Before I Wake

“Then we wouldn’t be here asking you for help,” I said. We’d come prepared for a strange conversation with Scott, but I found this apparent lack of strange even stranger than the strange I’d been expecting.

“Why should I help you?” Scott demanded, and his voice had an odd edge to it now. He wasn’t confused by either our presence or our questions. “What did you ever do for me?”

Tod glanced at me with both pale brows raised. “Is it just me, or does he seem a little saner than usual?”

“Maybe he’s having a good day,” I whispered, desperately hoping that was true.

“I’m insane, not deaf,” Scott said, and when he stood, I backed away. I was already dead, but because I was corporeal—I had to be, for him to see me—he could do physical damage to me, as both my father and Tod had already demonstrated on Thane.

“Can Avari hear us?” I wasn’t sure if Scott served as a sort of amplifier, through which Avari could hear us directly, or if it was more of a messenger service, where Scott had to mentally ask Avari everything we asked him.

“He can hear you, so be careful what you say. He can see you, so be careful what you do.” Scott stepped closer, and I backed up as Tod stepped between us. The psych patient peered at me over the reaper’s shoulder. “And if you’d come a little closer, he’d be able to taste you, too. Though he’d settle for just a little whiff.”

“I don’t want to punch a mental patient, but I will,” Tod growled.

“So the prince of death has become the white knight. I would not have laid wager on that.” In an instant, Scott changed, without changing at all. He stood straighter and suddenly seemed to take up more space in the small room than he should have. His gestures became formal, but didn’t seem overstated. He looked older. Scarier. He looked…familiar. “But you know you cannot wear both hats at once, dark prince. Not for long, anyway,” the Scott-thing said. “Someday you will have to choose.”

Chills raced up my spine “That’s not Scott.”

“I know,” Tod said as I stepped to the side for a better view around his arm. “Avari?”

Scott’s mouth smiled, and it was creepy to see the hellion’s mannerisms bleeding through the skin of a former classmate. “Human emotion is a handicap to a reaper, Mr. Hudson. She melts your cold heart and softens your hard edges, and she’ll keep at it until there’s nothing left of you but what beats and bleeds and burns for her. And then the formless lump of a man you’ll become won’t be capable of reaping souls. What will befall you then?”

“He’s possessed,” Tod whispered, and I could only nod, trying not to hear what Avari was saying. Trying not to remember that he couldn’t lie.

“If you stay with her, neither of you will see eternity.” Avari glanced at me through Scott’s eyes, and the hunger in them terrified me beyond what I’d thought I could feel in death. “Give her to me, and you will live forever.”

“I’m already dead,” I said.

“So am I,” Tod pointed out.

“But you don’t have to be.” The hellion focused on Tod, ignoring me completely. “Give her to me, and I’ll give you a body. A real one, that breathes and beats on its own. One that can age, and change, and truly feel every proper pleasure and base desire. And when that one wears out, there will be another body, fresh and young. They will stretch into eternity for you, and with them, untold lifetimes in the human world, a part of it again, instead of watching from the fringes. All of that, in exchange for one, insignificant little soul. You will forget about her by the end of your first mortal lifetime. Your second, at the latest. Or I could help you forget her now, if you’d prefer.”

Tod glanced at me, both brows raised. “Can a hellion go insane? Because I think this one’s lost his fucking mind.”

“I’m dead, Avari,” I repeated. “Doesn’t that make this whole stupid obsession kind of pointless?”

Scott clasped his hands at his back like an old man and tried to come closer, but Tod stayed between us, and the hellion didn’t seem to like having to look up at him. Or having to look around him to get to me. “Do you still have a soul, Ms. Cavanaugh?”

“Yes …” I said, and I could already see where this was headed.

“That soul is yet unsmudged, and unless I’m mistaken—” he made a show of sniffing the air in my direction, and my chill bumps doubled in size “—you died with other virtues intact. Do you have any idea how rare that is in today’s world?”

“So I’ve heard,” I mumbled.

“Now, if a hellion had access to the human plane, to a wealth of even purer souls and younger bodies, you might find your value eroded,” he continued. I didn’t give a damn about my value in the Netherworld, but I’d never been more relieved that Avari was stuck there. “Or perhaps not. There is something intriguing and rare about your persistent selflessness.” His frown was part fascination and part confusion, like he couldn’t quite figure out why I drew his interest.

That made two of us.

“Okay, I’ve had enough of this crap.” I stepped around Tod, and when he tried to pull me back, I gave him the warning look I’d perfected on Sabine. He backed off, but stayed close. “What the hell happened with Thane? Why didn’t you eat him when you had the chance?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?” Avari’s words rolled off Scott’s tongue with an ease that made me sick to my undead stomach.

“I saw him this morning, so unless you regurgitated him, it looks to me like he escaped your evil clutches. Or something like that.”

“No one escapes—”

“I did,” I said, before he could even finish his sentence. “Twice, if memory serves.”

“Three times,” Tod corrected, ticking them off on his fingers. “There was the time in his office, with Addy, then the time at the carnival, then in the cafeteria. Three times.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about the time with Addy.” I turned back to Scott, who looked distinctly unamused. “Three times.”

“As loathe as I am to concede the fact, you were never truly captured, so you can’t possibly have escaped. And neither has Thane.”

I crossed both arms over my chest, frowning. Hellions couldn’t outright lie. Possession of a human body didn’t change that, right? “Then what was he doing at the doughnut shop this morning?”

“Reaping.”

“Why?”

“Because that is what reapers do.”

I rolled my eyes and looked up at Tod. “Okay, this is a waste of time. Let’s go.”

“Not without what we came for,” he said, and I’d never heard his voice deeper or angrier. “You have two choices here,” Tod said to the hellion. “You can answer some questions, or you can let your boy Scott take a lump to the head.” Which would evict Avari from the body he’d possessed and put a temporary end to his playtime on the human plane.

“And how will you get the answers you seek then?” Avari demanded, and neither of us had an answer for that. “Nothing is free, Ms. Cavanaugh. Perhaps if you offered a trade …”

“You’re not getting my soul, or any other part of me,” I said.

“Information is tonight’s currency, is it not?” he said. “You answer two questions for me, and I will answer one for you.”

“How is that fair?” Tod demanded, and I realized he’d edged closer to me, like he might have to lunge between me and mortal danger any second. I was beyond the mortal phase of my existence, but his instinct still made me smile.

“Fair is irrelevant. I am a hellion of greed. I won’t offer this exchange again.”

“Okay,” I said, and Tod groaned, but I ignored him. “You get two questions, but I go first.” And as soon as I had my answer, I’d blink out.

Avari clucked Scott’s tongue and shook his head. “I haven’t succumbed to stupidity since we last spoke, Ms. Cavanaugh. But as a gesture of goodwill, I will allow you the second question.”

That was as good as I was going to get. “Fine. Ask.”

“What are you, little bean sidhe? How did you survive your own death?”

“That’s two questions,” Tod pointed out.

“They are one in spirit,” Avari insisted.