My Soul to Save

I’m a female bean sidhe. That’s what we do.

“No, she isn’t,” Tod said softly, and we turned to find him still staring at the stage. The reaper pointed, and I followed his finger until my gaze found Eden again, surrounded by her mother, bodyguards, and odd members of the crew, one of whom was now giving her mouth-to-mouth. And as I watched, a foggy, ethereal substance began to rise slowly from the star’s body like a snake from its charmer’s basket.

Rather than floating toward the ceiling, as a soul should, Eden’s seemed heavy, like it might sink to the ground around her instead. It was thick, yet colorless. And undulating through it were ribbons of darkness, swirling as if stirred by an unfelt breeze.

My breath caught in my throat, but I let it go almost immediately, because though I had no idea what that substance was, I knew without a doubt what it wasn’t.

Eden had no soul.

2

“WHAT IS THAT?” I whispered frantically, tugging Nash’s hand. “It’s not a soul. And if she’s dead, how come I’m not screaming?”

“What is what?” Nash hissed, and I realized he couldn’t see Eden’s not-soul. Male bean sidhes can only see elements of the Netherworld—including freed souls—when a female bean sidhe wails. Apparently the same held true for whatever ethereal sludge was oozing from Eden’s body.

Nash glanced around to make sure no one was listening to us, but there was really no need. Eden was the center of attention.

Tod rolled his eyes and pulled one hand from the pocket of his baggy jeans. “Look over there.” He pointed not toward the stage, but across it, where more people watched the spectacle from the opposite wing. “Do you see her?”

“I see lots of hers.” People scrambled on the other side of the stage, most speaking into cell phones. A couple of vultures even snapped pictures of the fallen singer, and indignation burned deep in my chest.

But Tod continued to point, so I squinted into the dark wing. Whatever he wanted me to see probably wasn’t native to the human world so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious.

And that’s when I found her.

The woman’s tall, slim form created a darker spot in the already-thick shadows, a mere suggestion of a shape. Her eyes were the only part of her I could focus on, glowing like green embers in the gloom. “Who is she?” I glanced at Nash and he nodded, telling me he could see her too. Which likely meant she was letting us see her …

“That’s Libby, from Special Projects.” An odd, eager light shone in blue eyes Tod usually kept shadowed by brows drawn low. “When this week’s list came down, she came with it, for this one job.”

He was talking about the reapers’ list, which contained the names and the exact place and time of death of everyone scheduled to die in the local area within a one-week span.

“You knew this was going to happen?” Even knowing he was a reaper, I couldn’t believe how different Tod’s reaction to death was from mine. Unlike most people, it wasn’t my own death I feared—it was everyone else’s. The sight of the deceased’s soul would mark my own descent into madness. At least, that’s what most people thought of my screaming fits. Humans had no idea that my “hysterical shrieking” actually suspended a person’s soul as it leaves its body.

Sometimes I wished I still lived in human ignorance, but those days were over for me, for better or for worse.

“I couldn’t turn down the chance to watch Libby work. She’s a legend.” Tod shrugged. “And seeing Addy was a bonus.”

“Well, thanks so much for dragging us along!” Nash snapped.

“What is she?” I asked as another cluster of people rushed past us—two more bodyguards and a short, slight man whose face looked pinched with professional concern and curiosity. Probably a doctor. “And what’s so special about this assignment?”

“Libby’s a very special reaper.” Tod’s short, blond goatee glinted in the blue-tinted overhead lights as he spoke. “She was called in because that—” he pointed to the substance the female reaper now was steadily inhaling from Eden’s body, over a twenty-foot span and dozens of heads “—isn’t a soul. It’s Demon’s Breath.”

Suddenly I was very glad no one else could hear Tod. I wished they couldn’t hear me, either. “Demon, as in hellion?” I whispered, as low as I could speak and still be heard.

Tod nodded with his usual slow, grim smile. The very word hellion sent a jolt of terror through me, but Tod’s eyes sparkled with excitement, as if he could actually get high on danger. I guess that’s what you get when you mix boredom with the afterlife.

“She sold her soul….” Nash whispered, revulsion echoing within the sudden understanding in his voice.

I’d never met a hellion—they couldn’t leave the Netherworld, fortunately—but I was intimately familiar with their appetite for human souls. Six weeks earlier, my aunt had tried to trade five poached teenage souls in exchange for her own eternal youth and beauty, but her plan went bad in the end, and she wound up paying in part with her own soul. But not before four girls died for her vanity.

