Reaper (Soul Screamers) - By Rachel Vincent
Tod Hudson was a typical teenager. He liked girls, sports, food and tolerated his younger brother, Nash. In fact, he had his whole life in front of him—and due to his bean sidhe heritage, it was going to be a very long life indeed. And then the car accident occurred.
Suddenly Tod's future wasn't so sure, and he had to make a choice. Life… Death… or something Between….
The world spun around me.
Nash flew forward and his head smacked the windshield. My seatbelt punched the air from my lungs as the entire dashboard lurched toward me.
Then everything went still.
The only sound was the soft hiss of something ruptured. Every breath hurt, and my neck was so stiff I could hardly turn my head. I exhaled slowly and closed my eyes, stealing a moment in the near-silence to appreciate my pounding heart, and the fact that it continued to beat.
Then I twisted in the dark to face my brother.
“Nash?” He was slumped in his seat half facing me. His eyes were closed, his head steadily dripping blood from an injury I couldn’t see in the dark. My relief bled into dread as I pushed my door open and the interior lights came on. “Nash?” I said again, but he didn’t answer.
He wasn’t breathing.
Staring down at the man on the bed, I couldn’t help but suspect the coincidence. What were the chances he’d be brought in on my first day at the hospital? Levi was a shrewd little bastard, and the man on the bed—practically gift-wrapped for me in a hospital gown, terror dancing in his eyes—was proof of that. I was no angel in life. Why should that be any different in death?
“Okay, I’m heading out…” Mom slid her purse over one shoulder on her way through the living room. “There’s leftover lasagna in the fridge. And there’s some bagged salad.”
I nodded absently and flipped the channel to VH1 concert footage from one of the kids’ networks—where I was not trying to catch a glimpse of my ex-girlfriend Addison, who’d dumped me for a chance at stardom when she was cast in a pilot.
“Tod.” Mom sat on the coffee table, right in front of the television. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah.” I leaned to the left and she mimicked my movement. “Lasagna. Salad. Got it.”
“I’m serious. Eat something green, okay?” She snatched the remote and aimed it over her shoulder, and a second later the screen went dark. I started to complain, but then I noticed how tired she looked—the beginnings of lines on a face that would look thirty years old for the next half a century—and came up with a grin instead.
“Do Skittles count?”
Mom rolled her eyes. She never could resist my smile. “Only if you save me the purple ones.” She handed me the remote, but wouldn’t let go when I tried to take it. “You’re staying home tonight, right?”
“What am I, a leper? It’s Friday night. I have plans.”
She sighed. “Change them. Please.”
“Mom…”
“I need you to keep an eye on Nash.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” I tried another grin, but this time she wasn’t buying it.
“Tonight, you’re his warden. It doesn’t do me any good to ground him if I can’t keep him at home.”
“Then why bother grounding him?”
She leaned closer and lowered her voice, bright blue irises swirling slowly in dread and frustration, and the fact that she let me read her eyes was my first clue how serious she was. Humans wouldn’t have been able to see it—only a fellow bean sidhe—banshee, to the uninformed—would be able to read her emotions in her eyes, but she usually hid them from us too.
“Because he snuck out in the middle of the night and drove to Holser House on a license still warm from the lamination! And an ineffective consequence is better than no consequence at all. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.” She raked one hand through her hair, then met my gaze with a worried one of her own. “He’s not like you, Tod. Aside from a couple of notable exceptions, you tend to think things through, but Nash is ruled by his heart—”
I nearly choked on laughter. “I think the organ he’s ruled by is a little farther south, Mom.”
She frowned. “My point is that he’s not taking this separation from Sabine very well. I thought some time apart would help…cool things down between them. But it seems to be doing the opposite.” She let go of the remote and gave me a wistful smile. “You and your brother could not be more different.”
“Because he thinks he’s in love, and I don’t believe in faerie tales?”
“Love isn’t a faerie tale, Tod. But it isn’t child’s play either, and it makes me nervous how intense they are together.”
