“Are you sure?” He had to open his eyes to see me nod again, then the line of his jaw hardened. “Will you help me?” he asked, pain twisting his features into a mask I barely recognized. “I swear I won’t let her take you.”
Unfortunately, after my father’s story, I wasn’t sure Uncle Brendon would have any control over who the reaper took instead. Any reaper who would reap a soul not on the list wouldn’t think twice about taking the bean sidhe who got in her way. Or everyone else in the room, for that matter.
But I couldn’t just let Sophie die, even if she was a royal pain in the butt most of the time.
“What are you all talking about?” My cousin glanced at each of us in turn, like we’d all lost our minds, and sanity was getting lonely. “What’s going on?”
Uncle Brendon crossed the living room in four huge steps and motioned to his daughter to join him on the couch. She went reluctantly, and he pulled her down onto the center cushion. “Honey, I have to tell you something, and I don’t have time for the long, gentle version.” He took Sophie’s hands, and my chest ached with what could only be the splintering of my heart.
“You’re going to die in a few minutes,” he said. Sophie frowned, but her father rushed on before she could interrupt. “But I don’t want you to worry, because Kaylee and I are going to bring you right back. You’ll be fine. I’m not sure what’ll happen after that, but what I need you to know is that you’re going to be just fine.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Confusion pinched Sophie’s fine features into a scowl, and I could see panic lurking on the edge of her expression. Her world had just ceased making sense, and she didn’t know what to do with information she couldn’t understand. I knew exactly how she felt. “Why would I die? And what on earth can Kaylee do about it?”
Uncle Brendon shook his head. “We don’t have time for all that now. I don’t know how long we have, so I need you to trust me. I will bring you back.”
Sophie nodded, but she looked terrified, as much for her father as for herself. She probably thought he’d gone over the proverbial deep end and was now drowning in it. She glared at me over his shoulder, as if I’d somehow contaminated him with my mental defect, but I couldn’t summon any irritation toward my cousin—not with her moments from death.
“Noooo.”
Every head in the room swiveled toward the hall, where Aunt Val now stood, clutching the door frame as if that were the only thing holding her up. “It wasn’t supposed to be Sophie.”
“What?” Uncle Brendon stood so fast the motion made me dizzy. He stared at his wife in dawning horror. “Valerie, what did you do? ”
Aunt Val? What did she have to do with grim reapers and bean sidhes? She was human!
Before my aunt could answer, a fresh wave of grief rolled over me and I staggered on my feet. Nash caught me before I hit the dining-room table and lowered me carefully into one of the chairs. It wouldn’t be long now.
Sophie started to tremble then, and the very sight of her sent tremors through my own limbs. Anguish racked me from the inside out. My heart felt too big for my chest. My throat burned like I was breathing flames.
But beyond the physical pain of holding back Sophie’s soul song, I felt my cousin’s loss intensely, though the reaper had yet to strike. It was like watching my own hand laid out on a chopping block, knowing the woodsman was coming for it. Knowing I’d never get it back. And it didn’t matter that we’d never been close. I wasn’t in love with my feet either, but I didn’t want to lose them.
“Mom?” Sophie squeaked, shifting her weight from one side to the other as she hugged herself. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry, honey,” Aunt Val said from the middle of the living-room carpet, her focus darting all over the place, like a junkie on a bad trip. “I won’t let her take you.” She paused, without ever looking at her daughter, and threw her head back as far as it would go, blond waves cascading down her back almost to her waist.
“Marg!” she shouted, and I flinched. My hands gripped the chair arms as I tried to regain my control after she’d nearly shaken it lose. “I know you’re here, Marg!”
Marg? I hadn’t told Aunt Val about seeing the reaper, or that she was, in fact, female. And I hadn’t even known the reaper’s name. Until now.
And suddenly I understood. Aunt Val knew the reaper’s name because she had hired her.
No! Denial and devastation pinged through me. I couldn’t believe it. Aunt Val was the only mother I’d known for the past thirteen years. She loved me, and she certainly loved Sophie and Uncle Brendon. She would never do business with a reaper, much less bargain with the souls of the innocent.
But the drinking, and the questions. She’d known all along why the girls were dying!
“This wasn’t part of the deal!” my aunt screamed, hands clenched into fists, shaking in either fear or fury. Or both. “Show yourself, you coward! You can’t do this!”
But that’s where she was so very wrong.
AUNT VAL’S SHRIEK had yet to fade from my ears when Sophie’s legs collapsed beneath her. As she fell, she smacked the back of her head on the edge of an end table. She hit the floor with a muffled thud, and blood trickled from her hair to stain the white carpet.
Neither of her parents saw. Uncle Brendon was scanning the bright room obsessively, as if the reaper might be hiding behind an armchair, or in one of the potted plants. Aunt Val still stared at the ceiling, shouting for Marg to appear and explain herself.
As if reapers hailed from above.
But the moment Sophie died, her soul song forced itself from my throat, and I nearly choked, trying to hold it back out of habit.
Aunt Val noticed me retching and whirled around to look for her daughter. “No!” she screamed, and I’d never heard a human voice come so close to my own screech until that moment.
She dropped to her knees on the floor. “Wake up, Sophie.” She stroked loose blond curls back from her daughter’s face, and her fingers came away smeared with blood. “Marg, fix this! This wasn’t the deal!”
“Sophie!” Uncle Brendon joined his wife beside his daughter’s lifeless body, as Nash and I looked on in horror, too shocked to move. Then my uncle looked at me over his wife’s shoulder, but I couldn’t understand what he wanted. I was too busy holding back the scream.
Nash dropped into a squat by my chair and took my hands, his gaze piercing mine with quiet strength and intensity. “Let it out,” he whispered. “Show us her soul so we can guide it.”
So I sang for Sophie.
I sang for a soul taken before its time, for a young life lost. For childless parents, and for a girl who would never get to decide who and what she wanted to be. For my cousin, my surrogate sister, whose quick tongue would never be tempered by age and experience.
As
