My Soul To Steal

The hall filled quickly, but I saw no faces. I couldn’t tear my focus from that open doorway, waiting for someone to go inside and find her. And finally, as the excruciating pain began to fade in my throat and my jaw began to loosen, someone did. A freshman girl I knew only by sight stepped into the classroom.

I opened my mouth and inhaled. Nash’s grip on me tightened from behind, offering wordless comfort. And maybe taking a little for himself.

And only seconds after she’d entered the room, the girl raced back into the hall. Her shout was muted by the glass between us and was only a fraction of the shrill sound I could have produced, but the crowd in the hallway froze. The dull static of gossip went silent. Everyone turned to look.

Nash pulled me away from the door as the first teacher came running, and I slid down the brick wall, my jacket catching on the rough edges. For the first time, I noticed the cold, and that my nose was running. “Are you okay?” he asked again, dropping to the ground in front of me, and that time I could answer.

“No. And neither is Mrs. Bennigan.”

“What are the chances that this is a coincidence?” he asked, and I sucked in a deep breath, as if I’d actually emptied my lungs on the unvoiced scream.

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Not anymore. “And even if I did, this is too much. Two teachers in one day? Something’s wrong.” I looked up to find a steady, tense swirl of green snaking through his irises. “Any idea what?”

He shook his head. “And I’m not sure I want to know. We’ve had enough to deal with this year, and I’m not …” His voiced faded into pained silence and he blinked, then started over. “Besides, this has nothing to do with us. Something’s obviously going on, but it could be bad bean dip in the teachers’ lounge, for all we know. Or some weird virus Wesner passed to Bennigan. Don’t they sing in the same church choir, or something?”

I nodded slowly, trying to convince myself. Just because we’d lost four classmates to Netherworld interference didn’t mean Mr. Wesner’s and Mrs. Bennigan’s deaths involved any extrahuman elements, right? Surely I was just letting my own fears and past experiences color my perception.

Please, please let me be overreacting….

But what if I wasn’t?

“We better go in,” Nash said, shoving himself to his feet.

“Yeah.” Still half-stunned, we started around the building toward the cafeteria doors, which were kept unlocked during all lunch periods. And it wasn’t until nearly an hour later, as I sat in my English class, that I remembered what Nash and I had been discussing when my bean sidhe heritage got in the way.

Sabine’s species.

We’d been interrupted again.

AFTER SCHOOL, I STOOD in the parking lot next to my car with my keys in my hand, dialing up my courage as I waited for Nash to come out of the building. Most of my afternoon teachers had been reeling from the death of two colleagues in one day, and they’d made no attempt to actually involve students in their lesson plans. Which gave me plenty of time to avoid thinking about Mrs. Bennigan by planning my first move in Sabine’s sadistic little game of love and war.

She’d laid down the challenge, and I could either rise to it or slink home alone and call Nash later for the scoop on his ex’s inhuman specifics. And after the day I’d had, I just didn’t feel like slinking anywhere.

I knew I’d made the right decision when they came through the double glass doors together. Sabine was laughing and Nash was watching her, and even from across the lot, I recognized the light in his expression. That was the way he used to look at me. I got into my car—newly made over by the local body shop, after Doug Fuller had totaled it a week before his death—and dropped my books onto the rear floorboard. Then I cranked the engine and took off across the lot as fast as I dared, one eye on potential pedestrian casualties, the other on Nash and Sabine, as he said something I couldn’t hear. Something that made her laugh harder and made him watch her even more closely.

My car squealed to a stop in front of them as they hit the end of the sidewalk, two feet away. Nash looked surprised, but Sabine actually jumped back, and a tiny granule of bitter satisfaction formed in the pit of my stomach, like a grain of sand in an oyster. If I nourished it properly, would it grow into a pearl?

I didn’t have automatic windows, so I had to shift into Park and lean across the passenger seat to shove the door open. The awkward movement dulled the sharp edge of my dramatic gesture, but I made up for that when Nash leaned down to see me beneath the roof of the car. “Get in,” I said, and he raised one brow. “He came with me,” Sabine said, before he could make up his mind.

“And I’m taking him home. Get in the car, Nash. We need to talk.”

