Before I Wake

“Today,” Madeline said. “He started class at your school last week, and since it seems likely that the two of you will run into each other, we’d like you to keep an eye on him.”

“Your necromancer is a teenager?”

“I believe he’s in his junior year.”

“Is he alive?” my father asked. He thought the dead-to-living ratio of my friends and coworkers was high enough already.

“Both alive and human, Mr. Cavanaugh. He’s also a very polite young man.”

“They’re gonna eat him alive,” I mumbled, and my father chuckled. “Fine, I’ll keep an eye out for your necromancer, but I can’t promise that associating with me will do him any favors, socially.”

“Thank you, Kaylee,” Madeline said, and I glanced up in surprise over the courtesy. Not that Madeline was ever truly rude, she just wasn’t very…personable. “I’ll find you when and if this reaper turns out to be a rogue.”

With that Madeline disappeared, and my father sighed. “So much for a normal first day back.”

I dipped a strip of bacon in a pool of syrup. “Dad, I can count the number of normal school days I’ve had this year on one hand.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that.” He sipped from his mug, and I shrugged, but before I could reply, Madeline appeared in the kitchen again, and this time I nearly choked. “Change your mind about the coffee?” my dad asked, but she only shook her head.

“The reaper made a kill. It’s time to earn your keep, Kaylee.”

I swallowed the bite I’d nearly choked on then stood, nerves buzzing in my stomach like I’d devoured a swarm of flies, even though I knew what to do. I’d been practicing for a month. But… “I have to be in first period in twenty minutes.”

“Then work fast.” Madeline reached into the pocket of her suit jacket and pulled out what looked like a handful of metal, which she held out for me to take. I lifted what turned out to be a heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. It was pretty, in a sweet, dated kind of way.

“It’s heavy.” I frowned, trying to slide my fingernail into the edge seam. “And it doesn’t open.”

“That’s because it’s not a locket. It’s an amphora. This will hold the soul after you capture it. This was designed especially for you, to look like something a young woman would wear.”

“A young woman from what era?” I mumbled, slipping the chain over my head.

Madeline frowned. “Bring this back to me when you have the soul. Do not try to apprehend the rogue. It’s up to the reapers to police their own—we’re only concerned with the stolen soul he carries. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t looking to pick a fight on my first day, anyway. “Where is this reaper?”

“He killed someone at the Daylight Donuts shop three minutes ago. If you hurry, he might still be close. If you have trouble finding or identifying him, sing for the soul.”

“Okay, but—”

“Go, Kaylee.”

I glanced from Madeline to my father, who nodded reluctantly. So I closed my eyes and thought of the doughnut shop—fortunately, I’d been there a million times. When I opened my eyes, I stood in the middle of the small dining area. The shop was open, but empty, and a quick glance around revealed the body of the owner on the floor of the kitchen, still in his long white apron. But there was no reaper.

Panicked, I stepped through the locked back door of the shop and into an alley, my feet silent on the concrete because I was both invisible and incorporeal at the moment. I expected to have to wail for the stolen soul—hell, I half expected to be too late already—but there the reaper stood, near the Dumpster. Like he was waiting for me.

My breath caught in my throat, which would have been a problem if I’d actually needed to breathe. I recognized the reaper, even in those ridiculous sunglasses. I’d seen Tod give him to a hellion in the Netherworld to keep him from reaping my soul. Yet there he stood, alive and kicking—metaphorically speaking. The reaper who’d wanted me dead since the day he killed my mother, thirteen years ago.

Thane. Back from the dead. Again.

2

“WELL, LOOK WHO SURVIVED HER OWN DEMISE.” Thane had clearly been waiting for someone, but based on the surprise drawn in the arch of his brows, I was obviously not that someone. “This is what happens when they replace an experienced reaper like me with a rookie.” Thane shoved both hands into the pockets of the black slacks he’d been wearing the first time I’d seen him, days before I was scheduled to die, and my stomach clenched around nothing. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should be personally afraid of him, now that my death date had come and gone, but I had plenty of still-living friends and family he could threaten if he decided he wanted revenge. “That is who sucker punched me, then sold me out, right? Your boyfriend’s reaper brother?”

