Before I Wake (20 page)

“Great-great-aunt,” Madeline supplied. “I was originally
recruited for my own abilities as a necromancer, but they turned out not to
extend into the afterlife—evidently being dead interferes with one’s ability to
detect the dead. When I realized we would need the skills I lost, I brought my
nephew on board, because his mother didn’t inherit the gift. It seems to skip
random generations.”

“My parents think I’m at some fancy boarding school, on a
soccer scholarship,” Luca added with a conspiratorial smile.

“So, what kind of crew is this, and why do you need us on it?”
Sabine asked.

“It’s the reclamation department,” I said, just as Madeline
said, “I don’t need you.”

“The hell you don’t,” I snapped. “Luca and I are all you have
left, and we’re not going to be enough against Avari, especially now that he’s
figured out how to cross over. You’re going to need everyone you can get, and
everyone in this room except for you and Luca has survived an encounter with
Avari, which puts them at the top of a very short list of people who can help
you.”

And that’s when the room exploded into chaos and questions.

“Who and what is Avari?” Madeline asked.

“What do you mean, he can cross over?” Nash demanded, looking
more scared than I’d seen him in a long time.

From Sabine: “Why are you and Luca all she has left?”

Em said, “What about Tod? Can’t he help? And his boss? What’s
his name?”

“Okay, one thing at a time.” I wanted to bury my head in my
hands. Or curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head. Instead, I took a
deep breath and sat on the arm of my father’s chair. “I don’t want to have to
repeat this, so everyone get comfortable and listen up.”

“Em’s right,” Sabine said from the kitchen as she helped
herself to a soda from the fridge. “If we’re looking for people who’ve survived
run-ins with Avari, shouldn’t we wait for Tod? And Alec. He’ll be more help than
anyone else, right?”

“You’re right. Call Alec.” I nodded to Emma and she started
scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “Tod already knows. Madeline can
talk to Levi after we’re done here, and I’ll hit up my dad and my uncle when
they get home from work.”

Madeline made a stuffy humphing sound. “Ms. Cavanaugh, this
isn’t how we at the reclamation department operate.”

I raised one brow and eyed her boldly. “As of right now, we
are
the reclamation department, and if you don’t
jump on board, we’ll carry on without you. Frankly, at this point, you’re the
one with the least to offer.”

Madeline fumed visibly, and Sabine laughed out loud. “Damn.
Death looks good on you, Kay!”

I ignored her and crossed the room to speak to Madeline in
semiprivacy while Emma spoke to Alec on the phone and Nash and Sabine filled
Luca in on some basics of dealing with hellions—most of which were no longer
relevant, now that Avari could cross over. “Look, I don’t mean to be
disrespectful, but I think we need to face facts here. Your people are dead
because they didn’t know what they were up against. We do, and that still may
not be enough to protect us, but we’re the best shot you have at saving more
lives than you can even imagine. Including your nephew’s.”

Madeline stared into my face, studying me. Looking for
something worth putting her trust in. I don’t know if she found what she was
looking for or just finally truly understood that we were all she had. Either
way, she nodded, hesitantly. Then she blinked, and I saw a new fortitude
building on her face. And this time when she nodded, she meant it.

While we waited for Alec, Emma and Sabine filled Madeline and
Luca in on Avari—all stuff Alec already knew—while Nash and I listened in
growing discomfort. It was an odd conversation, at best.

“He’s kind of obsessed with Kaylee,” Em said, by way of an
opener.

“With her soul,” Sabine corrected. “Because it’s all
purer-than-thou, with her being both a martyr
and
a
virgin.”

I flinched, and Sabine noticed Emma’s sudden silence. The
mara
’s focus narrowed on me and her brows rose. I
groaned inwardly. She knew. Why did she have to be bitchy
and
perceptive?

“But, um…” Em said when Nash glanced from Sabine to me and
frowned. “Avari likes to spread the pain around. He’s possessed me and Sabine,
and Nash was addicted to his breath for a while. Then again for another while…”
Her words faded into uncomfortable silence when Nash tried to obliterate her
with only the power of his glare.

