My Soul to Steal (25 page)

T
OD DISAPPEARED
,
and I headed straight for the gym, where Nash hung out during last period, now that football season was over.

I scanned the bleachers, glancing over several groups of students talking and watching the basketball team practice, but Nash found me before I spotted him. “Hey,” he called, and I turned to see him walking toward me from the boys’ locker room. “What happened?” he asked, falling into step with me when I gestured for him to follow me toward the gym doors, where we wouldn’t be overheard. “Emma said you disappeared during French. Like, literally disappeared.”

“Unscheduled trip to the Netherworld, courtesy of everyone’s least favorite
mara
.”

“Damn it, Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” He ran one hand through his hair in frustration. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged, trying not to show how pissed off I was, or how scared I’d been. Like it was no big deal that his ex had nearly gotten me killed. A lot.

“A little sticky…” I plucked at the drying gunk stuck to
the back of my shirt. “But still in one piece. And I
did
accuse her of trying to incite a school-wide riot. Though for the record, I think the interdimensional field trip constitutes gross overkill.”

“I’ll talk to her…” he said, shrugging his backpack higher on his shoulders, and suddenly it felt weird for me to be whispering to Nash in the middle of class, carrying nothing but the weight of my own guilt and fear. I’d left my stuff in French class, after my involuntary departure from the human world.

“Don’t bother. We have bigger hellions to fry, before one of them drops me into the hot oil. Or Sabine.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain when we find Sabine,” I said, leaning back against the side of the bleachers. “For now, please tell me you found the sleepwalker.”

“Not even close.”

“Great.” I shoved a flyaway strand of hair back from my face. “Well, now we’re looking for two puppets. One will sound like Avari, the other like this demon chick named Invidia. I heard them plotting when I crossed over. I’m guessing she’s a hellion of envy.”

Nash’s brows arched halfway up his forehead. “Based on…?”

“Based on the fact that she’s obsessed with Sabine, because of the amount of jealousy she’s evidently festering with.”

“Envy. Shit,” Nash said, leaning against the wall by the first set of doors, and I could practically read his thoughts on his face as he put the puzzle together for himself. “So…this Invidia helped power the blitz?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged and glanced through the glass door into the hall, itching to get moving. But discussing Netherworld
business in the empty school halls in the middle of last period would not only get us in trouble, it might just get us committed. The noisy gym was a much better place to go unnoticed. “My guess is that the power she shoved into our world to get the ball rolling came through as violent jealous impulses.”

“Thus, all the fights and property damage.”

“Exactly. And I’m pretty sure they
wanted
me to blame the whole thing on Sabine.”

“Because you’re jealous of her?” Nash said, nodding like he understood, and I bristled.

“I’m not jealous of her! I just don’t think she belongs on your bed at two o’clock in the morning.” Okay, maybe I was a
little
jealous of that part. “What I mean is that they framed her. I’m guessing Sabine’s envy drew this new hellion into the area, and Avari saw his chance. He probably knew your ex was here before we did. He killed the teachers in their sleep to make me think she was doing it, and Invidia overloaded the kids I saw Sabine reading fears from, so I’d think she was doing that, too.”

“Why?” Nash frowned. “Why do they care who you blame this on?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe to divert attention from Alec?” I glanced at the huge clock over the far set of bleachers, and my heart thudded harder. A quarter of last period was gone. We were running out of time. “I need you to get Sabine and meet me and Tod in the quad. We need to figure out who the hellions are possessing, and evict them.”

“No problem. We’ll be right there.”

Nash and I parted ways in the hall, where he headed right, toward Sabine’s sixth period class, and I went to the left, headed toward the French class I’d missed half of, where
Mrs. Brown handed me my books, along with a pink detention slip.

Funny how “teenage hero” translates to “teenage delinquent” on my permanent record.

Next I headed toward my history class, approaching from the right, so I could check on Emma without being seen by Coach Rundell, who rarely left his desk during class. Like several of the other teachers, Rundell was showing a video instead of actually teaching, but I could hardly blame him, considering that his office had been trashed that morning and the inexplicable chaos had only gotten worse.

