Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ and hit his head on some bricks bordering my mom’s flower bed. She was pruning the bushes when he fell, so she saw it happen.”

      “Where were you?” I spoke softly, afraid he’d stop talking if my voice shattered his memories.

      “In the backyard, but I came running when she screamed. When I got there, she was crying, holding his head on her lap. There was blood all over her legs. Then my dad stopped breathing, and she started singing.

      “It was beautiful, Kaylee.” His words grew urgent and he sat straighter, like he was trying to convince me. “Eerie and sad. And there was his soul, just kind of hanging above them both. I tried to guide it. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had to try to save him. But he made me stop. His soul. I could hear it. He said he had to go, and I should take care of my mom. He said she would need me, and he was right. She felt guilty because she’d asked him to paint the shutters. She hasn’t been the same since.”

      I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I had to take the next one. “How old were you?”

      “Ten.” His eyes closed. “My dad’s was the first soul I ever saw, and I couldn’t save him. Not without killing someone else, and he wouldn’t let me risk my own life. Or my mom’s.” He opened his eyes to stare at me intently. “And he was right about that too, Kaylee. We can’t take an innocent life to spare someone who’s supposed to die.”

      He’d get no argument from me there. But. “What if Meredith wasn’t supposed to die? What if it wasn’t her time?”

      “It was. That’s how it works.” Nash’s voice held the conviction of a child professing belief in Santa Claus. He was a little too sure, as if the strength of his assertion could make up for some secret doubt.

      “How do you know?”

      “Because there are schedules. Official lists. There are people who make sure death is carried out the way it’s supposed to be.”

      I blinked at him, eyes narrowed in surprise. “Are you serious?”

      “Unfortunately.” A breeze of bitterness swept across his face, but it was gone before I was even sure it was there in the first place.

      “That sounds so …bureaucratic.”

      He shrugged. “It’s a very well-organized system.”

      “Every system has flaws, Nash.” He started to disagree, but I rushed on. “Think about it. Three girls have died in the same area in the past three days, each with no known cause. They all just fell over dead. That’s not the natural order of things. It’s the very definition of ‘unnatural.’ Or at least ‘suspicious.’”

      “It’s definitely unusual,” he admitted. Nash rubbed his temples again and suddenly sounded very tired. “But even if they weren’t supposed to die, there’s nothing we can do about it without getting someone else killed.”

      “Okay.” I couldn’t argue with that logic. “But if someone isn’t meant to die, does the penalty for saving him still apply? ”

      Nash looked shocked suddenly, as if that possibility had never occurred to him. “I don’t know. But I know someone who might.”

       10

      “SO WHO’S THIS TOD?” I slurped the last of my soda, watching as passing headlights briefly illuminated his features, then abandoned him to short stretches of shadow. It was like rediscovering him with each beam of light that found his face, and I couldn’ t stop watching.

      “He works second shift at the hospital.” Nash flicked his blinker on as he made a left-hand turn.

      “ Doing what?”

      “ Tod’s …an intern.” He took another left, and Arlington Memorial lay before us on the right, the mirrored windows of the new surgical tower reflecting the streetlights back at us.

      I gathered the wrappers from our meal and shoved them into the paper sack on the floorboard between my feet. “I didn’ t know interns had set schedules.”

      Nash turned into the dimly lit parking garage and glanced in both directions, looking for an empty spot near the entrance. But he was also obviously avoiding my eyes. “He’s not exactly a medical intern.”

      “ What is he, then? Exactly.”

      An empty space appeared at the end of the first level, and he pulled into it, taking more care with Carter’s car than he had with his mother’s. Then he shifted into Park and killed the engine before turning to face me fully. “Kaylee, Tod isn’t human either. And he’s not exactly a friend, so he may not be eager to answer our questions.”

      I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to look irritated, which wasn’t easy, considering that every time he looked at me like that, like there was nothing else in the world worth looking at, my heart beat harder and my breath caught in my throat. “A non-human non-friend? Who works at the hospital as a non-medical intern?” At least it wasn’ t another football player. “Now that we’re clear on what he’s not, care to tell me what he is?”

      Nash sighed, and I knew from the sound that I wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say. “He’s a grim reaper.”

      “He’s a what?” Surely I’d heard him wrong. “Did you just say Tod’s the Grim Reaper?”

      Nash shook his head slowly, and I exhaled in relief. Bean sidhes were one thing— we could actually help people— but I was not ready to face the walking, talking personification of Death. Much less ask him questions.

      “He’s not the Grim Reaper,” Nash said, watching me closely. “He’s only a reaper. One of thousands. It’s just a job.”

      “Just a job? Death is just a job! Wait.” I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Then I counted to ten. When that wasn’t enough, I counted to thirty. Then I met Nash’s gaze, hoping panic didn’t show in the probably swirling depths of mine. “So …when you said you can’t stop death, what you really meant is that you can’t stop Tod?”

      “Not him specifically, but yes, that’s the general idea. Reapers have a job to do, just like everyone else. And as a whole, they’re not very fond of bean sidhes.”

      “Do I even want to know why not?”

      Nash smiled sympathetically and took my hand, and my pulse jumped at even such small contact. Crap. I could already see that any future anger at him was going to be very hard to sustain. “Most reapers don’t like us because we have the potential to seriously screw up their workday. Even if we don’t actually restore a person’s soul, a reaper can’t touch it so long as you hold it. So every second you spend singing means a one-second delay in the delivery of that soul. In a busy district, that could throw him disastrously behind schedule. Also, it just plain pisses them off. Reapers don’t like anyone else playing with their toys.”

      Great. “So not only am I not-human, but Death is my arch foe?” Who, me? Panic? “Anything else you want to tell me, while we’re confessing?”

      Nash tried to stifle СКАЧАТЬ