With All My Soul

Chapter Seven

“Are you girls ready?” Long blond curls fell over Harmony’s shoulder as she twisted in the driver’s seat to glance at Emma, then met my gaze in the rearview mirror.

“I will never be ready for this.” Em stared through the windshield at her house. Her former house. Which held her former room and all her former stuff. Even her former dog, Toto, who was still a dog but no longer hers. “Let’s get it over with.”

Harmony laid one hand on her arm. “We’re sure your mom’s still at work?”

“Yeah.” I leaned forward between the front seats. “I called to verify, and she said Traci would be here to let us in.”

“That’s her car.” Em pointed to the dusty Chevy parked in front of us in the driveway.

“Okay. I just need one of you to ask for a drink.” Harmony pulled the keys from the ignition and leaned to one side so she could slide them into her pocket, and again I was struck by how young she looked—thirty years old, at the most. You’d never know from looking at her that her sons were eighteen and twenty. Well, Tod would have been twenty, if he’d lived. “I’ll take care of the rest,” she continued. “If you’re sure you’re up to this.”

“No choice.” Em unbuckled her seat belt, and her hand trembled with the motion. “We can’t afford to put it off any longer.”

I unbuckled my own belt, one hand on the door handle. “If it’s too much for you—if she gets upset and you can’t control the syphoning—just let me know, and we’ll get you out of there.” She had been through so much already, and my heart ached at the thought of what lay ahead for her and for Traci. A decision no woman should ever have to make. A choice no human could ever anticipate.

Another devastating decision neither of them would be facing if they’d never met me.

I was a disease, infecting everyone I came into contact with, and the rot spread too fast to be contained. I went around with my scalpel, excising the infected bits of tissue—operating on lives and memories I didn’t have the right to slice up—but the only way to truly stop the infection was to cut off the source.

To excise me.

I’d been struggling to clean up my own mess for so long that I could no longer tell if continuing to fight made me brave or selfish.

“Thanks. I’ll be fine, though.” Em opened her door and got out of the car, and when I stood, still trying to gather my thoughts, I was surprised for the dozenth time by the fact that I could almost see over her head. In her own body, Emma had been taller than I was.

Traci answered the door on the second knock, and the first thing I noticed when she let us in were the bags beneath her eyes. She’d looked tired at Emma’s funeral, but I’d attributed that to the stress of losing, then burying, her sister. But now, I couldn’t deny that it was more than that.

It was the pregnancy.

Traci, Emma’s middle sister, was pregnant with my murderer’s child. And, like nearly everything else that had gone wrong over the past few months, that was my fault. Mr. Beck had been looking for me when he’d found her.

“Hey, Kaylee. It’s good to see you.” Traci pulled me into a hug with too-thin arms, and I had to stop myself from blurting out how sorry I was for what she was going through, and how I’d do anything for a cosmic do-over. For the chance to take it all back.

Instead I swallowed apologies she wouldn’t understand and returned her hug. “Thanks.” I was careful not to squeeze her too hard. She hardly had any belly yet, and she looked like she’d blow over in a light breeze. “This is Harmony Hudson, Nash’s mom. And this is my cousin Emily. They came to...help. Moral support.”

“Nice to meet you.” Traci shook Harmony’s hand, then motioned for us to come in. Then she turned to shake her sister’s hand without a single sign of recognition. “Kaylee can show you Emma’s room. Take whatever you want to remember Emma by. Mom, Cara, and I have already been through it all and taken what we wanted. What means the most to us.”

Em’s eyes watered. Traci didn’t notice.

“How are you?” I said, instead of leading everyone to Em’s room. Traci was leaning against the doorframe. I was afraid she might fall.

“Um...I’m having a rough first trimester.” She let go of the doorframe and sank onto the arm of the couch. “Emma told you about...the baby?”

Actually, I’d told Em about the baby, weeks before Traci had even known she was pregnant.

When Mr. Beck had come to Emma’s house looking for me and my best friend, he’d found Traci instead. What he’d done to Em’s sister might not have been rape by any human legal definition, but I couldn’t think of it any other way. Mr. Beck was an incubus. He’d made Traci want to sleep with him. She didn’t know it, but she’d had no choice.

If her baby was a boy—an incubus—the pregnancy would probably kill her. All signs were pointing toward that already. And if the pregnancy didn’t kill her, the child’s birth almost certainly would.

