Soul Screamers, Volume 1

I bit my lip to keep from saying something I’d regret later. Likely much later. “Shrimp fried rice. Want me to call it in?”


“That would be great. Thanks.” He hung up, and I stared at the empty living room, wishing I knew of some way I could get along with my father and save Addy’s soul. But so far, the two seemed to be mutually exclusive. Fortunately, it would all be over in a matter of hours, and my life would go back to normal.

Assuming I survived the night.





Chapter 15





My dad walked in the front door at seven twenty-four, carrying a white paper bag and smelling of metal and sweat. He looked awful. Exhausted. I felt bad for him. And really guilty.

After my mother died and I’d been handed over to my aunt and uncle, my father had gone to Ireland to run the pub his parents owned. He’d made a decent living, but most of his extra money went to pay for my incidentals and to fund my college account. So when he came back to the States, he’d brought nothing but a suitcase and enough cash to put down a deposit on a rental house and buy a second used car—I still had the one he’d bought me for my sixteenth birthday.

Now he worked in a factory all day, taking overtime where he could get it, because he thought he should at least try to make as much money as his brother did.

I didn’t care about the money. A little money only made people want more of it. And I liked our used furniture, because if I spilled on it, no one got mad, which meant I could snack in the living room, in front of the television. But my father insisted we eat dinner together every night. Our crappy kitchen card table was the magic wand he kept waving to turn us into a real family. But on some nights, all that magic seemed to do was irritate and frustrate us both.

And still he tried....

“I got some fried wontons.” He set the greasy bag on the card table and draped his jacket over the back of a folding metal chair.

“Thanks.” He knew they were my favorite. He knew all my favorite takeout, because he rarely had time to cook, and I didn’t care if I never ate another bite of homemade health food after living with Aunt Val for thirteen years.

We ate in near silence, except for the occasional intrusion upon my thoughts when he asked if I’d done my homework—yes—and how Nash and Harmony were doing—fine. He never asked about Tod, which was just as well, because if he had, he’d know from my answer that I’d been hanging out with the reaper, too. And that would just make him even angrier, and more worried.

“How long is it going to be like this?” my dad asked as I pushed back my chair and tossed my paper plate into the plastic trash bin. “How long are you going to be mad?”

“I’m not mad.” I trudged into the living room and shoved my trig and history books into my backpack, the corresponding homework assignments folded in half inside them. “I just…” Have things I can’t tell you. Things you could probably help me with. But you won’t. So talking does us no good. “I have stuff on my mind. It has nothing to do with you.”

I wanted to explain that things would get better. He would stop trying so hard—start realizing I was sixteen, not six—and eventually he’d understand that Nash was keeping me out of trouble, not getting me into it. When that happened, we could both relax. Maybe he could even tell me about my mother without tearing up and making some excuse to stop talking.

But not yet. None of that could happen while I was still helping Addy and Regan behind his back. Because he knew something was wrong, and he couldn’t move beyond that until it was resolved, and I couldn’t look him in the eye until I was done lying.

Soon, though. It would be soon.

My dad fell asleep in his recliner shortly after eleven, and he sat there snoring for several minutes before I thought to turn off the television. I could only stare at him from the couch, boiling with frustration.

He was supposed to fall asleep in his bed, not in the living room!

I could wake him up and tell him to go to bed. That would still leave more than half an hour for him to go back to sleep before I had to leave for Nash’s. But the last time I’d done that, he’d decided he wasn’t ready for bed yet, and he’d stayed up to watch some stupid action movie until after midnight.

I could leave him where he was and hope he didn’t check on me when he went to bed. But then I’d run the risk of waking him when I opened the front door. Because the window in my room was painted shut, and the screen on the back door squealed like a pissed-off harpy.

That only left my backup plan, which I’d really hoped to avoid.