Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

He did. I could tell. “Thane was stalking you? He was there with us, and you didn’t tell me?” His voice was soft and angry. His irises were too still. “Exactly how long have you been lying to me, Kaylee?”

“I was trying to save your life. He said he’d kill you if I told you he was there.”

“Maybe you should have let him. Maybe then—” Nash bit the rest of his sentence off, but I had no trouble finishing it in my head. “I can’t do this with you, Kaylee. Not yet.” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands. Then he stood and headed for the cafeteria, without another word or a look back. Sabine only hesitated long enough to grab another burger for the road, then she jogged after him, leaving me alone at my table, in the middle of lunch.

“What was that all about?” Em asked, and I looked up to find my best friend and her new boyfriend, Jayson Olivera, staring after Nash and Sabine.

“History. Secrets. Drama. You know, the usual.” I pushed the fast-food bag toward them as they sat. “So, tell me what I missed.” Having been abandoned by a necromancer, a mara, and an angry male bean sidhe in the past five minutes alone, I could sure use a dose of normal. At least until my undead boyfriend showed up.

AFTER SCHOOL, I lay on my stomach on my bed, with my chemistry text open in front of me. I’d read the assigned chapter three times, but it still hadn’t sunk in, so I’d moved on to staring at the not-a-locket Madeline had given me, which I’d found lying on my dresser when I got home.

It didn’t look like anything important. But it was the difference between final rest and eternal torture to anyone unlucky enough to have his or her soul stolen at death. Madeline had called it an amphora. I’d looked the word up. An amphora was an ancient Greek style of vase with a skinny neck and two handles.

My heart-thing looked nothing like an amphora. Yet the name seemed oddly appropriate, because like an old jar, my amphora was made to hold things. Specifically, souls.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I dropped the necklace into the crack between the pages of the open book, then dug my phone from my pocket. The screen showed a text from Tod.

Incoming in five…four…three…two…

“One,” he said, and I looked up to find the reaper standing in the middle of the rug at the end of my bed.

“Cute.” I rolled over to make room for him, and Tod stretched out on the bed next to me.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asked, glancing at the Cinemark uniform draped over my desk chair.

“Probably,” I admitted. “But what’s the point? Scooping popcorn and selling tickets for minimum wage feels like a waste of time now.”

Tod’s brows rose. “It’s not like either of us is short on time.”

“I know, but I don’t want to spend eternity wearing red polyester and smelling like fake butter.” Too late, I realized he was doing that very thing, only his uniform shirt was blue and he finished his shifts at the pizza place smelling like grease and pepperoni. Because the reaper gig didn’t pay in human currency and without cash, he couldn’t pay for his cell phone, or food and clothes he didn’t technically need, or the in-public date we kept promising ourselves.

“You obviously don’t want to spend eternity doing chemistry homework, either.” Tod slid the necklace onto the comforter between us, then flipped the textbook closed and set it on the floor. “I take it your return to class was less than triumphant?”

I rolled onto my back with a sigh. “Today sucked. No way around it. Between the stares, the gossip, and the inappropriate questions, school felt more like a three-ring circus than an institute of learning. Three different people actually asked to see my scar. Can you believe that?”

“Can’t say I blame them. As scars go, it’s pretty damn sexy.” Tod grinned and pushed the hem of my shirt up to expose the straight, pinkish line of raised tissue on my stomach. His fingers traced it slowly and chills gathered just below my navel. Then he lowered his head and followed that line again with a series of soft kisses. I closed my eyes and gripped handfuls of my comforter, and those chills at my center became a fire that burned deep inside me.

Suddenly that scar was my very favorite part of my body.

“No fair,” I moaned. “Only you could make me love the wound that killed me.”

“Never underestimate the therapeutic power of a few well-placed kisses,” he mumbled against my skin.

I laughed and pulled him up until our mouths met. “Mmm… If I’d known the afterlife could be this yummy, I might have tried to expedite the process.”

Tod pulled away, frowning. “That’s not funny.”

“What, you can make death jokes, but I can’t?” His morbid sense of humor used to worry me, but now I understood it. Eternity is hard to face when you can’t find anything to laugh about. Yet jokes couldn’t hide the truth. I was conscious, and warm, and…preserved. But I wasn’t alive, and I never would be again. Faking it was the best I could do. He and I had that in common.

“I would have done anything to keep you from dying.” Tod slid one hand slowly down my arm, leaving a trail of chills in its wake. “This would have been just as amazing while you were alive.”

“That was never part of the plan,” I said. “We just didn’t know it.” Not until he’d seen my name on the list of souls scheduled to be reaped. And because I’d already had my one allowed death-date exchange, there was nothing Tod, or my dad, or anyone else, could do to save me. “Besides, there are advantages to the afterlife. For instance, if I were to do this—” I pushed him gently but firmly onto his back, then I straddled him “—no one could see us unless we wanted them to.” And we did not.

“A valid point…” He reached for my hips, and I hated both layers of clothing between us almost as much as I loved the look in his eyes, part surprise, part heat, and no hint of an objection.

“And if I were to do this—” I leaned forward and kissed the edge of his jaw, and Tod groaned as my shift in position created a delicious friction between us “—and you were to make that sound you just made, no one could hear you unless you wanted to be heard.”

His hands tightened on my hips, pressing me tighter into him as my lips trailed down his jaw toward his neck, over the pale, late-night stubble he’d died with. “What happened to the good little girl who blushed and covered her face at the thought of what you’re doing right now?”

“She died,” I whispered into his ear.

That girl had felt alive with every breath she’d taken, even knowing she’d soon breathe her last. This one—the restored me—only felt alive when she experienced very strong emotions, which Madeline had assured me was perfectly normal. And so far the only strong emotions I actually enjoyed were the ones I felt when I was with Tod.

“Why? You like the good girl better?” I asked.

“I know her better.” Tod’s hand slid up my back beneath my shirt. “But this one’s certainly making me wish I’d shown up for invisi-lunch.” He’d texted me halfway through lunch to say he couldn’t make it.

I laughed, then rolled off of him and onto my side, watching his profile from inches away. “What could possibly compete with the lure of cafeteria food, adolescent conversation, and hostile company?”

“I spent two hours trying to question reapers without sounding like I was questioning them. What do you think it says about us as a group, that every reaper I know is either irritable, egotistical, voyeuristic, or some combination of the three?”

“That you fit in well?”