My Soul to Steal (7 page)

I
SAT UP IN BED
, sticky with sweat. My pillow was damp from tears, and lingering fear pulsed through me, throbbing with each beat of my heart. I wasn’t worth loving, or even remembering. I tried too hard, but gave too little. Nash had wasted his time on me, and selling me to Avari was the only way to recoup his loss.

My worst fears, ripped from my own soul and left bleeding like an open wound.

Then the room came into focus through my tears, and I shook off sleep. With awareness came logic. And anger.

Fury, like I’d never felt.

“Sabine, get the hell out of my room!” I snapped through clenched teeth, remembering not to yell at the last minute, to keep from waking my dad. “Stay out of my head and out of my dreams, and stay away from Nash, or I swear your last semester of high school will make you homesick for prison!”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even sure she was still there. But I had no doubt she
had
been. She’d given me the new nightmare, playing on my own fears. And that was the worst part.

Sabine was a horrible, cruel, emotional parasite, but she couldn’t have played architect in my dreams if I hadn’t given her the building material. The fears were real. Deep down, I was terrified that Nash wouldn’t stay clean. That he didn’t love me enough to even try. Because I wasn’t worth loving. Why else would my father have left me with his brother and let me be hospitalized?

My resolve wavered again, and I clutched at it like a life preserver, refusing to give in. Refusing to wallow in my own fear, which was no doubt what Sabine wanted.

I threw back the covers and grabbed my cell from the nightstand, pacing back and forth on my rug while the phone rang. My alarm clock read 2:09.

“Kaylee?” Nash sounded groggy. “What’s wrong?”

“Is she there?” I demanded, stomping all the way to my closet, then turning to stomp the length of my bed.

“Is who here?” As if he didn’t know!

“Sabine. Is she there with you? Tell me the truth.”

His bedsprings creaked. “You woke me up in the middle of the night to ask if Sabine’s with me?”

“It’s not like that’s a stretch, considering how late she was there last night.”

Nash groaned and I heard him roll over. “I sent her home hours ago. Before midnight,” he added. “Why?”

“Because she just gave me another nightmare, Nash. She was feeding from me in my sleep, like a great big flea!” Which made me feel a bit like a dog and gave me a huge case of the creeps. “I don’t want her in my head, or in my dreams, or in my room.” Or in my life, or in his. “If you don’t do something about her, I will.”

I had no idea what I would do, but I’d come up with something. Fortunately, Nash didn’t press for details.

“I will. I’ll take care of it, Kaylee. I swear.”

“What on earth did you guys talk about? ’Cause it obviously wasn’t the fact that
she is not allowed to stalk my dreams!
”

“Kay, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“It better not.” Sabine had invaded my most private thoughts. “It’s almost as bad as having you in my head.”

Nash’s sigh sounded like it had completely deflated him. “I don’t…” He stopped and started over. “I said I was sorry about that.
So
sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Because he’d been high when he’d tried to Influence me into his bed. “It’ll never happen again. Can we please just move on from that? Please?”

“
You
can, obviously. Forgive me if I’m having a little more trouble with that. Especially with your new girlfriend playing dreamweaver in my sleep!”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Kaylee.”

I sank onto my bed, clenching one fist around a handful of my comforter. “Well, she’s not much of a friend to you, either, if this is how she treats your…people you care about.”

He sighed again. “You have her at a disadvantage. She thinks she has to use her entire arsenal just to even the odds.”

“I have
her
at a disadvantage? Tod says the two of you were attached at the hip. Or was it the crotch?” Yes, I was being petty and unreasonable. That may have had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t getting any sleep, and I’d just had my psychic energy drained by my ex-boyfriend’s leech of an ex-girlfriend.

Nash’s bedsprings creaked again, and the soft click told me he’d just turned on his bedside lamp. “Are you mad at me because I slept with someone else two and a half years ago? Before I even met you?”

“Yes!” I stood again and rubbed my forehead, well aware
that my lack of logic wasn’t helping my case. But I couldn’t help how I felt, and he wasn’t doing much to alleviate my worries. “And don’t say that’s not fair, because ‘fair’ isn’t even in the equation anymore. What you let happen to me wasn’t fair, either. And I’m sure Scott would agree.”

