With All My Soul (10 page)

I nodded. But I didn’t look up. I couldn’t look at him, because
I wasn’t sure what I’d see swirling in his eyes this time.

“That baby will never be on my list. Just like his father never
would have. Just like Avari never will be. Because they’re...they’re monsters,
Kaylee. Predators.”

“Sabine’s a predator. She can’t live without hurting
others.” That sucked, but it was true. “If she can control it, so can
Traci’s baby.”

“No.” Tod stepped into the bathroom and stood at my back, close
enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin through my shirt but not close
enough to actually touch me. “Sabine’s the exception, Kaylee. She’s native to
our world. She’s the product of two human parents. She’s a predator, but not a
monster. Beck was different. His son will be different. You know what Beck did
to Traci. You know that he would have done the same thing to Emma. And to
Sophie. And to you, if you weren’t immune to his abilities.” Because I was a
bean sidhe.
“He feeds to survive, just like
everyone else in both worlds. The difference for incubi is...what he did to
Traci. To your friend Danica. They had no choice.” He stopped talking, waiting
for a response from me, but I had none. I didn’t know what to say.

“Kaylee, look at me, please. I need to know that you know I’m
not just being cruel.” He closed what little distance stood between us and
pressed his chest against my back. He ran his hands slowly down my arms, and
finally I met his gaze in the mirror and saw the truth swirling in his eyes.

Regret. Disappointment. Fear.

He didn’t like telling me what he was telling me, but he felt
it had to be done.

“If we help Traci bring another incubus into the world, he’s
going to do what his father did, to hundreds of girls your age or younger. Maybe
thousands over his lifetime. But I can’t live with the knowledge that he did it
even once, and we helped make that possible.”

Finally, I turned, and he was so close I had to crane my neck
to look into his eyes. “But you don’t know that. Incubi don’t have to feed
during sex. They can feed from lust. Without...touching. Traci could raise him
to do that. Surely nurture has as much as nature to do with how any kid turns
out. Even incubi.”

Tod shook his head slowly. Sadly. “Kaylee, that won’t happen.
Yes, it
could
happen, but it won’t. That’d be the
incubi version of living on nothing but cabbage. He’d slowly starve until he got
so desperate for sustenance that he gave in to hunger. And maybe that’s not
entirely his fault. I’m in no position to judge a creature for doing what’s in
his nature. But would you seriously want your teenage daughter anywhere near
Traci’s son when he hits puberty and his appetite kicks in?”

“I’m not going to have a daughter.” Ever. Nor a son.

Tod exhaled slowly. “I know. Me, neither. But you get my point,
right? What if it were you? What if you weren’t a
bean
sidhe
and Beck had made you...do things?” The swirling in his eyes
grew angrier and more intense at the thought. “But what if you didn’t
know
he’d made you do it? What if you thought you were
just the kind of person who’d cheat on her boyfriend, or sleep with a teacher,
or give away something that should mean something? What if
that
had been your first time?”

My stomach churned. What if I’d lost my virginity to my evil
math teacher with no idea I’d been under the influence of incubus pheromones at
the time? What would that have done to my relationship with Tod? What would that
have done to the rest of my life?

“Do you really want some other girl to go through that because
we helped bring an incubus into the world?”

I shook my head. “But I promised Emma I’d try.” And I wasn’t
going to let those horrible things happen. If her son grew up to be dangerous, I
was both prepared and willing to do what had to be done. At least, I would be by
then. Surely.

“You did try. And it’s a moot point anyway, because I don’t
have any extras. Reapers never have extras, unless they’ve gone rogue.”

I’d only met two rogue reapers, and that was two more than most
people would ever meet. But one of them was dead, and the other—Thane—I had no
way to find. And I wouldn’t go looking for him even if I knew how, because
there’s a big difference between risky and dangerous. Between determined and
stupid.

And anyway, I wasn’t that desperate just yet. There was still
one more possibility....

But I clamped a lid on that thought before it could show in my
eyes. I rarely disagreed with Tod, and I wasn’t sure this was actually one of
those times. I needed more time to think, and there was no use worrying him
before I knew there was anything for him to worry
about.