Sabine looked impressed in spite of herself, until he glanced from her to me, then back to her. “What did I miss?”

“This is about what I missed,” I said, shifting into Drive while the engine idled. “Get in the car.”

Nash turned back to Sabine. “What did you do?” His voice held a single blended note of caution and curiosity, which made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He wasn’t even surprised to know she’d done something.

She grinned, one hand propped on a half-exposed hip that evidently felt no cold. “You don’t really want the answer to that. Not yet.”

“What do I really want?” Nash asked, humoring her, whereas I wanted to roll my car over her foot.

“You want to know why Kaylee’s suddenly grown a pair.”

He frowned. “Enlighten me.”

She twisted one mismatched earring and shrugged. “I laid the cards out on the table. It’s only fair that she knows the stakes, right?”

Except she’d left one of those cards out of her disclosure. They both had.

“Damn it, Bina.”

“What?” She rolled her eyes, like I was the one being unreasonable. “I told her the truth. You can’t get mad over the truth.”

Oh, yes, we could. The truths between me and Nash hurt as badly as the lies.

Nash dropped his bag on my passenger’s side floorboard and turned back to Sabine. “I’ll see you later.”

Sabine—Bina? Really?—scowled, then leaned in with one hand on the roof of my car, wearing an ironic, almost respectful smile. “Well played, Kaylee.”

Nash got in and closed the door, and I drove off, leaving her standing there alone.

“I’m not playing her game, no matter what it looks like,” I said, as I turned left out of the parking lot.

“Good. The only way to win is by refusing to play. Trust me.” But he was smiling as he said it, like she was a toddler whose antics were still cute and harmless.

I did not find Sabine cute. Or harmless.

“Advice from your days in Fort Worth?”

Nash ran one hand through his thick brown hair, leaving it tussled in all the right places. “Based on observation, not experience. She doesn’t play games with me. She doesn’t need to.”

“She’s been back in your life for one day, and you sound like she was never gone.” I braked at a red light, and unease crawled up my spine. How deep must their connection have been, if they could pick up right where they’d left off more than two years before?

He exhaled heavily. “How am I supposed to answer that?”

“It wasn’t a question.”

Nash twisted in his seat to face me, and his expression made my stomach churn. “We got caught up last night. And I’m sure once she gets used to the fact that I want you in my life, she’ll—”

“No, she won’t.” I’d just met her, and I understood that much. My hand tightened on the wheel and I took a right at the next light. “She threw down the gauntlet, Nash. Like I’m gonna fight her for you.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Kay. But it’s not a physical fight she wants.”

“What do you want?” I demanded, taking the next curve a little too fast. “You want us to fight over you? You get off on this—two girls, no waiting?”

He sighed and stared out his window. “Days like this I wish I had a car.”

I rolled my eyes, though he wasn’t watching. “Days like this I wish you’d tell me the whole truth for once, instead of leaving little bits of it lying around for me to follow like a trail of bread crumbs.”

A moment passed in silence, except for the growl of my engine. Then he exhaled slowly and turned to look at me. “I’m guessing Tod told you?”

“He shouldn’t have had to.”

“I know. I tried to tell you, but Sabine …”

My pulse spiked in irritation. “You’re going to be saying that a lot now, are you? ‘But Sabine …’?”

“Do you want to talk, or are you just going to throw barbs at me?”

I exhaled deeply as I turned the car into his driveway. “I haven’t decided. How’s my aim?”

“Dead-on.” He pushed his door open and hauled his backpack out of the car, and I slammed my own door, then followed him into the house. I hadn’t been there in two weeks, but nothing had changed, except that someone had taken down the holiday decorations.

“You want something to eat? Mom made blondies.” Nash dropped his backpack on the worn couch, then pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.

“Just a Coke.” I followed him into the kitchen, where Harmony Hudson glanced up from the breakfast table in surprise.

“Kaylee!” She crossed the small kitchen and wrapped her arms around me in a warm hug, her soft blond curls brushing my face. “I’m so glad you’re back.” Then she pulled away from me, frowning with her hands still on my shoulders. “You are back, aren’t you?”

