Before I Wake ss-6

by Rachel Vincent

  “You know that’s a lot easier said than done, Kaylee,” Nash said softly, and we all knew he was thinking about Tod. About a betrayal he didn’t think he could forgive. But he was wrong about that.

  “Yeah, I know. But I’m willing to—” The rest of that sentence died on my tongue as my gaze snagged on something behind him. A girl in a green-and-white-letter jacket, watching me from the edge of the quad, half-hidden by the brick wall of the building.

  “Kaylee?” Nash twisted to see what I was looking at.

  I stood and the girl smiled at me. My heart stopped beating.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  But it was.

  Meredith Cole. Sophie’s fellow dance-team member, who’d died last September, here in the quad. I’d screamed for her soul. Which Marg the reaper had then given to Belphegore, the hellion of vanity.

  Meredith was back, and that could only mean one thing.

  “Shit,” Luca mumbled, and in my peripheral vision—I didn’t dare let Meredith out of my sight—I saw him scrub one hand over his face and through his hair. “There’s a body. In the parking lot, I think.”

  I grabbed my backpack and climbed over the bench seat as Meredith disappeared around the building. I took off after her, dodging tables and kids with trays, and I ran right past Emma and Jayson, who stared after me in surprise.

  “Kaylee!” Nash shouted, and footsteps pounded on the ground behind me, but I couldn’t tell how many of my friends were following me. And I could only hope the rest of the student body hadn’t decided to come watch whatever drama they imagined we were playing out.

  I chased Meredith around the corner of the building and she stopped halfway to the parking lot and turned to face me. I slowed to a walk and my grip tightened around the strap of my bag as I pulled the zipper open with my free hand.

  “Avari?” I said so softly I could barely hear myself.

  “Who else?” the hellion said in Meredith’s voice. “I thought this ensemble most appropriate for a visit during school hours. However, I’m not sure I got the smile quite right. How does she look on me?” He spread Meredith’s arms, inviting me to inspect her. She looked exactly like she had the day she’d died. Letter jacket. Skirt that barely passed the dress code. Too-thin legs. Honey-brown ponytail. This was beyond creepy. I was being haunted by everyone I’d ever failed to save—all the ghosts of my past.

  Dickens was probably rolling over in his grave.

  “Who’d you kill?” I demanded as several sets of footsteps slowed to a stop behind me.

  Meredith cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t ask his name. I only asked if he knew you, and when he was finished soiling himself—evidently he recognized my disguise—he managed to say that he shares a class with you.”

  My backpack shook in my grip. Another death laid at my doorstep. Another classmate dead for no reason. Who would be next? One of my friends? A member of my family? I could hardly see through the horror clouding my vision. I couldn’t let this go on.

  “I warned you, Ms. Cavanaugh, yet you greedily cling to your soul, when you could have spared your friends and classmates another loss.”

  “Meredith?” Sophie’s voice was a shocked whisper as she slowed to a stop at my side, and I glanced back just long enough to make sure no one else—no one human—had followed us out of the quad. They hadn’t, but that couldn’t last long.

  I tried to step in front of my cousin, but she shoved me away, her eyes wide and filled with tears.

  “Get her out of here,” I said to Luca. He tried to lead her away, but she wouldn’t go.

  “Meredith?” she said again, and I could hear the tears in her voice.

  To my horror, the hellion answered, in Meredith’s voice. “Don’t let them hurt me, Sophie. Your crazy cousin wants to kill me.”

  “Kaylee?” Sophie demanded, and on the edge of my vision, I saw Nash move to help Luca with her. “No! Get off me!” She shoved their hands away. “Kaylee, is that Meredith?”

  “No. Meredith is dead.” I didn’t dare look away from the hellion as he watched her, a quiet smile turning up one corner of his stolen mouth, enjoying her confusion and pain.

  “So are you!” Sophie hissed, pushing Nash away. If she threw a fit, people would come running. We had to keep her quiet and get her away from the hellion. “Is Meredith back? You can’t kill her! I won’t let you!”

  “Sophie, get out of here and let me do my job.” I desperately didn’t want her to be there when I had to stab a monster who looked like one of her friends.

