With All My Soul (3 page)

“Well?” She glanced from one brother to the other, but before
either of them decided to make the first move, Emma looked up, her jaw set in a
determined line, though she wasn’t looking at anyone in particular—in fact, she
seemed to be looking inward.

“I’ll do it. I’ll be Belphegore’s carrot.”

For a second I could only stare at Emma as what she was saying
sank in. Then I shook my head, horrified by the thought. When I’d said we would
be the bait, I hadn’t meant Emma. More than any of us, she deserved a little
peace.

“No, Em, you don’t have to do that. You’ve been through so much
already. This is the last thing you need right now.”

She twisted on the couch to face me, tucking one leg beneath
her, and again I was thrown off by how odd it was to look into Lydia’s face and
see Emma’s eyes. Hear Emma’s voice. “Your plan is good, Kaylee,” she said. “It’s
smart, and it’s bold, and it could work. But it
won’t
work if you’re not willing to accept help. To let the rest of
us take the risks you’ve been taking on your own.”

“No, Kaylee’s right. I’ll do it.” Tod shrugged. “I prefer to
think of myself as a pretty accurate judge of my own gifts, but in the right
slant of light, that could be seen as vanity, and—”

“I’m the natural choice,” Em insisted.

“You’re the least vain person I know—”

“Just listen,” my best friend said, and I did, because that was
the least I owed her. “I never thought about it until I died and woke up with a
stranger’s face, but who we are is very much influenced by what we look like. By
our own self-images. Think about the crazy things people will do to change the
way they look. Dangerous diets. Obsessive workouts. Unnecessary surgeries. And
what they’re really trying to change is who they are. Or at least how they see
themselves. As if changing what they look like can actually do that. It can’t.
But for the first time, I understand that mind-set. It’s like my name.”

“Your name?” Nash looked just as confused as I felt.

“Yeah. We went through several baby books and at least a dozen
baby-naming websites looking for a new name for me, but no matter what we
tried—no matter what names I thought I liked—I couldn’t remember to answer to
them. Because they weren’t
me.
I didn’t associate
those names with
who I am.
Just like I don’t
associate this body—this face—with who I am. Every time I look in the mirror,
I’m surprised. There’s this moment of disorientation when I have to remind
myself that I’m seeing my own reflection. And I know I should be grateful.
Sophie was right about that. I’m still alive, and that’s the most important
thing, and I should be grateful to Tod and Kaylee for directing my soul, and to
Lydia for giving me her body. Not that she had any choice in the matter.”

Em sniffled and a tear fell from each of her eyes to roll
slowly down her cheeks. “But I can’t help it. Every time I look in the mirror,
I’m disappointed.”

“Because you’re not pretty anymore?” Sabine said, and I’d never
wanted worse to smack her.

Okay, except for that time I
did
smack her.

“What?” the
mara
said, like she
actually didn’t understand her gaffe. “It’s true. Lydia’s not pretty, and Em’s
used to being pretty. That can’t be easy. I may not go through a lot of trouble
in the morning, but that doesn’t mean I’d be happy to wake up tomorrow with
nothing to fill out my bra, you know?” She gestured toward my nearly flat chest,
and that time my palm
itched
to connect with her
face.

“She’s right.” Em frowned and glanced at me apologetically.
“Not about your boobs. They’re fine.”

“
Way
better than fine,” Tod leaned
over to whisper, and I buried my face in my hands, both embarrassed and relieved
to realize that Nash was the only one in the room who’d refrained from
commenting on the sad state of my personal assets.

“But Sabine knows what I’m saying,” Em said, mercifully
diverting attention from me and my subpar endowment. “I
liked
who I was. What I looked like. I liked having curves, and I
liked my hair, and loved having clear skin without having to mess with it. I
liked seeing my eyes
in my own face.
I’m never going
to have that again, and I hate it. So yeah, I’m vain. As it turns out, I’m
really
vain. If Sabine’s willing to help manipulate
that with a little strategic fear amplification, I
know
I could reel Belphegore in.”

