Before I Wake (26 page)

* * *

The world pulled itself into focus around me again and
when Tod let go of me, my skin felt cold without his touch. Everything felt
cold.

“I’m freezing,” I whispered, and my teeth started to chatter on
the last syllable, drawing it out.

“I think you’re in shock. Here. Sit down.” Tod led me by the
elbow to a chair in one corner of the room. I thought the elbow thing was kind
of weird—until I realized my hands were still covered in blood.

“How can I be in shock, if I’m dead?” I sank into the chair and
laid my hands in my lap, palms up. And when I remembered why my hands were
messy, the chattering got worse.

“That’s actually a really good sign. It means that you’re still
tapped into your humanity. If you weren’t upset right now, I’d be worried. Well,
more
worried.”

I should have been glad to hear that I wasn’t turning into an
emotionless undead monster—like Thane—but I couldn’t think past the blood on my
hands and the memory of Alec staring up at me in agony as he died. “This doesn’t
feel like a good sign.” And for the first time since I’d been restored to my
body, I understood that it might actually be easier to let my humanity go—to
divorce myself from emotion entirely—than to watch loved one after loved one
die, or to live with the guilt of what I’d done to Alec.

Was that what had gone wrong with Thane? Had he given up his
humanity to avoid suffering guilt and loss? If I took the easy way out, would I
turn out just like he had?

“You’ve only been dead for a month,” Tod said, drawing me out
of the most terrifying temptation I’d ever experienced. “Your emotions are going
to be inconsistent for a while.” His voice sounded kind of distant, muffled by
the sound of running water. “Sometimes it’s hard to feel anything, then suddenly
you feel everything all at once, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which of those
is harder to deal with.”

“This.” My voice sounded hollow. Why did my voice sound hollow?
“This is the hardest to deal with.” The numbness I’d been resisting for weeks
was suddenly the most appealing thought in the world.

But Tod had made it. He’d held on to his humanity in spite of
the pain, and if he could do it, I could do it.

“Come here.” Tod stepped into the doorway, and that’s when I
realized he’d left the room in the first place.

I stood and took two steps toward him. Then I stopped and
glanced around. The room was tiny—space only for the twin bed, armchair, and a
small television on a cart. “Where are we?”

He tugged me into the other room with him and I realized it was
a bathroom. A tiny bathroom, with a shorter-than-standard shower/tub combo, a
toilet, and a pedestal sink, with hardly any room between them. Water was
running in the tub. Steaming water.

“This is my place.” Tod slid his hands beneath the sides of my
shirt, and his skin was
so warm.
I closed my eyes
and just felt him for a moment, blocking everything else out. Because everything
else hurt. Then his hands moved, pulling my shirt up, and the way the cotton
clung to my skin, sticky with blood, made me gag. “Arms up,” he ordered softly,
and I couldn’t comply fast enough.

“You have a place?”
Think about the place.
Tod’s place.

Don’t think about Alec.

Don’t think about the knife.

Don’t think about the blood.

“It was supposed to be a surprise. Everyone gets a locker, but
there aren’t enough rooms for all the reapers, and I’m kinda low on seniority,”
he said, and I wondered if he was talking just so I’d have something to listen
to. To keep my mind off things I shouldn’t think. “That never mattered before,
though—I always just hung out at my mom’s house when I wasn’t working, whether
they could see me or not. But after you died…” He shrugged, then tugged the
sticky material over my head, careful not to let it touch my face. “I put my
name on the waiting list the next day. This spot opened up yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” That was good timing. Too good. “Because of
Mareth…” My eyes closed, denying this new layer of pain when I had yet to deal
with the others. They were too heavy. I could hardly move. “This was Mareth’s
room?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He dropped my shirt on the floor, in the
corner, then turned me by my shoulders and unhooked my bra. “But she’s not the
only one missing. Two more reapers have disappeared in the past few days. One
before her. One after her.”

“And you inherited a room.”

“Yeah.” He reached for the button on my jeans, but I brushed
his hand away. I could do it. I wasn’t a baby.

