With All My Soul (20 page)

“Hey, you guys, there’s something in her pocket,” Nash called
from the living room. We all turned as he stepped into the kitchen. “I just
noticed it sticking out.” He unfolded the piece of paper and spread it out on
the island in front of us.

It was a note. One line.

Tag. You’re it.

Chapter Sixteen

“How is she?” I sat on the edge of my desk, and Nash
answered without looking up. Without letting go of the fingers sticking out of
Sabine’s cast.

“About the same. A little less swollen.” He’d rolled my desk
chair next to her bed—my bed, technically—more than an hour ago and hadn’t moved
since. “But she’s not waking up, and I can’t figure that out. When you got
pricked, you didn’t lose consciousness.”

“Yeah, but she got at least three times the venom I got.” I
shrugged, aiming for casual with the gesture. As if I wasn’t almost as worried
as he was. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’ll wake up soon.”
I hope.
“And you know what? The fact that she’s not moving is kind
of a blessing. With the dose of venom she got, if she’d been up moving around
like I was after I got pricked—” I’d had no idea what creeper venom could do, at
the time “—her heart would’ve beat faster, pumping poison all over her body.”
Another casual shrug. “Instead, it looks pretty localized, and I’d call that a
stroke of good luck.”

Unless...
I frowned at the thought
drawing into focus.
Unless it wasn’t the creeper venom, but
something Avari did that rendered Sabine unconscious.
In which case,
he’d actually saved her life. Or at least prolonged it.

My private frown deepened, but Nash didn’t notice. He was
watching Sabine again.

Why would Avari do that? Why would he poison her, then make
sure she lasted long enough to... To what?

Normally I’d guess that he wanted to extend her suffering, but
she was unconscious. How much pain could she possibly feel?

Was he trying to make sure she’d last long enough to be
found?

Suddenly Sabine’s lack of consciousness scared me almost as
much as her swollen skin and the thin puss oozing from every pinprick hole in
her arm and legs. What the
hell
was Avari up to?

“Yeah, I’m trying to look at the bright side,” Nash said,
clearly oblivious to the turn my own thoughts had taken. “She’s due for another
shot in a couple of hours, and after that, she should get better pretty quickly.
If she hasn’t woken up by then, though, I claim the right to completely freak
out.”

“And I fully support that right. Here.” I pushed away from my
desk and handed him the carton of fried rice I’d brought from the kitchen, with
a fork sticking up straight from the center. I didn’t know whether or not he
could use chopsticks, but I knew Tod could not. At all. “You should eat.”

“Thanks.” He took the carton and glanced at me, but then turned
back to Sabine. I headed for the hall to give him space, but when he spoke, I
stopped, one hand on the doorknob. “What if she dies?”

I let go of the door and turned around. “She’s not going to
die.”

“But what if she does? What if she dies without ever waking up,
and I don’t get the chance to tell her...all the things I need to say? All the
things she needs to hear?” He exhaled slowly, and I could practically see his
optimism die. “I’ve wasted
so
much time. And
so
many words. What if I don’t get the chance to make
it right?”

He was looking at me now, as if I might have the answer. As if
I
had
to have the answer. “Do you love her?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I ever really stopped. I
just didn’t realize it until she came back and made me remember...everything we
had. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love you, too....”

I actually laughed, just a little, over the irony. I couldn’t
help it. “You don’t have to apologize to me for loving your girlfriend, Nash. In
fact, don’t
ever
apologize for loving someone. Just
make sure that when she wakes up—and she
will
wake
up—you tell her what you just told me.”

The door squeaked open at my back, and Tod stepped into the
room. We’d both been making an effort to stay corporeal when we weren’t alone,
for everyone else’s benefit. “Any change?” he asked with a concerned glance in
Sabine’s direction.

“Nothing yet.” Nash cleared his throat nervously, and I
realized what he was about to say just a second too late to prevent it. “While
you’re here, I...um...I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Tod crossed both arms over his short-sleeved tee. “What did you
do now?”

“Nothing. Nothing recent, anyway.”

“Then what are you sorry for?”

