My Soul To Take

CHAPTER 18

“What did he say?” Nash shifted in his seat, staring out the passenger’s side window at the passing streetlights. We were almost to my house, and those were the first words he’d spoken since we’d pulled out of the hospital parking garage.

“Is there anything else I should know about reapers?” I couldn’t keep annoyance out of my voice; I was tired of being left in the dark. “Can they read my thoughts or see through my clothes?” Which would actually explain a lot… “Or make me stand on my head and squawk like a chicken?”

Nash sighed and finally turned to face me. “Reapers are like a supernatural jack-of-all-trades. They can appear wherever they want and can choose who sees and hears them. If they want to be seen or heard at all. They have other minor abilities, but nothing else as infuriating as the whole selective-hearing thing.” He wrapped one hand around the armrest, his knuckles white with tension. “So what did he say?”

I hesitated to answer; if Tod had wanted Nash to hear, he’d have broadcast on all frequencies. Then again, he didn’t make me promise…. “He asked me not to get you killed. He’s trying to protect you.”

I glanced away from the road in time to see Nash roll his eyes. “No, he’s trying to protect you, and he knows you’ll be more cautious for my sake than for your own.”

“How do you know that’s what he’s doing?”

“Because that’s what I would have done.”

An adrenaline-soaked warmth spread through my chest, even though I knew Nash was wrong. Tod was looking out for him, at least in part.

Squinting into the late-afternoon sun, I turned into my neighborhood. Two lefts later, my aunt’s car came into sight, parked in the driveway next to the empty spot mine usually occupied. My uncle had taken the day off, expecting my father to arrive around midmorning. And surely Sophie had already made it back from the memorial. The gang’s all here….

Nash followed me into the living room, where my uncle sat in the floral-print armchair, angled so that he could see both the television—tuned to the local news—and the front window. He stood when we came in, stuffing his hands into his pockets, his anxious gaze searching my expression immediately for any sign of trouble.

“Sophie told us what happened. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I collapsed onto one end of the couch and pulled Nash down with me.

Uncle Brendon’s gaze captured mine and held it. “Val…isn’t feeling well today. I just put her back in bed.”

Now? I glanced out the front window to see the last rays of afternoon light just then sinking below the rooftops across the street. It wasn’t even five-thirty.

“This may not be the best time for company,” he continued, glancing briefly at Nash.

“I want him to meet Dad,” I insisted, and my uncle looked like he wanted to argue. But then he nodded in resignation and sank into his chair. “What did Sophie tell you?” I asked. I was surprised he hadn’t called me, but I’d checked my phone in the car, and there were no messages or missed calls.

But then again, he was probably pretty busy dealing with my aunt.

Uncle Brendon leaned back in his chair and lifted a sweating can of Coke from the end table. “She said Emma fainted, and while everyone was fussing over her, one of the cheerleaders fell over dead. The whole school’s in complete shock. It’s already been on the news.”

I swallowed thickly and glanced at Nash. And naturally, Uncle Brendon caught the look.

“Emma died, didn’t she?” His expression was pained, as if he wasn’t sure he really wanted to hear the truth. “She died, and you two brought her back.”

At his words, horror and a stunned incredulity washed over me in a devastating wave—the culmination of every terrifying thing I’d seen and done over the past few days, and I could only nod, holding back tears through sheer will.

Anger rolled across my uncle’s face like fog before a storm, and he stood, his hand fisted around the can. If it had been full, he’d have been wearing most of his soda. “I told you to stay out of it. I said your father and I would look into it. You could have died, and as it stands now, you got someone else killed.”

I shot to my feet, anger eclipsing my weaker emotions. “That’s not fair. None of this was our fault!”

“There’s nothing fair about this,” Uncle Brendon roared, and I knew from his volume alone that Sophie wasn’t at home. “If you don’t believe me, go ask that poor cheerleader’s parents.”

Nash stood at my side, his stance steady and strong, his gaze unyielding. “Mr. Cavanaugh, we had nothing to do with Julie’s death. In fact, we tried to save her too, but—”

We all seemed to realize simultaneously that he’d said the wrong thing. I squeezed Nash’s hand to silence him, but it was too late.

“You tried to do it again?” Uncle Brendon’s fury was surpassed only by his fear.

“We had to!” I was shouting now, and the entire living room swam with the tears filling my eyes. “I couldn’t let the reaper steal another soul without at least trying to stop it.”