Emma was in her usual seat with her arms crossed over her chest, staring blankly at a television I couldn’t see. The entire classroom flickered with a familiar bluish light, and half the students had fallen asleep sitting up.

Satisfied that Emma was safe, I dropped my books off in my locker, then slipped outside through the parking lot exit and made my way around the building from the outside. The quad looked empty when I got there, but before I could take a seat at the nearest table, Tod appeared several feet away.

“It’s not Sophie,” he said, by way of a greeting. “She’s in the office, cryin’ like a baby, trying to explain why she cut some chick’s hair off.”

“Good.” At least that would keep her out of Avari’s grip for the time being.

More footsteps crunched on the grass behind me, and I turned to find Nash headed across the quad toward us. Alone.

“Where’s Sabine?” I asked, sliding onto the nearest bench seat.

Nash frowned, but sat down across from me. “Sabine’s a no-show.”

“From geography?”

“From school, as far as I can tell.” He stared at his hands, clasped together on the table, his jaw clenched in frustration, eyes swirling in true fear. For her. “I looked everywhere I could think of, and she’s just gone. Her books are in her locker—not that that’s any indication of…anything—and her car’s in the lot. And she definitely wouldn’t leave campus without her car.”

“You have her locker combination?” I asked, and they both just stared at me until I rolled my eyes. “It was a valid question!”

“You think she crossed over?” Tod asked, sitting on the end of the table next to ours, his legs hanging.

“I seriously doubt it,” Nash said. “She
can
cross, of course, being a
mara
. But she’d be just as vulnerable there as we are. And no matter what else you think about her, she’s not stupid.”

“No argument there,” I said reluctantly. If she were stupid, she’d be
so
much easier to deal with. “But if she didn’t cross…” My words faded into uneasy silence as a horrifying possibility occurred to me. “Avari can possess her,” I said, glancing from brother to brother.

“We’ve established this,” Nash said. “He used her to give you that nightmare about him pulling you into the Netherworld.”

Which was now starting to sound prophetic.

“That’s my point.” I stood, my thoughts racing too fast for me to process without freedom of movement. “When he possessed her, he had control of her abilities. So…does that mean he could possess her again and make her cross over?”

That thought was scary enough to make the fine hairs on my arms stand up. But even worse was the knowledge that if
he could make Sabine cross over that way, he could make me do the same thing.

So why hadn’t he? Why would he need human hosts, if he could just make us cross over on our own?

“I don’t think that would work,” Tod said, and my relief came almost before I’d heard his rationale. “You have to have intent to cross over, and even when he’s in control of your body, he’s not in control of your willpower. He can’t make you want to cross over.”

“Sabine did,” I pointed out, frowning over the inconsistency—yet grateful for it.

“Sabine made you dream that you wanted to cross, right?” Nash asked, and I nodded. “She’s had a lot of practice weaving nightmares. Avari hasn’t. For the moment, I think you’re safe from that. But we have to find a way to keep him from possessing us, or this is going to keep happening.”

Tod shrugged. “Being dead seems to do the trick.”

I glanced at him, arms crossed over my chest. “I think we’re looking for something a little less drastic.”

Nash cleared his throat, bringing us back on target. “Okay, we have to find Sabine. And whoever else they’re planning to grab.”

“Any idea who that could be?” Tod asked.

I shook my head. “All I know is that Avari claims to have prepared both the hosts. Which I’m guessing means that he wore them out somehow, so they’d be tired enough to fall asleep at school today.”

“Well, then, the joke’s on him,” Nash said. “Everyone I know could fall asleep at school
every
day.”

“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” I snapped, as the pressure to
do something
started to overwhelm me. “And the fact that it has to be someone with a connection to the Netherworld
narrows it down too much. I can’t think of anyone else who qualifies.”

“I could tell you…” a nauseatingly familiar, glacier-cold voice said from my left, and I turned slowly to find Alec watching us from the entrance to the quad. “But that would ruin the surprise.”

I stood so fast I nearly tripped over my own feet. “Let him go,” I demanded, wishing my own voice held half the authority the hellion’s did.

