Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ wanted to say yes—that a mother’s selfless sacrifice was enough of a good deed to erase her past sins. But the truth wasn’t so pretty.

      My aunt’s death wouldn’t bring back Heidi, or Alyson, or Meredith, or Julie. It wouldn’t repair whatever psychological damage her loss caused Sophie. It wouldn’t give Uncle Brendon back his wife.

      The truth was that Aunt Val’s sacrifice was too little, too late, and she’d left those she loved most to deal with the aftermath.

      “HERE, KAYLEE. This will help your throat.” Harmony Hudson set a small cup of honey-scented tea on the table in front of me, and I leaned over it, breathing in the fragrant steam. She started to head back into the kitchen, where the scent of homemade brownies—her favorite form of therapy—had just begun to waft from the oven, but I laid one hand on her arm.

      “I would have lost Sophie if you weren’t here.” My voice was still hoarse, and my throat felt like I’d swallowed a pinecone. And the shock was finally starting to pass, leaving my heart heavy and my head full of the terrible details.

      Harmony smiled sadly and sank into the chair next to mine. “The way I hear it, you’ve done more than your fair share of singing today.”

      I nodded and sipped carefully from the cup, grateful for the soothing warmth that trickled down my throat. “But it’s over now, right? Belphegore can’t leave the Netherworld, and Marg won’t come back, right?”

      “Not if she has any sense. The reapers know who she is now, and they’ll all be looking for her.” Harmony glanced to her left, and my gaze followed hers to the living room, where my aunt had died, my cousin had been restored, and I’d whacked a psychotic grim reaper with a cast-iron skillet.

       Weirdest. Tuesday. Ever.

      The paramedics had been gone for less than half an hour, and the thick white carpet still bore tracks from the wheels of the stretcher. They’d rolled Aunt Val out draped in a white sheet, and Uncle Brendon and Sophie followed the ambulance to the hospital, where she would get stitches in the back of her head, and her mother would be officially pronounced dead.

      Sophie didn’t understand what had happened; I’d known that from the moment she regained consciousness. But what I hadn’t anticipated was that she would blame me for her mother’s death. My cousin was technically dead when Aunt Val made the bargain that had saved her daughter’s life, and Sophie didn’t remember most of what she’d seen before that. All she knew was that her mother had died, and that I’d had something to do with it. Just like with my own mother.

      She and I had more in common now than we ever had—yet we’d never been further apart.

      “How did you know? About all of this?” I asked Harmony, waving toward the living room to indicate the entire disaster. But she only frowned, as if confused by the necessity for my question.

      “I told her.”

      Startled, I looked up to find Tod sitting across from me, his arms folded on the table, a single blond curl hanging over his forehead. Harmony smiled at him, letting me know she saw him too, then rose to check on the brownies.

      “How did you do it?” I brought the teacup to my mouth for another sip. “How did you guide Sophie’s soul? I thought you were a reaper.”

      “He’s both,” Nash said from behind me, and I turned just as he followed my father through the front door, pulling his long sleeves down one at a time. He and my dad had just loaded Aunt Val’s white silk couch into the back of my uncle’s truck, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the bloodstains when he and Sophie got back from the hospital. “Tod is very talented.”

      Tod brushed the curl back from his face and scowled.

      Harmony spoke up from the kitchen as the oven door squealed open. “Both my boys are talented.”

      “Both?” I repeated, sure I’d heard her wrong.

      Nash sighed and slid onto the chair his mother had vacated, then gestured toward the reaper with one hand. “Kaylee, meet my brother, Tod.”

      “Brother?” My gaze traveled back and forth between them, searching for some similarity, but the only one I could find was the dimples. Though, now that I thought about it, Tod had Harmony’s blond curls….

      And suddenly everything made a lot more sense. The pointless bickering. Nash knowing Tod “forever.” Tod hanging out at Nash’s house. Nash knowing a lot about reapers.

      How could I not have seen it earlier?

      “A word of warning.” Harmony gave me a soft smile, but then her focus shifted to my father. “You have to watch out for bean sidhe brothers. They’re always more than you bargain for.”

      My dad cleared his throat and glanced away.

      An hour later, the Hudsons had gone, and my father stood across from me at the bar, chewing the last bite of a brownie I’d had no appetite for. I set his empty saucer in the sink and ran water over it.

      He slid one arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I let him. He still knew no more about me and my life than he had an hour earlier—that much hadn’t changed. But everything else had. Now he could look at me, no matter how much I resembled my mother, and see me, rather than her. He could see what he still had, rather than what he’d lost.

      And he was going to stay. We’d probably fight over curfews and get on each other’s nerves, but at least those things felt normal. And I needed a good dose of normal after the week I’d just had.

      I sighed, staring down at the running water, too exhausted and dazed in that moment to even realize I should turn it off.

      “What’s wrong?” Dad reached around me to turn off the faucet.

      “Nothing.” I shrugged, then turned with my back to the sink. “Well, everything, really. It’s just that I’ve only met three adult bean sidhes so far, and all three of you are …alone.” Tragically widowed, in fact. “Do bean sidhes ever get happy endings?”

      “Of course they do,” my father insisted, wrapping one arm around my shoulders. “As much as anyone else does, at least.” And to my surprise, he didn’t look the least bit doubtful, even after all he’d been through. “I know that doesn’t seem possible right now, considering what you saw and heard tonight. But don’t judge your future based on others’ mistakes. Not Valerie’s, and certainly not mine. You’ll have as much of a happy ending as you’re willing to work for. And from what I’ve seen so far, you’re not afraid of a little work.”

      I nodded, unsure how to respond.

      “Besides, being a bean sidhe isn’t all bad, Kaylee.”

      I gave him a skeptical frown. “That’s good to hear, ‘cause from where I’m standing, it looks like a lot of death and screaming.”

      “Yeah, there’s a good bit of that. But.” My father turned me by both shoulders until I stared up at him, only dimly registering the slow, steady swirls of chocolate, copper, and caramel in his eyes. “We have a gift, and if you’re willing to put up with the challenges that come with that gift, then every now and then, life will toss you a miracle.” His eyes churned faster, and his hands СКАЧАТЬ