  Luca stepped in front of Sophie, blocking her view of the hellion, and when she tried to step around him, he wrapped both arms around her—more hug than restrictive hold. He spoke into her ear, so softly I could hardly hear him. “I don’t know who Meredith is, but if Kaylee says that’s not her, then that’s not her. That’s not even her corpse—you have my word.”

  “Then what is that? What the hell is that?” Her voice went shrill and terrified, and for the first time I thought I heard a little of her mixed-blood bean sidhe heritage leaking through. “What’s going on? What does it want?”

  “I came back for you, Sophie,” the Meredith-thing said. “Come with me. You belong in hell. That’s where all snotty little bitches wind up eventually, anyway.” The hellion’s lips curled up into a creepy smile, and Sophie screamed.

  Luca and Nash tried to cover her mouth, but her lungs were powerful and her voice was shrill.

  I reached into my backpack and pulled the dagger from an inside pocket. I’d had to blink straight into the school building to get it past the metal detectors, and now I was glad I’d gone to the extra trouble.

  The hellion was drinking up Sophie’s trauma, but Meredith’s eyes narrowed on me when she saw the blade, and she spread her arms. “This is my favorite part,” Avari said with Meredith’s voice. “Until next time…”

  I drove the dagger through her stomach and up into her chest.

  14

  “SOPHIE.” I KNELT in front of my cousin and Luca on the spring grass, but she wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t look at anything. She just clung to Luca, staring at the letter jacket that had remained after Meredith disappeared. Her name was on the back and several dance-themed pins were attached to the green letter E. “Sophie, I need you to focus.”

  Finally she blinked and started to look up. But then her gaze snagged on the bloody dagger still in my hand—I couldn’t put it in my backpack until I’d cleaned it—and she turned away from me and buried her face in Luca’s shoulder.

  “Was that him?” she said, her words muffled by the material of his shirt. “Was that the hellion we saw in the Netherworld?”

  I thought I’d heard her wrong until Luca answered, stroking her hair with one hand. “I couldn’t swear to it, but my guess would be yes.”

  “What? When were you two in the Netherworld?” I asked, and Luca shrugged.

  “The day we met. That’s kind of…how we got together. She’s stronger than you think she is, you know.”

  I certainly hoped he was right. “I’m gonna want to hear that story when things calm down. But for now, Sophie, Sabine’s going to take you to Nash’s house and I want you to stay there with her. We’ll tell the school you went home sick.” Nash could make them believe it without question, at least long enough to excuse her absence, and Avari would be less likely to look for her at his house than at mine. “I’ll drive your car home later. Okay?”

  Sophie shook her head sluggishly, but her eyes were clearer. “I’m not going anywhere with her.” Her gaze flicked up to where Sabine watched her over my shoulder.

  “You’re not my idea of a good time, either,” Sabine snapped. Then she glared at the rest of us. “You guys need me here.”

  “No, I need you to stay with Sophie in case Avari goes after her.” I needed someone who could fight, if necessary. Luca had volunteered for the job, but we needed him to take us to the corpse in the parking lot.

  “If she makes one snotty comment,
you won’t have to worry about the hellion killing her. I’ll save him the trouble.”

  “Sabine!” I stood and turned on her, but she only shrugged and held her ground, not the least bit intimidated by the bloody dagger in my hand or the fact that I’d just killed Avari. Again.

  “I’m a Nightmare, Kaylee. You want me to scare someone to death? I’m your girl. But I’m not cut out to be a babysitter.”

  “Just don’t let anyone kill her. It’s not that complicated,” I snapped, and Sabine scowled at me. “Look, lunch will be over in a few minutes, and I need to get her out of here. Just take her to Nash’s, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. If you’re really my friend, you’ll do this.”

  The mara’s scowl deepened. “You know, you were much less work as a nemesis.” Then she stomped off toward her car with my cousin in tow, and too late I realized I should have specified that she wasn’t allowed to feed on my traumatized cousin’s fears.