“You just don’t want to be a grandmother,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
“That’s definitely part of it,” she admitted. “My future grandchildren deserve better than teenage parents could give them. But beyond that, it isn’t healthy, how wrapped up they are in each other. Relationships like that burn bright, but when they burn out, they leave everyone blistered. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You’re condoning my playboy lifestyle, right? Because I’m your favorite.”
Mom laughed out loud. “At least Nash doesn’t get bored a month into a relationship. You, my hedonistic firstborn, are an entirely different kind of problem.”
“Hedonistic is another word for favorite, right? So that’s a compliment?”
She stood, still smiling. “Eat something green. And read something without pictures. Those are not suggestions.”
I turned the TV back on as she headed for the door. “I’ll take them both under advisement.”
“Nash!” Mom called, one hand already on the front doorknob. “I’m leaving!”
A door squealed open down the hall, and a minute later my little brother stood in the doorway, dark hair standing up all over like he’d just woken up. “And this is noteworthy because…?”
“Because this is your official reminder that your grounding does not expire with daylight. Do not leave this house while I’m at work.”
Nash gave her a crooked grin—possibly the only feature my brother and I had in common. “What if the house catches fire?”
“Roast marshmallows. And if it floods, you’ll go down with the ship. If there’s a tornado, I’ll meet both you and this house in Oz, after my shift. Got it?”
I chuckled and Nash glared at me before turning back to our mother. “Total house arrest. I got it.”
“Good. I’ll see you both in the morning. Don’t stay up too late.” Then the door closed behind her. A moment later an engine started and her car backed down the driveway.
“Mom told me to watch you. She thinks you’re up to something,” I said, when Nash just stared at me, leaning against the doorway into the hall.
“She’s right.” He crossed the room and sat on the coffee table, where she’d sat minutes earlier. “I need a favor.”
“Move.” I shoved him out of the way and started flipping through the channels again. “What kind of favor?”
“The kind that only you and I can do,” Nash said, and his hazel irises twisted in an intense storm of greens and browns. I turned the TV off and dropped the remote on the center couch cushion. “I’m going to pick up Sabine, and I need help convincing them to let her go.”
Shit. “I’m confiscating your hair dryer—you’ve fried your brain. You can’t just ‘pick up Sabine’ without a court order—she’s in a halfway house!”
Nash nodded, like he didn’t see the problem. “That’s where the ‘convincing’ comes in.”
And by convincing, he meant Influencing. The female of our species was better known, historically and mythologically, by her iconic wail for the dying. What most of the human race didn’t know was that where they heard a head-splitting scream, male bean sidhes—like me and Nash—heard an eerie, compelling song calling out to disembodied souls, keeping them from moving on.
Male bean sidhes' most prominent ability—Influence—was also vocal in nature, and much more subtle than the female’s wail. But no less powerful. With nothing but a few words and some serious intent, we could make people do things. Make them want to do things. Like release Sabine from her court-mandated halfway house into the custody of her sixteen-year-old boyfriend.
“You really think I’m going to drive all the way to Holser House on a Friday night just to help you score a conjugal town pass for your delinquent girlfriend?”
“Not a town pass, Tod. I’m not taking her for a walk—I’m breaking her out. We’re breaking her out. You talk to whoever’s on duty while I get Sabine. Then we leave. Simple.” He shrugged, like things were really that easy in NashWorld.
“You’re simple.” I leaned back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to figure out how to explain the problem so that even an impulsive, lovesick idiot twenty-two months my junior could understand. “Okay, look…everything you’ve said so far will probably work.” I’d certainly talked us both into and out of tougher situations before. “But what happens after?”
“After what?”
“After we leave and the night staff realizes they’ve just lost a girl put in their custody by the state of Texas? You think they’re just going to shrug and move on? Hell no, they’re going to report her missing. And at the very least, they’re going to have the description of the two guys she left with.” Because my Influence wouldn’t last much longer than it would take for the sound of my voice to fade into silence, and no matter how powerful I got with age and experience, I’d never be able to make someone forget what they saw or did. It just didn’t work like that. And Nash damn well knew it.