We hadn’t really come so I could take something to remember Em by. We’d come to help Traci.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. Harmony looked like she had plenty of suggestions, but I knew she wanted to wait until Traci’d had something to drink.

“No, thanks, hon. I’m fine. Just tired.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Emma asked a second before I would have. “I could use a soda, if you have any.” She knew they had some. All her mother ever drank was Dr. Pepper. Pretending to be unfamiliar with her own house must have been killing her.

“Sure.” Traci stood. “Just give me a minute.”

“You don’t look like you feel good,” Harmony said, right on cue. “If you don’t mind, I can get everyone a drink while the girls go through Emma’s things.”

Traci only hesitated for a second. Then she sighed and sank onto the couch again. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

Harmony disappeared into the kitchen while Em and I headed to her room and Traci stayed on the couch.

“She looks sick,” Em whispered to me in the hall.

I nodded. “We’re going to help her.” But Traci’s health would come with a price only she could pay.

Emma’s room was a mess. There were open cardboard boxes on the floor, photos missing from the walls, and clothes draped over the back of Em’s desk chair. Her bed was unmade, too, but that had nothing to do with her death. The bed probably looked just like it had when she’d woken up after her last night in it.

I was halfway across Emma’s room when I realized she’d stopped in the doorway. “You okay?” I called over my shoulder.

“This is weird. They’ve already started packing stuff up,” she whispered. “Like they can’t wait to get rid of me.”

“That’s not it.” I pulled her inside and mostly closed the door, to keep Traci from overhearing. “Nash said his mom did the same thing after their dad died, then after Tod died, not because she wanted to forget about them, but because it hurt too much to look at everything that reminded them of what they’d lost.”

Her chin quivered. She didn’t look like she believed me.

“They’re packing this stuff up because they miss you, Em. Not because they’re glad to be rid of you. Besides—” I glanced into several of the open boxes “—most of these are still empty. Grab one and pack up what you want.”

For a couple of minutes, I went through the clothes in her closet, looking for anything that might still fit, while she went through what little remained on her shelves. Her mom and sisters had claimed everything but some elementary school soccer medals, a participation trophy from the one year she’d tried middle school cheerleading, and the first-place ribbon from fourth-grade field day, when we’d won the egg toss.

“Is that all you want?” I set the shirts I thought Em could still wear in the box she was using, on top of the medals and several pictures of the two of us, dating all the way back to third grade.

Emma shrugged. “They took most of the good stuff. And I think I’m happy about that. I don’t need stuff to remember myself by, right? I’m still here. And I want them to remember me.”

She had a valid point. And she seemed to be in good spirits, considering.

“Any luck with my jeans? Or some shorts? It’s already getting warm outside.”

“The pants are a total loss. Sorry. You just don’t have the hips for them anymore. Maybe a couple of skirts, though....”

We were going through the last of her clothes when Harmony called us from the living room. “Girls? I think she’s ready.”

My heartbeat was a hollow thump my chest suddenly felt too small to contain.

Em looked as nervous as I felt. We put down the clothes and filed into the living room, where Harmony now sat next to Traci on the couch. Em and I took the two armchairs facing the couch at opposite angles.

“Traci? You okay?” She frowned at her sister in concern. Traci looked...confused.

“I feel weird. Tired.” She looked like she could fall asleep where she sat.

I scooted to the edge of my chair to take the can of soda Harmony offered me. Traci had a cup of what looked like hot tea. I peered into it, but saw no trace of whatever Harmony had spiked it with. “So...how does this stuff work?”

“‘This stuff’ is just water from a natural source in the Netherworld. Water there has various properties, and this one—” she held up a plastic vial, very much like the one Sabine kept her liquid envy in “—works like an amnesic. Traci is sleepy, but her cognition is not impaired, so she can talk to us just like she normally would. But she won’t remember anything that happens in the next hour or so.”

“What about after that?” Em asked.

“She’ll probably fall asleep, then wake up here and only remember that she took a nap.”

I glanced at Traci, who was watching us in mounting confusion. “So we can tell her everything?”

Harmony nodded.

“Everything, everything?” Em clenched the arms of her chair. “Like, about me?”

“If that’s what you want to do.”

Emma didn’t look sure, and I was hyperaware that the clock was ticking. So I started. “Traci, we have some things to tell you, and most of them are going to be hard for you to believe. But don’t worry about that, because you’re not going to remember this anyway.” We only needed her to understand long enough to make a very difficult decision.

