My Soul to Keep

11

“WHO IS HE, SCOTT?” I shuffled back another step and trailed my fingers over the top of his father’s desk, hoping the smooth, cool surface would ground me, in spite of my rapidly thumping heart. I needed to peek into the Netherworld, to see for myself who was talking to him, but I was afraid to take any of my attention from Scott.

“Take me…” he whispered fiercely, matching each of my steps with a larger one of his own. “We have to cross!”

Not gonna happen. I might not have Harmony’s experience, or my dad’s wisdom and pathological caution, but I was nowhere near naive enough to believe that whoever was tormenting Scott would simply “fix” him if I took him to the Netherworld.

The Netherworld didn’t do charity. This shadow man would claim us both, body and soul, and we’d never see the human world again.

Over Scott’s shoulder, the doorknob turned, and relief washed over me as Nash’s voice called out. “Kaylee?”

But the door didn’t open—it was locked—and I never should have taken my eyes off Scott.

“Nash, he’s not having delus—”

Scott grabbed my arm and jerked me forward. He pinned me to his chest and I gasped, more surprised than afraid. Something sharp bit into my throat, just below my jaw, and the shout I’d been about to unleash died on my tongue.

“Take me…” he demanded, and a cold, nauseatingly sweet puff of Demon’s Breath wafted over my face.

My breath hitched as I tried not to inhale, and my pulse pounded in my head. I wasn’t sure exactly where my jugular ran through my neck, but I was pretty sure accuracy wasn’t as important as enthusiasm in the art of throat slashing.

“If you don’t take me, I’m gonna die. And you’re gonna die with me,” Scott whispered, his voice shaky with terror.

His skin was cold, even through both layers of our clothing, and the blade—something small…a paring knife, maybe?—felt warm by comparison. “Scott, you don’t want to go there.” I had to force the words out, afraid that any movement of my throat would force the metal through my skin. “Trust me.”

“Carter, what are you doing?” Nash asked through the door, and I was worried by how composed he sounded—his best friend was about to cut my head off! Not that Nash knew about the knife…

“She won’t take me!” Scott hissed, his grip bruising my arm.

“He has a knife,” I said as loudly as I dared with the blade still pressed against my skin.

“Take you where?” Nash asked, ignoring my contribution to the exchange. And that’s when I realized he was Influencing Scott—trying to talk him down with a little bean sidhe push. “Let me in, and we’ll talk about this.”

“He’s not delusional, Nash,” I said, struggling to stay calm. “Something wants me to cross over with him. Could you please help me explain why that’s not a good idea?”

I needed Nash to do the talking, if there was any chance of his Influence actually working. And I was fighting complete panic at the feel of the blade against my throat.

In theory, if my time was up—if my name was on the list—I would die, and no amount of talking or fighting would stop that.

And if it wasn’t my time, so long as I stayed in the human world and avoided Netherworld elements, I wouldn’t die, no matter what. That not-death could come about in any number of ways. Scott might turn out to have colossally bad aim with a knife, or Nash might do everything right to stop the bleeding. Or Tod might blink in, then blink me instantly to the hospital. Or we might actually talk Scott out of violence.

Or…Scott could maim me beyond recognition and normal physical function without actually killing me.

But no matter what might happen next, crossing over would be worse. Our expiration dates meant nothing in the Netherworld, which officially made it the scariest place in existence, and the place I was least likely to take Scott.

“You’re confused,” Nash said to Scott from the other side of the door, and his voice slid over me like a warm breeze. “I can help you. Let me in, and I’ll help you.”

“No!” Scott shouted, his hand tightening around my arm.

“He knows about you. Your voice makes people do things. Shut up or I’ll kill her.”

My pulse spiked again, and there was only silence from the hallway. Tears filled my eyes, blurring the closed door until I blinked them away and mentally closed the well. Crying would not help me, nor would it help Scott. But there had to be a way out of this.

The light beneath the door flickered, like Nash had stepped closer. “How?” he asked softly, and his normal voice now sounded flat compared to the rich tones that accompanied his Influence.

“How what?” Scott asked, and his grip on my arm loosened slightly.

“How will you cross over if you kill her?” Nash clarified, and I almost smiled, in spite of my predicament. Scott knew about his vocal influence—sort of—so Nash was working without it. He was being smart. If I wanted to live, I’d have to get smart, too.

I closed my eyes, ignoring the hum from the heating vent overhead and the eerie coolness of the body pressed against my back. “Nash can’t take you,” I whispered, just loud enough for Scott to hear me.

Scott stiffened. “You’re lying.”

I started to shake my head, then remembered the knife and opened my eyes again. “Nash can’t take you, and neither can he. If he could, he wouldn’t need me, would he?” Scott didn’t answer, but he pulled me back a step across the thick, soft carpet. “Ask him. Not Nash. Ask him.”

