My Soul to Take. Rachel Vincent
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on the scent permeating the entire house, I snuck into the living room, snagged the phone book from an end table drawer and took it back to my room. There were four Hudsons with the right prefix, but only one on his street. Nash answered on the third ring.
My heart pounded so hard I was sure he could hear it over the phone, and for several seconds, silence was all I could manage.
“Hello?” he repeated, sounding almost as annoyed as sleepy now.
“Hey, it’s Kaylee,” I finally blurted, fervently hoping he remembered me—that I hadn’t imagined dancing with him the night before. Because frankly, after the night’s premonition and the morning’s newscast, even I was starting to wonder if Sophie was right about me.
Nash cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was husky with sleep. “Hey. You’re not calling to cancel, are you?”
I couldn’t resist a smile, in spite of the reason for the call. “No. I. Have you seen the news this morning?”
He chuckled hoarsely. “I haven’t even seen the floor yet this morning.” Nash yawned, and springs creaked over the line. He was still in bed.
I stamped down the scandalous images that knowledge brought to mind and forced myself to focus on the issue at hand. “Turn on your TV.”
“I’m not really into current events…. ” More springs squealed as he rolled over, and something whispered against his phone.
My eyes closed and I leaned against my headboard, sucking in a deep breath. “She’s dead, Nash.”
“What?” He sounded marginally more awake this time. “Who’s dead?”
I leaned forward, and my own bed creaked. “The girl from the club. Emma’s sister found her dead in the bathroom at Taboo last night.”
“Are you sure it’s her?” He was definitely awake now, and I pictured him sitting straight up in bed. Hopefully shirtless.
“See for yourself.” I aimed my remote at the nineteen-inch set on my dresser and scrolled through the local channels until I found one still running the story. “Channel nine.”
Something clicked over the phone, and canned laughter rang out from his room. A moment later, the sounds from his television synched with mine. “Oh, shit,” Nash whispered. Then his voice went deeper. Serious. “Kaylee, has this happened to you before? I mean, have you ever been right before?”
I hesitated, unsure how much to tell him. My eyes closed again, but the backs of my eyelids offered me no advice. So I sighed and told him the truth. After all, he already knew the weirdest part. “I don’t know. I can’t talk about it here.” The last thing I needed was for my aunt and uncle to overhear. They’d either ground me for the rest of my natural life or rush me back to the psych ward.
“I’ll come get you. Half an hour?”
“I’ll be in my driveway.”
3
I SHOWERED IN RECORD time, and twenty-four minutes after I hung up the phone, I was clean, dry, clothed, and wearing just enough makeup to hide the shock. But I was still straightening my hair when I heard a car pull into the driveway.
Crap. If I didn’t get to him first, Uncle Brendon would make Nash come in and submit to questioning.
I pulled the plug on the flatiron, raced back to my room for my phone, keys and wallet then sprinted down the hall and out the front door, shouting “good morning” and “goodbye” to my astonished uncle all in the same breath.
“It’s early for lunch. How ‘bout pancakes?” Nash asked as I slid into the passenger seat of his mother’s car and closed the door.
“Um … sure.” Though with death on my conscience and Nash in my sight, food was pretty much the last thing on my mind.
The car smelled like coffee, and Nash smelled like soap, toothpaste, and something indescribably, tantalizingly yummy. I wanted to inhale him whole, and I couldn’t stop staring at his chin, smooth this morning where it had been deliciously rough the night before. I remembered the texture of his cheek against mine, and had to close my eyes and concentrate to banish the dangerous memory.
I’m not a conquest, no matter how good he smells. Or how good he tastes. And the sudden, overwhelming need to know what his lips would feel like made me shiver all over, and scramble for something safe to say. Something casual, that wouldn’t hint at the dangerous direction my thoughts had taken.
“I guess the car started,” I said, pulling the seat belt across my torso. Then cursed myself silently for such a stupid opening line. Of course the car had started.
His brief gaze seemed to burn through me. “I have unreasonably good luck.”
I could only nod and clench the door grip while I forced my thoughts back to Heidi Anderson to keep them off Nash and … thoughts I shouldn’t have been thinking.
When he glanced my way again, his focus slid down my throat to the neckline of my tee before jerking back to the road as he clenched his jaw. I counted my exhalations to keep them even.
We wound up at a booth in Jimmy’s Omelet, a locally owned chain that served breakfast until three in the afternoon. Nash sat across from me, his arms resting on the table, his sleeves pushed up halfway to his elbows.
Once the waitress had taken our orders and moved on, Nash leaned forward and met my gaze boldly, intimately, as if we’d shared much more than a rhyme in a dark alley and an almost-kiss. But the teasing and flirtation were gone; he looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. Somber. Almost worried.
“Okay… ” He spoke softly, in concession to the crowd talking, chewing, and clanking silverware around us. “So last night you predicted this girl’s death, and this morning she showed up on the news, dead.”
I nodded, swallowing thickly. Hearing it like that—so matter-of-fact—made it sound both crazy and terrifying. And I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“You said you’ve had these premonitions before?”
“Just a few times.”
“Have any of them ever come true?”
I shook my head, then shrugged and picked up a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware to have something to do with my hands. “Not that I know of.”
“But you only know about this one because it was on the news, right?” I nodded without looking up, and he continued. “So the others could have come true too, and you might never have known about it.”
“I guess.” But if that were the case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about it.
When I drew my focus from the napkin I’d half peeled from the knife and fork, I found him watching me intently, as if my every word might mean something important. His lips were pressed firmly together, his forehead wrinkled in concentration.
I shifted on the vinyl-padded bench, uneasy under such scrutiny. Now he probably really thought I was a freak. A girl who thinks she knows when someone’s going to die—that might be interesting in certain circles; it definitely presented a certain morbid cachet.
But a girl who really could predict death? That was just scary.
Nash frowned, and his focus shifted back and forth between my eyes, like he was looking for something specific. “Kaylee, do you know why this is happening? What it means?”
My heart thumped painfully, and I clutched the shredded napkin. “How do you know it means anything?”
“I.don’t.” He sighed and leaned back in the booth, dropping his gaze to the table as he picked up a mini-jar of strawberry preserves from the jelly carousel. “But don’t you think it should mean something? I mean, we’re not talking about lottery numbers and horse-race winners. Don’t you want to know why you can do this?