He shrugged, and I wanted to smack him over the head. “So we come up with another plan. It won’t be the first time you snuck a girl out of her house in the middle of the night.”
“Nuh uh.” I sat straighter, shaking my head at him. “Don’t pretend this is the same as sneaking out for a beer at the watershed. You’re talking about helping a convicted criminal escape from corrective custody!”
“She doesn’t belong there.”
“Okay then, genius, what are you gonna do with her once you have her? Put her in a box and poke some holes?”
“She can take care of herself. And I can help.”
I searched his face for some sign that he was joking, but found nothing. “She’s fifteen!”
Nash shrugged. “That’s just a number. It doesn’t say anything about her.”
“It says something pretty damn funny about your IQ!” I said, and he opened his mouth to retort, but I spoke over him. “Fifteen is too young to drive, too young to get a legal job, too young to sign a lease, and obviously too young to pick a boyfriend with half a brain.”
Nash’s confidence crumbled and fell apart, exposing blind desperation and pain so intense I could hardly wrap my mind around them. And while I wanted to believe this was all drama and hormones, he obviously believed it was more than that. “They won’t even let me talk to her, Tod. I think they found the phone I gave her, ‘cause she hasn’t answered it in three days.”
Finally I leaned forward, right in his face, determined to give him the wakeup call he desperately needed. “What did you expect? You date a criminal, and you’re eventually going to have to share her with the state. Hell, she’s probably got a girlfriend on the inside by now.”
“You’re an a*shole.”
“And you’re living in a fantasy world. There are other girls out there, Nash. Maybe even a few who’ve never seen the inside of the police station.”
He glared at me, waiting for me to cave, but that wasn’t gonna happen. Not this time. Mom was right—he’d lost it. Over a girl. “Fine. I’ll do it myself. Gimme the keys.”
“No way. I’m meeting Genna in an hour.”
“I thought you were supposed to stay here and babysit.”
“I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. So why are you acting like such an idiot?”
“Just give me the keys!” Nash glanced around the living room, then lunged for the end table when he spotted the keys to the car I’d been forced to share with him since his birthday. I rammed his shoulder, knocking him to the carpet halfway across the room.
“Sorry.” I grabbed the keys and shoved them into my front pocket. “But Mom says you’re grounded.” I stuck my hand out to help him up, but he smacked it away, glaring up at me with his jaw clenched.
Nash shoved himself to his feet and stepped forward like he’d take a swing. But he wouldn’t. I could see hints of our father’s build in the width of his shoulders, but I still had two inches and twenty pounds on him, and he knew better than to start a fight he couldn’t win.
“I’d do this for you,” he spat instead. “Because you’re my brother. But obviously that concept is wasted on you.” Then he stomped off to his room and slammed the door.
“You’ll thank me for this later!” I shouted, trying to deny the fact that his parting shot stung almost like a physical blow.
A couple of hours later, the credits scrolled down the darkened TV screen, and Genna sighed. She sat up, and I missed the warmth of her back against my chest. I wrapped one arm around her waist and leaned forward. “Hey, I liked you there.”
She twisted in my grip to straddle me, delicious pressure in exactly the right place. Her brows arched and she gave me a slow smile as she bent toward my ear. “I thought you might like me here better,” she whispered, her breath an intimate warmth against my ear.
She was right.
She laid her hands flat against my chest, warm, thin fingers splayed over my shirt. My pulse spiked and I pulled her down for a kiss. My mouth left hers to trail over her chin and down her neck, tasting her bit by bit. She sat taller and threw her head back to give me better reach, shifting closer on my lap, and—
My cell phone buzzed on the end table.
I groaned, and Genna leaned back to brush hair from her face. “Aren’t you going to get that?”
“Nothing on earth could make me take that call right now.” I tried to pull her closer, but she leaned over the arm of the couch instead, peering at the display on my phone.
“It’s your brother.”