Chapter Nine

I stayed with Tod, and we made the most of the last
half hour of the day, then, when he had to go to work, I blinked into my room at
home to check on everyone.

My dad was asleep in his recliner in the living room with the
TV on, his crutches on the floor next to the chair. “Dad.” I shook him awake,
and he blinked at me slowly. Groggily. “You fell asleep in your chair
again.”

He pulled the lever to retract the attached ottoman and I
helped him stand, then handed him his crutches. He glanced at his watch. “Tod
went to work?”

“Yeah.” No sense denying where I’d been until midnight.

He adjusted the crutches beneath his arms. “I know you don’t
sleep here anymore, Kaylee. But I’m not mad. You’re as grown as you’re going to
get.”

“I don’t sleep anywhere, Dad. Try not to read too much into
that.”

He wouldn’t have said that if he were fully awake. If he
weren’t on pain pills, because the stab wound in his thigh still hurt like hell.
It bothered him that curfews, healthy meals, and a good night’s sleep were
wasted on me. It bothered him that I spent so much time at Tod’s, where there
wasn’t a door to leave open. It bothered him that there was little he could do
to protect me now, and it bothered me that he seemed to think that meant I no
longer needed a dad.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I still needed
him. I loved him more than ever. And there were days when I wanted nothing more
than to be a normal seventeen-year-old, worried about her dad watching the clock
on prom night, which was coming up in...four days.

How the hell had that snuck up on me?

Em and I had picked out our dresses together. She’d sworn that
prom was exactly the motivation she needed to return to school after her own
murder and that dress shopping would help her get to know her new body, but I
saw her face in the mirror every time a slinky, sparkly gown fit too loose in
the bust and hips and fell too long over her legs. She didn’t want to go to prom
as Lydia.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go at all, but I’d promised her
months ago that we’d go together, with or without dates, and she’d been planning
our first junior/senior prom since we were freshmen.

Her dress was red and sleek and dramatic, and it looked great
with her darker Lydia hair.

My dress was gold. It was long and full, and it sparkled in
every little bit of available light. My dad had spent money we probably couldn’t
afford on that dress because he’d said that in it, I shined brighter than the
sun. Just like my mother.

Tod said my dress glittered like sunlight on the ocean. He
found a gold vest and tie to match, but he refused to show off his tux in
advance for fear of forever tainting the other guys’ prom experience with
feelings of inadequacy.

So I would have to wait to see him in it, but I had no doubt
the wait would be worth it.

With my father in his room for the night, snoring two minutes
after I’d closed the door, I opened my own bedroom door to find Styx sitting on
the end of the bed staring at me, like she’d just been waiting for me to
appear.

She probably had. Something about the fact that she was a
Netherworld half-breed meant that she could see and hear me even when normal
people couldn’t. She’d probably known I was home before I’d even woken up my
dad.

As soon as I stepped into my room, she jumped down from the bed
and ran at me expectantly, tiny pink tongue hanging from her mouth by half an
inch. I picked her up and scruffed her fur, amazed for the millionth time how
small and fluffy and normal-looking she was in that moment, considering that if
there was danger lurking anywhere near me, on either plane of existence, she’d
be baring small teeth sharp enough to shred human flesh all the way to the
bone.

Em was asleep on her bed with her bedside table lamp on, and I
noticed that while Styx curled up with me anytime I sat in one place for more
than five minutes, she never curled up with my best friend, even though they saw
each other much more often now that Em lived here and I was dead. Styx tolerated
her. She even seemed to like her. But Styx and I had bonded in her infancy, and
she would forever be loyal to me above all others.

Sometimes I wondered what would happen to her if and when I
died...permanently.

Before her death, Emma and Toto were just as close as Styx and
I, but she’d decided to leave Toto—Styx’s littermate—with Traci, to protect her
and the baby. Just in case.

I set Styx down and carefully untangled the knot of earbud
wires from Emma’s hand, wrapped them around her iPod, then set it on the
nightstand. Then I pulled her covers up to her waist—her feet looked cold—and
turned off the lamp.