A glimpse of sympathy flashed through his anger, but then it was gone, stamped out by fear born of caution. “You have to. You can’t go sticking your nose into reaper business every time someone you know dies, unless you want to die with them!” He turned to Nash then, anger still spinning in his eyes. “If you’re going to tell her what she can do, you have a responsibility to also tell her what she can’t do.”

“He did,” I said before Nash could answer. “But Emma wasn’t supposed to die.”

My uncle’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How do you know that?”

Nash spoke before I could, probably to keep me from digging my hole any deeper. “Tod got a look at the list. The reaper is a rogue, and none of those girls were supposed to die.”

“See?” I demanded, when Nash went silent without revealing the rest of Tod’s information. “We had to save her. She wasn’t meant to die yet.” Plus, she’s my best friend. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

“He wouldn’t have.” The new voice came from the entry, carried on a soft September breeze, and we all whirled toward it in unison. My dad stood in the doorway, a suitcase in each hand. “But I would.”

I should have said something. I should have had some kind of greeting for the father I hadn’t seen in a year and a half. But my mouth wouldn’t open, and the longer I stood there in silence, the better I came to understand the problem. It wasn’t that I had nothing to say to him. It was that I had too much to say.

Why did you lie? Where have you been? What makes you think coming back now will make any difference? But I couldn’t decide what to say first.

Nash didn’t have that problem. “I’m guessing this is your dad?” he whispered, leaning closer so that our shoulders touched.

My father nodded, thick brown waves bobbing with the movement. His hair was longer than I remembered it, and nearly brushed his shoulders. I couldn’t help wondering how different I looked to him.

“You must be Harmony’s boy,” my father said, his deep voice rumbling. “Brendon said you’d probably be here.”

“Yes, sir,” Nash said. Then, to me, he said, “He doesn’t sound like he’s from Ireland.”

My father dropped his bags in the entryway. “I’m not. I just live there.” He reached back to pull the front door closed, then scuffed his boots on the mat before stepping into the living room. My dad took a long look at me, from head to toe, and his jaw hardened when his eyes lingered on my right hand, still clasped in Nash’s. Then his gaze landed on my face, and a series of emotions passed over his.

Grief, first of all. I’d expected that one. The older I got, the more I looked like my mother. She was only twenty-three when she died—at least that’s what they’d told me—and sometimes even I was freaked out by the resemblance in old pictures. He also looked sad and a little worried, as if he dreaded our upcoming conversation.

But the last expression—the part that kept me from storming out of the house and taking off in the car he’d paid for—was pride. My father’s eyes gleamed with it, even as old pain etched lines into his otherwise youthful face.

“Hey, kiddo.” He took a deep breath, and his entire chest fell as he exhaled. “Think I could get a hug?”

I’d had no intention of hugging my father. I was still so mad at him I could hardly think about anything else, even with everything else going on. Yet I disentangled my hand from Nash’s and stepped forward on autopilot. My father crossed the rest of the floor toward me. He wrapped his huge arms around me and my head found his chest, just like it had when I was little.

He might have looked different, but he smelled exactly the same. Like coffee, and the wool in his coat, and whatever cologne he’d been wearing as long as I could remember. Hugging my father brought back the ghosts of memories so old I couldn’t quite bring them into focus.

“I missed you,” he said into my hair, as if I were still a child.

I stepped back and crossed my arms over my chest. Hugs wouldn’t fix everything. “You could have visited.”

“I should have.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but at least we agreed on something.

“Well, you’re here now.” Uncle Brendon turned toward the kitchen. “Sit, Aiden. What can I get you to drink?”

“Coffee, thanks.” My dad shrugged out of his black wool coat and draped it over the back of an armchair. “So…” He sank into the chair, and I sat opposite him, beside Nash on the couch. “I hear you’ve discovered your heritage. And tried it out, evidently. You restored a friend?”

I met his eyes boldly, daring him to criticize my decision when he’d already admitted he’d have done the same. “Emma wasn’t supposed to die. None of them were.”

“None of them?” My father frowned toward the kitchen; obviously Uncle Brendon hadn’t yet given him the details of my discovery. “Who else are we talking about?”

“There were three others. One a day, three days in a row.” Nash’s thumb stroked the back of mine until my father scowled at him, and he dropped my hand and leaned back on the couch. “Then the reaper took someone else today when we saved Emma.”

Irritated—yet amused—I reclaimed his hand and let them both rest on my lap. Absentee fathers had no right to disapprove of boyfriends. “All four of them—five if you count Emma—just fell over dead with no warning. It wasn’t their time to go.”

“How do you know?”

I leaned into Nash, smiling innocently as my father’s jaw tightened. “Nash’s friend Tod is a reaper.”

