My Soul to Lose (8 page)

for her as it was for me.

At the end of the hall, we stumbled into my room

as the shouting grew louder. Lydia kicked the door

shut. My eyes watered. A deep keening had started at

the back of my throat, and I couldn’t make it stop. All

I could do was hold my mouth closed and hope for the

best.

Rachel Vincent / 63

Lydia dropped onto my bed and held her hands out

to me, her face pale now, and damp with sweat in spite

of the over-air-conditioned room. “Hurry,” she said,

but as I stepped forward, that terrible grayness swept

into the room from nowhere. From everywhere. It was

just suddenly there, leaching color from everything,

thickening with each second that high-pitched squeal

leaked from my throat.

I scrambled onto the bed with her and used my shirt

to wipe tears from my face. It was real! The fog was

real!
But that realization brought with it a bolt of true

terror. If I wasn’t hallucinating, what the hell was

going on?

“Give me your hands.” Lydia gasped and doubled

over in pain. When she looked up again, I took her

hand in my empty one, but kept my mouth covered

with the other. “Normally I try to block it,” she

whispered, pushing limp brown hair from her face.

“But I don’t have the strength for that right now. This

place is so full of pain…”

Block what? What the hell was going on?

Uncertainty pitched in my stomach, almost strong

enough to rival the dark fear fueling my uncontrollable

keening. What was she talking about? No wonder

she’d quit speaking.

Lydia closed her eyes, riding a wave of pain, then

she opened them and her voice was so soft I had to

strain to hear it. “I can let the pain flow naturally—

that’s easiest on both of us. Or I can take it from you.

That way’s faster, but sometimes I take too much.

64 / My Soul to Lose

More than just pain.” She flinched again, and her gaze

shifted to something over my shoulder, as if she could

see through all the walls separating us from Tyler.

“And I can’t give it back. But either way, it’s easier if I

touch you.”

She waited expectantly, but I could only shrug and

shake my head to demonstrate confusion, my lips still

sealed firmly against the scream battering me from the

inside.

“Close your eyes and let the pain flow,” she said,

and I obeyed, because I didn’t know what else to do.

Suddenly my hand felt both hot and cold, like I had

a fever and chills at the same time. Lydia’s fingers

shook in mine, and I opened my eyes to find her

shuddering all over. I tried to pull my hand away, but

she slapped her other palm over it, holding me tight

even as her teeth began to chatter. “K-keep your eyes

cl-closed,” she stuttered. “No m-matter what.”

Terrified now, I closed my eyes and concentrated

on holding my jaw shut. On not seeing the fog things

in the back of my mind. On not feeling the thick

current of agony and despair stirring through me.

And slowly, very slowly, the panic began to ebb. It

was gradual at first, but then the discordant ribbon of

sound leaking from me thinned into a strand as fragile

as a human hair. Though the panic still built inside me,

it was weaker now, and blessedly manageable thanks

to whatever she was doing.

I dared a peek at Lydia to find her eyes closed, her

face scrunched in pain, her forehead again shiny with

Rachel Vincent / 65

sweat. Her free hand clutched a handful of her baggy

T-shirt, pressing it into her stomach like she was hurt.

But there was no blood, or any other sign of a wound;

I looked closely to make sure.

She was funneling the panic from me somehow,

and it was making her sick. And as badly as I wanted

out of Lakeside, I would
not
take my freedom at her

expense.

I still couldn’t talk, so I tried to pull my hand away,

but Lydia’s eyes popped open at the first tug. “No!”

She clung to my fingers, tears standing in her eyes. “I

can’t stop it, and fighting only makes it hurt worse.”

The pain wouldn’t kill me, but from the looks of it,

whatever she was doing might kill her. I tugged again

and she swallowed thickly, then shook her head

sharply.

“It hurts
me,
Kaylee. If you let go, I hurt worse.”

She was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She’d

heard my aunt and uncle and knew that if I had another

screaming fit, Uncle Brendon wouldn’t be able to get

me out. Lydia was lying so I wouldn’t pull away, even

though she was hurting herself worse—maybe killing

herself—with every bit of panic she took from me.

At first I let her, because she seemed determined to

do it. She obviously had her reasons, even if I didn’t

understand them. But when the guilt became too much

and I tried to pull away again, she squeezed my hand

so hard it hurt.

“He’s cresting…” she whispered, and I searched

her eyes in vain for a translation. I still had no idea

66 / My Soul to Lose

what she was talking about. “It’s going to shift. Tyler’s

pain will end, and yours will begin.”

Begin?
Because it’s all been fun and games so

far…

But before I could finish that thought, Lydia’s

hands went limp around mine, and she relaxed so

suddenly and thoroughly she almost seemed to deflate.

For a precious half second, she smiled, obviously

painfree, and I started to think it was over.

“He’s gone,” Lydia said softly.

Then the panic
truly
hit me.

What I’d felt before had only been a preview. This

was the main event. The real deal. Like at the mall.

Anguish exploded inside me, a shock to my entire

system. My lungs ached. My throat burned. Tears

poured from my eyes. The scream bounced around in

my head so fast and hard I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t hold it in. The keening started up again,

more urgent than ever, and my jaws—already sore

from being clenched—were no match for the renewed

pressure.

“Give it to me…” Lydia said, and I opened my eyes

to see her staring at me earnestly. She looked a little

better. A little stronger. Not quite so pale. But if she

took any more of my pain, she’d backslide. Fast and

hard.

