My Soul to Lose

My Soul to Lose

Rachel Vincent

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

Thanks first of all to Lisa Heuer for the technical

advice and consultation. Without your contributions,

this story would have been impossible for me to write.

Thanks also to my early readers, Rinda, Chandra,

Heather, and Jen. Your opinions and advice were

invaluable, and the story is so much better for them

both.

Thanks to Mary-Theresa Hussey and Natashya Wilson

for so much enthusiasm and encouragement, which

keep me smiling.

And thanks finally to everyone out there reading about

Kaylee for the first time. I’ve poured my heart into her

continuing story, along with some delicate pieces of

my own soul, and I’m so very honored and excited that

you’ve decided to give her a chance. I hope you like

her as much as I do.

“Thanks for the ride, Traci!” Emma slammed the back

door, then opened it again to free the end of her filmy

red skirt as her sister leaned out the open driver’s side

window.

“Be ready to go at eight, or I’m leaving you here.”

Em gave a mock salute, then turned toward the

mall entrance without waiting for the car to pull away

from the curb. We would be nowhere near the parking

lot at eight o’clock. Finding a ride home would be no

problem—Emma could cock one hip and smile, and

guys all over Texas would throw their car keys at her

feet, if that’s what she wanted.

But sometimes a ride was more fun, because she

could flirt with the driver. See how much he could take

before his concentration wavered and he had to force

his attention back onto the road. She’d never actually

caused a wreck, but Em went a little further every

time, ever eager to push the limits of… Well, of

anything.

I went along for the ride because it was a delicious

rush of power and freedom—living vicariously

2 / My Soul to Lose

through Emma was usually more exciting than living

my own life for real.

“Okay, Kaylee, here’s the plan.” Em stepped up to

the glass doors, and they whooshed open. The artificial

cool inside was a mercy on my damp skin and

overheated cheeks; Traci’s car wasn’t air-conditioned,

and September in the Dallas metroplex was still hot

enough to make the devil sweat.

“So long as it leads to Toby’s public humiliation,

I’m in.”

“It will.” She stopped in front of a mirror built into

the wall of the main walkway and her reflection

grinned at me, brown eyes sparkling. “And that’s the

least he deserves. You really should have let me key

his car.”

And I’d been totally tempted to. But I was less than

a year from getting my license and couldn’t shake the

certainty that if we keyed someone’s fresh paint job—

even if that someone was my rat of an ex-boyfriend—

new-driver karma would come back to bite me on the

bumper.

“So, what are you going to do? Push him into the

snack table? Trip him on the way into the gym?

Unbutton his pants while you’re dancing, then scream

for help?” I wasn’t too worried about homecomingdance karma. But Toby should have been…

Emma turned from the mirror, her pale brows high

in surprise. “I was just gonna stand him up, then make

out with his best friend on the dance floor, but that last

one has real potential. Maybe we’ll do both.” She

Rachel Vincent / 3

grinned again, then tugged me around the first corner

to the huge main corridor of the mall, where the center

of the floor opened to reveal the first level below. “But

first we’re gonna make sure you look so good that he

spends every minute of this stupid dance wishing he

was there with you.”

Normally I’m not much of a shopper. Thin and

small chested looks just as good in jeans and skinny

tees as it does in anything more complicated, and I

must have been dressing to my advantage

subconsciously, because finding a new date had only

taken two days.

But that didn’t make Toby any less of a human

cockroach—less than an hour after he’d dumped me,

he’d asked Emma to homecoming. She’d accepted

with a plan for revenge already half-plotted.

So I’d come to the mall the weekend before the

dance armed with my aunt’s credit card and Emma’s

good taste, prepared to dump a metaphorical shaker of

salt over my slime-filled leech of an ex-boyfriend.

“We should start with…” Emma stopped and

gripped the brass rail, looking down at the food court

on the lower level. “Yum. Wanna split a soft pretzel

first?”

I knew from her tone that food wasn’t what had

caught her eye.

A level below us, two guys in green Eastlake High

baseball caps were shoving two tables next to a third,

where four girls from our school sat in front of an

untouched pile of junk food. The guy on the left was a

4 / My Soul to Lose

junior named Nash Hudson, whose pick of the week—

Amber something-or-other—was already seated.

Showing up at homecoming with Nash would have

been all the revenge I could ask for against Toby. But

that wasn’t gonna happen. I wasn’t even a blip on

Nash Hudson’s social radar.

Next to Amber sat my cousin, Sophie; I would have

recognized the back of her head anywhere. After all,

that was the part of her I saw most.

“How did Sophie get here?” Emma asked.

“One of the other dancing monkeys picked her up

this morning.” She’d been ignoring me consistently—

mercifully—since dance-team tryouts a month earlier,

when she’d become the only freshman member of the

varsity dance team. “Aunt Val’s picking her up in

about an hour.”

