Rachel Vincent - My Soul to Keep

“No, I just came to see Nash.”

“Oh!” She smiled and closed the door, cutting off the frigid draft. “Then you must have served out your sentence.”

“As of yesterday.”

Nash had been grounded, too, but he only got two weeks, to my four. I think he would have gotten more if he’d still been underage, but it’s hard to ground an eighteen-year-old. And punishing Tod wasn’t even an option, considering he was fully grown and technically dead, and had unlimited access to the Netherworld. She couldn’t even keep him in one room—not to mention corporeal—long enough to yell at him.

“He’s still asleep. What did you guys do last night, anyway?”

I dropped my duffel on the faded couch, going for nonchalance, though I hated withholding information from her even worse than from my father. “Party at Scott’s house. Doug Fuller rammed my parked car with an ’08 Mustang.”

“Oh, no!” Harmony stopped in the kitchen doorway, holding the swinging door open with one palm. “You’re insured, right?”

“Liability only.” That’s all I could afford, working twelve hours a week at the Cinemark. “But Doug’s parents are loaded, and there’s no way they can say I’m at fault. I wasn’t even in the car.”

“Well, that’s good at least, right?” I nodded, and she waved one hand toward the short hallway branching off from the opposite side of the living room. “Go wake up van Winkle and see if you can get him to eat something. I’m making apple-cinnamon muffins.”

Harmony was always baking something, and always from scratch. She was really more like a grandmother than a mom, in that respect, though she looked more like Nash’s older sister. She was eighty-two years old, with the face and body of a thirty-year-old.

So far, slow postpuberty aging was the only real advantage I’d discovered to being a bean sidhe. My father was one hundred thirty-two and didn’t look a day over forty.

Nash didn’t answer when I knocked, so I slipped into his room, then closed the door and leaned against it, watching him sleep. He looked so vulnerable in his boxers, one side of his face buried in the pillow, one leg tangled near the bottom of his sheet.

I knelt by the bed and brushed thick brown hair from his forehead. The room was warm, but his skin was cool, so I started to cover him up, but before I could, his face twisted into a grimace, his eyes still squeezed shut.

He was breathing too fast. Almost panting. His teeth ground together, then he made a helpless mewling sound. His arms tensed. He clenched handfuls of the fitted sheet.

I watched Nash’s nightmare from the outside, trying to decide if I should wake him up or let the dream play out. But then his eyes flew open and he gasped, his gaze still unfocused. He scuttled over the mattress, bare chest heaving, and stood against the far wall, staring across the bed at me. His irises churned in terror for several seconds before recognition settled into place and by then my own heart was racing in response to his fear.

“Kaylee?” He whispered my name, like he wasn’t sure he could trust his own eyes.

“Yeah, it’s me.” I stood as his breathing slowed and he started to calm down. “Nightmare?”

He rubbed both hands over his face, and when he met my gaze again he was calm, back in control of his expression. And of his eyes. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What was it about?”

“I don’t remember.” He frowned and sank onto the mattress. “I just know it was bad. But the waking up part is good so far…”

Nash pulled me onto his lap. “So, what’s with the personal wake-up?” He swept my hair over one shoulder and suddenly I was acutely aware that he was half-naked and now very close. “Phone calls just aren’t as satisfying anymore?” he whispered, trailing feather-soft kisses down my neck.

He leaned us both back, and before I even realized what had happened, I was lying on his bed, his weight pressing me into the mattress. His lips trailed down my neck again and his hand roamed over my shirt, and all I could think was that I didn’t want to stop him. He’d waited long enough. I wanted to just let it happen…

My next exhale was ragged, and I couldn’t control my racing pulse.

“I, uh…” What was I saying? What did he ask? Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter….

His hand slid beneath my shirt, but his fingers were freezing on my skin, and the shock woke me up. Irritated, I pulled Nash away and sat up to frown at him. “Are you Influencing me?”

He shrugged, a heated grin turned up one side of his mouth. “Just helping you relax.”

“Don’t Influence me, Nash!” I stood, struggling to sustain my anger with his voice still slithering through my mind.

“Don’t ever do that to me when I’m not singing for someone’s soul.” Sometimes his voice helped me quiet my bean sidhe wail, but that’s not what this was. Not even close. “I hate losing control. It’s like falling off a cliff in slow motion.” Or being sedated. “And that’s not what I came in here for,” I insisted, waving one hand at the bed.

Nash scowled, and that tremendous, irresistible false calm deserted me, leaving only the chill of its sudden absence and his obvious irritation. “How am I supposed to know that? I wake up and you’re in my bedroom with the door closed. What was I supposed to think? That you want to play Scrabble?”

“I…” I frowned, unsure how to finish that thought. Had I sent him some kind of signal? Was I wearing my “I’m done with my virginity, please get rid of it for me” T-shirt? “Your mom’s in the other room!”

“Whatever.” He sighed and pulled me closer by one hand.

“Forgive me?”

“Only if you promise to play nice.”

“I swear. So, what’s up?” He leaned back on a pillow propped against his headboard, hands linked behind his skull, putting himself on display in case I changed my mind.

“You said you’d give me a ride.”

His eyes swirled with mischief, and my cheeks blazed when I realized what I’d said. “Um…you’re the one who said no.”

“A ride to work. ” I’d just discovered the cause of spontaneous combustion. Surely I’d burst into flames any moment.

“I guess I could do that, too.”

“I’m serious!” But not too serious to let my gaze wander. After all, I was being invited to look… “I need a lift to work, and I was hoping we could make a stop first.”

“Where?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Doug Fuller’s.”

“Kaylee…” he began, and I could already hear the protest forming. He sat up and I let one leg hang off the bed. “Whatever Fuller’s into is none of our business.”

“He’s taking Demon’s Breath, ” I whispered with a nervous glance at the closed door, hoping his mother was still in the kitchen. “How is that none of our business?”

“It has nothing to do with us.” He stood and snatched a shirt from the back of his desk chair.

“Don’t you want to know where he got it? He could have killed someone last night. And if he takes any more of it, he’ll probably kill himself.”

Nash sank into his desk chair. “You’re overreacting, Kaylee.”

“No, you’re under reacting.” I scooted to the edge of his bed. “What happened to looking out for your friends?”

“What am I supposed to do?” He shrugged, frustration clear in the tense line of his shoulders. “Go up to Fuller and say, ‘Hey, man, I’m not sure where you’re getting secondhand air from a demon you don’t even know exists, but you need to lay off it before you kill yourself’? That’s not gonna sound weird.” He kicked a shoe across the room to punctuate his sarcasm.