Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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       17

      OVER THE NEXT FEW minutes, details filtered back to us through the crowd, now thankfully focused on the other side of the room. The girl was a junior. A cheerteader named Julie Duke. I knew the name and could call up a vague image of her face. She was pretty and well liked, and if memory served, more friendly and accepting than most of the other pom-pom-wavers.

      When Julie still had no pulse several minutes after she collapsed, adults began herding the students toward the doors, almost as one. Nash and I were allowed to stay because we were Emma’s ride, but the teachers wouldn’t let her leave until the EMTs had checked her out. However, Julie was the top priority, so when the medics arrived, the principal led them directly to the cluster of people around her.

      But it was too late. Even if I hadn’t already known that, it would have been obvious by their posture alone, and the unhurried way they went about their business, and eventually wheeled her out on a sheet-draped gurney. Then a single EMT in black pants and a pressed uniform shirt walked across the gym toward us, first-aid kit in hand. He examined Emma thoroughly, but found nothing that could have caused her collapse. Her pulse, blood pressure, and breathing were all fine. Her skin was flushed and healthy, her eyes were dilating, and her reflexes were …reflexing.

      The medic concluded that she’d simply fainted, but said she should come to the hospital for a more thorough exam, just in case. Emma tried to decline, but the principal trumped her decision with a call to Ms. Marshall, who said she’d meet her daughter there.

      When I was sure Sophie had a ride home, Nash and I followed the ambulance to the hospital, where the triage nurse put Emma in a small, bright room to await examination. And her mother. As soon as the nurse left, closing the door on his way out, Emma turned to face us both, her expression a mixture of fear and confusion.

      “What happened?” she demanded, ignoring the pillows to sit straight on the hospital bed, legs crossed yoga-style. “The truth.”

      I glanced at Nash, who’d pulled a rubber glove from a box mounted on the wall, but he only shrugged and nodded in her direction, giving me the clear go-ahead. “Um.” I croaked, unsure how much to tell her. Or how to phrase it. Or whether my still-froggy voice would hold out. “You died.”

      “I died? “ Emma’s eyes went huge and round. Whatever she’d expected to hear, I hadn’t said it.

      I nodded hesitantly. “You died, and we brought you back.”

      She swallowed thickly, glancing from me to Nash—who was now blowing up the disposable glove—and back. “You guys saved me? Like, you did CPR?” Her arms relaxed, and her shoulders fell in relief——she’d obviously been expecting something … weirder. I considered simply nodding, but no one else would corroborate our story. We had to tell her the truth—or at least one version of it.

      “Not exactly.” I faltered, raising one brow at Nash, asking him silently for help.

      He sighed and let the air out of the glove, then sank onto the edge of Emma’s bed. I sat in front of him and leaned back against his chest. I’d barely broken physical contact with him since singing to Emma’s soul, and I wasn’t looking to do it anytime soon. “Okay, we’re going to tell you what’s going on—” However, I knew when he squeezed my hand that he wasn’t going to tell her everything, and he didn’t want me to either. “But first I need you to swear you won’t tell anyone else. No one. Ever. Even if you’re still living ninety years from now and itching to make a deathbed confession.”

      Emma grinned and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like I’ll be thinking about the two of you when I’m a hundred and six and breathing my last.”

      Nash chuckled and wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned into his chest, and his heart beat against my back. When he spoke, his breath stirred the hair over my ear, softly soothing me, though I knew that part was meant for Emma. Just in case.

      “So you swear?” he asked, and she nodded. “You know how Kaylee can tell when someone’s going to die?” Emma nodded again, her eyes narrowed now, fresh curiosity shining in them, edged with fear she probably didn’t want us to see. “Well, sometimes, under certain circumstances …she can bring them back.”

      “With his help,” I added hoarsely, then immediately wondered if his own involvement was one of the parts Nash wanted to keep to himself. But he kissed the back of my head to tell me it was okay.

      “Yes, with my help.” His fingers curled around mine, where my hand lay in my lap. “Together, we … woke you up. Sort of. You’ll be fine now. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, and the doctor will probably decide you passed out from stress, or grief, or something. Just like the EMT did.”

      For nearly a minute, Emma was silent, taking it all in. I was afraid that even under Nash’s careful Influence, she might freak out, or start laughing at us. But she only blinked and shook her head. “I died?” she asked again. “And you guys brought me back. I knew I should have had that little digital health meter installed over my head, so I know when I’m about to drop.”

      I smiled, relieved that she could see the humor in the situation, and Nash laughed out loud, his whole body quaking against my back. “Well, with any luck, we’ve unlocked infinite health for you,” he said.

      Emma smiled back briefly, then her face grew serious. “Was it like the others? I just collapsed?”

      “Yeah.” I hated having to tell her about her own death. “In midsentence.”

      “Why?”

      “We don’t know,” Nash said before I could answer. I let his response stand, because technically it was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. And because I didn’t want Emma mixed up in anything that involved a psychotic, extra-grim, female reaper.

      She thought for a moment, her fingers skimming the white hospital blanket. When her hand bumped the bed’s controlter, she picked it up, glancing at the buttons briefly before meeting my gaze again. “How did you do it?”

      “That’s …complicated.” I searched for the right words, but they wouldn’t come. “I don’t know how to explain it, and it’s not really important.” At least as far as Emma was concerned. “What matters is that you’re okay.”

      She pressed a button on the controller, and the head of the bed rose several inches beneath her. “So what happened with Julie?”

      That was the question I’d been dreading. I glanced at my lap, where my fingers were twisting one another into knots. Then I shifted to look at Nash, hoping he had a better, less traumatizing way to explain it than simply “She died for you.”

      But evidently he did not. “We saved your life, and we’d do it again if we had to. But death is just like life in some ways, Em. Everything has a price.”

      “A price?” Emma flinched, and her hand clenched the controlfer. The bed lowered beneath her, but she didn’t even notice. “You killed Julie to save me?”

      “No!” I reached out for Emma, but she scooted backward into the pillow, horrified. “We had nothing to do with Julie dying! But when we brought you back, we created a sort of vacuum, and something had to fill it.” Which wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