She closed her eyes for a second, then met my gaze. “And,
frankly, I plan to enjoy the hell out of it. The bitch
broke my neck,
Kaylee. It’s
her
fault I
died—not yours. And I’m not going to let any of you tell me I can’t play a big
part in bringing her down. I deserve this. She’s going to get what she deserves,
too.”

Chapter Three

“How was the reception?” I set a glass of sweet tea on
the end table next to my father, then carefully lifted his leg from the coffee
table and slid a pillow beneath it.

“Kaylee, you really don’t have to wait on me. I’m fine.” He
scruffed the fur between Styx’s small, pointed ears, and she snuggled closer.
The cutest part about their recent bonding was that my dad thought Styx was
hungry for attention. I suspected the truth had more to do with her
determination to protect him at all costs.

Styx was half-Netherhound. She was fiercely loyal and could
snap a human long bone in a single bite.

“You were stabbed in the leg by a psychotic hellion wearing
Sabine’s foster mother’s face.” In the kitchen again, I pulled his plate out of
the microwave and grabbed a fork from the dish drainer. “What part of that is
fine?”

“The part where I lived.” My dad sighed, and for a moment his
eyes swirled with survivor’s guilt. “Some weren’t so lucky.”

“I heard that!” Em called from the bedroom, where she was
obsessing over which of my hopelessly plain T-shirts to wear on her first day of
school as Emily Cavanaugh.

“You’re a survivor, Em!” I called back. More of a survivor than
I was, anyway. At least her heart still beat on its own. Even if it wasn’t her
original heart.

I shooed Styx off the couch with one hand while I handed my
dad’s plate to him with the other.

“How’s she doing?” My dad pulled back the plastic film covering
his dinner as I set the remote control next to him.

“It’s going to take a while to adjust, but she’ll get there.” I
shrugged. “She still has all of us.” Which was more than most new kids had on
the first day. “So? The reception? How’s Ms. Marshall? And Em’s sisters?”

My father sighed. He no longer looked hungry. “They’re hurting,
Kay. It kills me that we can’t tell them the truth.”

We’d thought about it. A lot. After all, we could certainly
prove our crazy story. But telling them that Emma was still alive in someone
else’s body would mean telling them about
bean
sidhes,
and reapers, and death dates, and about the Netherworld, and
that there were hellions over there just waiting to devour our souls and torture
us for all of eternity.

Most humans didn’t handle that kind of disclosure well.

“It probably doesn’t help that they had to wait nearly two
weeks to bury her.”

The police had refused to release Emma’s body until after a
full autopsy. They hadn’t bought our claim that she’d broken her neck in a freak
fall from the swing set at the lake, where my birthday party had been crashed by
hellions.

We didn’t tell them about the hellions.

Of course, part of the reason our story was so hard for them to
accept was that her boyfriend, Jayson, had died that same day. As had Sabine’s
foster mother. That was too many deaths related to one high school clique to
pass as coincidence.

But in the end, they’d had to release all the bodies for burial
when they could find no signs of foul play. Because there
was
no foul play, on our part, anyway.

The hellions were not available for questioning.

“I’m just glad it’s over.” My dad picked up his fork and poked
at a clump of rehydrated mashed potatoes.

“Yeah.” Except for the part about us getting rid of the three
hellions occupying the Netherworld version of my high school. My dad wasn’t
ready to hear about that just yet. At least not until his leg had healed.

“Hey,” Tod said, and I looked up to find him standing in the
middle of the living room, holding a plain manila envelope.

“Is that...?” My dad gestured to the envelope, and Tod
nodded.

“Em!” I called when he sat on the couch on my other side and
handed me the package.

My bedroom door creaked open, and Emma trudged in from the hall
as I dumped the contents of the envelope on the coffee table. She looked more
nervous than curious when she saw what Tod had brought.

I picked up a small laminated card from the middle of the pile
of papers and held it out to her. “Emily Cavanaugh, you are now officially
licensed to drive.” Even though Lydia’s body was only fifteen years old. It
hadn’t seemed fair to make Em wait another year and take driver’s ed all over
again. She’d already lost so much—including her car.

“Where did you get them done?” Em sank into the armchair,
staring at her new license.

