If I Die (24 page)

A tingling began deep in my stomach and traveled up my spine, bringing with it a warmth like I’d never known. Tod was giving me a first—a very important first—and he was trusting me to keep a secret he’d never told anyone else, except his mother. And though I’d accepted my fate days ago, suddenly the injustice of my own death seemed unbearable for a whole new reason.

I wanted more firsts with Tod.

But all I had left was a handful of lasts. My last day. My last hour. My last minute. My last words. And my last breath.

“You sure you want to hear this?” Tod asked, eyeing me in concern—my eyes probably gave away my every thought. “We
are
allowed to talk about something other than death.”

“I wanna know. You’re the only person I know who’s survived death.” Other than Emma and Sophie, who didn’t remember anything. “I want to know what I’m in for.”

Tod frowned. “Your death won’t be like mine, Kaylee. No two deaths are the same, but mine was more different than most. I was recruited by the reapers—before I died.”

“Before you died? How does that work?”

“It’s a blind choice. To be eligible for recruitment, you have to be willing to make a sacrifice for someone else, without knowing you could be rewarded with an afterlife.”

“I don’t understand.” In fact, I understood less than I had before he’d started talking.

“Okay, here’s the typical recruitment scenario…” Tod let go of my hand, so he could gesture with his. “Once the personnel request comes down, the local reaper district manager will start sorting through the potential recruits in his area. But he’s not looking for someone scheduled to die. He’s looking
for someone who might be willing to die for someone else. That’s how they weed through the power-hungry psychos—though Thane is proof that the system isn’t perfect.”

“No kidding.” Whoever recruited him should be fed to a nursery of bloodthirsty Netherworld cannibal children. “Wait, does that mean you weren’t supposed to die?” That tingle in my spine became an outright chill….

“Everyone’s supposed to die. But no, I wasn’t supposed to die
then
.”

“What happened?” I felt like a kid at story hour, riveted by the tale unfolding in front of me.

“I was driving late on a Friday night, and some drunk ass-hole hit me head-on. I didn’t see him till it was too late to get out of the way, ’cause he was driving without headlights.”

No wonder my dad didn’t want me driving in the middle of the night on weekends. Not that that mattered anymore…

“I was fine,” Tod continued. “I hit my head, and the steering column came within inches of crushing my chest, but I would have lived. But my passenger wasn’t buckled. He flew forward and cracked the windshield with his head, and died a couple of minutes later. It was too late to call for an ambulance, so I did the only thing I could think of. I begged the reaper to give him more time.” Tod swallowed thickly, and I realized he was seeing something else again—maybe that dark road, more than two years in his past. “What he gave me instead was a choice. I could let the kid die—or I could take his place.”

And he’d done it, of course. That part of the story was obvious. But… “Why would you do that? Why would you agree to die for someone else?” I mean, my mom had done it for me, but I was her flesh and blood…

And that’s when I understood what Tod wasn’t saying.

“It was Nash, wasn’t it?” I whispered. Tod didn’t answer,
but I could see the truth in his eyes. “Nash died, and you traded your life for his. And that got you noticed by the reapers.”

“More or less.”

“And he doesn’t know!”

Tod shook his head. “He would have been all messed up if he knew he was the reason I died.” He seemed to choke on a bitter laugh. “The joke was on me, though, because he blamed himself anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because he was the reason we were out so late. On that road.”

“You and I both died in car crashes…” I said, thinking out loud. “Do you think that means something?”

“I hope not, because you and
Nash
both died in car crashes,” Tod pointed out. “I got my chest beaten in by a pint-size reaper eager to fill the opening in his district.”

“If you hadn’t, I never would have met either you or Nash. And if Nash had never told me what I am, eventually I would have wound up in Lakeside again. Which means I would have died in the mental health ward.”

“Well, at least something good came out of the whole thing.”

“A lot of good came out of it, Tod. You’re like that guy on
It’s a Wonderful Life,
only the opposite—if you’d lived, bad things would have happened to everyone around you.”

Tod’s pale brows rose in surprise, then he burst into laughter. “I’m going to miss you, Kaylee.” His irises swirled slowly with an odd mixture of sorrow and wistfulness. “You have no idea how much I’m going to miss you.”

“Good. Maybe I won’t be out of mind as soon as I’m out of sight.”

“I saw you in the hospital once. Way before you started going out with Nash.”

