My Soul to Lose

by Rachel Vincent

  “She…” I blinked, trying to focus in a thick cloud of confusion. “She took too much…” Too much of what? The answer was right there, but it was so blurry…I could see it, but couldn’t quite bring it into focus.

  “What?” Nurse Nancy knelt over the girl on my bed—Lisa? Leah?—and pulled back her eyelids. “Get her out of here!” She yelled at one of the aids, gesturing toward me with one hand. “And bring a stretcher. She’s seizing.”

  A woman in bright blue scrubs led me into the hall by one arm. “Go sit in the common room,” she said, then jogged past me.

  I wandered down the hall slowly, one hand on the cold, rough wall for balance. Trying to stay above water as wave after wave of confusion crashed over me. I sank into the first empty chair I found and buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t quite remember…

  People were talking all around me, whispering phrases I couldn’t make sense of. Names I didn’t quite recognize. So I latched on to the first familiar thing I saw: a jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table by the window. That was my puzzle. I’d been working it before something bad happened. Before…

  Cold hands. Dark fog. Screaming. Bleeding.

  I’d placed three puzzle pieces when two aides rolled a stretcher past the nurses’ station and out the main door of the unit. “Another one?” the security guard asked, as he held the door open.

  “This one’s still breathing,” the aide in purple said.

  This one? But the harder I tried to remember, the blurrier the images got.

  I’d only placed two more pieces when someone called my name. I looked up from my puzzle to see another aide—her name was Judy; I remembered that—standing next to my uncle. Who stood next to my suitcase.

  “Kaylee?” Uncle Brendon frowned at me in concern. “Ready to go home?”

  Yes. That much was clear. But my relief came with a bitter aftertaste of guilt and sadness. Something bad had happened. Something to do with the girl on my bed. But I couldn’t remember what.

  I followed Uncle Brendon through the main door—the one you had to be buzzed through—then stopped. Two men leaned over a stretcher in front of the elevator, where a girl with dark hair lay motionless. One man was steadily squeezing a bag attached to a mask over her face. A smear of blood stained her cheek. Her eyes were closed, but in my fractured memory, they were bright green.

  “Do you know her?” Uncle Brendon asked. “What happened to her?”

  I shuddered as the answer surfaced from the haze in my head. Maybe someday I would know what it meant, but in that moment, I only knew that it was true.

  “She took too much.”

  Will Kaylee ever understand what happened? Find out in

  Rachel Vincent’s

  MY SOUL TO TAKE,

  August 2009 from Harlequin Teen.

  SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH KAYLEE CAVANAUGH

  She doesn’t see dead people, but…

  She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

  Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about her need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who’ll be next…

  SOUL SCREAMERS

  The last thing you hear before you die

  “Folklore, mystery, and romance swirl together in a story unlike any other out there. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

  —Melissa Marr, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Lovely

  Turn the page to read a preview…

  My best friend Emma danced her way down the hall and into the main room, hands in the air, hips swaying with the pulse of the song. I followed her, keyed up by the energy of the Saturday-night crowd from the moment I saw the first cluster of bodies in motion.

  We worked our way into the throng and were swallowed by it, assimilated by the beat, the heat, and the casual partners pulling us close. We danced through several songs, together, alone, and in random pairs, until I was breathing hard and damp with sweat. I signaled Emma that I was going for a drink, and she nodded, already moving again as I worked my way toward the edge of the crowd.

  Behind the bar, Emma’s sister Traci worked alongside another bartender, a large, dark man in a snug black tee, both oddly lit by a strip of blue neon overhead. I claimed the first abandoned bar stool, and the man in black propped both broad palms on the bar in front of me.

  “I got this one,” Traci said, one hand on his arm. He nodded and moved on to the next customer. “What’ll it be?” Traci smoothed back a stray strand of pale, blue-tinted hair.

  I grinned, leaning with both elbows on the bar. “Jack and Coke?”

  She laughed. “I’ll give you the Coke.” She shot soda into a glass of ice and slid it toward me. I pushed a five across the bar and swiveled on my stool to watch the dance floor, scanning the multitude for Emma. She was sandwiched between two guys in matching UT Dallas fraternity tees and neon, legal-to-drink bracelets, all three grinding in unison.

  Emma drew attention like wool draws static.

  Still smiling, I drained my soda and set my glass on the bar.

  “Kaylee Cavanaugh.”