Nash groaned with his head stuck inside the fridge, then emerged with two cans. “Laissez faire parenting, Mom. We talked about this.” He handed me a soda, and Harmony let me go to scowl at her son.

“That was before I spent two weeks nursing you through withdrawal from a substance more dangerous and addictive than anything the human world has ever even seen. I think that’s earned me a little latitude, even if you are old enough to vote.”

“Fine.” Nash’s jaw clenched in irritation, but he’d never disrespect his mother. That much had not changed. “Kaylee’s just here to talk. Let’s try not to scare her away.”

Harmony gave me a hopeful smile, then handed me a paper plate piled high with blondies and shooed us out of the kitchen.

I followed Nash to his bedroom, where he sat on the bed and leaned back on the headboard, leaving the desk chair for me.

“Was Sabine in here?” I set the plate on his nightstand, glancing around his room as if I’d never seen it.

Nash popped open his can, his posture tense and expectant. He watched me like I was a bomb about to explode. “Does it really matter?”

“Yeah.” I set my can on his desk and faced him, fighting through suspicion and fear so I could focus on my anger. “Your ex-girlfriend just told me she has no problem going through me to get to you. So yes, Nash. It matters where you were when you talked to her until after two in the morning.” Because that’s as far as I’d narrowed it down so far. She was here until after two. When I was sound asleep, and probably already dreaming about them making out in front of my locker.

Nash closed his eyes, then opened them and took a long drink from his soda. Then he met my gaze. “Yeah. We were in here.”

My chest ached. I don’t know why finding out where they’d been made it worse—I knew they’d only talked. But knowing they’d been in his room made it more personal. Made it sting more.

“On the bed?” I asked, when I’d recovered my voice, hating how paranoid I sounded.

“Damn it, Kaylee, nothing happened!”

“Right. I heard. But did this ‘nothing’ happen on the bed?” I couldn’t breathe, waiting for his answer. “Was she on your bed, Nash?”

“For the last time, she’s just a friend,” he said, his voice low, the wet can slipping lower in his grip. “She’s the only friend I have right now who knows more about me than my football stats from last season.”

I knew more about him than that. I knew a lot more. But I hadn’t come to see him even once while he was working his way through withdrawal, because I couldn’t deal with it. The wounds were still too fresh. Too raw. When I thought about Nash, I thought about Avari, and the things they’d each let the other do to me, when I wasn’t in control of my own body.

In the painful silence, I popped open my Coke, just to have something to do with my hands. “So … what is she?”

Nash looked up, obviously confused. “I thought Tod told you …”

“He just said she’s my worst nightmare. Whatever that means.” But frankly, any girl openly trying to steal Nash from me would qualify as my nightmare. “So … what is she?” I repeated, hoping I wouldn’t have to say it again. “Siren? Harpy?” I raised both brows at him in sudden comprehension. “She’s a harpy, isn’t she? She acts like a harpy.” Not that I’d ever met one.

Nash laughed out loud. “She’d probably get a kick out of that.” But I had my doubts. “She’s a Nightmare, like Tod said. Only that’s kind of an antiquated term. Now, they’re called maras.”

“There’s a politically correct term for Nightmares? Would that make me a death portent?” I joked to cover my own confusion and ignorance, and Nash laughed again to oblige me.

“Sure. We could start a movement. ‘Rename the bean sidhe.’ You make picket signs, I’ll call the governor. It’s gonna be huge.”

“Funny.” Only it wasn’t. “So what exactly is a mara?”

Nash leaned forward and met my gaze with a somber one of his own. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise not to freak out. Remember, it was weird finding out you were a bean sidhe at first, too, right?”

Weird didn’t begin to describe it. “Nash, I just found out she was on your bed at two o’clock this morning. With you. How much worse could this be?”

He gave me an apprehensive look, but didn’t deny that they’d been on his bed together, and another little part of my heart shriveled up and died.

“Maras are a rare kind of parasite, and unique in that they aren’t native to the Netherworld. At least, according to my mom.”

“Did she and your mom get along?”

“Yeah.” Nash shrugged. “Sabine didn’t know what she was when I met her, and I’d figured out she wasn’t human, but that’s as far as I’d gotten. But my mom narrowed it down pretty fast. She wanted to help her.”

