With All My Soul

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bringing me back to life turned out to be a two-step process. The first part involved a very private reunion with the reaper who deserved more gratitude than I even knew how to express for loving me. For waiting for me. For safeguarding my soul from a distance. And for braving the Netherworld one last time to finally bring me home.

Tod still had his room at reaper headquarters. He still had the same bed. The same chair. The same minifridge used as a nightstand. His dirty clothes still littered the floor. His tub was still too short for a proper bath, and he still only owned two towels and five washcloths.

He still had my spare toothbrush.

He still touched me like I was the most precious thing in existence.

I still loved every single second of it.

Based on my first two hours back in the human world, it was tempting to assume very little had changed. I knew that wasn’t true, but for those two hours, I let myself pretend.

When we’d finally done enough touching and holding and kissing to be sure I wasn’t going to simply melt from reality, like a mirage, we sat cross-legged on his bed, facing each other, eating ice cream with plastic spoons from paper bowls.

“How did you do it?” Tod dumped more caramel syrup on the mound of home-style vanilla in my bowl, then topped it with a scoopful of candied walnuts. “I mean, I know that since your soul wasn’t yours in the first place—very clever, by the way—the deal you struck with him was nullified. But doesn’t that nullify his promise to leave us all alone forever?”

I took a bite of my victory sundae—which had been preceded by my Welcome Back from the Netherworld pizza—and let the sugar melt in my mouth. If I’d ever tasted anything so sweet before, I couldn’t remember it.

But the sugar soured on my tongue with the memory his question triggered.

It’s a word game, little fury. You are building a cage made of promises, and Avari must believe that the bars he sees between you are locking you in. Then, later, he will turn and realize he’s the one in the cage, and that you stand on the outside, watching him, a free woman.

“Ira taught me how to negotiate.” But not until after he and I had struck our own deal. “The key was phrasing my demands as two separate agreements. The first bargain said that he would let my dad go in exchange for my immortal soul. Since my soul was never mine to give him, that deal is now null and void, and if he still had my dad, Avari wouldn’t have to give him up. But he doesn’t have my dad. And since the other bargain we struck is still in effect, he never will have my dad.”

Tod leaned over to set the syrup bottle on top of the minifridge, and the mattress creaked beneath his weight. “What was the second part?”

Water dripped from my shower-wet hair and soaked into the T-shirt he’d lent me. I swallowed another bite and licked a smear of caramel from my lower lip. “That one was intentionally simple. Deceptively so. It just said that once he took possession of my soul, he could have no further contact with you guys. Ever again. He did take possession of my soul, and since there were no contingencies named in case he ever lost possession of it, that deal still stands.”

Tod stared at me, a ghost of a smile haunting the corners of his mouth. “You may be the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”

I laughed and plucked a walnut from a peak of ice cream. “The devil is in the details.”

“Have I ever told you how sexy your brain is?”

“Finally! A man who wants me for my brain.”

“I want you for all of you. Each individual part and the sum of them all. I want you for everything you are and everything you will ever be. I will never have enough of you, because there’s no such thing.” He stared right into my eyes, and I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. I was trapped, and never in my life had I been so happy to be caught. “I will never let you go again.”

“What did you tell them?” I scooped ice into the last of the plastic cups and nearly tripped over Styx for the fourth time in the past quarter hour. She’d been following me everywhere since the moment we’d blinked into my house, and I loved her for it.

I also loved her for the fact that, like Tod, she hadn’t changed at all in the four years I’d been gone. That couldn’t be said for anyone else, based on the pictures I’d found in Emma’s room—my former room. The twin beds had been replaced with a full, and my things were packed into boxes stacked at the back of her closet.

They hadn’t gotten rid of me. They’d just packed me up. Seeing those boxes reminded me of the day I’d helped Emma pack up her former life and move into her new one. We’d changed places, sort of. That felt weird.

“I told them I had an announcement,” Tod said. “They probably expect me to announce my retirement.” Which, for a reaper, meant requesting or accepting his final death. “It’s kind of...been coming.”

I frowned and dropped the ice scoop into the sink, and he shrugged. “It was hard without you, Kaylee. I couldn’t let you go, but I didn’t know how to be here without you. If I’d never met you, I probably would have been fine.” He shrugged, and that same stubborn curl fell over his forehead. “I mean, creatures who only exist in the dark don’t know they’re missing the sun, right? But once you’ve seen the sun. Once you’ve seen it light up the world...once you’ve felt its heat all around you...inside you...” He clutched his own chest, and my heart cracked open. “It’s hard to live in the dark after the sun dies.”