“In the hospital…?” That was the day they checked me into Lakeside. It had to be. I hadn’t been in the hospital for anything else.

“Yeah. You were the first
bean sidhe
I heard sing for someone’s soul, other than my mom, but I didn’t realize that was you when Nash first introduced us. Do you remember seeing me in the hospital that first time?”

I shook my head, searching my memory but coming up empty. I must have been medicated. Or… “Maybe you were invisible.”

“I was. But you saw me anyway. You looked right at me, and the only way I’ve been able to explain that is that maybe I wanted to be seen by you—
just
you—even way back then.” His hand tightened around mine, and it was hard to believe I was facing death, when I felt so incredibly alive in that moment.

“Will you be there when it happens?” I blurted, caving to impulse, and his smile faded slowly at the grim reminder. “I don’t want my dad or Emma to see me die, but I don’t want to be alone, either. So…will you stay with me until it’s over? Please?”

For one horrible moment, I was afraid he’d say no. Afraid I’d asked too much from a relationship less than eighteen hours old. Then he leaned forward to kiss the corner of my mouth and whisper into my ear.

“Kaylee, I would do anything for the girl who granted my dying wish.”

Tod called in sick to work, and we spent the next two hours on my couch, tangled up in each other both physically and emotionally. All at once, it felt like we were going too fast—like I was racing down the final hill on a massive roller coaster, determined to savor every intoxicated heartbeat—yet we couldn’t go fast enough. Because there wouldn’t be enough time.

I would never get to finish this ride with Tod—never fully explore this bond I’d discovered too late—and we both knew it. All we could do was live in the moment. So that’s exactly what we did. We lived in every single electrifying moment of the connection consuming us both, but destined to burn out early.

Between kisses that echoed and scalded the length of my body, I told him what it was like to save a life, and he told me what it was like to take one. I told him I was afraid of losing control—of being devoured by someone else’s will—but he already knew that. He told me he was afraid of being forgotten—of fading from humanity and simply ceasing to exist—but I already knew that.

Tod whispered his secrets, and I swallowed them whole,
then fed him with my own. My hands wandered and his explored, waking in me cravings and impulses like I’d never felt. I wanted things—I wanted
him
—not out of curiosity and deadline-driven determination, but out of a raw need to experience all of him. To know and be known like never before. To share everything I had and everything I would ever be with him. And for the first time, the strength of my own hunger didn’t scare me. Because it
was
my hunger.

Then, finally, Tod groaned, pulling away to sit up on the couch, his hand splayed across my stomach, over the material of my shirt.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not a damn thing.” He brushed one curl back from his forehead, eyes churning with a craving that surely mirrored my own. “But I need a break.”

“Why?” I sat up, frowning.

“Because you feel really good, and I haven’t done this in a long time. Not since I died. So I kind of need to stop or…not stop.”

Then I understood, and my face burned so hot my cheeks could have been on fire. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Embarrassed, I put both hands over my face, but Tod pulled them down gently, and his blue-eyed gaze met mine.

“You’re embarrassed by proof that I want you? If either of us should be embarrassed by this, it’s me. But I’m not. I just need to cool down, so I can want you again in a few minutes.”

The blaze in my cheeks turned inward, scalding a trail down my center to points lower, until I thought my body would roast itself alive if he didn’t stop looking at me like that. Yet I hoped he’d never stop looking at me like that.

Tod laughed, and I groaned when I realized he’d seen what I was thinking—a twist of overheated blue?—in my eyes.

“How ’bout some lunch?” he said, and I stood, grasping at the offer of a distraction.

“I think we have some sandwich stuff…”

He followed me into the kitchen, and pulled open the fridge, then bent to investigate the meat drawer. “Just give me a minute. I’ll think about cold cuts.”

I burst into laughter. I couldn’t help it.

“Cold cuts are funny?” He stood, and I shook my head, still laughing behind one hand.

“I was thinking about something else,” I said, but he only watched me, waiting for an elaboration. “Em wanted to know if blood flow would be an issue for you, and now I can tell her that it’s definitely not a problem.”

Tod frowned, but good humor swirled lazily in his eyes. “I’m dead, not impotent. Nasty rumors like that must be quashed before they gain momentum. Feel free to emphasize how very functional I am.”

I laughed again, setting a loaf of bread on the counter while he sniffed a package of sliced ham. “How functional are you? And on a completely unrelated subject, if I get kissed for stupid arguments, what would happen if I did something
really
bad?” His pale brows rose, and his irises twisted faster. “How bad are we talking?”

