“What are my options?”
“Anything you want, Kaylee.” The heat in his gaze set me on fire in all the right places. “Time is on our side, youth is our immortal legacy, and you are all I’ve ever wanted. This could be the best night of our afterlives.”
“Then what would we do tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow, we top our personal best.” He set the cups on the minifridge serving as his bedside table, and the dim overhead light cast highlights and shadows on every plane and ridge of his bare chest. “I like a challenge.”
“I like you.” I pulled him onto the twin mattress with me. Tod landed on his side, propped up on one elbow. I leaned down to kiss him, and when I started to pull away, his hand slid behind the back of my head, his fingers in my hair, holding me in place gently so our kiss would last. And last. And last...
When Tod finally let me go, my head was spinning, and that had nothing to do with the fact that I hadn’t taken a breath in several minutes and everything to do with the fact that he made me feel alive. He was the closest thing to a drug that I’d ever experienced, and I had yet to find a limit to what I’d be willing to do to protect him. To keep us together.
I’d spent most of my life setting boundaries. Lines I wouldn’t cross. Lines I wouldn’t let others cross. But with Tod, there were no boundaries. No limits. Time was not an issue. I loved him without reservation. I’d given him everything I had and everything I was, and he’d done the same. He’d given up his life for Nash, but he’d been willing to give up eternity for me. Not just willing—he’d actually done it.
I’d seen Levi, his boss, confiscate his soul and end his afterlife because he’d refused to kill me and reap my soul.
We had eternity to love each other, but after the way our relationship had begun—with loss and death and sacrifice—every single moment felt like a gift neither of us was willing to take for granted.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” Tod rolled away from me and reached past the edge of the mattress to pull open the top door of the minifridge, which exposed the even more mini freezer. When he rolled toward me again, he held a small container of Phish Food, my favorite ice cream, and two plastic spoons. “I know it’s small. This is the only size that would fit in the freezer.”
“What’s the occasion?” I took the spoon he handed me while he opened the carton and peeled off the plastic seal.
“Tuesday.” He frowned and twisted to glance at the alarm clock on top of the freezer. “For another forty minutes, anyway.” He handed me the plastic seal and I licked ice cream from it, then leaned over to drop it into the trash can at the foot of his bed. Which was wedged into a scant foot of space between the mattress and the only chair in the room. His place was so small we could practically reach everything in the room from one end of the bed or another.
But it was all his. Ours, he insisted, on nearly a daily basis. We were the only two people in either world who knew exactly where his place was. Nash had been in the room, but Tod had blinked him there, so on his own, Nash couldn’t find reaper headquarters again even if he wanted to. And he did not.
The rest of the reapers and my dad knew where the headquarters building was but not which room was Tod’s.
And the best part about Tod’s place was that there was no exit. Literally. The only door was the one separating the tiny bathroom from the small main room. There was no exit because reapers didn’t need doors, and now I didn’t either, and that was beyond convenient, because this way neither of us could lose the key. The absence of windows made things feel a little claustrophobic sometimes, but the fact that no one could burst in on us made up for that completely.
“Do you have any idea how hot it is when you lick that plastic ice cream thing?” Tod’s eyes were swirling when I scooted across the mattress toward him, rumpling the already chaotic mess of sheets and blankets. It never ceased to amaze me how disheveled his bed always was, considering that he rarely slept at all. If ever. I’d never seen him sleep, anyway.
“No. But you’re welcome to tell me....”
“It’s so hot I’m considering opening another carton, just to watch the replay.”
I smiled. “Sounds like you need to cool off.”
“That’s not what I need. In fact, that’s the opposite of what I need. But I might accept a short delay in the form of one of those little chocolate fishes.”
Laughing, I dug a fish-shaped bite of fudge out with my spoon and fed it to him.
“Mmm... This is the best part of being dead.”
“No, this is the best part of being dead.” I kissed him, and his tongue was cold and he tasted like fudge. So I kissed him again.
“We did that when you were alive, you know.”
Yeah, but only for a day. Because I’d died on the second day of our relationship. And... “But never here. Never in absolute privacy. Never after my father went to sleep, in a totally separate building, with no idea where we are or what we’re doing.” If I were still alive, my dad would be enforcing my curfew much more strictly.
I took a bite of ice cream and let it melt slowly in my mouth. We’d suffered a criminal lack of perfect moments since the day I’d kissed him in the hall at school. There always seemed to be something or someone standing in the way of perfection, however brief, and that something was a hellion more often than not. But this moment was perfect. This moment was chocolate, and privacy, and bare skin, and cold mouths, and warm hands, and cell phones set on Silent.
I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but Tod seemed to realize at about the same point I did that we could eat ice cream and hold hands, but if we didn’t also do something constructive, we would look back on this moment plagued with guilt, when our lack of preparation got someone killed.
Someone who wasn’t already supposed to die, that is.
“Anything new with Sophie?” he said, but his tone and the eye contact he was making with my mouth told me he was less interested in the answer than he was in...me.