“I’m so sorry.” I set the last cup on the counter and threw my arms around him again. “I’m so glad you didn’t do something...permanent.”

“I almost did. I started slipping away again. If not for my mom and Emma, I might have lost most of my humanity by now.”

“Em? You and Emma?” I pulled back to look at him, my chest aching, and I had to remind myself that four years was a long time, and they were only human—mostly. And that I’d left them, and they’d thought I was dead, and they had had every right to move on. To at least try...

Tod’s eyes widened, then he laughed and pulled me closer. “Not like that. Emma has a boyfriend. A necromancer friend of Luca’s. They’ve been together almost three years now.”

“The guy in the picture on her dresser?” They looked happy in the photo. They looked...normal. Emma deserved some normal.

“Yeah. He’s a good guy, and he loves her, and he knows how to handle the occasional syphon meltdown. But even if none of that were true...” Tod put a hand on each of my arms and looked right into my eyes. “You have my heart and soul, Kaylee Cavanaugh, and that never changed, even when I thought you were gone. Em and I are just friends. There was never anyone else. Which means that all of this—” he stepped back and spread his arms with a grin I’d missed like I would miss my own heartbeat if I never felt it again “—went to waste for four very long years.”

“Well, that’s all over now. An ego like that deserves to be stroked.” I ran my hands over his chest and stood on my toes to whisper in his ear, “Or at least humored.”

“Humored, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll take what I can get. For now...”

I pulled his head down for a kiss and didn’t let him go until an engine rumbled to a stop out front, and my heart stopped with it. “They’re here.” One of them, at least. I’d only heard one car.

I raced to the front window and peeked through the gap in the drapes to see an unfamiliar vehicle in the driveway. The driver’s door opened, and I hardly recognized the man who stepped out. He had Nash’s artfully mussed hair, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses. And he was...bigger.

My heart ached. Each beat seemed to bruise me from the inside out.

Nash had grown up, like Tod and I never would. Mental math told me he was twenty-two now, and though I could see it, I couldn’t truly believe it.

The passenger’s-side door opened and a headful of long, straight, dark hair appeared over the roof of the car. A second later, Sabine rounded the front bumper and slid her hand into Nash’s, and I’m sure my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.

She’d grown up, too, and she was gorgeous, in a mature, collected way the teenage mara I’d come to thoroughly tolerate had never been. And she looked...happy. Even with all the eyeliner she still wore and a familiar pair of guys’ khakis hanging low on the swell of her hips.

“This is bizarre,” I whispered, and Tod’s hand settled at my lower back.

“I guess it must be, seeing it all of a sudden like that.” He shrugged. “They grew up.”

“And they’re...okay? They’re good?”

“Yeah. Better than I would have expected.” His arm slid around my side and pulled me close again, just as the rear door of the car opened, and my breath caught in my throat.

Emma.

Lydia’s body had grown up, too, and Em now wore it like it was her own. She’d cut her thin hair, and it looked healthier than I’d ever seen it, bouncing on her shoulders in light brown waves. Her arms were tanned, and she’d finally figured out how to dress a body with no curves to speak of—a dilemma I remembered well.

I was still watching her walk up the sidewalk when Nash knocked on the door, then opened it and came in without waiting for the key Em had dug from her purse. “Hey, Peter Pan? You in here?”

Sabine followed him inside, and I could tell by the way their gazes passed over us, then settled on the cups of ice lined up on the kitchen counter that they couldn’t see either of us yet. I hadn’t gone spectral on purpose. Evidently—subconsciously, at least—I wasn’t ready to be seen.

“Kay?” Tod said, and they didn’t hear that, either. “You ready?”

I nodded, and I only realized that was the truth at the very last second.

Tod cleared his throat. Nash and Sabine turned our way just as Em stepped into the house.

For a moment, shocked silence reigned.

Nash took off his sunglasses, and his hazel eyes were as wide and still as I’d ever seen them. Emma dropped her purse, and Styx skittered away from the falling debris. Sabine’s mouth widened in a stunning smile. She was the first to believe her eyes, and, somehow, that didn’t surprise me.

“Kay?” She crossed the room in an instant and threw strong arms around me, while I tried to ignore the fact that she’d grown at least two inches taller since I’d last seen her. She towered over me now, and was only a couple of inches shorter than Nash. “Are you real?”

Tod laughed. “I’ve been asking her that for the past three hours. She’s real. Solid and thoroughly functional.”

“Well then.” Sabine let go of me and grinned. “I guess we know how they spent the past three hours, instead of alerting anyone else to the miraculous resurrection.” She shrugged. “Not that I blame you. If it were me and Nash, we’d still be sequestered.”

