My Soul to Take

by Rachel Vincent

  “I would love a ride.”

  15

  IN THE MORNING, I woke to find daylight streaming into my room between the slats of the blinds, and my bedroom door shaking and thumping beneath someone’s fist. “Kaylee, get your lazy butt out of bed!” Sophie shouted. “Your dad’s on the phone.”

  I rolled over, pulling the covers askew, and glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. 8:45 a.m. Why would my father call when he’d see me in less than an hour? To tell me he’d landed? Or that he hadn’t landed.

  He wasn’t coming. I should have known.

  For a moment, I ignored my cousin and stared at the thick crown molding along the edge of the tiered ceiling, letting my temper simmer just beneath the surface. I hadn’t seen my father in more than eighteen months, and now he wasn’t even going to come explain why he’d never told me I wasn’t human.

  Not that I needed him. Thanks to his cowardice, I had a perfectly good set of guardians at my disposal. But he owed me an explanation, and if I wasn’t going to get it in person, I could at least demand it over the phone.

  I tossed the covers back and stepped into the pajama pants pooled on the floor, and when I opened my door, there stood Sophie, completely dressed and in full makeup, looking as fresh and well-put-together as I’d ever seen her. The only sign that her night’s slumber had been chemically induced was the slight puffiness around her eyes, which would probably be gone within the hour.

  The last time I’d taken one of the zombie pills, I’d woken up looking like roadkill.

  “Thanks.” I took the home phone from Sophie, and she only nodded, then turned and plodded down the hall with none of her usual watch-me-prance energy.

  I kicked my door shut and held the cordless phone to my ear. It felt huge and cumbersome after my cell, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually held the home phone.

  “You could have called my cell,” I said into the receiver.

  “I know.”

  My father’s voice was just like I remembered—deep, and smooth, and distant. He probably looked exactly the same too, which meant my appearance would likely come as a bit of a shock to him, despite his understanding of the passage of time. I was almost fifteen the last time he’d seen me. Things had changed. I had changed.

  “I have this number memorized, so it was just easier,” he continued. That was absentee-father-speak for I’m too embarrassed to admit I don’t remember your cell-phone number. Even though I pay the bill.

  “So let me guess.” I pulled out my desk chair and plopped into it, punching the power button on my computer just to keep my hands busy. “You’re not coming.”

  “Of course I’m coming.” I could practically hear him frowning over the line, and that’s when I realized I could also hear actual background noise. An official-sounding voice over a loudspeaker. Random snatches of conversation. Echoing footsteps.

  He was at the airport.

  “My flight’s been delayed by engine trouble in Chicago. But with any luck, I’ll be in this evening. I just wanted to let you know I’d be late.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Soooo glad I didn’t start by demanding he tell me everything over the phone. “I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Yeah.” Silence settled over the line then, because he didn’t know what to say, and I was not going to make it easier on him by speaking first. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Are you okay?” His voice felt…heavy, as if he wanted to say more, but left the unspoken words hanging.

  “Fine.” Not that you could fix it if I weren’t, I thought, jiggling my mouse to find the cursor on-screen. “It’s all taken some getting used to, but I’m ready to have all the secrets out in the open.”

  “I’m so sorry about all this, Kaylee. I know I owe you the truth—about everything—but some of this won’t be easy for me to say, so I need you to bear with me. Please.”

  “Like I have a choice.” But as furious as I was over the massive lie that was my life, I was desperate to know why they’d all lied in the first place. Surely they had a good reason for letting me think I was crazy, rather than telling me the truth.

  My father sighed. “Can I take you out for dinner when I get in?”

  “Well, I’ll have to eat something.” I double-clicked on my Internet browser and typed the name of a local news station into the search bar, hoping for an update.

