Before I Wake

5

“SO, DID THAT CREEP YOU OUT AS MUCH AS IT creeped me out?” I asked, flopping down on my bed on my stomach.

Tod sank into my desk chair and rolled it forward until his knees touched the mattress. “Maybe more. Why would Thane work for Avari, if he’s free to leave the Netherworld?”

Styx growled at him from the foot of my bed, then settled into my lap when I clucked my tongue at her and patted my leg. “I think the bigger question is what is he doing for Avari, other than the obvious?” Reaping unauthorized souls.

“What is who doing for Avari?” my father asked, and I looked up in surprise to find him standing in my bedroom doorway. But I could tell from the way his gaze flitted over the room that he couldn’t see either of us. “The disembodied voice and the growling guard dog gave you both away, so you might as well show up for real.”

“Sorry.” I concentrated on the physical plane—on truly being there—and my father’s gaze finally landed on me. “I didn’t realize I was only half-there.”

“It takes some practice,” Tod said, and I knew that he’d become fully corporeal, too.

“So, what’s going on with Avari?” My father leaned against the door frame, not truly in my room, but clearly stating his intent to be involved in whatever we were up to. And since he’d overheard part of what I’d thought was a private conversation, we’d have to let him into the loop. Otherwise, he’d ask Madeline next time he saw her, and we’d be screwed.

I glanced at Tod and found just a hint of frustration and fear swirling in the cerulean depths of his eyes. “Thane’s back, and Avari appears to be pulling his strings.”

My father frowned. “Thane’s back? From the dead? Again?”

Tod nodded. “He’s like the Rasputin of reapers. He’s evidently impossible to get rid of. But don’t worry,” he said, turning to lay one hand over mine on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to handle this.”

My father’s forehead furrowed. “And by handle it, you mean …?”

“I’m going to ask Levi for help.” Tod met my gaze. “Madeline told you to let the reapers police our own, right?” he asked, and I could only nod. “I’m hoping Levi can deal with Thane before anyone else sees him and reports his return. That way he can’t carry out whatever nefarious task Avari put him up to and neither Levi nor I will get in trouble for dealing with him through unsanctioned means like last time.”

“How would Levi deal with him?” I asked, and my dad looked just as interested in the answer.

“I assume he’d…end Thane. The only way to do that—that I know of—is to take his soul. I’ve seen Levi do it several times,” Tod said, and my chill bumps were back.

“I’ve seen it, too,” I said, and the memory was enough to make my hands shake. “I saw him take yours, and he’ll do it again, if Madeline forces his hand.” I sat up on the end of the bed and met my father’s heavy gaze. “You can’t tell Madeline about Thane.”

My father frowned. But then he nodded.

“I started this, and I’ll finish it,” Tod said, still watching me. “There’s no reason for you to put yourself in any danger.”

“I agree,” my father said.

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m not submitting to a vote. I have every reason to get involved in this,” I insisted. “First, I am not going to spend eternity alone,” I said, glaring Tod into silence when he started to argue. “Second of all, Thane has a grudge against all three of us, one of whom he could still kill.” I aimed a pointed glance at my father, who looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “And anyway, you and Levi are going to need help finding Thane, and I happen to know someone who can sense the dead.”

“The necromancer?” Tod frowned. “How do you know you can trust him?”

I shrugged. “Madeline trusts him.”

“But I don’t trust her.”

“Neither do I,” my father added. “She doesn’t really care about you, Kaylee. She only cares about what you can do for her and the reclamation department.”

“That’s because she’s my boss, not my guidance counselor.” I exhaled slowly in frustration. “Look, we don’t have much time and we don’t have many resources, and Luca is too great an asset to ignore just because you don’t trust Madeline.” I focused on Tod. “Come meet him tomorrow at lunch?”

“Okay, but if he brings a Ouija board, I reserve the right to mess with anyone who can’t see me.”

“Fair enough. You talk to Levi tonight and, in the morning, I’ll see if Luca can pinpoint the rogue reaper again—he doesn’t even know who Thane is, much less that that’s who he spotted yesterday.”

“I love a woman with a plan,” Tod said, and my father scowled.

“Good, ‘cause there’s more. Avari and Thane know that the best way to get to us is through our friends and family, and they know where to find everyone we care about. So we need to keep tabs on everyone. Tod, can you keep an eye on Nash and your mom?” I figured Sabine would be wherever Nash was.

Tod nodded, and I turned to my father. “If you can check on Uncle Brendon and Sophie, when she’s at home, I’ll keep up with Emma and with Sophie while she’s at school.”

My dad nodded, and I breathed a little easier. Literally. I felt better having a plan, even if that plan was vague and full of holes.

When Tod went to work and my father went to bed, I spent an hour trying to dig up enough interest to get through my chemistry homework, but chemical formulas and equations seemed no more important at one in the morning than they had twelve hours earlier, and every time my mind wandered, I found Scott, or Thane, or Avari, haunting me from my own memories.

After a solid half hour spent tapping my pencil on the page and twisting the amphora heart on its chain around my neck while Styx snored on my pillow, I closed my textbook and admitted defeat. School no longer felt relevant, because I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t need most of what I learned there.