I wondered what she was thinking. Was she hating her new face
again? I couldn’t help wishing she’d known Lydia before
becoming
her. Lydia was so kind and selfless. She was so beautiful
on the inside that her outside hadn’t mattered.

And it’s not like she’d had any obvious flaws. She was
just...normal.

Obviously normal was hard to get used to, after a lifetime of
gorgeous.

“I got yours the same place I got mine.” Tod had needed
paperwork to get hired as a pizza delivery boy, just like Em needed it to start
school. “But I’m sworn to secrecy on that front.”

“Like it matters.” Emma slid her new license into her back
pocket, then leaned forward to study her new birth certificate. “This is
bizarre. I’m not sure I’ve even seen my real one.” She frowned and picked up
another small paper card. “New social security number. I guess I should memorize
this....”

“Thanks for getting these, Tod,” my dad said, lifting a forkful
of meat loaf toward his mouth.

“No problem.”

When my dad turned on the TV and Em sank farther into the chair
to study her new social security number, Tod gave his head a subtle nod toward
the hall.

“Hey, Dad, we’re gonna go...” I hesitated, trying to come up
with a quick, reasonable excuse to be alone with Tod, but my father only rolled
his eyes.

“Just leave the door open.”

I gave him a grateful smile and picked up my glass of water on
the way into the hall.

In the middle of my bedroom floor, between the beds, I turned
and put one hand over Tod’s chest to feel his heartbeat. It was there—faint but
very real. The gesture, checking for his heartbeat, had become both habit and a
silent communication between us. A reassurance.

A promise too big to be defined by mere words.

He opened his mouth, and I put one finger over my lips in the
universal sign for “shhhh.”

Tod rolled his eyes. He didn’t need to be reminded to make sure
the living couldn’t hear him—one of the handier perks of our undead state. In
fact, he often had to be reminded to
let
others see
and hear him. In the two-plus years since his death, most normal human functions
had fallen out of habit, and he’d once told me he wasn’t sure his heart ever
beat when I wasn’t there to feel it.

I’d promptly melted into a puddle of Kaylee-goo.

My fingers curled around a handful of his shirt when he kissed
me, and I stood on my toes to give him more of me. To taste more of him.
“Mmm...” I murmured when his lips trailed from my mouth over my chin, then down
my neck. “I missed that.”

“It’s only been a few hours,” he whispered, though no one else
could hear us. “Shouldn’t eternity make us more patient?”

“It’s having the opposite effect. Knowing we should have
forever makes me want a little bit of forever
right
now...
” I pulled him back up, and my lips met his
again. His hands trailed slowly up my sides, and I let the feel of him chase
away the anger and sadness I’d been fighting for most of the day. For most of
the past two weeks, in fact. Tod felt good. Tod
always
felt good, even when the rest of my world was falling
apart.

“Oh!” He pulled away from me and reached into his pocket, then
held up a small plastic vial full of a murky greenish liquid. “I almost forgot.
I picked this up to save Sabine a trip.”

“Is that...?”

“Yeah. She said not to touch it until you dilute it. We’re
supposed to use this.” He dug in his other pocket and came up with a small
plastic medicinal dropper. “But for the record, I don’t approve of you ingesting
Netherworld substances. Especially untested Netherworld substances. So I really
have no choice but to hang out until the effects have completely worn off. To
make sure you’re safe.”

I laughed. “My dad and Em are here.”

He lifted one pale brow. “And, naturally, you’re going to tell
your dad what you’re up to...?”

I tugged him closer until I could whisper against his cheek. “I
thought we agreed there were some things he doesn’t need to know about....”

“We did.” His hand slid beneath the hem of my shirt, and the
dropper grazed my side. “Those are my very favorite things.”

“You know, when it’s silent in there, I get suspicious!” my dad
called from the living room. Em laughed. Tod groaned.

He held me for another second and I breathed in his scent, then
let him go and took my water glass from the desk, where I’d set it. I stared
down into it, then at the vial. “This is not going to mix well.” I pulled out my
rolling chair—it wouldn’t go far, with Em’s bed in the way—and sank into it,
then set the glass down again while Tod worked the plug from the vial.

“You sure you want to do this?”

“No. But I can’t give it to Sophie if I’m not willing to try it
myself.”

