Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (44 page)

Besides, A&M wasn’t that far away. Especially with my two-second commute.

“Kaylee?” Sophie’s voice sounded strange. Fragile. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering all the weird shit I’ve seen in the past four years. But I have to admit...I didn’t believe Luca when he said you were back.”

She hugged me, and I was a little relieved to realize she hadn’t changed as much as the others. Of course, she was the youngest, though still older than me, now. “And hey, don’t worry about your hair. We can fix that. Three hours at my salon, and no one will ever know your poor head spent four years in that dry Netherworld air.”

I laughed out loud.

The next hour was surreal. They asked a dozen questions I didn’t want to answer about my time in the Netherworld, and I missed Alec more than ever. He would have understood my silence.

When it became obvious that I’d rather listen than talk, everyone seemed eager to oblige. I heard about classes, and parties, and schoolwork, and new cars, and new jobs, and new friends. I laughed at stories I didn’t completely understand and sympathized with disappointments I couldn’t really imagine. It seemed impossible that so much could have changed in the human world, when I could still remember my last day there like it was yesterday.

But I’d missed a lot of yesterdays.

We were digging into huge slices of birthday cake—Tod insisted, since I’d missed four birthdays—when another car pulled into the driveway.

My fork froze inches from my mouth. I dropped it onto my plate and was halfway to the door when it opened on its own. Harmony took one look at me, and her jaw dropped open so fast I was afraid it was going to fall off her face.

“Oh, my...”

I folded her into a long-overdue hug and only then noticed the firm bump between us. The one growing in her belly. I stepped back and glanced at her round stomach in surprise. “Are you...?” The rest of the words got stuck in my throat, and she nodded, beaming at me.

“It’s a girl.”

“We were going to call her Kaylee,” my uncle said, and I looked up to find him in the doorway, watching me through damp, shiny eyes.

Uncle Brendon gave me my millionth hug in the past hour, and only once I’d let him go did I notice that the gold band on his finger matched the one on Harmony’s. “Why didn’t anyone
tell
me?” I demanded, turning on the rest of my friends and family with a grin that probably spoiled my angry act.

Sophie laughed. “Dad would have killed me if he missed the look on your face. So...I’m going to be a big sister. Weird, huh?”

“Beyond weird.” I turned back to Harmony. “Wow! So, when are you due?”

“Three months. We’re excited! And your old room at Brendon’s will be the nursery.”

“Speaking of babies...” Em stepped forward with her phone and showed me a picture of a laughing toddler with her sister’s eyes and my old math teacher’s wavy brown hair.

I took the phone from her and stared at the picture. “Oh, Em, he’s adorable!” Her nephew was so cute, in fact, that though I would have sworn it was impossible, I wasn’t creeped out by his resemblance to the man who’d murdered me.

“Yeah. And he never would have survived without you. Without the soul you gave him.”

I’d left instructions in my goodbye letter, begging Harmony to help them install the soul in the baby when he was born. “What’s his name?”

“I suggested Damien,” Tod said while Em showed me how to scroll through the latest pictures on her phone—a leap in technology I’d missed during my sabbatical in hell. “But no one listened.”

“Caleb. He’s very sweet but quite a handful.”

“Have you searched his head for a birthmark in the form of three sixes?”

Emma shoved Tod again, and I got the impression that was a joke he’d told in infinite variations. I didn’t get it.

“Most little boys are...challenging,” Harmony said. “Including the two of you.” She smiled at both her sons.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s the big...?”

I froze at the sound of my father’s voice, and when it faded in surprise, I turned to find him staring at me.

“Kaylee?” His voice cracked, and disbelief dripped from the fracture. I smiled at him while my heart thundered in my chest. “Is that you? Are you real?”

Tod laughed again. “We’ve been asking her that all day.”

My dad practically floated across the room toward me, and only once his arms were wrapped around me did I realize he was wearing a flannel plaid shirt I’d been trying to get him to throw away for months before he’d disappeared into the Netherworld.

