Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

Traci answered the door on the second knock, and the first thing I noticed when she let us in were the bags beneath her eyes. She’d looked tired at Emma’s funeral, but I’d attributed that to the stress of losing, then burying, her sister. But now, I couldn’t deny that it was more than that.

It was the pregnancy.

Traci, Emma’s middle sister, was pregnant with my murderer’s child. And, like nearly everything else that had gone wrong over the past few months, that was my fault. Mr. Beck had been looking for me when he’d found her.

“Hey, Kaylee. It’s good to see you.” Traci pulled me into a hug with too-thin arms, and I had to stop myself from blurting out how sorry I was for what she was going through, and how I’d do anything for a cosmic do-over. For the chance to take it all back.

Instead I swallowed apologies she wouldn’t understand and returned her hug. “Thanks.” I was careful not to squeeze her too hard. She hardly had any belly yet, and she looked like she’d blow over in a light breeze. “This is Harmony Hudson, Nash’s mom. And this is my cousin Emily. They came to...help. Moral support.”

“Nice to meet you.” Traci shook Harmony’s hand, then motioned for us to come in. Then she turned to shake her sister’s hand without a single sign of recognition. “Kaylee can show you Emma’s room. Take whatever you want to remember Emma by. Mom, Cara, and I have already been through it all and taken what we wanted. What means the most to us.”

Em’s eyes watered. Traci didn’t notice.

“How are you?” I said, instead of leading everyone to Em’s room. Traci was leaning against the doorframe. I was afraid she might fall.

“Um...I’m having a rough first trimester.” She let go of the doorframe and sank onto the arm of the couch. “Emma told you about...the baby?”

Actually, I’d told Em about the baby, weeks before Traci had even known she was pregnant.

When Mr. Beck had come to Emma’s house looking for me and my best friend, he’d found Traci instead. What he’d done to Em’s sister might not have been rape by any human legal definition, but I couldn’t think of it any other way. Mr. Beck was an incubus. He’d made Traci want to sleep with him. She didn’t know it, but she’d had no choice.

If her baby was a boy—an incubus—the pregnancy would probably kill her. All signs were pointing toward that already. And if the pregnancy didn’t kill her, the child’s birth almost certainly would.

We hadn’t really come so I could take something to remember Em by. We’d come to help Traci.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. Harmony looked like she had plenty of suggestions, but I knew she wanted to wait until Traci’d had something to drink.

“No, thanks, hon. I’m fine. Just tired.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Emma asked a second before I would have. “I could use a soda, if you have any.” She knew they had some. All her mother ever drank was Dr. Pepper. Pretending to be unfamiliar with her own house must have been killing her.

“Sure.” Traci stood. “Just give me a minute.”

“You don’t look like you feel good,” Harmony said, right on cue. “If you don’t mind, I can get everyone a drink while the girls go through Emma’s things.”

Traci only hesitated for a second. Then she sighed and sank onto the couch again. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

Harmony disappeared into the kitchen while Em and I headed to her room and Traci stayed on the couch.

“She looks sick,” Em whispered to me in the hall.

I nodded. “We’re going to help her.” But Traci’s health would come with a price only she could pay.

Emma’s room was a mess. There were open cardboard boxes on the floor, photos missing from the walls, and clothes draped over the back of Em’s desk chair. Her bed was unmade, too, but that had nothing to do with her death. The bed probably looked just like it had when she’d woken up after her last night in it.

I was halfway across Emma’s room when I realized she’d stopped in the doorway. “You okay?” I called over my shoulder.

“This is weird. They’ve already started packing stuff up,” she whispered. “Like they can’t wait to get rid of me.”

“That’s not it.” I pulled her inside and mostly closed the door, to keep Traci from overhearing. “Nash said his mom did the same thing after their dad died, then after Tod died, not because she wanted to forget about them, but because it hurt too much to look at everything that reminded them of what they’d lost.”

Her chin quivered. She didn’t look like she believed me.

“They’re packing this stuff up because they miss you, Em. Not because they’re glad to be rid of you. Besides—” I glanced into several of the open boxes “—most of these are still empty. Grab one and pack up what you want.”

For a couple of minutes, I went through the clothes in her closet, looking for anything that might still fit, while she went through what little remained on her shelves. Her mom and sisters had claimed everything but some elementary school soccer medals, a participation trophy from the one year she’d tried middle school cheerleading, and the first-place ribbon from fourth-grade field day, when we’d won the egg toss.

“Is that all you want?” I set the shirts I thought Em could still wear in the box she was using, on top of the medals and several pictures of the two of us, dating all the way back to third grade.

Emma shrugged. “They took most of the good stuff. And I think I’m happy about that. I don’t need stuff to remember myself by, right? I’m still here. And I want them to remember me.”

She had a valid point. And she seemed to be in good spirits, considering.

“Any luck with my jeans? Or some shorts? It’s already getting warm outside.”

“The pants are a total loss. Sorry. You just don’t have the hips for them anymore. Maybe a couple of skirts, though....”

We were going through the last of her clothes when Harmony called us from the living room. “Girls? I think she’s ready.”

My heartbeat was a hollow thump my chest suddenly felt too small to contain.

Em looked as nervous as I felt. We put down the clothes and filed into the living room, where Harmony now sat next to Traci on the couch. Em and I took the two armchairs facing the couch at opposite angles.

“Traci? You okay?” She frowned at her sister in concern. Traci looked...confused.

“I feel weird. Tired.” She looked like she could fall asleep where she sat.

I scooted to the edge of my chair to take the can of soda Harmony offered me. Traci had a cup of what looked like hot tea. I peered into it, but saw no trace of whatever Harmony had spiked it with. “So...how does this stuff work?”

“‘This stuff’ is just water from a natural source in the Netherworld. Water there has various properties, and this one—” she held up a plastic vial, very much like the one Sabine kept her liquid envy in “—works like an amnesic. Traci is sleepy, but her cognition is not impaired, so she can talk to us just like she normally would. But she won’t remember anything that happens in the next hour or so.”

“What about after that?” Em asked.

“She’ll probably fall asleep, then wake up here and only remember that she took a nap.”

I glanced at Traci, who was watching us in mounting confusion. “So we can tell her everything?”

Harmony nodded.

“ Everything, everything?” Em clenched the arms of her chair. “Like, about me?”

“If that’s what you want to do.”

Emma didn’t look sure, and I was hyperaware that the clock was ticking. So I started. “Traci, we have some things to tell you, and most of them are going to be hard for you to believe. But don’t worry about that, because you’re not going to remember this anyway.” We only needed her to understand long enough to make a very difficult decision.