Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“The plan—” I said, and people gathered around while I filled Harmony in “—if you’re up for a return trip to the Netherworld this soon, is for you and Sabine to take Uncle Brendon and Nash to get my dad while I distract Avari. By pretending to turn myself in.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “That doesn’t sound even remotely safe.”

I shrugged. “It’s the Netherworld. ‘Safe’ doesn’t really apply.”

“And how are you planning to keep Avari from keeping you? What good would it do us to rescue your father but lose you in the process?”

“We’re not going to lose her,” Tod said. “I’m going with her.”

“Yes, and neither of you will have any of your undead abilities once you’re there, other than the ability to cross over on your own.”

“That’s all we need,” I insisted. “As soon as we’re sure you guys have my dad, we’ll just come home.”

Harmony’s blond brows rose in skepticism, and her resemblance to her elder son was almost uncanny. “And you really think it’ll be that easy?”

“No. Nothing’s ever easy anymore. Besides, my plan has facets. Components, even.”

“Well then, let’s hear them,” Uncle Brendon said.

“We know better than to expect my dad to be alone, so to buy you time to...kill things, or distract things, or whatever it takes, I’ll keep Avari busy by negotiating my surrender.”

“Negotiating requires give-and-take,” Sabine pointed out. “You really think he’ll be willing to give anything? Isn’t taking everything kind of his thing?”

“He doesn’t have to actually give up anything. I just have to keep him talking, even if all he says is no, over and over. I’m not really surrendering, remember, so it doesn’t matter whether he gives in to my demands.”

“I don’t get it.” Sophie frowned at me in confusion. “Why would he negotiate with you at all? Why not just...take you?”

“He would if he could,” Tod explained. “But Kaylee’s even harder to catch now than when she was alive. To take her soul against her will, he’d have to physically remove it from her resurrected body, which will be hard to do, because she’s not just going to stand there and let him have it. She’s undead and she’s a bean sidhe. She can cross back into the human world whenever she wants.”

“But he kept Thane’s soul, right?” Em said. “And Thane could cross over, too.”

“Yes,” I said. “But Thane was unconscious when he was delivered to Avari.” By Tod, who’d broken reaper law by turning on one of his own to keep Thane from making my last days miserable. “By the time he woke up, he was already missing his soul. If Avari physically catches me, I have no doubt that the first thing he’ll do is knock me out so he could take my soul and replace it with his own breath. Like he did with Thane.” Demon’s Breath could sustain my body, in absence of my soul, allowing Avari to torture both parts of me separately. And possibly simultaneously.

“But he knows that’s not going to happen,” Nash said, and Sabine nodded in agreement. “Which is why he’s trying to make you hand over your soul voluntarily?”

“Yup.” I glanced around at each of them. “And he’ll take any and all of your souls, too, if he gets the chance. Which is why I’m going to stall him while you guys look for my dad. I don’t want any of you anywhere near Avari.”

Uncle Brendon looked unconvinced. “And if he sees through your delay tactic?”

“Then I’ll play on his greed and on the envy that will inevitably accompany it when he finds out I kissed Ira.”

Harmony glanced at Tod in question, then back at me. “Ira?”

“Hellion of wrath,” I explained. “He wanted a taste of my anger in exchange for telling me where my dad’s being held.”

Sabine smirked. “Kaylee makes friends everywhere she goes.”

“Whatever. It was a completely disgusting, totally platonic mistake and I don’t want to talk about it. Ever. Are we ready?”

“What about us?” Sophie motioned to Luca and herself. “I can cross over.”

“No,” her dad said. “You’re staying here.”

For a second, I thought Sophie might argue. But then she closed her mouth and I realized she was relieved. She would have come with us, if we’d let her, and that actually meant something to me. But she was just as happy to stay in the human world, out of danger.

Relatively speaking.

“Obviously, Emma and Luca will have to stay, too,” Harmony added. She got no arguments.

“Okay, let me change into something more appropriate for a descent into hell.” Uncle Brendon glanced down at the suit he wore, then up at Tod. “This would go faster if you give me a lift.”

Tod nodded, and Brendon leaned over to kiss Harmony one more time. Sophie was still fake gagging when he and Tod disappeared from the kitchen.

Harmony rounded the counter and poured herself a mug of coffee. When she looked up again, she caught me smiling. “What?”

“I just... Don’t listen to Sophie and Nash. I think you two are cute together.”

“Me and Brendon?” Her sudden flush had nothing to do with the hot coffee.

“Yeah. You obviously make each other happy, and it’s good to see someone happy right now, when everything else seems so...dire.”

I wondered if Tod and I looked as cute together as she and my uncle looked. My opinion was no doubt biased, but I was pretty sure we were damn near lethally adorable.

“Well...thanks, Kaylee.”

“Also, thanks for going out with Sophie’s dad instead of mine. It would have been beyond weird for my dad to be dating my boyfriend’s mother.”

Harmony choked on her coffee, and I took the mug while she coughed. Then she gave me a small frown. “Kaylee, your father and I were never serious. Not even before he met your mom.” She leaned against the counter, her gaze unfocused with the memory. “Actually, Brendon and I weren’t very serious back then, either. We went separate ways years before I met my husband and Brendon met Valerie.”

“Well, however it happened, I wish it could happen to my dad.” He’d had as rough a time the past few months as I had, and he had no one to talk to about everything that had gone wrong. No one but his brother and daughter, anyway, and that wasn’t the same at all.

Harmony motioned for me to follow her to the table, where we both sat, and I began to wish I had poured myself a cup of coffee. “Kaylee, I don’t think your father’s going to be ready for something like that for a very long time.”

“Long time by human standards or bean sidhe standards?”

She set her mug down. “Has no one explained to you about why your father took your mother’s death so hard?” She blinked, then rephrased. “Well, of course, he took his wife’s death hard, and it’s no wonder, considering how she died. But has anyone explained to you why he’s still taking it hard, more than thirteen years later?”

“I don’t...” I hesitated, thinking back about everything my aunt and uncle had ever told me about my parents and about my mother’s death. There wasn’t much. “You know, people don’t exactly line up to explain things to me. So...what have I missed?”

“Kaylee, your parents were soul mates.”

I smiled at the thought and wished I could remember more about my mother. “I know he thought so, too.”

“No.” Harmony smiled, like I’d said something that amused her. “I don’t mean that they liked each other a lot, or even that they were destined to be together. Destiny is more of a faerie tale than most people think bean sidhes are.”

“So then, what does that mean, soul mates? You’re saying that’s some kind of real thing?”