  I jumped at the sound of my own name and whirled toward the stool to my left. My gaze settled on the most hypnotic set of hazel eyes I’d ever seen, and for several seconds I could only stare, lost in the most amazing swirls of deep brown and vivid green, which seemed to churn in time with my own heartbeat—though surely they were just reflecting the lights flashing overhead. My focus only returned when I had to blink, and the momentary loss of contact brought me back to myself.

  That’s when I realized who I was staring at.

  Nash Hudson. Holy crap. I almost looked down to see if ice had anchored my feet to the floor, since hell had surely frozen over. Somehow I’d stepped off the dance floor and into some weird warp zone where irises swam with color and Nash Hudson smiled at me, and me alone.

  I picked up my glass, hoping for one last drop to rewet my suddenly dry throat—and wondered fleetingly if Traci had spiked my Coke—but discovered it every bit as empty as I’d expected.

  “Need a refill?” Nash asked, and that time I made my mouth open. After all, if I was dreaming—or in the Twilight Zone—I had nothing to lose by speaking. Right?

  “I’m good. Thanks.” I ventured a hesitant smile, and my heart nearly exploded when I saw my grin reflected on his upturned, perfectly formed lips.

  “How’d you get in here?” He arched one brow, more in amusement than in real curiosity. “Crawl through the window?”

  “Back door,” I whispered, feeling my face flush. Of course he knew I was a junior—too young even for an eighteen-and-over club, like Taboo.

  “What?” He grinned and leaned closer to hear me above the music. His breath brushed my neck, and my pulse pounded so hard I felt light-headed. He smelled sooo good.

  “Back door,” I repeated into his ear. “Emma’s sister works here.”

  “Emma’s here?”

  I pointed her out on the dance floor—now swaying with three guys at once—and assumed that would be the last I saw of Nash Hudson. But to my near-fatal shock, he dismissed Em at a glance and turned back to me with a mischievous gleam in those amazing eyes.

  “Aren’t you gonna dance?”

  My hand was suddenly sweaty around my empty glass. Did that mean he wanted to dance with me? Or that he wanted the bar stool for his girlfriend?

  No, wait. He’d dumped his latest girlfriend the week before, and the sharks were already circling the fresh meat. Though they’re not circling him now… I saw no one from Nash’s usual crowd, either clustered around him or on the dance floor.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna dance,” I said, and again, his eyes were swirling green melting into brown and back, flashing blue occasionally in the neon glow. I could have stared at his eyes
for hours. But he probably would have thought that was weird.

  “Let’s go!” He took my hand and stood as I slid off the bar stool, and I followed him onto the dance floor. A fresh smile bloomed on my face, and my chest seemed to tighten around my heart in anticipation. I’d known him for a while—Emma had gone out with a few of his friends—but had never been the sole object of his attention. Had never even considered the possibility.

  If Eastlake High School were the universe, I would be one of the moons circling Planet Emma, constantly hidden by her shadow, and glad to be there. Nash Hudson would be one of the stars: too bright to look at, too hot to touch, and at the center of his own solar system.

  But on the dance floor, I forgot all that. His light was shining directly on me, and it was sooo warm. We wound up only feet from Emma, but with Nash’s hands on me, his body pressed into mine, I barely noticed. That first song ended, and we were moving to the next one before I even fully realized the beat had changed.

  Several minutes later, I glimpsed Emma over Nash’s shoulder. She stood at the bar with one of the guys she’d been grinding with, and as I watched, Traci set a drink in front of each of them. When her sister turned around, Emma grabbed her partner’s drink—something dark with a wedge of lime on the rim—and drained it in three gulps. Frat boy smiled, then pulled her back into the crowd.

  I made a mental note not to let Emma drive my car—ever—then let my eyes wander back to Nash, where they wanted to be in the first place. But on the way, my gaze was snagged by an unfamiliar sheet of strawberry-blond hair, crowning the head of the only girl in the building to rival Emma in beauty. This girl, too, had her choice of dance partners, and though she couldn’t have been more than eighteen, she’d obviously had much more to drink than Emma.

  But despite how pretty and obviously charismatic she was, watching her dance twisted something deep inside my gut and made my chest tighten, as if I couldn’t quite get enough air. Something was wrong with her. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I was absolutely certain that something was not right with that girl.