“Alec was his servant in the Netherworld for a quarter of a
century,” Sabine said. “And Tod did this whole drug-trafficking gig for
him—”

Madeline frowned, like she was trying to keep it all straight.
“Tod is the undead boyfriend?”

“He had no idea what he was carrying,” I interjected. “And he
had a really good reason.”

“A mule should
always
know what
he’s carrying,” Sabine insisted, and I wanted to smack her a little more than
usual.

“Okay, clearly you all have very complicated relationships,”
Madeline said, effectively calling a truce for us all. “But the point seems to
be that the hellion in question has had quite a bit of contact with you. I
appreciate your willingness to help us deal with him.”

“What happened to the others?” Nash asked. “The rest of the
department?”

“I suppose the truth is the least that I owe you all.” Madeline
sighed and glanced at her hands before meeting his gaze again. “Until a couple
of months ago, the reclamation department had no real presence in this district,
because we weren’t needed. But then we got word of an incubus in the area. That
happens from time to time. They tend to frequent the same haunts, and we knew
that if he was breeding, he’d need a soul for his son. So I was transferred here
along with three extractors. As you probably all know, we didn’t have a chance
to deal with the incubus—Kaylee did that for us. But by then, we’d discovered
another problem. Something else had settled into the area and was making
unscheduled kills and collecting the souls.”

“Avari?” Emma said.

Madeline nodded. “Evidently. But we didn’t know that at the
time. I sent my extractors after him one at a time, and none of them ever
returned. We lost two men before Kaylee died, and I started to panic. That’s why
we needed her so badly.”

“Because she’s a
bean sidhe?
” Nash
asked.

“Yes. When I found out that a female
bean
sidhe
had killed the incubus but lost her own life in the process,
I…made some emergency phone calls and arranged to have her restored so I could
ask her to join us. We were hoping her unique abilities would give her the edge
my other extractors obviously lacked. I only had one left by then, and even
though the soul thief kept killing, I held my last extractor back, so he could
help run things while I trained Kaylee. Then she proved herself in a dry run—”
when I’d been sent to the doughnut shop after Thane “—so I sent my last man
after the serial soul thief two days ago. He never came back. Now Kaylee and
Luca are all I have left.”

“No, you have all of us,” Nash said. “There’s no way we’d let
Kaylee do this alone. Neither will Alec or…my brother.”

Em nodded eagerly, and Sabine rolled her eyes at the room in
general. “Yeah. I’m all about the greater good. But it’s gonna cost you some
snacks. I’m starving.” She got up to help herself to my kitchen, and I followed
to keep her from making a mess I’d get stuck cleaning up.

“There’s popcorn in the cabinet over the bar,” I said,
pointing. “And there’s fruit in the fridge.” But Sabine didn’t even glance in
either direction.

“So, was it all you hoped it would be?” she asked, soft enough
that no one in the living room could hear.

“What are you talking about?” But I knew. And she knew I
knew.

She stepped so close I wanted to back up, but I was already
leaning against the counter. “You know, the only thing worse than a
self-righteous virgin is a self-righteous
fake
virgin.”

“I’m not faking anything.” I pulled a bag of popcorn from the
cabinet and unwrapped it, then practically threw it into the microwave and
pressed some buttons so the noise would cover yet another discussion I really
didn’t want to have with Sabine. “I’m saying it’s none of your business.”

“Does Nash know?”

I sighed heavily, wondering if it was too late to take the
fifth. “You know he doesn’t. And you can’t tell him.” I took a large salad bowl
from the dish drainer and set it next to the microwave.

“He needs to know, Kaylee.”

“The hell he does! Are you
trying
to hurt him?”

She exhaled slowly, like
she
was
the one fighting for patience. “I’m trying to pull off the Band-Aid and expose
the wound so it can heal.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Yes, you do. You ripped Nash’s heart out, and instead of
dealing with the gaping hole in his chest, he just slapped a bandage over it, so
he wouldn’t have to see the wound.”

“A bandage?”

