Before I Wake

by Rachel Vincent

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I dropped the necklace into the crack between the pages of the open book, then dug my phone from my pocket. The screen showed a text from Tod.

  Incoming in five…four…three…two…

  “One,” he said, and I looked up to find the reaper standing in the middle of the rug at the end of my bed.

  “Cute.” I rolled over to make room for him, and Tod stretched out on the bed next to me.

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asked, glancing at the Cinemark uniform draped over my desk chair.

  “Probably,” I admitted. “But what’s the point? Scooping popcorn and selling tickets for minimum wage feels like a waste of time now.”

  Tod’s brows rose. “It’s not like either of us is short on time.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to spend eternity wearing red polyester and smelling like fake butter.” Too late, I realized he was doing that very thing, only his uniform shirt was blue and he finished his shifts at the pizza place smelling like grease and pepperoni. Because the reaper gig didn’t pay in human currency and without cash, he couldn’t pay for his cell phone, or food and clothes he didn’t technically need, or the in-public date we kept promising ourselves.

  “You obviously don’t want to spend eternity doing chemistry homework, either.” Tod slid the necklace onto the comforter between us, then flipped the textbook closed and set it on the floor. “I take it your return to class was less than triumphant?”

  I rolled onto my back with a sigh. “Today sucked. No way around it. Between the stares, the gossip, and the inappropriate questions, school felt more like a three-ring circus than an institute of learning. Three different people actually asked to see my scar. Can you believe that?”

  “Can’t say I blame them. As scars go, it’s pretty damn sexy.” Tod grinned and pushed the hem of my shirt up to expose the straight, pinkish line of raised tissue on my stomach. His fingers traced it slowly and chills gathered just below my navel. Then he lowered his head and followed that line again with a series of soft kisses. I closed my eyes and gripped handfuls of my comforter, and those chills at my center became a fire that burned deep inside me.

  Suddenly that scar was my very favorite part of my body.

  “No fair,” I moaned. “Only you could make me love the wound that killed me.”

  “Never underestimate the therapeutic power of a few well-placed kisses,” he mumbled against my skin.

  I laughed and pulled him up until our mouths met. “Mmm… If I’d known the afterlife could be this yummy, I might have tried to expedite the process.”

  Tod pulled away, frowning. “That’s not funny.”

  “What, you can make death jokes, but I can’t?” His morbid sense of humor used to worry me, but now I understood it. Eternity is hard to face when you can’t find anything to laugh about. Yet jokes couldn’t hide the truth. I was conscious, and warm, and…preserved. But I wasn’t alive, and I never would be again. Faking it was the best I could do. He and I had that in common.

  “I would have done anything to keep you from dying.” Tod slid one hand slowly down my arm, leaving a trail of chills in its wake. “This would have been just as amazing while you were alive.”

  “That was never part of the plan,” I said. “We just didn’t know it.” Not until he’d seen my name on the list of souls scheduled to be reaped. And because I’d already had my one allowed death-date exchange, there was nothing Tod, or my dad, or anyone else, could do to save me. “Besides, there are advantages to the afterlife. For instance, if I were to do this—” I pushed him gently but firmly onto his back, then I straddled him “—no one could see us unless we wanted them to.” And we did not.

  “A valid point…” He reached for my hips, and I hated both layers of clothing between us almost as much as I loved the look in his eyes, part surprise, part heat, and no hint of an objection.

  “And if I were to do this—” I leaned forward and kissed the edge of his jaw, and Tod groaned as my shift in position created a delicious friction between us “—and you were to make that sound you just made, no one could hear you unless you wanted to be heard.”

  His hands tightened on my hips, pressing me tighter into him as my lips trailed down his jaw toward his neck, over the pale, late-night stubble he’d died with. “What happened to the good little girl who blushed and covered her face at the thought of what you’re doing right now?”

  “She died,” I whispered into his ear.

