Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“What’s wrong with him?” Em stared after Nash. “What happened?”

“Where’s my dad?” Sophie said as I pulled a container of raw meat from the fridge and plopped a chunk of it into Styx’s food bowl. She dug in, and Sophie spoke again, quieter this time, as if she already knew the answer. “Kaylee, where’s my dad?”

I turned on the kitchen faucet with my elbow and rinsed the deer blood from my hands, then washed with soap. Then I made myself look at her. “He’s still there. He’s okay, as far as we know.”

“As far as you know? ” Sophie looked stunned, and my heart ached for her.

Luca looked from me to Sabine, then to Nash. “What the hell happened?”

“Avari blew the side out of the building!” Nash sat on the arm of the couch and ran one hand through hair that was once artfully mussed but now just looked messy. Then he swiped both hands over his face, angrily wiping away frustrated tears. “The concrete wall fell on my mom. Sophie’s dad carried her out, but he can’t cross over, so they’re kind of stuck there.”

“Shit.” Luca put an arm around Sophie, who stared at the floor like she hadn’t heard what she’d expected and hadn’t quite processed that fact yet. “Is your mom okay?”

“Don’t know yet,” Sabine said. When I turned, I found her digging through the cabinet over the short kitchen peninsula. She pulled down a bag of Doritos and removed the clip, then shoved a chip into her mouth.

We all stared at her while she chewed.

“What?” She swallowed, then dug out another chip. “Sometimes you have to fix the problem that can be fixed. I can’t get your parents back, but I can fix the munchies.”

“So, he’s still there?” Sophie sank into a squat on the kitchen floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You left him there?”

Luca pulled her up, then guided her to the couch.

“No.” I refused the bag of chips when Sabine held it out to me. “Tod went back for them.”

“Alone?” Sophie looked up from the couch, and her gaze speared me with the weight of my own guilt. “We only have three good parents left between us.” Except for Luca’s, who were half a country away and had no idea their son was a necromancer. “You’re telling me that they’re all three trapped in the Netherworld, and only one of you went back for them?”

“We all wanted to go, but Tod thought putting more of us in danger would be...well, dangerous. And he was right,” I insisted. “If we all go back and get killed, who’ll be left to rescue them once we find them?”

“Find them?” Sophie demanded. “You don’t even know where they are? You lost my dad?”

“He had to run,” Sabine said, another orange corn chip held at the ready. “He had to get Harmony out of there before the ice melted and that horde of monsters ate them alive.”

Emma sank onto a bar stool, from which she could see both rooms at once. “That sentence is simultaneously unintelligible and terrifying.”

Sabine shrugged. “Unintelligible and terrifying is what the Netherworld’s all about.”

“Screw this.” Sophie stood and jerked her hand from Luca’s when he tried to take it. “I’ll go get him myself. Where did you last see him? At the psych ward?”

“Yup,” Sabine said around another mouthful.

“No!” I glared at her, then turned back to my cousin. “He’s not there anymore,” I insisted. “He would have tried to get as far away from there as he could, as quickly as possible.”

Sophie frowned. “Then how the hell is Tod supposed to find them?”

“He’s not,” Nash said, and I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. Not without lying. “Your dad is hiding, and if he does it right, Tod won’t be able to find him and neither will you.”

“Watch me.”

Luca stood and stepped into her path. “Sophie. Wait. On the not-gonna-happen scale, how impossible is it going to be for me to talk you out of this? Pick-up-trash-on-the-side-of-the-highway unlikely or leave-the-house-without-makeup unlikely?”

“Makeup.”

“Fine.” He nodded decisively. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“She’s not going,” I said. “Sabine, help me out.”

Sabine shrugged and stepped into the living room with the bag of chips, her focus set on Sophie. “You’re not going. And if you do, I’ll drag your ass back here in handcuffs. Chains, if that’s what it takes.” She folded the top of the cellophane bag. “ Please give me a reason to go shopping for chains.”

“You have a broken arm.”

Sabine shrugged. “One of mine’s better than two of yours.”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “I dare you to stop me.”

“Oh, don’t dare her,” Emma groaned from her bar stool.

“Sophie, think about this,” Nash said. “I want to go, too. We all do. But if your dad were here, what would he say? Would he want you to put yourself in that kind of danger?”

My cousin rolled her eyes. “But he’s not here. That’s the point.”

Sabine scowled. “No, the point is that if I let you cross over, when your dad gets back—and he will get back—he’ll kick my ass for letting you out of my sight.”

“No, he—” Sophie began, but Sabine spoke over her.

“The hell he won’t. Face it, tiny dancer. The only real problem you have is that people actually give a damn about you.”

My cousin blinked in surprise. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Sabine stepped closer, her dark eyes flashing in anger, but there was something deeper than that, too. Something more raw peeking through the cracks in the fearless facade she wore like Sophie wore SPF foundation. “I’m talking about this room. This room is full of people who love you. Who don’t want you to get yourself killed searching a nightmare dimension for the father who loves you more than life itself.” Sabine shoved the chip bag at me, and I took it before I realized what I was doing. “Did you know I had six older sisters?”

“I didn’t...” Sophie looked confused. “You have family?”

“Had. I’m a mara —the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter—which means I had six older sisters and presumably a set of parents who liked kids enough to have at least seven of them. They must have loved kids. But they didn’t want me. They left me on a church doorstep, buckled into a car seat, when I was a toddler. So I don’t have those sisters anymore. I don’t have those parents. What I have is this.” She spread her arms to take in all of us. “These same people you have. And like it or not, they have me. And so do you. Your dad just took custody of me, which means you’re my sister now. You’re the only sister I have left—the only one I’m ever going to have—and I’m not gonna screw that up. I’m not going to throw you away, like they threw me away. I’m not going to let you get hurt. And I’m sure as hell not going to let you hurt yourself. So you put your bony little butt back on that couch and start using your head instead of your mouth, because it’s your head we need right now.”

“My head?” Sophie stared at Sabine in shock. We all stared at Sabine in shock.

“You know your dad better than anyone else here,” the mara said. “You know better than any of us where he’s most likely to go. Where he might hide. When we go back in, we’ll go together, and you’ll be the one telling us where to look. Got it?”

Sophie opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She blinked at Sabine. Then, finally, she nodded. And sat back down.

Luca sat with her, and while they talked softly about where her dad might have gone, I headed into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, partly to give my hands something to do, partly because I like coffee, and partly because I could already tell it was going to be a long night—those who needed sleep would appreciate the offer of caffeine instead.