“Denial. He was avoiding both of you, so he wouldn’t have to
think about it, and now he thinks he can pretend to be happy with your
friendship, and if he plays his cards right and stays clean, you’ll realize Tod
was just a temporary comfort and everything will go back to the way it was. You
and I both know that’s not going to happen, but he refuses to see it. But he
won’t have any choice if he knows that after all those months when you barely
let him touch you, you gave it up to his brother after a month.”

Anger clouded my judgment and defeated my determination not to
have this conversation with her. “Why do you have to make it sound like that?
And who the hell are you to question my timing or my relationship with Tod? You
can’t possibly understand what he and I have been through or what he means to
me.”

“I’m not questioning anything,” Sabine insisted. “And maybe I
can’t understand all the specifics of your weird-ass, undead relationship, but I
do
understand what he means to you. And Nash
needs to understand that, too. Which is why you have to tell him.”

“Are you
insane?
” I demanded, and
when the microwave beeped, I pulled out the full bag and threw another one in,
then pressed more buttons, again for the noise. “Nash is only a month past a
relapse, and he’s just now speaking to me again. He still won’t be in the same
room as Tod. And you want to tell him I slept with his brother. Which is none of
your business
or
his, for the record.”

“Yes, it is. Whether you like it or not, the four of us are all
tangled up, Kaylee. And we always will be. Nash loves me, but he loves you, too,
even though you’re in love with his brother. Whom he currently hates, but can’t
get rid of. And you’re the first girlfriend I’ve ever had. Can you see those
threads, all tied in a knot?”

“I’m not your friend, Sabine.” How could I be, after she’d
stalked my dreams and given me nightmares, then tried to sell me to Avari so she
could have Nash for herself?

She looked hurt for a second, then that familiar obstinacy was
back. “Then why did you try to help me with Thane the other night? Nash loves
me, and he just stood there, at first, but you tried to come to my rescue. Tod
had to hold you back.”

“I…” I had no good answer for that. “Fine. I didn’t want you to
get hurt. But if you want to call yourself my friend, you should know that
position comes with boundaries.”

Sabine frowned. “I’m no good with boundaries.”

“Yes, and the ocean is damp. Can we be done with the
understatements now?”

“I’m just trying to help Nash move on.”

“Bullshit. You’re not thinking about what’s good for him.
You’re thinking about what’s good for
you.
”

“I
am
what’s good for him!” The
microwave dinged, then went silent, and she lowered her voice, but not the
intensity of her argument. “I’m the only good thing he has left until he starts
speaking to his brother and trusting his mother again. But he won’t see that as
long as he thinks there’s a chance for the two of you. He knows you were waiting
for the ‘right’ time to break the world’s most damage-resistant hymen and if he
finds out that time came and went without him, he’ll know the two of you are
truly over. And he really needs to know that, Kaylee.”

I hate it when she’s right.

“He does need to understand that we won’t be getting back
together,” I finally admitted. “But what Tod and I do in private is not up for
discussion. I’ll think of some other way to show Nash. And, Sabine, if you
really want to be my friend, you’ll respect that.” I dumped both bags of popcorn
into the bowl and left her in the kitchen to think about that.

Alec knocked on the door as I set the bowl on the coffee table,
and four different people yelled for him to come in. To my house.

“Hey, Kaylee,” he said, pulling me into a hug as Luca closed
the door behind him. “How’s Death treating you?”

“No better than life did.” I hugged him back, treasuring one of
the few uncomplicated relationships I had. Alec was my friend, and that line was
blessedly unblurred by attraction, jealousy, or any feelings of neglect or
betrayal. Alec was a drama-free safe zone.

He laughed. “I meant Tod. You know, death with a capital
D?
”

“Ah. More death humor. Never gets old.” I let him go and
grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Tod’s great.” I wanted to say more, but Nash was
listening, and I didn’t want him to think I was rubbing anything in his
face.

“Who’re they?” Alec whispered, less-than-subtly tossing his
head toward Madeline and Luca.

I reached up and turned him by his shoulders to face them both,
then cleared my throat to catch everyone’s attention. “Madeline is my boss at
the reclamation department. She helped me cover up my own murder and clear
Nash’s name. And Luca is her great-great-nephew. He’s a necromancer, which means
he sees dead people.”