After I fed Styx and checked to make sure all the doors were
locked—not that anything I truly feared needed an open door to get to me—I
blinked out of my house and into the middle of Madeline’s office. She stood with
her back to me, a stack of papers in her hand, like she’d just picked them up
from the credenza behind her desk.

She turned and saw me and gave an uncharacteristically
undignified little
yip
of surprise. And dropped the
entire stack of papers to clutch her heart. As if she could possibly have a
heart attack when she was already dead. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been dead,
but we had a pool going, with a bonus included for whoever was able to actually
obtain the answer.

“Kaylee! You’ve certainly gotten stealthier in the past few
weeks.” She didn’t look entirely impressed by that fact.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“What can I do for you?” Madeline sat in the chair behind her
large dark wood desk and waved a hand at the pair of leather-padded armchairs on
my side. When her boss had found out exactly how dire our situation was, when
Avari was stealing souls pell-mell from the human plane, he’d increased our
department’s budget and tossed a little more manpower our way.

Too bad all of that came after all the death and chaos and
after Thane stole the hellions’ collection of souls, which prevented them from
appearing on the human plane again, at least until they could renew their
supply.

I was assuming they hadn’t yet managed that, based on the fact
that I’d only seen them in borrowed—possessed—bodies since then.

“I...um...” I sank into the chair on the right and clasped my
hands in my lap to keep from fidgeting. Looking nervous wouldn’t do me any
favors. “Well, Tod’s at work, and everyone else I know is asleep, and I...”

Her smile got a little kinder. “You’re bored.”

“Yeah.” That wasn’t entirely a lie. My boredom usually peaked
in the middle of the night, and at first the shortage of company and the
complete lack of anything to keep me busy had led to a dangerous melancholy
period, during which I’d lost the desire to do...well, anything. I hadn’t
snapped out of it until Avari started parading the ghosts of my past—everyone
I’d failed to save—before me and making me “kill” them all over again.

The melancholy hadn’t returned. It had been replaced with a
relentless thirst for justice.

Though Ira would call that rage.

“Well, fortunately, things have slowed down around here, and
you know we have two new reclamation agents now.”

Yes, I knew. My dad called it the “hurry up and wait”
phenomenon. They raised me from the dead to help them with a very
bean sidhe
–specific emergency job, and now that that
job was over—at least, as long as Avari was stuck in the Netherworld—they had
much less immediate need of me. And since I was the rookie among more
experienced employees again, I got the smallest, simplest, least complicated
jobs. Which I was fine with. I was still in high school, after all. But...

“I was thinking. Thane got away with several stolen souls.
Shouldn’t we be...reclaiming them? I mean, if the others are too busy, I guess I
could look into it.” That sounded casual. Right?

Madeline folded her hands on her desk. “Kaylee, Thane is a
rogue reaper. He’s completely beyond our authority. The reapers police their
own.”

“But he stole souls. Lots of them.” I hadn’t been able to
rescue them from him at the time, because Em had just died and Lydia’s body was
on the verge of death. I’d had to act quickly to save one of them. Or, a piece
of each of them. “Besides, we deal with hellions who’ve stolen souls, and
they’re way more dangerous than rogue reapers.”

Madeline nodded. “It’s not about the danger. It’s about the
jurisdiction. There’s no other agency in place to deal with hellions when they
steal souls, but the reapers have their own authority. Around here, that’s Levi,
and I’m not going to step on his toes, especially after everything he’s done to
help us recently.”

“But—”

“No.” She leaned closer to me over her desk. “Thane’s a reaper.
Let the reapers deal with him.”

“They’re the ones who lost him in the first place!” When he’d
killed my mother, then come back to kill me when I was three.

Madeline’s frown deepened. “Was there something else I can help
you with, Kaylee?”

That was a dismissal if I’d ever heard one.

“No. Thanks.” I stood and headed toward the door, because using
it seemed more polite than just disappearing right in front of her, and I’d
obviously already pissed her off. I paused in the doorway with my hand wrapped
around the doorframe. “Hey, Madeline?”

“Yes?” She sounded annoyed now.

“Whatever happened to Mr. Beck’s soul?”

“Mr. Beck?”

