Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ they wail over the dying, announcing that the end is near.” I sipped watered-down soda, then gestured with my cup. “But, Nash, banshees are just stories. Old European legends.”

      He nodded. “Most of it, yes. They spell it wrong, for starters. The Gaelic is B-E-A-N S-I-D-H-E. Two words. Literally, it means ‘woman of the faeries.’”

      My eyebrows shot halfway up my forehead as I dropped my cup back into the drink holder. “Wait, you think I’m a faerie? Like, with little glittery wings and magic wands?”

      Nash frowned. “This isn’t Disney, Kaylee. ‘Faerie’ is a very broad term. It basically means ‘other than human.’ And forget about the wispy gowns and following funerals. All that went out of style a long time ago. But the rest of it? Women as death heralds? Sound familiar?”

      Okay, there was a slight similarity to my morbid predictions, but. “There’s no such thing as bean sidhes, no matter how you spell it.”

      “There are no premonitions either, right?” His hazel eyes sparkled in the fading light when he grinned, refusing to be derailed by my cynicism. “Okay, let’s see how much of this I can get right. Your dad. He looks really young, right? Too young to have a sixteen-year-old daughter? Your uncle too. They’re brothers, right?”

      Unimpressed, I rolled my eyes and folded one leg beneath me on the narrow leather car seat. “You saw my uncle an hour ago—you know he’s young. And I haven’t seen my dad in a year and a half.” Though as a child, I’d always thought he looked young and handsome. But that was a long time ago….

      “I know your uncle looks young, but that means nothing to a bean sidhe. He could be a hundred.”

      That time I laughed. “Right. My uncle’s a senior citizen.” Wouldn’t it piss Aunt Val off to think he could be more than twice her age and still look younger!

      Nash frowned at my skepticism, his face darkening as the last rays of daylight slowly bled from the sky. “Okay, what about the rest of your family? Your ancestors are Irish, right?”

      I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “My name’s Cavanaugh. That’s not a big leap.” Plus, he already knew my dad lived in Ireland.

      “Bean sidhes are native to Ireland. That’s why the stories all stem from old Irish folktales.”

      Oh. Now that was quite a coincidence. But nothing more. “Got anything else, Houdini?”

      Nash reached across the center console and took my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away. “Kaylee, I knew what you were the minute you told me Heidi Anderson was going to die. But I probably would have known earlier if I’d been paying attention. I just never expected to run into a bean sidhe at my own school.”

      “How would you have known earlier?”

      “Your voice.”

      “Huh?” But my heart began to beat harder, as if it knew something my head hadn’t quite caught on to.

      “Last Friday at lunch, I heard you and Emma talking about sneaking into Taboo, and couldn’t get you out of my head. Your voice stuck with me, like after I truly heard you that first time, I couldn’t stop hearing you. Your voice carries above everything else. I can find you in a crowd even if I can’t see you, so long as you’re talking. But I didn’t know why. I just knew I needed to talk to you outside of school, and that you’d be at the club on Saturday night.”

      Suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. My lungs seemed too big for my chest, and I couldn’t make them fully expand. “You followed me to Taboo?” His admission made my head spin, questions and confessions both battling for the right to speak first. But I couldn’t think clearly enough to focus on them.

      “Yeah.” He sounded so matter-of-fact, as if it should be no big surprise that a hot, out-of-my-league guy would go to a club on a Saturday night just to see me. “I wanted to talk to you.”

      I swallowed thickly and stared at my hands. I could hardly believe what I was about to tell him. “When you talk to me, I feel like everything’s okay, even when things are really falling apart. Why?” I looked up then and met his gaze, searching for the truth even if I wouldn’t understand it. “What did you do to me?”

      “Nothing. Nothing on purpose, anyway.” He squeezed my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “We truly hear each other because we’re the same. I’m a bean sidhe,

      Kaylee. Just like my mom and dad, and at least one of your parents. Just like you.”

      Just like me. Was it possible? My instinct was to say no. To shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut until I was sure the crazy dream was over. Really, though, was being a bean sidhe any weirder than being plagued with premonitions of death?

      But even if it was true, something didn’t fit….

      “In the stories there are no male bean sidhes.”

      “I know.” Nash scowled and let go of my hand to cross his arms over his chest. “The stories come from what humans know about us, and they only seem to know about the ladies. You girls are pretty hard to miss, with all the screaming and wailing.”

      “Ha ha.” I started to shove him, then froze in the act of raising my arm. I’d just defended—albeit jokingly—a species I claimed not to belong to. Or even believe in.

      And that’s when it hit me. When the whole thing sank

      in.

      Yes, it sounded crazy. But it felt right. And little pieces of it actually made sense, in a way that was more intuitive than logical.

      My throat felt swollen, and my eyes began to burn with tears of relief. Being not-human was better than being crazy. And infinitely better than dying of cancer. But most important, having answers—even weird answers—was better than not knowing. Than doubting myself.

      “I’m a bean sidhe?” Two tears fell before I could banish them, and I wiped the rest away with my sleeve. Nash nodded solemnly, and I repeated it, just to get used to the idea. “I’m a bean sidhe.”

      Saying it out loud helped that last little bit of certainty slip into place, and I felt my chest loosen. One long breath slipped from my throat, and I sank into the car seat, staring out the windshield at a sunset I barely noticed. A tension I hadn’t even felt began to ease through my body.

      Nash had given me one answer, but he’d brought to mind dozens of others, and I needed more information. Immediately.

      “So why doesn’t anyone know about male bean sidhes? And if you’re a guy, wouldn’t that make you more of a male sidhe?“

      He reached for his drink, and the muscles in his arm shifted beneath skin tinted red in the last rays of sunlight. “Unfortunately, the term was coined by humans, who don’t know male bean sidhes exist, because we don’t wail. We don’t get the premonitions.”

      I frowned. “So what makes you a bean sidhe? I mean, how are you different from … humans?” Even having accepted my new identity, it felt weird to refer to myself as other than human.

      He leaned against Carter’s СКАЧАТЬ