  That girl had felt alive with every breath she’d taken, even knowing she’d soon breathe her last. This one—the restored me—only felt alive when she experienced very strong emotions, which Madeline had assured me was perfectly normal. And so far the only strong emotions I actually enjoyed were the ones I felt when I was with Tod.

  “Why? You like the good girl better?” I asked.

  “I know her better.” Tod’s hand slid up my back beneath my shirt. “But this one’s certainly making me wish I’d shown up for invisi-lunch.” He’d texted me halfway through lunch to say he couldn’t make it.

  I laughed, then rolled off of him and onto my side, watching his profile from inches away. “What could possibly compete with the lure of cafeteria food, adolescent conversation, and hostile company?”

  “I spent two hours trying to question reapers without sounding like I was questioning them. What do you think it says about us as a group, that every reaper I know is either irritable, egotistical, voyeuristic, or some combination of the three?”

  “That you fit in well?”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “So, had any of them seen Thane?”

  “Not that they told me. But I can’t be sure, because I couldn’t come right out and ask. It was probably a waste of time that would have been better spent with you. What did I miss at lunch?”

  I shrugged with the shoulder not pressed into my mattress. “Nash is still mad. Sabine is still blunt. And I met Madeline’s necromancer. His name’s Luca.”

  “A death detector?” Tod made a face. “That’s creepy.”

  “Says the living dead boy.”

  “I’m serious.”

  I pretended to study his expression. “So that’s what that looks like… .”

  “You know you can’t hide from him, right? He’ll see you, whether you’re corporeal or not, and he’ll hear you if he’s close enough. Tell me that’s not creepy.”

  “It’s a little creepy, but he’s the one who found Thane this morning. I’m thinking a necromancer on our side is infinitely less creepy than one working for the bad guys.”

  “I guess…”

  “It gets weirder. He’s dating Sophie.”

  “On purpose?” Tod looked horrified. It takes a lot to scare a reaper.

  “Looks like it. She knows what he is and doesn’t seem to care. Oh, and we ate with Em’s new boyfriend, too.”

  “These are the days of our lives…” Tod announced in a false baritone, and I smacked his shoulder. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Em’s boyfriend like?”

  “His name’s Jayson. He’s human. Normal and nice. He’s probably perfect for her.”

  “But…?”

  “But nothing.” I shrugged. “She’s safer with him than with any of us. She deserves a nice, normal relationship, but—”

  “I knew there was a ‘but.’”

  “—but I don’t know how to be around her when she’s with him. There’s too much I can’t say. Too much he doesn’t know.”

  Tod ran his hand down my arm until he found my hand, and his fingers folded around mine. “Are we still talking about Jayson? ’Cause it kind of sounds like you’re talking about Emma now.”

  I sighed. “Maybe.” Em knew a lot about my world—not to mention the Netherworld—but she was still in the dark about a lot of it, too. She didn’t know much about Thane, or that Avari was willing to kill her to get to me. She didn’t know that Mr. Beck—the incubus math teacher who’d murdered me—had planned to kill her, too, but not until a
fter he’d fed from her. She didn’t know that her sister was pregnant with Beck’s incubus fetus, or that Harmony was busy collecting and combining a blend of Netherworld herbs that could end the brand-new pregnancy and save her sister’s life. Though I’d have to tell her most of that very soon, because I was not looking forward to explaining the truth to Traci, who could discover her own pregnancy any day.

  But mostly, Emma didn’t know how hard it was for me to sit through class after class today, knowing that none of it mattered anymore. I wasn’t going to grow up and go off to college with her. I wasn’t ever going to use the past-perfect conjugation of French verbs, and after finals, I’d probably never again be required to write out a mathematical proof.

  The only things still certain in my future were the reclamation of stolen souls and Tod. That’s it. Those were the only things that mattered anymore, and the harder I clung to the plans that were important to the once-living Kaylee, the more I felt like a fraud walking around in her skin.