“Because Levi doesn’t think they’re coming back.” I slid my
jeans over my hips and stepped out of them one leg at a time.

“Yeah.” Tod reached over to turn the water off while I stepped
out of my underwear, and I was already calf-deep in the water before I realized
I was naked. In front of him. I should have been embarrassed, or at least
nervous. I’d been naked with him before, obviously, but last time there’d been
more touching than looking.

But he wasn’t looking now. He was very obviously not-looking,
which was good, because I couldn’t think about being naked. Not until the blood
was gone. The water was pink with it.

There was so much blood.

Tod set a bottle of guy-shampoo on the edge of the tub, along
with a bottle of guy-body wash. “I’m going to go…take care of things. I’ll bring
some clean clothes, too.”

I caught his hand, and finally he looked at me. At my eyes,
which were wet again, and I wondered if we could both pretend I’d gotten
bathwater in them. “Don’t leave.”

Please don’t leave…
.

“I’ll be back. You’re safe here. No one else can get in.
There’s no door.”

“No door?” I hadn’t noticed, but now that he’d mentioned it, I
realized he was right. The other room had no door, except the one leading to the
bathroom.

“Reapers don’t need them,” he explained. “I’ll be back. If the
water gets cold, run some more. Here’s a towel.” He laid one hand on a folded
towel on the shelf above the toilet—one of only two. “Sorry, I don’t have a
robe.”

“It’s okay.”

“Just…stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Then he was gone.

I lay back in the tub, but it was short, so I had to bend my
knees, and they got cold. I opened the guy-shampoo and sniffed the bottle. It
smelled like Tod’s hair, and for some reason, that made me cry.

I tried not to think, but that got harder with each second of
silence. So I slid beneath the surface. I didn’t even have to hold my breath. I
just…stopped breathing. I don’t know how long I stayed under, blinking up at the
world through hazy pink water. Minutes, maybe. Or maybe an hour. I didn’t have
to come up, so I didn’t.

Until someone shouted my name. “Kaylee!”

Nash?
No. Nash couldn’t get into
Tod’s special reaper room. The water was messing with my hearing.

“Give her some privacy,” Tod said, and I blinked. Then I
frowned.

“She’s not coming up!” Nash insisted. And it
was
Nash.

Water sloshed around me as I sat up with my arms crossed over
my chest, to find Tod blocking the bathroom doorway with his back to me, one
hand on Nash’s chest, holding him back. “She doesn’t have to breathe,
remember?”

Careful to keep myself covered, I scrubbed water from my eyes
with one hand and blinked at Nash just as Tod shoved him into the bedroom. It
wasn’t a hard push. But it wasn’t a push that would be misunderstood,
either.

“I brought you some clothes, but I couldn’t get your robe out
of the bathroom without having to explain something to your dad.” Tod set a
stack of clothes on the closed toilet seat, because there was nowhere else to
put them.

“Thanks.”

“How do you feel?”

“Lost. I feel lost.” I was supposed to save souls, not take
lives. I was supposed to protect my friends, not kill them. How had this
happened? This
couldn’t
have happened.

Tod sank to his knees next to the tub and put one hand on my
bare back. “You’re not lost, Kaylee. You can’t ever be lost, because I’ll always
know where you are. And if I’m not there with you, I’m on my way, and nothing
standing between us will be standing for very long.”

Tears blurred my vision again, but he was still beautiful, even
out of focus. “Promise?”

“I swear on my very existence.”

I believed him. I’d never believed in anything more.

Tod stepped out of the room and pulled the door closed, but
didn’t latch it, and while I lathered my hair on autopilot, I listened. I
couldn’t hear all of it, but I heard enough.

“What am I doing here?” Nash demanded in a fierce whisper.
“Listening to the two of you is like having spikes driven through my ears.”

“I think actual victims of impalement would disagree with you
there.”

“She’s naked,” Nash hissed.

“That’s how a bath works.”

“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?” Nash made a horrible
choking sound, and I flinched. “Is that why you brought me here? To rub it in my
face?”

