Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (11 page)

“Well, I’m not! There was never a thing with Scott or Doug. And I was never
with
Nash. Like that. Why, did he say we...?”

“No. Not to me, anyway. But we all just assumed, because you were with him for so long.”

“Well,
un
assume!”

“Done.” He smiled, and he looked friendly. Like he might not be such a bad guy. Which meant he definitely didn’t deserve to be possessed by a hellion or knocked out by my undead boyfriend. “So, you’re really just checking on me?” He started walking again, and I kept up.

“Yeah. I saw you in the nurse’s office, and you didn’t look so good.”

“That’s what I hear. I don’t know what happened. I dozed off in third period, and the next thing I know I’m lying on a table in the nurse’s office with a cold pack on my head and another one on my...lower. The nurse said she found me there, and no one even saw me go in.”

“So...you’re okay?”

“Except for the part where my dad wants me to see a shrink. He says blackouts are a sign of a more serious underlying problem.”

I gave him as confident and reassuring a smile as I could muster. “You’re not crazy. Just...don’t fall asleep in school anymore.”

“No shit. That all you wanted?” He stopped walking outside his next class, and I was dimly aware that mine was all the way across the building and up a floor.

“Yeah. Oh, wait.” I stepped closer and lowered my voice, uncomfortably aware that anyone who saw us would assume the rumors about me were true. One of the rumors, anyway. “I also wanted to ask you a question.” He nodded, so I continued, “I heard that back before he died, Doug gave you a sample of this stuff he had. The stuff in the balloon.”

“Frost?” he asked. When I nodded, his expression darkened and he motioned for me to follow him closer to the lockers, out of the main stream of traffic. “Stay away from that shit, Kaylee. They say it can’t be detected in a drug test, but everyone else I know who’s tried it is dead now. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Everyone?” So, he didn’t know Nash had used, too?

“Yeah. There were some other guys who wanted to try it at Doug’s last party.” Right before he’d died. “But then Nash threatened to kick the shit out of the guy with the balloon bouquet if he didn’t get lost, and that night Doug died. I haven’t seen any balloons since. And the more time that passes, the happier I am about that. You shouldn’t—”

“I’m not,” I assured him. “I was just...curious. Thanks, Marco.”

I sped off into the thinning crowd before he could say anything else, and the one time I looked back, he was still staring after me, looking thoroughly confused.

Chapter Seven

“Are you girls ready?” Long blond curls fell over Harmony’s shoulder as she twisted in the driver’s seat to glance at Emma, then met my gaze in the rearview mirror.

“I will
never
be ready for this.” Em stared through the windshield at her house. Her former house. Which held her former room and all her former stuff. Even her former dog, Toto, who was still a dog but no longer hers. “Let’s get it over with.”

Harmony laid one hand on her arm. “We’re sure your mom’s still at work?”

“Yeah.” I leaned forward between the front seats. “I called to verify, and she said Traci would be here to let us in.”

“That’s her car.” Em pointed to the dusty Chevy parked in front of us in the driveway.

“Okay. I just need one of you to ask for a drink.” Harmony pulled the keys from the ignition and leaned to one side so she could slide them into her pocket, and again I was struck by how young she looked—thirty years old, at the most. You’d never know from looking at her that her sons were eighteen and twenty. Well, Tod
would
have been twenty, if he’d lived. “I’ll take care of the rest,” she continued. “If you’re sure you’re up to this.”

“No choice.” Em unbuckled her seat belt, and her hand trembled with the motion. “We can’t afford to put it off any longer.”

I unbuckled my own belt, one hand on the door handle. “If it’s too much for you—if she gets upset and you can’t control the syphoning—just let me know, and we’ll get you out of there.” She had been through so much already, and my heart ached at the thought of what lay ahead for her and for Traci. A decision no woman should ever have to make. A choice no human could ever anticipate.

Another devastating decision neither of them would be facing if they’d never met me.

I was a disease, infecting everyone I came into contact with, and the rot spread too fast to be contained. I went around with my scalpel, excising the infected bits of tissue—operating on lives and memories I didn’t have the right to slice up—but the only way to truly stop the infection was to cut off the source.

