If I Die ss-5

by Rachel Vincent

  He was staring at the wall again, his head slightly tilted. Like he was listening. “Why should he?” Scott asked no one. “He wants to know what’s in it for him.”

  “For who?” I asked, and Scott glanced at me.

  “For Avari. Pay attention!”

  Crap! Did Avari know I was there? Could he see what Scott saw? Is that who Scott was talking to?

  No, it couldn’t be. He was talking about Avari. Or maybe for him. But who was he talking to? Or was he completely imagining the other half of the conversation—not beyond the realm of possibility for someone who regularly saw people who weren’t there.

  “Scott, I can’t hear whatever you’re hearing. I can’t see your hallucinations.”

  He laughed out loud, and the bitter cackle caught me completely off guard. “You’re the hallucination. The rest of us are real.”

  The weird parallel between his psychosis and Farrah’s chilled me from the inside out, but arguing with him would do no good.

  “No way.” Scott shook his head, talking to the wall again. “He wants more. Something bigger.” He paused as the wall presumably answered, and the smile that crawled over Scott’s face then made me want to hold my breath and throw salt over my shoulder. “Now you’re talkin’.”

  “Scott, who are you talking to?” I asked, creeped out to realize that whatever he was talking about was starting to make a weird kind of sense. Nothing I could quite understand, but definitely not lunacy.

  “I don’t know!” he shouted, and I jumped, then glanced at the door, worried it would fly open and the room would be overrun with needle-bearing aides. “I’m not talking to you,” he insisted, a little quieter. “Because you’re not supposed to talk! Go away! Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway!”

  I opened my mouth, but before I could think of what to say, the door flew open and a large male aide—Charles, according to his name tag—burst into the room. I stood frozen, pulse racing so fast my vision was starting to blur. I’d been caught. I’d be arrested, and handcuffed, and driven to the police station in the back of the car.

  “Okay, Scott, calm down…” Charles started, both hands outstretched, and I realized this was a familiar performance for them both. But when he saw me, the aide’s voice faltered, and I was pretty sure he was doubting his own sanity in the brief silence. Then, “Who are you? You’re not a resident.”

  They never called us—er, them—patients. Always residents, like people resided at Lakeside by choice.

  My hands opened and closed. I was starting to sweat, and my chest ached until I realized I wasn’t breathing. I opened my mouth and sucked in a deep breath, but that didn’t fix anything. Tod wasn’t back. I was still trapped.

  “She’s not real,” Scott whispered, glancing from me to the aide, then back. “Make her go away.”

  Charles scowled at me, part confusion, part anger. “You can’t be here. How did you even get in here?”

  “I…” But that’s where my words ran out.

  I could run, but I’d never get past Charles. He was big, and part of his job was restraining residents, when the need arose. And even if I got past him, I couldn’t get out of the locked ward.

  Each breath came faster than the last, but I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t even slow them. There was only one way out, and I desperately didn’t want to take it. If hellions and assorted monsters hung out across the world barrier from the high school, I didn’t want to know what was lurking in the Netherworld version of a mental health facility. Insane hellions? Was there any other kind?

  I closed my eyes, trying to block out the entire room and both of the other occupants. Pulse racing, I tried to think about death. To remember those I’d witnessed so that my wail for them would help me cross into the Netherworld.

  But the only death I could think about was my own, and I can’t wail for myself.

  “Security!” Charles shouted, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, still trying.

  A warm hand took a strong grip on mine, and I screamed and tried to jerk away. But he held tight. An instant later, the hum of the air conditioner faded into silence and my ears popped.

  Then, suddenly the world felt warm and humid. Cicadas chirruped all around me, and that hand still held mine, its grip confident, but looser now.

  “You okay?” Tod asked, and I opened my eyes to find him watching me, dark blond brows drawn low over blue eyes still brilliant in the setting sun. We were in the parking lot, by the trash bins, almost exactly where we’d stood half an hour earlier.

  “That was… What was that?” I demanded, as my pulse finally began to slow.

  “That was me taking some of the tarnish off this old armor.” He pretended to brush dust off the front of his shirt.

  “You call that a rescue?”

  Tod frowned. “You don’t?”

  “That aide was about to haul me out of the room!” I pulled Lydia’s robe off in several angry movements, surprised to see that my hands were still shaking from the close call.

  “It’s more fun when you’re almost caught.”

  “That’s not almost. I was caught.” As evidenced by the remnants of panicked adrenaline still burning in my veins.

  “Well, now you’re un-caught. And for the record, you’re the second chick I’ve snatched from the jaws of the mental health industry tonight.” His eyes shined in the dying light, and I couldn’t resist a small smile. Yes, I’d been caught and nearly suffered a fatal aneurysm from the shock—several days early, by my count—but it was over now, and I’d gotten what I needed.

  “So, you what? Just blinked us both out of there? So that aide saw us disappear?”

  Tod’s brows rose. “What kind of amateur do you think I am? He only saw you disappear. He never saw me at all.”

  “That makes two of us. I was starting to worry about you.” I dropped Lydia’s robe on the sidewalk and headed for my car.

