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Praise for the novels of

New York Times bestselling author

RACHEL VINCENT

“Twilight fans will love it.” —Kirkus Reviewson My Soul to Take

“A high-octane plot with characters you can really care

about. Vincent is a welcome addition to this genre!”

Kelley Armstrong on Stray

“I liked the character and loved the action. I look

forward to reading the next book in the series.”

Charlaine Harris on Stray

“Fans of those vampires will enjoy this new

crop of otherworldly beings.”

—Booklist

“My Soul to Take grabs you from the very beginning.” —Sci-Fi Guy

“Wonderfully written characters … A fast-paced,

engrossing read that you won’t want to put down.

A story that I wouldn’t mind sharing with my

pre-teen … A book like this is one of the reasons that

I add authors to my auto-buy list.

This is definitely a keeper.”

—TeensReadToo.com

Also available from Rachel Vincent

Published by

Soul Screamers MY SOUL TO TAKE MY SOUL TO SAVE MY SOUL TO KEEP MY SOUL TO STEAL IF I DIE

Coming soon …

BEFORE I WAKE

If I Die

Rachel Vincent

www.miraink.co.uk

This one is for everyone who wrote to ask

what happens next.

Here you go.

Now ask me again.

Acknowledgments

Thanks, as always, to my critique partner Rinda Elliot, who listens (and believes me) every time I swear that this one is the BEST ONE YET!!!

Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for unwavering enthusiasm for the Soul Screamers series, and for never even flinching at what I’ve put Kaylee and her friends through.

Thanks to Natashya Wilson, for input and encouragement.

Thanks to everyone behind the scenes at Harlequin Teen. You’ve made this possible. Kaylee and I thank you.

And, of course, thanks to #1, who puts up with me and with the multitude of fictional characters who take up most of my time and attention. Someday, more of both will be yours. I swear.

1

I used to think death was the worst thing that could happen to a person. I also used to think it was the last thing that could happen. But if I’ve learned anything from surrounding myself with reapers, and living nightmares, and my fellow bean sidhes, it’s this: I was wrong on both counts….

“What are you doing here before the warning bell?” I asked, sliding into my seat in first period algebra II with four minutes to spare. “Isn’t that one of the signs of an impending apocalypse?”

“If so, this is how I want to go out.” Emma Marshall sighed, digging the textbook from the bag on her lap. “Enjoying the view.”

I followed my best friend’s gaze to the front of the class, where Mr. Beck—hired in the wake of Mr. Wesner’s untimely demise—was writing math problems on the white board with green ink. His numbers were blockish and completely vertical; he had the best handwriting of any teacher at Eastlake. But Emma’s focus was several feet below his numbers, where the jeans encouraged by the new “Spirit Fridays” policy proved that Mr. Beck was much more dedicated to physical fitness than the average high school faculty member.

“And I suppose your sudden interest in math is purely academic, right?”

Her grin widened as she set the book on her desk, and it fell open to the place marked with a fat, purple-print emery board. “I don’t know if ‘pure’ is totally accurate, but I haven’t figured out how to entirely avoid academia in the school setting. I think the most we can hope for is something pretty to look at, to distract us from the inherent pain of the educational process.”

I laughed. “Spoken like a true underachiever.”

Emma could have been a straight-A student, but she was satisfied coasting by on effortless Bs, except in French and math, the only subjects that didn’t seem to come naturally for her. And the hot new math teacher had done nothing to improve her grades. Thanks to the aesthetic distraction, she was less inclined than ever to pay attention to what was written on the board and in the book.

Not that I could blame her. Mr. Beck was undeniably yummy, from his dark, tousled hair to his bright green eyes and the scuffed sneakers he always wore, even with slacks.

“He’s only twenty-two,” Em said, when she caught me looking. “Less than a year out of college. I bet this is his first teaching job.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, as Mr. Beck set his marker down and dug through his desk drawer for something.

“Heard it from Danica Sussman. He’s been tutoring her after school, to keep her eligible for softball.”

“Where is Danica?” I asked, on the tail end of the late bell. She’d been out sick for a couple of days, but she’d never missed on a game day before—Danica was supposed to pitch that afternoon.

“Still sick, I guess,” Em whispered, as Mr. Beck started taking roll. She unfolded a half-blank sheet of notebook paper. “Did you do the homework?”

I rolled my eyes and pulled out my own work. “What happened to your new interest in math?”

“It doesn’t extend to homework.”

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” Mr. Beck called from the front of the room, and I glanced up, startled, certain we’d been caught cheating. But Beck was just standing there with his roll book in hand, waiting for my answer.

“Oh. Here,” I said, and he’d called three more names when the door opened and Danica Sussman stepped into the classroom. She was pale, except for dark patches beneath her eyes, which she hadn’t even tried to cover.

“Danica, are you okay?” Beck asked, as she crossed toward the front of the room, a blue late slip in hand.

“I’m fine.” She handed him the slip, but he balled it up in one fist and dropped it into the trash can next to his desk.

“I haven’t called your name yet, so you’re not really late,” he said, frowning, like he wasn’t convinced by her answer.

“Thanks, Mr. B.” But when she headed toward her desk, Danica had one hand pressed to her stomach, her face scrunched up in obvious pain.

Halfway through class, as Emma scrambled to finish her homework without ever taking her focus from Mr. Beck’s face, a familiar, sharp pain began to scratch at the back of my throat.

No! My heart beat so hard I practically shook in my chair. It couldn’t be happening again. Not at school. Not just six weeks after the loss of three teachers in a two-day span. My winter had felt like a series of deaths connected only by my advanced knowledge of them. I’d been hoping for a spring reprieve.