Crap, crap, crap!
I’d wanted to
warn Tod that I’d broken my promise....

“Everything. I’m sorry for everything.” Nash shoved his hands
in his pockets and stared at the ground for a second. When he looked up, I could
see him struggling to hide the conflicting emotions stirring in his irises. “You
should have told me what really happened. I could have handled it. But that’s
not the point.” He took another deep breath, and I saw Tod’s posture slowly
start to relax, though he didn’t uncross his arms. “What I’m trying to say is
that what you did for me means something. It means
everything.
And I’m so damn sorry for wasting it.”

Tod blinked. Then he turned to me, his irises as still as I’d
ever seen them. “You told him?”

“I’m sorry. It just kind of...came out. But, Tod, he needed to
know. He
deserves
to know.”

“Why didn’t
you
tell me?” Nash
said, and Tod turned back to him, struggling to keep a lid on what he was
feeling. Locking us both out.

“Because I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want you to
think you owed me something. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to live your
life like I would have lived mine. I wanted you to live your own way.”

“My way is
stupid,
Tod. Stupid and
reckless.”

“I know.” The reaper finally cracked a small smile. “I knew
that going into it. But stupid and reckless can be outgrown—death can’t.” Tod
shoved that single, errant curl back from his forehead, and suddenly he looked
serious again. “You’re smart enough to be someone important. To do something
good. But you weren’t going to do any of that from a hole in the ground.” He
shrugged. “When you died, I realized that the most important thing I could ever
do with my life was to make sure you’d keep living yours.”

“You are so full of shit,” Nash said. Then he threw his arms
around his brother, and their long overdue fraternal hug blurred beneath my
tears—the first happy ones I’d shed in ages.

* * *

“Well,
you’ve
had a busy
day.” Tod sank onto the couch next to me with two glasses of soda and handed me
one of them.

“Thanks.” I took a drink, then made myself meet his gaze. “I’m
sorry I told your secret. I was going to tell you as soon as you got back, but
then Sabine was hurt, and there just hasn’t been much of a break since then.” I
sipped from the glass he gave me, then held it, letting condensation drip down
my fingers.

Tod shrugged, and I noticed a mischievous tilt in the corners
of his beautiful mouth. “I planned to tell him eventually anyway, but according
to the official Big Mouth code of honor, you now owe me a new secret.” He took
my glass and set it on the coffee table next to his, then took my cold, damp
hand in his warm one. “That’s the only way to restore the balance of information
in this relationship.”

“You already know everything worth knowing about me.”

His fingers threaded with mine and he leaned so close I could
feel his breath on my ear. “You don’t have to
tell
me a new secret.” His intimate whisper echoed through me in all the best places.
“You have to help me
make
one.”

My eyes widened. “Here? Now?” I frowned, trying to ignore the
cravings that just being so close to him awoke in me. “Just because we
can
be invisible and inaudible doesn’t mean—”

Tod laughed, and Emma glanced our way from the kitchen, then
turned back to the brainstorming session she, Luca, and Sophie were sharing.
“Not now,” he whispered. “But soon. You have a
big
secret to replace, so put on your thinking cap. And just FYI, that’s the only
article of clothing this particular process requires....”

I groaned as his lips grazed my neck and his hand tightened
around mine. “This kind of makes me want to tell
all
your secrets.”

“Then we’d have even more to make up for.” His mouth trailed
toward the hollow of my collarbone. “It’s a vicious, beautiful cycle.”

With another reluctant groan, I took his chin and pulled him
back up to eye level. “That vicious, beautiful cycle is going to have to wait.
We have nosy friends and missing parents.”

“That’s kind of my point.” The heat in his eyes was suddenly
overwhelmed by pale blue twists of a deeper urgency. “Watching Nash watch Sabine
makes me think we should all stop waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For anything. If we have something to say, we should say it.
If we have something to do, we should do it.”

I rubbed the sudden chill bumps on my arms. “Because we might
not get another chance?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Or liberating. If you think about it like that, we have no
reason
not
to do whatever we want, right this
minute. In fact, we have a
responsibility
to enjoy
the time we have together, in case we’re about to lose that chance.” Tod’s brows
rose, and that heat was back in his eyes in spite of ominous undertones I
couldn’t quite dismiss.

