Before I Wake

I turned on her, and my temper got the better of me. “I’m an eleventh-grade girl who was murdered in her own bed by a mystical dagger-wielding incubus posing as a math teacher, about an hour before I was resurrected in order to extract stolen souls from monsters for the rest of my unnatural life. What part of that led you to assume anything I do or say will be appropriate by traditional standards?”

Madeline gaped at me for a second. Then she blinked and nodded. “A valid point.”

“Good. Then make yourself visible and introduce yourself to the rest of your crew.”

“My crew?”

“What crew? What the hell is going on here, Kaylee?” Nash asked.

I could tell the minute Madeline appeared to the room in general, because both Nash and Sabine focused on her instantly. “Madeline, this is Nash Hudson. You saved him from going down for my murder. And this is Sabine Campbell, his…Nightmare.” I wasn’t sure how else to explain their relationship. “Madeline is my boss in the reclamation department. And evidently Luca’s aunt. That part’s new to me.”

“Great-great-aunt,” Madeline supplied. “I was originally recruited for my own abilities as a necromancer, but they turned out not to extend into the afterlife—evidently being dead interferes with one’s ability to detect the dead. When I realized we would need the skills I lost, I brought my nephew on board, because his mother didn’t inherit the gift. It seems to skip random generations.”

“My parents think I’m at some fancy boarding school, on a soccer scholarship,” Luca added with a conspiratorial smile.

“So, what kind of crew is this, and why do you need us on it?” Sabine asked.

“It’s the reclamation department,” I said, just as Madeline said, “I don’t need you.”

“The hell you don’t,” I snapped. “Luca and I are all you have left, and we’re not going to be enough against Avari, especially now that he’s figured out how to cross over. You’re going to need everyone you can get, and everyone in this room except for you and Luca has survived an encounter with Avari, which puts them at the top of a very short list of people who can help you.”

And that’s when the room exploded into chaos and questions.

“Who and what is Avari?” Madeline asked.

“What do you mean, he can cross over?” Nash demanded, looking more scared than I’d seen him in a long time.

From Sabine: “Why are you and Luca all she has left?”

Em said, “What about Tod? Can’t he help? And his boss? What’s his name?”

“Okay, one thing at a time.” I wanted to bury my head in my hands. Or curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head. Instead, I took a deep breath and sat on the arm of my father’s chair. “I don’t want to have to repeat this, so everyone get comfortable and listen up.”

“Em’s right,” Sabine said from the kitchen as she helped herself to a soda from the fridge. “If we’re looking for people who’ve survived run-ins with Avari, shouldn’t we wait for Tod? And Alec. He’ll be more help than anyone else, right?”

“You’re right. Call Alec.” I nodded to Emma and she started scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “Tod already knows. Madeline can talk to Levi after we’re done here, and I’ll hit up my dad and my uncle when they get home from work.”

Madeline made a stuffy humphing sound. “Ms. Cavanaugh, this isn’t how we at the reclamation department operate.”

I raised one brow and eyed her boldly. “As of right now, we are the reclamation department, and if you don’t jump on board, we’ll carry on without you. Frankly, at this point, you’re the one with the least to offer.”

Madeline fumed visibly, and Sabine laughed out loud. “Damn. Death looks good on you, Kay!”

I ignored her and crossed the room to speak to Madeline in semiprivacy while Emma spoke to Alec on the phone and Nash and Sabine filled Luca in on some basics of dealing with hellions—most of which were no longer relevant, now that Avari could cross over. “Look, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I think we need to face facts here. Your people are dead because they didn’t know what they were up against. We do, and that still may not be enough to protect us, but we’re the best shot you have at saving more lives than you can even imagine. Including your nephew’s.”

Madeline stared into my face, studying me. Looking for something worth putting her trust in. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for or just finally truly understood that we were all she had. Either way, she nodded, hesitantly. Then she blinked, and I saw a new fortitude building on her face. And this time when she nodded, she meant it.

While we waited for Alec, Emma and Sabine filled Madeline and Luca in on Avari—all stuff Alec already knew—while Nash and I listened in growing discomfort. It was an odd conversation, at best.

“He’s kind of obsessed with Kaylee,” Em said, by way of an opener.

“With her soul,” Sabine corrected. “Because it’s all purer-than-thou, with her being both a martyr and a virgin.”

I flinched, and Sabine noticed Emma’s sudden silence. The mara’s focus narrowed on me and her brows rose. I groaned inwardly. She knew. Why did she have to be bitchy and perceptive?

“But, um…” Em said when Nash glanced from Sabine to me and frowned. “Avari likes to spread the pain around. He’s possessed me and Sabine, and Nash was addicted to his breath for a while. Then again for another while…” Her words faded into uncomfortable silence when Nash tried to obliterate her with only the power of his glare.

“Alec was his servant in the Netherworld for a quarter of a century,” Sabine said. “And Tod did this whole drug-trafficking gig for him—”

Madeline frowned, like she was trying to keep it all straight. “Tod is the undead boyfriend?”

“He had no idea what he was carrying,” I interjected. “And he had a really good reason.”

“A mule should always know what he’s carrying,” Sabine insisted, and I wanted to smack her a little more than usual.

“Okay, clearly you all have very complicated relationships,” Madeline said, effectively calling a truce for us all. “But the point seems to be that the hellion in question has had quite a bit of contact with you. I appreciate your willingness to help us deal with him.”

“What happened to the others?” Nash asked. “The rest of the department?”

“I suppose the truth is the least that I owe you all.” Madeline sighed and glanced at her hands before meeting his gaze again. “Until a couple of months ago, the reclamation department had no real presence in this district, because we weren’t needed. But then we got word of an incubus in the area. That happens from time to time. They tend to frequent the same haunts, and we knew that if he was breeding, he’d need a soul for his son. So I was transferred here along with three extractors. As you probably all know, we didn’t have a chance to deal with the incubus—Kaylee did that for us. But by then, we’d discovered another problem. Something else had settled into the area and was making unscheduled kills and collecting the souls.”

“Avari?” Emma said.

Madeline nodded. “Evidently. But we didn’t know that at the time. I sent my extractors after him one at a time, and none of them ever returned. We lost two men before Kaylee died, and I started to panic. That’s why we needed her so badly.”

“Because she’s a bean sidhe?” Nash asked.

“Yes. When I found out that a female bean sidhe had killed the incubus but lost her own life in the process, I…made some emergency phone calls and arranged to have her restored so I could ask her to join us. We were hoping her unique abilities would give her the edge my other extractors obviously lacked. I only had one left by then, and even though the soul thief kept killing, I held my last extractor back, so he could help run things while I trained Kaylee. Then she proved herself in a dry run—” when I’d been sent to the doughnut shop after Thane “—so I sent my last man after the serial soul thief two days ago. He never came back. Now Kaylee and Luca are all I have left.”

“No, you have all of us,” Nash said. “There’s no way we’d let Kaylee do this alone. Neither will Alec or…my brother.”

Em nodded eagerly, and Sabine rolled her eyes at the room in general. “Yeah. I’m all about the greater good.