty except for us.

“They just don’t know what to say,” I insisted. “People never know what to say when someone close to you dies, and it’s even worse this time, thanks to the rumors about Scott.” Half the student body thought he and I were cheating on Nash and my cousin, Sophie, and that we’d been caught the day of Scott’s infamous breakdown.

“I know, but that doesn’t change anything. I’ve been alone and sick from withdrawal for two weeks, and when I get back to school, people just stare at me and whisper.”

“I get it.” How could I not? But I had Emma and Alec to help distract me from Nash’s absence. And even Tod had been coming around more lately… “What about Tod?” I asked, as the thought occurred to me. “Why can’t you just hang out with your brother?”

“Because he won’t talk to me. I haven’t even seen him since that night. After the Winter Carnival.” When he’d punched Nash for letting Avari possess me over and over. “Since he can’t do anything else for Addy, he’s decided that he’s your white knight, and I don’t think he’s going to forgive me until you do.”

Wow. “I had no idea.”

Nash leaned forward and crossed his arms over the table, staring directly into my eyes. “I’m not making a play for your sympathy. I know I got myself into this. But I need someone to talk to—someone to just hang out with—and I know you’re not ready to play that role for me yet. But Sabine is. And she needs me for the same reason. She’s new here, and she doesn’t know anyone else, and she’s trying to pull herself together. Just like I am.”

I held his gaze, my next question stalled on my tongue, where I wanted it to wither and die. But I had to know. “Did you love her, Nash?”

His pause was barely noticeable. But I noticed. “Yeah. We were only fifteen, but yeah, I loved her.” He blinked, then met my gaze again, letting me see the truth swirling in his. “But that was years ago. She’s just a friend now, Kaylee.”

My leg bounced under the table, uncontrollably. “Have you told her that?”

“Yeah. And eventually, it’ll actually sink in. Look, I know she makes you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry about that. And if it’s going to mean losing my second chance with you, I’ll tell her to go away. But I’m asking you not to make me do that.”

I bristled. “I can’t make you do anything, Nash.” Though the same could not be said for him and his Influence.

He frowned. “You know what I mean.”

“You want my blessing to strike up a friendship with your ex-girlfriend. The first girl you ever slept with, who’s still in love with you and doesn’t even deny it. Does that sum it up?”

Another long exhale. “Yeah. I think that covers it.”

If I said yes, I’d be giving him permission to spend time with his hot, willing ex. If I said no, I’d be denying him what he needs to work through his addiction.

How did I even get into this mess?

He’d left me no real choice, unless I was ready to let him go. Or willing to pretend that the past six weeks of my life had never happened. And I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to. Not yet.

“Fine. Hang out with Sabine. But if this thing goes beyond friendship and support—”

I’ll what? Leave him to find solace in her arms? Or her bed? That’s exactly what she wanted, and in spite of Nash’s good intentions, it wouldn’t take him long to get over me, considering the kind of comfort she’d offer. I had no doubt of that.

“It won’t,” Nash insisted, saving me from grasping for a viable threat, and I hated the sudden surge of relief in his eyes. How could he not see what she was really like?

“Whatever. But don’t expect me to spend time with the two of you.” Though maybe Tod would, if I asked him. He couldn’t watch them every second, but surely he’d see enough to report back on the true nature of their relationship….

Great, now I’m spying on Nash. I should have been ashamed. Instead, I was just…scared. Scared of losing him—even though I’d pushed him away—because now she was there to catch him.

“Just…be careful, okay? You may be looking for some kind of Netherworldly AA sponsor, but she’s looking for trouble. I saw it in her eyes.”

Nash’s brows shot up, and a smile tugged at one side of his mouth. “That’s not what you saw in her eyes. There’s something else we need to talk about, but I don’t want to do it here.”

However, before he could elaborate, footsteps sounded at my back. A second later, Sabine appeared on my right, then settled onto the bench next to Nash. Her silverware clattered as she dropped her tray on the table.

“I don’t know how you guys can eat this shit. It’s an open campus, right? Let’s go get some real burgers.”

“It is an open campus,” Nash said, both brows raised. “I almost forgot.” The prohibition against off-campus lunch—the result of a wreck in the parking lot the second week of school—had expired with the fall semester.

“There’s only twenty minutes left in lunch.” It was all I could do to speak to her civilly. Every time I looked at her, I saw her making out with Nash in front of my locker, and that bitter, acrid fear from my dream sloshed around in my stomach, rotting the remains of my breakfast.

