Rachel Vincent - My Soul To Take

“No!” I croaked, but no sound came out.

Yet no sooner had my scream faded from the air than true sound came roaring back to me, as if my ears had popped from a change in pressure. And the first thing to greet them was the most beautiful, ethereal music I’d ever heard in my life.

Nash’s mom was singing for Sophie.

All four of the men were tugging on my cousin’s soul now, with Harmony’s song binding it. But Marg was pulling on it too. Sophie’s soul began to rise again, and this time it edged toward the reaper, her arms spread to receive it.

“Marg, please!” Aunt Val shouted. “Take me. My soul may not be young, but it’s strong, and you can’t have Sophie!”

“You can’t save her….” Marg sang, and, glancing around, I saw that she was right. With four souls in reserve, she was too strong for even four male bean sidhes . Ironic, considering how small and frail she looked….

Wait. She was frail. My dad had said reapers had to take on physical form to interact with their surroundings. Which meant Marg had the same physical weaknesses as the reaper who’d tried to take me. The reaper my father had punched…

My head spinning, throat throbbing, I ran into the kitchen. I glanced at the knife rack, then shook my head. I didn’t know if I could stop her with one blow.

But I could whack the crap out of her.

I pulled open the cabinet beneath the oven and dug around for the old cast-iron skillet Uncle Brendon used for corn bread, then lugged the pan out and raced through the dining room. I passed Nash, Harmony, and Tod, and had already pulled the skillet back for a blow when I came even with my father.

Marg must have heard me coming, or seen some sign of it in my aunt’s face, because she turned at the last minute. The pan hit her in the shoulder, rather than the head, so instead of knocking her unconscious, I simply knocked her down.

But she went down hard. Her hip hit the floor with a thud, shaking the end table two feet away.

I couldn’t suppress a grin of triumph, even as a vicious ache rebounded up my arm from the blow I’d landed.

For a moment, the reaper lay stunned, glossy black waves spread around her head, arms splayed at her sides. On the edge of my vision, I saw Sophie’s soul sink smoothly toward her body. Then Aunt Val let loose a shriek of rage and launched herself across the floor. I’d never seen her look less graceful or poised—and I’d never admired her more.

She landed on Marg’s slim hips, straddling her, hands grasping the reaper’s shoulders. Her eyes were wild, her hair nearly standing on end. She looked crazy, and I had little doubt that if she wasn’t there yet, she would be soon.

“You will not take my daughter!” she shouted, inches from the reaper’s face. “So you either take me now, or you’re going back one soul short of the bargain!”

Marg’s lips curled back in fury as I inched forward, the skillet still gripped in both hands. She glanced up at Sophie’s soul, and her dark eyes blazed in fury to find that it was gone and that Sophie was now breathing, though still unconscious.

Marg stared up at my aunt then, terror fleeting across her features. Whoever this Belphegore was, Marg clearly didn’t want to disappoint her. The reaper considered for less than a full second, then she nodded. “Your soul won’t fulfill the deal you made, but it will pay for your arrogance and vanity.” And just like that, Aunt Val slumped forward onto the reaper, her eyes already empty and glazing over.

But Aunt Val’s body hit the carpet, because Marg was gone.

I blinked, staring at my aunt in shock, and carefully lowered myself to the floor, to keep from falling flat out.

“Kaylee, are you okay?” Nash’s fingers curled around my left hand, reminding me that I still clutched the cast-iron skillet in my right. Startled by what I’d done with it, now that it was all over, I dropped the skillet at arm’s length, and it hit the carpet with a muffled thud.

“I’m fine,” I croaked. “Considering.”

Uncle Brendon stomped past me to kneel at Sophie’s side. He took her pulse and exhaled in relief, then felt around her head, near where she’d banged it on the end table. Then he picked her up in both arms and laid her on the couch, heedless of the blood her hair smeared across the white silk.

Aunt Val would have had a fit over the mess. But Aunt Val was dead.

With Sophie’s safety assured, her father dropped to the floor beside his wife and repeated the same steps. But this time, there was no sigh of relief. Instead, my uncle scooted backward on the seat of his jeans until his back hit the side of the couch, his hair brushing Sophie’s arm. Then he propped his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. His whole body shook with silent tears.

“Brendon?” my father said, laying one warm hand on my back.

“How could she do this?” his brother demanded, looking up at us with red-rimmed eyes. “What was she thinking?”

“I don’t know.” My dad let go of me to kneel at his brother’s side.

“It’s my fault. Living with us is too hard for humans. I should have known better.” Uncle Brendon sobbed, swiping one sleeve across his face. “She didn’t want to grow old without me.”

“This is not your fault,” my dad insisted, clasping his brother’s shoulder. “It’s not that she didn’t want to get old without you, Bren. She didn’t want to get old at all.”

My aunt Valerie had made a deal with a hellion, and cost four innocent girls their lives. She’d lied to us all, and had nearly gotten her own daughter killed. And she had blasted a hole the size of a nuclear crater through our family’s core.

But when the time came, she’d given her own life in exchange for her daughter’s without a second thought, just like my mother had. Did that make her sins forgivable?

I wanted to say yes—that a mother’s selfless sacrifice was enough of a good deed to erase her past sins. But the truth wasn’t so pretty.

My aunt’s death wouldn’t bring back Heidi, or Alyson, or Meredith, or Julie. It wouldn’t repair whatever psychological damage her loss caused Sophie. It wouldn’t give Uncle Brendon back his wife.

The truth was that Aunt Val’s sacrifice was too little, too late, and she’d left those she loved most to deal with the aftermath.

“Here, Kaylee. This will help your throat.” Harmony Hudson set a small cup of honey-scented tea on the table in front of me, and I leaned over it, breathing in the fragrant steam. She started to head back into the kitchen, where the scent of homemade brownies—her favorite form of therapy—had just begun to waft from the oven, but I laid one hand on her arm.

“I would have lost Sophie if you weren’t here.” My voice was still hoarse, and my throat felt like I’d swallowed a pinecone. And the shock was finally starting to pass, leaving my heart heavy and my head full of the terrible details.

Harmony smiled sadly and sank into the chair next to mine. “The way I hear it, you’ve done more than your fair share of singing today.”

I nodded and sipped carefully from the cup, grateful for the soothing warmth that trickled down my throat. “But it’s over now, right? Belphegore can’t leave the Netherworld, and Marg won’t come back, right?”

“Not if she has any sense. The reapers know who she is now, and they’ll all be looking for her.” Harmony glanced to her left, and my gaze followed hers to the living room, where my aunt had died, my cousin had been restored, and I’d whacked a psychotic grim reaper with a cast-iron skillet.

Weirdest. Tuesday. Ever.

The paramedics had been gone for less than half an hour, and the thick white carpet still bore tracks from the wheels of the stretcher. They’d rolled Aunt Val out draped in a white sheet, and Uncle Brendon and Sophie followed the ambulance to the hospital, where she would get stitches in the back of her head, and her mother would be officially pronounced dead.