“No.” Well, yes, but Thane had missed the whole boyfriend/brother drama, and I had no urge to fill him in. “What the hell are you doing here, Thane?” And how had he escaped Avari, the hellion Tod had given him to? “You have some kind of grudge against the doughnut industry? Did they forget to give you sprinkles?”

“Cute.” He leaned with one shoulder against the side of the Dumpster and crossed both arms over his chest. “I’m reaping what you sowed.”

“What I sowed?”

“This is all your fault, little miss won’t-stay-dead. You and that blond reaper. Normally I hate sharing credit, but that doughnut guy is dead because of the two of you, and everything else that’s coming…it’s all your fault.”

Chills crawled up my arms. “What’s my fault? What’s coming?

A slow, creepy smile spread over his face. “Until next time, little bean sidhe …”

“No!” I realized he was about to blink out of the alley with less than a second to spare, and in my desperation to take the soul he carried before he left, I accidentally unleashed my bean sidhe wail at full power. Top volume.

Thane flinched and slapped his hands over his ears. Glass rattled in the windows of the doughnut shop behind me, and something actually shattered inside the Dumpster. If I hadn’t been inaudible to everyone else, anyone within a two-block radius would have wanted to claw their own ears out of their heads.

I’d grown as a bean sidhe over the past few months, and death had further strengthened my skills, a fact I’d been kind of horrified to realize during my training.

“What are you?” Thane asked, arms spread for balance as the soul he’d stolen began to leach out of his body like smoke sucked out the only open window in a room. But I had to read his lips, because I couldn’t hear him over my own screech, and I certainly couldn’t answer.

The soul—a formless foglike shape—began to coalesce around him, and for a moment, I panicked. I didn’t know how to actually get it into the not-a-locket. Desperate, and acutely aware that I was running late for school, I took the locket off and held it by the chain at arm’s length. To my immense relief, the soul began to spiral toward the locket, and as I watched, it soaked into the metal, just like Mr. Beck’s soul had soaked into the dagger I’d killed him with.

When the soul was completely absorbed, I let my wail die and slid the chain over my head.

“What the hell are you?” Thane demanded again, his eyes wide with fear for the first time since I’d met him. Though the word met hardly seemed to do our introduction justice.

“You first. Why aren’t you dead?”

“I am. You can’t come back from death.” His focus narrowed on me. “Which you now know from personal experience, don’t you?” But I didn’t know how to respond without giving up information he obviously hadn’t yet figured out for himself. Thane reached for the amphora around my neck, and I backed away. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, little girl, but if you think being dead puts you beyond Avari’s reach, you’re in for quite a shock. He’s pissed that he didn’t get your soul when you died, and he’ll be willing to go through everyone you love to get to you once he finds out you’re still…here. So why don’t you save them all an eternity of pain and come with me now?”

“Not gonna happen.” I backed farther away, one hand clutching the amphora. “He can’t get to me, and he can’t get to anyone else, either.” Because hellions couldn’t cross into the human world. That was one of very few things I still knew without a doubt since my death. “Go to hell.”

“I’m already there, little dead girl.” Thane’s voice faded to a whisper. “Soon you will be, too….” Then he blinked out of existence, and I knew he was truly gone, because reapers couldn’t make themselves invisible to me anymore. Unfortunately, the opposite was also true.

I took a minute to catch my breath and when the shock wore off, a sharp new fear settled into its place. Avari’s threats were nothing new, but Thane was back, and he was reaping again, and that was very bad. But I couldn’t tell Madeline that I’d identified the rogue reaper or why his presence was a surprise without telling her what Tod had done. If she found out Tod had acted against a fellow reaper without authorization, she’d tell Levi. Levi already suspected what Tod had done, of course, but as long as no one else in a position of authority found out, he was free to keep ignoring what he knew. Because he liked Tod. But if he was notified of the crime through any official channel, he’d have no choice but to fire Tod, and an unemployed reaper was a truly dead reaper.

I couldn’t lose Tod. But I couldn’t let Thane keep killing people.