To excise
me.

I’d been struggling to clean up my own mess for so long that I could no longer tell if continuing to fight made me brave or selfish.

“Thanks. I’ll be fine, though.” Em opened her door and got out of the car, and when I stood, still trying to gather my thoughts, I was surprised for the dozenth time by the fact that I could almost see over her head. In her own body, Emma had been taller than I was.

Traci answered the door on the second knock, and the first thing I noticed when she let us in were the bags beneath her eyes. She’d looked tired at Emma’s funeral, but I’d attributed that to the stress of losing, then burying, her sister. But now, I couldn’t deny that it was more than that.

It was the pregnancy.

Traci, Emma’s middle sister, was pregnant with my murderer’s child. And, like nearly everything else that had gone wrong over the past few months, that was my fault. Mr. Beck had been looking for me when he’d found her.

“Hey, Kaylee. It’s good to see you.” Traci pulled me into a hug with too-thin arms, and I had to stop myself from blurting out how sorry I was for what she was going through, and how I’d do anything for a cosmic do-over. For the chance to take it all back.

Instead I swallowed apologies she wouldn’t understand and returned her hug. “Thanks.” I was careful not to squeeze her too hard. She hardly had any belly yet, and she looked like she’d blow over in a light breeze. “This is Harmony Hudson, Nash’s mom. And this is my cousin Emily. They came to...help. Moral support.”

“Nice to meet you.” Traci shook Harmony’s hand, then motioned for us to come in. Then she turned to shake her sister’s hand without a single sign of recognition. “Kaylee can show you Emma’s room. Take whatever you want to remember Emma by. Mom, Cara, and I have already been through it all and taken what we wanted. What means the most to us.”

Em’s eyes watered. Traci didn’t notice.

“How are you?” I said, instead of leading everyone to Em’s room. Traci was leaning against the doorframe. I was afraid she might fall.

“Um...I’m having a rough first trimester.” She let go of the doorframe and sank onto the arm of the couch. “Emma told you about...the baby?”

Actually,
I’d
told
Em
about the baby, weeks before Traci had even known she was pregnant.

When Mr. Beck had come to Emma’s house looking for me and my best friend, he’d found Traci instead. What he’d done to Em’s sister might not have been rape by any human legal definition, but I couldn’t think of it any other way. Mr. Beck was an incubus. He’d
made
Traci want to sleep with him. She didn’t know it, but she’d had no choice.

If her baby was a boy—an incubus—the pregnancy would probably kill her. All signs were pointing toward that already. And if the pregnancy didn’t kill her, the child’s birth almost certainly would.

We hadn’t really come so I could take something to remember Em by. We’d come to help Traci.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. Harmony looked like she had plenty of suggestions, but I knew she wanted to wait until Traci’d had something to drink.

“No, thanks, hon. I’m fine. Just tired.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Emma asked a second before I would have. “I could use a soda, if you have any.” She knew they had some. All her mother ever drank was Dr. Pepper. Pretending to be unfamiliar with her own house must have been killing her.

“Sure.” Traci stood. “Just give me a minute.”

“You don’t look like you feel good,” Harmony said, right on cue. “If you don’t mind, I can get everyone a drink while the girls go through Emma’s things.”

Traci only hesitated for a second. Then she sighed and sank onto the couch again. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

Harmony disappeared into the kitchen while Em and I headed to her room and Traci stayed on the couch.

“She looks sick,” Em whispered to me in the hall.

I nodded. “We’re going to help her.” But Traci’s health would come with a price only she could pay.

Emma’s room was a mess. There were open cardboard boxes on the floor, photos missing from the walls, and clothes draped over the back of Em’s desk chair. Her bed was unmade, too, but that had nothing to do with her death. The bed probably looked just like it had when she’d woken up after her last night in it.

I was halfway across Emma’s room when I realized she’d stopped in the doorway. “You okay?” I called over my shoulder.

“This is weird. They’ve already started packing stuff up,” she whispered. “Like they can’t wait to get rid of me.”