  He hesitated for another long moment, as if waiting for more, and as badly as part of me wanted to speak, wanted to spare him the awful silence I’d suffered, I resisted. Birthday visits and Christmas cards weren’t enough to hold his place in my life. Especially since they’d stopped coming…“I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  “Okay.” I hung up and set the phone on the desktop, staring at it blankly for several seconds. Then I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and scrolled through the day’s headlines online, hoping to purge my father from my thoughts. At least until he showed up on the porch.

  There was nothing new about Alyson Baker or Meredith Cole, but the coroner had officially declared a cause of death for Heidi Anderson. Heart failure. But wasn’t that ultimately what everyone died of? However, in Heidi’s case, there was no cause listed for her heart failure. As I’d known all along, she’d simply died. Period.

  Frustrated all over again, I turned off the computer and dropped the home phone into its cradle on my way to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, showered, blow-dried, and dressed, I sat at the bar in the kitchen with a glass of juice and a granola bar. I’d just ripped open the wrapper when Aunt Val wandered in, wrapped in my uncle’s terry-cloth robe, rather than her usual silky one. Her hair was one big blond tangle, yesterday’s styling gel spiking random strands in odd places, like a leftover punk rocker’s. Eyeliner was smeared below her eyes, and her skin was pale beneath lingering blotches of blush and foundation.

  She shuffled straight to the coffeepot, which was already full and steaming. For several minutes, I chewed in silence as she sipped, but by the time she brought her second mug to the counter, the caffeine had kicked in.

  “I’m sorry about last night, hon.” She combed one hand over her hair, trying to smooth it. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your boyfriend.”

  “It’s fine.” I wadded my wrapper and tossed it into the trash can on the other side of the room. “There was too much else going wrong to worry about one drunk aunt.”

  She grimaced, then nodded. “I guess I deserved that.”

  But watching her wince over every movement—as if contact with the very air hurt—made me feel guilty. “No, you don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” Aunt Val forced a smile. “I can’t begin to explain how sorry I am. None of this is your fault….” She stared down into her coffee, as if she had more to say, but the words had fallen into the mug and were now too soggy to use.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I finished my orange juice and set my glass in the sink, then headed back to my room, where I texted Emma to make sure she was still coming to the memorial.

  Her mom said she’d meet me there fifteen minutes early—at a quarter to one.

  The rest of the morning passed in one endless stretch of mindless television and Internet surfing. I tried twice to get my uncle alone so I could pass along Tod’s information, but every time I found him, he was with a very somber, clingy Sophie, who seemed to be dreading the memorial as badly as I was.

  After an early lunch I could only pick at, I changed out of my T-shirt, hoping my long-sleeved black blouse was appropriate attire for the memorial service for someone I’d failed to save. On my way out the door, I saw Sophie sitting on the bench in the hall, her hands folded on the skirt of a slim black dress, her head hanging so that her long blond hair fell nearly to her chest. She looked so pitiful, so lost, that as badly as I hated to spoil the drive alone with Nash, I offered her a ride to school.

  “Mom’s taking me,” she said, briefly meeting my gaze with her own huge, sad eyes.

  “Okay.�
�� Just as well.

  I pulled into Nash’s driveway five minutes later and waited nervously for him to get into the car. I was afraid talking to him would be weird after his middle-of-the-night fight with Tod, and his reluctant discussion of it with me. But he leaned over to kiss me as soon as his door was closed, and from the depth of that kiss—and the fact that neither of us seemed willing to end it—I was guessing he was over the awkwardness.

  The school parking lot was packed. Overflowing. Lots of parents had come, as well as some city officials, and according to the morning paper, the school had called in extra counselors to help the students learn to deal with their grief. We had to park on the side of the road nearest the gym and walk nearly a quarter of a mile. Nash took my hand on the way, and we met Emma at the front door, where one of her sisters had dropped her off. I’d promised to give her a ride home.

  Emma looked like crap. She wore her hair pulled into a tight, no-frills ponytail, along with the bare minimum of makeup. And if her reddened eyes were any indication, she’d been crying. But she didn’t know Meredith any better than I did.