“I think that’s Doug Fuller across from her. Come

on!” Emma’s eyes glittered beneath the huge skylight

overhead. “I wanna drive his new car.”

“Em…” But I could only run after her, dodging

shoppers hauling bags and small children. I caught up

with Emma on the escalator and rode down one step

above her. “Hey look.” I nodded toward the group at

the food court, where one of the dancers had just

switched sides of the table to whisper something into

Doug’s ear. “Meredith’s gonna be pissed when she

sees you.”

Emma shrugged and stepped off the escalator.

“She’ll get over it. Or not.”

Rachel Vincent / 5

But the moment my foot hit the ground, a cold,

dark sense of dread gripped me, and I knew I couldn’t

go any closer to the food court.

Not unless I wanted to cause a scene.

I was seconds from losing control over the scream

building deep inside me, and once it broke free, I

wouldn’t be able to make it stop unless I could get

away.

Better to leave before that happened.

“Em…” I croaked. One hand went to my throat; it

felt like I was being strangled from the inside.

Emma didn’t hear me; she was already strutting

toward the cluster of tables.

“Em…” I said again, forcing that single syllable out

firmly, ahead of the pressure building in my throat,

and that time she heard me.

Emma turned and took one look at my face, and her

forehead wrinkled in familiar concern. She glanced

longingly toward the food court, then rushed to my

side. “Panic attack?” she whispered.

I could only nod, fighting the urge to close my

eyes. Sometimes it was worse then, when I saw only

darkness. It felt like the world was closing in on me.

Like things I couldn’t see were creeping toward me.

Or maybe I watch too many scary movies…

“Okay, let’s go.” Em linked her arm through mine,

half holding me up, half dragging me away from the

food court, the escalator and whatever had triggered

this particular…episode.

6 / My Soul to Lose

“A bad one?” she asked, once we’d put a good two

hundred feet behind us.

“It’s getting better.” I sat on the edge of the huge

fountain in the center of the mall. The jets of water

shot all the way up to the second floor at certain points

during its routine, and little droplets pelted us, but

there was nowhere else to sit. The benches were all

full.

“Maybe you should talk to somebody about these

panic attacks.” Emma plopped down beside me with

one leg tucked beneath her, trailing her fingers through

the rippling water. “It’s weird how they seem to be

locked on specific places. My aunt used to get panic

attacks, but walking away didn’t help her. The panic

went with her.” Emma shrugged and grinned. “And

she got really sweaty. You don’t look sweaty.”

“Well, at least there’s a bright side.” I forced a

laugh in spite of the dark, almost claustrophobic fear

still lurking on the edges of my mind, ready to take

over at the first opportunity. It had happened before,

but never anywhere so heavily populated as the mall. I

shuddered, thinking how close I’d come to humiliating

both me and Emma in front of hundreds of people.

Including half a dozen classmates. If I freaked out in

front of them, the news would be all over school by the

tardy bell on Monday morning.

“Still feel like cooking up a little revenge?” Emma

grinned.

“Yeah. I just need one more minute.”

Rachel Vincent / 7

Em nodded and dug through her purse for a penny.

She couldn’t resist feeding the fountain, despite my

certainty that no wish you had to pay for could

possibly come true. While she stared at the coin on her

palm, eyes squinted in concentration, I steeled myself

and turned to face the food court, my jaws clenched

tight. Just in case.

The panic was still there—indistinct but

threatening, like the remains of a nightmare. But I

couldn’t pinpoint the source.

Usually I could put a face on the dark dread

looming inside me, but this time the crowd made that

impossible. A group wearing our rival school’s colors

had taken the table next to Sophie and her friends, and

both sides were deeply engaged in a French-fry war.

Several families stood in line, some parents pushing

strollers, one pushing a small wheelchair. Some kind

of moms-’n’-tots group had descended upon the

frozen-yogurt place, and couples of all ages shuffled

their way through the cattle shoots in front of each

restaurant’s counter.

It could have been anybody. All I really knew was

that I couldn’t go back there until the source of my

panic had gone. The safest thing to do was to get as far

away as possible.

Em’s penny plunked into the water behind me, and

I stood. “Okay, let’s try Sears first.”

“Sears?” Emma’s frown puckered both her

forehead and her glossed lips. “My grandmother shops

there.”

8 / My Soul to Lose

As did my style-conscious aunt, but Sears was as

far from the source of my panic as we could get and

still be in the mall. “Let’s just look, okay?” I glanced

at the food court again, then back at Emma, and her

frown faded as understanding sank in. She wouldn’t

make me say it. She was too good a friend to make me

voice my worst fears, or my certainty that, at that

moment, they could all be found at the food court.

“They might have something…” I finished weakly.

And with any luck, by the time we’d scoured the

juniors’ department, whoever had triggered my panic

attack would be gone.