Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ comparison doesn’t really work for me.”

      “I’ll try harder next time.” Nash sighed. “I don’t really want to talk right now, Mom.”

      She crossed her own arms over her chest, mirroring his stubborn posture. “Well, I want to talk.”

      Finally Nash turned to look at her, wincing with one hand over his ribs. “About what? Cookies? I don’t want any. The move? I don’t want to be here. Tod? I don’t want him dead. But since this isn’t the Republic of Nash, that doesn’t seem to matter.”

      My mom sighed and picked up a cookie she probably wouldn’t eat. “Nash, Tod’s time was up, and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it. You have to stop blaming yourself.”

      The irony stung like fire in my chest, and I stumbled back a step.

      Nash’s expression went hard, but I could see the pain beneath. “Why, Mom? You blame me.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. “You don’t blame me for his death—we both know how that works—but you blame me for how he died. If I hadn’t gone out, that damn drunk would never have hit us. Tod might have died peacefully at home, instead of on the side of the road, crushed by his own steering wheel.”

      I blinked, stunned. I’d made sure Nash would never know what happened, but instead of absolving him of guilt, I’d saddled him with it. Nash thought it was his fault. And one glance at my mother told me he was right—she did too.

      But she didn’t know the truth. He obviously hadn’t told her that I’d had Genna over instead of watching him—which had set the whole thing in motion. And neither of them knew about the rest of it.

      Nash stared at our mother, silently begging her to argue. To insist that she didn’t blame him. But we could both see the truth, even if the colors in her eyes held steady.

      “No.” I said it out loud, glancing back and forth between them, but no one heard me. “This isn’t what I wanted.” But my brother stared right past me.

      Mom answered, finally, too late to be believable. “It’s not your fault,” she said, staring at the hands clasped in her lap.

      Nash actually rolled his eyes. “I went to the party. I got drunk. I made him come get me. It’s my fault we were on the road. If I’d done any of that differently, he wouldn’t have gone out like that.”

      I couldn’t take anymore. “It was my choice!” I stood, but they still couldn’t see me, and they damn well couldn’t hear me.

      My mother shook her head slowly, wordlessly denying his guilt, even as her eyes argued to the contrary.

      “I wish you’d just say it!” Nash shouted, and I stood in front of him, trying to interrupt, trying to keep him from saying whatever would come next, because there’d be no taking it back. But he looked right through me. “I wish you’d just yell at me and get it over with. I know I screwed up. I know I can never fix it, and I wish you’d just say it, so we can…so we can at least start to move on. Because he’s not coming back, Mom. I’m the only one left.”

      “Nash, no,” I said, but my words—like my presence—were worthless.

      Mom sniffled. “Nash, I’m not going to…”

      “Just say it!” he shouted, standing, and I tried to shove him back into his chair, but my hands went right through his chest.

      “You knew better!” she yelled, and I spun toward my mom. She stood, and she was crying, and I couldn’t stand it, but there was nothing I could do. “You were grounded, and you went out drinking anyway. Sabine just got arrested for the same thing and you saw her in that place, but it didn’t sink in, did it? You went out and partied, and Tod paid for it. You got him killed!” Her legs folded and she dropped to her knees on the carpet.

      Nash walked through me and sank to the floor with to her. He wrapped his arms around her and they cried, apologizing to each other over and over, mourning me together. And I could only watch, my fists clenched in frustration, separated from them by death, and life, and the devastating knowledge that things could have been different—but that would only have made them worse.

      I sank into Nash’s chair, but the cushion didn’t squish beneath my weight. In my current state—present, but powerless—I couldn’t even affect the damn furniture, much less my family. I was no good to them like this. What was the point of making sure Nash lived, if he and my mom were both going to blame him for my death?

      I had to take the job. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of killing people for the remainder of my afterlife—I wasn’t even sure I could actually do it—but I couldn’t let them spend the rest of their lives thinking he was responsible for how I died. Not when the truth was the other way around.

      I left them like that, crying and forgiving each other for shouting what they thought was the truth. Bonding over my death.

      In the living room, I stopped cold in the middle of the floor when my gaze landed on what I’d missed before. The cake. On the coffee table. The candles looked burned, and I knew I would have smelled them, if I were really there.

      I moved forward slowly, dreading what I’d see, even as the understanding sank in. The cake would be chocolate, with cream cheese frosting between the layers. The same every year, because it was my favorite. And there it was, printed in blue letters, in my mother’s own curly cake script.

      Happy Birthday Tod.

      Today I would have turned eighteen.

      I waited for the last bus of the evening with three other people, then stepped up through the folding doors when they closed behind the woman in front of me. The bus swayed beneath me as it rolled forward, but I wasn’t jostled, like the other passengers. As if the rules of physics that bound me were a little less precise than they should have been. I was only kind of there, thus only kind of on the bus, and I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was only one deep breath away from falling through the seat and onto the road, where the highway traffic would barrel right through me.

      The bus stopped down the street from the hospital, and I didn’t fully relax until my feet kind of hit the concrete and the bus rolled away. Two blocks later, I passed two EMTs unloading a man on a stretcher on my way into the waiting room, wishing like hell I could feel the air-conditioning or smell the antiseptic and bleach.

      Levi sat facing the entrance. Waiting for me. “Well?” He stood as I approached, forced to project determination in my bearing, since he couldn’t hear my bold, confident footsteps.

      “I’m in.” And I would talk to my mother, even if it got me fired. I hadn’t expected an afterlife, so I wouldn’t be losing much if I died again—for real this time. At least this way she would know the truth.

      “I thought you would be.” But Levi’s smile was slow, his thin brows slightly furrowed, and I understood that he was connecting more dots in his head, and he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the picture they formed. “Let’s go make it official.”

      I still couldn’t feel the wind.

      Levi swore that when I got better at dialing up and down my corporeality, I’d be able to feel and smell things without becoming visible or audible. But that level of competence was obviously going to take more than two days’ СКАЧАТЬ