My Soul to Keep (11 page)

The nurse ripped open a package of sterile bandages and I flinched, startled.

“And he just attacked you with a knife?” The detective was still scribbling in his notebook, not even watching me as I nodded. “Did he say anything?”

“Um… He wanted me to take him somewhere.”

Finally the cop looked up, surprised. “Where?”

“He didn’t say.” Which was true, technically. “He just said he’d kill me if I didn’t take him. I told him I’d take him wherever he wanted to go if he’d put the knife down. So he moved it from my throat to my back, and when I tried to get away, he slashed me.” I held up my injured arm for emphasis, foiling the nurse’s attempt to bandage it.

“Okay, thank you, Kaylee.” The detective stood and flipped his notebook closed, then slid it into the right pocket of his long coat. “Your dad’s on his way—” I hadn’t been able to stop them from calling him and scaring him to death “—and it looks like you’re in good hands until he gets here.” The cop smiled first at Nash, who didn’t even seem to notice him, then at the nurse, whose cold hands shook as they pressed the bandage gently on the long line of stitches curv
ing over the bony part of my forearm onto the fleshier underside. “We’ll be following up with you soon, when we know more about what happened. Okay?”

I nodded as he headed toward the exit. He already had one hand on the doorknob when I looked up. “What’s going to happen to Scott?”

Nash glanced at me in surprise almost equal to the cop’s, but the nurse didn’t even pause in her work.

“Well, that all depends on his attorney. But Mr. Carter—Scott’s father—has testified in several cases around here and, for a psychiatrist, he knows a fair bit about the law. I wouldn’t worry about Scott. He’ll get the best legal and mental care available.”

I nodded, but only because I didn’t know how else to respond. No amount of money or treatment could fix Scott now, and for all I knew, he’d hear that voice in his head—see that shape in the shadows—for the rest of his life. Even if he never again saw the outside of a padded room.

“J
UST COME STRAIGHT HOME
,”
Harmony said into her cell phone as I sank onto my couch with my bandaged arm in my lap. She pushed the front door closed, cutting off the chill from outside, then marched into the kitchen, already digging through my fridge for something that hadn’t started to mold.

On the other end of the line, my father tried to argue, but she interrupted him with the confidence of a woman accustomed to giving orders. “I already picked her up.”

My dad worked at a factory in Fort Worth, while Harmony worked in the very hospital they’d taken us to. So even coming from home—she’d worked the third shift—she’d gotten there nearly half an hour earlier than my dad could have made it.

“Because I was closer to the hospital than you were.” And because Nash’s Influence had convinced the doc to release me to someone other than my legal guardian.

Harmony held the phone away from her ear while my father blustered, complained, and questioned. “She’s fine,
physically. We’ll talk about it when you get here.” With that, she flipped her phone closed and shoved it into her front pocket with a finality that suggested she would
not
answer if he called back.

Wow.
I’d never seen anyone handle my dad like that, and I was so impressed I forgot to argue that I was fine mentally, too. I thought I was handling the whole thing pretty well, considering I’d nearly been killed. Again.

“Kaylee, do you believe in déjà vu?” Harmony smiled amiably and pulled a carton of milk from the fridge. “Because the sight of you lying injured on that couch is starting to look awfully familiar.”

“I don’t go looking for trouble,” I insisted, a little miffed.

Nash set the keys to the rental on the half wall between the entry and the living room, then dropped onto the couch next to me with his head thrown back like it weighed a ton. We’d stopped by the Carters’ house on the way home so Nash could follow us in the loaner. Scott’s parents had been called back from Cancún early, but they wouldn’t get in until the next day, so his house was completely dark and looked oddly deserted, even in the middle of a sunny winter day.

It was creepy, to say the least.

Harmony set a tub of margarine on the counter, then pulled half-full bags of flour and sugar from the depths of a cabinet I’d rarely peeked into. “Yet trouble manages to find you, whether you’re looking for it or not.”

“In this case, I think ‘trouble’ is a bit of an understatement,” I mumbled, twisting carefully to lean on Nash as he wrapped one arm around me. “Don’t you want to know what happened?” I asked, watching her through the wide kitchen doorway.

“Not yet.” Her voice echoed from inside another cabinet.

“You’ll have to explain it all over again when your father gets here, so I’ll just wait for that.”

“Well,
I
won’t,” Tod snapped, and I glanced up to find him leaning against the kitchen door frame. He’d shown up in my room in the E.R. right after the detective left, demanding answers we couldn’t give him while the nurse was still there. Then he’d blinked out to find his mother, only to discover her already on the way to the hospital. One of her fellow nurses had called her when she recognized Nash.

“Yes, you will.” Harmony finally stood and faced her older, mostly dead son, a box of baking soda in one hand. “Making her repeat herself won’t make her feel any better.”

