My cousin dropped her bare crust on the extra plate and frowned at Em. “Excuse me, but I think I can visualize the forces of evil however I like.”
Luca stifled a laugh. “As long as you’re not expecting them to go ‘Oof!’ and ‘Ka-pow!’ when you hit them.”
“I’m not planning to hit them,” Sophie mumbled, picking a clump of sausage from her second slice.
“Okay, so what’s the plan for tonight?”
I shrugged. “Considering that Emma’s exhaustion led to her being possessable today, I think you guys should let me and Tod do all the Netherworld searching tonight, so you can get some rest.”
“Hell, no,” Nash said.
Sabine’s brows rose in my direction. “I don’t need much sleep. Nash and I will take the first shift. Now, before it gets too late.” I started to object, but she spoke again before I could. “Don’t bother. I’m not asking for permission. I’m letting you know what we’ll be up to, so you won’t worry if you can’t find us. And so you can worry if we’re not back in a reasonable amount of time.”
Before any of the rest of us could answer, Nash pulled her closer and kissed her fuller and deeper than I’d ever seen him kiss anyone other than me.
Sabine looked surprised for the second it took her to realize what was happening. That Nash was kissing her in front of people.
Then things got awkward. Fast.
“Are you trying to make my pizza come back up?” Em demanded, and Luca laughed.
After dinner, Nash and Sabine went to the Netherworld together, concentrating on the buildings within walking distance of the hospital—the ones Tod and I hadn’t already searched.
Luca, Sophie, and Emma curled up on the couch with a movie—no one even suggested doing homework—and Tod and I retreated to my room with a promise not to blink to any more private locations without telling them we were leaving.
My heart started beating on its own when I closed the door and turned to see him sitting in my desk chair. Watching me.
“Okay. So. How mad are you?”
“I’m not mad.” He motioned me closer, and I sat in his lap, facing him.
“You’re not mad at all?” I frowned. “You understand that when I left the hospital this morning, I already knew I was going to summon Ira and I didn’t tell you.”
“Yeah. I got that, and it’s not like I’m celebrating the omission. But...I went after Thane without telling you, so I figure I don’t have much of a leg to stand on in an argument about full disclosures.”
“So you’re not mad because we’re even? I don’t want this to be some kind of contest.”
“It’s not. I’m not mad because I know from personal experience that—like me—you did what you thought you had to do, and you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” His gaze seemed to see straight through to my soul. “So, all I need to know is...did you kiss him?”
“No.” My eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t even ask what his price would be, because I was afraid he would ask for another...taste. Or something worse. I let our parents stay stuck in the Netherworld because I didn’t want him to touch me again,” I confessed. The tears fell, and I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t know whether to feel guilty for my own squeamishness or glad that I didn’t kiss someone else this time.
He took my hand, and his fingers wound around mine. “Kaylee, you didn’t do anything wrong. My mom wouldn’t want you to pay for her freedom like that, and I know damn well your dad and uncle wouldn’t, either.” His grip on my hand tightened, and shivers traveled up my arm. “And as selfish as it probably sounds, I can’t stand the thought of him touching you for any reason.”
“I don’t think I deserve you,” I whispered as those tingles wound their way from my arm down my spine. “I suck as a girlfriend.”
“That’s not true. The real problem is that hellions suck as nemeses.”
“What?”
Tod shrugged. “A proper villain would know when to start overexplaining his dastardly scheme. He’d actually look when you point at the sky and shout, ‘Look!’ When the going gets tough, a real villain would throw one of his minions under the bus and run, or rant against the justice department while he’s being shoved into the back of a cop car. Hell, a real villain would at least wear a mask or creepy clown makeup, so we know at a glance who’s good and who’s bad.” Tod grinned and shrugged. “Face it, Kay. The problem here isn’t you. It’s these subpar villains the universe has thrown at us. Someone should lodge a formal complaint with the bad-guy union.”
I laughed, more grateful than ever for his willingness to make me smile even at the worst of times.
I started to kiss Tod, but then Nash pushed the door open and poked his head into the room. “Hey, sorry to interrupt.” But he didn’t sound that sorry—obviously turnabout was fair play. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, holding his cell phone, and I realized I’d misinterpreted his expression.
Something was wrong.
“You have a call.” He held his cell out to me.
“On your phone?”
“Yeah. It’s Marco. Only it’s not Marco.”
“Oh, crap.” Tod helped me climb out of his lap without landing on the floor, and I stared at Nash’s phone like it might bite me if I touched it. Sure enough, Marco’s name was at the top of the screen, but...
“Ms. Cavanaugh, I really don’t think you want to keep me waiting.” Avari’s voice sounded distant coming from a phone not held close to my ear, but it was perfectly audible. He either couldn’t work Marco’s vocal chords or wasn’t bothering.
My hand shook when I took the phone. It shook harder when I held it to my ear. “Hello?” The standard human greeting sounded stupid, considering I was speaking to a hellion, but I didn’t know how else to start.
“Ms. Cavanaugh, you’ve become a difficult bean sidhe to get hold of. I’ve had to resort to...creative means.”