  “I keep forgetting to be, Tod,” I whispered, my voice muted by the enormity of what I was admitting.

  “Forgetting to be what?”

  “To be. To be here. To exist. If I don’t concentrate, I slip right out of the physical plane, and I don’t even notice it until I realize people can’t see or hear me.” That had happened with my dad over and over since I’d died, and if it ever happened at school, I was screwed.

  “That’s normal.”

  “That’s not normal!” I insisted. “Forgetting to exist is textbook-weird!”

  His hand tightened around mine, and his blue irises swirled in sympathy. “It takes a while to get into the routine of taking physical form. I didn’t make a habit of it until I met you.”

  “It’s like I don’t exist anymore. Like I’m nowhere.” I rolled onto my back, and he leaned over me, staring down at me from inches away.

  “You’re very much here, Kaylee. From my vantage point, you’re everywhere.” His eyes were all I could see, his irises swirling slowly, confirming everything he was saying and hinting at even more.

  “This is the only time I feel real, Tod. Only when I’m touching you. I wish it could be like this forever.”

  “It can be. It will be,” he said, and he sounded so sure of that that I could almost believe him.

  “What if you get tired of me? Forever’s a long time.”

  “I’m well aware.” Tod sat up and pulled me up with him until we faced each other on my bed. “Forever used to feel like a curse. Now it feels like a promise,” he said, and my chest ached, and I loved that feeling—that rare pain that came from feeling too much, so different from the emptiness I’d almost gotten used to. “All you have to do is stay here with me.”

  “That, and eat breakfast for my dad. And reclaim souls for Madeline. And go to school and work to convince everyone that Nash is innocent.” I frowned as something ridiculous occurred to me. “In the movies and on TV, there are all these ancient vampires taking math and PE with a bunch of teenagers, and I always thought that was the stupidest thing. I mean, if you had eternity to spend however you want—and for the most part, we do—why the hell would you go back to high school? What on earth was I thinking?”

  Tod laughed. “I can’t speak for ancient, fictional creatures, but you were thinking that you wanted to retain what little normalcy still exists in your life. Er, your afterlife. Also, going back to school and work is part of proving you’re still alive, and being alive is the only way to prove that Nash didn’t kill you.”

  “Oh, yeah. But I went back for a day, and everyone saw me, so they know I’m alive now. So I don’t have to go back, right? Tell me I don’t have to go back.”

  “You don’t have to go back.” Tod leaned down and kissed me, and my hand slid into his hair, holding him close as my mouth opened beneath his. “If you quit school we could spend every afternoon just…” Kiss. “Like…” Kiss. “This.” Another, longer kiss, and this time when he pulled away, he left me gasping for breath.

  “Aren’t you supposed to tell me to be responsible and stay in school?”

  Tod’s lips brushed my ear. “I signed on for the role of ‘boyfriend,’ not ‘conscience.’ If you want wholesome and ethical, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But I promise that won’t be half as much fun as this is… .”

  His hand slid down my side and over my hip, and my heart beat faster.

  “That feels so good,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my chin and down my neck. “You feel good. Real.” Solid, like no matter how incorporeal he made himself, I would always be able to touch him. To feel him.

  I gasped when his line of kisses skirted my collarbone and dipped into what little cleavage I’d accumulated before death put an end to the possibility of accruing any more.

  “You, too,” he said, his lips still pressed against my skin. “You make me feel alive. Every time I touch you, I feel like there’s some kind of charge flowing between us. Like tiny little bolts of lightning, setting me on fire. Can you feel it here?” He pushed my shirt up and laid one hand on my stomach.

  I closed my eyes. “I feel it.”

  “Can you feel it here?” His hand glided over my skin and around the curve of my ribs until his finger brushed the edge of my bra, and I stopped breathing, just for a second.

  “I feel it.” I pulled him back up and slid my hands beneath his shirt, feeling my way over his chest as I pulled the material up and over his head. I dropped his shirt on the floor and laid my hand over his heart, and I could feel it beating.