But a bean sidhe’s wail is never wrong. When someone near me is about to die, an overwhelming urge to scream—to cry out to his soul—consumes me. And the scream clawing its way up my throat at that very moment could only mean one thing.

I clenched my teeth so tight my jaws ached, denying the scream an exit. My hands gripped the sides of my desk, muscles so tense I accidentally pulled it back an inch, and Emma glanced up when she heard it squeal on the dingy linoleum tile.

She took one look at my face and frowned. Again? she mouthed, and when I could only nod, her frown deepened. Emma had seen me resist screaming for someone’s soul often enough to recognize the symptoms. At first it had freaked her out, and a large part of me wished it still did. I didn’t like how accustomed she was becoming to the cocoon of death that seemed to surround me.

Yet there were definite advantages to having a best friend in the know. Like the fact that she didn’t panic as she watched my gaze travel over my classmates, waiting for the dark aura to materialize around someone and show me who was about to die. But I saw no aura, and the scream remained a steady, painful pressure at the back of my throat—fairly easily stoppered, since I knew what I was doing—as if the soon-to-be-deceased and I weren’t actually in the same room. That thought made me relax enough that I raised my hand to be excused.

Mr. Beck started to nod in my direction, but before he could, Danica Sussman slid right out of her chair and onto the floor. Unconscious.

The entire class gasped, and chairs squealed against the floor as people stood for a better view. I was so surprised my mouth almost fell open, which would have released my painfully shrill shriek into the school.

Mr. Beck stared at Danica, blinking in shock and confusion.

Was it her? Was Danica about to die? If so, why wasn’t my urge to scream getting any stronger?

Mr. Beck rushed down the aisle, but before he got there, Chelsea Simms dropped onto the floor and stuck her hand in front of Danica’s face, an inch from her nose. “She’s still breathing….” Chelsea sat back and glanced over our fallen classmate, obviously looking for an injury. Then she gasped again, sharper than before. “Shit, she’s bleeding!” Chelsea scrambled backward on her knees and bumped her shoulder on the nearest desk, as shocked whispers echoed across the room.

Mr. Beck knelt beside Danica, features tense with worry. “Chelsea, call the office from the phone on my desk. Just dial nine.” When Chelsea stood, I saw what everyone else had already reacted to: the pool of blood spreading beneath Danica’s thighs.

That’s when the scream hit me full force. While everyone else whispered and stared, gathering around our fallen classmate until Mr. Beck ordered them back, I sat stiff in my chair, gripping the sides of my desk again, swallowing compulsively to fight back the scream that was scalding me from the inside out.

But Danica was still breathing. I could see her chest rising between the shoulders of two basketball players standing in the aisle. Her breathing wasn’t even labored. But the strength of the scream within me said that someone was going to die any minute. If it wasn’t Danica, who was it?

“You okay?” Emma asked, leaning close to me, eyes wide, forehead furrowed. “Is it her?”

I could only shrug. The only way I know how to check was …

I let a thin thread of the scream trail from my lips, an emaciated sound so soft no one else heard it over the steady, stunned buzz of the gathered spectators. But it was enough. With that sound calling out to the soul, I would be able to see it when it left Danica’s body. Assuming she was the one about to die.

But the insubstantial form hovering over Danica Sussman was like no soul I’d ever seen. Usually, a soul’s appearance—merely its representation in the physical world—mimicked its owner’s size, at least. But this soul was tiny. No bigger than my fist, and irregular in shape. And Danica’s breathing had not slowed.

And that’s when I understood. Danica wasn’t dying. She was losing her unborn child.

“I don’t think I can eat today.” Emma stirred a paper bowl of tomato soup with a plastic spoon. “This just isn’t in good taste.”

I cracked open my soda lid without glancing at her lunch, for fear I’d be sick at the sight. “I’m pretty sure they plan the menu months in advance.” But that was little solace after what we’d seen that morning. Somehow, even after all the death I’d both witnessed and heralded, I’d never even considered the possibility of a miscarriage triggering my instinct to wail for a yet-unborn soul. The usual helplessness, frustration and horror that accompanied any death for me were magnified almost beyond my own comprehension. This was a baby. A child who would never be. And I didn’t know how to deal with that.

“It does look pretty gory, though,” Sabine insisted from across the table, ignoring her own tray as the spring breeze blew long black hair into her face. She tucked the stray strands back, exposing a mismatched set of silver hoops in her upper ear. “So is it true that Danica Sussman hemorrhaged all over the floor in first period?”

“Both true and gruesome.” Em dropped her spoon and pushed her meal back as Nash settled onto the bench seat next to me with a cardboard tray of nachos. “I hope she’s okay.”

An ambulance had come for Danica, and though she was still unconscious, I was long past wailing for her baby by the time they wheeled her away on a stretcher. And I was the only one who knew for sure that she would live—but that a tiny, hidden part of her had already died.

“I hope so, too.” Nash slid one arm around my waist and squeezed me, then dug into his chips, and I couldn’t help wondering if we would have been able to save Danica’s baby, if we’d both been there when it happened. As a male bean sidhe, Nash didn’t wail for the souls of the dying. His gifts included Influence—the ability to compel people to do things just by speaking to them—and the capacity to guide a disembodied soul. Together, we could reinstate a person’s soul and save his or her life—but only in exchange for someone else’s. A life for a life. That’s how it worked.