“I don’t know. Failing to correct inaccurate, sexually defamatory rumors?”

“That
would
be bad.” Tod dropped the ham on the counter and pulled me closer, pressing me against the closed refrigerator door, and a spark shot up my spine and set fire to my lungs. “I think I’d have to take the situation in hand.” His right hand found my left one and his fingers intertwined with mine. His skin was warm against my palm while the fridge was cold against the back of my hand. With him pressed against me—
all of him—I could feel how much he still wanted me. And that knowledge was exciting. Intoxicating.

“What if that wasn’t enough to do the trick?” I whispered, made bold by the blatant need churning in his eyes. “What if I were
persistently
bad?”

“That might require a stronger approach.” He leaned toward me and dropped a series of tiny, hot kisses down my neck, headed for my collarbone. I reached up with my free hand to feel his hair—the curls were
so
soft—and his left hand found the slight curve of my hip, fingers pressing into my skin beneath the hem of my shirt, like they wanted more than they could possibly find there.

“I don’t think this is fixing your little problem,” I whispered, as his hand wandered slowly over my waist and toward my ribs, over my shirt now.

Tod straightened and gave me a frown. “You should be careful, tossing descriptors like that around in a situation like this. My ‘problem’ isn’t little. Unless you’re drawing some pretty wild comparisons. Please tell me you’re not drawing wild comparisons. Or blood-relative comparisons.”

“Nope. No comparisons. That’s one limb of your family tree I’m not going out on. Are you comparing me to Addison?”

“To Addy? Hell no. Genna, maybe…” he teased, and I frowned, though I had no idea who that was.

“So how do I stack up?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to know.

“Kaylee, you burn so bright that everyone else looks dim in comparison. You’re all I see, and all I want to see, and I would be happy if this moment never ended. If I could spend the rest of my afterlife doing this…”

He leaned down again and started a new trail of kisses beginning at the hollow beneath my jaw, his hands flat against
my lower back, like he couldn’t touch enough of me, even if we’d had nothing but time.

We spent the rest of the day on my couch, ignoring a succession of movies in favor of each other, holding back my fear of death and incubi with the feel of him. With the stories he told and the questions he asked.

Hours later, someone knocked on my front door, and I came up for air long enough to glance at the time on my cell phone. Almost 3:00 p.m.

School was out, and that was probably Emma at the door, and I knew I should go answer it. But I wanted one more kiss. One more minute for just me and Tod, and this moment we’d stolen from eternity.

One more minute, then I would do the right thing. The mature thing. I would start learning how to let it all go….

“I thought Sabine wanted in on this,” Emma said, helping herself to a cold soda from my fridge. She’d come over after school expecting our game plan powwow to include all four members of the Eastlake super league, but Sabine and Nash were, obviously, still MIA, and Tod had gone to check on them. And maybe to cool off again. “Don’t tell me she’s mad at you. She ought to be thanking you for finally giving her what she wanted.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, then decided I didn’t want to spend any of what little time I had left rehashing that morning’s catastrophe. “Here’s the short version. Nash fell off the wagon—hard—and Sabine’s babysitting him.”

“What wagon?” She popped the top on her can and sipped from it.

“He’s on frost again, Em.” And Nash-on-frost was very different from sober-Nash.

“Ohh…” Emma dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and
pulled one knee up to her chest. No doubt she was remembering Doug, her boyfriend and one of Nash’s best friends, who’d died of a frost overdose in December. “Is this because you broke up with him?”

“No,” Tod said, appearing beside me out of nowhere, and that time I didn’t even jump. “He’s upset because she broke up with him, but he got high because he’s an addict. He makes his own choices.”

“Okaaay…” But Em looked unconvinced, and I couldn’t quite quash the remnants of my own guilt.

Tod took my hand, his fingers winding around mine, and my chest tightened. Everything between us was new and shiny, a thrill that would never fade, thanks to my own imminent death, and the excitement was compounded by the fact that we were about to go fight evil together—like a one-up mushroom for our entire relationship. Yet Tod looked grim, even for a reaper. “Why didn’t you tell me what he did to you?”

Crap. Sabine must have told him.

“What did he do?” Em sat up straight, eyeing us both expectantly.

“Because I knew you’d blame yourself?” I said, throwing his own words back at him, but all I got was a deeper frown.