Tod exhaled, and I knew that whatever came out of his mouth
would only be half of what he wanted to say. “I’m gonna have to take a rain
check on the part where you get all angry and morose, but if you want, you can
threaten to kick my ass again when I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have to deal with Alec, but I don’t want to leave her alone.
So could you hate me quietly for now and be there for her?”

“You want me to be your understudy? I’m not sure I have the
dark wit to pull that off.”

“Nor the tragic backstory. Don’t be my substitute. Be her
friend. This hasn’t truly hit her yet, but when it does, it’ll be bad, and I
don’t want her to be alone when that happens. Do you?”

“No.” Nash sighed.

I slid beneath the water again and considered never coming
up.

17

I WOKE UP
in a cold sweat, with the sheets tangled around my legs, the pillow
squeezed so tightly in my arms that feathers threatened to burst from the seam.
But they weren’t my sheets. It wasn’t my pillow.

I rolled over to find Nash watching me from the armchair in the
corner. The room was so small that his right knee touched the end of the
mattress and his left was pressed against the TV cart. But this wasn’t Nash’s
room, either. It was Tod’s. Tod had a room—really more of a big closet—and I was
in his bed. Alone with his brother. Drowning in remorse and grief too thick to
breathe through.

“You didn’t have to stay,” I said, sitting up to pull the
pillow into my lap. My voice was hoarse from crying.

“Yeah, I did. There’s no door.”

“Oh, yeah.” I pushed damp, tangled hair back from my face.
“Sorry. You want me to take you home?”

Nash shook his head slowly. “If you leave, you won’t be able to
get back.” Because I had no idea where I was. “Are you okay?”

I stared at my hands in my lap, my legs crossed beneath me,
bare beneath my short pj shorts. “Did Tod tell you what happened?”

“He said Alec died and you reclaimed his soul.”

I looked up in surprise, fighting flashbacks so vivid I could
still feel Alec’s blood on my hands, warm, and sticky, and horrible. “Is that
all he said?”

Nash’s eyes narrowed. “Is there more?”

“The dog. Falkor was dead, too. Butchered.” My eyes watered.
Why hadn’t Tod told him what really happened?

“I’m so sorry, Kaylee.”

“Me, too.” But sorry didn’t cover it. Sorry didn’t even come
close.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.” The blood. The knife. The look in Alec’s eyes.
“It’s all my fault. All of it.”

Nash exhaled and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees,
and when he looked at me, the unease and discomfort in his eyes echoed deep
inside me, striking similar chords in my own heart. He didn’t know how to be
there, in Tod’s room, with me, and I didn’t know how to be there, in the land of
the living, with everyone else.

“Kaylee, I don’t know how to do this,” Nash said finally, and
there was a fragile note in his voice. A delicate hesitance that made me want to
apply a Band-Aid or spray on some disinfectant. But his wounds were too big for
that.

So were mine.

“I don’t know how to talk to you anymore,” he continued. “I
don’t know what you want to hear or what I’m allowed to say. But I do know
you.
You can sit there and tell me how much has
changed, and how different you are now, but it’s not true. Death didn’t change
you. It couldn’t. You’re still the girl I fell in love with the moment I first
heard you laugh, and I still know exactly who you are.”

“Nash…”

“You would never hurt anyone,” he said, still watching me with
that bruised look in his eyes.

“I hurt you.”

“Yeah. But not on purpose, and not as badly as I hurt you.
That’s how I know that whatever happened, this isn’t your fault.”

“I killed him, Nash,” I said, and he blinked, then sat up
slowly, staring at me in disbelief. “I stabbed him.” Then I burst into
tears.

Nash circled the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, then
pulled me into a hug. “What happened?”

“I thought it was Avari.” More tears fell, and I half choked on
them. “I thought he’d killed Alec and was wearing his soul. I thought I was
freeing his soul, but… I killed him.” I could hardly form words around the sobs
shaking my entire body, but Nash understood. His arms tightened around me, and I
cried harder. I’d thought saying it out loud—admitting my guilt—would make me
feel better. Like releasing the pressure behind a dam. But I felt worse for
having said it out loud. Worse, knowing that Nash knew what I’d done.