“Sabine says half a drop of liquid envy is more than enough. We were right about that. Turns out my cousin is a possessive little monster, though, so Sabine’s going to skip the morning dose tomorrow, because no one has any pre-lunch classes with Sophie, and we don’t want her to...well...go psycho when no one’s there to help.”
“Really? I think that might be kind of entertaining. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You know how Laura Bell has this horrible Pat Benatar-from-the-eighties haircut?”
“I don’t even know who Laura Bell is, and I can’t honestly say I care about her hair. Your hair is the only hair I care about.” He ran a strand of it through his fingers. “And I love how it looks kinda red in the light, and how it feels when it trails over my skin when we’re—”
I could feel my cheeks burn. “Well, Laura has tragically short hair, courtesy of Sophie, from back when Invidia was polluting the entire school with a monster dose of jealousy. We’re trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible this time. Especially since the point of this whole thing is to keep the hellions from doing any more damage at Eastlake.”
“Great. Good plan. I approve. Now can we do that thing where your hair trails over...?” He made a vague gesture encompassing his chest and my hair.
I laughed. “In a minute. Business first.” I slid another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth when he started to object.
“Fine,” Tod said when his mouth was empty again. “So, how’s Emma holding up? Any more accidental syphoning?”
“Yeah,” I said around a bite of chocolate-laced marshmallow cream. “I think she was taking a bit of her sister’s...pregnancy emotion this afternoon.”
“What emotion would that be?”
“Several at once, as near as I can tell. Fear. Grief. This fierce love for her unborn child, which was kind of amazing to watch. I mean, she’s never even seen the baby. And she can’t have felt it kick yet. I looked it up, and it’s too early for that, unless things are different for an incu
bus pregnancy. But she loves that baby like it’s the only thing she has in the whole world.” Which wasn’t true. But that didn’t make the intense love I’d seen in her eyes any less real.
“I guess sometimes the parental bond begins in utero.”
“I guess.” I sat up and put the lid on the ice cream carton, then handed it to him. “Tod, do you ever wind up with any...extras?”
“Extra what?” He swiveled on the edge of the mattress to put up the ice cream, and when he turned again, he handed me one of the cups of water, then took a sip from his own.
“Extra souls.”
Tod choked on his drink, then coughed while I pounded on his back. Dead people can’t choke to death, but you’d never know that from the way it still feels when you inhale water.
“You okay?” I said, when he finally stopped coughing and met my gaze.
He set his cup on the fridge without even glancing away from me. “Kaylee, I know what you’re thinking, and you need to stop thinking it. Seriously. It won’t work.”
“He’s a baby. We can’t just let Traci’s baby die.”
“Yes, we can. We have to.”
“What is wrong with you?” Angry and disappointed, I stood and stomped across the floor and into the bathroom—a four-step trip—and dumped my water into the sink.
Tod followed but hovered in the doorway. Giving me space but not giving in. “Kay, listen to me. Please. I’m not just being randomly cruel. I have nothing against Traci Marshall, and you know I’d never intentionally hurt Emma.”
Unless it was to save me. He’d hurt Em to save me. He’d hurt anyone to save me, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with that knowledge.
“Traci’s baby is an incubus. She wouldn’t be so sick otherwise, right?”
I nodded. But I didn’t look up. I couldn’t look at him, because I wasn’t sure what I’d see swirling in his eyes this time.
“That baby will never be on my list. Just like his father never would have. Just like Avari never will be. Because they’re...they’re monsters, Kaylee. Predators.”
“Sabine’s a predator. She can’t live without hurting
others.” That sucked, but it was true. “If she can control it, so can Traci’s baby.”
“No.” Tod stepped into the bathroom and stood at my back, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin through my shirt but not close enough to actually touch me. “Sabine’s the exception, Kaylee. She’s native to our world. She’s the product of two human parents. She’s a predator, but not a monster. Beck was different. His son will be different. You know what Beck did to Traci. You know that he would have done the same thing to Emma. And to Sophie. And to you, if you weren’t immune to his abilities.” Because I was a bean sidhe. “He feeds to survive, just like everyone else in both worlds. The difference for incubi is...what he did to Traci. To your friend Danica. They had no choice.” He stopped talking, waiting for a response from me, but I had none. I didn’t know what to say.
“Kaylee, look at me, please. I need to know that you know I’m not just being cruel.” He closed what little distance stood between us and pressed his chest against my back. He ran his hands slowly down my arms, and finally I met his gaze in the mirror and saw the truth swirling in his eyes.
Regret. Disappointment. Fear.
He didn’t like telling me what he was telling me, but he felt it had to be done.
“If we help Traci bring another incubus into the world, he’s going to do what his father did, to hundreds of girls your age or younger. Maybe thousands over his lifetime. But I can’t live with the knowledge that he did it even once, and we helped make that possible.”
Finally, I turned, and he was so close I had to crane my neck to look into his eyes. “But you don’t know that. Incubi don’t have to feed during sex. They can feed from lust. Without...touching. Traci could raise him to do that. Surely nurture has as much as nature to do with how any kid turns out. Even incubi.”