“Not that there’s any chance of that, anyway…” My dad was going to go
apocalyptic
when he heard about the Demon’s Breath. And I wasn’t entirely convinced Harmony wouldn’t join him, once she knew the whole story.

Tod grumbled and dropped into my father’s recliner, apparently willing to physically wait with the rest of us for once.

I sat up and shrugged out from under Nash’s arm so I could see his face, but he wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were closed, one wave of brown hair fallen over his eyebrow. I might have thought he was asleep, if not for the tense lines of his shoulders and jaw. Nash was just as upset as I was, and probably suffering an even heavier burden of guilt, because Scott was his friend.

Metal clanged against the faded Formica as Harmony set our good mixing bowl on the counter.

A labored engine roared down the street out front, then rumbled to a stop in the driveway. My father was home, and considering how quickly he’d arrived, I was surprised not to hear police sirens following him.

Moments later, the front door flew open and smashed against the half wall. My dad’s keys dangled from his hand and his chest heaved as if he’d just run all the way from work. His breathing didn’t slow until his gaze found mine. “Are you okay?”

I scooted forward on the couch as Nash sat up straight next to me. “Yeah. I’m good.” Thanks to twenty-eight stitches and a strong local anesthetic. But I wasn’t looking forward to the next hour of my life. The nurse who’d bandaged my arm had given me two Tylenol tablets. Because once the local anesthetic wore off, she’d said, I’d feel like someone sliced my arm open.

I think that was her idea of a joke.

“What the hell happened?” my dad demanded, still standing in the open doorway as a cold draft swirled across the room, fluttering the opened bills on one end table and raising chill bumps on my legs. “Don’t they have teachers at that school? Why wasn’t anyone there to stop this?”

Well, crap. I guess there’s no way to avoid the whole truancy aspect….

“We weren’t actually
at
school.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I looked pathetic enough to thwart the bulk of his temper.

The front door slammed and I opened my eyes to see anger and concern warring behind my father’s pained expression. “I don’t even know where to start, Kaylee. I’ve only been back for three months, and you’ve nearly been killed twice. What do I have to do to keep you safe? Are you out
looking
for trouble?”

In spite of the growing pain in my arm and my general state of guilt and grief, I managed a wry grin, trying to lighten the mood. “You missed that part of the discussion.” When his worried scowl deepened, the smile died on my face.

My father sighed and pulled his coat off as he clomped across the living room, bringing with him the scents of sweat and metal from the factory where he worked. He’d had to leave early—giving up part of his paycheck—thanks to me. “How’s your arm?”

“Fine.” I held out my hand when he reached for it, and he
studied my arm, as if he could actually see through the long, thick bandage. “The doctor said there’s no permanent damage. It’s just a few stitches, Dad.”

Tod huffed and propped his feet on the footrest of my father’s recliner. “Try twenty-eight,” he said, and my dad actually jerked in surprise. I was almost amused to realize that, though he could clearly hear the reaper, my father couldn’t see him.

“Damn it, Tod!” He glared in the reaper’s general direction.

“Do not sneak up on me in my own house—I don’t care
how
dead you are! Show yourself or get out.”

Harmony and I shared a small smile, but my father didn’t notice.

The reaper shrugged and grinned at me, then blinked out of the chair and onto the carpet at my father’s back, now fully corporeal. “Fine,” he said, inches from my dad’s ear, and my father nearly jumped out of his shirt. “Your house, your rules.”

My dad spun around, his flush deepening until I thought his face would explode. “I changed my mind. Get out!”

Tod shrugged again and a single blond curl fell over his forehead. “I’ll get the scoop from Kaylee later. My break’s over, anyway.” Then he winked silently out of existence, leaving my father still fuming, his fists clenched at his sides in anger that had no outlet.

I looked up at the clock in the kitchen. It was 2:05 p.m. Tod’s shift had only started at noon. If he didn’t watch it, he was going to get fired.

“Is he really gone?” My dad glanced first at me, then at Harmony, who shrugged, clearly trying to hide a grin as she shoved several fallen ringlets back from her face.

“As far as I can tell.”

Tod didn’t torment his mother or me much because he couldn’t get such a rise out of us. My father and Nash were
his favorite targets, because they took themselves so seriously.

My dad closed his eyes and sucked in a long, hopefully calming breath, then refocused his attention on me. “Where were we?”

“I was telling you I’m fine. No permanent damage.” No need to mention the twenty-eight stitches again…

“But you could have been killed,” he insisted, and I couldn’t argue with that, so I kept my mouth shut. “Come in here where I can get a better look at you.” He stomped into the kitchen and gestured for me to take a seat at the table, beneath the brightest light in the house.

