Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

Bringing me back to life turned out to be a two-step process. The first part involved a very private reunion with the reaper who deserved more gratitude than I even knew how to express for loving me. For waiting for me. For safeguarding my soul from a distance. And for braving the Netherworld one last time to finally bring me home.

Tod still had his room at reaper headquarters. He still had the same bed. The same chair. The same minifridge used as a nightstand. His dirty clothes still littered the floor. His tub was still too short for a proper bath, and he still only owned two towels and five washcloths.

He still had my spare toothbrush.

He still touched me like I was the most precious thing in existence.

I still loved every single second of it.

Based on my first two hours back in the human world, it was tempting to assume very little had changed. I knew that wasn’t true, but for those two hours, I let myself pretend.

When we’d finally done enough touching and holding and kissing to be sure I wasn’t going to simply melt from reality, like a mirage, we sat cross-legged on his bed, facing each other, eating ice cream with plastic spoons from paper bowls.

“How did you do it?” Tod dumped more caramel syrup on the mound of home-style vanilla in my bowl, then topped it with a scoopful of candied walnuts. “I mean, I know that since your soul wasn’t yours in the first place—very clever, by the way—the deal you struck with him was nullified. But doesn’t that nullify his promise to leave us all alone forever?”

I took a bite of my victory sundae—which had been preceded by my Welcome Back from the Netherworld pizza—and let the sugar melt in my mouth. If I’d ever tasted anything so sweet before, I couldn’t remember it.

But the sugar soured on my tongue with the memory his question triggered.

It’s a word game, little fury. You are building a cage made of promises, and Avari must believe that the bars he sees between you are locking you in. Then, later, he will turn and realize he’s the one in the cage, and that you stand on the outside, watching him, a free woman.

“Ira taught me how to negotiate.” But not until after he and I had struck our own deal. “The key was phrasing my demands as two separate agreements. The first bargain said that he would let my dad go in exchange for my immortal soul. Since my soul was never mine to give him, that deal is now null and void, and if he still had my dad, Avari wouldn’t have to give him up. But he doesn’t have my dad. And since the other bargain we struck is still in effect, he never will have my dad.”

Tod leaned over to set the syrup bottle on top of the minifridge, and the mattress creaked beneath his weight. “What was the second part?”

Water dripped from my shower-wet hair and soaked into the T-shirt he’d lent me. I swallowed another bite and licked a smear of caramel from my lower lip. “That one was intentionally simple. Deceptively so. It just said that once he took possession of my soul, he could have no further contact with you guys. Ever again. He did take possession of my soul, and since there were no contingencies named in case he ever lost possession of it, that deal still stands.”

Tod stared at me, a ghost of a smile haunting the corners of his mouth. “You may be the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”

I laughed and plucked a walnut from a peak of ice cream. “The devil is in the details.”

“Have I ever told you how sexy your brain is?”

“Finally! A man who wants me for my brain.”

“I want you for all of you. Each individual part and the sum of them all. I want you for everything you are and everything you will ever be. I will never have enough of you, because there’s no such thing.” He stared right into my eyes, and I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. I was trapped, and never in my life had I been so happy to be caught. “I will never let you go again.”

“What did you tell them?” I scooped ice into the last of the plastic cups and nearly tripped over Styx for the fourth time in the past quarter hour. She’d been following me everywhere since the moment we’d blinked into my house, and I loved her for it.

I also loved her for the fact that, like Tod, she hadn’t changed at all in the four years I’d been gone. That couldn’t be said for anyone else, based on the pictures I’d found in Emma’s room—my former room. The twin beds had been replaced with a full, and my things were packed into boxes stacked at the back of her closet.

They hadn’t gotten rid of me. They’d just packed me up. Seeing those boxes reminded me of the day I’d helped Emma pack up her former life and move into her new one. We’d changed places, sort of. That felt weird.

“I told them I had an announcement,” Tod said. “They probably expect me to announce my retirement.” Which, for a reaper, meant requesting or accepting his final death. “It’s kind of...been coming.”

I frowned and dropped the ice scoop into the sink, and he shrugged. “It was hard without you, Kaylee. I couldn’t let you go, but I didn’t know how to be here without you. If I’d never met you, I probably would have been fine.” He shrugged, and that same stubborn curl fell over his forehead. “I mean, creatures who only exist in the dark don’t know they’re missing the sun, right? But once you’ve seen the sun. Once you’ve seen it light up the world...once you’ve felt its heat all around you...inside you...” He clutched his own chest, and my heart cracked open. “It’s hard to live in the dark after the sun dies.”

“I’m so sorry.” I set the last cup on the counter and threw my arms around him again. “I’m so glad you didn’t do something...permanent.”

“I almost did. I started slipping away again. If not for my mom and Emma, I might have lost most of my humanity by now.”

“Em? You and Emma?” I pulled back to look at him, my chest aching, and I had to remind myself that four years was a long time, and they were only human—mostly. And that I’d left them, and they’d thought I was dead, and they had had every right to move on. To at least try...

Tod’s eyes widened, then he laughed and pulled me closer. “Not like that. Emma has a boyfriend. A necromancer friend of Luca’s. They’ve been together almost three years now.”

“The guy in the picture on her dresser?” They looked happy in the photo. They looked...normal. Emma deserved some normal.

“Yeah. He’s a good guy, and he loves her, and he knows how to handle the occasional syphon meltdown. But even if none of that were true...” Tod put a hand on each of my arms and looked right into my eyes. “You have my heart and soul, Kaylee Cavanaugh, and that never changed, even when I thought you were gone. Em and I are just friends. There was never anyone else. Which means that all of this—” he stepped back and spread his arms with a grin I’d missed like I would miss my own heartbeat if I never felt it again “—went to waste for four very long years.”

“Well, that’s all over now. An ego like that deserves to be stroked.” I ran my hands over his chest and stood on my toes to whisper in his ear, “Or at least humored.”

“Humored, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll take what I can get. For now...”

I pulled his head down for a kiss and didn’t let him go until an engine rumbled to a stop out front, and my heart stopped with it. “They’re here.” One of them, at least. I’d only heard one car.

I raced to the front window and peeked through the gap in the drapes to see an unfamiliar vehicle in the driveway. The driver’s door opened, and I hardly recognized the man who stepped out. He had Nash’s artfully mussed hair, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses. And he was...bigger.