Soul Screamers, Volume 1

And making sure her misery has plenty of company.

Half an hour later, all five of us sat around the square card table in our eat-in kitchen, me straddling the corner between Nash and Sophie. There wasn’t enough room to actually put the food on the table, so if anyone wanted seconds, he’d have to get up and refill his plate from the dishes on the counter. But that didn’t seem to be much of a worry, considering that the rim of Sophie’s plate was ringed with small bits of marinara-stained waxed paper, which my dad had forgotten to remove from the slices of cheese he’d layered into the lasagna.

If it hadn’t embarrassed my father to no end, it would have been almost funny to watch her face twist with fresh horror each time she pulled a limp bit of paper from her food. Not that it mattered. She didn’t eat enough to keep a squirrel alive, anyway, and had lost several pounds in the weeks since her mother’s death.

There wasn’t much conversation over dinner, but every now and then, my uncle would look across the table at his brother and chuckle as he pulled a piece of cheese paper from his pasta and folded it into his napkin, breaking the tension for another few moments. For which I was profoundly grateful.

Nash and I excused ourselves immediately after dinner, nodding at my father’s reminder to be home by ten-thirty, and I drove, because Nash’s mom had their car. I’d rarely driven in downtown Dallas and had never been to Addison’s hotel, so I counted us lucky to get there in one piece.

The lobby of the Adolphus was full of dark, ornate furniture and fancy chandeliers, and I felt underdressed clomping through the lobby in jeans and sneakers. Fortunately, before I could work up the nerve to ask the snooty clerk behind an oversize desk which room “Lisa Hawthorne” was in, Tod appeared from around a corner, wearing respectably clean and intact jeans and an unwrinkled button-up shirt open over his usual dark tee. He jerked his head toward a cluster of elevators on one end of the lobby, and we followed him gratefully into the first one to open.

“She’s pretty nervous, so go easy on her,” Tod said, eyeing Nash as soon as the mirrored doors closed and the elevator slid into motion.

“She’s not the only one.” I ran one shaky hand over my ponytail, wondering if I should have worn my hair down. Or wiped my feet before walking through the lobby. But the overpriced hotel wasn’t really the cause of my nerves.

I’d peeked into the Netherworld that afternoon, and wasn’t anxious to do it again anytime soon. But as badly as the prospect of actually walking into that shadow-world scared me, my horror was much greater at the thought of condemning Addison Page to an eternity there. Even if she had signed away her own soul.

Tod was right. She didn’t know what she was getting into. She couldn’t have.

The elevator binged in warning and slowed to a smooth stop, then the doors slid open almost silently. Tod got off first, and Nash and I followed him down a thickly carpeted hallway past at least a dozen doors before he stopped in front of the very last one, nearest the emergency staircase.

“Hang on a minute,” he said, then popped out of sight before we could protest, leaving me and Nash standing in the hall like idiots, hoping no one came out to ask if we’d lost our key. Or to call Security.

Who me? Paranoid?

Absolutely.

Several seconds later, the door opened from the inside, and for the second time in as many days, we walked into the private rooms of Addison Page, rock star. I had a fleeting moment of panicked certainty that once again, she wasn’t expecting us. That Tod had made the whole meeting up. But Addison stood in the middle of the sitting room, watching us through red-rimmed eyes, and she didn’t look surprised to see us. Thank goodness.

“Thanks for coming,” she said as we made our way to a collection of couches gathered around yet another flat-screen television. “I know you guys probably think I don’t deserve your help, and the truth is that I’m not sure I do.”

Neither was I, but the fact that she had her own doubts made me want to help her for her own sake, beyond my need to make up for not being able to save the girls my aunt had damned to eternal torture.

“Yes you do.” Tod guided her to a boldly patterned armchair with one hand on her lower back. She didn’t pull away from him, and I was impressed all over again by her composure. I wouldn’t have been so calm if I had an undead ex-boyfriend.

Or the staggering lack of a soul.

Nash sank onto the cream-colored couch and pulled me down with him, his lips firmly sealed against the dissenting opinion I read clearly on his face. He wasn’t convinced that we had any business there. Or that Addison had any right to ask for our help.