Of course she had. Harmony’s heart was too big for her own good. She wanted to help me, too, and I was definitely starting to see a pattern. Nash and his mother shared their hero complex—I should have seen that coming, considering that she was a nurse—and so far, only Tod seemed immune to the family calling to help people.

He killed them instead.

“So she’s a parasite? That sounds … gross. If I get in her way, is she going to attach herself to my back and suck me dry like a tick? Or a vampire?”

Nash rolled his eyes. “There are no vampires. And no. Maras don’t feed physically. They feed psychically. Off of human energy.”

Alarms went off in my head. “She eats human energy? Like Avari?”

“No.” Nash frowned, like he was mentally organizing his thoughts, and it was a struggle. “Well, kind of. But she’s not a hellion. Hellions thrive on pain and chaos, and they’re strong enough to take it from the bleed-through of human energy between worlds. Parasites are nowhere near that strong. They have to feed through a direct connection, of one sort or another. And maras, specifically, feed from fear.”

I blinked. Then blinked again, grasping for a nugget of comprehension from the words he seemed to be throwing at me at random. “She’s a fear eater?” I said at last. “So … as long as I don’t show her any fear, she can’t feed from me?”

Nash took another long drink from his can, then set it on his nightstand. “Not exactly. There’s a reason they used to be called Nightmares.”

But before he could continue, movement from across the room caught my eye and I looked up to find Tod scowling at me. “You really think this is smart, after what he did?”

Nash obviously could neither see nor hear his brother, but he’d seen me stare off into space often enough to interpret the silence. “Damn it, Tod.”

I sighed, glancing from one brother to the other. “I needed answers.”

“I would have given them to you.” Tod crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Nash, who stared at nothing, two feet from the space Tod actually occupied.

“He owes them to me.”

“Show yourself or get out,” Nash said, finally tired of being ignored. “Better yet, just get out.”

Tod’s eyes narrowed and he stepped forward, clearly stepping into sight, just to spite his brother. “Did you tell her about the dreams?”

Nash’s frown deepened. “I was about to.”

Dreams. Nightmares. Parasite. Sabine kissing Nash in front

of my locker. No! But the pieces of the puzzle fit, so far as I could tell, and there was no denying the picture they formed. “She feeds during nightmares? She fed from me, during my sleep last night?”

“Probably,” Tod said, while Nash asked, “What did you dream?”

I wasn’t going to answer, but they were both looking at me, obviously waiting for a response. “I dreamed you and Sabine were making out in front of my locker. And you dumped me for her, because she ‘delivers.’”

Nash flinched, while the reaper only shrugged. “Yeah, that sounds like Sabine.”

“I’m sorry, Kay.” Nash looked miserable. “I’ll make sure she stops.”

“Yeah. You will.” I didn’t even have words for how repulsed and scared I was by the fact that she’d been there while I slept, sucking energy from me through my dream. A very personal, horrifying dream.

“Kay, she didn’t just feed from your nightmare,” Tod explained, lowering his voice, as if that might soften whatever blow was coming. “She gave you that nightmare.”

Huh? “What does that mean? How do you give someone a nightmare?” Other than scaring the living crap out of them. Which, come to think of it, fit Sabine to a T.

Nash tapped his empty can on the nightstand. “Sabine creates nightmares from a person’s existing fear. It’s a part of what she is, just like singing for people’s souls is a part of who you are.”

I felt my eyes go wide, as indignation burned deep inside me. “Yeah, but when I sing, I’m not sucking people dry! I’m trying to save their lives! That’s the opposite of parasitic. Sabine and I are polar opposites!”

“Trust me, I know,” Nash said. And if that was true, how could he possibly claim to love me, when he’d once loved her?

“Did you tell her how they feed?” Tod crossed the room to sit on the edge of the desk, taking his place at my side like an ally. And I’d never felt more like I needed one.

“Get out, Tod,” Nash snapped. “I can handle this myself.”

Tod scowled. “I’m not here to help you.”

“How do they feed?” I demanded, when they both seemed more interested in measuring testosterone levels.