Traci focused on me sluggishly. “This feels like a dream.”

“Are you sure that stuff won’t hurt the baby?” Em asked.

Harmony smiled and leaned back on the couch, still facing Emma. “I’m sure. It’s really just water. And the baby’s way too young to worry about memory loss.”

“What does this have to do with my baby?” Traci laid one hand across her mostly flat stomach.

“Okay. Here goes....” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then swallowed my own nerves and uncertainties and met her gaze. “Traci, there’s a better than average chance that your baby isn’t human.”

Traci blinked. Then she laughed kinda sluggishly. “Have you two been drinking? It’s, like, three in the afternoon.” She seemed to have forgotten Harmony was even there.

“No.” Em gripped the arms of her chair. “Your baby’s not human, but that’s okay, ’cause Kaylee’s not, either. In fact, she’s dead.”

“Who are you again?” Traci frowned at her.

“We’ll get to that in a minute.” I stood. “Traci.” She turned to see me and suddenly seemed more drunk than tired. “I’m a bean sidhe. Most people call us banshees, but whatever you know about banshees is probably wrong. Incomplete, at the least. Also, like she said, I’m dead.”

There were probably a million better ways to tell her what she needed to know and a million people better prepared than I was to deliver the news—like Harmony—but we were short on time and on volunteers Traci knew well enough to trust.

“You’re dead.” It wasn’t a question. Yet she obviously didn’t understand. “And you’re a banshee.”

“I know it sounds weird. I didn’t believe it at first either. But I can prove it. At least, I can prove the part about being dead. Are you ready?”

“Sure.” She shrugged listlessly, then crossed her arms beneath a well-endowed chest, obviously humoring us. “Knock yourself out. Be as dead as you want to be. ’Cause we haven’t had enough of that around here.”

Valid point.

I caught Traci’s skeptical gaze and held it. Then I let myself fade from sight. I didn’t actually go anywhere, but they couldn’t see me.

As soon as I started to fade, Traci sat up straight. She didn’t look sleepy anymore.

“What the hell just happened?” She turned to Em and Harmony. “Did you see that? Did she just disappear?”

Em nodded solemnly. “She does that now. A lot. Because she’s dead.”

“How did...? When did she...?” Traci closed her eyes and shook her head, then opened her eyes to stare at the spot where I stood, though she still couldn’t see me. “What?”

“Remember the night I got stabbed?”

Traci actually jumped. Her gaze flitted over the room but couldn’t find me until I let myself reappear. “You got stabbed, and now you can do that?” She waved a hand in my general direction. “So you’re saying...you died? When you got stabbed by...?”

She couldn’t say the name of the man who’d fathered her child and stolen my life.

I couldn’t blame her. And for the first time, I thought about what that whole thing must have been like for her. What it must still be like. I was all over the news for weeks—the girl who’d survived being stabbed by her teacher. What most people didn’t know was that I hadn’t really survived.

What even fewer people knew was that before Mr. Beck had gotten to me, he’d gotten to Traci Marshall, who’d had no choice about what they did together, though she didn’t know her will was being subverted.

Now she was carrying the inhuman child of a serial rapist and murderer. The daily reminder of even what little of that she understood must have been hell.

“Yeah. I died.” I stared at the floor for a moment, pushing back remembered terror, blazing pain, and the overwhelming memory-scent of my own blood. “I’ve been faking life ever since. There was a whole cover-up and everything.”

“I don’t... How is that possible? If you’re really dead, why are you still here? How are you here?”

“The how part is a little complicated. The short version is this—there are lots of things out there you don’t know about. Things you’ll never know about, if you’re lucky. Most of those things are dangerous and scary. I’m neither, I hope. But I am dead. I can make my heart beat, but it doesn’t do that on its own, and when it doesn’t pump blood, I get cold. Not refrigerator-cold, but cooler than the natural body temperature. I don’t have to eat, but I can if I want to. I can get hurt, and if I do, I heal really slowly, because my body isn’t as alive as it used to be.”

Though in some ways, I was more alive than I’d ever been. Thanks to Tod.

“And you can...disappear?”

“Yeah. That’s one of the convenient aspects. The downside is that I’ll never age, which means I’ll never get to live in one spot for very long.” At least, not visibly. “And I’ll never grow up or have children.”

Traci looked so sad that I wished I’d left that last part off.

