Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ I doubt Tod agrees.” And he was pacing again, as if the faster he walked, the faster he could think. Though my doubts about that technique stemmed from personal experience.

      “Well, he must, ‘cause he’s going to help us.” No need to mention that his help stemmed more from my involvement in the matter than from Nash’s.

      “Help you with what?” Uncle Brendon froze halfway across the room, facing me, and this time his eyes were definitely swirling.

      “Help us figure out what’s going on. He’s getting some information for us.”

      My uncle’s expression darkened, and my breath hitched in my throat as the green in his irises churned so fast it made me dizzy. “What kind of information? Kaylee, what are you doing? I want the truth, and I want it right now or I swear you won’t leave this house again until you turn twenty-one.”

      I had to smile at the irony of Uncle Brendon asking me for the truth. I sighed and sat straighter on the bed. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but don’t freak out. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds—” I hope “—because there’s this loophole in the exchange rate, and—”

      “The exchange rate?” Uncle Brendon’s face went from tomato-red to nuclear countdown in less than a second. And then there was more pacing. “This is why we wanted your father to be the one to explain everything. Or at least me. That way we’d know how much you understand and what you’re still clueless about.”

      “I’m not clueless.” My temper spiked, and I stretched to drop my iPod on my nightstand before I accidentally crimped the cord.

      “You are if you think you have any business even contemplating the exchange rate. You have no idea how dangerous messing in reaper business can be!”

      “Ignorance is dangerous, Uncle Brendon. Don’t you get it?” Standing, I grabbed a clean pair of jeans and shook them out harshly, pleased when the material snapped against itself, sharply accenting my anger. “Eventually, if the premonitions kept up, I would have been unable to hold back my song. I’d have wound up delaying some random reaper’s schedule and really pissing him off—not to mention whatever other invisible creepies are out there—with no idea what I was doing. See? The longer you all keep me bumbling around in the dark, the greater the chance that I’ll stumble into something I don’t understand. Nash knows that. He explained the possibilities and the consequences. He’s arming me with knowledge because he understands that the best offense is knowing how to avoid trouble.”

      “From what I heard, it sounds more like you’re out looking for trouble.”

      “Not trouble. The truth.” I dropped the folded jeans on the end of the bed. “There’s been precious little of that around here, and even now that I know what I am, you and Aunt Val are still keeping secrets.”

      He exhaled heavily and sat on the edge of my dresser, scruffing one hand through unkempt hair. “We’re not keeping secrets from you. We’re giving your dad a chance to act like a real father.”

      “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 somet hing 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 СКАЧАТЬ