  “Sorry.” Tod fell into step beside me. “It was a little more complicated than I expected.”

  “But she’s okay?” I asked.

  “She…? Oh, Lydia.” Tod brushed one stubborn blond curl from his forehead. “Yeah. I mean, she’s scared to be on her own, but anything’s better than that place.” He glanced over his shoulder at Lakeside. “And she has your number, right?”

  “Yeah.” As I drove home, I played with the idea of inviting her to stay at my house. In a perfect world, that would have been…perfect. My dad needed someone to take care of, and he was about to lose me. Lydia needed to be taken care of, and she couldn’t go back to her own parents.

  But if we lived in a perfect world, I wouldn’t be days from death and Lydia wouldn’t have been locked up in the first place. The reality was that she could never take my place, and my dad would probably be in no shape to take care of anyone for a while after his grand scheming failed and I died.

  How could there possibly be so many things left to fix, and so little time in which to fix them?

  “You wanna come in?” I asked, as I pulled my key from the engine.

  Tod looked at me in the light shining through the windshield from the porch light. “Don’t you need to do some homework, or get a good night’s sleep, or something equally wholesome?”

  I pushed open my car door. “I am no longer attending school for the purpose of education. At this point, I’m only showing up to keep an eye on Mr. Beck. And speaking of evil demon sires, I have a theory I need to verify. Interested in helping?”

  The reaper shrugged. “I have nothing else planned till midnight.”

  “Good.” I got out of the car and shoved my door closed as he stepped right through his. “That gives us five hours to…” Oh, crap. I glanced at my cell phone screen again, then groaned. It was just after seven.

  I’d stood Nash up. Again.

  I took several steps toward the house, then froze when my gaze landed on the front porch. Where Nash sat watching us.

  “You know, pretty soon I’m going to start taking this personally.”

  13<
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  “Hey, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

  Nash stood as I unlocked the door, but instead of following me inside, he stepped into the doorway, one hand on either side of the frame. Symbolically blocking Tod from entering, since he couldn’t physically keep the reaper from doing anything. “I need to talk to Kaylee.”

  “So talk.” Tod disappeared from the front porch, then reappeared next to me in the living room, and when Nash turned around, his eyes were flashing in anger.

  “This is private.”

  Tod opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind about whatever he was going to say and looked at me instead, brows raised in question.

  I nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for…everything.” But I owed Nash both an apology and an explanation.

  Tod disappeared from my living room as fast as he’d appeared, and Nash closed the front door and leaned against it, watching me. “What happened?”

  I collapsed onto the couch next to Styx, and ran one hand over her fur. “Sabine figured out that Beck’s an incubus, and Alec said that if he’s in heat, or whatever, Danica probably isn’t the first student he’s slept with, so we did some research and figured out—”

  Nash shook his head. “I know all that. I talked to Sabine while I was waiting on your front porch. For almost an hour.” He dropped into my dad’s armchair and stared at me across the coffee table. “What happened with Tod?”

  “With Tod?” I said. And then his meaning sank in, and my gaze dropped. I hadn’t done anything wrong—other than breaking into Lakeside and springing a patient—but I couldn’t deny that I knew what he meant. Not anymore.

  “Don’t let him do this, Kaylee.”

  “I’m not letting him do anything,” I said, as exhaustion, confusion, and fear crashed over me, drawing all of the day’s overwhelming risks and revelations into one sharp point of focus. “What good is it going to do for us to have this conversation? I’m sorry I stood you up, but nothing happened with Tod.”

  Nash blinked. “But you know how he feels?”

  “I kinda figured it out.” But not as soon as I should have. Maybe if my life wasn’t full of nightmares, and hellions, and incubi, I would have had time to stop and notice what was going on with the people in my life who weren’t trying to kill me.

  “Then why are you still hanging out with him? How am I supposed to take that?”

  “He’s my friend, Nash.” Styx twitched in her sleep beneath my hand, and I watched her, wishing my life was as simple as hers. Eat. Sleep. Growl at everyone you don’t like. There was something to be said for simplicity.

  “No.” Nash shook his head and leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, trying to catch my gaze. “He’s in love with you, Kaylee.”

  “That’s…” Wait. What? I hadn’t thought it through using those words. I hadn’t realized…

  My heart pounded, and I didn’t know how to interpret the sudden lurch of my stomach into my throat.

  “No,” I said, trying not to remember Tod holding my hand in the adolescent ward, or pulling me out of the Netherworld right before Avari could grab me, or staying all night with me and Emma to make sure no one tried to possess her again. Or telling me I don’t belong with Nash… “But even if he is, what does it matter, Nash? Really. I’m going to die in a few days, and after that, none of this will matter.”

  So can’t we just go on ignoring it for a little longer…?

  “It’ll matter to me.” He looked like I’d just punched him. How could things suddenly be so complicated?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” My head felt like it was going to explode. “I just meant—”

  “I don’t like you hanging out with him alone.”

  My temper spiked, and my apology died a swift death on the end of my tongue. “You mean like you hang out with Sabine alone, even though she’s in love with you?”

  Nash rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “That’s different.”

