Before I Wake

“Looks like it. She knows what he is and doesn’t seem to care. Oh, and we ate with Em’s new boyfriend, too.”

“These are the days of our lives.” Tod announced in a false baritone, and I smacked his shoulder. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Em’s boyfriend like?”

“His name’s Jayson. He’s human. Normal and nice. He’s probably perfect for her.”

“But …?”

“But nothing.” I shrugged. “She’s safer with him than with any of us. She deserves a nice, normal relationship, but—”

“I knew there was a ‘but.’”

“—but I don’t know how to be around her when she’s with him. There’s too much I can’t say. Too much he doesn’t know.”

Tod ran his hand down my arm until he found my hand, and his fingers folded around mine. “Are we still talking about Jayson? ‘Cause it kind of sounds like you’re talking about Emma now.”

I sighed. “Maybe.” Em knew a lot about my world—not to mention the Netherworld—but she was still in the dark about a lot of it, too. She didn’t know much about Thane, or that Avari was willing to kill her to get to me. She didn’t know that Mr. Beck—the incubus math teacher who’d murdered me—had planned to kill her, too, but not until after he’d fed from her. She didn’t know that her sister was pregnant with Beck’s incubus fetus, or that Harmony was busy collecting and combining a blend of Netherworld herbs that could end the brand-new pregnancy and save her sister’s life. Though I’d have to tell her most of that very soon, because I was not looking forward to explaining the truth to Traci, who could discover her own pregnancy any day.

But mostly, Emma didn’t know how hard it was for me to sit through class after class today, knowing that none of it mattered anymore. I wasn’t going to grow up and go off to college with her. I wasn’t ever going to use the past-perfect conjugation of French verbs, and after finals, I’d probably never again be required to write out a mathematical proof.

The only things still certain in my future were the reclamation of stolen souls and Tod. That’s it. Those were the only things that mattered anymore, and the harder I clung to the plans that were important to the once-living Kaylee, the more I felt like a fraud walking around in her skin.

“I keep forgetting to be, Tod,” I whispered, my voice muted by the enormity of what I was admitting.

“Forgetting to be what?”

“To be. To be here. To exist. If I don’t concentrate, I slip right out of the physical plane, and I don’t even notice it until I realize people can’t see or hear me.” That had happened with my dad over and over since I’d died, and if it ever happened at school, I was screwed.

“That’s normal.”

“That’s not normal!” I insisted. “Forgetting to exist is textbook-weird!”

His hand tightened around mine, and his blue irises swirled in sympathy. “It takes a while to get into the routine of taking physical form. I didn’t make a habit of it until I met you.”

“It’s like I don’t exist anymore. Like I’m nowhere.” I rolled onto my back, and he leaned over me, staring down at me from inches away.

“You’re very much here, Kaylee. From my vantage point, you’re everywhere.” His eyes were all I could see, his irises swirling slowly, confirming everything he was saying and hinting at even more.

“This is the only time I feel real, Tod. Only when I’m touching you. I wish it could be like this forever.”

“It can be. It will be,” he said, and he sounded so sure of that that I could almost believe him.

“What if you get tired of me? Forever’s a long time.”

“I’m well aware.” Tod sat up and pulled me up with him until we faced each other on my bed. “Forever used to feel like a curse. Now it feels like a promise,” he said, and my chest ached, and I loved that feeling—that rare pain that came from feeling too much, so different from the emptiness I’d almost gotten used to. “All you have to do is stay here with me.”

“That, and eat breakfast for my dad. And reclaim souls for Madeline. And go to school and work to convince everyone that Nash is innocent.” I frowned as something ridiculous occurred to me. “In the movies and on TV, there are all these ancient vampires taking math and PE with a bunch of teenagers, and I always thought that was the stupidest thing. I mean, if you had eternity to spend however you want—and for the most part, we do—why the hell would you go back to high school? What on earth was I thinking?”

Tod laughed. “I can’t speak for ancient, fictional creatures, but you were thinking that you wanted to retain what little normalcy still exists in your life. Er, your afterlife. Also, going back to school and work is part of proving you’re still alive, and being alive is the only way to prove that Nash didn’t kill you.”

“Oh, yeah. But I went back for a day, and everyone saw me, so they know I’m alive now. So I don’t have to go back, right? Tell me I don’t have to go back.”

“You don’t have to go back.” Tod leaned down and kissed me, and my hand slid into his hair, holding him close as my mouth opened beneath his. “If you quit school we could spend every afternoon just …” Kiss. “Like …” Kiss. “This.” Another, longer kiss, and this time when he pulled away, he left me gasping for breath.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me to be responsible and stay in school?”

Tod’s lips brushed my ear. “I signed on for the role of ‘boyfriend,’ not ‘conscience.’ If you want wholesome and ethical, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But I promise that won’t be half as much fun as this is….”

His hand slid down my side and over my hip, and my heart beat faster.

“That feels so good,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my chin and down my neck. “You feel good. Real.” Solid, like no matter how incorporeal he made himself, I would always be able to touch him. To feel him.

I gasped when his line of kisses skirted my collarbone and dipped into what little cleavage I’d accumulated before death put an end to the possibility of accruing any more.

“You, too,” he said, his lips still pressed against my skin. “You make me feel alive. Every time I touch you, I feel like there’s some kind of charge flowing between us. Like tiny little bolts of lightning, setting me on fire. Can you feel it here?” He pushed my shirt up and laid one hand on my stomach.

I closed my eyes. “I feel it.”

“Can you feel it here?” His hand glided over my skin and around the curve of my ribs until his finger brushed the edge of my bra, and I stopped breathing, just for a second.

“I feel it.” I pulled him back up and slid my hands beneath his shirt, feeling my way over his chest as I pulled the material up and over his head. I dropped his shirt on the floor and laid my hand over his heart, and I could feel it beating.

“Does it do that all the time?” I whispered, and he shook his head, his eyes swirling with pale blue twists of need, and hunger, and something deeper, and steadier, and…endless. “Mine doesn’t, either.”

Tod laid his hand over my heart and I blinked up at him. “It’s beating now,” he said softly.

“Yeah. It is.”

He kissed me, and I didn’t realize my legs had wrapped around his hips until he moaned into my mouth and pressed himself into me.

I felt so alive in that moment. So real and—

“Kaylee, are you home?” my father called from the living room, and the front door slammed shut on the tail of the question.

“Shit!” I whispered, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear us. He couldn’t see us, either, but I couldn’t hide the rumpled comforter.

Tod sat up and reached for his shirt while I straightened mine. “Relax,” he said as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “What’s he going to do, kill us again?”

“Not me.” I ran both hands through my hair to smooth it. “You.”

“You’re almost seventeen, and you’re dead. He has to know that his parental influence is nearing its end stage.”

“He does. I think. We’re gonna talk about it. Just…not today.”

“Kaylee?” My dad’s footsteps echoed in the hall, headed our way.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on making myself both visible and audible. “In here.” I opened the door and my dad stepped into the doorway as I dropped the amphora around my neck. “Hey, do you wanna go out for …” His words melted into a sigh when he noticed Tod, but then he rallied with a smile. “Hi, Tod, I didn’t realize you were here. In my daughter’s bedroom. With the door closed.”

“Happy to be here,” Tod said, and I groaned out loud.