Avari sauntered toward us in Alec’s tall, lanky body, moving much too smoothly for a human. Or even a half human. “I’ve been in here for almost twelve hours now—thanks to the energy produced by the cesspool of envy that is your school—and I’ve grown much too comfortable to give him up now.”

“Twelve hours…?” But twelve hours ago, Alec was…

Dark rage washed over me, igniting tiny fires in my veins. “It was you the whole time, in Emma’s room. With the ice cream.”

Tod and Nash glanced at me nervously, eyes narrowed in identical questioning expressions, but I ignored them.

“You only pretended you’d let him go.”

Avari shrugged. “You’ve made it difficult to gain access to this body lately, so why give it up once I had it?”

“But the password… How did you know about my bike?” I asked, and both Hudson brothers frowned in confusion.

“Ahh, Ms. Marshall is a veritable fount of information.”

He’d tricked Emma into playing what she thought was a trivia game, then had manually hacked our password. Damn it! That never would have happened if I’d told her what was going on.

But… “I saw you.” I stepped closer, and Nash and Tod moved
up to stand at my sides. “An hour ago, in the Netherworld. Talking to Invidia. You didn’t have Alec then.”

Avari smiled with Alec’s full lips, and the effect was too creepy to bear. “I had him in…what would you call it today? Limbo?”

“Paused? You had him
paused?
” Somehow, that sounded almost worse than being actively possessed. Where had Alec been, when neither he nor Avari were using his body? Some sort of mindless, metaphysical holding cell?

“Precisely. And that would never have been possible, if this generous educational institution hadn’t provided me with the power to control both his body and my own simultaneously.”

“Let him go.” Nash stepped forward when my horror proved too much to fight through for the moment. But Avari had come to make a deal, and he wouldn’t leave until he’d gotten what he wanted.

Or been physically evicted from his host.

“What do you want?” I demanded, trying to gather my thoughts and come up with a plan.

“I want you.” The brown eyes that stared at me were Alec’s but their expression was all hellion. “You come with me now, of your own free will, and I give you my word that I’ll never possess any of your friends again.”

“Stall him,” Tod said, and that’s when I realized Avari could neither see nor hear the reaper. And Tod had a plan. “Keep him talking. Blink if you understand,” he said, and I blinked, careful not to look at him and give away his presence.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. I blinked again, and Tod disappeared.

“No way,” I said to the hellion, hating every second that I was forced to address him in my friend’s body. “You’re gonna
have to do better than that if you expect me to just hand myself over to you.”

Alec’s head cocked to the side, like he was studying a particularly interesting insect. “This isn’t a negotiation, Ms. Cavanaugh. If you don’t cooperate, you’ll be to blame every time I feed through this body, or try on Ms. Marshall’s form and find out exactly what she has to offer.”

I swallowed, fighting through horror and revulsion just to be able to speak. “You’re psychotic.”

“We don’t utilize that term in the Nether. The very concept is considered both obvious and redundant. Now, if you don’t cross over this instant, I swear I will take the reins of your boyfriend’s subconscious the next time he succumbs to slumber, and we’ll see how well you like him when
I’m
in control.”

“Don’t listen to him, Kaylee,” Nash insisted. “I’ll never let that happen.”

Avari laughed, and the cold, sterile joy sounded foreign and harsh coming from Alec’s throat. “We all know you can’t stop me.”

“But
I
can.”

I heard Tod before he appeared, and he appeared just a fraction of a second before he swung a big aluminum toaster in a two-handed grip—at the back of Alec’s head.

Alec’s eyes fluttered, then closed, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious but still breathing, and at least temporarily free from the Netherworld body snatcher.

“One down,” Tod said, grinning over the still form on the grass. “Let’s go evict the other one.”

T
OD STARED AT ME
over Alec’s unmoving form on the grass, still holding the toaster, the flat left side of which was now massively dented. “Kaylee? You okay?”

“Not even kind of.” I shoved hair back from my face and glanced from Tod to Nash, then back. “But having known you both for several months now, I’m starting to see ‘okay’ as a relative term.”