But I had no idea if it would work at all on an unborn child, without a fully formed body in which to reinstate the soul. Or if it would last, even if it did work. I mean, miscarriages happen for a reason, right? Because there’s something wrong with the baby, or because the mother can’t handle the stress. Or something like that. So … really, a miscarriage is a blessing, right?

Or maybe I was just desperate to find a silver lining to go with the single darkest, most horrifying cloud of a death I’d ever witnessed.

“People are saying it was a miscarriage,” Emma said softly, and I flinched when a guy in a green-and-white senior class shirt turned around on the bench behind her, his brown eyes shiny with unshed tears, face flushed with anger. Max Kramer was Danica’s boyfriend of almost a year, and his pain and anger were so raw I felt like I was violating his privacy just by witnessing them.

“Well, people are wrong,” he snapped, and Emma froze, obviously embarrassed, then turned to face him slowly.

“I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t mean …”

Max stood without letting her finish, towering over our entire table. “They’re all wrong.” He didn’t raise his voice, but made no special effort to lower it either, so half the quad heard him when he continued. “Danica couldn’t have been pregnant. We’ve never even done it. So find someone else to talk about. Or better yet, why don’t you all just shut the hell up.”

We stared after him as he stomped off toward the cafeteria doors, and one look at Emma told me she felt just as bad for him as I did.

“Poor fool,” Sabine said, one of Nash’s cheese-covered chips halfway to her mouth. “I think he really believes that.” As a mara, Sabine could read people’s fears and feed from the nightmares she wove for them while they slept. But even beyond her mara abilities, she had an uncanny ability to read people’s expressions and body language. To my constant irritation.

“Of course he believes it.” Emma would have taken any excuse to argue with the mara—Sabine had dragged her into the Netherworld six weeks earlier and almost sold her to a hellion, body and soul. But this time her anger was obviously about more than that; Em felt guilty for passing along what she’d heard in front of Max. “Just ‘cause people are saying something doesn’t make it true. My aunt had a miscarriage last year, and it looked nothing like that. There was hardly any blood. Mostly just some cramping.”

Sabine shrugged, unfazed. “I’m no doctor, but if you ask me, she was pregnant, and the baby didn’t belong to good ol’ Max. But he obviously hasn’t figured that out yet.”

“Well, no one asked you,” Emma insisted. “So mind your own business.”

The mara frowned. “It’s not like I was going to tell him!”

“Sabine …” Nash half groaned.

Normally, I like it when he’s irritated with her. Sabine was my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, and she wasn’t too happy about the “ex” part.

“She’s right,” I said, as softly as I could speak and still be heard at my own table.

“How do you …?” Emma asked, and I met her gaze reluctantly.

“Because I felt the baby die.”

The silence at our table was almost heavy enough to feel. Then Emma breathed a soft, “Ohhh,” of understanding. “That’s why you needed to scream. I didn’t even think about it, after Danica fell out of her chair. I guess I thought she’d die once she got to the hospital.”

“No, she’ll be fine, as far as I know,” I said, glad to have at least that bit of good news to report. “But she definitely lost a baby, right there in first period. And Max obviously wasn’t the father.”

“I wonder who knocked her up?” Sabine bit into another of Nash’s chips, staring off into the clouds, like she could actually puzzle that one out on her own.

Nash pulled his cardboard tray away from her. “That’s none of our business.”

“Maybe it is,” Sabine insisted. “I bet it was Mr. Beck’s.”

“You are so full of shit!” Emma snapped, even angrier at having her favorite teacher’s name dragged through the mud by her least favorite person.

Sabine rolled black eyes. “It’s just a theory. And it’s not even that far-fetched. I mean, if he’s hiding his species, there’s no telling what else he’s hiding.”

My spoon slipped from my grip and plopped into my own untouched bowl of soup. “Beck isn’t human?” I demanded, as Emma’s brown eyes widened. Even Nash looked surprised.

Sabine shrugged again. “I thought you knew.”

“Hell no, we didn’t know!” Nash stared at her over the table. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that Kaylee dreams about some very interesting things she’d never even consider when she’s awake.”

Nash pushed aside his lunch and leaned over the table, lowering his voice even further. “How do you know?”

The mara’s focus tightened on me and her eyes darkened, like a cloud had just passed over the sun. Only the day was still bright and warm, for mid-March. “I played around in her slumbering subconscious a couple of months ago, remember? And in her dreams, Miss Prim-n-Proper doesn’t have all those stifling control issues and that pesky trust deficit.”

“How do you know about Beck,” Nash clarified through clenched teeth, while I tried to redirect the heat in my cheeks into a death ray aimed right at Sabine.

She frowned, like the answer should have been obvious. “I read his fears. He knows this is a hotbed of Netherworld activity and he’s afraid of being caught fishing in the communal pond by something bigger and badder before he has what he came for.”

“And what’s that?” Emma asked, obviously stunned.

“How the hell should I know?” Sabine snatched another chip from Nash’s carton. “I’m a mara, not a psychic. Not that mind reading would help anyway. It’s not like people go around thinking, ‘I’m a monster from another world, hell-bent on wreaking havoc. Gee, I hope no one hears my thoughts …’”

“You could have just said, ‘I don’t know,’” I snapped.

Sabine raised one eyebrow in silent challenge. “I don’t know,” she said, managing to make her own ignorance sound smug. “But as usual, I know more than you do.”

I wasn’t surprised by her jab, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Beck wasn’t human. Especially considering that in the Netherworld—a hellish reflection of our own world, from which all evil springs—our school was the new hot spot for the monster A-list.

