With All My Soul. Rachel Vincent
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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.”
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