Shit!

A glance at the time on my phone threw another layer of trouble over my already-problematic morning. I had five minutes to be in my first-period class.

With a frustrated sigh, I closed my eyes and pictured my own kitchen, and when I opened my eyes again, I was there.

“Here.” I shoved the amphora at Madeline and grabbed the backpack slung over my chair at the table. “I gotta go.”

“Did you get the soul?” she asked as I threw my bag over my shoulder.

“Yeah. The owner of the doughnut shop. Someone should call the police.”

“Did you see the reaper?” my father asked, worry lining his face as I scooped my keys from the empty candy dish on the half wall between the living and dining rooms.

“Yeah. I’ll describe him later. I have to be in my chair in three minutes.” With that, I blinked out of the house and left them both staring at the spot I’d just vacated.

When I opened my eyes an instant later, I was in the girls’ bathroom, completely incorporeal. Which was good, because two freshmen stood at the sinks, overdoing their lip gloss. I groaned in frustration, then stepped into an empty stall and concentrated on becoming completely corporeal. Then I flushed the toilet and threw the stall door open.

“I hope I’m not behind her in the cafeteria,” one of the girls said when I rushed past the sinks, and I groaned again, then went back to wash my hands for no reason at all. By the time my hands were dry, I had ninety seconds to be in my chair. I shoved open the bathroom door and ran for my math class, then slid into my seat just as the bell started ringing.

On the bright side, being almost late to school meant that neither the reporters nor the other students had time to mob me with questions. But that didn’t stop my classmates from staring at me as a man I’d never seen before started calling roll.

“Hey. I didn’t think you were gonna make it,” my best friend, Emma Marshall, whispered from her desk next to mine.

“Me, neither.” During my convalescence, she’d come to hang out on the afternoons when she didn’t have to work and I didn’t have to train, and seeing her never failed to make me smile, even when I had to feign interest in school gossip, which had never felt less relevant to my life. She didn’t pass on the rumors about me, thank goodness. “I got a surprise visit from Madeline this morning.”

Em’s eyes widened. “But it’s your first day back.”

“Also my first day on the job, evidently.”

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” the new math teacher called, and thirty-one heads swiveled my way, thirty-one sets of eyes watching me.

“Here,” I said, like I was used to being stared at by the entire class. Before, I’d felt invisible. Now I really could be invisible—if there weren’t so many people already watching me. So far, my afterlife seemed made of that kind of bitter irony.

“Kaylee, welcome back,” the man at the front of the class said. “According to school policy, you have just over a month to complete your makeup work. Please let me know if you need any help at all with the math portion.”

I nodded. I’d already finished my makeup work, but I couldn’t admit that. Most stab victims aren’t concerned with school work during their recovery. I wasn’t, either, but without the need for sleep, I’d had hours and hours to kill when neither Tod nor training had kept me busy. During those endless solitary hours, it sometimes felt like homework was the only thing connecting me to the world I was no longer truly a part of.

The new math teacher—Mr. Cumberland—went back to the roll book and Em leaned closer to whisper. “I can’t believe they even bothered filling that faculty position again. They might as well rename the class Defense Against the Dark Arts. I mean, seriously, who would answer an ad for this job?”

I shrugged, studying Mr. Cumberland. “Is he …?”

“Criminally dull? Yes. But so far I’ve seen no sign that he intends to feed from the student body in any way. So? What was the job this morning?”

Normally, no one paid any attention to Em and me whispering in class, but with my unfortunate morbid-celebrity status, I could practically feel the ears all around me perk up, hoping for some juicy bit of gossip about what had happened the night Mr. Beck died. So I concentrated really hard on Emma, to make sure she was the only one who could hear me.

“Rogue reaper,” I said, and when no one reacted, I knew I’d done it right; hopefully anyone else who saw my lips move would think I’d whispered too softly to be heard. “Thane’s back,” I added, and Em’s eyes widened even farther in fear and surprise. But before I could elaborate, Mr. Cumberland started class.