I felt guiltier than ever for thinking I deserved relief from
that guilt in the first place.

“What happened?” Tod asked, and I looked up to find him
standing in the middle of the little available floor space. Nash stood and
shoved his hands in his pockets, and I threw my arms around Tod. He squeezed me
and I laid my head on his shoulder.

“Nothing,” Nash said, and my guilt thickened when I saw him
watching me over his brother’s shoulder. “I was trying to convince her that this
isn’t her fault. Avari tricked her.”

Tod pulled away so he could look at me. “You told him? Kaylee,
you weren’t supposed to tell him. I spent the past two hours cleaning everything
up so no one would know.”

“Cleaning it up?” A sick feeling bubbled deep in my stomach.
“What did you do?”

“I did what had to be done to keep you out of this.” His gaze
held mine. He was unashamed of whatever he’d done. “But that won’t work if
you’re not on board.”

“Then maybe you should have told me what you were doing.”

“I didn’t think you’d let me.” He sank onto the bed and pulled
me down to sit next to him. “Besides, I kind of felt like ‘don’t confess to
murder’ goes without saying.”

“It’s not murder. It was an accident,” Nash said, and he looked
even more out of place, since he was the only one standing.

“We know that, but what are the police going to think? How
likely are they to believe that she
accidentally
stabbed a good friend in the stomach, a month after she killed her math teacher
the same way?”

“But that was self-defense.” Shock echoed inside me,
ricocheting from one terrifying thought to the next. “Beck stabbed me
first.”

Tod took my hand, and his fingers wrapped around mine. “And
right now they believe that. But since we can’t tell the police you’re doing
battle with a demon who can possess your friends and wear the souls of the dead,
we have to start thinking about what conclusions they’re going to draw if they
find out you were in that apartment. Two stabbing deaths in a month aren’t going
to be labeled ‘coincidence.’”

He was right. I didn’t want him to be right, but what I wanted
had never mattered less. “So what did you do?”

“I buried the dog and got rid of any evidence that he ever
existed.”

“Why?”

“Because Alec’s apartment is now the scene of an open homicide
investigation, and they’re going to test every blood sample they find. But
Falkor’s DNA isn’t anything their lab geeks will recognize. I also busted in the
front door and took his TV and stereo, so it’d look more like a robbery.”

“Did you report it?” I asked, blinking more tears from my eyes
at the thought of Alec lying all alone in a pool of his own blood.

Tod shook his head. “An anonymous call would look suspicious,
but I left the door open. One of his neighbors will find him and report it.”

I shook my head slowly. “It doesn’t feel right. He deserves
better than to be found by a stranger.”

Tod tucked one arm around me, his fingers curling over my hip.
“Kaylee, there’s nothing more we can do for Alec, so I did what needed to be
done for
you.
And I’d do it again in a
heartbeat.”

“Thank you.” I wrapped my arms around him again and he held me
so tight breathing wasn’t an option. “But maybe you could not alter any more
crime scenes on my behalf? At least, not until I’ve had a fair chance to talk
you out of it? The whole ‘ask for forgiveness rather than permission’ approach
to our relationship doesn’t really work for me.”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to let you get arrested, which
would force you into hiding, which means you wouldn’t see your friends and
family, and the two of us would be all alone together…?” Tod faked a frown.
“Hmm… Maybe I should have thought that one through a little more.”

“That’s not the conclusion I was headed toward, but if it
works…” I kissed him, desperately trying to see through the dark to the light at
the end of the tunnel.

“Okay, seriously, it was bad enough the first time. I don’t
need the instant replay,” Nash said, and I pulled away from Tod reluctantly.

“Sorry.”

“Someone take me back. Now.”

Tod stood. “I’ll take you both. Kaylee’s dad’s going to call in
the cavalry if she’s not back in half an hour, and since I can only assume that
when he says ‘the cavalry,’ he means Levi and Madeline… We should probably all
go.”

“I don’t want to go yet.” I still hadn’t figured out how to
tell my dad what had happened—I didn’t want him to look at me and see a
murderer. “I’ll call him and tell him I’m staying here. Unless you want me to
go…?”

