Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

Fortunately, the room—some kind of break room, with a coffee bar and a couple of vending machines—was empty.

I stayed incorporeal, so that if I saw anyone coming before I was spotted, I could step through a door and into another room. Where I had an equal chance of being seen, come to think of it.

Reaper headquarters was not a good place for a dead girl to hang out.

The hall outside the break room was empty, but I could hear voices coming from several of the rooms that opened into the hall. The plaques outside the doors read things like “The West End” and “Downtown” and “DFW.” As near as I could tell, those were zones of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, each of which had obviously been assigned an office and probably a crew of reapers.

Would a rookie like Tod have an office?

The door at the end of the hall—at the northwest corner, unless my navigation was off—was a door marked “Administration.”

Bingo.

I tiptoed down the hall, my heart pounding from nerves, like it had when I was still alive, until I realized that the more suspicious I looked, the greater my chance of being identified as a trespasser. But if I walked through the hall like I belonged there, maybe anyone who saw me would assume I was a reaper.

After all, who’d be stupid enough to break into reaper headquarters?

Well, me, obviously. But I tried the confidence approach anyway, and I stuck with it even when my pulse began to race like it hadn’t since the day I’d died. I walked past two open doors, through which I caught glimpses of reapers at work. Or on break. I couldn’t really tell the difference, since no one was swinging a scythe or donning a long black cape.

The other rooms were empty, and when I got to the end of the hall, I walked right through Levi’s door, trusting that Luca was right. That the boss wasn’t home.

When I saw the empty room, I actually exhaled with relief. Then I jogged across the good-size room and snatched the letter opener from its obviously custom-made wooden stand.

The moment my hand touched the metal, I knew Madeline had been right. It hummed against my flesh, more a feeling than a sound—the soul trapped inside calling out to me.

With the letter opener in my left hand, I held the broken dagger in my right, ready to make the switch. Until I realized I had no idea how to do that. Calling the soul from its current home should be easy, but leading it into the dagger? I wasn’t sure how to do that. Normally, the soul would be attracted to the dagger on its own, because hellion-forged steel seems to call to displaced souls. But both the letter opener and my dagger were made of the same material, and I had no male bean sidhe around to help guide the soul.

Nor did I have time to stand around and think for very long. So, with my mouth closed, to keep most of the volume in, I let just a thin ribbon of my bean sidhe wail leak from my throat, calling to the displaced soul. That used to be a very difficult task for me. I’d only known my true species for eight months, and since then I’d learned what I could do mostly through trial and error. And a little trial by fire. And a lot of help from Harmony, the only other female bean sidhe I knew.

She’s the one who’d taught me to call for a soul without letting loose the full power of my scream, which humans found painful, at the very least.

After less than a second, the soul within the letter opener began to leak out in a thin stream of foglike substance, attracted to the muffled version of my soul song. But I still had no idea how to get it into the dagger. I tried waving the severed blades through the ethereal stream of...soul, but nothing happened. My rough chopping motions sliced through the disembodied soul, which flowed right back together afterward.

Finally, when I heard footsteps outside Levi’s office, and my pulse began to race in panic, I set the letter opener back on its stand and backed away from it, still singing softly for the soul. It followed me, trailing out from Levi’s “conversation piece” until it hung in the air. When the soul, the dagger, and I were all as far from the desk as we could get without walking through the door, I let my wail fade into silence.

The soul hung in the air for just a second, and when I held the dagger up near it, the soul soaked into the hellion-forged steel on its own. To my immense relief.

I was about to blink out of reaper headquarters and into my room to wake Emma up and tell her the good news, when I heard voices headed my way through the door. Very familiar voices...

“Any leads?” Levi asked, and my heart nearly ruptured my sternum in an attempt to flee my body. If I didn’t leave immediately, I would get caught. But before I could go, Tod answered his boss’s question.

“No, but I still have a few more people to talk to. Have any of the souls turned up yet?”

“No. He’s either selling them outside our district, or he’s holding on to them. I’ve alerted the managers of all the closest districts, but no one’s seen or heard from him so far.”

They were talking about Thane. They had to be. Tod was tracking him. Was that why he’d been out of reach so much recently? Why hadn’t he told me he was hunting down my mother’s murderer? My murderer. I would have helped!

But then, that’s probably exactly why he hadn’t told me. To keep me from putting myself in danger. Tod never stood in my way, but he didn’t go out of his way to show me new risks I could take, either. And I couldn’t really blame him for that.

When the footsteps got too close to Levi’s office, I blinked out reluctantly, wishing I could have heard the rest of the conversation.

In my room, I set the broken dagger on top of my dresser, then turned on my bedside lamp and shook my best friend’s shoulder.

“Em. Wake up.”

“Mmmm?” Her eyes fluttered open, then closed, then opened again. She pushed thin brown hair back from her face and sat up slowly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I sank onto the edge of my own bed, facing her. “Nothing new, anyway. I got it.” I couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear. “I got a soul for Traci’s baby.”

“You did? How?” Em was wide-awake now. She tossed back her covers and crossed her legs beneath her on the mattress. “Where is it?”

I pointed at my dresser. “It’s in the dagger. I kind of...took it from Levi’s office. He doesn’t know yet.” I was hoping he wouldn’t figure out the incubus soul was missing for a very long time, and that when he did, I wouldn’t be the first suspect to come to mind. Hopefully lots of people were envious of his “conversation piece.”

Em stared at the dagger, which was thin in profile from across the room. “How? Whose soul is it?”

“That’s the best part. It’s Beck’s. Traci’s baby can inherit his father’s soul! No one else has to die so he can live!”

But Em’s expression fell suddenly, and I knew what she was thinking, because I’d had a very similar thought. “Until he needs to feed.” She suddenly seemed much less sure of what we’d agreed to without Traci’s emotions there to syphon. “How many will die then?”

“None.” I kicked off my shoes and folded my feet beneath me. “I can’t let that happen. I’m hoping Traci’s baby will be like Sabine, in a way.” In several ways, actually. More ways than I really cared to think about. “He’ll have to learn to eat without killing, but first he’ll have to learn to control his charm long enough to find girls who actually, legitimately want to be with him. Maybe if we help Traci raise him—teach him—he’ll be able to control his appetite like Sabine does. Maybe even better than Sabine does.”