Tod shrugged. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

Horror filled me. “Why would anyone do that?”

Nash looked like he shared my revulsion, but Tod only shrugged again, clearly unbothered by the most horrifying concept I’d ever encountered. “They usually ask for fame, fortune, and beauty.”

All of which Eden had in spades.

“Okay, so she sold her soul to a hellion.” That statement sound wrong in sooo many ways. … “Do I even want to know how Demon’s Breath got into Eden’s body in its place?”

“Probably not,” Nash whispered, as heavy black curtains began to slide across the front of the stage, cutting off the shocked, horrified chatter from the auditorium.

But as usual, Tod was happy to give me a morbid peek into the Netherworld—complete with irreverent hand gestures. “When the hellion literally sucked out her soul, he replaced it with his own breath. That kept her alive until her time to die. Which is why Libby’s here. Demon’s Breath is a controlled substance in the Netherworld, and it has to be disposed of very carefully. Libby’s trained to do that.”

“A controlled substance?” I felt my brows dip in confusion. “Like plutonium?”

Tod chuckled, running his fingers across a panel of dead electronic equipment propped against the wall. “More like heroin.”

I sighed and leaned into Nash, letting the warmth of his body comfort me. “The Netherworld is soooo weird.”

“You have no idea.” Tod’s curls bounced when he turned to face Libby again, where the lady reaper had now inhaled most of the sluggish Demon’s Breath. It swirled slowly into her mouth in a long, thick strand, like a ghostly trail of rotting spaghetti. “Come on, I want to talk to her.” He took off toward the stage without waiting for our reply, and I lunged after him, hoping he was solid enough to touch.

He was—at least for me. Though I was sure Nash’s hand would have gone right through the reaper.

“Wait.” I hauled him back in spite of the weird look I got from some random stagehand in a black tee. “We can’t just trot across the stage without being seen.” Though, there were certainly times I wished I could go invisible. Like, during P.E. The girls’ basketball coach was out to get me, I was sure of it.

“And I don’t think I want to meet this super-reaper.” Nash stuffed his hands in his front pockets. “The garden variety’s weird enough.”

Plus, most reapers hold no fondness for bean sidhes. The combined natural abilities of a male and female bean sidhe—the potential to return a soul to its body—are in direct opposition with a reaper’s entire purpose in life. Or, the afterlife.

Tod was the rare exception to this mutual species aversion, by virtue of being both bean sidhe and reaper.

“Fine, but don’t expect me to pass on any pearls of wisdom she coughs up….” Tod’s gaze settled on me, and his full, perfect lips turned up into a wicked smile. He knew he had me; I was trying to learn everything I could about the Netherworld, to make up for living the first sixteen years of my life in total ignorance, thanks to my family’s misguided attempt to keep me safe. And as creeped-out as I was by Eden’s sudden, soulless death, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to learn something neither Tod nor Nash could teach me.

“Nash, please?” I pulled his hand from his pocket and wound my fingers through his. I would go without him, but I’d rather have his company, and I was pretty sure I’d get it. He wouldn’t leave me alone with Tod, because he didn’t entirely trust his undead brother.

Neither did I.

I saw Nash’s decision in the frown lines around his mouth before he nodded, so I stood on my toes to kiss him. Excitement tingled along the length of my spine and settled to burn lower when our lips touched, and when I pulled away, his hazel eyes churned with swirls of green and brown, a sure sign that a bean sidhe was feeling something strong. Not that humans could see it.

Nash nodded again to answer my unspoken question. “Yours are swirling, too.”

I dared a grin in spite of the solemn circumstances, and Tod rolled his eyes at our display. Then he stomped off silently to meet this “special” reaper.

The fluttering in my stomach settled into a heavy anchor of dread as we followed Tod behind the stage, dodging shell-shocked technicians and stagehands on our way to the opposite wing. I needed all the information I could find about the Netherworld to keep myself from accidentally stumbling into something dangerous, but I didn’t exactly look forward to meeting more reapers. Especially the creepy, intimidating woman swallowing the ominous life-source that had kept Eden up and singing for who knew how long.

“So what makes this reaper such a legend?” I whispered, walking between Nash and Tod, whose shoes still made no sound on the floor.