Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“Did that really just happen?”

“I think it did.” I exhaled, long and slow, more relieved than I could ever have explained by this breakthrough in their relationship. In the landscape of betrayal and resentment they’d been mired in for months, that relaxed banter was like climbing the Mount Everest of emotions. Together.

When Nash and Sabine had left so she could hunt, Sophie, Luca, and Emma curled up on the couch to try to distract themselves with another movie. Though I could tell during the opening credits just how futile an effort that would be.

When I turned to relinquish the living room to those still actually living, I found Tod watching me from the hall. His eyes swirled with conflicting emotions, in complementing shades of blue, and I watched as rage at Avari and worry for his mother competed with desire for...me.

He smiled when he saw me looking, and I wanted to kiss each of his dimples. I wanted to kiss him until he forgot about everything else. Until all of the fear and anger and horror we’d been living with for so long had faded into the background and—for a few minutes, anyway—there was nothing but us and the comfort we found in each other.

I needed some time alone with Tod, and it had to be soon, because Avari’s clock was ticking and what I’d learned from our phone call with the hellion—what I’d finally been forced to admit to myself—was that I was the only one who could stop his macabre countdown.

But first...

I slipped into the hall and tried on a smile of my own. “Hey.” I looked up at Tod, and he stared into my eyes like he could see right through me. Into me.

“Hey.” His smile faded a little, infused with a more intense, more intimate emotion that couldn’t be described with any one word in my vocabulary. “Your irises are spinning like crazy. Whatever could be on your mind, bean sidhe? ”

I stepped closer and put my hands on his chest for balance while I went up on my toes and whispered, though no one else could hear me anyway. “Well, reaper, I was thinking that we should get out of here for a little while.”

The blue spirals in his own eyes tightened in response, and anticipation tingled up my spine. “And where should we go?”

“You know the place.”

“Do you think that’s safe?” He glanced over my shoulder into the living room. “Leaving them here?”

“Nothing is safe. But we’ll be just an autodial away, thanks to the miracle of cell phone technology.”

“I’m convinced.” But then his gaze narrowed on me, studying me. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Considering the circumstances? I’m as okay as I’m ever going to be.” I dropped onto the balls of my feet so he couldn’t see how very true that was. “Let me tell them we’re going, then I’ll pick up a snack and meet you there in twenty minutes.”

“I can get food. What do you want?”

I shook my head. “My treat this time. I insist.”

His brows rose, but he didn’t argue. “Okay. I’ll see you in a few...” Then he disappeared.

I ducked into the living room and told the three couch potatoes that I’d be at Tod’s for a while, and that they should text one of us if anything...happened. Sophie pretended to gag. Luca shut her up with a kiss. And Emma gave me such a wistful look that I almost changed my mind, so I could keep her company. I owed her that.

But I had to talk to Tod in private. And time was running out.

The fact that I hadn’t actually lied to Tod didn’t ease my guilt as I blinked into his mother’s home. The house felt strange and too quiet without Nash and Harmony there. I missed the hum of the dishwasher, the scent of baking chocolate, and the video game sounds usually emanating from Nash’s room at the end of the hall.

My shoes squeaked on the linoleum while I searched the kitchen, and I bruised my knees climbing onto the countertop so I could check the upper cabinets, but I didn’t find what I was looking for there, or in the bathroom, or the living room.

Walking into Harmony’s room while she was suffering in the Netherworld felt like violating a shrine. Her closet was open and her bed was unmade, like she’d just gotten up, but the truth was that she hadn’t been home in more than a day, and she wouldn’t come home at all if I didn’t get what I’d come for, then do what had to be done.

Avari’s clock ticked in my head as I searched her drawers and her bedside table, and a countdown of my own added to the pressure when I glanced at her alarm clock and saw that twelve minutes had already slipped away from me. Tod would expect me in eight more. If I was too late, he’d text. Then he’d come looking for me.

I finally found what I needed in a shoe box at the back of Harmony’s closet. Eleven vials, neatly labeled in her all-caps print, along with a handful of disposable plastic droppers sealed in cellophane and a small notebook full of notes to herself. Most of the sentences were incomplete, but the dosages were clear.

I wondered how she’d been testing them. Then I decided I didn’t really want to know.

I slid the vial I needed into my pocket, along with one of the droppers. Then I took another dropper, just in case. After I’d closed the box, pushed it back into place, and double-checked to make sure I hadn’t left anything else out or open, I blinked out of Harmony’s house and into Levi’s office.

“Kaylee.” Tod’s boss blinked at me in surprise then hopped down from his rolling chair. His chest barely cleared the surface of his desk. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old when he’d died, and I found little else in either world creepier than an undead child. “I’m in the middle of a meeting.” He waved one small, freckled hand at something behind me, and I turned to see two reapers I didn’t recognize sitting in chairs at my back. I’d appeared out of nowhere between them and Levi’s desk.

“I need a favor.” Don’t look at his letter opener. Don’t look at his letter opener.... If he’d noticed the missing incubus soul, I couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t about to alert him to the loss.

“If memory serves, you’re already in my debt in that regard.” He’d restored Tod’s afterlife after I’d died. “And did I mention that you don’t have an appointment?”

“She’s not even a reaper,” one of the men at my back said.

Levi crossed tiny arms over his little-boy chest, half covering the Gap Kids logo. “I’m aware, David.”

“What is she?” the other reaper asked.

“Out of line. That’s what she is.” Levi planted both palms on his desk and glared up at me. It was like being scolded by a kindergartner. A kindergartner with an old soul and a corpse’s eyes. “Kaylee, see my assistant and make an appointment. I think I have an opening around noon tomorrow.”

“This can’t wait. Please, Levi. I need help.” I clutched the vial in my pocket and held his gaze, letting desperation show in mine, even though he probably couldn’t see the motion in my irises. “Five minutes, max. I swear.” That’s more than I could afford to spend there anyway.

Finally he exhaled and looked past me to the other reapers. “Wait in the hall.”

When they filed out the door without arguing, I realized that Tod was probably the least compliant employee Levi had—much like me in Madeline’s service.

The door clicked closed at my back. Levi gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk, and I sat. “Is this about Tod?”

“No. Not directly, anyway.” My feet bounced on the floor, and I couldn’t make them stop.

“Good, because he’s used all the favors he’s going to get—most of them on your behalf—and he’s been dead less than three years.”