Before I Wake

the body yet. There wasn’t a security guard or an EMT in sight.

As I walked, heading toward the department store at the very end of the mall, I let a thin ribbon of my bean sidhe wail leak from my lips, satisfied that no one else could hear it when a Sears employee walked right past me with a large fountain drink in hand. Any disembodied soul should have been pulled toward the sound, and I, in return, should have been pulled toward the soul. But I felt nothing.

Was I too late? Had the thief already taken his stolen soul and fled?

Frustrated, I stopped at the end of the mall, in front of the cornerstone department store, and crossed both arms over my chest, scanning the few shoppers for something—anything—that stood out. I was just about to admit defeat and return to Madeline empty-handed—secretly relieved at not having found the monster that would most likely have stolen my soul and ended my afterlife—when someone stepped out of the back hall that housed restrooms, storage, and the mall’s security office.

My gaze probably wouldn’t have snagged on the girl for very long, if hers hadn’t already snagged on me. She shouldn’t have been able to see me, yet she was looking right at me. And she looked familiar. Eerily, thoroughly familiar—every single part of her, including her short, sparkly dress, sequined sandals, and her long, reddish blond hair.

Familiarity bled into recognition, and chills shot through me, settling into my fingers and toes, reverberating the length of my spine. I’d never actually met her, and I’d only seen her once, but I would have recognized her anytime, anywhere, even if she weren’t still wearing the clothes she’d had on the night I saw her. The night I predicted her death. The night she died on the floor of the bathroom at Taboo, the eighteen-and-over dance club where Emma’s sister worked.

Heidi Anderson. Her death was the very first prediction I’d ever been able to verify, and that led to my discovery of my bean sidhe heritage, which threw me and Nash together as a couple and brought my father home from Ireland. Heidi’s death had changed my life and set into motion the events that had led to my death. Which was how I knew for a fact that I couldn’t possibly be seeing what I was seeing.

Heidi was dead, yet there she stood. Then she started walking. Toward me. She could clearly see me, even though I was sure I’d done the invisibility thing right this time.

I backed up, eyes wide, still clenching the heart around my neck, and still she came, smiling that creepy dead-girl smile, long hair swishing behind her with every step. I retreated until my spine hit the wall and there was nowhere left to go unless I blinked out of the mall. But I couldn’t do that. Someone was dead, and a soul had been stolen, and Heidi’s presence couldn’t be a coincidence.

Was she a ghost? Was there any such thing? I made a mental note to ask Tod or Luca when this was over and I wasn’t staring into the eyes of a dead girl. It takes one to know one, right? So was she like me? Was she undead? If so, where had she been for the past seven months? She wasn’t a reaper. Not a local one, anyway—Tod would have told me if she were. And she definitely didn’t work for reclamation.

“Kaylee, right?” Heidi said, and her voice wasn’t familiar, because I’d never heard her speak. “We almost met once. Do you remember?”

I nodded, my insides cold from shock, my hands shaking at my sides.

“Oh, you’re trembling!” Her smile brightened, but her gaze was cold. “Is that fear or guilt?”

It was actually confusion and terror, but admitting that seemed unwise, so I started with something more basic. “Are you real?”

“As real as you are.” She reached for my right hand, then held it in both of hers. Her hands were warm around mine, and undeniably solid.

“How…?” She was dead. I knew she was dead. Was she the corpse Luca had sensed? If so, what was she doing here? Was this a trap?

I couldn’t make sense out of all the possibilities, and I couldn’t make sense out of her.

“You’re asking the wrong question. How doesn’t matter,” Heidi said, and she laughed when I pulled my hand from her warm grasp. “What should matter to you is why. Ask me why.”

I blinked, but no words came out. I was drowning in shock and horror, followed closely by a devastating confusion.

“Okay, I’ll say your lines, but just this once.” Heidi cleared her throat and closed her eyes, and when they opened again, she frowned at me in a mask of bewilderment obviously meant to mimic my own. “Why are you here, Heidi, when we both know you died months ago?” she said in a falsetto that sounded nothing like me.

“I’m so glad you asked,” she continued in her normal voice. “I’m here because of you, Kaylee. Also, not coincidentally, I’m dead because of you. I wasn’t supposed to die, and you failed to save me, just like you failed to save all those other girls. Just like you failed to save the woman propped up on a toilet in the bathroom. I left the stall open. Someone will find her soon, and they may never know her death was your fault, but I’ll know it. And you’ll know.”

I was breathing too fast, and I wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but I couldn’t make it stop. Luca had only sensed one corpse, and if there was a dead woman in the bathroom, she had to be what he’d felt. Which meant Heidi wasn’t dead.

How could she not be dead?

“You can’t hyperventilate anymore, but I appreciate the drama. Very angsty. But even if you could pass out, this would all be here waiting for you when you wake up. Me. The woman in the bathroom—a random, innocent soul, plucked in its prime. And she’s only the start. Every life I take will be on your shoulders. You couldn’t stop it then, and you can’t stop it now. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and scream for their souls. Isn’t that right, little bean sidhe?”

I don’t know if it was the way she called me a “little bean sidhe” or the way her gaze narrowed on me, her mouth open slightly, like she could taste my fear on the air. Either way, in that moment, I realized I wasn’t talking to Heidi Anderson.

I never had been.

“Avari,” I whispered. “You’re the soul thief?”

Heidi threw her head back and laughed. She sounded like a girl, but that look in her eyes, that brutal mirth in response to my pain—that was all hellion. “That shall be my new epithet,” he said, abandoning the borrowed teen- speech pattern altogether. “Avari, thief of souls. I like it. Although, ‘devourer’ has more of a menacing undertone. But we can work on the details later.”

I blinked, resisting the urge to shake my head in denial. This made no sense. But then, neither did my existence.

“What is this? First Scott and now Heidi? How are you possessing dead bodies?” I demanded, trying to find even one connection between the jumble of mismatched puzzle pieces in my head.

Had he taken Scott’s corpse, then returned it to the morgue? Why didn’t Luca sense Heidi as a walking corpse? And how could Heidi possibly look exactly as I remembered her, seven months after she’d died? How was she still dressed the same?

“You haven’t figured it out yet,” the Heidi-thing taunted. She put one hand on my shoulder and circled me slowly, trailing her hand across my back, then down my arm, and I could only shudder in revulsion. “The dead can’t be possessed, and even if they could, the real Heidi Anderson would not be fit for public viewing. She has long since started to decompose.”

“Then what is this? How are you here?” Was this some kind of illusion? Was I dreaming? Sabine could design one hell of a nightmare, but she couldn’t manipulate the fears of the dead, so this couldn’t be her work.

“I’ve learned a new trick. And I have a new toy.” Avari spread his borrowed arms and turned Heidi slowly, for my appraisal. “Isn’t she pretty?”

“She’s not a toy.”

“You’re right. She’s more like a pawn, and pawns exist to be sacrificed. Fortunately, your world is full of pawns.” Avari waved one arm at the shoppers ambling from store to store, but the gesture had greater meaning. Greater horror. His chessboard wasn’t the mall; it was the world. My world. “And I will use as many of them as it takes.”

“They’re not pawns, they’re people,” I said through gritted teeth.

“And you want to save them?” he asked. I didn’t bother to answer. “You can’t save them all, Ms. Cavanaugh. Even in your new state of being, you don’t have that kind of power. But you can save one. I will gladly accept your