“But there’s more.” I sat in my chair again, and Emma scooted hers closer. “The night I died was the night you got pregnant. Do you remember that?”

Traci flushed with the memory. “But I never told anyone...?”

“I know because the father of your baby is the man who killed me.”

“How the hell did you know that?” She leaned forward so far I was afraid she’d fall off the couch. “I never told anyone who he is. Not even my mom. I couldn’t, after I found out what he did to you.”

“He told me.” Beck had wanted me to know exactly what he’d done to Traci, and that it was all my fault, and that he would do the same to Sophie and Emma if I put up a fight while he killed me and stole my soul for his unborn son.

Traci’s gaze lost focus. “It was so weird. I’d never even met him, but the moment I saw him on the front porch, I wanted him. I didn’t want to want him—he was a total stranger—but I couldn’t help it. Then I saw him on the news and heard what he’d done, and after that, I couldn’t tell anyone....” Her eyes filled with tears, and her hand spread over her stomach.

“Traci, Mr. Beck wasn’t human,” Harmony said, and I envied the control she had over her voice. How she was able to sound calm and soothing, when surely she was as affected by Traci’s trauma as Em and I were. “He was a predator and a parasite. What he did to you wasn’t your fault. In fact, it had nothing to do with you—you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Her tears fell. “I was at home!”

“I know.” My heart ached for her, but the terrifying truth was that sometimes home is the wrong place. It certainly was for me the night I’d died. “Unfortunately, it gets worse. Traci, if your child is what his father was, there’s a really good chance you won’t survive this pregnancy. So...you have to make a decision. We’ll give you all the information we have, but the choice is yours.”

Thank goodness. I’d had to make several impossible decisions recently, but nothing like the one Traci was facing. I’d never had to decide the fate of a child.

“Wait...” She scrubbed her face with both hands, like she was trying to wake herself up, and Harmony handed Traci her teacup. Traci pushed hair back from her face, then drained the rest of her tea, though it must have been cold by then. “What was Mr. Beck? What is my baby?”

The cool thing about disappearing before someone’s eyes is that they tend to believe anything you say afterward, which cuts down on a lot of the time I would normally have spent trying to convince someone that humans are not alone in the world. Either world. Traci had taken the expressway to all things supernatural. For me, that was kinda nice.

For her, it was understandably traumatic, and the more of the truth she heard, the worse that would get.

“Beck was an incubus,” Emma said. “That’s basically a sex demon.”

“A sex demon?” Traci stared at the coffee table like it might contain a translation of that phrase that was easier to stomach. “I had...” She swallowed thickly. “With a demon?”

“Actually, an incubus is just one of several kinds of psychic parasites. This kind happens to feed on...desire.”

“Lust,” Emma corrected, her voice sharp enough to sting. “Don’t sugarcoat it. She needs to know what really happened.” Em turned to her sister. “He came here that night looking for us, and he found you instead.”

“Why would he be looking for you here?” Traci’s frown deepened. “Who are you?”

Emma groaned, frustrated by the reminder that her own sister still didn’t recognize her. “Who I am doesn’t matter. The point is that he was mad that we stood him up, and he took that out on you, and I’m so sorry. He raped you, Traci.”

“No...” She shook her head, confusion momentarily overridden by denial that bruised me all the way to my soul. “I wanted to....”

“You didn’t have any choice,” Harmony said softly, and I could have hugged her for stepping in. Em and I...we were in over our heads. I didn’t know how to explain the truth to Traci without further upsetting her. “He made you want to. It’s as much a violation of your will as of your body. There’s nothing you could have done any differently.”

“No.” She shook her head again and swiped tears from her cheeks in one determined motion. “That’s not how it happened. I—”

“Traci.” Emma reached for her hand, but her sister pulled away from the touch she didn’t recognize, and my heart ached for Em. “Under what other circumstance would you have opened the door for a perfect stranger, then invited him straight to your bed?” Fresh tears swelled in Traci’s eyes, and her sister continued, “The only difference between Mr. Beck and half the men in prison for assault right now is that he violated you on multiple levels. Which makes me wish Kaylee could kill him all over again. And that I could help this time.”

Traci stared at the floor, her gaze unfocused, one hand still spread over her stomach. I wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. Or how well she was handling what she’d already heard.

Hell, I wasn’t sure how well I was handling it.

“So the baby...?”

“Your baby is almost certainly an incubus,” Harmony said. “So we need to discuss the best way for you to...survive.”