Scott remained silent and rigid against me, and I wondered if whoever he was listening to could hear me, or if Scott had to ask him directly. Silently or otherwise.

Finally Scott seemed to sag against me, though the blade never left my throat. “Take me there. Please take me. Please make it stop,” he begged. He was close to his breaking point, which meant that whoever wanted him must be getting desperate.

Scott went quiet again, listening to something we couldn’t hear, and I was almost surprised to realize daylight still slipped through the cracks in the closed blinds. It felt like we’d been in that room forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Then Scott leaned into me, dragging my thoughts back to the crisis at hand. His mouth brushed my right ear, through my hair. “He says this is all your fault.”

What? A wash of confusion diluted my fear. What did any of this have to do with me?

“Scott, if I take you there, he’ll kill us both. Or worse.”

He stiffened again, and his knife hand twitched. I gasped as the point of the blade pierced my skin with a sharp slice of pain. A warm bead of blood trailed slowly down my neck, and I froze.

“He says I’ll die here. You say I’ll die there. But if I can’t get him out of my head, none of that matters!” He sobbed, then stood straighter, drawing me up with him as the blade pressed more firmly against my broken skin. “Take me there now, or I’ll cut your throat wide open.”

“Okay…” I said, my heart pounding so hard I could barely hear my own words, much less my thoughts. “I’ll take you. Just…put the knife down.”

“Kaylee?” Nash demanded from the other side of the door, and something thumped to the floor. He’d dropped the soda.

“No way.” Scott shook his head, jostling us both, ignoring Nash completely. “He says you’ll run.”

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to slow my racing thoughts. And my racing pulse. Then I opened my eyes to find the doorknob twisting again as Nash tried to force his way into the room.

“If this shadow man is so smart—” my voice wavered with nerves “—he’ll know it takes a lot of concentration to cross over. And I can’t concentrate with a knife at my throat.”

Nash pounded the door. “Kaylee, no…!” he shouted, but he was too upset now to manage much Influence on either of us.

Scott went still behind me, listening to his shadow man again. Then, “Fine. But if you run, he says I should gut you like a goat on an altar.”

My heart beat so hard my head hurt, and adrenaline was turning my fight-or-flight instinct into a demand. I knew what I had to do, but had no idea if I could actually pull it off. He was a lot bigger than I was, and a lot stronger and faster. And Nash would be no help from the other side of the door.

Slowly, Scott removed the knife from my neck, and more blood trickled down my throat. A moment later, the blade poked at my back through my jacket and my thin tee. “Yes, that’s much more relaxing,” I snapped, unable to censor my sarcasm, even with my life in mortal peril.

I stared at the closed door and tried to communicate my intentions to Nash silently, desperately wishing bean sidhes were psychic. But that was just another on a long list of really cool abilities I didn’t get.

“Okay, this is gonna feel kind of funny,” I warned Scott, closing my eyes as I silently wished myself luck. “Your skin will tingle, and it’ll feel like you’re falling.” Which wasn’t true in the least. Nash stopped pounding on the door for a moment, as if to listen. He knew I was lying, and had hopefully gathered from that fact that I had no intention of taking Scott to the Netherworld.

But then what I was really planning sank in, and he kicked the door so hard it shook in its frame.

“So, don’t freak out if you lose your balance, okay?” I continued for Scott’s benefit, doing my best to ignore Nash. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” But Scott’s voice had gone squeaky, and his grip on my arm was cutting off my circulation. He was terrified.

Good. So was I.

I took another deep breath. Then I spun away from the knife and twisted my arm from Scott’s grip. He shouted. The knife arced toward me. I threw my arm up to shield my face. Pain sliced across the fleshy part of my forearm. I screamed and kicked him. My boot hit his hip, and Scott stumbled toward the desk. He tripped over his own foot and went down like a felled tree.

I whirled around before he landed and fumbled with the lock, twisting the knob twice before it would turn. I pulled the door open and Nash shoved me behind him even as he charged into the room, armed with nothing but his own outrage.

Scott lay motionless on the floor, the knife clutched loosely in his fist.

For a moment, I thought he was dead. That his shadow man had been right—he’d died because he hadn’t crossed over. Then I saw his chest rise and fall, and realized he was unconscious. He’d hit his head on the desk when he fell.

Nash dug his phone from his pocket and was dialing before I’d even processed what happened. Distantly, I heard him answer the 9-1-1 operator’s questions, telling her that his best friend, Scott Carter, had gone crazy. That he’d attacked me with a knife, then fell and hit his head on a desk and knocked himself out.

The operator said help would be there soon. She was right.