Nash gave me a grim, confident smile, and Tod actually chuckled without letting go of the toaster.

“Okay. I need you to check Sabine’s house, and if you find her, call us,” I said, and Tod nodded. I didn’t think she’d left campus, since her car was still in the lot, but with Sabine, I’d learned to expect the unexpected. And the impulsive. And the vindictive. And the just plain crazy.

“If she’s not at her house, try mine,” Nash added, just before his brother blinked out of sight. “I’ve already checked everywhere she hangs out when she skips class,” he said, as we headed toward the cafeteria entrance.

I shrugged. “So we’ll check again. And if we don’t find her here, we’re gonna have to cross over.”

Nash nodded reluctantly, obviously much more willing to put us both in danger to save Sabine than he’d been for Addison.

He pulled open the door and held it for me, and I stepped past him into the lunchroom—where I could only stare. The cafeteria was
trashed
.

“What happened?” My gaze wandered the food-smeared walls, then snagged on a huge plastic jug of nacho cheese that lay busted open on the floor, oozing smooth orange processed cheese product a couple of feet from my shoes.

“Giant food fight. I’m not sure who started it, but a couple dozen people trashed the place before Goody could get it under control. She suspended thirty-eight kids. The cafeteria staff got pissed when she told them to clean it up, so they walked out, and now all those suspended kids have to spend tomorrow scrubbing the walls. Which is why they sold pizza for lunch in the hall. You didn’t see any of that?”

I shook my head, still stunned. “I was busy falsely accusing Sabine during lunch.” Then I’d sat in my car to cool off until the bell rang for fourth period. Somehow I’d missed the entire spectacular disaster.

Normally, I would have assumed that food fights were a little juvenile for high school, but based on the number of dented pots and busted food containers, I’d say this one was really more of a riot than anything. “This isn’t going to smell any better tomorrow…” I said, stepping over the busted cheese container, on my way to the main entrance. “Let’s go.”

But I’d only taken a few steps when Nash’s hand landed on my arm. “Wait. Did you hear that?”

I’d only heard the sticky squeak of my shoes on the filthy
floor, so I stopped and listened. And I heard it, too. A voice, soft and smooth, and feminine, in spite of the low pitch.

My chest seemed to constrict around my heart. I knew that voice, though I’d only heard it once. “Invidia,” I whispered. “She’s already here.” And Sabine would be with her.

Suddenly I wished I hadn’t divided our resources by sending Tod to look for her.

Nash held one finger to his lips and I nodded as I followed him toward the kitchen, carefully sidestepping most of the mess. We followed the empty serving lane past the glass-topped ice cream freezer and into the heart of the Eastlake cafeteria, a maze of commercial-size stoves, dishwashers, and deep stainless-steel sinks. And there at the back, between one of the sinks and a tall metal shelf filled with commercial-size cans, stood Sabine.

And Emma.

“Em?” I asked

She smiled at me slowly with a foreign tilt of her head, and that’s when I understood. Emma had fallen asleep in history during the video, and Invidia had made her move. My best friend was the second host.

Emma’s body stood half-behind Sabine, pressed against the
mara
’s right side, her mouth inches from Sabine’s ear. She watched me closely, a predatory gleam in her normally bright brown eyes, lips half-parted, like I’d interrupted her in midsentence.

“Is this the sweet little
bean sidhe?
” Invidia’s voice asked, while Emma’s hand stroked Sabine’s bare arm. “See how she taunts you? How she flaunts the boy in front of you? She knows how you feel. She knows how
he
feels, and she doesn’t need him, yet she clings to him, just to keep him from you.”

“Sabine, that’s not true…” I moved closer slowly, scanning
my peripheral vision for anything I could use against Invidia without permanently injuring Emma.

“Hellions can’t lie,” Sabine said, and her gaze blazed with hatred. With envy so bitter I could practically taste it on the air between us. How could she suddenly hate me, when she’d called me a friend a few hours ago? Was this because of my false accusation—which I’d actually believed at the time? Or was some of it because of Invidia, and the storm of envy she’d unleashed in our school?