Obviously some things hadn’t changed....

“I—I don’t...” Em stuttered, and as soon as Sabine stepped back, Emma was there. She’d grown, too, but that put her at exactly my height, and I hugged her so tight I could almost hear her ribs groan. “How...?”

“She didn’t die. Levi lied.” Tod still sounded less than pleased by that, and I couldn’t blame him.

“I asked him to,” I clarified, without letting go of Emma. I couldn’t let her go. I wasn’t ready. And based on the strength of her hug, neither was Em. “I knew that if you guys knew what I was planning, you’d come after me.”

“Come after you where?” Sabine frowned, and I could tell by the suspicion dripping from that one question that she’d figured at least part of it out.

“The Netherworld.” Tod told them the part I couldn’t make myself say out loud. “She turned herself in. Which sounds really asinine until you hear about the out clause she built into her deal with Avari. That part’s really brilliant.”

“You turned yourself in? To Avari?” Emma shuddered even as she said his name, and I could see all the questions she obviously wanted to ask hiding just below her surprise and confusion. “You were there the whole time? So you’ve been...? He’s been...?” Horror washed over her face in slow motion as comprehension surfaced. As she realized where and how I’d spent the past four years. And why I’d spent them.

“Damn, Kay,” Sabine whispered.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tears formed in Emma’s eyes. “How can you be okay?”

“I made a deal with Ira. I gave him everything I couldn’t handle....” Mostly massive amounts of pain and rage. “And that left me with my...um...sanity.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but no one bought that.

“Ira. Damn.” Sabine tossed long, dark hair over her shoulder. “I haven’t heard that name in years. And you actually talked a hellion of wrath into sucking the crazy right out of you?”

“It was mutually beneficial. And Ira’ll be munching on Avari’s fury for centuries. That’s really why he agreed to the whole thing.” I blinked and shook my head, mentally changing the subject. “Enough about the Netherworld. We’re done with that now.” I’d put myself through hell for four years to make damn sure of that. “I want to talk about you guys! You’re all...grown!”

Emma laughed. “Yeah. I guess so. You missed prom. Then...everything else.”

“You’re in college?” Tod had told me that, but I wanted to hear it from her.

“Yeah. I’m a junior at A&M. But they’re about to graduate. Both of them!” She gestured to Sabine and Nash, and when my gaze fell on Nash again, it stuck there. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t said a word. He was still staring at me in shock, and his sunglasses lay on his left foot, where he’d dropped them.

“Nash?”

He blinked, and his eyes swirled with confused, surprised twists of brown and green. I took a step toward him, and he studied me. Like he didn’t dare believe the signals his eyes were sending him.

So I closed the distance between us on my own, then went up on my toes to hug him.

He felt...different. Bigger. More solid.

Healthy.

Slowly, his arms closed around me. His hug tightened steadily until I couldn’t have breathed if I’d needed to. He shook in my arms, and his tears soaked into the shoulder of my shirt.

“It’s okay,” I said with what little breath remained in my lungs. “It’s okay, Nash.”

When he finally let me go and wiped tears from his face, I wanted to hug him all over again.

“You know, there are easier ways to make an ex get over you, Kay. You didn’t have to fake your own death. Again.”

I laughed through my own tears, and I hugged him again. Then I escaped into the kitchen to pull myself together while I poured soda into the cups, hoping they wouldn’t see how surreal this was for me. Four hours earlier, I hadn’t known my own name. I’d forgotten this world existed. I’d been lost in a hell from which there should have been no mistake.

And now...

I turned and found them all watching me, so I took a long drink from my cup to buy time. To think of what to say.

Tod’s hand slid into mine, and he smiled. Without saying a word, he told me that everything was okay. That everything would come back to me, in time. That the world may have moved on without me, but he hadn’t.

And that’s when I realized what I wanted to talk about. The world had moved on without me, but ignoring that fact wouldn’t help me adjust to it. I had to hit it head-on.

“You all look so different!” I couldn’t get over it. “So, college and life? How are things?”

“Things are good,” Emma said. “I have a boyfriend.”

“The necromancer? I heard!”

Her smile was like sunlight emerging from the clouds as she grabbed a cup for herself from the drinks lined up on the counter. “His name’s Chad. He knows who I really am and how I...got here.” In Lydia’s body, obviously. “He knows the truth, and it didn’t scare him away.”

“It’s kinda hard to scare a necromancer.” Tod set cups in front of Nash and Sabine when they settled onto bar stools across the counter from us. “They’re like reapers, but with less purpose.”

“He has purpose!” Em gave Tod a good-natured shoved. “He’s an ed major. He wants to teach.”