  “You okay?” I slipped my free arm around her waist as we made our way through a set of double doors, pushed along with the crowd.

  “Yeah. This whole thing’s just so weird. First that girl at the club, then the one at the movies. Now one from our own school. Everyone’s talking about it. And they don’t even know about you,” she said, whispering the last word.

  “Well, it gets even weirder than that.” Nash and I guided her toward an empty alcove near the restrooms. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her any of the latest developments, and for once I was glad she was grounded from her phone. If she hadn’t been, I might have blurted out the whole story—bean sidhes, grim reapers, and death lists—before I’d thought any of it through. Which probably would have scared her even more.

  “How could it get any weirder than this?” Emma spread her arms to take in the somber crowd milling around the lobby.

  “Something’s wrong. They weren’t supposed to die,” I whispered, standing on my toes to get closer to her ear, as Nash pressed in close on my other side.

  Emma’s eyes went wide. “What does that mean? Who’s ever supposed to die?”

  I glanced at Nash, and he gave me a tiny shake of his head. We really should have discussed how much to tell Emma. “Um. Some people have to die, or the world would be overpopulated. Like…old people. They’ve lived full lives. Some of them are ready to go, even. But teenagers are too young. Meredith should have still had most of her life in front of her.”

  Emma frowned at me like I’d lost my mind. Or at least several IQ points. No, I’m not a very good liar. Though technically, I wasn’t lying to her.

  With Emma still trying to puzzle out my odd editorial on death, Nash guided us through the crowd toward the gym, where we found seats on the bleachers near the middle of the visitors’ side and smooshed in with several hundred other people. A temporary stage had been set up beneath one of the baskets, and several school officials were seated there with Meredith’s family, beneath the school’s banner and the state and national flag.

  For the next hour and a half, we listened to Meredith’s friends and family come forward to tell us all how nice she was, and how pretty, and smart, and kind. Not all of their praise would really have applied to Meredith, had she been there with us, but the dead have a way of becoming saints in the eyes of their survivors, and Ms. Cole was no exception.

  And to be fair, other than being beautiful and popular, she was no different from most of the rest of us. Which was precisely why everyone was so upset. If Meredith could die, so could any one of us. Emma’s eyes watered several times, and my own vision blurred with tears when Mrs. Cole came up to the podium, already crying freely.

  Sophie sat in the bottom row, surrounded by sobbing dancers blotting streaks of mascara with tissues pulled from small, tasteful handbags. Several of them spoke, mostly Meredith’s fellow seniors, reciting stale platitudes with fresh earnestness. Meredith would have wanted us to move on. She loved life, and dancing, and would want neither to stop in her absence. She wouldn’t want to see us cry.

  After the last of her classmates spoke, an automated white screen was rolled down from the ceiling, and someone played a video of still photographs of Meredith from birth to death, set to some of her favorite songs.

  During the film, several students stood and made their way to the lobby, where counselors waited to counsel them. Sniffles and quiet sobs echoed all around us, a community in mourning, and all I could think about was that if we couldn’t find the reaper responsible for the unauthorized reaping of Meredith’s soul, it would happen all over again.

  After the memorial, Nash, Emma, and I made our way slowly down the bleachers, caught up in the gradual current of people more interested in comforting one another than in actually vacating the building.

  Eventually we made it to the gym floor, where more groups had clustered, gravitating en masse toward one of the four exits. Since we’d parked in front of the school, we headed for the main doors, shuffling forward inches at a time.

  Nash had just taken my hand, his arm brushing the entire length of mine, when a sudden, devastating wave of sorrow crashed over me, settling heavily into my chest and stomach. My lungs tightened, and an unbearable itch began at the base of my throat. But this time, rather than silently bemoaning the onset of my dark forecast and the imminent death of another classmate, I welcomed it.

  The reaper was here; we would have our chance to stop him.

