Soul Screamers, Volume 1

Guilt was inevitable. Right?

“Considering the sacrifice your mom made for you, I find it hard to understand how Eden—or anyone else for that matter—could possibly see her own soul as acceptable currency. As payment for something else.”

I shrugged and dropped my wadded-up napkin on my empty plate. “I don’t think she understood what she was getting into. Humans don’t know about any of this.”

“They’re supposed to know, before they sign the contract. Hellion law requires full disclosure. But who knows if the poor fool actually read her contract before signing. What a waste.” Harmony shook her head in disappointment and pushed the rest of her brownie toward me. “So much potential, squandered. For what, do you know?”

I shook my head, staring at her plate. I’d lost my appetite.

My best guess would be that Eden sold her soul for fame and fortune, but I didn’t know for sure. All I knew for certain was that she was probably regretting that decision now, and that if we couldn’t get Addison’s soul back in four days, she would suffer the same fate.

I would not let that happen.





Chapter 6





“So, what’s with the fake name at the hotel? She’s avoiding the press?” I tried to distract myself as I typed “hellion” into the search bar at the top of my laptop screen, then tapped the enter key. Links filled the screen faster than I could read the entries, and my vision started to blur with exhaustion. I hadn’t slept very well the night before, thanks to nightmares of dead girls being tortured in the Netherworld, and had poured the last of my energy into my bean sidhe lesson that afternoon.

“I guess.” Nash leaned back on my bed and I watched him in the mirror, my heart tripping faster when he put his hands behind his head and cords of muscle stood out beneath his short sleeves. Sometimes it still felt weird to be going out with a jock, but Nash Hudson wasn’t your average football player. His bean sidhe bloodline, dead father, not-so-dead reaper brother, and familiarity with a world that would land most humans in a straitjacket meant that on the inside, Nash didn’t fit in at school any more than I did.

He just hid it better.

And there were definite advantages to having a boyfriend as…aesthetically gifted as Nash. The downside was that I had trouble concentrating on anything else while he was around.

Focus, Kaylee… I took a deep breath and forced my thoughts back on track. “Isn’t the whole fake name thing a little clichéd?”

He shrugged without dropping his arms. “So long as it works.”

On-screen, the page had finished loading, and I skimmed the results. The first was about some kind of turbo engine for Mustangs, and the second was a link to a comic book Wiki. The rest of the links ran along those same lines. So much for internet research.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Nash’s normally hypnotic voice was pinched thin and sharp with reluctance. And maybe a little annoyance.

“Because Addison needs help and I believe in karma.” I glanced in the mirror again to find Nash watching me in amusement now.

“I meant dinner.”

“Oh.” I pushed my chair away from the desk and almost tipped over when one of the back wheels caught on the ratty carpet. Standing, I tugged my tee into place, then sank cross-legged onto the bed facing Nash. “Because my dad’s trying really hard to make this whole single-parent thing work, and Uncle Brendon’s the only one he has to talk to.”

After my mom died, my father sent me to live with my aunt and uncle, to help hide me from the reaper-with-a-vendetta who’d traded my mother’s life for mine. But we both knew my resemblance to her was at least as strong a motivator for my dad’s absence from my life. Every time he looked at me, he saw her, and his heart broke a little more.

But after what Aunt Val had done, he’d come back, assuming it would be easier to protect me himself, now that I was in on the big secret of my species. And I was pretty sure he felt guilty for being gone so long. So, my dad had given up a good job in Ireland for crappy factory work in Texas, and together we were trying not to screw up the whole father-daughter thing too badly. So what if that meant a tiny rental house, no extra money, and weekly dinners with my uncle and mean-girl cousin?

Nash’s knees touched mine and he took my hands in his, letting them lie in the hollow between our legs. “I know, but Sophie’s turning into a real pain.”

He was right about that.