My Soul to Take (16 page)

“Ha!” I stomped around the bed to put it between us, then snatched a long-sleeved tee from the pile. “He’s had sixteen years. What makes you think he’ll start now?”

“Give him a chance, Kaylee. He might surprise you.”

“Not likely.” I folded the shirt in several short, sharp motions, then tossed it on top of the jeans, where one arm flopped free to dangle over the side. “If Nash knew what my dad had to say, he’d tell me.”

Uncle Brendon leaned forward and flipped the sleeve back on top of my shirt. “Nash should
never
have taken you to see a reaper, Kaylee.
Bean sidhes
have no natural defenses against most of the other things out there. That’s why we live here, with the humans. The key to longevity lies in staying out of
sight. In only meeting a reaper once in your life—at the very end.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I tossed another folded shirt onto the stack and tugged a pair of pajama pants from the pile. “A reaper can’t touch you unless your name shows up on his list, and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Avoiding reapers is pointless. Especially when they can
help
you.” In theory. But wasn’t my theory about the dead girls based on the suspicion that at least one reaper
had
strayed from his purpose?

“What truth is this reaper helping you look for?” Uncle Brendon sank back into the desk chair with a defeated-sounding sigh. He rubbed his temple as if his head ached, but I was
not
taking the blame for that. If every adult in my life hadn’t been lying to me for thirteen years, none of this would have happened.

“He’s sneaking a peek at the master list for the past three days, to find out if the dead girls were on it.”

“He’s
what?
” Uncle Brendon went totally, frighteningly still, and the only movement in the room was the tic developing on the outer edge of his left eyelid.

“Don’t worry. He’s not taking it. He’s just going to look at it.”

“Kaylee, that’s not the point. What he’s doing is dangerous, for all three of you. Reapers take their lists very seriously. People aren’t supposed to know when they’re going to die. That’s why you can’t warn them. Once you get a premonition, you can’t speak, right?”

“Yeah.” I plucked at some fuzz on the flannel pants, distinctly uncomfortable with the direction the discussion was now headed, and the guilt it brought on. “I tried to warn Meredith, but I knew if I opened my mouth, I’d only be able to scream.”

Uncle Brendon nodded somberly. “There’s a good reason for that. Grief consumes people. Imminent death
obsesses
people. It’s bad enough for a person to know he’s dying of terminal cancer, or something like that. But to know the exact moment? To have the date and time stamped on your brain, looming closer to you as life slips away? That would drive people crazy.”

I gaped at him, pants clenched tightly in both hands. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Of course you do.” He ran one hand through thick brown hair, exhaling through his mouth in frustration. “You know it much better than I ever could, and it got you hospitalized.”

“No,
you
and
Aunt Val
got me hospitalized.” I couldn’t let that one slide.

“Ultimately, yes.” Uncle Brendon conceded the point with a single crisp nod. “But only because we couldn’t help you on our own. We couldn’t even calm you down. You screamed for more than an hour, long after the premonition passed, though I was probably the only one who could tell when that happened.”

I turned and pulled open the top drawer of my dresser, then dropped the pj’s inside. “How could you tell?”

“Male
bean sidhes
hear a female’s wail as it truly sounds. After a while, yours changed from the soul song to regular screaming. You were terrified—hysterical—and we were afraid you’d hurt yourself. We didn’t know what else to do.”

“It didn’t occur to you to talk to me? Tell me the truth?” I plucked several pairs of underwear from the pile and stuffed them into another drawer, then slammed it shut.

“I wanted to. I even
tried
to at one point, but you wouldn’t listen. I doubt you could even hear me over your own screaming. I couldn’t calm you down, even when I tried to Influence you.”

“Nash could. He’s done it twice now.” I sank onto my bed at the memory, absently pulling another bundle of cloth onto my lap, placated by just thinking about Nash.

“He has?” A strange look passed over my uncle’s face—some odd combination of surprise, wistfulness, and concern. “He’s
Influenced
you?”

“Only to calm me during those two premonitions. Why?” And suddenly I understood what he was really asking. “No! He would never try to Influence me into doing something. He’s not like that.”

He seemed to consider my point for a moment, then finally nodded. “Good. I’m glad he can help you control your wail, even if he has to use his Influence. That’s certainly better than the alternative.” He smiled as if to set me at ease, but instead, the tense line of his mouth set me on edge. “But we’ve strayed from the point. Kaylee, you can’t get involved in reaper business. And you certainly shouldn’t have asked a reaper to spy on a coworker like that. If he gets caught, it won’t be pretty. They’ll probably fire him.”

“So what?” What was one lost job compared to an innocent girl’s
life?
Besides, losing a job wasn’t the end of the world; Emma was proof of that. She’d lost one every couple of months for nearly a year until I’d gotten her hired at the Ciné. “Soul-snatching seems like a pretty specialized skill, and Nash says there are reapers all over the world. Surely he can find another job somewhere else. He doesn’t like the hospital much, anyway.”

Uncle Brendon closed his eyes and took a deep breath before meeting my gaze again. “Kaylee, you don’t understand. There’s no coming back once a reaper loses his position.”

“Coming back? What does that mean? Coming back from what?”

“From the dead. Reapers are dead, Kaylee. The only thing keeping their bodies functioning and their souls inside is the job. Once a reaper loses that, it’s all over.”

“Nooo.”
The socks I’d been pairing dropped into my lap as I tried to wrap my mind around what he was saying.

So when Tod said he’d almost lost his job for letting the little girl live, what he meant was that he’d almost lost his
life.
And if he got caught spying for me, that’s exactly what would happen.

