for her as it was for me.
At the end of the hall, we stumbled into my room
as the shouting grew louder. Lydia kicked the door
shut. My eyes watered. A deep keening had started at
the back of my throat, and I couldn’t make it stop. All
I could do was hold my mouth closed and hope for the
best.
Rachel Vincent / 63
Lydia dropped onto my bed and held her hands out
to me, her face pale now, and damp with sweat in spite
of the over-air-conditioned room. “Hurry,” she said,
but as I stepped forward, that terrible grayness swept
into the room from nowhere. From everywhere. It was
just suddenly there, leaching color from everything,
thickening with each second that high-pitched squeal
leaked from my throat.
I scrambled onto the bed with her and used my shirt
to wipe tears from my face. It was real! The fog was
real!
But that realization brought with it a bolt of true
terror. If I wasn’t hallucinating, what the hell was
going on?
“Give me your hands.” Lydia gasped and doubled
over in pain. When she looked up again, I took her
hand in my empty one, but kept my mouth covered
with the other. “Normally I try to block it,” she
whispered, pushing limp brown hair from her face.
“But I don’t have the strength for that right now. This
place is so full of pain…”
Block what? What the hell was going on?
Uncertainty pitched in my stomach, almost strong
enough to rival the dark fear fueling my uncontrollable
keening. What was she talking about? No wonder
she’d quit speaking.
Lydia closed her eyes, riding a wave of pain, then
she opened them and her voice was so soft I had to
strain to hear it. “I can let the pain flow naturally—
that’s easiest on both of us. Or I can take it from you.
That way’s faster, but sometimes I take too much.
64 / My Soul to Lose
More than just pain.” She flinched again, and her gaze
shifted to something over my shoulder, as if she could
see through all the walls separating us from Tyler.
“And I can’t give it back. But either way, it’s easier if I
touch you.”
She waited expectantly, but I could only shrug and
shake my head to demonstrate confusion, my lips still
sealed firmly against the scream battering me from the
inside.
“Close your eyes and let the pain flow,” she said,
and I obeyed, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Suddenly my hand felt both hot and cold, like I had
a fever and chills at the same time. Lydia’s fingers
shook in mine, and I opened my eyes to find her
shuddering all over. I tried to pull my hand away, but
she slapped her other palm over it, holding me tight
even as her teeth began to chatter. “K-keep your eyes
cl-closed,” she stuttered. “No m-matter what.”
Terrified now, I closed my eyes and concentrated
on holding my jaw shut. On not seeing the fog things
in the back of my mind. On not feeling the thick
current of agony and despair stirring through me.
And slowly, very slowly, the panic began to ebb. It
was gradual at first, but then the discordant ribbon of
sound leaking from me thinned into a strand as fragile
as a human hair. Though the panic still built inside me,
it was weaker now, and blessedly manageable thanks
to whatever she was doing.
I dared a peek at Lydia to find her eyes closed, her
face scrunched in pain, her forehead again shiny with
Rachel Vincent / 65
sweat. Her free hand clutched a handful of her baggy
T-shirt, pressing it into her stomach like she was hurt.
But there was no blood, or any other sign of a wound;
I looked closely to make sure.
She was funneling the panic from me somehow,
and it was making her sick. And as badly as I wanted
out of Lakeside, I would
not
take my freedom at her
expense.
I still couldn’t talk, so I tried to pull my hand away,
but Lydia’s eyes popped open at the first tug. “No!”
She clung to my fingers, tears standing in her eyes. “I
can’t stop it, and fighting only makes it hurt worse.”
The pain wouldn’t kill me, but from the looks of it,
whatever she was doing might kill her. I tugged again
and she swallowed thickly, then shook her head
sharply.
“It hurts
me,
Kaylee. If you let go, I hurt worse.”
She was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She’d
heard my aunt and uncle and knew that if I had another
screaming fit, Uncle Brendon wouldn’t be able to get
me out. Lydia was lying so I wouldn’t pull away, even
though she was hurting herself worse—maybe killing
herself—with every bit of panic she took from me.
At first I let her, because she seemed determined to
do it. She obviously had her reasons, even if I didn’t
understand them. But when the guilt became too much
and I tried to pull away again, she squeezed my hand
so hard it hurt.
“He’s cresting…” she whispered, and I searched
her eyes in vain for a translation. I still had no idea
66 / My Soul to Lose
what she was talking about. “It’s going to shift. Tyler’s
pain will end, and yours will begin.”
Begin?
Because it’s all been fun and games so
far…
But before I could finish that thought, Lydia’s
hands went limp around mine, and she relaxed so
suddenly and thoroughly she almost seemed to deflate.
For a precious half second, she smiled, obviously
painfree, and I started to think it was over.
“He’s gone,” Lydia said softly.
Then the panic
truly
hit me.
What I’d felt before had only been a preview. This
was the main event. The real deal. Like at the mall.
Anguish exploded inside me, a shock to my entire
system. My lungs ached. My throat burned. Tears
poured from my eyes. The scream bounced around in
my head so fast and hard I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t hold it in. The keening started up again,
more urgent than ever, and my jaws—already sore
from being clenched—were no match for the renewed
pressure.
“Give it to me…” Lydia said, and I opened my eyes
to see her staring at me earnestly. She looked a little
better. A little stronger. Not quite so pale. But if she
took any more of my pain, she’d backslide. Fast and
hard.