  While Nash went to the office to influence the attendance secretary into signing Sophie out, I blinked into the teachers’ restroom and locked the door, then cleaned the dagger and put on the letter jacket Nash had lent me to cover the blood on my shirt.

  At my current rate of consumption, I wouldn’t have a shirt left in my closet by the end of the next week.

  When I was fit to be seen again—just in case—I met Nash in the parking lot and Luca led us to a dusty blue compact car, where Brant Williams was slumped behind the wheel.

  “No!” Nash reached for the door handle, but I stepped in front of him and refused to move when he tried to reach around me. “Kaylee, get the hell out of my way!” He and Brant had been teammates in both football and baseball since Nash transferred to Eastlake. There were tears in his eyes, and even more half-choking his voice, but I stood my ground.

  “No fingerprints, Nash.”

  “I’ll say I found him,” he insisted. “They’d expect me to try to help him.”

  “You can’t be the one to find him.” I waited for understanding to surface among the agonized twists of brown and green in his eyes, and when it didn’t, I said what I’d been trying to avoid. “You were arrested as a suspect in a double homicide a month ago. You don’t need to pop up on the police department’s radar again this soon. The line between witness and suspect can get really thin.”

  Nash flinched like I’d slapped him, and he couldn’t quite hide the twist of resentment in his eyes. It was my fault he was on their radar in the first place. “How long am I going to be paying for the fact that I didn’t kill you, Kaylee?”

  Before I could even make sense of what he was asking, the bell rang, and all three of us jumped, and when I tried to make Nash go to class, he refused. I couldn’t really blame him.

  A glance into Brant’s car told me the doors were locked and he wasn’t breathing, but I blinked into the car to check his pulse just in case, careful not to touch anything else.

  He was dead. And I wanted to throw up. We’d never been close, but I’d known Brant since the third grade. He was one of the basketball team captains and one of few Eastlake baseball players other than Nash that I’d ever spoken to outside of school. He was a nice guy. And now he was dead. Because of me.

  My hands were shaking when I rejoined Luca and Nash next to the car. “I’m sorry, Luca, but you have to find the body.” I couldn’t do it. My shirt was covered in blood.

  Luca looked sick. But he nodded. “What do I say about why I was in the parking lot?”

  “Do you have a license?” I asked, and he nodded again. “Tell them you told Sophie you’d drive her car home, and you found Brant just like this.”

  “Okay.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, ready to call either 9-1-1 or the front office. I didn’t ask which.

  “You sure you’re good with this?” Nash asked, his voice grim, his forehead deeply furrowed.

  “Yeah.” Luca started pressing buttons. “You two get out of here. And call my aunt.”

  I promised him I would, then I took my backpack in one hand and Nash’s hand in the other and blinked us into his living room, after a stop behind a convenience store about halfway between.

  Sophie sat on the couch in tears, and she nearly jumped out of her own skin when we appeared right in front of her. “Where’s Luca?” she said, frowning when he didn’t appear with us.

  “At school discovering Brant’s body.”

  “Brant Williams?” More tears filled her eyes. “Brant’s dead? How? What happened?”

  “That hellion you saw? That’s Avari. He tortures and kills people for fun. Which is why he pretended to be Meredith—to hurt you.” I couldn’t tell how much of that she’d actually heard over her own sniffling, but she had enough to process already. “Where’s Sabine?” I asked when a cursory glance into the kitchen revealed no disgruntled mara.

  “Back there somewhere.” Sophie gave a tearful glance down the hall, and I turned to look just as Sabine stepped out of Nash’s room with a half-full bottle of tequila.

  “Hell, no.” I grabbed for the bottle as she stepped into the living room, but she pulled it out of my reach. “The last thing we need right now is a drunk Nightmare.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, your cousin’s a bit of a delicate flower.” Sabine gestured toward Sophie, who still sat curled up on one end of the couch, in spite of Nash’s best efforts to comfort her. “So you can give her a shot, and hope that makes her a little easier for me to stomach, or you can give me a shot and hope that makes her a little easier for me to stomach. Otherwise, I’m outta here.” The mara shrugged. “Your call.”

