Rachel Vincent: My Soul to Steal

She smiled at me slowly with a foreign tilt of her head, and that’s when I understood. Emma had fallen asleep in history during the video, and Invidia had made her move. My best friend was the second host.

Emma’s body stood half-behind Sabine, pressed against the mara ’s right side, her mouth inches from Sabine’s ear. She watched me closely, a predatory gleam in her normally bright brown eyes, lips half-parted, like I’d interrupted her in midsentence.

“Is this the sweet little bean sidhe? ” Invidia’s voice asked, while Emma’s hand stroked Sabine’s bare arm. “See how she taunts you? How she flaunts the boy in front of you? She knows how you feel. She knows how he feels, and she doesn’t need him, yet she clings to him, just to keep him from you.”

“Sabine, that’s not true…” I moved closer slowly, scanning my peripheral vision for anything I could use against Invidia without permanently injuring Emma.

“Hellions can’t lie,” Sabine said, and her gaze blazed with hatred. With envy so bitter I could practically taste it on the air between us. How could she suddenly hate me, when she’d called me a friend a few hours ago? Was this because of my false accusation—which I’d actually believed at the time? Or was some of it because of Invidia, and the storm of envy she’d unleashed in our school?

Surely the lure of it was even thicker, so close to the hellion who controlled it.

“Hellions can’t intentionally lie,” Nash corrected, stepping up on my right. “But they’re free to guess and make assumptions, just like anyone else.”

“Look how they work together to subvert you…” Emma’s long blond hair fell over Sabine’s shoulder, standing out against the dark strands as the hellion’s voice slid over me, sweet and smooth as honey on my tongue. If I could hardly resist her pull, how was Sabine supposed to, considering how badly she actually wanted what I had?

“She’s changed him. Lessened him,” Invidia continued, and I could see that Sabine was listening. That the hellions words were hitting their target—not Sabine’s ears, but her heart. “But with her gone, you could fix him. You could have him back, and it would be like it was before. Without the meddlesome little female bean sidhe to get in your way…”

“Sabine, don’t do this,” I begged, taking a single step toward them. “Make her leave Emma alone. Em has nothing to do with this.”

“This Emma-body?” Invidia looked surprised, then she exhaled a languid, seductive laugh from my best friend’s throat. “Emma Marshall has everything to do with this,” the hellion insisted, leaning closer to whisper directly into Sabine’s ear, though we could all hear her. “She is part of the problem. Part of the effortless existence simply handed to this little bean sidhe, while life has given you only battles to be fought.”

“Bina, please…” Nash begged, and Sabine’s conflicted gaze flicked his way. But that made things worse, because she couldn’t see him without seeing me, and seeing us together only reinforced the poison the hellion dripped straight into her ear.

“He’s part of it, too. Part of her gilded privilege.” Emma’s hand reached Sabine’s fingers, then trailed slowly upward again, and the mara ’s arm twitched. “The loving boyfriend, the loyal friends, the protective father. She has everything, and you have only hunger. Insatiable, unbearable hunger, clawing, devouring you from the inside, night and day.”

I edged forward again, and Nash came with me. “Sabine, you can have all that, too!” I insisted. Well, maybe not the father, but that wasn’t my fault. “And you don’t need to bargain with a hellion to make it happen!”

“She lies,” Invidia purred, and Sabine shuddered when Emma’s lips brushed her ear. “People are drawn to the sweet little bean sidhe, to bathe in her bright innocence. When you enter a room, they tremble and shrink back. You must work to hide the horrors they see in your eyes, and she has only to smile. You cannot have what she has—not any of it—on your own. But I can give it to you. I can give you love, and acceptance, and a smile brighter than the sun. I can give you people, and attention, and a steady stream of sleeping mortals, just waiting to scream in their slumber for you.”

“She can’t do it, Sabine,” I insisted, stepping past a stainless-steel counter, now less than ten feet from them. “Even if she thinks she can, it won’t really be what you want. She can’t change your species, and she can’t give you real friends. No matter what she promises.”

“What does she know of your pain? Of your isolation?” Invidia hissed, and a deep chill traveled through me at the sibilance in her voice. “She knows nothing of your darkness, yet she would extinguish the one flame glowing on your horizon.” Em’s gaze flicked to Nash at my side, and Sabine’s followed.

“You need only cross into the Nether…” The hellion slid Emma’s arm around Sabine’s waist in a possessive gesture. “Deliver me this young, ripe Emma-body and sign away your soul. Such a small price, for a lifetime of peace and pleasure.”

“Sabine, no!” Nash cried, and when I glanced at him, I saw his irises churning with fear and rage. “If you cross over, you’ll never make it back. She won’t let you.”

“Smart bean sidhe boy…” Invidia purred. “He still wants to protect you. If not for her, he would be yours. Cross over now, and I give you my word you will return, the moment you sign. You will live out your full lifeline here, with everything she has, but you truly deserve.”

My thoughts raced so fast the room was starting to spin. Invidia might be able to give things to Sabine, but she couldn’t take them from me. Could she?

I saw the decision in Sabine’s eyes a moment before she disappeared. She loved Nash too much—and evidently envied me too much—to resist the offer. “No!” I lunged for Emma, desperate to pull her away from Sabine before the mara crossed over. But I was too late. My fingers barely brushed the fine hairs on Emma’s arm, then they were both gone.

“No!” Nash took me by both arms and made me look at him, forcing me to see through my own encroaching shock.

Emma was in the Netherworld. And I had let it happen. Humans couldn’t survive in the Netherworld, and even if Em proved to be the exception, she’d never be the same. How could she be, if she saw even a fraction of the grotesque, horrifying creatures who lived there, every last one of them waiting to devour her in one way or another?

“Kaylee, we have to get them back. You have to cross us over. Now!”

And that’s when I understood the depth of Invidia’s plan. She couldn’t take what I had from me and give it to Sabine. Surely that was beyond her power. But if I went to the Netherworld, she—or Avari—could enslave me for the rest of my life. Or they could just kill me and take my soul, which was what they probably had in mind for Emma. Eventually, anyway.

We’d been set up. Invidia had meant for us to hear her talking to Sabine, and she meant for us to see them cross over. And she wanted us to follow.

But even knowing that, knowing both hellions would be there waiting for us, we had to cross. I couldn’t leave Emma—or even the terminally conflicted mara —to the hellions’ mercy. Not and live with myself afterward.

“I know,” I whispered, my voice having succumbed to terror and shock. Get it together, Kaylee . “Okay, let’s think about this.”

“No, let’s go get them back. I can’t cross over without you, Kaylee. Come on…”

“Wait a second.” I pulled Nash to the opposite side of the room, careful not to get too close to the walls in case the Crimson Creeper invasion had spread to the kitchen. “We’d be stupid to cross over in the same spot they last saw us. They’ll be right there waiting to grab us.”