“I want you to stay forever. But if you want to stay here
tonight, you need to tell him that in person. If he doesn’t see you in the flesh
very soon, he’s going to lose it. He’s worried, Kaylee.”

I nodded reluctantly, and Tod turned to Nash. “You can’t tell
anyone what she told you,” he said, and Nash bristled under the command.

“I’m not going to tell anyone because it wasn’t her fault and I
don’t want to ruin her life. Not because of anything you say. But I can’t
promise Sabine won’t find out.” Because her fear-reading ability was often
eerily like mind reading.

“Then make sure she won’t say anything,” Tod said.

“Wait, I’m not going to lie to everyone, guys. Not to my
friends and family. They deserve to know how Alec really died.
He
deserves that.”

“No,” Tod said, and behind him, Nash was shaking his head.

“Now how is that fair? The only thing you both agree on is
disagreeing with me.”

“We agree about protecting you,” Nash clarified.

“Well, that’s not your call to make, and I don’t need to be
protected.”

“Yes, you do.” Tod crossed his arms over his chest. “And don’t
try to turn this around and call us sexist. This isn’t a damsel-in-distress
moment. We all need to protect one another, and you’ve done your fair share of
that.”

“Yeah. We protect one another from Avari and Thane, and
anything else that goes bump in the Netherworld. Not from our own friends and
family.”

“He’s not worried about Em and your dad,” Nash said. “He’s
worried about Levi and Madeline.”

“There are
rules
in the afterlife,
Kaylee.” Tod looked scared. “And killing innocent people is against most of
them.”

“You were there. You know it was an accident!”

He took both of my hands and looked right into my eyes. “And I
will die shouting it from the rooftops, if I have to. But at the end of the day,
the bottom line is that you couldn’t tell the difference between a hellion
wearing a human soul and a hellion wearing a human body, and it’s
your job
to know the difference. And if you’re not
competent in your job, they have no reason to keep you…alive.”

“You think I’m incompetent?” My chest felt sore. Bruised. I
knew Alec’s death was my fault, but it hurt to think that he agreed with me.

“No. I think Madeline would have done the same thing you did.
The same thing I would have done in your position. But if you tell them what
really happened, there will be incident reports, and inquisitions, and
eventually a hearing. Madeline can’t afford to lose you right now, but once all
this is over and they’ve recovered from a massive personnel shortage, someone
will have to be held accountable for a mistake that cost the life of an innocent
man. And when Madeline comes to take you, we’ll have to run, and we’ll be on the
run for the rest of forever with only each other, and nothing to do but explore
the youthful perfection eternity has blessed us with, and…” Tod frowned. “Okay,
that makes it sound better than it will actually be.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit overblown?” I asked.

“Well, I guess we could skip straight to the young lovers on
the run part, but do you really want to leave all your friends and family
behind?”

He was joking—hopefully—but his point was as serious as the
fear in his eyes. Fear for me.

“I’m not going to lose you, Kaylee. No matter what I have to
do, or whom I have to fight. Even if that means quashing your vexing tendencies
toward self-sacrifice.”

“Did you just say ‘vexing’?” Nash asked.

Tod scowled. “Nothing else seemed to fit. I stand by my word
choice.”

“Are you going to be like this for eternity?” I demanded,
trying to resist when he pulled me close again.

“If you mean protective, and devoted, and perfectly preserved,
then, yes. That is the burden I bear.”

“I mean stubborn. I mean unrelentingly, infuriatingly
stubborn.”

“That, too. But have you looked in the mirror lately, because
we happen to share that particular personality flaw.”

“I’m not going to lie to my dad, Tod. Not again. Not about
this. He won’t tell anyone.”

The reaper exhaled slowly. “I guess I can’t argue with
that.”

Nash huffed. “Never thought I’d hear those words come out of
your mouth… .”

“Wanna hear some really colorful ones?” Tod started to turn to
Nash, but I swiveled his face back in my direction with one hand on his
cheek.

“Play nice or go home.”

Tod lifted one brow and glanced pointedly around the room. His
room.

“Oh. Well, then, take me home.”