  “Does it do that all the time?” I whispered, and he shook his head, his eyes swirling with pale blue twists of need, and hunger, and something deeper, and steadier, and…endless. “Mine doesn’t, either.”

  Tod laid his hand over my heart and I blinked up at him. “It’s beating now,” he said softly.

  “Yeah. It is.”

  He kissed me, and I didn’t realize my legs had wrapped around his hips until he moaned into my mouth and pressed himself into me.

  I felt so alive in that moment. So real and—

  “Kaylee, are you home?” my father called from the living room, and the front door slammed shut on the tail of the question.

  “Shit!” I whispered, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear us. He couldn’t see us, either, but I couldn’t hide the rumpled comforter.

  Tod sat up and reached for his shirt while I straightened mine. “Relax,” he said as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “What’s he going to do, kill us again?”

  “Not me.” I ran both hands through my hair to smooth it. “You.”

  “You’re almost seventeen, and you’re dead. He has to know that his parental influence is nearing its end stage.”

  “He does. I think. We’re gonna talk about it. Just…not today.”

  “Kaylee?” My dad’s footsteps echoed in the hall, headed our way.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on making myself both visible and audible. “In here.” I opened the door and my dad stepped into the doorway as I dropped the amphora around my neck. “Hey, do you wanna go out for…” His words melted into a sigh when he noticed Tod, but then he rallied with a smile. “Hi, Tod, I didn’t realize you were here. In my daughter’s bedroom. With the door closed.”

  “Happy to be here,” Tod said, and I groaned out loud.

  “Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute, please?” my dad said with a glance at the rumpled comforter.

  “Um, yeah.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he pulled a soda from the fridge and popped the tab.

  “I know things are inevitably going to change, but I’m not going to pretend to be happy that the two of you were here, alone, behind closed doors.” I didn’t bother to tell him that doors no longer mattered. The only time I didn’t feel alone was when Tod was with me.

  “I don’t really want to have this conversation with you, Dad.”

  “I don’t want to have it, either, but you’re kind of forcing my hand.”

 
; “No, I’m not.” I took a soda from the fridge for myself, and after a moment’s consideration, I grabbed one for Tod, too. “If you think about this logically, you have to admit that most of the reasons for me to wait to have sex died when I died.”

  My dad flinched. “You said it out loud. There’s no going back now, is there?”

  “Nope.”

  He was thinking about my mother. Wishing she was here for this conversation. I knew, because I was thinking the same thing. But wishes were worthless, so I launched into logic.

  “I can’t get pregnant, and I can’t catch anything.” Not that Tod had anything for me to catch. “And I love him. And he loves me. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Yes. It should. And it will be.” He closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the countertop, like it was the only thing holding him up. Then his eyes opened and his gaze met mine, his swirling with brown twists of regret and nostalgia. “But you’re still so young.”

  “I’m as grown up as I’m going to get, Dad. And hell, I died a virgin. I died because I was a virgin. So I hope you can understand why I no longer see the point in preserving something that only served to get me killed.”

  “Okay.” My dad nodded slowly. “Those are valid points. Just promise me you’ll think about this before you jump into anything.” He flinched again, and met my gaze with what looked like great effort. “You haven’t already jumped…right?”

  “No. There’s been no jumping yet. And I promise that I’m not done thinking. How’s that?”

  “Is that as good as I’m going to get?”

  “It’s as good as I have to offer.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look exactly mad, either. He looked…disappointed. And maybe a little scared. “You do understand that if we were to add up all the time we’ve actually spent together, you’d still only be around five years old to me, right?”

  “I know,” I said, and his sad smile made me ache. “And you understand that I grew up during those years you missed, right? That’s not how I wanted it, but that’s how it happened, and I can’t go back and fix it. I can’t go back and fix anything, Dad.”