“Not at Eastlake, I hope.” I smiled, trying not to feel lost in a conversation about someone I’d never met. “I hear that place is dangerous.”

“Not since you...died.” Nash frowned at the counter for a moment. “When you left, all that other stuff...it just...stopped.”

“Not because you were the cause of it,” Tod clarified, squeezing my hand. “You weren’t. The hellions left Eastlake because you paid to make them go away.” His grin returned. “You didn’t just clean up the school, you made a down payment on a miracle—a mara with an education!” He made a grand gesture toward Sabine, and she laughed.

“Yeah.” The mara tossed dark hair over her shoulder. “It turns out that without hellions stalking you constantly, school’s not that big of an obstacle. Still boring as hell, though.”

“She has a three-point-four GPA.” Nash wrapped one arm around her, and I could see the pride in his eyes. “And she’d have a four-point-oh if I could talk her into actually attending most of her classes.”

Sabine shrugged. “Waste of time when you already know the material. We’re nearly done now, though. Two more finals, then we graduate in two weeks.”

My chest ached again, and before I could process how thoroughly they’d all moved on without me, and why that bothered me, despite how happy I was for them all, the front door creaked open again and I turned to find Sophie standing in the doorway, frozen in place. Staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.

Luca nudged her inside, then closed the door at their backs. “Told ya so,” he leaned closer to say into her ear. I laughed. Of course he’d known. He’d probably felt me the moment I crossed back into the human world.

“Creepy-ass necromancers,” I said with a grin, and he stepped around my cousin to give me a hug.

“So glad you’re back,” he said. “Work sucks without our best reclamationist.”

“You’re still working for Madeline?”

He nodded, and his grin widened. “As are you. Aunt Madeline says she wants you back on the job by the end of the week. Also, she says, ‘Welcome back.’”

Warmth flooded me, and I was surprised to realize how good that made me feel. There was still a place for me, even if that place wasn’t at college with Nash, Sabine, and Emma.

Besides, A&M wasn’t that far away. Especially with my two-second commute.

“Kaylee?” Sophie’s voice sounded strange. Fragile. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering all the weird shit I’ve seen in the past four years. But I have to admit...I didn’t believe Luca when he said you were back.”

She hugged me, and I was a little relieved to realize she hadn’t changed as much as the others. Of course, she was the youngest, though still older than me, now. “And hey, don’t worry about your hair. We can fix that. Three hours at my salon, and no one will ever know your poor head spent four years in that dry Netherworld air.”

I laughed out loud.

The next hour was surreal. They asked a dozen questions I didn’t want to answer about my time in the Netherworld, and I missed Alec more than ever. He would have understood my silence.

When it became obvious that I’d rather listen than talk, everyone seemed eager to oblige. I heard about classes, and parties, and schoolwork, and new cars, and new jobs, and new friends. I laughed at stories I didn’t completely understand and sympathized with disappointments I couldn’t really imagine. It seemed impossible that so much could have changed in the human world, when I could still remember my last day there like it was yesterday.

But I’d missed a lot of yesterdays.

We were digging into huge slices of birthday cake—Tod insisted, since I’d missed four birthdays—when another car pulled into the driveway.

My fork froze inches from my mouth. I dropped it onto my plate and was halfway to the door when it opened on its own. Harmony took one look at me, and her jaw dropped open so fast I was afraid it was going to fall off her face.

“Oh, my...”

I folded her into a long-overdue hug and only then noticed the firm bump between us. The one growing in her belly. I stepped back and glanced at her round stomach in surprise. “Are you...?” The rest of the words got stuck in my throat, and she nodded, beaming at me.

“It’s a girl.”

“We were going to call her Kaylee,” my uncle said, and I looked up to find him in the doorway, watching me through damp, shiny eyes.

Uncle Brendon gave me my millionth hug in the past hour, and only once I’d let him go did I notice that the gold band on his finger matched the one on Harmony’s. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I demanded, turning on the rest of my friends and family with a grin that probably spoiled my angry act.

Sophie laughed. “Dad would have killed me if he missed the look on your face. So...I’m going to be a big sister. Weird, huh?”

“Beyond weird.” I turned back to Harmony. “Wow! So, when are you due?”

“Three months. We’re excited! And your old room at Brendon’s will be the nursery.”

“Speaking of babies...” Em stepped forward with her phone and showed me a picture of a laughing toddler with her sister’s eyes and my old math teacher’s wavy brown hair.

I took the phone from her and stared at the picture. “Oh, Em, he’s adorable!” Her nephew was so cute, in fact, that though I would have sworn it was impossible, I wasn’t creeped out by his resemblance to the man who’d murdered me.