I pressed the speaker button and set Nash’s phone on my desk, not just so that he and Tod could hear, but so that I could put distance—however worthless—between my ear and the hellion’s voice. “What do you want?”
“The real question is what do you want? What would you like me to do with your father? Shall I list your options, or would you like to guess?”
“This isn’t a game.” I leaned against the desk, staring at my feet.
“Of course it’s a game. Life is a game, little bean sidhe, and you are going to lose. The only choice still yours to make is how soon that happens. For instance, if you were to surrender yourself now, or anytime in the next few hours, your father would be returned to the human world, having suffered no permanent damage.”
“He’s okay?” Was that even possible?
“‘Okay’ is a relative term, in my world as in yours. He has, as yet, suffered no permanent damage. Physically, at least. It is difficult for me to determine how much and what kind of psychological trauma is recoverable.”
Hearing him talk about my father like that made me hate Avari all over again with a loathing rendered raw and fresh, as if the wound were new. But the truth was that he’d cut my heart out months and months ago. Avari kept himself entertained—and fed—by squeezing it whenever he got the chance.
“And if I don’t turn myself in?” It hurt to say the words. To vocally betray my father.
“If you haven’t surrendered your body and soul by midnight, I will begin amusing myself in earnest with your father’s suffering. Physically, at first, and progressing from there. I will push my fingers into his psyche and create excruciating new realities for him. Realities where you are dead and gone, through some negligence on his part, and he drowns in guilt and grief for eternity. Realities where he watches his beloved daughter suffer offenses and indignities beyond human endurance, over and over again while he screams in vain for your freedom and, eventually, for the mercy of your final death.”
My skin crawled. “Stop.” My eyes closed in horror and my voice carried no sound, which was just as well, be
cause it would have made no difference anyway.
Tod rolled the desk chair closer and took my hand, and Nash sank onto the end of my bed, his eyes swirling with angry, despairing shades of green and brown.
“He will have twelve hours of such agony, while you further consider your choices,” Avari continued. “And if you are not in my possession by noon in your human time zone, I will end his life and deliver his soulless corpse—whatever is left of it—into your possession.”
My heart went still, and its last beat echoed the hollow length of my body. “You’re going to kill him?”
“Yes, of course. Unless you are willing to trade yourself for him. And if you have not surrendered by that next midnight—thirty of your human hours from now, if I understand your maddeningly consistent method of keeping time—I will begin to torture his immortal soul.”
“Torture?” I heard the word, but I couldn’t process it. Not truly. My mind was a maelstrom of chaos and fear, rapidly sucking me into a pinpoint of darkness from which I was afraid I might never return.
“It’s a general term, of course. It reveals nothing of my true intent, or the specific levels of pain I can achieve in one so...attached as your father. You are his weakness, you know. You are the thing he would die for. The thing he would suffer for. The thing he will suffer for. And when his sanity starts to slide, he will not be able to differentiate between reality and the mental projection of his worst fears and imaginings. I believe your cousin saw the result of that particular technique when she met Addison in the Nether.”
Sophie met Addison?
“She’s a clever little thing, your kin. More like you than you think. And when your father sinks too far into insanity to suffer for me—for you—I will move on to your cousin.”
“You won’t get that chance,” I said, and Avari laughed out loud.
“She isn’t a pure-blood bean sidhe, and her wail is largely pointless, but the pain that sound could carry... She will be my consolation prize while I wait to acquire you. Her screams will whet my appetite for yours. A most appropriate substitute for however long you are willing to let her suffer. Do you have an estimate of how long that might be? It would really help with my planning....”
“Hang up,” Tod said. “We’ve heard more than enough.” Avari had officially delivered his horrifying ultimatum.
“Well, if it isn’t the knight in tarnished armor. How is that breastplate fitting these days? Has Ms. Cavanaugh discovered how readily you shed the costume of honor when ethical compromise produces faster results—or greater profit?”
Tod glared at the phone, fists clutching the sides of the rolling desk chair like they were the only thing holding him there. “She knows everything I’ve done.”
And I knew that everything he’d done—supernatural drug trafficking and feeding certain criminal elements to the Netherworld—had been done to protect someone else. Tod’s methods may have been flawed, but his heart was in the right place. Always.
“How large is my audience?” the hellion said. “Is the other Mr. Hudson listening? The one with the bruised soul and wounded eyes?”
Nash didn’t answer. None of us did. We only stared at the phone, and with each new word my hand inched closer, my finger hovering over the button that would end the call.
“I look forward to resuming our business relationship. I’ve always found you to be the most pragmatic of your peers,” the hellion continued. “The one who best understands business and is least likely to let emotions interfere.”
“Not gonna happen,” Nash said so softly I wasn’t sure Avari could hear him. “We won’t be doing any more business.”
“Oh, I think we will. I think you and your older, fairer, deader brother will do just about anything to provide for the care and comfort of your lovely mother....”
Nash reached for the phone, but before he could pick it up, the screen flashed black, then the words “call ended” appeared. “Bastard!” Nash shouted, and I grabbed his phone before he could reach it because I could see his intent in his eyes. “He has our mom!” Nash turned on Tod. “How can you just sit there, knowing he has our mother?”