Even if I decided to go to college, what would I do with my degree? Assuming someone would be willing to hire a doctor, or a lawyer, or a physical therapist who looked sixteen, I wouldn’t be able to hold any one job for very long, because it wouldn’t take people long to notice that I wasn’t aging. And it would take a very patient boss to overlook all the times I’d have to take a long lunch or an unauthorized hour off to hunt down a stolen soul.

Suddenly my future was looking long and boring. And frustrating beyond reason. And I’d only been dead a month.

What if the boredom and sense of futility got worse? What if I eventually lost my humanity and wound up like Thane, so bored I was willing to hurt people just to entertain myself? To break up the monotony of day after day and night after night of nothing.

If that were to happen, would I know it was happening? Would I even care? Once my friends and family were all gone, would I even have a point of reference for what humanity and normalcy look like? What they feel like? Would Tod and I be enough to keep each other sane and human enough to care about each other? To care about anything?

I closed my eyes and rolled over on my bed, trying to purge the litany of fears and useless questions marching through my brain, but I couldn’t get rid of them because I had nothing to replace them with except more fears and useless questions.

What if Luca couldn’t find Thane?

What if Levi wouldn’t help us deal with him?

How would I protect my friends and family from a hellion willing to use them to get to me?

The questions played through my head like a song list on repeat, but I had no answers, and after a while, the questions themselves stopped making sense. And when I looked up, I realized I’d been staring at the amphora in my hand for forty-seven minutes, without moving. Without breathing. Without even blinking.

My eyes and my throat were dry, but the really weird thing was that I had no urge to stretch or find a new position. Or to move at all. I could easily have sat there doing and thinking nothing for another forty-seven minutes or longer.

The even weirder thing was that that thought didn’t bother me. It didn’t scare me, though I knew it should have. I felt like a bear in hibernation, minus all the sleeping. I’d just…shut down.

That had happened before. Always at night, when I was alone. When there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. It hadn’t scared me then, either, but the next day, in retrospect, it always did. And it would again.

I was trying to decide whether or not to get up and find something worth doing, on general principle, when I heard a thud from outside. I froze and listened, and heard it again.

I was on my feet in an instant, racing down the hall in my bare feet. I grabbed a knife from the butcher block in the kitchen and fought memories of sharp metal, warm blood, and excruciating pain as I headed slowly for the door, telling myself I couldn’t die twice. Er, three times. I was halfway there before I remembered that I could make sure no one heard my footsteps.

Being dead takes a lot of practice.

At the door, I peered through the peephole, but saw nothing but my empty front yard, damp from a steady drizzle of spring rain. But then I heard another thud, this time followed by a familiar groan. I set the knife on the end table next to my father’s recliner and pulled the front door open.

Nash sat on the top step, leaning against the porch railing, a squarish glass bottle loosely held in one hand. His clothes were wet, his hair plastered to his head.

“Nash, what the hell are you doing here?”

He looked up, like he was surprised to see me. At my own house. “I’m drinking on your porch. Care to join me?” He held the bottle of whiskey up and I shook my head, then stepped out of the house and closed the door behind me, so my dad wouldn’t hear him. “Why are you drinking on my porch?”

“The lawn’s too wet to sit on.”

“That’s because it’s raining. Give me that.” I pulled the bottle from his grip. “Did you walk here? You’re soaked.”

He laughed, but the sound was harsh. Half choked. “My mom frowns on driving drunk.”

“Your mother frowns on being drunk. Come dry off and I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“You need to go home. Come on.” I tried to pull him up but he was too heavy, so he pulled himself up, using the porch railing for balance. Standing, he stared down at me, his eyes half focused in the porch light. He blinked, too drunk to hide the swirls of confusion and longing in his irises. Then he leaned down like he’d kiss me.

I stepped back and put my empty hand on his chest, my heart aching for him. For me. For all four of us, and the ties twisting us together. “No. Don’t do this, Nash,” I said, and his next exhalation seemed to deflate him.

I stepped over the threshold and held the door open for him, and he trudged inside, dripping on the floor. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Working.” I pushed the door closed and set his whiskey on the half wall between the kitchen and living room, then dug a clean hand towel from a drawer in the kitchen. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“In bed.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah,” he said, and I caught my breath, surprised by the hollow feeling in my chest—an unexpected residual ache. “That’s what you wanted, right? You want me with her, so I can forget about you?”

I handed him the towel and he blotted his face with it, but his gaze never left mine. “I just want you to be happy, Nash.” And clean. And stable.

“Yeah, well, that ship’s sailed.” He stood dripping on the tiled entry, still watching me. “Tell me it hurts, Kaylee. Tell me it hurts, just a little bit.”

I exhaled slowly and took the towel when he handed it back. “It hurts. More than a little.” It hurt to see him, knowing that I’d played no small part in making him into what he’d become. It hurt a lot. “Go dry off in the bathroom. I’ll get you something to wear.” My dad’s clothes would be big on him, but at least he’d be dry and dressed.

“I don’t want to wear your dad’s clothes. He hates me.”

“You’d rather wear mine?”

Nash scowled, but took off his shoes, stumbled over his own feet, and headed for the bathroom.

I pawed through the dryer for a pair of my dad’s drawstring jogging shorts and the smallest T-shirt I could find. When I knocked softly on the bathroom door, Nash opened it wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Here.” I handed him the clothes and he took them, then just stood there, watching me.

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