  “You okay?” Nash shouted, laying one hand on my shoulder, and suddenly I realized I’d gone still, while everyone around me was still writhing to the beat.

  “Yeah!” I shook off my discomfort and was relieved to find that looking into Nash’s eyes chased away that feeling of wrongness, leaving in its place a new calm, eerie in its depth and reach. We danced for several more songs, growing more comfortable with each other with every moment that passed. By the time we stopped for a drink, sweat was gathering on the back of my neck and my arms were damp.

  I lifted the bulk of my hair to cool myself and waved to Emma with my free hand as I turned to follow Nash off the dance floor—and nearly collided with that same strawberry blonde. Not that she noticed. But the minute my eyes found her, that feeling was back in spades—that strong discomfort, like a bad taste in my mouth, only all over my body. And this time it was accompanied by an odd sadness. A general melancholy that felt specifically connected to this one person. Whom I’d never met.

  “Kaylee?” Nash yelled over the music. He stood at the bar, holding two tall glasses of soda, slick with condensation. I closed the space between us and took the glass he offered, a little frightened to notice that this time, even staring straight into his eyes couldn’t completely relax me. Couldn’t quite loosen my throat, which threatened to close against the cold drink I so desperately craved.

  “What’s wrong?” We stood inches apart, thanks to the throng pressing ever closer to the bar, but he still had to lean into me to be heard.

  “I don’t know. Something about that girl, that redhead over there—” I nodded toward the dancer in question “—bothers me.” Well, crap. I hadn’t meant to admit that. It sounded so pathetic aloud.

  But Nash only glanced at the girl, then back at me. “Seems okay to me. Assuming she has a ride home…”

  “Yeah, I guess.” But then the current song ended, and the girl stumbled—looking somehow graceful, even when obviously intoxicated—off the dance floor and toward the bar. Headed right for us.

  My heart beat harder with every step she took. My hand curled around my glass until my knuckles went white. And that familiar sense of melancholy swelled into an overwhelming feeling of grief. Of dark foreboding.

  I gasped, startled by a sudden, gruesome certainty.

  Not again. Not with Nash Hudson there to watch me completely freak out. My breakdown would be all over the school on Monday, and I could kiss goodbye what little social standing I’d gained.

  Nash set his glass down and peered into my face. “Kaylee? You okay?” But I could only shake my head, incapable of answering. I was far from okay, but couldn’t articulate the problem in any way resembling coherence. And suddenly the potentially devastating rumors looked like minor blips on my disaster meter compared to the panic growing inside me.

  Each breath came faster than the last, and a scream built deep within my chest. I clamped my mouth shut to hold it back, grinding my teeth painfully. The strawberry blonde stepped up to the bar on my left, and only a single stool and its occupant stood between us. The male bartender took her order and she turned sideways to wait for her drink. Her eyes met mine. She smiled briefly, then stared out onto the dance floor.

  Horror washed over me in a devastating wave of intuition. My throat closed. I choked on a scream of terror. My glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor. The redheaded dancer squealed and jumped back as ice-cold soda splattered her, me, Nash, and the man on the stool to my left. But I barely noticed the frigid liquid, or the people staring at me.

  I saw only the girl, and the dark, translucent shadow that had enveloped her.

  Other books by Rachel Vincent available now

  STRAY

  ROGUE

  PRIDE

  PREY

  For more information on Rachel Vincent and her books, visit:

  Her website:

  http://rachelvincent.com

  Her blog:

  http://urbanfantasy.blogspot.com/

  Her MySpace page:

  www.myspace.com/rachelkvincent

  Her Facebook:

  http://www.facebook.com/people/Rachel-Vincent/1172307623

  Her Twitter:

  http://twitter.com/rachelkvincent

  Join the conversation about Rachel Vincent’s titles and paranormal books at www.paranormalromanceblog.com and in our community discussions at eHarlequin.com (http://community.eharlequin.com).

  For more about Harlequin Teen, visit www.HarlequinTeen.com.

  A native of the dust bowl, Rachel Vincent is the oldest of five siblings, and arguably the most outspoken of the bunch. She loves cats, devours chocolate and lives on flavored coffee. Rachel’s older than she looks—seriously—and younger than she feels, but remains convinced that for every day she spends writing, one more day will be added to her lifespan.

  She maintains a Web site at rachelvincent.net and an active blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3867-5

  My Soul to Lose

  Copyright © 2009 by Rachel Vincent

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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