  “You’re right.” I pulled Styx into my arms and stood with her, stomping toward the kitchen. “Sabine hijacked my dreams and tried to feed me to the Netherworld to get to you. Everything she says is intended to either drive a wedge between us or put herself in your bed. But Tod’s never tried to hurt you and he’s never even come close to pulling his clothes off and jumping me. So yeah, I guess that is different.”

  The recliner creaked, then Nash’s footsteps followed me into the kitchen. “The difference between Tod and Sabine is that she’s honest about it. You know what she’s up to, and you know why, but you’ll never see the strings Tod’s pulling behind the scenes until suddenly you’re just magically where he wants you to be.”

  “He isn’t pulling any strings, Nash. He’s just helping me with something very important. And if I wind up somewhere other than where I am now, it won’t be because he wanted me there. It’ll be because I want me there.” I set Styx on the floor and stood to find Nash watching me, arms crossed over his chest.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  What did that mean? I hadn’t thought it through, I’d just…let it out.

  I exhaled slowly, trying to push everything irrelevant—everything I knew I wouldn’t have time to really address—to the back of my mind. “It doesn’t mean anything except that I needed help, and he came through. That’s what a friend does.”

  “If you needed help, why didn’t you ask me? Why don’t you ever want my help anymore, Kaylee?”

  “I…” The words died on my tongue, my answer as incomplete as the thought behind it. I’d asked Tod and Alec for help with Beck. Hell, I’d even asked Sabine for help. But I’d told Nash to go to baseball practice while the rest of us researched and plotted. Was he right? Had I been excluding him?

  Not on purpose. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about him not being there, because I was focused on Mr. Beck and Nash couldn’t help with that. He couldn’t read Beck’s fear to ID him. He couldn’t give us background info on incubi, and he couldn’t get me into the mental health ward unseen.

  “You couldn’t help me with this,” I said, finally. “I needed Tod.” My logic was sound, so why did I feel so guilty about the truth?

  Nash’s irises churned in anger. “You needed Tod. Do you hear yourself? You’re supposed to need me.”

  The ache in my chest grew into a throbbing so fierce I could hardly breathe. “That’s not what I meant.” Things were falling apart. In spite of my best effort to hold everything together until the end—until my end—my life was unraveling faster than I could grasp at the threads, and I could see chaos bulging through the seams.

  Nash watched me, waiting for more, but Styx started whining then and glanced from me to the fridge, where I gripped the door handle much harder than necessary. She was hungry. As usual. And taking care of her was easier than taking care of Nash.

  I pulled open the fridge and took a package of raw sirloin from the bottom shelf. Styx preferred venison, but we were out, and beef would do in a pinch. Nothing ground, though. Styx didn’t just want to eat—she wanted to tear flesh with her tiny little teeth.

  Maybe that was why Cujo was constantly pissed off.

  “Do you like him?” Nash demanded, leaning against the peninsula, and I closed my eyes, wishing I could erase this moment forever, like it had never happened. But when I opened my eyes, that moment was still there, taunting me with its stamina.

  Styx went crazy at my feet as I peeled clear plastic back from the beef. I dropped a small hunk of meat into her bowl, and she dug in, growling like her meal was still alive and kicking as she ripped small chunks from it and swallowed them whole, more like a cat than a dog.

  “Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?” a new voice said, and my head popped up in surprise. Thane sat on the small table in our dining nook, and Styx hadn’t so much as acknowledged his presence. “Yeah, evidently fresh meat outranks even the dreaded reaper,” he said, when he noticed me frowning at the dog.

  “Kaylee.” Nash step
ped into my line of sight to reclaim my attention, though he had no idea what had stolen it. “Do you like him?”

  “Like who?” Thane slid off the table and walked right through Nash, and I shuddered, revolted and horrified by the sight of them…blended together.

  “Does it matter?” I wrapped the remaining meat up, trying desperately to pretend that the man assigned to kill me wasn’t getting yet another unauthorized peek into my private life.

  “Of course it matters,” Nash snapped. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  I shoved the meat into the fridge and spun to face him, struggling not to vent my fury at Thane on him. “Because in three days, I’m going to be dead, and this’ll be the mootest point of all time.”

  “Well said!” Thane shouted, and his voice echoed around the room like thunder, though only I could hear it.

  “It matters to me,” Nash insisted. “And the question won’t be moot in three days, because Tod will still be here, and every time I look at him, I’m going to know how he felt about you and wonder if that was mutual. If my own brother was trying to steal my girlfriend. So answer me! Do you like him?”

  “Oooh, there’s a brother?” Thane demanded, standing inches away, his chest practically brushing my right shoulder. “Drama, drama, drama.”

  I did my best to ignore the reaper, and focus on Nash. “First of all, I’m not a piece of property that can be stolen.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Nash began, but I cut him off.

  “And second of all, Tod isn’t trying to steal anything from you. You and your mom are all he has left in the world, and I don’t think he’d ever intentionally hurt you.”

  “You know, Cain and Abel were brothers…” Thane said, and I whirled on him, fury sparking like fire in my veins. But before I could say a word, Nash followed my gaze and found…nothing.