Not cool. Not cool at
all.

Why on earth had he said he’d do it? Surely not just for my name? I wasn’t
that
interesting, and my name couldn’t be too hard to find on his own. He already knew where I went to school.

“But we had to do it.” I met Uncle Brendon’s eyes, speaking the truth as soon as I recognized it. “We
had
to know if those girls were on the list. I don’t think they were supposed to die, and we won’t know for sure without a peek at the list.”

However, my resolve wavered even as I spoke. It was the same old moral dilemma. Did I have the right to decide whether one life was worth risking another? A girl I might not even know, for a guy I’d only met once? An
already dead
guy, who’d surely known the risk when he agreed to it.

Suddenly nothing made sense. I knew in my heart that these girls weren’t supposed to be dying, but trying to save the next one would expose me to creatures I couldn’t even begin to imagine in a world I couldn’t see, and put several other lives in danger. Including my own.

My shoulders fell and I stared at my uncle in almost paralyzing confusion. “So what am I supposed to do?” I hated how young and clueless I sounded, but he was right. I really had no idea what was going on, and all the good intentions in the world wouldn’t mean a thing if I didn’t know what to do with them.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Kaylee.” Uncle Brendon looked just as frustrated as I felt. “But we don’t know there’s anything actually wrong yet, and until we know for sure, you’re just borrowing trouble.”

I tried really hard to keep an open mind. Not to jump to conclusions. After all, I wasn’t exactly rolling in evidence. All I had was a bad feeling and some soul-searing guilt. And even if I turned out to be right, my options were few and far between. Not to mention far
-fetched.
I’d just found out I was a
bean sidhe
and had yet to try out a single one of my purported skills. There was no guarantee I could do anything to save the next girl’s life, even if it
was
wrongly endangered.

Maybe I should just stay out of reaper business. After all, it didn’t really involve me.

Yet.

But what if it did soon? One girl from my school had already died, and there was no guarantee that wouldn’t happen again. And it could happen to anyone. It could be me, or any one of my friends.

“But what if I am right? If these girls are dying before their time, I can’t just stand by and let it happen again if I can possibly stop it. But I can’t save anyone on my own, and pulling someone else into it will just put more people in danger.” Like I’d risked Tod. And Nash.

“Well then, I think you have your answer. Even if you’re willing to risk yourself—and for the record, I will not let you do that so long as you’re in my care—you have no right to risk anyone else.”

I abandoned the laundry for my pillow, plucking anxiously at a feather sticking out through the pillowcase. “So I should just let an innocent girl die before her time?”

Uncle Brendon exhaled heavily. “No.” He leaned forward
with his elbows on his knees and took a long, deep breath. “I’ll tell you what. When you hear back from this reaper, if it turns out that these girls weren’t on the list, I’ll look into it. With your father. On one condition. You swear to
stay out of it
.”

“But—”

“No buts. Do we have a deal?” I opened my mouth to answer, but he interrupted. “And before you answer, think about Nash, and Tod, and whoever else you might be putting in danger if you try to handle this yourself.”

I sighed. He knew he had me with that last bit. “Fine. I’ll let you know what Tod finds out as soon as I know something.”

“Thank you. I know none of this is easy for you.” He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets as I dropped my socks into the open drawer behind me.

“Yeah, well, what’s a little mental illness and pathological screaming among family?”

My uncle laughed, leaning against the door frame. “It could be worse. You could be an oracle.”

“There are oracles?”

“Not many anymore, and most of those are truly certifiable. If you think predicting one death at a time is hard on your sanity, try knowing what’s going to happen to everyone you meet, and being unable to turn the visions off.”

I could only shudder at the thought. How could there be so much out there that I’d never known about? How could I not realize that half of my own family wasn’t even human? Shouldn’t the swirly eyes have clued me in?

“How come I never saw your eyes swirl before tonight?”

Uncle Brendon gave me a wistful smile. “Because I’m very old and have learned how to control my emotions, for the most part. Though that gets harder to do around you every day. I think that’s part of why your dad stays away. When he looks at you,
he sees your mother, and he can’t hide his reaction. And if you saw his eyes, you’d have questions he wasn’t ready to answer.”

Well, not-answering was no longer an option…. “So how old are you? For real.”

Uncle Brendon chuckled and glanced at the ground, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer—that I’d broken some kind of
bean sidhe
code of conduct by asking. But then he met my eyes, still smiling faintly. “I wondered how long that one would take you. I turned one hundred twenty-four last spring.”

“Holy crap!” I felt my eyes go wide as his smile deepened. “You could have retired sixty years ago. Does Aunt Val know?”

“Of course. And she teases me mercilessly. The children from my first marriage are older than she is.”

“You were married before?” I couldn’t keep shock from my voice.

That longing smile was back. “In Ireland, half a century ago. We had to move every couple of decades to keep people from noticing that we didn’t seem to age. My first wife died in Illinois twenty-four years ago, and our children—both
bean sidhes
—now have grandchildren of their own. Remind me and I’ll show you pictures sometime.”

I nodded, numb with surprise. “Wow. So are those kids any nicer than Sophie?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Uncle Brendon gave me a halfhearted frown, which smoothed into a sympathetic smile. “Frankly, yes. But Sophie’s still young. She’ll grow into her attitude.”

Somehow, I had my doubts.

But then something else occurred to me. “Ironic, isn’t it?” I took another step back, assessing him from a better vantage point—and an all-new perspective. “You’re three times Aunt Val’s age, but you look so much younger.”