Unfortunately, I was beyond the ability to focus by
then. I didn’t know whether or not to give her what she
wanted, much less how to do it. I could only ride the
Rachel Vincent / 67
scream jolting through me like a bolt of electricity and
hope it stayed contained.
But it wouldn’t. The keening grew stronger. It
thickened, until I thought I’d choke on it. My teeth
vibrated beneath the relentless power of it, and I
chattered like I was cold. I couldn’t hold it back.
Yet I couldn’t afford to let it go.
“There’s too much. It’s too slow,” Lydia moaned.
She was tense, like every little movement hurt. Her
hands shook again, and her face had become one
continuous grimace. “I’m sorry. I have to take it.”
What? What does that mean?
Her pain was
obvious, and she wanted more? I pulled my hand
away, but she snatched it back just as my mouth flew
open. I couldn’t fight it anymore.
The scream exploded from my throat with an
agonizing burst of pain, like I was vomiting nails. Yet
there was no sound.
An instant after the scream began—before the
sound had a chance to be heard—it was sucked back
inside me by a vicious pull from deep in my gut. My
mouth snapped shut. Those nails shredded my throat
again on the way down. It whipped around inside me,
my unheard screech, being steadily pulled out of me
and into…
Lydia.
She began to convulse, but I couldn’t pry her
fingers from my hand. Her eyes rolled up so high only
the lower arc of her green irises showed, yet still she
68 / My Soul to Lose
clung to me, pulling the last of the scream from me
and into her. Pulling my pain with it.
Gone was the agony of my bruised lungs, my raw
throat and my pounding head. Gone was that awful
grief, that despair so encompassing I couldn’t think
about anything else. Gone was the gray fog; it faded
all around us while I tried to free my hand.
Then, suddenly, it was over. Her fingers fell away
from mine. Her eyes closed. She fell over backward—
still convulsing—before I could catch her. She hit her
head on the footboard, and when I fumbled for a
pillow to put under her, I realized her nose was
bleeding. Dripping steadily on the blanket.
“Help!” I shouted, the first sound I’d made since
the whole thing started, several endless minutes
earlier. “Somebody help me!” My voice sounded
funny. Slurred. Why was it so hard to talk? Why did I
feel so weird? Like everything was moving in slow
motion? Like my brain was packed with cotton.
Footsteps pounded down the hall toward me, then
the door flew open. “What happened?” Nurse Nancy
demanded, two taller female aides peering over her
shoulder.
“She…” I blinked, trying to focus in a thick cloud
of confusion. “She took too much…” Too much of
what? The answer was right there, but it was so
blurry… I could see it, but couldn’t quite bring it into
focus.
“What?” Nurse Nancy knelt over the girl on my
bed—Lisa? Leah?—and pulled back her eyelids. “Get
Rachel Vincent / 69
her out of here!” She yelled at one of the aids,
gesturing toward me with one hand. “And bring a
stretcher. She’s seizing.”
A woman in bright blue scrubs led me into the hall
by one arm. “Go sit in the common room,” she said,
then jogged past me.
I wandered down the hall slowly, one hand on the
cold, rough wall for balance. Trying to stay above
water as wave after wave of confusion crashed over
me. I sank into the first empty chair I found and buried
my face in my hands. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t quite
remember…
People were talking all around me, whispering
phrases I couldn’t make sense of. Names I didn’t quite
recognize. So I latched on to the first familiar thing I
saw: a jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table by the
window. That was my puzzle. I’d been working it
before something bad happened. Before…
Cold hands. Dark fog. Screaming. Bleeding.
I’d placed three puzzle pieces when two aides
rolled a stretcher past the nurses’ station and out the
main door of the unit. “Another one?” the security
guard asked, as he held the door open.
“This one’s still breathing,” the aide in purple said.
This one?
But the harder I tried to remember, the
blurrier the images got.
I’d only placed two more pieces when someone
called my name. I looked up from my puzzle to see
another aide—her name was Judy; I remembered
70 / My Soul to Lose
that—standing next to my uncle. Who stood next to
my suitcase.
“Kaylee?” Uncle Brendon frowned at me in
concern. “Ready to go home?”
Yes.
That much was clear. But my relief came with
a bitter aftertaste of guilt and sadness. Something bad
had happened. Something to do with the girl on my
bed. But I couldn’t remember what.
I followed Uncle Brendon through the main door—
the one you had to be buzzed through—then stopped.
Two men leaned over a stretcher in front of the
elevator, where a girl with dark hair lay motionless.
One man was steadily squeezing a bag attached to a
mask over her face. A smear of blood stained her
cheek. Her eyes were closed, but in my fractured
memory, they were bright green.
“Do you know her?” Uncle Brendon asked. “What
happened to her?”
I shuddered as the answer surfaced from the haze in
my head. Maybe someday I would know what it
meant, but in that moment, I only knew that it was
true.
“She took too much.”
***
Will Kaylee ever understand what happened? Find out
in
Rachel Vincent’s
MY SOUL TO TAKE,
August 2009 from Harlequin Teen.
CAVANAUGH
She doesn’t see dead people, but…
She senses when someone near her is about to die.
And when that happens, a force beyond her control
compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.
Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention
of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard
to come by when Nash seems to know more about her
need to scream than she does. And when classmates
start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only
Kaylee knows who’ll be next…
The last thing you hear before you die
“Folklore, mystery, and romance swirl together in a
story unlike any other out there. I thoroughly enjoyed
it.” --Melissa Marr, New York Times bestselling
author of Wicked Lovely