Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

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      There was a second of darkness, then something clicked and light bathed us from a bare bulb overhead. Nash had found the switch. “Okay, spit it out,” he snapped. “I do not want to explain to Kaylee’s father why we were caught in a locked hospital storage room full of controlled substances.”

      “Fair enough.” Tod leaned with one shoulder against a shelf along the back wall, giving me and Nash as much room as possible—which was about a square foot apiece. “I was waiting on a guy with a knife wound to the chest. Should have been short and simple, but I stepped out to take a call from my boss, and by the time I got back inside, the doc had brought him back three times. You know, with those shock paddle things?”

      “So you let him live?” Nash sounded nearly as surprised as I was.

      “Um.no.” Tod frowned, blond curls gleaming in the unfiltered light. “He was on my list. Anyway, when I finished with the stab victim, I came out to the lobby for a cup of coffee and heard you talking.” He was looking at me now, and completely ignoring Nash. “So I followed you into your friend’s room. She’s hot.”

      “Stay away from… her,” I finished lamely, remembering at the last minute that it wasn’t wise to give out my friends’ names to the agents of death. Not that the reaper couldn’t find it on his own anyway. And not that Death didn’t already have Emma’s name on file, after that afternoon.

      Tod rolled his eyes. “What kind of reaper do you think I am? And anyway, what fun would killing her be?”

      “Leave her alone,” Nash snapped. “Let’s go.” He turned and grabbed the handle, then threw the door open fast enough that if anyone from the nurses’ station had been looking, we’d have been caught for sure. Surprised, I hurried after him and barely heard the storage closet close behind me. We were nearly to the double doors when Tod spoke again.

      “Don’t you want to know about the phone call?” He only whispered, but somehow his voice carried as if he’d spoken from an inch away.

      I stopped, pulling Nash to a sudden halt. He glanced at me in confusion, then in mounting irritation, and I realized with a jolt of shock that once again he hadn’t heard Tod—and that I shouldn’t have either. The reaper was at least twenty feet away, still in front of the closet.

      “The call from your boss?” I whispered experimentally, to see if Tod could hear me.

      The reaper nodded, smiling smugly.

      “What did he say?” Nash growled softly, angrily.

      “Come on.” After a quick look to make sure none of the nurses were watching, I nearly dragged him down the hall and back into the closet behind Tod. “Why should we care about your communication issues with your boss?” I asked aloud, to catch Nash up on the discussion.

      “Because he has a theory about the off-list reaping.” Tod’s grin grew as he leaned against the left-hand shelf, and a small dimple appeared in his right cheek, highlighted by the stark light from overhead. How could I not have noticed that before?

      “What theory?” Nash asked. Apparently he could hear Tod again.

      “Everything costs something. You should know that by now.”

      “Fine.” I huffed in frustration and ignored Nash when his hand tightened around mine. “Tell us what you know, and we’ll tell you what we know.”

      Tod laughed and pulled a plastic bedpan from the shelf, peering into it as if he expected a magician’s rabbit to hop out. “You’re bluffing. You don’t know anything about this.”

      “We saw the reaper when Emma died,” I said, and his smile faded instantly. He dropped the bedpan back onto the shelf and I knew I had his attention. “Start talking.”

      “You better be telling the truth.” Tod’s gaze shifted between me and Nash repeatedly.

      “I told you, Kaylee doesn’t lie,” Nash said, and I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t include himself in that statement.

      Tod hesitated for a moment, as if considering. Then he nodded. “My boss is this really old reaper named Levi. He’s been around for a while. Like, a hundred fifty years.” He crossed his arms over his chest, getting comfortable against the back wall of shelves. “Levi said something like this happened when he first became a reaper. Everything was a lot less organized back then, and by the time they figured out someone was taking people not on the list—

      they wrote the whole thing by hand back then, can you

      imagine?—they’d already lost six souls from his region.”

      “You’re serious?” Nash wrapped one arm around my waist, and I let him pull me close. “Or are you just making all this up to impress Kaylee?”

      Tod shot him a dark scowl, but I thought it was a totally valid question. “Every word of this came straight from Levi. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him yourself.”

      Nash stiffened, and muttered something about that not being necessary.

      “So why were they dying?” I asked, drawing us back on subject.

      The reaper’s eyes settled on me again, and he lowered his voice conspiratorially, blue eyes gleaming. “Their souls were being poached.”

      “Poached?” I twisted to glance at Nash with one brow raised, but he only shrugged, his mouth set in a hard line. “Why would anyone steal souls?”

      “Good question.” Tod fingered a box of disposable thermometer covers. His grin widened, and I was reminded of the way movie-goers sometimes cheer during murder scenes, secure in the knowledge that they’re seeing fake blood and movie magic. “There’s not much use for detached souls in this world….” The reaper left his last word hanging, and a sick feeling twisted deep in my stomach.

      “But there is in the Netherworld?” I finished for him, and Tod nodded, evidently impressed that my newbie roots were no longer showing.

      “Souls are a rarity on the deeper plane. Something between a delicacy and a luxury. They’re in very high demand, and every now and then a shipment goes missing in transit.”

      “A shipment of souls?” A bolt of dread shot through me at the very thought. “In transit from where? To where?”

      Nash answered, looking simultaneously pleased to know the answer and annoyed at having to provide it. “From here to where they’re … recycled.”

      “Reincarnated?”

      “Yeah.” Tod stood straighter and bumped his head on an upper shelf, then rubbed it as he spoke. “But sometimes a shipment doesn’t make it, so those souls aren’t passed on. They’re replaced with new ones, which is one of the reasons you’ll run into a brand-new soul sometimes.”

      I made a mental note to ask later how one might identify a new soul. “So these poached souls are going to the Netherworld?” I asked, trying to simply stay afloat in the current of new information. “You mean Meredith, and Julie, and the others were killed so some monster in another realm could make a midnight snack out of their souls?” I gripped a shoulder-height shelf for balance as my head spun. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what I’d just said.

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