Surely the lure of it was even thicker, so close to the hellion who controlled it.

“Hellions can’t
intentionally
lie,” Nash corrected, stepping up on my right. “But they’re free to guess and make assumptions, just like anyone else.”

“Look how they work together to subvert you…” Emma’s long blond hair fell over Sabine’s shoulder, standing out against the dark strands as the hellion’s voice slid over me, sweet and smooth as honey on my tongue. If
I
could hardly resist her pull, how was Sabine supposed to, considering how badly she actually wanted what I had?

“She’s changed him. Lessened him,” Invidia continued, and I could see that Sabine was listening. That the hellions words were hitting their target—not Sabine’s ears, but her heart. “But with her gone, you could fix him. You could have him back, and it would be like it was before. Without the meddlesome little female
bean sidhe
to get in your way…”

“Sabine, don’t do this,” I begged, taking a single step toward them. “Make her leave Emma alone. Em has nothing to do with this.”

“This Emma-body?” Invidia looked surprised, then she exhaled a languid, seductive laugh from my best friend’s throat. “Emma Marshall has everything to do with this,” the hellion
insisted, leaning closer to whisper directly into Sabine’s ear, though we could all hear her. “She is part of the problem. Part of the effortless existence simply handed to this little
bean sidhe,
while life has given you only battles to be fought.”

“Bina, please…” Nash begged, and Sabine’s conflicted gaze flicked his way. But that made things worse, because she couldn’t see him without seeing me, and seeing us together only reinforced the poison the hellion dripped straight into her ear.

“He’s part of it, too. Part of her gilded privilege.” Emma’s hand reached Sabine’s fingers, then trailed slowly upward again, and the
mara
’s arm twitched. “The loving boyfriend, the loyal friends, the protective father. She has everything, and you have only hunger. Insatiable, unbearable hunger, clawing, devouring you from the inside, night and day.”

I edged forward again, and Nash came with me. “Sabine, you can have all that, too!” I insisted. Well, maybe not the father, but that wasn’t my fault. “And you don’t need to bargain with a hellion to make it happen!”

“She lies,” Invidia purred, and Sabine shuddered when Emma’s lips brushed her ear. “People are drawn to the sweet little
bean sidhe,
to bathe in her bright innocence. When you enter a room, they tremble and shrink back. You must work to hide the horrors they see in your eyes, and she has only to smile. You cannot have what she has—not
any
of it—on your own. But
I
can give it to you. I can give you love, and acceptance, and a smile brighter than the sun. I can give you people, and attention, and a steady stream of sleeping mortals, just waiting to scream in their slumber for you.”

“She can’t do it, Sabine,” I insisted, stepping past a stainless-steel counter, now less than ten feet from them. “Even if she thinks she can, it won’t really be what you want. She can’t
change your species, and she can’t give you real friends. No matter what she promises.”

“What does she know of your pain? Of your isolation?” Invidia hissed, and a deep chill traveled through me at the sibilance in her voice. “She knows nothing of your darkness, yet she would extinguish the one flame glowing on your horizon.” Em’s gaze flicked to Nash at my side, and Sabine’s followed.

“You need only cross into the Nether…” The hellion slid Emma’s arm around Sabine’s waist in a possessive gesture. “Deliver me this young, ripe Emma-body and sign away your soul. Such a small price, for a lifetime of peace and pleasure.”

“Sabine, no!” Nash cried, and when I glanced at him, I saw his irises
churning
with fear and rage. “If you cross over, you’ll never make it back. She won’t let you.”

“Smart
bean sidhe
boy…” Invidia purred. “He still wants to protect you. If not for
her,
he would be yours. Cross over now, and I give you my word you will return, the moment you sign. You will live out your full lifeline here, with everything she has, but you truly deserve.”

My thoughts raced so fast the room was starting to spin. Invidia might be able to give things to Sabine, but she couldn’t take them from me. Could she?

I saw the decision in Sabine’s eyes a moment before she disappeared. She loved Nash too much—and evidently envied me too much—to resist the offer. “No!” I lunged for Emma, desperate to pull her away from Sabine before the
mara
crossed over. But I was too late. My fingers barely brushed the fine hairs on Emma’s arm, then they were both gone.