When the bell rang fifty minutes later, only a couple of people headed for the door. Everyone else waited, slowly loading books into their bags or digging through purses, not-quite-surreptitiously watching me. When Em and I headed for the door, suddenly everyone else was ready to go, too.

“Today’s gonna suck,” I whispered.

As if the crowd of gawkers falling into step behind us wasn’t enough, Mr. Cumberland chose that moment to ask Emma to stay after class for a minute. Math had never been her best subject.

She glanced at me apologetically, then veered toward his desk. I started to wait for her, but soon realized I wouldn’t be waiting alone. When the second-period students began wandering into the classroom, adding their stares and whispers to the collective, I pushed my way into the hall against the flow of traffic and race-walked toward my locker.

But escape was futile.

Chelsea Simms, reporter for the student newspaper, was the first to take the plunge, falling into step with me as I rounded the corner into the front hall. “Hey, Kaylee, we’re so glad you’re back.”

“Thanks.” I walked faster, but she matched my speed.

“So, I heard you died. Like, your heart stopped on the operating table.”

“Only for a few minutes.” I had to concentrate on remaining corporeal, because my desire to disappear had never been so strong.

“But the news said you were dead. For real. They showed a body bag on a gurney.”

Chills traveled down my arms in consecutive waves. Knowing I’d died and hearing about it were two completely different things.

A familiar hazel-eyed gaze met mine from across the hall, and my steps slowed as I passed Nash and Sabine, desperately wishing I could join them. That we could talk, or bicker, or just stand in uncomfortable silence, thinking of everything that had gone wrong between the three of us. Anything to avoid the stares and questions from relative strangers. To escape the crowd following me, a teen-paparazzi mob that felt more like a morbid funeral procession, a month too late.

But Nash and Sabine only watched as the parade of crazy marched by. I wanted to stop and talk, but I had no idea where to begin. I hadn’t seen Nash since the day I came back from the dead, and “I’m so sorry I dumped you and framed you for my murder” seemed like a really bad way to start a conversation. Or rekindle a friendship. Or ask for forgiveness.

Either way, Em had said the gossip mob only laid off Nash when everyone heard I was coming back to school, and I couldn’t suck him back into such a brutal spotlight. Not after what I’d already put him through.

“Kaylee?” Chelsea said, staring at me from inches away, and I was horrified to realize she’d pulled out a pencil and a notepad, and was now taking notes. “The body bag?”

“That was stock footage and a clerical error.” I finally spotted my own locker through the sea of heads. “I don’t know what else to tell you. The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated,” I said, misquoting Mark Twain. But though she seemed to believe me—after all, I was walking evidence of my own survival—the questions didn’t stop.

“Did you see a bright light? Did your life flash before your eyes?”

“If so, it must have been the shortest, most boring recap in history,” my cousin Sophie said from her locker. But for once, her insult lacked real bite, which was just as well, because no one seemed to notice she’d spoken.

The crowd parted in front of me as I headed for my locker, several doors down from Sophie’s, but before I could enter the combination, a girl from my French class stepped into my private space, leaning with one shoulder on the locker next to mine. I could tell from the bold combination of curiosity and determination in her eyes that someone had finally found the courage to ask what they all really wanted to know.

“Is it true that Mr. Beck died in your bed?”

On my bed. He’d died on my bed, not in it. But I knew better than to answer.

I’d known this moment was coming, but knowing you’re about to be dunked headfirst into ice-cold water is never enough to prepare you for the shock. And with that one question from the masses, the floodgates opened on all queries personal and inappropriate, and I could only stand there, wishing it all away as voice after voice shouted at me, dissecting my personal trauma and baring my wounds for the world.

“Why was he in your bed?”

“Did you really kill him?”

“Were you sleeping with Mr. Beck?”

“Is that why Nash dumped you?”

“Why was Nash arrested?”

“Why did they let him go?”

“Was he there that night?”

“Did he kill Mr. Beck?”

After all the time and concentration it had taken to reestablish breathing as a habit and convince my heart to beat, my body chose that moment to claim perfect recall of both processes. My heart pounded too hard. Blood rushed through my veins so fast my head swam. Air slid in and out of my lungs so quickly that if I’d had actual need of it, I probably would have passed out.