“Yeah, but you have study hall next, right?” Sabine said, ignoring me in favor of Nash. “And a decent burger would totally be worth a tardy in Spanish.”

Nash glanced at me for an opinion, but I only shook my head. I couldn’t afford another tardy in English. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said at last, and Sabine scowled.

“Fine. But I’m not going to eat this crap.” She shoved her tray across the table, and one corner of it knocked my open soda over. Coke poured from the bottle and splash-fizzed all over the front of my shirt. I jumped up to avoid getting drenched, and Sabine stood, too.

“Here, take my napkin.” She plucked a single, thin cafeteria napkin from her tray and dropped it onto the table, where it was instantly soaked.

I glared at Nash and would have been appeased a bit by how miserable he looked—if I weren’t busy blotting my shirt, while Coke pooled where I’d sat a second earlier.

“I’ll get more napkins,” he muttered, then jogged toward the cafeteria, leaving me alone with Sabine.

“Sorry about the mess.” Sabine stepped calmly around the table and added Nash’s napkin to the puddle on my bench seat, apparently oblivious to everyone else in the quad now staring at us. “I just needed a chance to talk to you, girl-to-girl,” she said, stepping too close to me so no one else would hear. “I figure it’s best to get this out in the open.”

“What?” I couldn’t think beyond the cold, sticky spots on my shirt.

“It’s cute, how he still thinks he loves you. Very chivalrous. Very Nash. But if you’re not gonna make your move, don’t blame me for making mine.” She shrugged, and I saw that dark flash of…something in her eyes again. “Love, war, and all that. Right?”

Was she serious? Was this an open declaration of her intent to take my boyfriend? My kind-of boyfriend? Just like that?

My mouth opened and closed. Say something! I couldn’t let her have the last word—that first little victory.

“So…which is this?” I asked, frustrated to realize that I sounded shell-shocked. “Love, or war?”

Sabine’s smooth forehead wrinkled in surprise. “Both!” She smiled, a glaring ray of sunshine beneath storm-cloud eyes. “When it’s good, it’s always both. And Nash is so very, very good.” Her eyes widened in mock regret, like she’d just let some vital secret out of the bag. “Oh, but you wouldn’t know, would you?”

My face flushed. “He told you…?” Hadn’t he already humiliated me enough?

Sabine shook her head slowly, exaggerating a show of sympathy. “He didn’t have to. You may as well have a shiny white V stamped on your forehead.”

Suddenly I hated her. Truly hated her, in spite of my generally forgiving temperament and everything Nash swore she’d been through.

Unfortunately, my abject hatred saw fit to express itself in utter speechlessness.

“Anyway, I don’t have many girlfriends, so when this is all over, if you wanna hang out, I’m totally willing to let bygones be…well, bygone.” She watched me expectantly—completely seriously—and I could only stare until Sabine blinked and shrugged again. “Or not. Either way, good luck!”

She reached out with her right hand and shook mine before I recovered the presence of mind to jerk away from her grip. When my skin touched hers, Sabine blinked, and her eyes stayed closed just an instant too long. When they opened and focused on me, her smile swelled, her irises darkened, and my chill bumps returned with a vengeance.

I pulled away from her and almost backed into Emma. “What happened?” Em asked, holding out a handful of napkins.

“I knocked her Coke over,” Sabine said, as Nash jogged across the grass toward us. They soaked up the mess while I carried the soggy remains of my lunch to the trash can against the wall, desperate to put some distance between me and my new least favorite person in the whole world. In either world.

At least Avari’d never invaded my school.

“What the hell was that?” I whispered under my breath, as I dumped my empty bottle and my ruined hamburger into the can. “That was Sabine,” Tod said from my left, and I jumped, nearly dropping my sticky tray.

“Something’s wrong with her,” I whispered, when I’d recovered from the surprise. “If she wasn’t human, I’d swear that…”

“Human?” Tod’s brows rose. “She’s not human, Kay. Not even close. Nash didn’t tell you?”

Crap. He’d tried to tell me something about Sabine. Tried twice, but she’d suddenly shown up to prevent him both times. “What is she?” I said, turning to watch the cleanup effort under way at our table as my heart tried to sink into my stomach.

“She’s your worst Nightmare, Kaylee,” Tod said, his frown widening. “Literally.”