  16

  MY HAND GRASPED Nash’s. He glanced my way, and his eyes went wide. “Again?” he whispered, leaning down so that his lips brushed my ear, but I could only nod. “Who is it?”

  I shook my head, each breath coming quickly now. I hadn’t pinpointed the source yet. There were too many people, in too many tightly formed groups. All the bodies in dark colors were blending together in a virtual camouflage of funeral attire, and in some cases I couldn’t distinguish one form from another.

  A bolt of uncertainty shot through my heart, piercing my determination like a spear through flesh. What if I can’t do this? What if I can’t find the victim, much less save her…?

  “Okay, Kaylee, relax.” His whispered words flowed over me with an almost physical sliding sensation, trying to calm me even as his eyes churned in slow, steady fear. “Look around slowly. We can save the next one. But you have to find her first.”

  I tried to follow his directions, but the panic was too loud, a private, frenzied buzzing as the scream built inside my head. It interrupted thought. Rendered logic an abstract concept.

  Nash seemed to understand. He stepped in front of me so that we were facing, his nose inches from my forehead. He stared into my eyes and took both my hands in his. The crowd shuffled by, parting to flow around us like water around a river outcropping. Several people glanced our way, but no one stopped—I wasn’t the only young woman having a public breakdown in the gym, and most of the others were much louder than mine. For the moment, anyway.

  I clenched my jaw shut, holding back the strongest soul song I’d ever felt as I let my gaze rove the crowd, passing over the boys and adults and lingering on the girls. She was here somewhere, and she was going to die. There was nothing I could do to stop that. But if I found her in time, and if I was truly capable of doing what Nash had explained to me, I could bring her back. We could bring her back.

  Then all we’d have to worry about was avoiding the rogue reaper fury.

  It may have been coincidence, or maybe my very real need, despite our strained relationship, to see that my cousin was safe, but my gaze settled first on Sophie. She stood beneath the basket at the far end of the gym with a group of teary-eyed friends, arms linked in a huddle of sorrow. But none of those red, damp faces intensified my panic, and not one of them was dimmed by a veil of shadows that only I could see. The girls were fine, but for their grief. Fortunately, I would not have to add to it.

&nbs
p; Next my focus found another cluster of young women—freshmen, if I had to guess. Everywhere I turned there were more girls, some in dresses, some in dark pants, others in jeans, the official uniform of adolescence. It was like the boys and adults no longer existed. My eyes were drawn only to the girls.

  But of all the faces—freckled, tear-streaked, thin, round, pale, dark, and tanned—none held my gaze. Not one cried out to my soul.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been more than a minute, my gaze found Nash again. My jaws ached from being clenched, my throat was raw from holding back the scream, and my fingernails had left impressions in his hands. I shook my head and blinked away the tears forming in my eyes. She was still there somewhere—based on the unprecedented strength of the cry building inside me—but I couldn’t find her.

  “Try again.” Nash squeezed my hands. “One more time.” I nodded and made myself swallow the rising sound—an agony like gulping broken glass—but this time the consequences of repressing it were very real. Pressure built in my chest and throat, and I was increasingly certain that if I couldn’t release it soon or remove myself from the source, my body would rupture into one gaping wound of grief.

  Desperate now, I looked over his shoulder, where people still pressed slowly toward the exit. Everyone in that direction faced away from me, identities obscured by the anonymous backs of their heads. A thin redhead, with long, loose curls. Two heavyset girls with identical black waves. A brunette with thin, fine hair as straight as a ruler. She turned, and I saw her profile, but the panic didn’t escalate.

  Then one head caught my attention—another blonde, about fifteen feet away, her entire form dark with a thick, ominous shadow that somehow fell on no one else. The moment my gaze found her, my throat convulsed, fighting to release the wail my jaws held back. My chest ached for fresh air, but I was scared to take it in, afraid that would fuel the scream I wasn’t yet ready to release. The blonde was tall and curvy, her hair cut straight across the middle of her back. If she’d had a ponytail, I’d have sworn it was Emma.