If I Die. Rachel Vincent
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“Don’t promise her things you can’t deliver,” Nash snapped from the chair to my left, and I could hear anger in his voice, just as thick as the tears were in mine. “We all know how well that worked out for Addison.”
Tod’s jaw clenched, but his attention never left me. “I can’t stop whatever’s going to happen on Thursday, Kaylee. More than anything in the world, I wish I could.” I nodded, sniffling. “But Levi said if I can get proof that Thane’s been reaping off the record, he’ll take it to his boss, and at the very least, we can get him removed from your case and held for review. And that should protect your dad. No promises …” The reaper glanced pointedly at his brother, then met my tear-blurred gaze again. “But I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you.” I wiped away more tears, trying to balance overwhelming fear and frustration with the bone of hope he’d just tossed me.
“How do you know all this already?” Nash’s gaze narrowed on his brother when the reaper finally stood and stepped back. “You popped in here like you had urgent news, but if it was so urgent in the first place, how did you and Levi have time to work this out?”
I glanced at Nash, surprised by his anger. “He’s just trying to help,” I insisted, sliding my hand into his.
“Don’t you think his timing is a little convenient?”
Tod actually laughed. “Little brother, the last thing I was trying to be was convenient.”
Something silent passed between them. Some kind of unspoken challenge that made my stomach pitch. “What am I missing?” They’d never been best friends, but I’d rarely seen them openly hostile.
Nash never even glanced at me. “You’ve delivered your news. Now go deliver some pizza.”
I glanced at him in surprise. “What’s wrong with you?”
But when Nash didn’t answer, Tod did, his eyes darker than usual, but still steady. “He wants to pick up where the two of you left off.”
I could feel myself flush, and Nash’s hand tightened around mine. But he was watching his brother again. “Do you have a problem with that, Tod?”
That sick feeling in my stomach grew stronger, and I looked up to find the reaper watching me, like he was waiting for some kind of signal. And when I didn’t give him one—when I couldn’t even fully understand the words they were saying, much less the ones they weren’t—he exhaled heavily, holding my gaze. “Not if that’s what she wants. At least this time she’s actually in there and able to speak for herself.” He tapped his head to illustrate his point, and I struggled to breathe through a complicated mix of embarrassment and squirming discomfort.
I didn’t like the reminder that he knew what had happened. What Nash had let happen when he was high. I didn’t want to think about it, and I didn’t want to know that anyone else ever thought about it.
Nash went stiff at my side, and I could practically feel his temper rolling off him in waves. “Get. Out.”
Tod watched me for another second, while I tried desperately to calm the storm of confusion battering my heart from all sides. Then he disappeared.
“I can’t believe he said that to you.” Nash pulled me up by the hand he still held, and I let him tug me toward the living room.
“He was talking to you,” I said softly, as I sank onto the couch next to him, and Nash went very, very still.
It was the thing we didn’t talk about. It had happened, more than once, and it had broken us up for a while, but he felt horrible about it, and the whole thing was behind us now. And I was fine as long as I didn’t think about it. About what was said and seen and done while I wasn’t in control of my own body.
Nash looked straight into my eyes with an intensity and sincerity that made me catch my breath. “It’s never going to happen again. Not even if you lived to be a thousand. You know that, right?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” I said at last. Wasn’t that proof enough that I was trying to move past it?
But I couldn’t get Tod’s expression out of my head. There’d been just a flash of motion in his irises—a swirl of blue too quick to interpret.
I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. Tried to get back to the place Nash and I had been an hour before, alone, in my room, where thoughts didn’t matter—it was all about feeling. But when I met Nash’s gaze, I knew the moment was over. He was still mad at Tod, and hurt by the reminder of things we’d put behind us. And maybe I was, too.
“He did this on purpose.” Nash let his head fall against the back of the couch. “He dredged up old problems to start new trouble.” And this time I couldn’t argue.
As it turns out, there’s no greater impediment to la petite mort—the little death—than a visit from the real thing.
7
I blinked in the dark, confusion covering me like a blanket over my head. Why was I awake? Then Styx growled, and I realized two things at once: I was in my room, and I wasn’t alone.
I sat up, heart pounding, pulse whooshing in my ears. Light from the hall painted a strip of color over one corner of my desk and the end of my bed, while the rest of the room stood shrouded in shadow. Styx lay near my footboard, curled up like she was still asleep, except for her raised head, shining black eyes, and sharp teeth, exposed as she growled in warning.
Avari. Harmony had said Styx would wake up if a hellion came anywhere near me, even from the other side of the world barrier, and though I’d managed to piss off two other hellions—Belphagore and Invidia—in the six months since I’d learned I was a bean sidhe, Avari would always be my default guess. My go-to bad guy, a title awarded on the basis of persistence alone.
It creeped me out to know that Avari was wandering around the Netherworld version of my house—a field of razor wheat—with nothing separating us except for the world barrier. Was he trying to possess me again? He couldn’t take over my body while I was conscious, which is why Styx’s job—half guard dog, half security alarm—was so important. And that was also why I was under orders to wake my dad up if Styx so much as growled in her sleep.
I crawled out from under the covers and stretched to reach her fur, stroking her in reward for a job well done on my way out of bed.
“Well, look who’s all grown up.”
I jumped at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, then sat up slowly, skin crawling as I reached for my bedside lamp. It wasn’t Avari. It couldn’t be—unless he’d possessed someone else and broken into my house.
Shit, shit, shit! I flipped the lamp switch and every dark silhouette in my room was thrown into full color, the sudden light blinding me for one long moment. I blinked rapidly, fighting off panic as I waited for my vision to adjust, but when it did, it brought no answers—only more questions.
A man sat in my desk chair, watching me silently, arms crossed over the front of a white button-up shirt. His dark eyes glittered with some perverse version of anticipation or amusement, as if he knew me and was waiting for a familiar reaction. But I’d never even seen him before—I would have remembered that face. Smooth and young, with a strong chin and wide forehead. If I’d seen him at a party, I would have watched him—or watched Emma fawn over him. But in my room, in the middle of the night …?
“Get out.” I slid off the mattress on the opposite side, and squatted to pull an aluminum baseball bat—one of Nash’s spares—from beneath the bed. I was no stranger to late-night unwanted company.
“Do you even know who I am?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Unscheduled visitors rarely brought good news—just ask Jacob Marley. “Get out now, or I’ll yell for my dad.”
The stranger settled farther into my chair,