Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“Yeah. I got that, and it’s not like I’m celebrating the omission. But...I went after Thane without telling you, so I figure I don’t have much of a leg to stand on in an argument about full disclosures.”

“So you’re not mad because we’re even? I don’t want this to be some kind of contest.”

“It’s not. I’m not mad because I know from personal experience that—like me—you did what you thought you had to do, and you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” His gaze seemed to see straight through to my soul. “So, all I need to know is...did you kiss him?”

“No.” My eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t even ask what his price would be, because I was afraid he would ask for another...taste. Or something worse. I let our parents stay stuck in the Netherworld because I didn’t want him to touch me again,” I confessed. The tears fell, and I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t know whether to feel guilty for my own squeamishness or glad that I didn’t kiss someone else this time.

He took my hand, and his fingers wound around mine. “Kaylee, you didn’t do anything wrong. My mom wouldn’t want you to pay for her freedom like that, and I know damn well your dad and uncle wouldn’t, either.” His grip on my hand tightened, and shivers traveled up my arm. “And as selfish as it probably sounds, I can’t stand the thought of him touching you for any reason.”

“I don’t think I deserve you,” I whispered as those tingles wound their way from my arm down my spine. “I suck as a girlfriend.”

“That’s not true. The real problem is that hellions suck as nemeses.”

“What?”

Tod shrugged. “A proper villain would know when to start overexplaining his dastardly scheme. He’d actually look when you point at the sky and shout, ‘Look!’ When the going gets tough, a real villain would throw one of his minions under the bus and run, or rant against the justice department while he’s being shoved into the back of a cop car. Hell, a real villain would at least wear a mask or creepy clown makeup, so we know at a glance who’s good and who’s bad.” Tod grinned and shrugged. “Face it, Kay. The problem here isn’t you. It’s these subpar villains the universe has thrown at us. Someone should lodge a formal complaint with the bad-guy union.”

I laughed, more grateful than ever for his willingness to make me smile even at the worst of times.

I started to kiss Tod, but then Nash pushed the door open and poked his head into the room. “Hey, sorry to interrupt.” But he didn’t sound that sorry—obviously turnabout was fair play. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, holding his cell phone, and I realized I’d misinterpreted his expression.

Something was wrong.

“You have a call.” He held his cell out to me.

“On your phone?”

“Yeah. It’s Marco. Only it’s not Marco.”

“Oh, crap.” Tod helped me climb out of his lap without landing on the floor, and I stared at Nash’s phone like it might bite me if I touched it. Sure enough, Marco’s name was at the top of the screen, but...

“Ms. Cavanaugh, I really don’t think you want to keep me waiting.” Avari’s voice sounded distant coming from a phone not held close to my ear, but it was perfectly audible. He either couldn’t work Marco’s vocal chords or wasn’t bothering.

My hand shook when I took the phone. It shook harder when I held it to my ear. “Hello?” The standard human greeting sounded stupid, considering I was speaking to a hellion, but I didn’t know how else to start.

“Ms. Cavanaugh, you’ve become a difficult bean sidhe to get hold of. I’ve had to resort to...creative means.”

I pressed the speaker button and set Nash’s phone on my desk, not just so that he and Tod could hear, but so that I could put distance—however worthless—between my ear and the hellion’s voice. “What do you want?”

“The real question is what do you want? What would you like me to do with your father? Shall I list your options, or would you like to guess?”

“This isn’t a game.” I leaned against the desk, staring at my feet.

“Of course it’s a game. Life is a game, little bean sidhe, and you are going to lose. The only choice still yours to make is how soon that happens. For instance, if you were to surrender yourself now, or anytime in the next few hours, your father would be returned to the human world, having suffered no permanent damage.”

“He’s okay?” Was that even possible?

“‘Okay’ is a relative term, in my world as in yours. He has, as yet, suffered no permanent damage. Physically, at least. It is difficult for me to determine how much and what kind of psychological trauma is recoverable.”

Hearing him talk about my father like that made me hate Avari all over again with a loathing rendered raw and fresh, as if the wound were new. But the truth was that he’d cut my heart out months and months ago. Avari kept himself entertained—and fed—by squeezing it whenever he got the chance.

“And if I don’t turn myself in?” It hurt to say the words. To vocally betray my father.

“If you haven’t surrendered your body and soul by midnight, I will begin amusing myself in earnest with your father’s suffering. Physically, at first, and progressing from there. I will push my fingers into his psyche and create excruciating new realities for him. Realities where you are dead and gone, through some negligence on his part, and he drowns in guilt and grief for eternity. Realities where he watches his beloved daughter suffer offenses and indignities beyond human endurance, over and over again while he screams in vain for your freedom and, eventually, for the mercy of your final death.”

My skin crawled. “Stop.” My eyes closed in horror and my voice carried no sound, which was just as well, because it would have made no difference anyway.

Tod rolled the desk chair closer and took my hand, and Nash sank onto the end of my bed, his eyes swirling with angry, despairing shades of green and brown.

“He will have twelve hours of such agony, while you further consider your choices,” Avari continued. “And if you are not in my possession by noon in your human time zone, I will end his life and deliver his soulless corpse—whatever is left of it—into your possession.”

My heart went still, and its last beat echoed the hollow length of my body. “You’re going to kill him?”

“Yes, of course. Unless you are willing to trade yourself for him. And if you have not surrendered by that next midnight—thirty of your human hours from now, if I understand your maddeningly consistent method of keeping time—I will begin to torture his immortal soul.”

“Torture?” I heard the word, but I couldn’t process it. Not truly. My mind was a maelstrom of chaos and fear, rapidly sucking me into a pinpoint of darkness from which I was afraid I might never return.

“It’s a general term, of course. It reveals nothing of my true intent, or the specific levels of pain I can achieve in one so...attached as your father. You are his weakness, you know. You are the thing he would die for. The thing he would suffer for. The thing he will suffer for. And when his sanity starts to slide, he will not be able to differentiate between reality and the mental projection of his worst fears and imaginings. I believe your cousin saw the result of that particular technique when she met Addison in the Nether.”

Sophie met Addison?

“She’s a clever little thing, your kin. More like you than you think. And when your father sinks too far into insanity to suffer for me—for you —I will move on to your cousin.”