My father’s brows rose in surprise, and for a moment he forgot to scowl. “Your friend’s a reaper?”

Nash shrugged. “I knew him before he…died.”

Dad leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, eyes narrowed. “And this reaper told you the girls weren’t on his list?”

“They weren’t on any list,” I said, drawing his scrutiny from Nash. “Tod’s boss thinks there’s a reaper out there poaching souls to be sold in the Netherworld. Or something like that.”

Uncle Brendon froze in the doorway, holding two steaming, fragrant mugs. “Someone’s selling souls in the Netherworld?” He and my father exchanged twin looks of horror and dread before turning back to us. “What do you know about the Netherworld?”

“Just that there is one, and that some of the locals are hot for human souls.” I shrugged, trying to set them both at ease. “But that doesn’t really matter to us, right? Tod’s boss said he would take care of it.”

The relief on my uncle’s face was as thick as the tension in Nash’s posture. “Good. The reapers should take care of their own problems. It really isn’t bean sidhe business.”

Frowning, I scuffed the toe of my shoe into the carpet. “Except that this psycho reaper tried to take a bean sidhe’ s best friend. That kind of makes it my business.”

Uncle Brendon scowled and looked ready to argue, but my father spoke before he could. “Did people see you bring Emma back?” he asked, cradling his steaming mug as if for warmth.

Nash sat straighter, eager to defend me. “No one knew what was happening. Em had just collapsed, and everyone thought Kaylee was freaked out over that. And once Emma sat up, they all thought she’d just fainted.”

That was mostly true, though rumors were already circulating that Emma’s heart had actually stopped for a minute. The lady who took her pulse had probably started them. Not that I could blame her. The poor woman would probably need therapy.

But then, so might I. And maybe Emma.

My father shrugged, eyeing his brother sternly. “Sounds like no harm was done.”

“Except for Julie,” I muttered, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

My father paused with his mug halfway to his mouth. “She’s the exchange?”

“Yeah.” And though I knew in my heart that Julie’s death wasn’t our fault, I couldn’t escape the guilt that tightened my chest and made my whole body feel heavy.

Uncle Brendon sank into the other armchair and shook his head in regret. “This is why you have to stay out of reaper business. That poor girl would be alive right now if you two had just left things alone.”

“Yeah, but Emma wouldn’t.” My free hand gripped the arm of the couch. “And we had no way of knowing for sure she’d take another one. Tod said there shouldn’t be any penalty for saving a life that shouldn’t have been taken in the first place.”

“She?” My father slowly lowered his mug onto its coaster. “Do I even want to know how you know the reaper is a woman?”

I shifted uncomfortably on the couch and glanced at Nash, but he shrugged, leaving it up to me. So I made myself meet my father’s gaze. “We…kind of saw her.”

Uncle Brendon sat straight in his chair, every muscle in his body tense. “How?”

“She just showed up.” I shrugged. “When they were doing CPR on Julie. She was at the back of the gym, behind most of the crowd, and she smiled at us.”

“She smiled at you?” My father frowned. “Why would she show herself on purpose?”

“It doesn’t matter,” my uncle said. “The reapers will take care of their own. We should stay out of it.”

For a moment, I thought my father would argue. He looked almost as angry as I was. But then he nodded decisively. “I agree.”

“But what if they can’t find her?” I demanded, Nash’s hand still clasped in mine.

My father shook his head and leaned back in his chair, crossing both arms over the front of his sweater. “If you two can find her, the reapers can find her.”

“But—”

“They’re right, Kaylee,” Nash said only inches from my ear. “We don’t even know who the reaper will go after next. If she does it again at all.”

She would. The moment she’d smiled at me, I’d known she wasn’t finished. She would take another girl soon, unless someone stopped her. But no one else seemed willing to try.

My father turned to his brother, his thoughts hidden by a calm facade. “How are your girls?” he asked, and just like that, the subject was closed.

“They aren’t taking this very well.” My uncle heaved a heavy sigh. “Sophie’s out with her friends. The girl who died yesterday was on her dance team, and the rest of the squad is spending every waking moment together, like some sort of perpetual wake. And Val…She got a quarter of the way through a bottle of brandy this afternoon, before I even knew she’d opened it. I put her to bed about an hour ago to let her sleep it off.”

Wow. Maybe Aunt Val needed to go see Dr. Nelson.

“I’m sorry, Bren.”

Uncle Brendon shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, but the tense line of his shoulders said otherwise. “She was always pretty high-strung. Sophie’s the same way. They’ll be fine once this all blows over.”

But it wasn’t going to blow over, and I couldn’t be the only one who knew that.