For a moment, I heard only silence over the line. I’d gone too far. I knew it, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never been so mad in my life, and now that the dam had ruptured, I couldn’t repair the damage. The overflow of anger wasn’t just about Sabine and this nightmare. It was about everything beyond my control that had happened in the past couple of months. Everything I’d never vented about before, but suddenly
had
to address, or I’d explode.

“Are you trying to hurt me? It’s okay if you are. I know I deserve it. I just want to be clear on the point of this whole conversation, so I’ll know when we’ve accomplished whatever it is you need.”

I had to think about that for a second. “No. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to heal me.”

“Is it working?” He sounded so logical. So frustratingly reasonable, when I wanted to scream and shout and throw things until I felt better, logic be damned.

“I don’t know,” I had to admit at last, sinking into my desk chair.

More silence. Then, “What was the nightmare about?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, too quickly. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was that he’d fall off the wagon. That he’d go back to selling his memories of me and trying to Influence me into things I wasn’t ready for. That he might let Avari take over my body again, if that’s what it took to get his next high.

Listing my fear—the facts—like that, the logical part of me
couldn’t even believe I was thinking about forgiving him. The smart thing would be to let Sabine have him. Let the ex-con and the former addict have each other, and wash my hands of the whole mess.

But I couldn’t, because of the one truth it didn’t hurt for me to think about: the guy who’d done those things to me wasn’t the real Nash.
My
Nash was the guy who’d defied my family to save my sanity, and fought hellions alongside me, and put himself in danger just to help protect me.

This other boy—this boy whose addiction was literally the thing of my nightmares—he wasn’t even real. It wasn’t him doing those things, it was the frost. The Demon’s Breath, which had suppressed—maybe even corroded—his soul. Changed who he was with each poisonous breath.

If he’d been human, the damage would have been irreversible. Part of it might be, anyway. But if it wasn’t, then Nash was still the first and only guy outside of my family who’d ever loved me. And I couldn’t turn my back on him if there was even a possibility of getting that Nash back.

I still wanted that Nash. I still needed to feel his hand in mine. I wanted to see him smile like he had before and know that I was the only thing he craved. I wanted to feel him behind me and know he had my back, whether we faced bitchy cousins or evil, soul-stealing hellions.

“Kay, can I come over?” Nash asked. “Can I please come see you?”

My heart thumped painfully, in spite of my best effort to calm it, and I sat up straight in my chair. “Now?”

“Yeah. I need to see you. We can just sit on the couch and talk. I just… I want to see you without the rest of the student body staring at us.”

The ache in my chest spread into my throat, which tried to
close around the only answer that made sense. “It’s the middle of the night, Nash. My dad would kill you. Then he’d kill me.” Just because he’d called to check up on Nash while he was sick didn’t mean my dad wanted us back together. If he knew I was even thinking about taking Nash back, he’d make me get my head examined.

“Besides,” I continued, standing to pace again before he could protest. “Alec’s on the couch, so we wouldn’t exactly have privacy.”

“What?” Nash’s voice went dark and angry with just that one syllable, and I realized I hadn’t told him Alec was staying with us. I’d hardly spoken to him at all since the Winter Carnival. “He’s there with you, while your dad’s asleep? When your dad’s not even there? And you didn’t tell me?”

I rolled my eyes, though he couldn’t see them. “Don’t start. Sabine was in your room a couple of hours ago, actively trying to get into your pants while your mom was at work. And don’t even get me started on the list of things you didn’t tell me.”

Another moment of silence. Then, “Fair enough. But I can handle Sabine. I know her. You don’t know anything about Alec, except that he spent a quarter of a century working for a hellion. Not exactly a stellar recommendation. Has he tried anything?”

“Gross, Nash, he’s forty-five years old.”

“That won’t matter when you’re legal and he still looks nineteen.”

I sank onto my bed and let my head thump against the headboard. “You’re totally overreacting. He thinks I’m a kid.”

“That’s not going to stop him from looking.”

“You don’t even know him.”

