Soul Screamers Volume Two, Page 2

  “Then Em wins this round.” He glanced around at the last of the mourners, including my father, who leaned on his crutch, chatting softly with Harmony, Tod and Nash’s mom, and his own brother—my uncle Brendon. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough death for one day.”

  That really means something, coming from a reaper.

  * * *

  “You okay?” I tossed Emma a T-shirt from my dresser, and she pulled it over her head. We were nearly the same size, now that she was Lydia. Which meant that the clothes we’d snuck out of her mom’s house no longer fit her.

  “Yeah.” She kicked one of Styx’s rubber dog bones out of the way and stepped into a pair of my jeans. “I don’t know what happened at the cemetery. I mean, it’s not like I’m really dead, but as soon as my mom started talking to you, I just lost it.”

  That was true. She’d been staring at her mother and sisters for two straight days, at the viewing the day before, the funeral today, then the actual burial, and she hadn’t lost it once. Not until her mother was within arm’s reach.

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been through hell this year, Em. I’d be worried about you if you weren’t upset.” Though actually, I was worried about her. Very worried.

  Emma sat on the edge of her bed to pull on a pair of sneakers, and if I’d reached out from the end of my bed, I could have touched her. We’d given up nearly all the floor space in my room for the extra twin bed, and I’d had to get rid of my beanbag chair, which was a real shame, considering we didn’t actually need a second bed. Emma could have had mine—I hadn’t slept in it once in the nearly two weeks since my birthday/her death-day, in part because I no longer needed sleep, though I’d discovered that I did need rest.

  But telling my father that I was spending most of my nights at Tod’s place, whether or not my reaper boyfriend was actually at home, would have been...

  Well, that wouldn’t have been a pleasant conversation. Even if my dad had his suspicions about how physical our relationship had become, I was in no hurry to confirm them. I may have been practically grown—and technically dead—but I would always be his little girl. He’d made that more than clear.

  And I loved him for it.

  More comfortable in our regular clothes, Em and I met everyone else in the front of the house, where Sabine had helped herself to a soda without getting one for anyone else. “All I’m saying is that Emily and Emma are practically the same name. No offense, Em,” she added when we walked past my father’s chair, where the mara was perched on the arm, hopelessly wrinkling the black slacks she only wore to funerals. And, truthfully, she only wore those because Nash had insisted black jeans weren’t good enough.

  “None taken.” Em headed into the kitchen and took a seat at the bar, where she rested her forehead on her folded arms.

  “At least she wasn’t named after a can of soup,” Tod said, and Sabine shot him a scowl. Her last name—Campbell—had come from a hungry worker at the church where she’d been abandoned as a toddler.

  “Emma and Emily are pretty similar.” Nash sank into my dad’s armchair and wrapped one arm around the mara’s waist. “Wouldn’t you rather pick something different? I mean, you could be anyone you want. It could be fun. None of the rest of us got to pick our names.”

  Em didn’t even look up.

  “We called her Cynthia for three days.” Tod shoved a pillow over so I could sit with him on the couch. “She couldn’t remember to answer. Calling her Emily is just easier.”

  “Who cares what you call her? Emma is still Emma, and that’s all that matters, right? That she survived.” Sophie shrugged in her spaghetti-strap dress, leaning against the wall by the door like she wanted to stay but needed to be near an exit, just in case.

  I could tell she was trying to say the right thing. To be useful and insightful. She’d been doing that a lot since she and Luca got together, which seemed to show her that she had more in common with me and my “freak” friends than she would ever again have in common with her fellow dancers and teen socialites. But when filtered through the lens of narcissism through which my cousin viewed the world “useful and insightful” usually came out sounding more like “pointless and trite.”

  Sophie had come a long way, but the journey was far from over.

  “Yeah, I survived.” Em sat up and glared at her over the half wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “Unless you count the part where my neck was snapped by a hellion who wanted to wear me like a perpetual Halloween costume. And the fact that my permanent address is now plot number 436 at the Grandview Cemetery. You think Zappos delivers to burial plots? If so, you must be right! Nothing’s changed! So what if I’m now a brunette, and a B-cup, and an Emily? At least I survived, right?”