“The incubus. The one who killed me. His soul was in my dagger
when I turned it in that first time. Did it get recycled along with the
others?”

Madeline’s brows rose in sudden interest, and she put down the
pen she’d picked up. “No. As it turns out, an incubus soul is a relative rarity,
and it carries quite a bit of power. And since no one was expecting it at the
recycling facility—your incubus wasn’t on the list, of course—Levi decided to
keep it as a sort of...souvenir. A conversation piece.”

“Is he allowed to do that?”

“Well, no. Not technically. But he wasn’t allowed to bring back
your young reaper suitor either. He did that as a favor to me—” because I’d
refused to work for her if she couldn’t bring Tod back to me “—so I will, of
course, be overlooking his small indiscretion. As will you, naturally.”

“Naturally...” I hardly heard the word as I spoke it, because
my head was spinning with other thoughts. Other possibilities.

Levi still had Beck’s soul. If it would work for the father, it
would work for the son. No one else would have to die to give Traci’s baby
life—a pattern that would hopefully continue throughout the little parasite’s
existence.

“What exactly is a conversation piece, anyway?” That wasn’t
really a lie either, because I hadn’t actually said I didn’t know the
definition. I’d just implied it.

“It’s a piece of art or decor intended to start conversations.
Thus the name. In this case, it’s a highly stylized letter opener. It’s
obviously just for show. Something interesting to set on his desk. And now when
people ask about it, he can tell them not only the history of the letter opener
itself—it’s hellion-forged steel he won in some kind of gambling game—but that
it contains the soul of the only incubus ever known to have died at the hands of
one of his victims.”

I started to argue with that statement. I wasn’t an incubus’s
victim in the traditional sense. He hadn’t wanted my body; he’d wanted my soul.
However, he had killed me, so Levi’s story wasn’t really inaccurate....

But I had just as much right to Beck’s soul as he did. More
really. And I wanted Traci to have it.

“Thanks, Madeline. Just let me know when you need me. I’ll
be...around.”

“Thank you, Kaylee.” I’d been dismissed again, and this time I
was eager to go.

I blinked from Madeline’s office back into my bedroom, where I
silently lifted the broken dagger from my dresser. I’d taken it from Beck—it was
the weapon that had killed us both—and he’d bought it from Avari, who’d
evidently ripped the metal from the Netherworld ground and forged the dagger
himself.

That thought made me pause, stunned to realize that Avari,
Beck, and I were tangled up in as intimate and distressing a knot as Nash,
Sabine, Tod, and I. Hundreds of years before my birth Avari had made the blade
that would kill me, but I’d survived its use—and my own death—to retain
ownership of my own murder weapon. Which he no doubt wanted back.

On second thought, the Avari/Beck/me tangle was much more
disturbing than anything forged in adolescent hormones and rooted in love.

I stared at the dagger in my hand for a moment, tracing the
jagged, broken edges with my gaze. Invidia, the hellion of envy, had broken off
both of the points on the night Emma had died. Afterward, Tod had gone back to
the Netherworld to retrieve it for me, but he wasn’t able to find the severed
points.

Fortunately, the jagged blades were just as scary—and almost as
sharp—as the original weapon had been.

I slid the double-bladed dagger beneath the waistband of my
jeans, at the base of my spine, uncomfortably aware that if I made the wrong
move, I’d knick my own backside with both broken points. But I couldn’t exactly
walk into reaper headquarters wielding a weapon.

In fact, I couldn’t just walk into reaper headquarters at all.
I wasn’t even supposed to know where it was, and if Levi found out Tod had told
me, he’d get in trouble. Which meant I couldn’t afford to wander around looking
for his office. I’d need to know exactly where I was going. Or as exactly as
possible, to cut down on the walking I’d have to do. I couldn’t make myself
invisible to reapers.

And I only knew one person who might know where Levi’s office
was
and
be willing to tell me.

I blinked into Madeline’s apartment and spared a moment for
relief over the fact that I already knew she was still at work. Luca’s room was
easy to find—there were only two bedrooms, and Madeline’s didn’t even have a
bed. Did the woman truly never sleep?