Soul Screamers, Volume 1

“Seriously? Where do you send it?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept.

“Nowhere.” He leaned back against the rope and frowned. “That’s the problem. Your skills are useful. Altruistic, even. Mine…? Not so much.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s only one place to send a disembodied soul.”

“The afterlife?” I folded one leg beneath the other and twisted to face him, trying not to be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities he was throwing at me.

He shook his head as a cicada’s song began in the distance. “A soul doesn’t need me for that.”

And suddenly I understood. “You can put it back! Into the body.” I sat up straight and the bridge swayed. “You can bring someone back to life!”

Nash shook his head, still somber in spite of my growing enthusiasm, and stood to pull me up. “It takes two of us. A female to capture the soul, and a male to reinstate it.” His hand found my hip again, and the heat behind his gaze nearly scorched me. “We could be amazing together, Kaylee.”

My cheeks blazed.

Then the reality of what he was saying truly hit me, like a blast of cold air to the face.

“We can save people? Reverse death? You should have told me that part first!” A tingly exhilaration blossomed in my chest, and at first I didn’t understand when he shook his head.

But then my excitement withered, replaced by a cold, heavy feeling of regret. Of mounting guilt. “So not only did I fail to warn Meredith, I let her die, when we could have saved her. Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t stop the flash of anger that realization brought. Meredith would still be alive if I’d known how to help her!

“No, Kaylee.” Nash tilted my chin up until I saw the dark regret swirling in his eyes. “We can’t just go around shoving souls back into dead bodies. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t even warn someone of his own death. It’s physically impossible, because you can’t do anything else while you’re singing a soul’s song. Right?”

I nodded miserably. “It’s completely consuming....” Though I still couldn’t imagine that horrible screech sounding like the song he’d described. “But there has to be a way around that.” I sidestepped him on the wobbly bridge and took the steps two at a time. My mind was racing and I needed to move. “We could work out some kind of signal or something. When I get a premonition, I could point, and you could go warn the…um…pre-deceased.”

Nash caught up with me, already shaking his head again. He caught my arm and pulled me to a halt, but let go when I stiffened. “Even if you could warn someone, it wouldn’t change anything. It would just make the poor guy’s last moments terrifying.” I started to shake my head, but he rushed on. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Kaylee. You can’t stop death.”

“But you just said we could.” I leaned against the side of a green plastic twisty-slide, frowning up at him. “Together, we could have saved Meredith. Maybe even Heidi Anderson. Doesn’t it bother you that we didn’t even try?”

“Of course it does, but saving Meredith wouldn’t have stopped her death. It would only have prolonged her life. And reanimating someone whose time has come carries serious consequences. And believe me, the price isn’t worth paying.”

“What does that mean?” How could saving someone not be worth the price?

Nash’s gaze burned into me, as if to underline the importance of what he was going to say. “A life for a life, Kaylee. If we’d saved Meredith, someone else would have been taken instead. Could be one of us, or anyone nearby.”

Ouch.

I sank onto the rubber mat at the base of the slide, my eyes closed in horror. Okay, that was a high price. And even if I’d been willing to pay it myself, I had no right to make that decision for an innocent bystander. Or for Nash. Yet I couldn’t let the issue go. No matter what he said, no matter how logical the arguments, letting Meredith die felt wrong, and I couldn’t stand the thought of ever having to do that again.

Nash sighed and sank onto the mat with me, his arms propped on his knees. “Kaylee, I know how you feel, but that’s the way death works. When someone’s time comes, he has to go, and you’ll only drive yourself crazy looking for loopholes in the system. Trust me.” The anguish in Nash’s voice resonated in my heart, and I ached to touch him. To ease whatever grief lent such pain to his words.

“You’ve tried, haven’t you?” I whispered. He nodded, and I leaned over to let my mouth meet his, lingering when the contact shot sparks through my veins. I wanted to hold him, to somehow make it all better. “Who was it?”

“My dad.”