  “I was just trying to help.” Sophie blinked back tears that probably had more to do with her own frustration than with sympathy for Em. “I almost died, too, you know. We all did.”

  “Almost only counts in beauty pageants.” Emma slid off her bar stool and pulled a can of soda from the fridge, then took down a tall glass and the bottle of whiskey my dad had confiscated from Nash a couple of weeks earlier. No one said anything when she poured generous helpings of both into the glass.

  “We’re going to get him,” I said through clenched teeth, struggling to hide my anger on her behalf while she drained a quarter of the glass. “We’re going to get them all.”

  She didn’t deserve this. It was my fault Emma had lost everything she’d ever had, except for a best friend who’d failed to protect her. It was my fault, and it was Avari’s, and he was going to pay for what happened to Em and to everyone else he’d hurt.

  “Sure we are.” Emma rolled her eyes and took another drink. “We’re going to sock it to the immortal hellions capable of squashing us like ants on the sidewalk. So what if they can’t be killed, or caught, or even hurt, as far as we know. Maybe we can kill them with kindness. Or maybe they’ll see us wearing our big-boy pants, all ready to take them down, and they’ll die laughing. That’s the only way we’re going to get them. I know nothing about the Netherworld, but I know that.”

  “I have a plan, Em. A good one.”

  “I know you do. I’m sorry.” She shoved limp brown hair back from her face and sat, still holding her glass. “I just... I attended my own funeral today. There’s just no way to improve a day that started with throwing clods of dirt on your own coffin.”

  “I know.” My hand tightened around Tod’s. I hadn’t seen myself buried, but I had been...well...murdered. Sacrificed, in fact. As a virgin.

  Cliché? Sure. Painful? Hell, yes.

  Reversible?

  Nope.

  “Well, at least you’re compatible roommates,” Sabine said as Luca headed into the kitchen. “Kaylee’s dead, but pretending to live in her own body, and Emma’s alive in someone else’s body, but faking death. Your living situation was meant to be. Unlike mine.” The mara threw an angry glance at my cousin.

  Since her foster mother’s death, Sabine had been staying with Sophie and my uncle Brendon, who’d officially applied to be her new foster parent, to keep her within the fold. Because in spite of obvious attitude...issues, she’d proved useful.

  Also because if we tried to get rid of her, she’d only claw her way back into Nash’s life, stepping on everyone in her way. She’d certainly done it before.

  Sabine had a unique perspective on boundaries—she refused to recognize them.

  Sophie stepped away from the wall she’d been holding up and adjusted her black silk dress. “Hey, Luca, I told my dad we’d put in an appearance at the reception,” she said, but we all saw through that—she looked more comfortable in her three-inch stiletto heels than in my house. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah. Just a sec.” Luca looked up from the kitchen peninsula, where he was talking softly to Emma with his back to the rest of us. He said something, and she actually chuckled. When he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear—Lydia’s ear—the look Sophie
gave them should have boiled the blood in their veins.

  Em and I were supposed to go to the reception, too, but when I’d told my dad how she’d reacted to her mother at the funeral, he’d agreed that we should probably forgo any more close contact with Ms. Marshall until they’d both had a little time to adjust to Emma’s death.

  “Luca?” my cousin repeated.

  He stood and gave Emma one more smile before joining Sophie in the living room. “Hey, I was thinking maybe you could give Em a hand with her hair before school tomorrow.” He tried to take his girlfriend’s hand, but she pulled it firmly from his grasp. His smile faltered, but he barreled forward, and I was impressed by his resolution in the face of imminent temper tantrum. “She’s never had to work with thin, fine hair before, so—”

  “Are you saying my hair is limp?” Sophie demanded.

