Soul Screamers, Volume 1

That’s right; his mother was a bean sidhe too. No wonder she’d stared at me. She probably knew I had no idea what I was.

When we got to the heart of the playground—a massive wooden castle full of towers, and tunnels, and slides—Nash stepped beneath a piece of equipment and reached up for the first monkey bar beam. “Were you watching the pre-departed when he actually…departed?”

I raised an eyebrow in dark amusement, trying not to stare at the triceps clearly displayed beneath the snug, short sleeves of his tee. “Pre-departed?”

He grinned. “It’s a technical term.”

“Aah. No, I wasn’t looking at anything.” I sank onto a low tire swing held up by three chains, rocking back and forth slowly, trying to forget the words even as I spoke them. “I was trying to make the screeching stop. Mall Security called my aunt and uncle, and when I couldn’t stop crying, they took me to the hospital.”

Nash let go of the bar and settled onto the rubber-coated steps of a nearby slide, watching me from a couple of feet away. “Well, if you’d looked at the other guy, you would have seen the deceased’s soul. Hovering.”

“Hovering?”

“Yeah. Souls are fundamentally attracted to a bean sidhe’s wail, and as long as it lasts, they can’t move on. They just kind of hang there, suspended. You remember sirens in mythology? How their song could draw a sailor to his death?”

“Yeah…?” And that image did nothing to ease the apprehension now swelling inside me like heartburn.

“It’s like that. Except the people are already dead. And they aren’t usually sailors.”

“Wow.” I put my feet down to stop the tire from rocking. “I’m like flypaper for the soul. That’s…weird. Why would anyone want to do that? Suspend some poor guy’s soul?”

Nash shrugged and stood to pull me up. “Lots of reasons. A bean sidhe who knows what she’s doing can hold on to a soul long enough for him to prepare for the afterlife. Let him make his peace.”

I frowned, unable to picture it. “Okay, but how peaceful can it possibly be, with me screaming bloody murder?”

He laughed again, and I followed him up the steps to a wobbly bridge made of wooden planks chained loosely together. “It doesn’t sound like screaming to the soul. Or to me either. Your wail is beautiful to male bean sidhes.” Nash turned to look at me from the top step, his gaze soft, and almost reflective. “More like a wistful, haunting song. I wish you could hear it the way we hear it.”

“Me too.” Anything would be better than the earsplitting screech I heard. “What else can I do? Tell me the parts that don’t make me want to dig my own ears out of my skull.”

Nash pulled me onto the bridge, which rocked beneath us until I sat in the middle with my legs dangling over the side. “You can keep a soul around long enough for him to hear the thoughts and condolences of his friends. Or say goodbye to his family, though they can’t hear him.”

“So I’m…useful?” My pitch rose in earnest hope.

“Totally.” He settled onto the next plank, facing my profile with one leg hanging over the edge of the bridge and the other arching behind me.

My smile swelled, as did the warmth spreading throughout my chest, slowly overtaking my unease at the very thought of suspending a human soul. I wasn’t sure whether this blossoming peace stemmed from my newfound purpose in life—and in death—or from the way Nash watched me, like he’d do anything to make me smile.

“So what can you do?”

“Well, my vocal cords aren’t as powerful as yours, but a male bean sidhe’s voice does carry a kind of…Influence. A strong power of suggestion, or projection of emotion.” He shrugged and draped one arm over the rope railing, leaning back to see me better. “We can project confidence, or excitement. Or any other emotion. A bunch of us together can urge groups into action, or pacify a mob. That one was big during the witch trials, and public panics of old.” He grinned. “But mostly, we just relax people when they’re nervous, or upset.” Nash shot me a meaningful look, and I sucked in a startled breath so big I nearly choked on it.

“You calmed me, didn’t you? In the alley behind Taboo.”

“And behind the school, this afternoon. With Meredith…”

How could I not have realized? I’d never been able to control the panic before, without putting distance between myself and…the pre-deceased.

I blinked back grateful tears and started to thank him, but he spoke before I could get the words out. “Don’t worry about it. It was cool to finally get to show off.”

“And there’s more, other than the Influence?”

He nodded, and the bridge rocked as he leaned forward, eyeing me dramatically. “I can direct souls.”

“What?” Chill bumps popped up beneath my sleeves, in spite of the unseasonably warm evening.

Nash shrugged, like it was no big deal. “You can suspend a soul, and I can manipulate it. Tell it where to go.”