Rachel Vincent - My Soul to Steal

After glancing into Sabine’s sixth period classroom with no luck, I ducked into the first-floor girls’ restroom in search of her. I’d checked three of the four stalls and found them all empty when Tod suddenly appeared in front of the door to the fourth.

I shrieked a shrill profanity and jumped back so hard my elbow slammed into the third stall. “You can’t be in here!”

Tod stuck his head through the last stall door, then backed up and shrugged. “It’s all clear.”

“Well, it might not be for long. What are you doing here?”

“Nash called me.”

He had? Emma must have told him I’d disappeared from fifth period.

“Oh. Well, thanks, but I’m more than capable of sneaking around the Netherworld on my own for a few minutes.” Even if I almost got devoured by man-eating plants and carnivorous kindergarteners… “So you can go polish your shining armor for someone else to admire.”

I might have been a little irritated at him for telling me to give up Nash.

Tod frowned and brushed a curl from his forehead. “You went to the Netherworld? Why the hell would you do that?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I propped my hands on my hips, impatient to continue my search, but I wasn’t going to be seen talking to an invisible friend in the hall. Not so soon after the recent bathroom weirdness. “Sabine took her anger issues out on me when I fell asleep in French.”

“Hell hath no fury like a mara falsely accused.”

“Nash told you? What’d he do, call you at work?”

Todd shook his head and pulled a small, slim phone from his back pocket. “Mom put me on her cell plan, now that I can pay for the additional line. Got it a couple of days ago.”

“And you didn’t give me the number?” I swallowed a bitter, unexpected wash of disappointment.

The reaper grinned and leaned with one hip on the nearest sink. “I was waiting for you to ask.”

A flash of irritation burned in my cheeks. “That might have actually happened, if I’d known you had a phone.”

His brows arched in surprise. “I figured Nash would tell you.”

“Well, he didn’t,” I snapped.

Tod slid the phone back into his pocket. “So…you’re still mad about the other day?”

“Wouldn’t you be mad if I told you to give up on someone you care about? Just…hand her over to someone who doesn’t even deserve her?”

Tod gave me a strange, sad look I couldn’t interpret, and the blues in his irises shifted subtly for a moment before he got control of them. “Yeah. I guess I would.”

And obviously that was as much of an apology as I was going to get.

“Anyway, if you didn’t come to rescue me from the Netherworld, what are you doing here?”

Tod blinked, and I could almost see him refocusing on the crisis at hand. “Nash just called to tell me that Sabine sensed someone sleeping in the hall—you know maras can feel slumber, like we’d feel heat from a fire, right?”

I nodded, creeped out by the comparison. “So what?”

“So there was no one sleeping in the hall. Everyone was up and moving, on the way to class.”

“So maybe her spidey senses are all messed up.” I shrugged. “Karmic payback for sending me to the Netherworld in my sleep.”

“I doubt it’s that simple. Or that satisfying,” he said. So did I. “The only way I know of for a sleeping person to function like he’s awake is if he’s…”

“Possessed,” I finished for him, as the implication began to sink in and dread settled through me like lead, pinning me in place. Avari had taken control of his “host.” Or maybe Invidia had taken control of hers. “Did Sabine mention the lucky victim’s name?”

Tod shrugged. “She said the hall was too crowded and no one was snoring.”

“Great. She’s always so much help.” I closed my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts, then looked up at him. But before I could tell him what I’d overheard in the Netherworld, the sixth period bell rang, and I nearly jumped out of my shoes.

“You gonna be in trouble?” Tod asked, glancing at the ceiling like he could actually see the bell.

I reached for the door and gripped the handle. “Nowhere near as much trouble as we’ll all be in if Avari gets his way. He’s playing with a friend this time, and they’re up to something big.”

“You mean the blitz?”

“The blitz is just a means to an end. He and his partner are trying to drag me and Sabine into the Netherworld, and they’ve each picked out a body here in the human world to give them hands-on involvement in the process. We have to find out who they’ve possessed before they can make their move.”

There weren’t many possibilities to choose from. A person had to have some connection to the Netherworld to even qualify for hellion possession, and I couldn’t think of a single eligible party, other than me, Nash, and Emma.

And Sophie…

Shit!

Tod’s blue eyes went hard and angry on my behalf—and probably on Sabine’s. “What can I do?” He followed me into the hall, where I lowered my voice to avoid notice by the stragglers still making their way to class.

“Find Sophie and make her talk. If she doesn’t sound like herself, knock her out. Then meet me in the quad.”

Tod’s lips turned up in a grim smile. “You know I never pass up an opportunity to smack your cousin.”

TOD DISAPPEARED, and I headed straight for the gym, where Nash hung out during last period, now that football season was over.

I scanned the bleachers, glancing over several groups of students talking and watching the basketball team practice, but Nash found me before I spotted him. “Hey,” he called, and I turned to see him walking toward me from the boys’ locker room. “What happened?” he asked, falling into step with me when I gestured for him to follow me toward the gym doors, where we wouldn’t be overheard. “Emma said you disappeared during French. Like, literally disappeared.”

“Unscheduled trip to the Netherworld, courtesy of everyone’s least favorite mara .”

“Damn it, Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” He ran one hand through his hair in frustration. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged, trying not to show how pissed off I was, or how scared I’d been. Like it was no big deal that his ex had nearly gotten me killed. A lot.

“A little sticky…” I plucked at the drying gunk stuck to the back of my shirt. “But still in one piece. And I did accuse her of trying to incite a school-wide riot. Though for the record, I think the interdimensional field trip constitutes gross overkill.”

“I’ll talk to her…” he said, shrugging his backpack higher on his shoulders, and suddenly it felt weird for me to be whispering to Nash in the middle of class, carrying nothing but the weight of my own guilt and fear. I’d left my stuff in French class, after my involuntary departure from the human world.

“Don’t bother. We have bigger hellions to fry, before one of them drops me into the hot oil. Or Sabine.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain when we find Sabine,” I said, leaning back against the side of the bleachers. “For now, please tell me you found the sleepwalker.”

“Not even close.”

“Great.” I shoved a flyaway strand of hair back from my face. “Well, now we’re looking for two puppets. One will sound like Avari, the other like this demon chick named Invidia. I heard them plotting when I crossed over. I’m guessing she’s a hellion of envy.”

Nash’s brows arched halfway up his forehead. “Based on…?”

“Based on the fact that she’s obsessed with Sabine, because of the amount of jealousy she’s evidently festering with.”