“Yeah. And he never would have survived without you. Without the soul you gave him.”

I’d left instructions in my goodbye letter, begging Harmony to help them install the soul in the baby when he was born. “What’s his name?”

“I suggested Damien,” Tod said while Em showed me how to scroll through the latest pictures on her phone—a leap in technology I’d missed during my sabbatical in hell. “But no one listened.”

“Caleb. He’s very sweet but quite a handful.”

“Have you searched his head for a birthmark in the form of three sixes?”

Emma shoved Tod again, and I got the impression that was a joke he’d told in infinite variations. I didn’t get it.

“Most little boys are...challenging,” Harmony said. “Including the two of you.” She smiled at both her sons.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s the big...?”

I froze at the sound of my father’s voice, and when it faded in surprise, I turned to find him staring at me.

“Kaylee?” His voice cracked, and disbelief dripped from the fracture. I smiled at him while my heart thundered in my chest. “Is that you? Are you real?”

Tod laughed again. “We’ve been asking her that all day.”

My dad practically floated across the room toward me, and only once his arms were wrapped around me did I realize he was wearing a flannel plaid shirt I’d been trying to get him to throw away for months before he’d disappeared into the Netherworld.

“I’m real.” I inhaled his scent, and fresh tears formed in my eyes. “I am so sorry for everything I put you through.” I clung to him, crying onto his shirt, burying my face in his shoulder.

My dad held me at arm’s length, staring at me through his own tears. “Kaylee, what on earth could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“I lied to you,” I said, between sobbing hiccups. “And I skipped school, and communed with evil forces, and drugged my boyfriend, and went to the Netherworld without permission, and I’m about four years late for my curfew. I totally understand if you want to ground me. With four years’ worth of interest.”

My father laughed so hard his whole body shook, and tears dripped from his chin. “Is that what it’ll take to keep you here?”

I shook my head. When he pulled me into another overdue hug, I laid my head down on his shoulder. “You couldn’t get rid of me this time if you tried.”

For at least a solid minute, we cried in each other’s arms, unleashing four years’ worth of grief and pain and guilt.

When he finally let me go, I turned in a slow circle, looking around at everyone I loved. Everyone I’d abandoned in an attempt to protect them. The room blurred beneath my tears. “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe you’re all here.”

“Um...” Sophie crossed her arms over a designer blouse and arched both manicured brows at me. “Out of all the weird species, out-of-body experiences, resurrections, and octogenarian pregnancies represented by the occupants of this room right now, your presence is the thing most difficult to believe.”

“Sophie...” Uncle Brendon said, but my cousin shook her head.

“I have something to say, and I’m going to be heard.” She turned to me again, and I braced myself for a well-meaning but offensive critique of my hair, or my face, or the tee I’d borrowed from Tod, which hung nearly to the cuff of my shorts. But instead, she smiled and glanced around the room. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say...welcome home, Kaylee.”

“Are you sure about this?” I called through the closed bathroom door, lifting acres of gold tulle. When I turned in front of the small mirror, light caught the sequins on my bodice and reflected a thousand points of light on the walls of Tod’s tiny bathroom.

“I’m sure. Come on out.”

“I feel stupid,” I moaned, pulling the door open, but my complaint died on my tongue with one look at him. “But you look...” I stared at him for a second. Then I had to touch him.

I ran my fingers over his gold tie, feeling the raised thread pattern, then down the right side of the matching vest, half-hidden by his black tux jacket. “You look gorgeous.”

“Okay.” He nodded hesitantly. “That’s a little feminine, as far as compliments go, but I can’t argue with the general sentiment. I look great. And so do you. Turns out gold is a good color for us both.” He made a spinning motion with one finger, and I turned slowly to show off my dress. To show off me in my dress. The prom dress I’d never worn.

I felt simultaneously beautiful and foolish, twirling in what little floor space there was between the unmade twin bed and the pile of unfolded laundry. “Tell me again why we’re wearing four-year-old prom clothes, alone in your bedroom?”

“We’re making up for lost time.” His arms slid around my waist, and mine met behind his neck. “We’re going to do everything you missed while you were gone. We’ll make up for every single lost moment. All of them.”

I looked into his eyes and got lost in them. “That could take a long time.”

He started swaying, and I swayed with him, and it didn’t matter that we didn’t have music, or friends, or punch, or a gym decorated with lights and crepe paper. We had the only two things we needed for our private prom—each other. And pretty clothes.

“I don’t care if it takes forever, Kaylee,” he said, and warmth trailed down my spine to settle in a dozen pleasant places. “The universe owes us forever. And our eternity starts now.”