Soul Screamers, Volume 1

Did that even matter? I wasn’t human. Neither was he.

“You want me to pick you up for the memorial?”

His eyes narrowed in confusion over my abrupt subject change. Then he inhaled deeply, slowed the churning in his eyes, and settled against the car next to me. “What about your dad?”

“He can drive himself.”

Nash rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d want to go, with your dad in town.”

“I’m going. And I’m going to drag my dad and uncle along too.”

He arched his brows, sliding one arm around my waist. “Why?”

“Because if some vigilante reaper is after teenage girls, I figure he’ll find an auditorium full of us pretty hard to resist. And the more bean sidhes that are present, the greater the chance one of us will get a look at him, right?”

“In theory.” Nash frowned down at me, and I could feel a “but” coming. “But, Kaylee—” I grinned, mildly amused at having predicted something other than death “—it’not going to happen again. Not this soon. Not in the same place.”

“It’s happened for the past three days in a row, Nash, and it’s always happened where there are large groups of teenagers. The memorial will have the highest concentration of us in one room since graduation last year. There’s just as much chance he’ll pick someone there as anywhere else.”

“So what if he does? What are you going to do?” Nash demanded in a harsh whisper. He glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one had appeared on the porch, then met my eyes again, and I realized that behind his sudden anger lay true fear.

I knew I should have been scared too, and in truth, I was. The very concept of reapers running around harvesting their metaphysical crop from empty human husks made my stomach pitch and my chest tighten. And the idea of actually looking for one of those reapers… Well, that was crazy.

But not as crazy as letting another innocent girl die. Not if we could stop it.

I watched Nash, letting my intent show on my face. Letting determination churn slowly in my eyes.

“No!” He looked toward the house again, then back at me, his irises roiling. “You heard what Tod said,” he whispered fiercely. “Any reaper willing to steal unauthorized souls won’t hesitate to take one of ours instead.”

“We can’t just let him kill someone else,” I hissed, just as urgently. I resisted the urge to step back, half-afraid that any physical space I put between us during an argument would translate into an emotional distance.

“We don’t have any choice,” he said. I started to argue, but he cut me off, running one hand through his chunky brown hair. “Okay, look, I didn’t want to have to go into this right now—I figured finding out you’re not human was enough to deal with in one day. But there’s a lot you still don’t understand, and your uncle’s probably going to explain all this soon, anyway.” He sighed and leaned back against the car, his eyes closed as if he were gathering his thoughts. And when he met my gaze again, I saw that his determination now matched my own.

“What we can do together?” He gestured back and forth between us with one hand. “Restoring a soul? It’s more complicated than it sounds, and there are risks beyond the exchange rate.”

“What risks?” Wasn’t the exchange rate bad enough? A new thread of unease wound its way up my spine, and I leaned against the car beside him, watching light from the porch illuminate one half of his face while rendering the other side a shadowy compilation of vague, strong features. I was pretty sure that if whatever he was about to say was as weird as finding out I was a bean sidhe, I’d need Carter’s car at my back to hold me up.

Nash’s gaze captured mine, his eyes churning in what could only be fear. “Bean sidhes and reapers aren’t the only ones out there, Kaylee. There are other things. Things I don’t have names for. Things that you don’t ever want to see, much less be seen by.”

My skin crawled at his phrasing. Well, that’s more than a little scary. Yet incredibly vague. “Okay, so where are these phantom creepies?”

“Most of them are in the Netherworld.”

“And where is that?” I crossed my arms over my chest, and my elbow bumped Carter’s side-view mirror. “Because it sounds like a Peter Pan ride.” Yet my sarcasm was a thin veil for the icy fingers of unease now crawling inside my flesh. It might have been easy to dismiss claims of this other world as horror movie fodder—if I hadn’t just discovered I wasn’t human.

“This isn’t funny, Kaylee. The Netherworld is here with us, but not really here. It’s anchored to our world, but deeper than humans can see. If that makes sense.”