Traci blinked, then frowned, and my heart ached as I watched her struggle to bring Harmony into focus through pain, confusion, and the Netherworld contaminate in her system. “Why wouldn’t I survive?”

“Because incubus babies are notoriously hard for human women to carry. They...” Harmony only hesitated for a moment, but I could see how much she dreaded speaking the necessary truth. “Well, they drain their mothers, from the inside out.”

Em set her soda on the coffee table and ran one hand through her hair. She seemed surprised when there was less hair than she remembered. “Then, when they’re born—if they’re born—they have no soul of their own, and if there isn’t one ready for the baby, it’ll take the mother’s soul. Unless she’s human.”

“Even if she’s human,” Harmony clarified, to my horror and confusion. “A human soul can’t support an incubus baby for long, but that’s no help to a mother who’s already passed away for want of a soul by the time her baby dies. Usually the father spends most of the gestational period hunting for a non-human soul for his child, but in this case, there’s no father.”

“May he rot in hell for all of eternity,” Em added.

“I don’t...” Traci shook her head, like she was trying to clear cobwebs from her mind. “That’s a lot of information about something I’m not sure I understand.” She glanced from one to the other of us in mounting fear. “What does all that mean?”

Harmony exhaled slowly. “It means that if you manage to carry the baby to term and deliver it, at birth he will take your soul, which will kill you. Then, when your soul fails to support him long-term, the baby will die anyway.”

Em met her sister’s gaze with a wide-eyed, urgent one of her own. “So, basically, the only way for you to survive an incubus pregnancy is for your baby...not to.”

Traci nodded. Then she stared at her hands, sitting idly in her lap, obviously thinking. Hard. When she finally looked up, I was impressed by how calm she seemed, and I wondered how much of that was because of what Harmony had put in her drink. “So, what are the chances that the baby is actually an incubus? I mean, I’m human, so the baby could be human, too, right?”

I nodded, but Harmony shook her head. “Traci, hon, your baby is an incubus. I can tell that from looking at you. At how sick you are. You’re sick because your baby is sharing your soul at the moment, just like it’s sharing your blood and everything you eat. All of that puts a huge strain on you, and, frankly, you’re older than anyone I’ve heard of who’s successfully delivered an incubus.”

“But I’m only twenty-two.”

“The younger, the better. Evidently,” I said. Which was why Beck had posed as a high school math teacher—for virtually limitless access to underage girls. The bastard.

“Okay.” Traci took a deep breath and stared at her hands. Then she took another deep breath and looked up, her mouth set in a firm line. “I’m not ending my pregnancy—I don’t care what kind of baby I’m carrying. I don’t care who or what his father was. I care that this baby is mine and I want him. So...what do we do?”

Harmony frowned, and I recognized the worry lines in the center of her forehead—the only sign that she might be older than the thirty-year-old she looked like. She got those same lines every time she saw Nash and Sabine together.

Emma exhaled heavily. “Trace, you’re not thinking this through. If you try to have this baby, you’re going to die. That’s, like, ninety-nine percent certain. You can’t do that to Mom and Cara. Not after the funeral.”

“Who are you?” Traci’s eyes flashed with anger, and in that moment she looked so much like Emma—the old Emma—that I caught my breath. “I don’t even know you!”

Em’s eyes filled with tears again. “Traci. It’s me.” She waited, searching her sister’s face for some sign of recognition, and when she found none, she turned to me, heartbreak drawn in every feature on her face. “I thought she’d be able to see it, at least in my eyes.”

I got up to sit on the arm of Emma’s chair so I could put one arm around her, hating how helpless I felt in the face of her pain. “Traci, this is Emma. Your sister. She didn’t really die. Well, she did. But...it’s complicated, and now she has a new body.”

Somehow, even as the words fell out of my mouth, that part sounded much less believable than, “Hey, Traci, you’ve inadvertently taken on the role of human incubator for a demon’s spawn.”

Traci blinked at me. Then her gaze hardened. “What is wrong with you? My sister—your best friend—just died, and I don’t care whether you can make yourself disappear, or run at the speed of light, or fly to China with no airplane, it is never going to be okay for you to joke about that.”

“It’s true,” Harmony said. “There was an...accident. I’d appreciate it if you don’t make us explain every little detail, because it’s complicated, and we don’t have all night. What you really need to know is that this is Emma. Your sister. Her death has been just as hard on her as it has been on you and your mom and sister.”