He stuck the tip of the dropper into the vial and drew up a
quarter of an inch of murky green gunk. “My mom calls that the baby food
test.”

“Baby food?”

“Yeah. When we were little, she wouldn’t give us anything to
eat until she’d tasted it herself. Which is why she started baking. Evidently
baby food is vile.”

I watched as he dropped into a squat, so that he was eye level
with my glass. “So you really did grow up on cookies and cake. I
knew
it.”

“That’s why I’m so sweet now. I have no idea what went wrong
with Nash.” He carefully squeezed the bulb at the top of the dropper, and a
single drop of concentrated liquid envy plopped into my glass. For a second, it
hung suspended in the water. Then tiny threadlike feelers of dark, dark green
stretched out from the drop in all directions, bleeding slowly into the rest of
the glass while Tod squirted the rest of what he’d sucked up back into the
vial.

In seconds, the drop was gone and my water was an uneven green,
paler than the concentrated color. Like an old bruise.

“Yuck.” I held the glass up to the light, and the green grew
paler. “Maybe we should have mixed it with soda.”

Tod opened his mouth, and I took the first sip before he could
offer to drink it for me. To test it on himself. The last thing I needed was for
him to develop an irrational envy. The only person he could possibly be jealous
of was Nash, and it had taken me forever to get the two of them back on speaking
terms. Backward momentum was
not
okay.

“Yuck!” I made a face and wished for a cookie to rid my mouth
of the foul film. “Envy tastes bitter.”

Tod laughed. “I could have told you that without even trying
it. You gulp that, and I’ll get you something sweet to chase it with.”

“Thanks.”

I made myself drink the whole glass while he was gone, then
made a mental note to warn Sabine to put it in something dark and sweet.
Definitely coffee or soda. Or artificially sweetened diet protein shakes.

As I was swallowing the last mouthful, Tod reappeared in my
room with a clear plastic cup of pink lemonade from my favorite burger place, a
block from school. “Thanks.” I set the empty glass down and gulped a quarter of
the lemonade through the straw without even taking the cup from him. “Much
better.”

He set the drink on my nightstand, then sank onto my bed and
scooted back until he could lean against the wall. I sat in front of him, my
back pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me. “Feel anything
yet?”

“Just this.” I threaded my fingers between his in my lap. But I
was already starting to regret volunteering for our little experiment. The more
I thought about it, the easier it was to remember how I’d felt with Invidia
spewing envy into the air at my school, poisoning us, amplifying whatever benign
envy we felt on a daily basis until it poured from us in bitter, violent
waves.

If she hadn’t been there—if we hadn’t been under the influence
of more jealousy than any normal sixteen-year-old could handle—would Sabine and
I have fought over Nash? Or would I have seen what was right in front of me
sooner?

I didn’t have the answer, and thinking about it—about being out
of control of my own emotions—made me angry. So I snuggled closer to Tod,
determined to distract myself from my fears. “Have you ever been jealous of
anyone? Like, really jealous?”

“Is that a serious question?”

Something in his tone made me pull away just enough that I
could turn and see his face.

“Nash?”

The blues in his irises twisted for a second before he got his
emotions under control.

“Don’t,” I whispered. “Let me see. Please.”

Tod frowned. Then he closed his eyes, and when they opened, the
shades of blue they held were churning like a storm at sea, cobalt twisting
through thin, fragile shades of glacial ice, then rolling over bold streaks of
cerulean.

“That bad, huh?” I couldn’t completely hide the satisfaction in
my voice. It was nice to be wanted. It was even better to be needed, and I could
feel how much Tod needed me every day. He needed me almost as much as I needed
him.

“It wasn’t just jealousy, Kaylee. I
coveted
you. It was all biblical and forbidden.”

“Tell me.”

He hesitated just for a second. “I
hated
seeing you with him, but I couldn’t stay away because I knew
that if I wasn’t there, you two would do things you’d never do with me in the
room, and then I’d be all alone imagining that—imagining my
brother
touching the girl I was meant to be with for the rest of my
afterlife—and then... Well, then things would get worse. But it’s not like I
could say anything. Not as long as you wanted to be with him.”