  I sighed, digging my phone out of my pocket. “Fine. Give her a shot. One.” Was that really any worse than the pills her mother had given her when Meredith died the first time? At least you don’t need a prescription for tequila.

  Sabine produced a shot glass from her pocket, and while I texted Tod, I tried not to worry about the fact that Nash had a bottle of tequila in his room and Sabine carried a shot glass in her pocket.

  @ Nash’s. Can u come?

  Tod appeared in front of the television just as Sabine handed the full shot glass to Sophie. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing new,” Sabine said as my cousin took a sip from the shot glass, then grimaced. “Just getting a cheerleader drunk.”

  “She’s not a cheerleader. She’s a dancer,” I said, sliding my phone into my pocket.

  “Wow. Look how much of a damn I don’t give.” Sabine pushed the shot glass back at Sophie. “What, you’re too precious to drink it straight?” She twisted to glance around the room. “Anybody got some lime and a cute little paper umbrella?”

  “I’ll get her a chaser.” Nash headed for the kitchen without a word to his brother.

  Tod glanced at me with one brow raised, and I sighed. “Avari showed up at school as Meredith Cole, another one of the girls Marg killed for Belphegore. Meredith was on Sophie’s dance team, and we all saw her die last September.”

  “Seeing a classmate return from the dead would freak anyone out,” Tod said as we both watched Sabine try to get my cousin to drink.

  “Yeah, but he made an effort to upset Sophie specifically. I’m worried he’ll go after her next.”

  “What’s with the jacket?” Tod asked as Nash crossed the room with a glass of soda.

  “Oh.” I’d forgotten I was wearing it. “I ruined another shirt.” I unsnapped Nash’s letter jacket and pulled it off, then laid it over the arm of the nearest chair.

  “You know, there’s a much easier, simpler way to sedate her,” Tod whispered as Sophie downed half the shot, then gulped the soda Nash handed her.

  I rolled my eyes. “No, you can’t knock her out. She’s traumatized, but she’ll come around.” She’d evidently survived a trip to the Netherworld, which told me that as upset as she was about Meredith, Luca was right. She was stronger than she looked. She had to be. “I have to text Madeline.” I sank into the chair, typing with both thumbs, and Tod sat on the arm opposite Nash’s jacke
t.

  “I get that that was a hellion.” Sophie leaned back on the couch, clutching the glass of soda as she stared at the shot glass standing empty on the coffee table. “But why did it look like Meredith? Why did it sound like Meredith?”

  Sabine picked up the shot glass and refilled it. “It looked and sounded like your dancing chick because it was wearing her soul like a raincoat.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” I insisted as Sabine tossed the shot back.

  “Sure we do. But on the bright side, Kaylee freed her soul, so she’s no longer being tortured in the Netherworld.”

  “Tortured?” Sophie’s chin quivered, and Sabine nodded, pouring another shot.

  I stood and grabbed the bottle from her, and tequila splashed onto the coffee table. “We can’t afford for you to be at less than your best right now.”

  “Kaylee, we just watched you stab the undead cheerleader who threatened to drag your cousin into hell. I think we could all use a drink.”

  “You just had one.”

  Sophie was sniffling again. “Why would a demon want to torture Meredith? Or send me to hell?”

  “Can’t imagine,” Tod said. “Got any sins you wanna confess? Something in the vein of narcissism and cruelty?”

  “It’s not hell,” I said, elbowing him. “It’s the Netherworld.”

  “What’s the difference?” Sophie wiped her nose, glaring at Tod.

  Sophie’s question was rhetorical, but Sabine huffed in reply anyway. “Hellions vacation in hell to cool off.”

  “Not helping, Bina.” Nash sank onto the couch next to Sophie and took her hand. “It has nothing to do with you, personally. This particular hellion has been around for thousands of years and has been directly or indirectly responsible for more deaths than any of us can even imagine. His breath killed Doug Fuller. He killed Mr. Wesner, Mr. Wells, and Mrs. Bennigan at school. This afternoon, he killed Brant Williams in his own car. And even if he didn’t personally kill Scott, he’s ultimately responsible for his death.”