“I’m real.” I inhaled his scent, and fresh tears formed in my eyes. “I am so sorry for everything I put you through.” I clung to him, crying onto his shirt, burying my face in his shoulder.

My dad held me at arm’s length, staring at me through his own tears. “Kaylee, what on earth could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“I lied to you,” I said, between sobbing hiccups. “And I skipped school, and communed with evil forces, and drugged my boyfriend, and went to the Netherworld without permission, and I’m about four years late for my curfew. I totally understand if you want to ground me. With four years’ worth of interest.”

My father laughed so hard his whole body shook, and tears dripped from his chin. “Is that what it’ll take to keep you here?”

I shook my head. When he pulled me into another overdue hug, I laid my head down on his shoulder. “You couldn’t get rid of me this time if you tried.”

For at least a solid minute, we cried in each other’s arms, unleashing four years’ worth of grief and pain and guilt.

When he finally let me go, I turned in a slow circle, looking around at everyone I loved. Everyone I’d abandoned in an attempt to protect them. The room blurred beneath my tears. “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe you’re
all
here.”

“Um...” Sophie crossed her arms over a designer blouse and arched both manicured brows at me. “Out of all the weird species, out-of-body experiences, resurrections, and octogenarian pregnancies represented by the occupants of this room right now, your presence is the thing most difficult to believe.”

“Sophie...” Uncle Brendon said, but my cousin shook her head.

“I have something to say, and I’m going to be heard.” She turned to me again, and I braced myself for a well-meaning but offensive critique of my hair, or my face, or the tee I’d borrowed from Tod, which hung nearly to the cuff of my shorts. But instead, she smiled and glanced around the room. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say...welcome home, Kaylee.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” I called through the closed bathroom door, lifting acres of gold tulle. When I turned in front of the small mirror, light caught the sequins on my bodice and reflected a thousand points of light on the walls of Tod’s tiny bathroom.

“I’m sure. Come on out.”

“I feel stupid,” I moaned, pulling the door open, but my complaint died on my tongue with one look at him. “But
you
look...” I stared at him for a second. Then I had to touch him.

I ran my fingers over his gold tie, feeling the raised thread pattern, then down the right side of the matching vest, half-hidden by his black tux jacket. “You look
gorgeous.
”

“Okay.” He nodded hesitantly. “That’s a little feminine, as far as compliments go, but I can’t argue with the general sentiment. I look great. And so do you. Turns out gold is a good color for us both.” He made a spinning motion with one finger, and I turned slowly to show off my dress. To show off me
in
my dress. The prom dress I’d never worn.

I felt simultaneously beautiful and foolish, twirling in what little floor space there was between the unmade twin bed and the pile of unfolded laundry. “Tell me again why we’re wearing four-year-old prom clothes, alone in your bedroom?”

“We’re making up for lost time.” His arms slid around my waist, and mine met behind his neck. “We’re going to do everything you missed while you were gone. We’ll make up for every single lost moment. All of them.”

I looked into his eyes and got lost in them. “That could take a long time.”

He started swaying, and I swayed with him, and it didn’t matter that we didn’t have music, or friends, or punch, or a gym decorated with lights and crepe paper. We had the only two things we needed for our private prom—each other. And pretty clothes.

“I don’t care if it takes forever, Kaylee,” he said, and warmth trailed down my spine to settle in a dozen pleasant places. “The universe
owes
us forever. And our eternity starts now.”

* * * * *

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Natashya Wilson and the rest of Harlequin Teen for launching the Teen line with Soul Screamers and for supporting Kaylee the whole way.

Thanks to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, for making things happen.

Thanks to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, for untold hours plotting, and whining, and planning over the phone. I hope we get to do all that in person very soon.

Thanks to No. 1, who sees the crazy, frazzled writer my official author photos hide well. Thanks for knowing when to offer coffee, when to make fajitas, and when to back quietly away from the office door. You’ve made this possible.