After a four-to-eight Friday-night shift at the Cineplex, where scooping popcorn and filling soda cups couldn’t drive the image of Danica bleeding on the floor from my head, I pulled into my driveway exhausted, but ready for my second wind. Nash was coming over at nine to watch a movie, and my dad had promised to stay in his room all night. But before I could relax with my boyfriend, I wanted to shower off the scents of popcorn and butter-flavored oil. Also, I should probably tell my dad that my new math teacher wasn’t human—that’s the kind of thing he usually wanted to know.

I’d just dropped my keys into the empty candy dish on the half wall between the kitchen and living room when the sudden silence made me realize my dad had been talking when I’d come in. Until I’d come in.

Hmm …

“Dad?” I kicked my shoes off and dropped them on the floor of the front closet, then headed down the hall toward his room. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, hon.”

His bedroom door was ajar, so I pushed it open to see him standing in the middle of the floor, his hands in his hip pockets. I’d expected to find him on the phone—he had to be talking to someone, right?

“What’s up?” I frowned when he hedged. “Dad …?”

And suddenly Tod appeared in the room, several feet away, staring right at me.

“Okay … This is even weirder than the suspicious silence,” I said, expecting one or the other of them to laugh and spit out one of the logical explanations my father always seemed to have ready. But there was only more silence. “Okay, now you two are really starting to scare me.”

Tod generally only acknowledged my father’s existence when an opportunity arose to drive him nuts. And my dad had no use for Tod at all, unless he needed information only a rookie Grim Reaper could gain access to. So this private powwow had to be about something important.

“Guys? I can only stand here pretending you’re not scaring me for another second or two before I completely lose it. T minus five … four …”

“It’s nothing, honey,” my dad started to say, but the scowl on Tod’s face exposed the lie before my father could even finish it.

“If you don’t tell her, I will,” the reaper threatened.

“Tod, I can handle this—”

Tod turned his back on my father and met my gaze with a frighteningly honest weight. “Kaylee, the new list came out today.” By which he meant the reaper list, detailing every death scheduled in his district in the next seven days.

Oh, shit. Someone’s going to die. I took a deep breath, but couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. Please don’t be Emma. Or Nash. Or my dad. I couldn’t lose another parent.

I tried to ask—I tried to summon that much strength—but in the end, it just wasn’t there. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing someone else. Someone I loved.

So Tod answered the question I didn’t have the courage to ask.

“It’s you, Kaylee. You’re on the list.”

2

“Where’s Styx?” I turned my back on my father and the reaper and closed my eyes, trying not to let them see how shocked I really was. Fear would kick in soon, surely, once the reality had set in. But for the moment, I was numb and oddly chilled, like I’d jumped into the lake instead of letting my body adjust to the temperature a bit at a time.

“Kaylee?” My dad’s footsteps thumped behind me as I stepped into my room, questions whirling around in my head so fast I got dizzy, just standing still. “Did you hear Tod?”

“Of course I heard him.” Though, admittedly, that was never a guarantee. Reapers could choose who they wanted to be seen and heard by, on an individual basis, and Tod had an irritating habit of appearing to just one person in the room at a time—usually me.

“I think she’s in shock,” the reaper said as I scanned the floor, the rumpled covers, and the laundry piled in my desk chair, looking for a breathing lump of fur.

“Styx?” I called, but nothing moved. Tod materialized at the foot of the bed, studying me closely for my reaction, and I jumped, startled by his sudden appearance. “I’m not in shock. Not yet, anyway.” At a glance, he looked nothing like his brother, beyond their similar athletic builds. Tod had his mother’s blue eyes and blond curls, while Nash obviously took after his father, who’d died long before I met either of the Hudson boys.

“For the moment, I am firmly entrenched in denial, which—honestly—feels like the healthiest stage of acceptance. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me wallow there for a while.” I brushed past my father into the hall, headed toward the kitchen. “Styx!”

“I let her into the backyard,” my dad said at last, following me into the kitchen. “She doesn’t like Tod.”

“That’s because Tod never brings anything but death and bad advice,” I snapped, beyond caring that I was being unfair—it wasn’t the reaper’s fault that my number was up.

“That’s not true.” Tod tried to grin, and I had to respect his effort to lighten the mood. “Sometimes I bring pizza.”

Because the reaper gig—he extinguished life and reaped souls at the local hospital from midnight to noon—didn’t pay in human currency, Tod had begun delivering pizza for spending money during his free time. At my suggestion.

At first, I’d been amused by the fact that you could get both death and a large pepperoni delivered by the same person. But after Danica Sussman’s first period miscarriage and the news of my own impending demise, nothing seemed very funny at the moment.

“Styx is probably starving,” I mumbled, pulling open the fridge. My father’s warm hand landed firmly over mine on the handle and he pushed the door closed.

“Kaylee, please sit down. We need to talk about this.”

“I know.” But I was terrified that if I stopped moving for more than a second, that cloud of denial would clear and leave me staring at the ugly truth. And I’d already faced more than my share of ugly truths in the almost-seventeen years of my life.

Finally I nodded reluctantly. For all I knew, I didn’t have the luxury of avoiding the truth for very long.

I opened the fridge again and pulled out a can of Coke, then followed my dad into the living room, where Tod was already seated in my father’s recliner. For once, Dad didn’t yell at him to move. Instead, he sat on the couch with me, and I could see that he wanted to hug me, but I couldn’t let him, because that gesture of grief would make it real, and no matter how little time I had left, I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

So I would focus on the facts, rather than the truth. Because no matter what it sounds like, there’s actually a very big difference between the two.

