Soul Screamers, Volume 1

Acknowledgments

First of all, thanks to Rayna and Alex, for letting me pick your teenage brains, and again to Alex, for being the first reader in my target audience.

Thanks to Rinda Elliott, for showing me what I couldn’t see.

Thanks to my agent, Miriam Kriss, for believing I could do this, before there was any evidence to support that claim.

Thanks to Elizabeth Mazer, and everyone else behind the scenes at Mira for making it happen.

Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for all the questions—for answering mine along the way, and knowing just which ones to ask in the margins.

And finally, thanks to Melissa, for being there.





           My Soul to Save





           Contents

    Chapter       1

    Chapter       2

    Chapter        3

    Chapter        4

    Chapter        5

    Chapter       6

    Chapter        7

    Chapter        8

    Chapter        9

    Chapter        10

    Chapter        11

    Chapter        12

    Chapter        13

    Chapter        14

    Chapter        15

    Chapter        16

    Chapter        17

    Chapter        18

    Chapter        19

    Chapter        20

    Chapter 21

    Acknowledgments





Chapter 1





Addison Page had the world at her feet. She had the face, the body, the voice, the moves, and the money. Let’s not forget the money. But advantages like that come with a price. I should have known it was all too good to be true....





“What?” I yelled, my throat already raw from shouting over the roar of the crowd and the music blasting from dozens of huge speakers. Around us, thousands of bodies bobbed in time to the beat, hands in the air, lips forming the words, shouting the lyrics along with the beautiful, glittery girl strutting across the stage, seen close-up on a pair of giant digital screens.

Nash and I had great seats, thanks to his brother, Tod, but no one was sitting. Excitement bounced off every solid surface, fed by the crowd and growing with each passing second until the auditorium seemed to swell with the communal high. Energy buzzed through me, setting my nerve endings on fire with enough kick to keep me pinging off the walls through high school and well into college.

I didn’t want to know how Tod had scored seats a mere fifteen rows from the stage, but even my darkest suspicion hadn’t kept me at home. I couldn’t pass up a chance to see Eden live in concert, even though it meant giving up a Saturday night alone with Nash, during my dad’s extra shift at work.

And this was only Eden’s opening act....

Nash pulled me closer, one hand on my hip, and shouted into my ear. “I said, Tod used to date her!”

I rode the wave of adrenaline through my veins as I inhaled his scent. Six weeks together, and I still smiled every time he looked at me, and flushed every time he really looked at me. My lips brushed his ear as I spoke. “Tod used to date who?” There were several thousand possible suspects dancing all around us.

“Her!” Nash shouted back, nodding over the sea of concertgoers toward the main attraction, his spiky, deliberately messy brown hair momentarily highlighted by a roaming spotlight.

Addison Page, Eden’s opening act, strutted across the stage in slim black boots; low-cut, ripped jeans; a tight white halter; and a sparkly silver belt, wailing a bitter yet up-tempo lament about the one who got away. The glittery blue streak in her straight, white-blond hair sparkled beneath the lights and fanned out behind her when she whirled to face the audience from center stage, her voice rising easily into the clear, resonant notes she was famous for.

I stared, suddenly still while everyone around me swayed along with the crescendo. I couldn’t help it.

“Tod dated Addison Page?”

Nash couldn’t have heard me. I barely heard me. But he nodded and leaned into me again, and I wrapped my arm around him for balance as the cowboy on my other side swung one eager, pumping fist dangerously close to my shoulder. “Three years ago. She’s local, you know.”

Like us, the hometown crowd had turned out as much for Texas’s own rising star as for the headliner. “She’s from Hurst, right?” Less than twenty minutes from my own Arlington address.

“Yeah. Addy and I were freshmen together, before we moved back to Arlington. She and Tod dated for most of that year. He was a sophomore.”

“So what happened?” I asked as the music faded and the lighting changed for the second song.