Thanks most of all to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for guidance, support, enthusiasm, and—most importantly—for smiley faces in the margins.

FEARLESS

For Rinda, my longtime critique partner, whose brilliant suggestion greatly influenced the new ending of this story, which was originally published years ago, without the last segment. Thank you!

This story takes place almost a year before MY SOUL TO LOSE, two full years before Kaylee and Sabine will meet....

“Sabine, look at me.”

Not likely.
But staring out the car window wasn’t much better. All I could see was the building, long, low, and squat with tall, skinny windows arranged in pairs. Better than correctional custody, but not by much.

The brick-backed sign to the right of the sidewalk read Holser House, but that was a lie. “This isn’t a house.”

“Sabine...”

“Houses have yards. This is a parking lot.”

May as well have a barbed wire fence or a metal detector at the door; the effect would have been the same. Everyone knew about Holser House, and the Holser girls. Whores, junkies, and thieves in training, biding their time till they turned eighteen and were officially booted from the Texas Youth Commission with a sealed record and a prayer.

“It’s only for six months,” Navarro insisted, and I rolled my eyes at his optimism. Six months was the minimum stay, maximum to be determined by the director. “Better than the alternative, right? You can wear your own clothes and go to public school when the semester starts. And when you turn sixteen, they’ll let you get a job, if you’ve been playing nice.”

But I would only be there when I turned sixteen if I decided
not
to play nice. So much for optimism.

I turned to look at him as my fingers curled around the door handle. “Can I go in alone, or am I still under escort?”

He gave me a strict, parole-officer frown. “There’s paperwork....”

There was always paperwork. You can be sure you don’t really exist when you’re known by a case number, instead of a name.

“Sabine, do
not
run away from Holser. This isn’t prison, but you’re still in state custody. Running away is considered escape, and you do
not
need an escape charge. Next time it’ll be Ron Jackson.”

The Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex. Navarro says it makes the detention center look like kindergarten, and four days in juvenile detention was plenty of time for me to remember that I hated orange jumpsuits and institutional food.

“I didn’t run away.” I’d just missed curfew. By seven hours. Evidently a grievous violation of my parole, even without the additional status offense—underage drinking.

“David reported you missing.”

That’s because my foster so-called father was a dick. “Whatever.”

Navarro sighed. “Look, Sabine, I’m trying to help you. I had to call in a favor to get you placed here. They don’t usually take violent offenders.”

“I’m not violent,” I insisted, but Navarro only rolled his eyes. We’d agreed to disagree on that one.

“If you don’t take this seriously, there’s nothing else I can do for you.”

He wanted to help me. He might even have believed me if I’d explained about missing curfew. That Jenny was out of town, and I didn’t want to be alone with David, because he might decide to do more than look, and if that happened, I’d have to hurt him. Then I’d be in Ron Jackson for sure. With the actual violent offenders.

Because even if Navarro believed me, the rest of the system wouldn’t. They’d never take the word of the troubled teen parolee over the upstanding foster father, because then they’d have to admit that their system didn’t work, and a broken system was better than no system at all. Right?

“Promise me you’ll stay here. Just ride it out for a few months, then you can go home.”

Assuming the Harpers would take me back. Not that I cared about them, but another new foster home meant yet another new school, and then I couldn’t see Nash...

But I refused to follow that line of thought.

“Promise me, Sabine.”

I looked up, meeting his dark-eyed gaze, studying him for the millionth time. “Why do you care? For real. You’ll still draw a paycheck even if I choke on my well-balanced, state-mandated group dinner.”

Navarro exhaled again, and the weight of the world slipped a bit on his shoulders. “I don’t want to see you waste your life.”

That was a lie, yet very close to the truth. He wasn’t afraid I’d never reach my full potential—he was afraid that he would fail me. Or one of his other girls. That he would drop the ball, and one of us would wind up dead.

Oddly enough, his was a fear I’d never felt the need to exploit. At least, not while I was the one benefiting from his efforts.

“You ready?” Navarro asked.