“I can prove it,” Em said before Traci could start arguing or get more upset. She leaned forward in her chair, obviously desperate to have her say before her sister kicked us out. “I know things no one else but you and I know. Like...I know what flavor bubble gum you stuck in Cara’s hair the night before picture day when she was nine. It was that horrible watermelon flavor. The kind that’s green on the outside and red in the middle. Only when you chew it, it turns brown and looks as gross as it tastes. And I know about the time you accidentally took nighttime cold medicine instead of daytime cold medicine and you fell asleep in first period, and some jackass wrote all over your face with permanent marker. I guess there’s probably a whole class full of people who remember that, and Mom and Cara know, but why would any of them tell me? I know because I was there while Mom tried to scrub four-letter words off your forehead with rubbing alcohol, and I was with Cara when she went out to buy stage makeup to cover up the ghost of the F-word on your cheek, when the alcohol didn’t work. I saw you cry into the mirror every day for a week, waiting for the ink to wear off.”

“Oh my...” Traci’s eyes were huge and her cheeks were pink, but I saw no sign of doubt on her face now. “Emma?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” Em smiled bigger than I’d seen her smile since the day she woke up in Lydia’s body. “Death sucks. I mean, I’m still alive, but everything’s different, and I hate my new hair, and my old clothes don’t fit now, and the world looks different when you’re only five foot two, and I don’t have a car anymore, and... But I’m taking Toto with me. He’s all I have left now.”

Traci stood so fast I got dizzy just watching. She launched herself over the coffee table and threw her arms around Emma, squeezing her harder than I would have thought possible, considering how frail the expectant mother’s frame looked. “I can’t believe it. I don’t really understand what’s happening here, but this is real?” She sounded half-choked, like she was speaking through tears, and we all nodded. “I thought you were dead.” Traci pushed Em away and held her at arm’s length, suddenly as furious as she’d been relieved a moment earlier. “I thought you were dead! How could you do that? How could you let us think you died?”

“I didn’t have any choice. Don’t be mad. What was I supposed to say, ‘Hey, guys, I died, but then Kaylee got me a new body, but you’re still gonna have to bury me, and pretend you don’t know I’m still here’?”

“I guess not.” Traci sank into her seat again, but she couldn’t stop staring at Emma. “You look so different. Except your eyes...”

Emma glanced at me with her brows arched. “Oh, now she notices my eyes.”

“Girls, I truly wish we had time for the reunion this moment deserves. But we’re running out of time on this dose.” She gestured to Traci’s empty teacup. “And I’d rather not risk Traci still being under the influence of a second dose when her mother comes home. I’d hate for her to forget something she needs to remember.”

“So, I’m really not going to remember any of this? I won’t remember about Emma?”

“I’m afraid not. However, you may subconsciously remember that she’s alive, and that could make it easier for you to move on, even if you still believe on the surface that your sister is dead.”

Traci nodded, and I privately wondered how many good uses I could find for a vial of Netherworld forget-me water if I had one.

“But as sorry as I am for everything you’ve been through,” Harmony continued, “we really need to get back to the matter at hand. Do you understand what we’ve been telling you?”

“I think so.” Traci’s eyes narrowed in thought. “My sister’s still alive, but my baby’s going to die. Or else I will.”

“No. You’re not going to die.” Harmony looked...heartbroken. She leaned toward Traci on the couch to emphasize the importance of what she was saying. “We came here to tell you the truth, so you can do what needs to be done. To save your life.”

“Well, I won’t do it.” Traci leaned back against the cushion, one hand on her small belly, as if the matter was already decided. “I’m not going to kill my baby.”

“Traci...” Em said, but her sister shook her head firmly.

“No. He’s sharing my soul. My soul, Emma. That means he’s part of me. How am I supposed to kill part of myself? I can’t live with myself, knowing his death was the price for my life.”

A storm of horror and empathy collided within me, trapping me between that figurative rock and hard place. The decision was Traci’s to make—but I wasn’t sure she fully understood the choice she was making. Or the consequences of letting an incubus baby live.

“But, Trace, he’s probably going to die anyway!” Emma insisted. “You can’t carry him, and if you try, you’ll both die. You’re already sick, and it’s still your first trimester!”