“He doesn’t have her.” Tod’s voice sounded calm, but I could see tension in every line of his body. In the way he sat perfectly still, as if he might lose control of his temper—just like Nash—if he moved at all. “If Avari really had her, he’d come right out and say it, so there could be no doubt. But he didn’t say it. He only implied it, because that’s as close to lying as a hellion can get. He hasn’t found her yet, Nash.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said, and Tod nodded. “That’s probably why he hung up so fast—so we couldn’t start asking about her.”
“So, she’s okay?” Nash needed us to say yes. I could see that in the anxious twists of green ringing the edges of his irises. He wouldn’t sleep if we said no. In fact, he’d probably stay up all night plotting her rescue from scratch, not that I could blame him. But we owed him the truth.
“Maybe,” I finally said. “She’s more okay than she’d be if Avari had her, anyway.”
“Well, I guess that’s probably true.” My mattress creaked when he stood. “I’m going to look for her again. Will you guys come with me?”
Tod hesitated, but I nodded, trying to hide the dangerous idea and the grim certainty growing clearer in my mind with every passing second. “Yeah. Of course. But we should give it a little while. Avari’s going to be on alert for at least the next few hours, in case I actually lose my mind and decide to turn myself in.”
“That’s fine. I’m going out with Sabine anyway,” Nash said, his hand on the doorknob. Tod shot him a questioning look, which I suspect my expression echoed. “Not out, out. Just out to eat. She feeds at night, remember? And I don’t want her going alone after what happened last night.”
Sabine wasn’t going to feed in the Netherworld, which meant she should be safe on her own, but I saw no reason to point that out. Nash feeling protective of his recently poisoned girlfriend was good news for them both.
I was happy for them.
“Don’t forget your key,” Tod said.
“And this.” I held out his phone, and Nash took it, then shoved it in his back pocket. “Be careful.”
“We will.”
“Hey, baby brother, stay out of trouble,” Tod said before Nash could pull open the door.
Nash lifted both brows and grinned. “I’m a year and a half older than you now. I think that makes you the baby brother.”
“I may be physically younger, but—much like a sweet, golden apricot—I was plucked from life at the peak of perfection.” Tod’s smile grew and mischief swirled in his irises. “Someday decades from now, when you and Sabine are hobbling around in your old-people pants and orthopedic shoes, yelling at grandchildren and reminiscing about the days when you could still see your feet, unimpeded by the view of your gut, I will still be basking in the glow of eternal youth, forever young, forever golden, forever—”
“In love with the face in the mirror and the sound of your own voice,” I finished for him, and Nash laughed.
“I can’t take credit for my genetic blessings, but I can’t deny them, either.” Tod pulled me onto his lap again and his hand settled on my hip, and for a moment my whole world went still beneath the unexpected weight of his intense focus. “But the face and voice I most love to see and hear both belong to you. And they always will, Kaylee.”
My heart beat so hard my entire body trembled. I kissed him, and my fingers slid into his hair, and Tod’s hands splayed across my back, touching as much of me as possible.
Nash cleared his throat. “I’m going to refrain from acknowledging the awkwardness of this moment, as I quietly retreat....” His shoes whispered against the carpet.
I pulled away from Tod reluctantly and turned to his brother. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make things—”
“Don’t be.” Nash’s smile was small and more than a little melancholy, but he met
my gaze and held it a second. Then he gave Tod a small, firm nod, like he’d come to some private decision. “Don’t be sorry. Either of you. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I’ve understood that for a few weeks, but I didn’t tell you because...well, because I was really mad at you both. But this is...right.” He made a gesture encompassing us both. “This is good. I hope you both get to stay golden for a long, long time.”
Tod was silent for a moment, and I felt his heart go as still as his eyes, which usually meant he was feeling something he didn’t know how to express. Then, finally, he grinned. “And I hope you get all those grandkids and that old-man gut.”
Nash laughed, and I frowned at Tod.
“What?” He gave me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “I just basically wished him a lifetime of good food and sex. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
I glanced from one brother to the other, confused. “Food and sex? How do you figure?”
Nash crossed his arms over his chest, still chuckling. “Where do you think the kids and the gut come from?”
On the bright side, the fraternal communication gap had obviously been bridged.
But on that other side...it turned out that nonsense was the official language of testosterone, and I was not a native speaker.
“But we’re talking extreme future tense, here. Like, hover cars and space colonies.” Nash lifted his shirt, showing off one of few physical traits he and his brother actually had in common. “These abs are gonna be around for a long, long time.” He disappeared into the hall, still chuckling, and Tod looked at me in astonishment.
“Did that really just happen?”
“I think it did.” I exhaled, long and slow, more relieved than I could ever have explained by this breakthrough in their relationship. In the landscape of betrayal and resentment they’d been mired in for months, that relaxed banter was like climbing the Mount Everest of emotions. Together.
When Nash and Sabine had left so she could hunt, Sophie, Luca, and Emma curled up on the couch to try to distract themselves with another movie. Though I could tell during the opening credits just how futile an effort that would be.
Soul Screamers Volume Two Page 27