Tod shook his head slowly. Sadly. “Kaylee, that won’t happen. Yes, it could happen, but it won’t. That’d be the incubi version of living on nothing but cabbage. He’d slowly starve until he got so desperate for sustenance that he gave in to hunger. And maybe that’s not entirely his fault. I’m in no position to judge a creature for doing what’s in his nature. But would you seriously want your teenage daughter anywhere near Traci’s son when he hits puberty and his appetite kicks in?”
“I’m not going to have a daughter.” Ever. Nor a son.
Tod exhaled slowly. “I know. Me, neither. But you get my point, right? What if it were you? What if you weren’t a bean sidhe and Beck had made you...do things?” The swirling in his eyes grew angrier and more intense at the thought. “But what if you didn’t know he’d made you do it? What if you thought you were just the kind of person who’d cheat on her boyfriend, or sleep with a teacher, or give away something that should mean something? What if that had been your first time?”
My stomach churned. What if I’d lost my virginity to my evil math teacher with no idea I’d been under the influence of incubus pheromones at the time? What would that have done to my relationship with Tod? What would that have done to the rest of my life?
“Do you really want some other girl to go through that because we helped bring an incubus into the world?”
I shook my head. “But I promised Emma I’d try.” And I wasn’t going to let those horrible things happen. If her son grew up to be dangerous, I was both prepared and willing to do what had to be done. At least, I would be by then. Surely.
“You did try. And it’s a moot point anyway, because I don’t have any extras. Reapers never have extras, unless they’ve gone rogue.”
I’d only met two rogue reapers, and that was two more than most people would ever meet. But one of them was dead, and the other—Thane—I had no way to find. And I wouldn’t go looking for him even if I knew how, because there’s a big difference between risky and dangerous. Between determined and stupid.
And anyway, I wasn’t that desperate just yet. There was still one more possibility....
But I clamped a lid on that thought before it could show in my eyes. I rarely disagreed with Tod, and I wasn’t sure this was actually one of those times. I needed more time to think, and there was no use worrying him before I knew there was anything for him to worry about.
Chapter Nine
I stayed with Tod, and we made the most of the last half hour of the day, then, when he had to go to work, I blinked into my room at home to check on everyone.
My dad was asleep in his recliner in the living room with the TV on, his crutches on the floor next to the chair. “Dad.” I shook him awake, and he blinked at me slowly. Groggily. “You fell asleep in your chair again.”
He pulled the lever to retract the attached ottoman and I helped him stand, then handed him his crutches. He glanced at his watch. “Tod went to work?”
“Yeah.” No sense denying where I’d been until midnight.
He adjusted the crutches beneath his arms. “I know you don’t sleep here anymore, Kaylee. But I’m not mad. You’re as grown as you’re going to get.”
“I don’t sleep anywhere, Dad. Try not to read too much into that.”
He wouldn’t have said that if he were fully awake. If he weren’t on pain pills, because the stab wound in his thigh still hurt like hell. It bothered him that curfews, healthy meals, and a good night’s sleep were wasted on me. It bothered him that I spent so much time at Tod’s, where there wasn’t a door to leave open. It bothered him that there was little he could do to protect me now, and it bothered me that he seemed to think that meant I no longer needed a dad.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. I still needed him. I loved him more than ever. And there were days when I wanted nothing more than to be a normal seventeen-year-old, worried about her dad watching the clock on prom night, which was coming up in...four days.
How the hell had that snuck up on me?
Em and I
had picked out our dresses together. She’d sworn that prom was exactly the motivation she needed to return to school after her own murder and that dress shopping would help her get to know her new body, but I saw her face in the mirror every time a slinky, sparkly gown fit too loose in the bust and hips and fell too long over her legs. She didn’t want to go to prom as Lydia.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go at all, but I’d promised her months ago that we’d go together, with or without dates, and she’d been planning our first junior/senior prom since we were freshmen.
Her dress was red and sleek and dramatic, and it looked great with her darker Lydia hair.
My dress was gold. It was long and full, and it sparkled in every little bit of available light. My dad had spent money we probably couldn’t afford on that dress because he’d said that in it, I shined brighter than the sun. Just like my mother.
Tod said my dress glittered like sunlight on the ocean. He found a gold vest and tie to match, but he refused to show off his tux in advance for fear of forever tainting the other guys’ prom experience with feelings of inadequacy.
So I would have to wait to see him in it, but I had no doubt the wait would be worth it.
With my father in his room for the night, snoring two minutes after I’d closed the door, I opened my own bedroom door to find Styx sitting on the end of the bed staring at me, like she’d just been waiting for me to appear.
She probably had. Something about the fact that she was a Netherworld half-breed meant that she could see and hear me even when normal people couldn’t. She’d probably known I was home before I’d even woken up my dad.
As soon as I stepped into my room, she jumped down from the bed and ran at me expectantly, tiny pink tongue hanging from her mouth by half an inch. I picked her up and scruffed her fur, amazed for the millionth time how small and fluffy and normal-looking she was in that moment, considering that if there was danger lurking anywhere near me, on either plane of existence, she’d be baring small teeth sharp enough to shred human flesh all the way to the bone.
With All My Soul ss-7 Page 11
