Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“You all look so different!” I couldn’t get over it. “So, college and life? How are things?”

“Things are good,” Emma said. “I have a boyfriend.”

“The necromancer? I heard!”

Her smile was like sunlight emerging from the clouds as she grabbed a cup for herself from the drinks lined up on the counter. “His name’s Chad. He knows who I really am and how I...got here.” In Lydia’s body, obviously. “He knows the truth, and it didn’t scare him away.”

“It’s kinda hard to scare a necromancer.” Tod set cups in front of Nash and Sabine when they settled onto bar stools across the counter from us. “They’re like reapers, but with less purpose.”

“He has purpose!” Em gave Tod a good-natured shoved. “He’s an ed major. He wants to teach.”

“Not at Eastlake, I hope.” I smiled, trying not to feel lost in a conversation about someone I’d never met. “I hear that place is dangerous.”

“Not since you...died.” Nash frowned at the counter for a moment. “When you left, all that other stuff...it just...stopped.”

“Not because you were the cause of it,” Tod clarified, squeezing my hand. “You weren’t. The hellions left Eastlake because you paid to make them go away.” His grin returned. “You didn’t just clean up the school, you made a down payment on a miracle—a mara with an education!” He made a grand gesture toward Sabine, and she laughed.

“Yeah.” The mara tossed dark hair over her shoulder. “It turns out that without hellions stalking you constantly, school’s not that big of an obstacle. Still boring as hell, though.”

“She has a three-point-four GPA.” Nash wrapped one arm around her, and I could see the pride in his eyes. “And she’d have a four-point-oh if I could talk her into actually attending most of her classes.”

Sabine shrugged. “Waste of time when you already know the material. We’re nearly done now, though. Two more finals, then we graduate in two weeks.”

My chest ached again, and before I could process how thoroughly they’d all moved on without me, and why that bothered me, despite how happy I was for them all, the front door creaked open again and I turned to find Sophie standing in the doorway, frozen in place. Staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.

Luca nudged her inside, then closed the door at their backs. “Told ya so,” he leaned closer to say into her ear. I laughed. Of course he’d known. He’d probably felt me the moment I crossed back into the human world.

“Creepy-ass necromancers,” I said with a grin, and he stepped around my cousin to give me a hug.

“ So glad you’re back,” he said. “Work sucks without our best reclamationist.”

“You’re still working for Madeline?”

He nodded, and his grin widened. “As are you. Aunt Madeline says she wants you back on the job by the end of the week. Also, she says, ‘Welcome back.’”

Warmth flooded me, and I was surprised to realize how good that made me feel. There was still a place for me, even if that place wasn’t at college with Nash, Sabine, and Emma.

Besides, A&M wasn’t that far away. Especially with my two-second commute.

“Kaylee?” Sophie’s voice sounded strange. Fragile. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering all the weird shit I’ve seen in the past four years. But I have to admit...I didn’t believe Luca when he said you were back.”

She hugged me, and I was a little relieved to realize she hadn’t changed as much as the others. Of course, she was the youngest, though still older than me, now. “And hey, don’t worry about your hair. We can fix that. Three hours at my salon, and no one will ever know your poor head spent four years in that dry Netherworld air.”

I laughed out loud.

The next hour was surreal. They asked a dozen questions I didn’t want to answer about my time in the Netherworld, and I missed Alec more than ever. He would have understood my silence.

When it became obvious that I’d rather listen than talk, everyone seemed eager to oblige. I heard about classes, and parties, and schoolwork, and new cars, and new jobs, and new friends. I laughed at stories I didn’t completely understand and sympathized with disappointments I couldn’t really imagine. It seemed impossible that so much could have changed in the human world, when I could still remember my last day there like it was yesterday.

But I’d missed a lot of yesterdays.

We were digging into huge slices of birthday cake—Tod insisted, since I’d missed four birthdays—when another car pulled into the driveway.

My fork froze inches from my mouth. I dropped it onto my plate and was halfway to the door when it opened on its own. Harmony took one look at me, and her jaw dropped open so fast I was afraid it was going to fall off her face.

“Oh, my...”

I folded her into a long-overdue hug and only then noticed the firm bump between us. The one growing in her belly. I stepped back and glanced at her round stomach in surprise. “Are you...?” The rest of the words got stuck in my throat, and she nodded, beaming at me.

“It’s a girl.”

“We were going to call her Kaylee,” my uncle said, and I looked up to find him in the doorway, watching me through damp, shiny eyes.

Uncle Brendon gave me my millionth hug in the past hour, and only once I’d let him go did I notice that the gold band on his finger matched the one on Harmony’s. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I demanded, turning on the rest of my friends and family with a grin that probably spoiled my angry act.

Sophie laughed. “Dad would have killed me if he missed the look on your face. So...I’m going to be a big sister. Weird, huh?”

“Beyond weird.” I turned back to Harmony. “Wow! So, when are you due?”

“Three months. We’re excited! And your old room at Brendon’s will be the nursery.”

“Speaking of babies...” Em stepped forward with her phone and showed me a picture of a laughing toddler with her sister’s eyes and my old math teacher’s wavy brown hair.

I took the phone from her and stared at the picture. “Oh, Em, he’s adorable!” Her nephew was so cute, in fact, that though I would have sworn it was impossible, I wasn’t creeped out by his resemblance to the man who’d murdered me.

“Yeah. And he never would have survived without you. Without the soul you gave him.”

I’d left instructions in my goodbye letter, begging Harmony to help them install the soul in the baby when he was born. “What’s his name?”

“I suggested Damien,” Tod said while Em showed me how to scroll through the latest pictures on her phone—a leap in technology I’d missed during my sabbatical in hell. “But no one listened.”

“Caleb. He’s very sweet but quite a handful.”

“Have you searched his head for a birthmark in the form of three sixes?”

Emma shoved Tod again, and I got the impression that was a joke he’d told in infinite variations. I didn’t get it.

“Most little boys are...challenging,” Harmony said. “Including the two of you.” She smiled at both her sons.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s the big...?”

I froze at the sound of my father’s voice, and when it faded in surprise, I turned to find him staring at me.

“Kaylee?” His voice cracked, and disbelief dripped from the fracture. I smiled at him while my heart thundered in my chest. “Is that you? Are you real?”

Tod laughed again. “We’ve been asking her that all day.”

My dad practically floated across the room toward me, and only once his arms were wrapped around me did I realize he was wearing a flannel plaid shirt I’d been trying to get him to throw away for months before he’d disappeared into the Netherworld.