“What happened to ‘no secrets’?”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to talk about it. I was mad, and humiliated, and I just wanted to forget about it.”

“Kaylee, you didn’t do anything wrong. Sabine knows it. I know it. Nash’ll know it, once he’s thinking straight.” His hand tightened around mine. “You have no reason to be embarrassed.”

“What did he
do?
” Em repeated, losing patience now.

“If I were stronger, I could have resisted. Sabine can resist him.”

“Sabine can just unleash his own fear on him and make him back down. You can’t.”

“What the hell did Nash
do?
” Em demanded, standing to get our attention.

“He tried to use his Influence to make her go somewhere private with him. Alone. So he could Influence her into taking him back.”

“That son of a bitch!” Em looked like she wanted to punch him, too, only maybe lower than Sabine had aimed.

“It’s more complicated than that. He was hurting. And anyway, it was the frost,” I insisted. No matter how mad he got at me and Tod, he wouldn’t have done something like that if he’d been clean. I was absolutely certain of that.

Tod was unconvinced. “It was him
on
frost.”

“Is he okay?” Em asked, settling into her chair again.

“Sabine and my mom seem to have it under control, at least for the moment,” Tod said. “But I don’t think we should count on either of them for backup tonight.”

“So, what, it’s just the three of us?” Em asked, and I was relieved to hear a tremor of fear in her voice. The real trouble would come later, when Beck unleashed his charm on her again, and she forgot to be afraid.

“What, you don’t think I can protect you?” I said, only half kidding as I ducked into the living room to grab my laptop from my backpack.

“I don’t doubt your
bean sidhe
skills, Kaylee.” Emma leaned back in her chair to see me around the kitchen doorway. “I just don’t see how they’re going to be any good against an incubus. I mean, we don’t even know how to fight him, short of a good hard kick to the groin.”

“You can’t go wrong with that,” Tod mumbled, looking distinctly uncomfortable at the thought.

“Except that by the time it’s time to kick him, that’s the last thing you’re going to want to do. Which is where this comes in.” I set my laptop on the kitchen peninsula and turned it on. “So far, we haven’t had much luck fighting Netherworld evil with tips from the internet, but Alec says that because they need humans to breed with, as well as to feed from, incubi have a long, and presumably well-documented history in our world.” And I was hoping that at least some of that history had made its way to the web.

“Ooh, I have mine, too, so I can double our efforts.” Emma claimed the second bar stool and plugged her laptop in next to mine. While we searched with Google like madwomen, Tod stood behind us where he could see both screens, reading and pointing out anything he thought might be useful.

“Is this chick for real?” Emma asked, about ten minutes into the research, and I leaned over to glance at her screen. “She claims she’s been communicating with demons that appear and disappear at night in her room since she was a kid, but now she’s tired of them and wants to know how to get rid of them.”

“Antipsychotic medication,” Tod suggested, scowling at the screen. “The internet is full of crackpots claiming to have personal contact with ‘demons’ who bear no resemblance to any Netherworld creature I’ve ever heard of, except for hellions. And if hellions could cross the barrier into your bedroom, we’d have bigger things to worry about than one horny incubus.”

“I wish you wouldn’t throw that word around like it’s harmless,” I said, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Horny?” Tod grinned.

Emma laughed. “She means
crackpot.
”

“Just because someone talks to things other people can’t see or hear doesn’t mean those things aren’t there, and it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s crazy,” I insisted. “She could just be having a series of bad dreams.”

The reaper’s brows rose in amusement over my automatic defense of the mentally unstable. “Or, she could have an over-active imagination and a pathological need to be the center of attention. With all due respect to those who’ve unjustly served time in mental institutions, people who are really hearing and seeing things they shouldn’t either go crazy—in which case a coherent internet plea for help would be improbable—or they keep quiet about their so-called delusions to avoid looking crazy.”

Tod spun my stool so that I faced him, then looked straight into my eyes, so I could see sincerity swirling in his. “You are none of the above, Kaylee, so you can quit worrying about that. But just because
you’re
not crazy or looking for attention doesn’t mean that—” he glanced at Emma’s screen, then back at me “—DemonQueen87 is in possession of all her marbles.”

“Okay, valid point,” I said, when I couldn’t find fault with his logic. “So, did DemonQueen get any advice we could use?” Just because her problem was probably bogus didn’t mean all the answers would be.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Em scrolled slowly, reading aloud as her finger slid down the mouse pad. “‘Banishing incantations…’”