Panicked, I glanced at Sophie, desperate for help, but she was edging slowly, silently out of the crowd, probably hoping no one knew she’d been there that night so they couldn’t assault her with the same questions. When I died, her dad had finally been forced to tell her the truth about our family. I wondered how she was handling it, but I couldn’t tell that from watching her back as she fled. I wanted to escape with her, but I couldn’t get through the crowd. I couldn’t even get my locker open, because there wasn’t room.

There wasn’t room to move, and there wasn’t room to breathe. The world started to close in on me, and the only way I knew to escape was to disappear, and I couldn’t do that. No matter what, I couldn’t disappear in front of fifty fellow students.

The questions kept coming, but the answers got stuck behind the lump in my throat. They weren’t the real answers, anyway, because I couldn’t tell them what had really happened, because the truth wouldn’t set me free. The truth would get me locked up.

Distantly, I heard a couple of teachers yelling for order, but it was Emma who finally made it stop. “Back off, vultures!” she shouted, and I exhaled in relief as she pushed her way to the center of the crowd. “She just got out of the hospital. Why don’t you go gossip behind her back, like decent people?”

I could have kissed her.

Once Emma had achieved near-silence in the hall, the teachers were able to start herding everyone toward their classes again, and through the crowd, I saw Nash and Sabine heading away from us. Without a word.

I don’t know what I expected. For all I knew, he might never forgive me, and I couldn’t really blame him.

“Are you okay?” Coach Tucker, the girls’ softball coach, asked as I finally pulled my locker open.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” What else could I say?

“Here.” She pulled out a notepad and started scribbling on it, then ripped the top sheet off and handed it to me. It was a late pass, with my name on it. “Take a few minutes and get yourself together,” she said, already scribbling on a second pass for Emma.

“Thanks.” But all I could think about was that she’d remembered my name for the first time in nearly three years.

“I’m so sorry about what happened to you, Kaylee,” Coach Tucker said as she handed Em her pass. “I feel like one of us should have known something was wrong with him. We saw him every day. We talked to him. Ate with him. I’m so sorry we failed you.”

I didn’t know what to say. The faculty had sent flowers to my house the day after I’d been restored from the dead, but I’d assumed the bouquet was an autoresponse from the secretary. Now I wondered if Coach Tucker had arranged the whole thing.

“Nobody failed me. I’m fine. Really,” I said, but she didn’t look convinced.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you get readjusted,” she said, and I nodded, then started removing books from my backpack and sliding them into my locker. I wasn’t trying to be rude. I just didn’t know what else to say.

Finally Coach Tucker left to scold a couple kissing in the hall, and I exhaled slowly.

“You okay?” Emma asked, leaning against the locker next to mine.

“Been better. People suck.”

Em smiled. “Yeah. People do suck.” Her smile died as I stared into my now-empty backpack, trying to remember what I’d been doing. What book I needed.

Second period. Chemistry. Oh, yeah.

“So, Thane’s back?” Em said softly as I dropped my chemistry text into my bag again. “How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does this mean?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Em. I don’t know anything about it, except that he killed the owner of the doughnut shop around the corner from the school, and you’re the only person I’ve told.” But I couldn’t tell her what he’d said about Avari coming after my friends and family. That would scare her to death.

“You haven’t told Tod?”

“Haven’t had a chance.” I closed my locker and threw my backpack over one shoulder. “I can’t tell Madeline, because she’ll tell Levi, and that will force him into making trouble for Tod. Like, big trouble. I have to do something, but I have no idea what that is yet. For now—”

The bell rang, and several underclassmen ran past, on their way to class.

“—we’re both late for second period,” I finished. And Em hadn’t been to her locker yet.

“Okay, I know. But one more thing.” She laid a hand on my arm and the rare show of nerves in her expression made me stop. “Since you’ve been gone, Nash and Sabine have been avoiding me, so I’ve been eating lunch with Jayson.”

“Jayson Olivera?”

“Yeah. We’ve been kind of…going out. For a couple of weeks.”