Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ to us stared at me now, only looking away when Nash drew me into an embrace, pulling my head down onto his shoulder as if to comfort me. Which was, in part, what he was doing.

      “Kaylee, no,” he whispered into my hair, but this time his Infuence was little help. The urge to wail was too strong, the death coming too fast—distantly I saw Emma watching us, still wrapped in an almost solid sheet of shadow. “Don’t look at them.”

      He sees them too? That answered one of my questions….

      “Focus on holding it back,” he said. “Your keening breaches the gap, but I don’t think they can see us yet. They will when you sing, but they’re not here with us, no matter what it looks like.”

      Gap? Gap between what and what? Our world and the Netherworld? Not good. Not good at all…

      I stepped out of his arms to see his face, looking for answers in his expression, but there were none to be found. Probably because I couldn’t ask the right questions.

      Fine. I would ignore the weird gray reality-veil, as impossible as that seemed. But what about the reaper? If Emma was going to die—even if only temporarily—I would not let it be for nothing.

      I glanced pointedly at Emma for effect, my heart breaking a little more at the alarm clear on her face, then exaggerated shrugging my shoulders for Nash, all the while choking back the scream that now felt immediate.

      By some miracle, he understood.

      “You can’t see him until he wants to be seen,” Nash reminded me gently, stepping close to murmur against my forehead. His very words, the almost-physical satin-soft glide of his Influenced voice against my skin, made the panic abate a bit. Not enough to offer much relief, but enough to hold back the screaming for a few more seconds. “And I’d bet my life savings he doesn’t want to be seen. You have to wait. Just hold it in a little longer.”

      “What?” Emma repeated, squeezing my hand now to get my attention. “Can’t see who? Where—”

      Then, in midsentence, she simply collapsed.

      Emma’s legs folded beneath her with my hand still clenched in hers. Her head hit the person behind her. He stumbled and almost went down. I fell forward with her, tears flowing freely now. Nash’s hand was ripped from my grip as my knees slammed into the floor and the blow reverberated throughout my body. And Emma’s eyes stared up at nothing, the windows to her soul thrown wide open, though it was obvious no one was home.

      “Kaylee!” Nash dropped to the ground on Emma’s other side. He stared at me imploringly as people turned to look, eyes wide, mouths hanging open.

      I barely heard him. I no longer noticed the dimness or the odd movement creeping back into the edges of my vision. I couldn’t think about anything but Emma, and how she lay there, unmoving, staring at the ceiling as if she could see through it.

      “Let it go, Kaylee. Sing for her. Call her soul so I can see it. Hold it as long as you can.”

      I looked down at Emma, beautiful even in death. Her fingers were still warm in mine. Her hair had fallen over her shoulder, and the soft ends of it brushed my arm. I let my head fall back and my mouth fall open.

      Then I screamed.

      The shriek poured from me in an agonizing torrent of discordant, abrasive notes that scraped my throat raw and seemed to empty me, from my toes all the way to the top of my head. It hurt like hell. But beyond the pain, I felt overwhelming relief to no longer be the physical vessel for such an unearthly din and agonizing grief over having lost my best friend. The cousin I should have had. My confidante and, at times, my sanity.

      The entire gymnasium went still in an instant. People froze, then turned to stare, most slapping hands over their ears and grimacing in pain. Someone else screamed—I could tell because her mouth was wide open, though I couldn’t hear her over the much more powerful noise coming from my own mouth.

      And then, before I could even process all the gawking stares aimed my way, the whole world seemed to shift.

      That fine gray mist settled into place all around me, over everything normal, though that was more a feeling than a physical fact. The strange, misshapen creatures I couldn’t focus on before were suddenly everywhere, interspersed with and in some cases overtaying the human crowd, ogling me just like the students and parents, but from the far side of the grayness. They were drab, as if the haze had somehow stolen their color, and they looked distant, as if I were watching them through some kind of formless, tinted glass.

      Was that what Nash meant, when he said they wouldn’t actually be with us? Because if so, I didn’t quite understand the distinction. They were entirely too close for comfort, and drawing nearer every second.

      On my left, a strange, headless creature stood between two boys in wrinkled khakis, blinking at me with eyes set into his bare chest, between small, cotorless nipples. An odd, narrow nose protruded from the hollow below his sternum, and thin lips opened just above his navel.

      No need to mention how I knew it was a he….

      Horrified, I closed my eyes, and my scream faltered. But then I remembered Emma. Em needed me.

      They’re not here with us. They’re not here with us. Nash’s voice seemed to chant from inside my head. I let the song loose again, marveling at the capacity of my lungs, and opened my eyes. I was determined to look only at Nash. He could get me through this; he’d done it before.

      But my gaze snagged instead on a beautiful man and woman slinking their way toward me through the crowd. They looked almost normal, except for their hazy gray coloring and the odd, elongated proportion of their limbs—and the tail curled around the female’s slim ankle. As I watched, spellbound, the man walked through my science teacher, who didn’t so much as flinch.

      That’s it. Enough. I couldn’t handle any more weird gray monsters. This time I would look at Nash, or at nothing.

      My throat burned. My ears rang. My head pounded. But finally Nash’s face came into focus directly across from me. But to my complete dismay, his gaze did not meet mine. He stared, rapt, at the space over Emma’s body, eyes narrowed in concentration, face damp with sweat.

      I looked up, and suddenly I understood. There was Emma. Not the body cooling slowly on the floor in front of me. The real Emma. Her soul hung in the air between us, the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. If a soul can be called a thing.

      She wasn’t beautiful, like I’d expected. No glowing ball of heatless light. No Emma-shaped ghost fluttering in an ethereal breeze. She was dark and formless, yet translucent, like a clear, slowly undulating shadow of … nothing. But what her soul lacked in form, it made up for in feel. It felt important. Vital.

      Cold fingers touched my arm and I jumped, sure one of the Nether-creatures had come for me. But it was only the principal, kneeling next to me, saying something I couldn’t hear. She was asking me what had happened, but I couldn’t talk. She tried to pull me away from Emma, but I wouldn’t be budged. Nor would I be silenced.

      A short, round woman in a sacklike dress burst into the circle that had formed around us, shoving people out of her way. The gray creatures took no note of her, and I realized they probably couldn’t see her. Or any of the other humans.

      The woman squatted by Nash and said СКАЧАТЬ