  “No, your hair is beautiful.” He tucked a long blond strand behind her ear and ended the gesture with his palm cupping her jaw. I could practically see Sophie melt. “I was just thinking that Em’s a little insecure about her new look, and you’re good with stuff like that, and she’s your friend, so...?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” Sophie blinked. “No problem.” She almost looked ashamed of herself, and I couldn’t resist a smile. She was nicer when she was with him. She wanted to be better, which made me want to like her.

  Luca was the best thing that had ever happened to my cousin, and he’d come at the best possible time—in the middle of the worst year of her life. I think she truly cared about him. I couldn’t help hoping that someday she’d actually deserve him.

  After Luca and Sophie left to mourn my best friend in public, Emma brought her half-empty glass into the living room and sank onto the couch on my other side. “Okay, let’s hear this brilliant plan. How are we going to bring the hurt to everyone’s least favorite hellions?”

  “We’re not.” I smiled. I was proud of my plan, even if it still had a few kinks to work out. “You were right—we can’t hurt them. But they can hurt one another. A lot, hopefully. Maybe they can even kill each other.” Because goodness knows we couldn’t kill them. We’d never even come close to hurting a hellion, even though a couple of weeks before, I’d been forced to stab Avari over and over every time he took a new form in the human world—stolen from a murder victim—to torture us.

  “Okay, that sounds promising.” Nash leaned forward in my dad’s chair, and Sabine put one hand on his back. “How do we get them to do that?”

  “We’re going to use their weaknesses against them.” Tod’s hand tightened around mine again. He already knew the plan. We’d gone over and over it during his breaks at work for nights on end—he was both a reaper at the local hospital and a delivery boy for a nearby pizza place, but the reaper gig came with more free time.

  Way more people ordered pizzas than met their death on any given night.

  “Weaknesses?” Sabine said. “Hellions have weaknesses?”

  “Only one apiece, that we’ve seen.” I scooted forward until I sat on the edge of the couch, excited and relieved to finally tell them what we’d come up with. “Think about it. When Sabine tried to sell me and Emma to—”

  “Really? We’re on that again?” the mara snapped. “You know I was under the Influence of a hellion of envy. As were you. We both did some pretty stupid shit because of Invidia.”

  “Yeah, but Kaylee didn’t try to sell anyone to a demon,” Tod pointed out.

  “Forgiven and forgotten, remember?” Nash aimed an irritated glance at his brother.

  I remembered forgiving Sabine, but I’d never said I could forget.... “Just listen. When we were all with Avari and Invidia in the Netherworld, how did we get away?”

  Sabine shrugged. “I crossed over with Nash.” Because male bean sidhes don’t wail, they can’t cross to and from the Netherworld on their own. “Tod took Em, then came back for you.”

  Like his brother, Tod was a male bean sidhe, but he could cross freely by virtue of his reaper abilities, most of which didn’t work in the Netherworld, much like my own undead skills. Unfortunately.

  “Yes, but how did we get that chance?” I waved one hand in a circular motion, encouraging them to follow that thought through to the conclusion.

  Nash’s brows rose with the realization. “Avari attacked Invidia.”

  “Why?” Tod said, and his brother—my ex—frowned, trying to remember. He’d been in a lot of pain at the time, and I’m sure the memory was fuzzy.

  “Because he wanted what she had,” the mara said.

  “Exactly.” Sabine was smart—I had to give her that. “Avari is a hellion of greed. The only weakness I’ve ever seen him display is an obsession with having everything. He wants his toys and Invidia’s. And Belphegore’s. And any others on the playground.”

  Em set her nearly empty glass on the coffee table. “So we’re going to play them against one another? How?”

  Tod frowned, and his voice deepened. This was the part he didn’t like. “By dangling the same bait in front of all three of them at once.”

  “What bait?” Em asked, but I could tell by her tone that she was already catching on.

  “Us.” I glanced around the room. “Some of us, anyway. Including Sophie and Luca, if we need them and they’re willing.” And we probably would need them. Avari had already gone after them both. “We’re the bait.”

  Chapter Two

  “We’re the bait? And you’re okay with this?” Nash stared across the room at his brother, challenge swirling in the greens and browns of his eyes—a bean sidhe’s emotions could be read in the colors twisting in their irises, at least by fellow bean sidhes.