“Are you sure?” I asked, holding the cold can with both hands, relishing the discomfort because it meant that I was still alive.

Tod nodded miserably. “Normally I don’t see the names more than a day or two in advance, but because you’re already on borrowed time, your name came on the special list.”

Special …

I was on borrowed time because I’d already died once. I was only three at the time, and thirteen years later, I only knew what I’d been told long after the fact: I was scheduled to die that night, on the side of an icy road in an accident. However, my parents couldn’t stand the thought of losing their only child, so my father tried to exchange his death date for mine. But the reaper was a vicious bastard, and he took my mother’s life instead.

I’d been living my mother’s life—literally—since I was three years old. And now her lifeline was coming to its end. Which meant that I would die. Again.

“Aren’t you just a rookie?” My father frowned skeptically.

“How do you even have access to this special list?” Normally, my dad wouldn’t hesitate to question the reaper, based solely on the fact that they didn’t get along. But his disbelief this time had a deeper root. One I understood.

If Tod was wrong, or even lying for some reason, then maybe I wasn’t going to die. Maybe my borrowed lifeline wasn’t really sliding through my fingers faster than I could cling to it.

“That’s the weird thing,” Tod said, unbothered by my dad’s skepticism. “Normally, I wouldn’t have access to it. If I’d known it was coming up, I could have looked up the specifics on the sly.” Tod had his boss’s passwords because he’d set them up in the first place—he was one of only two reapers in the district young enough to have grown up with computers. “But this time I didn’t have to. When I went in this afternoon to pick up my own list, Levi sent me into his office for something. And the special list was sitting right there on his desk, in plain sight.”

“And naturally, you read it,” my father added.

“I’m a reaper, not a saint. Anyway, I think he wanted me to see it. Why else would he have left it out, then sent me in alone with it lying right there?”

“Why would he want you to see it?” I asked, curious in spite of the huge dark cloud hanging over my truncated future.

Tod shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he likes me. Maybe he likes you.” I’d only met Levi, Tod’s boss, once, but he had seemed impressed with my ingenuity. Impressed enough to give me a heads-up about my own death? Maybe, but …

“Why?” I asked, focused on Tod’s eyes in search of an answer. If I’d been looking at Nash, I’d have known what he was feeling just by watching the colors twist in his irises. But, like my dad, Tod was too good at hiding what he was feeling.

He rarely ever let his emotions show through the windows to his soul.

“Why would he like you?” Tod’s eyes held steady. “Well, you do have this sort of magnetic effect on the darker elements of life. And the afterlife.” As evidenced by Avari the hellion’s obsession with claiming my soul. “And Levi’s definitely on the murky side of things.”

I had no idea how old Levi was—though my best guess was in the mid-triple digits—but he looked like an eight-year-old, freckled, redheaded little boy. That, combined with the fact that all reapers were technically dead, made him hands down the creepiest reaper I’d ever met. And, unfortunately, in the last six months, I’d had occasion to meet several.

But that wasn’t what I’d meant.

“No, why would he want me to know? Why would you want me to know? Nash said we’re not supposed to tell people when they’re going to die, because that just makes their last moments miserable. And I gotta say, he was right.” I didn’t know my exact time of death yet, but just knowing it was coming was enough to make my stomach revolt against the entire concept of food.

“In general, that’s true …” my father began, but Tod cut him off, sporting a characteristic dark grin.

“But you seem to be the exception to so many rules, why should this one be any different?”

“Does that mean you want me to suffer through anticipation?” I asked, hoping I’d misinterpreted that part.

“No.” My dad shook his head. “It means that forewarned is forearmed. We couldn’t have fought this if we didn’t know it was coming.”

“We’re going to fight this?” That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I mean, someone had already fought that battle for me once, and won. I’d been saved, at the expense of my mother’s life. As badly as I wanted to live, it hardly seemed fair for me to cheat death again. No one else I knew had even had one second chance, much less two.

Then there was the other problem. The big one: extending my lifeline—again—would mean killing someone else instead. Again. And I couldn’t live with that.

“Of course we’re going to fight it!” my dad insisted. “There are ways around death, at least temporarily. We know that better than anyone. We’ve done it, once.”

“That’s the problem,” Tod said softly, his grin notably absent. “One of them, anyway.”

My father scowled at the reaper. “What does that mean?”

“The rules are very clear about second extensions.” He hesitated, and I heard what he was going to say next before he even formed the words. “There are none.”

For a long moment, there was only silence, and the deep, cold terror that settled into my chest was like hands of ice massaging my heart. In spite of my determination not to let anyone else pay for my continued existence, the death of that possibility echoed into eternity, like no fear I’d ever felt.

“There have to be exceptions,” my father insisted, as usual, the first to recover his voice after severe systemic shock. “There are always exceptions.”

Tod shook his head slowly, and a single unruly blond curl fell over his forehead. “Not for this. I already asked around, and … well, it just doesn’t happen. It can’t.”

“But you’re a reaper!” My dad stood, his voice thundering throughout the room. I felt like I should do something. Make him stop yelling, or at least try to calm him down. “What good are you if you can’t even help out a friend?”

“Dad …” I protested, uncomfortably aware that he’d never referred to Tod as a friend before. But I guess that’s what they say about desperate times …

“Kaylee, this is your life we’re talking about,” my father said, and a chill raced through me when I realized his hands were shaking. “We’re not going to let this happen. We’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

And suddenly I understood what he was saying. He’d tried to give me his lifeline before, and he’d do it again without a second thought.

