Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“Very real.” Her smile was back. “Your father and mother were so very much in love that some small part of their souls melded.”

“Melded?” That sounded more like metalwork than love.

“Yes. He carried a bit of hers, and she carried a bit of his.”

“Seriously?” I said, and she nodded. “What does that have to do with her death?”

Harmony’s smile faded, and her eyes went so uncharacteristically still that I hadn’t realized I was seeing emotion in them until she hid her thoughts from me entirely. “Your mother’s soul wasn’t so much reaped as stolen, and because it wasn’t turned in to the proper authorities, your father never got that bit of his own soul back. Likewise, he still carries a part of your mother’s with him. He is quite literally lovesick, and he won’t be able to truly let her go until her soul finds rest and his is made whole again.”

The sudden deep ache in my chest caught me by surprise. My father missed my mother so much that he was actually sick from the loss. His soul was incomplete. He might never get over her, and she...

My mother...

That ache deepened until I almost couldn’t stand it. “So, we know that for sure, then, that she’s not resting in peace?”

Harmony nodded slowly. Sadly. “I’m sorry, Kaylee. I didn’t realize you didn’t understand that.”

I’d had no idea. “So, they’re both still suffering. Together.”

“Yes. Your father’s soul isn’t his own, and he won’t be able to move on from her death until it’s intact again. And, obviously, the same goes for your mother.”

I sat there staring at nothing. Stunned. My parents were soul mates. Literally. They carried a part of each other, and neither of them would have peace until their souls were whole again and my mother was finally at rest.

My parents had to be the most romantic couple in history, which would have been mind-blowingly cool...if their love story didn’t have the most tragic ending ever.

We stood in pairs, holding hands in front of Lakeside, the mental health ward attached to the hospital where Tod and Harmony both worked, one to treat people, the other to kill them. Holding hands was the only way Harmony and Sabine could keep my uncle and Nash invisible.

Tod and I just...didn’t want to let go.

“I hate this place,” I said, and Tod squeezed my hand. “Something tells me it’ll only be worse on the other side of the world barrier.”

Again, no one argued.

“So, what?” Nash said, staring up at the three-story building. “We cross over first, then head into the basement? Or we blink into the basement, then cross over?”

In truth, there were risks either way. “I vote for blinking in, then crossing over, because once we cross over, there can be no blinking.”

“Good point,” my uncle said.

I let go of Tod and held my hands out to Nash and Uncle Brendon, while Tod took his mother’s hand and Sabine’s. A second later, we all six stood in the basement of the mental health building, and I wished I’d thought to bring a flashlight. If the basement had ever been in common use, I couldn’t tell from the dripping water, dank smell, and almost total absence of light.

Sabine pulled her cell phone from her pocket and turned on a flashlight app, but I realized quickly that I didn’t want to see any of what she was showing me, even in the human world. With some additional light from our cell phones, we found the largest room of the basement—there were only a few of them—and decided that would be the best place to cross over. Even if my dad wasn’t actually in that room, if Avari had an audience, or even just a few current victims to play with, he’d probably like room to spread out.

Ira hadn’t actually told me that Avari was with my dad at Lakeside, but planning for anything less than the worst-case scenario would have been foolish.

We split into our pairs again and agreed that Tod and I would cross over first, to capture Avari’s attention. Then the other pairs would cross over in two different areas of the basement, to increase their chances of finding my dad quickly. Instead of walking around in the Netherworld version of the basement, as soon as they’d determined that a room didn’t contain my father, they would cross back to the human world, go to another room, then cross over and search again. That would surely decrease the chances of them being caught.

Sabine and Nash had instructions to cross back to the human world immediately if they ran into something they couldn’t handle or if either of them got hurt. Tod and I were given the same instructions, but I dismissed them immediately. I had no plans to leave the Netherworld without my father.

My uncle seemed to realize that. He pulled me aside and took both of my hands, staring straight into my eyes, though he couldn’t possibly have seen them very well in the dark basement. “Kaylee, please be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

Nash laughed out loud.

“Okay, I always try to be careful.” But the truth was that “careful” doesn’t always get the job done. If you’re not willing to risk everything you have and everything you are for those you love, what’s the point in living? Er, in my case, not living? My afterlife wouldn’t be worth having without my friends and my family, and I wasn’t going to let Avari take any more of them from me. From the rest of us.

“Just...don’t do anything heroic, okay?”

I nodded. I had no plans to take crazy risks. I just wanted my dad back.

My uncle must have seen some of that in my eyes, because he turned to Tod next. “If this goes bad, get her out of there.”

Tod nodded. “Count on it.”

He and I took up a position near the outermost wall of the large basement, not so close to the cinder blocks that anything growing on them could reach for us, but close enough that we were unlikely to suddenly appear in the middle of a crowd. Or a piece of furniture.

My palms were starting to sweat. Tod took my hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay, Kaylee,” he whispered. “One way or another.”

I let him cross us both over so I wouldn’t risk losing touch with him in the process.

When I opened my eyes in the Netherworld, I was nearly blinded. Not that the light was that bright, but after the darkness of the human-world basement, any light shining in my eyes was a shock to my system. I stood as still as possible while my eyes adjusted, clutching Tod’s hand, and the first thing I noticed when I could see again was that the light was dancing. Shadows jumped and stretched. Light flickered over grimy cinder-block walls, odds-and-ends furniture, and an assortment of bizarre creatures sitting, standing, and lounging all over the large room.

Candles. Avari had lit his creepy basement lair with hundreds of tiny candles, unlike any I’d ever seen. Tiny flames licked the air from shallow, irregularly shaped bowls of thick liquid, but I couldn’t see a single wick. The liquid itself was on fire.

Tod squeezed my hand, and I nodded in silent acknowledgment that yes, I saw it. I saw it all. I wasn’t willing to speak or move, because no one had noticed us yet—an advantage I hadn’t expected but intended to use.

The reason no one had noticed us yet was that they were all busy noticing some kind of bloody spectacle at the other end of the room, where one large creature appeared to be systematically devouring another, slightly smaller creature, complete with a disturbing array of crunchslurpgulp noises.

I gagged, then slapped my free hand over my mouth to hold back the lunch I now regretted eating.

Tod squeezed my hand again, and I sucked in a deep, silent breath to calm myself, mostly out of habit. I didn’t really need to breathe anymore. I made myself scan the large room, my gaze stumbling over misshapen limbs, backward-bending joints, and more kinds of horns, scaly wings, and twitching tails than I could even count. But I saw no sign of my father.