I sat, and he sank into the chair next to mine, studying my face as if it now held foreign planes and angles. “Who did this?” He took my chin in one hand and carefully turned my head for a better look at the short, shallow cut on my neck, which the nurse had cleaned and left unbandaged. It hadn’t even required stitches.

I sighed and pulled away from his gentle grip, already dreading the explanation I was about to launch. “Scott Carter.”

“The same kid who trashed your car?”

“No, that was Doug Fuller.”

My father twisted in his seat to glare at Nash, who was now hunched over on the couch, his head cradled in both hands, his broad shoulders slumped. “And they’re both friends of yours? Teammates?”

Harmony crossed her arms over her chest. “Aiden, Nash had nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, really?” My father turned on her, and I hoped she understood that the sharpness in his voice reflected more worry than anger. “So it’s just a coincidence that one of his teammates rammed her car through a brick mailbox, and less than a week later another one tries to hack her head off.”

Well, at least I know where I get my penchant for exaggeration….

“Scott’s kind of been borrowing trouble from Doug,” I said, picking at the edge of my bandage. “But Nash has nothing to do with any of it.”

I glanced at Nash for confirmation, but he still had his head buried in his hands. He was really taking Scott’s breakdown hard, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d be devastated if anything happened to Emma. Especially something I could have prevented. Which was why the whole thing had to end now, even if that meant turning the whole mess over to my dad.

“Exactly what kind of trouble are these boys in?” my father demanded softly. “And what does it have to do with you?”

Nash finally looked up, his eyes shiny and rimmed in red. His hands shook, clenched in his lap, and I wanted to sink onto the couch next to him and tell him it would be okay. That none of it was really his fault. He hadn’t given his friends the Demon’s Breath, and we didn’t know for sure that acting earlier would actually have saved Scott. For all we knew, sending him into withdrawal earlier might only have escalated his breakdown.

But I stayed at the table because Nash looked like he wanted to wallow in private misery. I wanted to respect that. To give him some time. But if he so much as looked at me, I’d be across the room in an instant.

I shrugged, meeting my dad’s gaze reluctantly. “I don’t think it has anything to do with me.” Though Scott’s shadow man’s insistence that the whole thing was my fault was certainly nagging at the back of my mind. I sucked in a deep breath and spat out the rest of it before I could chicken out.

“Scott and Doug are taking Demon’s Breath, and it’s making them crazy. Literally.”

“What?” my father demanded, at the exact moment Harmony dropped an egg on the kitchen floor. She just stood there, her open hand palm up and empty, slimy egg white oozing over the linoleum toward the toe of one worn sneaker.

Then understanding sank in—I saw its progression across her face—and she stepped absently over the busted egg. “That’s why you were asking—”

My father turned on her. “You knew about this?”

“No!” Harmony glanced at me, and the hurt in her slowly swirling eyes withered my self-respect. “I thought she was talking about Regan Page! I had no idea there was Demon’s Breath in their school!” Then her gaze narrowed on me again. “You didn’t take any of it, did you?”

“Of course not!” It killed me that she even had to ask. But then, I had lied to her—if indirectly—in my search for facts.

“Don’t you think I’ve spent enough time strapped to a bed?”

My dad flinched and I almost felt guilty for throwing such a low blow. But he wasn’t the one who’d had me hospitalized. My aunt and uncle had done that, in a very ill-thought-out attempt to help me “deal” with abilities I neither knew about nor understood. My father’s only crime was leaving me with them in the first place.

“Nash and I were just trying to cut off their supply.” I shrugged, hating how unsure of myself I sounded. And how juvenile our attempts at intervention must look to a couple of
bean sidhes
with a combined age of more than two centuries.

“Dad, these guys have no idea what they’re taking, or what it’s doing to them. We took Scott’s first balloon and gave it to Tod to dispose of, but he got another one, and—”

“You did
what?
” My father’s voice was as hard as ice, and about as warm. “Tod knows about this?”

I shrugged and glanced at Nash, who looked like he wanted to disappear as he avoided his mother’s look of disbelief and confusion. “We were assuming you wouldn’t want us to take the balloon to the Netherworld ourselves….”

“You assumed right.” Yet somehow my father didn’t look very happy about my display of uncommon sense. “How did
two human boys get their hands on Demon’s Breath in the first place?”

“They…” I started, but then a sharp shake of Nash’s head caught my attention, and I looked up to find him staring at me intently. And suddenly I wasn’t sure what to do. We’d agreed to tell our parents about the Demon’s Breath, and technically we’d done that. But Nash clearly didn’t want them to know about Everett. Or maybe about the party.

My father watched me expectantly, waiting for me to finish my aborted thought. “They bought it from some guy who sells it in party balloons. He calls it frost.” Which was true…“We could ask Doug—”