“That’s not it.” I pulled her inside and mostly closed the door, to keep Traci from overhearing. “Nash said his mom did the same thing after their dad died, then after Tod died, not because she wanted to forget about them, but because it hurt too much to look at everything that reminded them of what they’d lost.”

Her chin quivered. She didn’t look like she believed me.

“They’re packing this stuff up because they miss you, Em. Not because they’re glad to be rid of you. Besides—” I glanced into several of the open boxes “—most of these are still empty. Grab one and pack up what you want.”

For a couple of minutes, I went through the clothes in her closet, looking for anything that might still fit, while she went through what little remained on her shelves. Her mom and sisters had claimed everything but some elementary school soccer medals, a participation trophy from the one year she’d tried middle school cheerleading, and the first-place ribbon from fourth-grade field day, when we’d won the egg toss.

“Is that all you want?” I set the shirts I thought Em could still wear in the box she was using, on top of the medals and several pictures of the two of us, dating all the way back to third grade.

Emma shrugged. “They took most of the good stuff. And I think I’m happy about that. I don’t need stuff to remember myself by, right? I’m still here. And I
want
them to remember me.”

She had a valid point. And she seemed to be in good spirits, considering.

“Any luck with my jeans? Or some shorts? It’s already getting warm outside.”

“The pants are a total loss. Sorry. You just don’t have the hips for them anymore. Maybe a couple of skirts, though....”

We were going through the last of her clothes when Harmony called us from the living room. “Girls? I think she’s ready.”

My heartbeat was a hollow thump my chest suddenly felt too small to contain.

Em looked as nervous as I felt. We put down the clothes and filed into the living room, where Harmony now sat next to Traci on the couch. Em and I took the two armchairs facing the couch at opposite angles.

“Traci? You okay?” She frowned at her sister in concern. Traci looked...confused.

“I feel weird. Tired.” She looked like she could fall asleep where she sat.

I scooted to the edge of my chair to take the can of soda Harmony offered me. Traci had a cup of what looked like hot tea. I peered into it, but saw no trace of whatever Harmony had spiked it with. “So...how does this stuff work?”

“‘This stuff’ is just water from a natural source in the Netherworld. Water there has various properties, and this one—” she held up a plastic vial, very much like the one Sabine kept her liquid envy in “—works like an amnesic. Traci is sleepy, but her cognition is not impaired, so she can talk to us just like she normally would. But she won’t remember anything that happens in the next hour or so.”

“What about after that?” Em asked.

“She’ll probably fall asleep, then wake up here and only remember that she took a nap.”

I glanced at Traci, who was watching us in mounting confusion. “So we can tell her everything?”

Harmony nodded.

“
Everything,
everything?” Em clenched the arms of her chair. “Like, about me?”

“If that’s what you want to do.”

Emma didn’t look sure, and I was hyperaware that the clock was ticking. So I started. “Traci, we have some things to tell you, and most of them are going to be hard for you to believe. But don’t worry about that, because you’re not going to remember this anyway.” We only needed her to understand long enough to make a very difficult decision.

Traci focused on me sluggishly. “This feels like a dream.”

“Are you sure that stuff won’t hurt the baby?” Em asked.

Harmony smiled and leaned back on the couch, still facing Emma. “I’m sure. It’s really just water. And the baby’s way too young to worry about memory loss.”

“What does this have to do with my baby?” Traci laid one hand across her mostly flat stomach.

“Okay. Here goes....” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then swallowed my own nerves and uncertainties and met her gaze. “Traci, there’s a better than average chance that your baby isn’t human.”

Traci blinked. Then she laughed kinda sluggishly. “Have you two been drinking? It’s, like, three in the afternoon.” She seemed to have forgotten Harmony was even there.

“No.” Em gripped the arms of her chair. “Your baby’s not human, but that’s okay, ’cause Kaylee’s not, either. In fact, she’s dead.”

“Who are you again?” Traci frowned at her.

“We’ll get to that in a minute.” I stood. “Traci.” She turned to see me and suddenly seemed more drunk than tired. “I’m a
bean sidhe.
Most people call us banshees, but whatever you know about banshees is probably wrong. Incomplete, at the least. Also, like she said, I’m dead.”