Nash was still wrapping my bleeding arm with a kitchen towel when the sirens screamed down the street. “Just go along with whatever I say,” he insisted as flashing red lights drew to stop in front of the house, easily visible through the glass front door. He pushed me gently onto a couch in the living room. “Everyone at school will back us up. They all saw him acting crazy.”

My eyes watered and the room blurred. “You’re going to get him committed…” I whispered, unsure whether or not I meant it as a question.

“There’s no other choice,” Nash insisted, walking backward toward the front door to let the EMTs in. “There’s nothing we can do for him now, and the only way to keep him from hurting anyone else is to lock him up.”

“This is our fault, Nash,” I sobbed, wiping scalding tears from my cheek with the back of my good arm. “We should have done something sooner.”

“I know.” His eyes swirled with grief, and guilt, and regret. Then he turned his back on me and opened the front door.

“TELL ME AGAIN WHY you left school?” the police officer said, scooting his chair closer to the E.R. gurney I sat on, my legs crossed beneath me like a kindergartner. Only he wasn’t just an officer. He was a detective. Because attempted murder—or manslaughter, or whatever they would wind up calling it—was a felony, and even though Scott was strapped to a bed in the same mental health ward I’d once spent a week in, he couldn’t officially plead his mental defect until his parents called in their fancy, overpriced attorney to replace the court-appointed rookie currently shaking in his loafers upstairs.

And if anyone deserved to get off on temporary insanity, if was Scott Carter. He hadn’t really meant to kill me. Well, maybe he had, but he would never have done it if he weren’t in withdrawal from Demon’s Breath and under the manipulation of an as-yet-unidentified Netherworld monster. Both circumstances I was convinced Nash and I could have prevented, if we’d acted sooner. Called in reinforcements.

“Kaitlyn? Kaitlyn, are you okay?” the cop asked, and Nash squeezed my good hand until I glanced up, surprised to find everyone staring at me.

“It’s Kaylee…” I mumbled, staring at the neat row of stitches on the arm I held stiffly in front of me, awaiting a sterile bandage. “My name is Kaylee.” I was grateful for the local anesthetic, and a bit surprised that it seemed to have numbed my mind, as well as my arm.

Or maybe that was shock.

“I’m sorry. Kaylee,” the detective corrected himself, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. I’d insisted he sit, because I didn’t like him towering over me. He made me nervous, probably because I felt guilty, though he didn’t seem to suspect me of anything. “Kaylee, please tell me again why you followed Mr. Carter from the school parking lot.”

Behind him, the thin blue curtain slid back on its metal track and an elderly nurse appeared, nearly swallowed by her purple scrubs. She carried several small, sealed packages, and I eyed them suspiciously.

“Because he was acting…crazy.” There. Maybe I could help with Scott’s defense…. “He wasn’t making any sense, and we didn’t think he should be driving. So we followed to make sure he was okay.”

“And he went straight home?”

I glanced at Nash, who nodded. “Yeah. The front door was open, so we went in. He was in his dad’s office.”

The nurse ripped open a package of sterile bandages and I flinched, startled.

“And he just attacked you with a knife?” The detective was still scribbling in his notebook, not even watching me as I nodded. “Did he say anything?”

“Um… He wanted me to take him somewhere.”

Finally the cop looked up, surprised. “Where?”

“He didn’t say.” Which was true, technically. “He just said he’d kill me if I didn’t take him. I told him I’d take him wherever he wanted to go if he’d put the knife down. So he moved it from my throat to my back, and when I tried to get away, he slashed me.” I held up my injured arm for emphasis, foiling the nurse’s attempt to bandage it.

“Okay, thank you, Kaylee.” The detective stood and flipped his notebook closed, then slid it into the right pocket of his long coat. “Your dad’s on his way—” I hadn’t been able to stop them from calling him and scaring him to death “—and it looks like you’re in good hands until he gets here.” The cop smiled first at Nash, who didn’t even seem to notice him, then at the nurse, whose cold hands shook as they pressed the bandage gently on the long line of stitches curving over the bony part of my forearm onto the fleshier underside. “We’ll be following up with you soon, when we know more about what happened. Okay?”

I nodded as he headed toward the exit. He already had one hand on the doorknob when I looked up. “What’s going to happen to Scott?”

Nash glanced at me in surprise almost equal to the cop’s, but the nurse didn’t even pause in her work.

“Well, that all depends on his attorney. But Mr. Carter—Scott’s father—has testified in several cases around here and, for a psychiatrist, he knows a fair bit about the law. I wouldn’t worry about Scott. He’ll get the best legal and mental care available.”

I nodded, but only because I didn’t know how else to respond. No amount of money or treatment could fix Scott now, and for all I knew, he’d hear that voice in his head—see that shape in the shadows—for the rest of his life. Even if he never again saw the outside of a padded room.