Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

Sabine’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened, no doubt ready to spew several inventive and highly entertaining threats aimed at Sophie, but before she could say anything, Luca cleared his throat and smiled at Emma. “Your hair looks nice today. All smooth and shiny.”

“Thanks.” Em’s eyes lit up, and her smile made me want to smile back. It was a very nice change from the previous day’s lunch.

Sophie glared daggers at her. “Keratin treatment and some Frizz-Ease. It’s not rocket science.”

I glanced at Sabine in silent question, and she nodded. She was amplifying Sophie’s fears to heighten her envy of...anyone Luca so much as looked at.

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” a new voice said, and we all turned to see a sophomore whose name I couldn’t remember standing at the end of our table, holding a slip of paper out to me. “Are you Kaylee Cavanaugh?”

“Yeah.” As if she didn’t know. Everyone in school knew who I was. Everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew who I was. I was the girl stabbed in her own bed by her evil math teacher. Not that most people knew Mr. Beck was actually evil, instead of just your average psychotic pedophile.

“They want you in the counselor’s office.”

Crap. “Okay. Thanks.” I took the slip of paper from her—my official summons—and when the sophomore walked away, I turned back to the rest of the table. “I completely forgot my appointment.” Turns out that when you’re nearly fatally stabbed, then lose your best friend in a freak park-swing accident less than a month later, the school guidance counselor likes to keep tabs on you.

“Want me to come?” Tod ran his hand up my back, over my shirt. “If you keep her busy, I could convert the filing system from ‘alphabetical’ to ‘most deserving of psychiatric help.’” He leaned closer, and I knew no one else would hear whatever came out of his mouth next. “I’ve been meaning to make some special notations in Nash’s file anyway. Imagine the level of help he could receive if they knew the root of his recent academic decline was a deep-seated fear of the letter Q. ”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And though everyone else at the table looked curious, no one asked what Tod had said. They were finally starting to learn. “Thanks, but it’s hard enough to take grief counseling seriously without you singing ‘Living Dead Girl’ at the top of your lungs behind the counselor’s back.”

“You mock one grief counselor, and you’re branded for life,” he mumbled. “Er...afterlife. I have a shift at the pizza place this afternoon, but I’ll pop in when I get a chance.” Tod kissed my cheek—the most we could get away with while only one of us was invisible—then disappeared. I grabbed my bag, said goodbye to my friends, then headed for the counselor’s office.

Our school had two counselors, one for the first half of the alphabet and one for the last half. During lunch, the waiting room they shared was nearly empty.

“You can go in,” the student aide said when the outer door had closed behind me. “She’s been waiting for you.”

Because I was eighteen minutes late.

I trudged into Ms. Hirsch’s office, trying to summon an expression appropriate for someone who’d just lost her best friend. Nuance was important. My grief had to fall somewhere between “sobbing, devastated heap” and “Emma who?” I knew from experience that either of the extremes would only get me sentenced to more counseling.

“Hey, Ms. Hirsch. Sorry I’m late.” I closed the door, then slouched into one of the chairs in front of her desk. But Ms. Hirsch only watched me from across the desk.

I set my bag on the floor and stared at my feet for a second, riding out the silent treatment—was that supposed to pressure me into talking on my own? But when I looked up, she was still watching me. No, studying me. Like she’d never seen me before.

“Ms. Hirsch? You okay?” Was she in shock? Was I going to have to counsel her?

“You’re smaller than I expected,” she said. Only she said it with someone else’s voice. She said it with a man’s voice, deep and smooth, and... rich, somehow. And totally out of place coming from Ms. Hirsch’s slim, delicately curved feminine form.

She was obviously possessed, presumably by a hellion, but I didn’t recognize the voice.

My pulse spiked and chill bumps popped up on my arms, but beneath that an angry flush began to build inside me. I knew I should be scared—I was sitting across my guidance counselor’s desk from a hellion I couldn’t identify—but since my untimely death, I’d discovered that there was a limit to my capacity for fear. I could only be threatened, stalked, intimidated, manipulated, possessed, and actually killed so many times before I began to acclimate to the constant state of fear. Before terror lost its punch, like a scary movie watched too many times.

Anger, though... My capacity for anger at the Netherworld and at the host of Nether-creatures that had turned my afterlife into a living hell...that seemed to know no limits.

Much like hellions themselves.

My hands clenched around the arms of the chair. “Who the hell are you?”

Ms. Hirsch’s left brow arched. “You don’t know?” At the sound of his voice, that warmth inside me spread, not comforting, but seditious. Like a fierce flame burning within me, demanding action.

“Should I?” The fact that he couldn’t use her voice probably meant he hadn’t been in her body often enough to learn how to work all the gears and levers. Hopefully, he’d never been in her body before. I hadn’t even known she was eligible for possession....

“Not officially, but I’m a big fan of your work.”

“My work?” I should have been terrified, but what little fear I felt wasn’t because my guidance counselor had been possessed, or because whoever was possessing her had obviously known when and where he could get to me through her. I was scared for Ms. Hirsch. Of what he might do to her—or make her do to herself—if he didn’t get whatever he wanted from me.

Ms. Hirsch’s head bobbed and a strand of red hair—her bangs were long and trendy—fell across her forehead. “You’ve managed to thoroughly piss off not one but three of my most reviled associates. And to survive their anger.” He frowned with my guidance counselor’s pink mouth. “Sort of.”

Every word he said stoked the fire inside me until the flames of my anger grew hotter, taller, licking the inside of my skin like they wanted to burst free and roast the world.

I knew what he was doing. He was feeding my anger. Nurturing it, like fertilizing a garden until the veggies are ready to harvest. And devour.

The worst part was that whoever this hellion was, he knew exactly who I was, and that I wasn’t—strictly speaking—alive. And he knew who my enemies were. But I didn’t need to be told that when dealing with hellions, the enemy of my enemies was definitely not my friend.

“Who are you and what do you want?” The longer I sat there, the angrier I got. He’d hijacked Ms. Hirsch’s body. He’d subpoenaed me from my lunch period like I had nothing better to do than be ordered around by a monster from another world! “Never mind. I don’t care who you are or what you want. Get the hell out of my counselor’s body, or I’ll take you out myself.”

I stood and picked up the large, jagged chunk of pink quartz Ms. Hirsch used as a paperweight and hefted it, silently threatening to bash his hellion brains in.

“Nice. Decent buildup from irritation to anger, with a flare of true rage on the end. How long have you been harboring so much hatred, Kaylee? You were only a blip on my radar a few months ago, but now you’re a blinking light too bright to ignore.”