“There’s another problem, Traci,” I said quietly, and Harmony’s attention settled on me like a comforting hand on my back, silently encouraging me to say what had to be said, even as waves of nausea rolled over me at the very thought. I took a deep breath. When I was sure I had Traci’s full attention, I continued, “Your son isn’t human. The male offspring of an incubus is always an incubus, so...you need to understand that even if you could carry and deliver this baby, and even if you both survived, you wouldn’t be raising a normal little boy. You’d be raising a predator.”

Her uncertain frown deepened. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“When your son reaches puberty, he’ll develop an appetite—a need—to feed on lust, in any form. If he doesn’t, he’ll starve to death, just like he would without food.” I scooted forward in my chair. I could practically feel her taking in every word I said, studying them for truth and, beyond that, for meaning. “Your son will grow up to do to other girls what Beck did to you. He will bowl them over with a desire he exudes—and won’t be able to control without practice—then he’ll take what he needs, when he needs it, from whoever is convenient at the time. Like you were convenient for Beck. At best, he’ll try and fail to control his appetite, unintentionally victimizing girls who don’t even know they’re victims. Girls who won’t understand why they slept with a strange boy and might think of themselves as sluts because of something they had no control over. I can only imagine how damaging that kind of self-image will be for the rest of their lives. At worst, your son will be a flat-out rapist and murderer, like his father.”

I could see her horror growing with every word I said, but I continued because she needed to know all of it. She needed to understand.

“Either way, he will be the most dangerous thing on the middle school playground, and that will only get worse the older he gets. He’ll be a sexual predator, Traci. There’s nothing any of us can do to change that. That’s what incubi are. It’s how they survive, and their survival is in direct opposition to the free will of every woman in their path. You know that even better than we do.”

Traci’s hands started to shake in her lap, and her gaze lost focus beneath the tears now standing in her eyes.

“And it’ll be even worse than that when he feels the need to...reproduce, about once a century,” Harmony added. “During each of those spawning periods—for lack of a better term—up to a dozen young girls could die trying to carry his child. Which is the same risk you’re facing now. Do you understand?”

Please, please let her understand. Somehow, telling Traci that her child would grow up to be a monster was even harder than telling her that the conception was a crime of convenience committed against both her mind and her body. I hated myself for having to tell her either of those things, and suddenly I understood why some people might be inclined to shoot the messenger.

“You’re telling me that my son will be a psychological rapist, right?” Harmony nodded, and for the first time since we’d arrived at Emma’s house she looked uncomfortable to be there. “Well, I don’t accept that,” Traci continued. “You may know what this baby will be, but you don’t know who he’ll be. You can’t possibly know how much nurture can affect his nature, and you don’t have any right to judge him now for crimes he may commit sixteen years from now. And you don’t have the right to judge the kind of mother I’m going to be. The kind who would never let her child turn into the monster you’re describing. He deserves a chance. I deserve a chance. And he’s mine.” Tears filled her eyes again, and she sniffled, trying to hold herself together.

“Trace—” Emma started, but her sister interrupted.

“No! You can’t just come in here and tell me that this thing happened to me. This thing I couldn’t stop and didn’t even understand. You can’t tell me that this murdering bastard came into my house and got into my head and scrambled everything up, and made me think I wanted him to do what he did, and that none of what I felt about that was real. That the whole thing was...corrupt.” She gestured angrily at the front door and at her own head as she spoke, and my heart beat so hard my chest ached from the pounding. “You can’t come in here and tell me all that, then tell me I can’t keep the one good thing to come out of the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. He might have taken a decision away from me, but you’re not going to. This is my choice. This is my baby.” Traci stood, staring boldly down at the sister she’d just rediscovered. “I’m not going to end my pregnancy. If that’s what you expect me to do, then...get out. Thanks for coming and telling me all these horrible things, but now you need to go. All of you. Now.”

“Wait.” Emma stood. Unspent tears trembled in her eyes. “Wait.” She turned to me. “We have to help her.”

“Em, there’s nothing I could do.” I’d rarely felt more helpless. More useless. But we were way out of my league.

“She just needs a soul. You can get her a soul. I know you can. You’re a bean sidhe, and you’re a reclamationist. Or whatever. Right?”

Traci looked so suddenly hopeful that my heart broke for her all over again. “Can you?”

“No! I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. I don’t get to keep the souls I reclaim! I have to turn them in. And it’s not like I have extras lying around.” But as soon as I’d said it, I realized that might not be true.

“What?” Em’s gaze narrowed on me. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. Just...maybe. It might be possible. But I can’t promise anything.”