“You do realize you’re just trying to justify your
impulse-control issues, right?”

“I think it’s working.” His hand slid over my stomach and
curled around my hip, and I caught my breath. “Can you guess what kind of
impulse I’m not controlling right now?”

“I think we can all guess.” Em sank into my dad’s recliner
across the coffee table from us. “So rein it in before my inner syphon decides
your hormonal excess needs to be balanced. I don’t think
any
of us want to see that happen.”

Sophie dropped into the armchair in the corner. “I’ve never
heard a truer statement.”

“I’ve got a few more true statements for you,” Tod mumbled, and
I elbowed him, but not as hard as I probably should have. Her dad was missing,
too.

“Any change with Sabine?” Luca said on his way in from the
kitchen.

“No.” I turned to Tod, looking into his eyes for the guilt he
no doubt saw in mine. “We shouldn’t have let her go. This is our fault.”

“Kaylee, Sabine is stronger and more independent than anyone
else I know. Other than you and my mom, of course.” He squeezed my hand, holding
my gaze. “She had as good a chance of walking out of there unhurt as any of us.
Better than several of us.”

“Except that she didn’t. And there’s no telling how long we
left her like that, tied to the ground, being poisoned, because we expected her
to take longer than we would.” Because she actually had to drive to and from the
crossover site.

“We did the best we could. Now we need to figure out our next
move.”

I shrugged. “We keep looking. But this time, just the two of
us.” I wasn’t going to put Sophie in danger of what had happened to Sabine.
“Agreed?” I glanced around the room and was rewarded with three nodding
heads.

“Yeah,” Tod said. “And this time I think we should go
together.”

“Sophie, what do you have for us?”

“Oh. Just a second.” She headed into the kitchen and a chair
scraped the floor, then she was back a second later with a small spiral
notebook.

“Okay, here goes.” Sophie sat on the arm of Luca’s chair,
staring at her notes, and his arm snaked around her. “My dad likes to go
camping, remember?” she said, and I nodded. “He’s gone every fall as far back as
I can remember, and last month he finally told me that those camping trips are
usually retreats with my brothers.”

My uncle had grown sons from a marriage that had ended with the
death of his first wife, nearly a century ago—a fact that continued to blow my
mind every time I thought about it.

“And they’ve been going on these retreats into nature since
before most modern camping conveniences were invented,” Sophie continued. “So I
figure he knows how to live off the land, at least a little. He can find shelter
and tie knots and fish without a pole, for sure, though I have no idea how handy
those skills will be in the Netherworld. Personally, I think his best bet is to
get inside, assuming that most buildings won’t be as heavily populated as the
Netherworld version of our school is.”

“I truly hope they’re not.” And there was a decent chance of
that, because Avari had drawn the current Netherworld populace of our school
into the building by living there himself, like some kind of demonic
landlord.

“We’re kind of assuming he’d forgo the buildings closest to the
hospital, because those would be the first place Avari and his monster horde
would look,” Luca said. “But he wouldn’t go too far, because your mom—” he
glanced at Tod “—will start to feel heavy after a while.”

“And we have a general direction, based on the blood trail and
rags Tod found, right?” Em said.

“Yes,” I said. “Unless those were intentionally misleading.”
Which was a good possibility. “If it weren’t so close, I’d guess he’d taken her
into the actual hospital. That’s where he’s most likely to find bandages and any
other medical supplies that crossed into the Netherworld with the building.” And
those supplies were likely to be plentiful, considering how highly and
consistently populated the hospital was.

But the truth, even after we’d shared our intel and theories,
was that we really had no clue where Uncle Brendon and Harmony were. In hiding
from Avari and the rest of the Netherworld creatures, they were hiding from us,
too.

Tod and I spent most of that night in the Netherworld,
searching for his mom and my uncle in and around the buildings we’d decided they
were most likely to target. We were looking for my dad, too, of course, but we
had much less hope of actually finding him, since he was no doubt both hidden
and guarded. And probably unable to call out to us if we got close.