“Are you familiar with astral projection?” Nash asked, and I nodded.

“That’s when someone’s consciousness leaves the body and can go somewhere else, fully awake. Right?”

“Basically. What Sabine does is similar to that, except when her consciousness goes walking—she calls it Sleepwalking—she crafts people’s fears into nightmares while they sleep. She says it’s like weaving, only without physical thread.” He shrugged. “Then she feeds from the fear laced into the dreams she’s woven.”

“By sitting on her victim’s chest,” Tod added, looking simultaneously satisfied and disgusted with his contribution to the explanation.

“Sitting on their …?” On my chest. My stomach churned. My horror knew no bounds. “You cannot be serious. While I was sleeping—minding my own business—she came into my room and sat on my chest, weaving some kind of metaphysical quilt out of fears she took right out of my own head?” That sentence sounded so crazy I was half-afraid men in white coats would burst through the door to drag me back to mental health.

“Not all of her. Just the part that was Sleepwalking,” Nash insisted miserably.

“Is that supposed to make this any better? How could you not tell me this the minute she showed up at school?” I demanded, and when he had no answer for me, I turned around and stomped out of his room, through the house, and out the front door.

“Kaylee, wait!” he shouted, but I didn’t wait. I got in my car and drove straight home, so angry my vision was tinged in red.

Sabine wants a nightmare?

That’s exactly what she’s gonna get …

7

NASH IS ON THE floor watching me. He’s not in the bed, and I don’t understand why, because he looks sick. His face is pale, and beads of sweat dot his forehead and his bare chest. He should be resting.

Instead, he’s staring at me, and his eyes hold accusation and pain and shame. His irises swirl with it all, so fast I can’t separate one emotion from the others. They blend together, writhing violently, until the definitions no longer matter, because they’re all aimed at me. Whatever’s wrong with him, it’s my fault.

My stomach clenches around nothing and suddenly I’m cold. I cross his bedroom and sink onto my knees in front of him, in the corner. His eyes are unfocused. Half-closed. I take his hand, and it’s freezing.

No! This can’t be happening. Not again. He quit!

Then I see it. In the corner, the opening pinched between his fingers. A single red balloon, half-deflated. I hate that balloon. In that horrible, irrational moment, I hate all balloons.

“Kaylee …?” he whispers, reaching for my face. His other hand stays around the balloon, but that’s not safe. Not with him like this. If he lets go, he’ll pollute the whole room and probably kill us both.

I take the balloon from him, careful not to let the deadly vapor leak out. I twist the end into a knot, gritting my teeth as the unnatural chill seeps into my hands. My knuckles ache with the cold and my fingers are stiff. But the knot holds.

“I’m so sorry….”

Nash is gone. His body is here and his mouth keeps moving, keeps apologizing, but Elvis has left the building. Abandoned it to the toxin I hate. The poison that is rotting his soul, and corrupting him, and killing us.

“I tried,” he whispers, and I need to move closer to hear him better. But I can’t. I won’t. I don’t want to breathe what he’s exhaling, and I can smell it from here. “I tried,” he repeats. “But it was too hard on my own. You didn’t come….”

Tears form in my eyes. He’s right. I didn’t come see him while he was getting clean. I didn’t help. I could hardly look at him without remembering, and now he hasn’t just fallen off the wagon, he’s been run over by it.

And it’s all my fault.

I want to get mad. I want to yell at him and scream, demanding to know why he can’t just stand and shake it off. He’s so strong in every other way. Why can’t he do this one thing?

But I can’t yell. I can’t cling to my anger—not when

everything I know is falling apart along with Nash. Anger is great. It’s powerful, when you need something to hold you up. Something to steel your spine. But in the dark, when you’re alone with the truth, anger can’t survive. The only thing that can live in the dark with you is fear.

And I’m swimming in fear. I’m afraid of Nash when he’s like this. Afraid of what he’ll do or say. Afraid that he won’t listen. That he won’t stop. And I’m terrified of Demon’s Breath. Of the vapor he loves more than he loves me.

Because that’s the crux of it. The dark truth. I’m not enough for him. I can’t keep him safe from Avari. Safe from himself. He doesn’t care enough about me to let me try.