Harmony stood, her hands opening and closing at her sides like she was nervous. Like we were making her nervous. “Girls, this won’t work. It’s not our place to...give people souls that don’t belong to them. That’s beyond what a bean sidhe can do. It’s beyond what we’re supposed to do.”

“But Kaylee did it! She put my soul here in Lydia’s body, so I know she could do that for Traci’s baby. If we had a soul for him.”

Harmony blinked. She opened her mouth like she’d make another objection or tell us how dangerous that idea was. But nothing came out.

“But finding a soul for your baby will be a moot point if you don’t survive the pregnancy,” I said, and Traci’s expression fell so far I thought her jaw might actually drop off her face.

Emma turned to Harmony. “You have another vial in your purse, don’t you?” Her voice was quiet. Sad. Thoughtful. “What does the other vial do?”

“It’s a mixture of some plants and roots from the Netherworld. For Traci. For if she decides to end her pregnancy.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a second plastic vial a quarter of the way full with a pale yellow liquid. “This is the safest way.”

“If you can do that...” Em’s voice broke, and I realized she was crying. “If you can help her lose the baby safely...can’t you help her keep it safely? Isn’t there some plant or root in the Netherworld that can...I don’t know. Boost her immune system, or give her a superdose of vitamins, or somehow make her healthy enough to carry the baby to term?”

“Emma, Traci, I know this is hard, but the chances of this ending well are so small,” Harmony said.

Em swiped one arm across her eyes angrily. “No. This is my nephew we’re talking about. And my sister. She’s lost enough already. She can’t lose the baby, too. If you can help her, you have to.”

Harmony sighed. She closed her eyes, and her lips moved without making any sound. Like she was praying. When she finally looked at us again, her blue eyes were swirling with...sadness. Or maybe regret. I couldn’t tell for sure. I’d never seen her unable to control the swirling before.

“I can’t promise anything. I can help, but...there are no guarantees. The chances are still slim—”

“I’ll take them.” Traci wiped tears from her cheeks. “I’ll take those chances. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll pay you. Just please do whatever you can for my baby.”

“Oh, honey...” Harmony took Traci’s hand and pulled her closer. “I would never charge you. I just need you to understand that I have no idea whether or not this will work. We’ll have to take it day by day. And your baby may come early. We may have to make him come early, if your body starts to fail you.”

“Fine. Whatever it takes.”

“Okay.” Harmony sat, and Traci sat next to her. Em and I sank into our seats, fascinated and a little scared. “First, let’s put this away.” She slid the yellow vial back into her purse. “Second, you’ll need to eat healthily. Exercise, but don’t overdo it. Get plenty of rest. And...I’ll be back tomorrow with something for you to take every day. With tea or water. No coffee.”

Emma frowned. “Harmony, is she going to remember this?”

“No.” Harmony glanced at the ground for a second, thinking. “You’ll have to introduce me to her again, Kaylee, and I’ll give her the mixture as a prenatal supplement.” She turned back to Traci. “Are you sure you want to do this? You won’t remember what we’ve told you. You won’t remember the risks. You won’t remember...so much of this.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Traci insisted. “I would never give him up, no matter what I know or don’t know about this pregnancy. If you tell me tomorrow that I need whatever you’re bringing, I’ll believe you. I’ll take it.”

“If she doesn’t, Nash can help, right?” Emma leaned closer to whisper.

I nodded. “Nash, or Tod, or my dad.” Any one of them could Influence Traci into wanting to take what she needed to take to help her keep the baby. And I was only willing to let them do that—to play with her mind—because we’d all seen how badly she wanted to keep her baby.

But... “Traci, there’s one more thing.” I’d never hated myself as badly as I did for what I was about to say. She nodded for me to go on, and I could see in her eyes that though she might not have anticipated the wording, she knew at least some of what I was going to say. “If you can’t do this...” I took a deep breath, then started over.

“If it turns out that nurture can’t trump nature and your son becomes dangerous, I’ll have to...stop him.” That wasn’t in my job description, strictly speaking, but I already felt responsible for whatever this theoretic incubus might do later in life, because I’d agreed to help bring him into the world. Against my better judgment. “I can’t let him hurt people, Traci. I’ll be watching him. And I won’t be alone. Your son will get a chance, but he’ll only get this one chance. And the next tough decision on his behalf won’t be yours to make.”

It would be mine.

And I would damn well make the right one.