Uncle Brendon stood and picked up his mug. His every movement spoke of exhaustion and dread. “I’m going to check on my wife. Val got the guest room ready for you this morning. If you need anything else, just ask Kaylee.”

“Thanks.” When Uncle Brendon’s bedroom door closed, my father stood and faced Nash, obviously expecting him to stand too. “Nash, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for how you’ve helped my daughter.”

Still stubbornly seated, Nash shook his head. “I couldn’t have done anything without her there to hold the soul.”

“I mean what you did for Kaylee. Brendon says your dose of truth probably saved her from a serious breakdown.” He held his hand out, and Nash floundered for one awkward moment, then stood and accepted it.

“Dad…” I started, but he shook his head.

“I messed up, and Nash picked up the slack. He deserves to be thanked.” He shook Nash’s hand firmly, then let go and stepped back, clearing an obvious path to the front door.

I rolled my eyes at his less-than-subtle hint. “I agree. But Nash is staying. He knows more about this than I do anyway.” I slipped my hand into his and stood as close to him as I could get.

To my surprise, though he looked irritated, my father didn’t argue. His gaze shifted from me to Nash, then back to me, and he simply nodded, evidently resigned. “Fine. If you trust him, so do I.” He backed slowly toward his chair and sat facing us. Then he inhaled deeply and met my steady gaze. I was ready to hear whatever he had to say.

But the real question was whether or not he was ready to say it.

“I know this all should have come out years ago,” he began. “But the truth is that every time I decided it was time to tell you about your mother—about yourself—I couldn’t do it. You look so much like her….”

His voice cracked, and he glanced down, and when he looked at me again, his eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

“You look so much like her that every time I see you, my heart jumps for joy, then breaks all over again. Maybe it would have been easier if I’d kept you with me. If I’d seen you every day and watched you develop into your own person. But as it is, I look at you and I see her, and it’s so damn hard…”

Nash squirmed, and I stared at my hands as my father looked around the living room, avoiding our eyes until he had himself under control. Then he sighed and swiped one arm across his eyes, blotting tears on a sweater too thick to be truly necessary in September.

Crap. He was actually crying. I didn’t know how to deal with a crying father. I barely knew how to deal with a normal one.

“Um, anyone else hungry? I didn’t get any supper.”

“I could eat,” Nash said, and I was sure he’d picked up on my need to break the tension.

Or maybe he was just hungry.

“Is macaroni and cheese okay?” I asked, already halfway out of the room by the time he nodded. Nash and my dad followed me through the dining room and into the kitchen, where I knelt to dig a bag of elbow pasta from the back of a bottom cabinet.

I’d thought I was ready. That I could deal with whatever he had to say. But the truth was that I couldn’t just sit there and watch my father cry. I needed something to keep my hands busy while my heart broke.

“You can cook?” My father eyed me in surprise as I pulled a pot from another cabinet, and a block of Velveeta from my uncle’s shelf in the fridge.

“It’s just pasta. Uncle Brendon taught me.” He’d also taught me to hide the occasional bag of chocolate behind his stash of pork rinds, which Aunt Val would never touch, even to throw away in a frenzied junk food purge.

My father sat on one of the bar stools, still watching as I turned the burner on and sprinkled salt into the water. Nash settled on a stool two down from him and crossed his arms on the countertop.

“So what do you want to know first?” My dad met my gaze over the cheese I was unwrapping on a cutting board.

I shrugged and pulled a knife from a drawer on my left. “I think I have a pretty good handle on the whole bean sidhe thing, thanks to Nash.” My father cringed, and I might have felt guilty if he’d ever made any attempt to explain things himself. “But why did Aunt Val say I was living on borrowed time? What does that mean?”

This time he flinched like I’d slapped him. He’d obviously been expecting something else—probably a technical question from the How to Be a Bean Sidhe handbook, my copy of which had probably gotten lost in the mail.

My father sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “That’s a long story, Kaylee, and one I’d rather tell in private.”

“No.” I shook my head firmly and ripped open the bag of pasta. “You flew halfway around the world because you owe me an explanation.” Not to mention an apology. “I want to hear it now.”

My father’s brow rose in surprise, and more than a hint of irritation. Then he frowned. “You sound just like your mother.”

Yeah, well, I had to inherit a backbone from someone. “Wouldn’t she want you to tell me whatever it is you have to say?”

He couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d punched him. “I honestly don’t know. But you’re right. You’re entitled to all the facts.” He closed his eyes briefly, as if gathering his thoughts.

“It all started the night you died.”