“No, Dad …” I whispered, fear and shock rendering my voice a pathetic whisper.

My father ignored me and turned to look at Tod. “But I can’t do it without help.” The blues in my dad’s eyes churned with desperation, the strongest emotion I’d ever seen displayed there, and I was only seeing it now because he couldn’t hide it. He’d lost control, and that scared me more than anything. “Please, Tod.” My dad sank onto the opposite end of the couch, elbows on his knees, scrubbing his face with both hands. “I’m begging you. I’ll do whatever you want. Please make an exception for my daughter.”

Tod looked almost as stunned as I felt. I’d never heard my father beg for anything, not even for his own life, when Avari dragged him into the Netherworld, using him to get to me.

“Mr. Cavanaugh, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” Tod looked so earnest and frustrated that I wanted to comfort him. Especially when he turned those sad blue eyes on me, silently begging me to believe him. “Kaylee, I’d do it if I could. You know that. But it’s not up to me. I’m not your reaper.”

For one surreal moment, I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or upset about that.

“They don’t let rookies reap under special circumstances. They’ll call in an expert. I don’t even know what zone you’re actually supposed to be in when … when it happens,” he finished miserably.

I sucked in a deep breath, trying to process everything I’d just heard. Trying to push past the tangle of frighteningly useless words and grasp something I could actually use. “Who?” I said at last. “Who will they bring in? Libby?”

Libitina was the dark reaper—one of the oldest in existence—who’d come to execute Addison’s death and dispose of the Demon’s Breath that had kept her alive in place of the soul she’d sold. Libby had done what she could to help us return Addy’s soul, but in the end, she’d also done her job. She’d taken Addison’s life and damned her disembodied soul to eternal torture.

I wouldn’t find leeway with Libitina.

“I don’t know,” Tod said. “If the reaper’s been chosen, I haven’t heard about it.”

But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about Tod killing me, which seemed like an odd thing to be grateful for.

“How?” I set the sweating soda can on the end table and clasped my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking. “Do you know how it’ll happen?” I asked, not sure that I really wanted to know. Knowing too much could make me paranoid—would I walk around staring up to avoid anvils falling from the sky?

But Tod shook his head. “We never know that, because the method isn’t predetermined. Sometimes there’s an obvious choice. Like, if it’s an old man with a weak heart, the reaper will just let his heart stop beating. But with young people, it’s usually an accident, or an overdose, if there’s no preexisting illness. We work with what we have. It’s easier for the family and the coroner if they have something to blame it on.”

“Wow. You make death sound so courteous.”

Tod exhaled slowly. “We both know it’s not.”

Yeah. I knew.

“So …” I stared at the floor between my feet, and I couldn’t stop my leg from jumping as I worked my way up to the question I’d been avoiding.

“Do you know when? Does the list at least tell you how long I have?”

I was avoiding my father’s gaze—my own fear was hard enough to swallow at the moment—but I could see in my peripheral vision that he was watching Tod closely, waiting for the answer just as nervously as I was.

Tod cleared his throat, avoiding the question.

“Tod …?” My father’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Next Thursday,” the reaper said finally, looking right into my eyes. His irises roiled with a sudden maelstrom of pain and distress, and I was pretty sure he was watching the same storm rage in mine. “You’re going to die in six days.”

3

I stood so fast the room spun around me, and it felt like my head was going to explode.

Is this how I go? A stroke in my own living room, when the stress of knowing I’m going to die becomes too much? Could knowing I was going to die actually bring about my death? And if so, did that make it Levi’s fault? Or Tod’s? Or my dad’s, for letting him tell me?

But the truth was that it was no one’s fault. I’d overstayed my welcome, and death had finally caught up to me. There was no more natural, more necessary part of life than this end to the whole thing. Yet I was overwhelmed by the need to stomp my feet and pound my fists and shout it’s not fair! at the top of my fearsome bean sidhe lungs.

“Kaylee …?” Tod repeated, when I didn’t answer my dad.

Six days …

I headed down the hall and into my room, where I pulled my shirt over my head without remembering to close the door. They both followed, and when my dad realized I was changing, he stepped out of the doorway and shoved a very corporeal Tod farther down the hall.

“Kaylee, say something,” he called, but I couldn’t. I barely even registered his voice. All I could hear was the raucous clamor of panic in my own head, insisting I do something—anything—to take my rapidly fracturing mind off the fact that I had less than a week to live.

No senior year.

I unbuttoned my uniform pants and let them pool around my ankles, then stepped into the pair of jeans draped over my bed.

No graduation.

I pulled open the second drawer of my dresser and pawed through the contents for my favorite blue ribbed T-shirt.

No college.

I pulled the shirt on and tugged my hair from the collar, then stepped into a pair of sneakers.

No career. No family. No anything, beyond whatever catastrophe next Thursday had waiting for me.

“Kaylee, where are you going?” my father demanded as I stomped past him and Tod on my way to the front door.

“Out.” I turned to face them as I scooped my keys from the candy dish, and the panic clear in my father’s expression could have been a reflection of my own. “I’m sorry. I have to … I can’t think about this right now, or I’m going to lose my mind. And I don’t want to spend my last week on earth in a straitjacket. I’ll be back … later. Could you feed Styx for me, please?”

Without waiting for an answer, I opened the front door and jogged out to my car. A moment later, I glanced up as I backed down the driveway to find them both standing on the front porch, staring after me.