Nash laughed harshly, like I’d just told him rainbow-colored unicorns had flown through my bedroom window. “I know
because he’s there, and you’re there, and he hasn’t seen a girl without tentacles or claws in twenty-six years.”

“Wow. You make me sound like such a catch.”

“I can’t win this argument, can I?”

“Nope. I’m going back to sleep now.”

“Lock your bedroom door.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Good night, Nash. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I hung up before he could argue and turned off my lamp.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make myself go back to sleep for fear that Sabine would be waiting to attack me again from my own subconscious. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Nash, huddled in a corner, telling me I wasn’t worth staying clean for. So I got up and padded into the kitchen, where I found Alec wide-awake, fully dressed, and halfway through a box of snack cakes.

“You, too?” I asked, trudging past him to take a glass from the cabinet.

“Kaylee?” Alec coughed, nearly choking on his snack in surprise.

“Yeah. I live here, remember?” I ran tap water until it turned cold, then filled my glass.

“Of course. I didn’t expect you to be awake. At this hour.”

I raised one brow at him over my water glass. “You okay? You sound…tired.” And less than perfectly coherent. “And Dad’s going to kill you for eating all his cupcakes.”

An annoyed expression passed over Alec’s strong, dark features, but was gone almost before I’d seen it.

“You wanna hear something interesting?” I asked. “And by interesting, I mean terrifying beyond all reason…”

One dark brow rose as Alec closed the end of the snack box. “You have my attention.”

I had his attention? “If you’re trying to sound your real age, I think you’re finally getting it right.”

He frowned, like I’d spoken Greek and he was trying to translate.

“Anyway, remember my nightmare last night? I just had another one, but it turns out that they aren’t real dreams. Well, not natural dreams, anyway.” I leaned against the counter with the sink at my back. “Nash’s ex is giving them to me. On purpose. She’s a
mara,
if you can believe it. The living personification of a nightmare. How messed up is that?”

“Nash’s former lover is a
mara?
” Alec wasn’t even looking at me now. He was staring into space as if that little nugget of information took some time to sink in. I knew exactly how he felt.

“Yeah. She wants him back and has decided I’m in her way. But I have news for that little sleep-terrorist—it’s going to take more than a couple of bad dreams to scare me off, so I hope she has something bigger up her sleeve.”

But as soon as I’d said it, I wanted to take it back. Challenging Sabine felt a little bit like staring a lion in the mouth, daring it to pounce.

“Y
OU OKAY
?”
MY DAD
asked, pouring coffee into his travel mug as I walked into the kitchen. He wore his usual jeans and steel-toed work boots, his chin scruffy with dark stubble above the collar of a flannel shirt.

“Just tired.” I couldn’t go back to sleep after my middle-of-the-night chat with Alec, so I’d stretched out on my bed, silently rehashing my argument with Nash, analyzing every word he’d said ad nauseam. “Can I have some of that?”

My father frowned at the pot of coffee, hesitating. Then he gave up and poured a second mug for me. “If you need coffee at sixteen, I hate to think what mornings will be like when you’re my age.”

Considering how many times I’d nearly died since the beginning of my junior year, I’d settle for just surviving to his age. But I knew better than to say that out loud.

“Hey, Dad?” I said, pulling a box of cereal from the cabinet overhead.

“Hmm?” He opened his carton of cupcakes—the breakfast of champions—and frowned into it. “Did you eat my snacks?”

“No. Dad, what do you think the chances are of two teachers dying on the same day?”

He looked up from his box, still frowning, but now at me. “I guess that depends on the circumstances. Why?”

“’Cause Mr. Wesner and Mrs. Bennigan both died yesterday. At their desks, at least six hours apart. You didn’t see it on the news last night?” The story had been a short, somber community interest piece—a small Dallas suburb mourning the loss of two teachers at once. “There were no signs of foul play, so they’re calling it a really weird, tragic coincidence.”

“And you don’t believe that?” His irises held steady—it took a lot to rattle my father—but unease was clear in the firm line of his jaw.

“I don’t know what to think. It probably
is
just a coincidence, but with everything else that’s gone down this year…” I couldn’t help but wonder. And I could tell my dad was thinking the same thing.