Unfortunately, I was beyond the ability to focus by

then. I didn’t know whether or not to give her what she

wanted, much less how to do it. I could only ride the

Rachel Vincent / 67

scream jolting through me like a bolt of electricity and

hope it stayed contained.

But it wouldn’t. The keening grew stronger. It

thickened, until I thought I’d choke on it. My teeth

vibrated beneath the relentless power of it, and I

chattered like I was cold. I couldn’t hold it back.

Yet I couldn’t afford to let it go.

“There’s too much. It’s too slow,” Lydia moaned.

She was tense, like every little movement hurt. Her

hands shook again, and her face had become one

continuous grimace. “I’m sorry. I have to take it.”

What? What does that mean?
Her pain was

obvious, and she wanted more? I pulled my hand

away, but she snatched it back just as my mouth flew

open. I couldn’t fight it anymore.

The scream exploded from my throat with an

agonizing burst of pain, like I was vomiting nails. Yet

there was no sound.

An instant after the scream began—before the

sound had a chance to be heard—it was sucked back

inside me by a vicious pull from deep in my gut. My

mouth snapped shut. Those nails shredded my throat

again on the way down. It whipped around inside me,

my unheard screech, being steadily pulled out of me

and into…

Lydia.

She began to convulse, but I couldn’t pry her

fingers from my hand. Her eyes rolled up so high only

the lower arc of her green irises showed, yet still she

68 / My Soul to Lose

clung to me, pulling the last of the scream from me

and into her. Pulling my pain with it.

Gone was the agony of my bruised lungs, my raw

throat and my pounding head. Gone was that awful

grief, that despair so encompassing I couldn’t think

about anything else. Gone was the gray fog; it faded

all around us while I tried to free my hand.

Then, suddenly, it was over. Her fingers fell away

from mine. Her eyes closed. She fell over backward—

still convulsing—before I could catch her. She hit her

head on the footboard, and when I fumbled for a

pillow to put under her, I realized her nose was

bleeding. Dripping steadily on the blanket.

“Help!” I shouted, the first sound I’d made since

the whole thing started, several endless minutes

earlier. “Somebody help me!” My voice sounded

funny. Slurred. Why was it so hard to talk? Why did I

feel so weird? Like everything was moving in slow

motion? Like my brain was packed with cotton.

Footsteps pounded down the hall toward me, then

the door flew open. “What happened?” Nurse Nancy

demanded, two taller female aides peering over her

shoulder.

“She…” I blinked, trying to focus in a thick cloud

of confusion. “She took too much…” Too much of

what? The answer was right there, but it was so

blurry… I could see it, but couldn’t quite bring it into

focus.

“What?” Nurse Nancy knelt over the girl on my

bed—Lisa? Leah?—and pulled back her eyelids. “Get

Rachel Vincent / 69

her out of here!” She yelled at one of the aids,

gesturing toward me with one hand. “And bring a

stretcher. She’s seizing.”

A woman in bright blue scrubs led me into the hall

by one arm. “Go sit in the common room,” she said,

then jogged past me.

I wandered down the hall slowly, one hand on the

cold, rough wall for balance. Trying to stay above

water as wave after wave of confusion crashed over

me. I sank into the first empty chair I found and buried

my face in my hands. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t quite

remember…

People were talking all around me, whispering

phrases I couldn’t make sense of. Names I didn’t quite

recognize. So I latched on to the first familiar thing I

saw: a jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table by the

window. That was my puzzle. I’d been working it

before something bad happened. Before…

Cold hands. Dark fog. Screaming. Bleeding.

I’d placed three puzzle pieces when two aides

rolled a stretcher past the nurses’ station and out the

main door of the unit. “Another one?” the security

guard asked, as he held the door open.

“This one’s still breathing,” the aide in purple said.

This one?
But the harder I tried to remember, the

blurrier the images got.

I’d only placed two more pieces when someone

called my name. I looked up from my puzzle to see

another aide—her name was Judy; I remembered

70 / My Soul to Lose

that—standing next to my uncle. Who stood next to

my suitcase.

“Kaylee?” Uncle Brendon frowned at me in

concern. “Ready to go home?”

Yes.
That much was clear. But my relief came with

a bitter aftertaste of guilt and sadness. Something bad

had happened. Something to do with the girl on my

bed. But I couldn’t remember what.

I followed Uncle Brendon through the main door—

the one you had to be buzzed through—then stopped.

Two men leaned over a stretcher in front of the

elevator, where a girl with dark hair lay motionless.

One man was steadily squeezing a bag attached to a

mask over her face. A smear of blood stained her

cheek. Her eyes were closed, but in my fractured

memory, they were bright green.

“Do you know her?” Uncle Brendon asked. “What

happened to her?”

I shuddered as the answer surfaced from the haze in

my head. Maybe someday I would know what it

meant, but in that moment, I only knew that it was

true.

“She took too much.”

***

Will Kaylee ever understand what happened? Find out

in
Rachel Vincent’s

MY SOUL TO TAKE,

August 2009 from Harlequin Teen.

CAVANAUGH

She doesn’t see dead people, but…

She senses when someone near her is about to die.

And when that happens, a force beyond her control

compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention

of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard

to come by when Nash seems to know more about her

need to scream than she does. And when classmates

start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only

Kaylee knows who’ll be next…

The last thing you hear before you die

“Folklore, mystery, and romance swirl together in a

story unlike any other out there. I thoroughly enjoyed

it.” --Melissa Marr, New York Times bestselling

author of Wicked Lovely