Before I Wake

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.