As it turns out, you can’t outrun death. No matter how fast you drive, you can’t even outrun thoughts of death, when you know it’s coming for you. Is this how Addy felt? Like she couldn’t breathe without choking on the knowledge that she’d soon be breathing her last?

I drove for nearly forty minutes, paying little attention to the direction, blasting music on the radio in an attempt to drown out my own thoughts. But none of it worked, and by the time I’d made my way back to familiar surroundings, I’d realized that the only way to get my mind off my own problems was to focus on someone else’s.

When I glanced up, I realized the hospital was several blocks ahead, as if my subconscious had known where I was going the whole time.

I found front-row parking in the visitors’ lot, which was nearly empty because visiting hours were over. The lady at the front desk gave me Danica Sussman’s room number, but warned me that I wouldn’t be able to see her this late. I thanked her and headed back toward the parking lot—then looped around to another entrance, where I took an elevator up to the third floor.

There was only one person at the third floor nurse’s station, and it was easy to sneak past when she got up for coffee. Room 324 was around the corner and four doors down. I hesitated, loitering outside Danica’s door for a couple of minutes, trying to dial up my courage and think of an opening line that wouldn’t make me sound like a nosy gossip in search of tomorrow’s high school headline. But when shoes squeaked from around the corner, I hurriedly pulled the door open and stepped inside.

After all, what was the worst that could happen? I’d babble like an idiot and get tossed out of her room? The embarrassment could only last six days, max, and after that, nothing would matter anyway.

The hospital room smelled sterile and felt cold, and it was lit only by a horizontal strip of light over the head of the bed.

Danica was asleep on her right side, facing me. She looked pale and small beneath the thin covers. Too young to have been a mother. Not that that mattered now.

I watched her sleep for several minutes, thinking about how very different our lives must be. She’d obviously done at least one thing I hadn’t, and that had led to pregnancy—another experience I would never have—and to a loss I could never personally understand.

But Danica would live. If she wanted another baby, she’d have time for that, whenever she was ready.

I would not. I wouldn’t have time for anything. No more firsts, and only one more last. My time was up.

What the hell am I doing here? I couldn’t help Danica. It was none of my business who her baby’s father was, even if he was a teacher, on the odd chance that Sabine was right. Even if that teacher wasn’t human. I was just using Danica and her problems to distract myself from my own, and that wasn’t fair for either of us.

Half ashamed of myself and half irrationally irritated, I had one hand on the door handle when the bed creaked behind me.

“You’re not a nurse.”

I turned slowly, suddenly nervous. I had no idea what to say to her. How to explain my presence. We weren’t friends. I didn’t have any similar personal experience or wisdom to share with her. I was just snooping. And now I’d been caught.

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” Danica squinted into the shadows beyond her bed, and I nodded.

“Yeah. Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was … visiting a friend. Then I remembered you were here, and thought you might like some company.”

She didn’t smile and wave me over. But she didn’t yell for security, either. “Isn’t it kinda late for visitors?”

I shrugged and came forward slowly, my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, but I can hang till I get caught, if you want.”

Danica stared at the hands she was twisting together, and I knew she was going to tell me to get lost. But then she looked up, and there were tears standing in her eyes, and I realized that maybe her problems were as rough as mine. Maybe even rougher—after all, mine would soon be over. “That’d be cool. If you want.”

I sat in the armchair by the window, and we avoided looking at each other, neither of us sure what to say. But finally Danica sighed and pressed the button to raise the back of her bed, then she leaned against the pillow and rolled her head to face me. “So, I guess everyone’s talking about what happened?”

“Well, it’s probably safe to say that the girls’ quarter-final basketball loss is no longer big news.”

Danica nodded slowly. “What are they saying?”

“The most extreme theory I’ve heard so far is that you’re dying of colon cancer.” Another shrug. “But most people think you had a miscarriage.” Which I knew for sure.

Danica rubbed tears from her eyes with the heels of both hands. “Everything’s so messed up….”

“Messed up seems to be my natural state of being. But if it makes you feel any better, Max has your back. He’s telling everyone you couldn’t be pregnant, ‘cause you guys never …” I let my words trail off toward the obvious conclusion, and Danica’s eyes overflowed again.

I felt bad about manipulating her. I really did. But I couldn’t tell her I knew the rumors were true, because she’d ask how I knew. So I needed her to tell me herself.

“Yeah. Max doesn’t have my back anymore,” she sniffled.

“He came to see me after school, and I had to tell him the truth.” Another sniffle, and this time she reached for a tissue from the rolling tray table.

“The truth?” I held my breath. She wouldn’t tell me. I mean, I wouldn’t tell me, if I were Danica. She didn’t owe me any answers.

“I was pregnant. But it wasn’t his.”

I actually glanced around the room in surprise, looking for evidence of medical malpractice in the form of unregulated, judgment-impairing pain medication. But then I saw her watching me, looking for something in my expression, and I realized that she wasn’t overmedicated. She just needed a friend.

“Wow.” And suddenly I felt guilty for pumping her for information just to distract myself from my own encroaching expiration date, when all she wanted was a friendly ear. “So … how’d he take it?”

I can do this. It didn’t have to be either-or, right? I could listen like a friend and still dig for answers like … um … an ill-fated amateur detective trying to solve one last case before she kicks the proverbial bucket. Right?

Danica wadded her tissue in one hand, then dropped it onto her lap. “At first he just looked at me, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. Then he got this awful heartbroken look, like I’d told him I murdered his puppy. Then he just turned around and walked right out the door without a word.” She sighed and tossed the tissue toward the can, where it landed a foot and a half shy. “The only visitor I’ve had, until you, and he leaves hating me. But I guess I deserve that.”

