Soul Screamers, Volume 1

He pulled open the passenger side door and shoved it closed when I was settled in my seat and was still yelling when he opened his own door. “How are we supposed to do that? Wander around the Netherworld asking random hellions if they took possession of a human pop star’s soul, and if so, would they please consider giving it back out of the kindness of their decayed hearts?”


Nash slid into his seat and slammed the door, leaving Tod alone in the dark parking lot with a handful of humans now watching us warily. He turned the key in the ignition, shifted into Drive, then took off across the asphalt, headed toward the exit with his parking receipt already in one fist.

As soon as we turned out of the lot, something caught my eye from the side-view mirror and I twisted in my seat to see Tod staring back at me, his usual scowl unusually fierce. “Don’t do that!” I said, for at least the thousandth time since we’d met. “Normal people don’t get in the car while it’s still moving!”

Nash glared at him in the rearview mirror. “But as long as you’re here, you need to understand something, and I’m only going to say this once—we are not tracking down Addison Page’s soul. It’s not our responsibility, and we wouldn’t even know where to start. But most important, it’s too. Damn. Dangerous.”

“Fine,” Tod said through teeth clenched with either fear or anger. Or both.

“What?” Nash stopped for a red light and glanced in the mirror again, his brows low in confusion. He’d obviously expected an argument, as had I.

Tod shifted on the cloth seat, his corporeal clothes rustling with the movement. “I said fine. This is my problem, not yours. I’ll do it myself.”

“This isn’t your problem, either,” Nash insisted, and I turned in my seat again so I could see them both at once. “She sold her soul of her own free will for fame and fortune. The contract is legally binding, and it has a legally binding out-clause. Let her get it back herself.” He stomped on the gas when the light changed, and the tires squealed beneath us as I grabbed the armrest.

“She didn’t know what she was doing, Nash, and she still doesn’t.” Tod leaned forward, glaring into the rearview mirror. “She has no idea what rights she has in the Netherworld, and she can’t even get there on her own. The out-clause is no good if you can’t enforce it. You know that.”

“Wait…” I loosened my seat belt and found a more comfortable sideways position as dread twisted my stomach into knots a scout couldn’t untie. “She really can’t do this on her own?”

Tod shook his head. “She doesn’t stand a chance.”

I sighed and sank back into my seat.

Nash glanced away from the road long enough to read my expression, shadows shifting over his face as we drove under a series of streetlights. “No, Kaylee. We can’t. We could get killed.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the headrest. “I know.”

“No!” he repeated, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, jaw clenched in either fear or anger. Probably both.

“Nash, we have to. I have to, anyway.” I stared at his profile, desperate for the words to make him understand. “I couldn’t save the souls Aunt Val sold. Heidi, and Alyson, and Meredith, and Julie are going to be tortured forever, because I couldn’t save them.” My throat felt thick, and my voice cracked as tears burned my eyes.

“Kaylee, that’s not your fau—”

“I know, but, Nash, I can help Addison. I can stop the same thing from happening to her.” I wasn’t sure how, but Tod wouldn’t have offered our help if there was nothing we could do. Right? “I have to do this.”

Nash clutched the wheel even tighter, and he looked like he wanted to twist it into a pretzel. Then he exhaled, and his hands relaxed. He’d made his decision, and I held my breath, waiting for it. “Fine. If you’re in, I’m in.” His focus shifted to the rearview mirror, where he glared at Tod. “But I’m in this for Kaylee, not for you, and not for your idiot pop princess.” The look he shot me then was part disappointment, part anger, part loyalty, and all Nash. His gaze scalded me from the inside out, and I squirmed in my seat as that heat settled low within me.

But when he turned back to the road, the flames sputtered beneath a wash of cold fear. Nash would get involved for me, but the truth was that I had no idea what I was doing.

What had I just gotten us into?





Chapter 5





“Okay, Kaylee, focus....” Harmony Hudson, Nash’s mother, leaned forward on the faded olive couch, licking her lips in concentration as she watched me. She wore jeans and another snug tee, her blond curls pulled into the usual ponytail, a few ringlets hanging loose around her face. Harmony was the hottest mom I’d ever personally met. She looked thirty years old, at the most, but I’d seen her blow out her birthday candles a month earlier.

All eighty-two of them.

“Close your eyes and think about the last time it happened,” she continued, and I sucked in a lungful of the fudge-brownie-scented air. “The last time you knew someone was going to die.”