“No!” Nash took me by both arms and made me look at him, forcing me to see through my own encroaching shock.

Emma was in the Netherworld. And I had let it happen.
Humans couldn’t survive in the Netherworld, and even if Em proved to be the exception, she’d never be the same. How could she be, if she saw even a fraction of the grotesque, horrifying creatures who lived there, every last one of them waiting to devour her in one way or another?

“Kaylee, we have to get them back. You have to cross us over. Now!”

And that’s when I understood the depth of Invidia’s plan. She couldn’t take what I had from me and give it to Sabine. Surely that was beyond her power. But if I went to the Netherworld, she—or Avari—could enslave me for the rest of my life. Or they could just kill me and take my soul, which was what they probably had in mind for Emma. Eventually, anyway.

We’d been set up. Invidia had meant for us to hear her talking to Sabine, and she meant for us to see them cross over. And she wanted us to follow.

But even knowing that, knowing both hellions would be there waiting for us, we had to cross. I couldn’t leave Emma—or even the terminally conflicted
mara
—to the hellions’ mercy. Not and live with myself afterward.

“I know,” I whispered, my voice having succumbed to terror and shock.
Get it together, Kaylee
. “Okay, let’s think about this.”

“No, let’s go get them back. I can’t cross over without you, Kaylee. Come on…”

“Wait a second.” I pulled Nash to the opposite side of the room, careful not to get too close to the walls in case the Crimson Creeper invasion had spread to the kitchen. “We’d be stupid to cross over in the same spot they last saw us. They’ll be right there waiting to grab us.”

A current of surprise and relief twisted through the fear churning in his irises. “Good thinking.”

“Thanks.”

Nash was usually the calm, cool one, but he wasn’t thinking clearly at all this time.
It’s Sabine
. He wanted her back as badly as I wanted Emma back, and I couldn’t help wondering if Tod was right. Were Nash and Sabine meant to be together? Was I the only thing standing in their way.

No time for that now…
“Give me your hand.”

His fingers tightened around mine and a lump formed in my throat. I’d held his hand so many times before, but it had never felt this…bittersweet. Sabine needed him, and he needed to go save her. And he needed me to get him there. But what did I need from him?

“Kay?” Nash’s forehead furrowed in fear and concern. “You ready?”

I exhaled heavily. “Nope. Let’s go.”

Calling forth my wail was much too simple that time, because of how easy it was to picture Emma dying—again. I’d promised her I wouldn’t let that happen, no matter what. And I was
not
going to break my promise.

When the wail faded from my ears and the pain in my throat subsided, my eyes flew open and I scanned the Netherworld-version kitchen around us. Thin tendrils of creeper vine had snaked in from the cafeteria but, though they reached for us, slowly slithering along the walls and floor, they hadn’t grown enough to completely overwhelm the room yet.

The sink faucets dripped typically rank, gloppy substances, but few of the other appliances had bled through the barrier.

Emma and Sabine stood in the middle of the kitchen, exactly where they’d crossed over, only now my best friend was back in her own body—and obviously in shock. Sabine held Em’s forearm, and I couldn’t tell whether the
mara
was trying to protect her or control her.

Avari and Invidia faced them from separate sides of the room, so that Sabine couldn’t keep an eye on both hellions at once.

“Kaylee…?” Emma’s brown eyes were wide, but not truly focused when her gaze slid to me from Invidia, whose long, sizzling hair flowed rapidly now with excitement. Drops of it rolled down her clothes without damaging the material, then fell to bubble and burn little holes in the linoleum tile. Emma winced at the sizzle. “Where are we? This is hell, right? I’m in hell?”

“It’s the Netherworld, Em.” My version of hell. “It’s gonna be fine. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Am I dead, Kay?” Her words were slurred with shock, and my heart broke. She’d fallen asleep in history class and woken up in hell, and she thought I’d let it happen. That I’d let her die when I could have saved her.

“Soon, my dear…” Invidia crooned. “Very, very soon.”