Her only visitor? “Your parents didn’t come?”

“My mom’s … sick. And my dad won’t talk to me. The doctor told him what happened, and he left without even coming in to say hi. Because, you know, the shame is contagious.”

For a moment, biting sarcasm eclipsed the obvious pain in her voice, and I found myself hating a father who wasn’t mine. A man I’d never met. “And now I’ve lost Max, too. And I don’t even know how this happened!”

“You don’t …?” I started, brows raised, but Danica rolled her tear-reddened eyes.

“I mean, I know how it happened. I just can’t figure out why. I remember … getting pregnant. But I can’t remember what I was thinking. I don’t do things like that. I love Max, and I can’t remember why I was willing to throw him away for one stupid night….”

“It was just one night?” I said, stunned by the thought that a single mistake could throw her whole life into chaos.

Danica nodded miserably. “Less than that, really. It was just a couple of hours about a month ago. Afterward I tried to put it behind me and move on, but every time I see him, I want him all over again, even though I hate myself for what I did to Max. How horrible does that make me?” She covered her face with both hands. “Why can’t I get him out of my head?”

I waited, hoping she’d let a name slip, but when her hands fell, she only stared at the wall across from her bed, shoulders slumped, eyes starting to lose focus. Maybe she was a little medicated after all.

“Did you know you were pregnant?” I whispered, wondering if I’d worn out my welcome. She looked like she wanted to go back to sleep for a long, long time.

Danica nodded slowly. “I found out last week. That was the only bright spot.” She blinked, then faced me again. “I was going to keep it. I don’t know how—my dad would rather kick me out than claim a bastard grandchild—but I would have found a way. Then this morning, I passed out in first period and woke up in the hospital, and bam, my whole life’s ruined.” She let the tears fall that time, and they rolled down her face to drip on the white blanket.

I leaned forward, hurting for her and desperate to help. But I was in over my head. I had no experience with peer counseling, and no matter what Sabine had to say about my inexperience and naivety, I wasn’t exactly a shining example of the adolescent ideal. Just ask my dad.

“Your life isn’t ruined, Danica,” I insisted, scrambling for something to support that statement. “Max might get over this, if you tell him how much he means to you. And even if he doesn’t, you have a whole lifetime to decide who you want to be with, and if you want kids later, you can …”

“No, I can’t.” Danica stared down at her fingers, shredding a second tissue all over the bedspread, and the flat, dead quality of her voice sent chills through me. “I can’t have kids, Kaylee. Not anymore. Whatever went wrong with this one ruined it for the rest of them.”

Ohh …

I leaned back in my chair, devastated for her and stunned beyond words.

“I know I wasn’t ready,” Danica began, and this time her voice was alive with bitter pain. “It was probably stupid of me to think I could handle it. But now I don’t even have that option. What kind of screwed-up world is this, when the doctor can stand there and tell a seventeen-year-old that her insides are so messed up that she can’t support life. Ever. And they can’t even tell me why. That’s the real bitch.”

I nodded for lack of a better response, oddly relieved to find her anger outshining her grief. “They don’t know what happened?”

She shook her head miserably. “They have more tests to run, but all they know now is that this morning I was pregnant, and now I’m not, and I lost a ton of blood in the process.

That doesn’t usually happen in a first trimester miscarriage, according to the doc, but I needed a transfusion.”

She got quiet then, with her head against the pillow, and I thought she was falling asleep.

Last chance, Kaylee …

“Danica, who was the father?” I whispered, leaning forward in my chair again.

“Doesn’t matter,” she whispered back, her eyes closed. “Not anymore.” She fumbled for the controller and pressed a button to lower the head of the bed again. “I need to sleep now,” she mumbled, clearly exhausted by the visit. “Thanks for coming …”

I stood and watched her doze for a second, then I was heading for the door when Danica groaned, and I glanced back at her.

“Maybe this would have happened later anyway,” she mumbled, so low I could barely hear her. “Maybe I wasn’t meant to have kids. But I wanted this one …”

“Visiting hours were over two hours ago,” a sharp female voice barked as I closed Danica’s door, and I spun around to find an elderly nurse—her name tag read Debbie Nolan, RN—in pale purple scrubs frowning at me.

Oops. Busted …

“Sorry. I didn’t get off work in time to visit, and she’s my cousin, so.” I was almost disturbed by how easily the lie flowed. When had I gotten so good at that?

“Oh …” Nurse Nolan’s frown melted into a bruising look of sympathy. “I’m sorry. It’s so sad, with her so young.” She glanced behind her, like someone might be watching, then gestured for me to come closer as her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you want to see your aunt, too, while you’re here?”

“My …?”

My aunt was suffering an eternity of torture in the Netherworld at the hands of the hellion she’d sold her soul to. But Nurse Nolan meant Danica’s mom. When Danica said her mother was sick, I’d assumed from the way she said it that “sick” was a euphemism for drunk, or stoned, or psychotic.

“Sure.” I said at last, hoping the nurse hadn’t followed the progression of my thoughts across my expression. What kind of fake cousin would I be if I didn’t visit my fake aunt while I was there?

“Room 348, at the end of the hall,” she said, still whispering. “I’ll give you ten minutes, if you promise not to tell….”

“Of course. Thank you.” I’d hoped to sneak out when she went back to the nurse’s station, but I never got the opportunity because she escorted me down the hall to a perfect stranger’s hospital room, while my heart pumped panic-fueled fire through my veins.