  “Hell no, I’m not okay with it. It’s dangerous, and risky, and perilous, and also profoundly unsafe. But I have yet to come up with a better idea, so...” Tod gestured to me, reluctantly yielding the floor, but Em snatched it before I could speak.

  “We’re the bait? So we’re going to be dangled? How are we going to be dangled?”

  “Okay, first of all, no one has to do this.” I stood and Tod scooted over so I could sit on the arm of the couch, from where I could see everyone in the room. “You’re all completely free to just...not participate. But obviously, I can’t promise that staying out of this will keep you safe. We weren’t dangling anything in front of anyone the last time Avari and his hellion posse set their sights on us. Not on purpose, anyway. Which is why I’m pretty sure it’ll be easy to get their attention. The hard part will be keeping them from seeing the setup. So, raise your hand if you want to be a part of this, then I’ll—”

  “I’m in.” Nash didn’t bother to raise his hand.

  “Just like that?” Em frowned at him.

  He nodded. “No one wants to see that bastard pay more than I do.”

  “I’m fully prepared to debate that statement with you, but there’s really no point.” I glanced around the room again. “I’m in, obviously, as is Tod.” He nodded to confirm, and a single pale curl fell over his forehead. “What about you two?”

  “You couldn’t keep me out of this if you tried,” Sabine said. “This place is dull when there’s no evil afoot.”

  “When is that, exactly?” Tod gave her a sardonic grin, and Sabine returned it.

  “Em?” I wasn’t yet familiar enough with her new face to tell what she was thinking. “You totally don’t have to do this.”

  “No.” She drained the last of her whiskey and soda, made a sour face, then set the glass down a little too hard on the coffee table. “I’m in. Just tell me what to do.”

  “Yeah. What kind of dangling are we talking about?” Nash said. “Carrot in front of a donkey? Or raw meat over a pit of lions?”

  “Probably not the carrot.” Sabine shrugged. “Hellions strike me more as carnivores.”

  I’d rarely heard a truer statement. As far as I could tell, hellions lived only to consume humanity—whichever parts of us they could get. Our emotions. Our blood. Our flesh. And, rumor had it, any other bodily flui
ds on hand.

  “Since they can’t cross into the human world, with a few obvious exceptions—” like the recent invasion of hellions wearing the souls and forms of the dead “—we’re only going to be dangling our emotions.”

  “Oh, good. Metaphysical carrots.” Emma exhaled in relief and looked like she might want a refill.

  “Here’s where it gets tricky,” Tod said, while I headed into the kitchen for a six-pack of sodas from the fridge. “They’re not going to be fooled by anything less than the real thing. Authentic—and very strong—envy and vanity.”

  “Envy for Invidia and vanity for Belphegore?” Sabine said, and I nodded.

  Nash accepted the soda I handed him, then passed it to Sabine. “What about Avari?”

  I handed him another can. “We’re not going to worry about him. He’s harder to get rid of than to trap, and if one of us starts flaunting unusual levels of greed, he’ll know something’s up. But if he thinks Invidia and Belphegore are closing in on the carrot he’s been chasing for months—”

  “Or any of us other carrots,” Tod added, accepting a can for himself.

  “—he’ll jump into the game on his own. Which is exactly what we want. So all we really have to do is dangle one carrot in front of each of the other two. And since this involves you all, I’m open to suggestions. Anyone want to dangle?”

  Sabine raised her hand. “I nominate Sophie as bait for Invidia.”

  Tod laughed. He was always able to find humor in even the creepiest situations. I’d thought that was an undead thing, until I became a member of the undead. Then I realized it was a Tod-thing.

  “Just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you can feed her to a hellion,” Em said. “Haven’t we been over this?”

  “I don’t want to get rid of her, I—” Sabine rolled her eyes and started over. “Okay, I do kind of want to get rid of her, but that’s not what this is. Think about it. Out of all seven of us, who’s currently harboring the most envy?”