Before I Wake

them for?”

The moment he spoke, all three hellions turned to look at us, like they’d been expecting us all along. And, of course, they had been. Avari disappeared, then reappeared close enough to whisper in Luca’s ear. “Why don’t you join us and find out?”

Before we could answer—or think, or plan, or run—he grabbed Luca and disappeared again, then reappeared beneath the pavilion, where he shoved Luca onto the bench next to Emma.

“Okay, plan?” I whispered, glancing from one Hudson brother to the other.

Nash huffed. “We probably should have come up with one before we crossed over.”

“It’s not like we had notice or anything,” Tod said.

“Only two of us can cross,” I said, eyeing our friends on the bench. “Even if we could get to them, I don’t know how many I can take at once.” And the hellions could probably hear every word we were saying.

“Maybe you should go get help?” Tod whispered.

“Your mom?”

“No!” both Hudson brothers said.

“Levi, or Madeline,” Tod suggested.

“The more, the merrier,” Avari said, and somehow, his voice came from right next to me, though he hadn’t left the pavilion. “Bring Madeline. I haven’t yet made her acquaintance.”

“No!” Emma shouted, with what may have been the last of her strength. “Don’t bring Madeline. Avari needs her.”

Tod and Nash both glanced at me, and I knew what they were thinking. What could unite three hellions who hated one another, and why the hell would they want Madeline?

Thane slapped Emma, and she gasped, then kicked him in the shin, still holding her side with one hand. He pulled his hand back to hit her again, but Luca stood and shoved Thane back, glaring silently, and the reaper actually stayed back. Tod wasn’t the only member of the undead unnerved by the necromancer.

Sophie was sniffling quietly. Lydia looked paralyzed with fear and pain, and I realized she was syphoning some of Emma’s pain. Neither of them would last long like that.

“Come on.” I wasn’t sure what the hellions were up to, but we couldn’t help anyone from fifty feet away. I marched down the slight incline toward the pavilion and both Tod and Nash followed me.

“—don’t need Madeline,” Thane was saying when we got within earshot. “I told you, she can do it.” He looked pointedly at me.

“I can do what?” I asked.

“You lying, traitorous bastard,” Tod spat, but Thane only shrugged.

“We do what we have to do to survive. You promised to try to recover my soul if I helped you. Avari promised to give it back if I helped him. The difference is that he can’t lie, and you can. I had to go with the sure thing.”

“Is this a trade?” I asked Avari. “You want me? Fine. I’m here. I’ll trade myself for all four of them,” I said, glancing at my friends lined up on the bench.

“Oh, we’re way beyond a simple trade,” Belphegore said. “Avari can no longer afford to keep you for himself, and these four meat sacks are all necessary for our little project.” She waved one hand at the bench and its occupants.

“But we are not unreasonable,” Invidia said. “If you do what we ask, we will let both of your little men go free.” She gestured at Nash and Tod.

“Hell, no,” Tod spat, just as Nash said, “No way.”

“We don’t even know what they want yet,” I said, without taking my attention away from the hellions. And Thane.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tod growled. “They don’t get you.”

“They don’t get any of us. What do you want?” I asked Avari again.

“You may have noticed that we’ve learned how to cross into your world,” he began, and I nodded. They’d gone to great pains to make sure I knew that. “The problem is that our current method of transportation requires a new human soul for each trip. We would like a more efficient way to utilize our resources. You help us, and both Hudsons will go free. You have my word.”

“What about them?” I asked, glancing at the full bench again.

“Unfortunately, they are all part of the permanent solution. As are you.”

“No.” Tod grabbed my hand and started to haul me backward, and when I pulled free, he stood at my back, quietly fuming, strung so tight I could hear his teeth grinding.

“What do you want?”

“You and the necroanima will bind my life force with a resurrected soul already in my possession.”

One of the reapers he’d snatched? And what the hell was a necroanima? Were they talking about Luca?

“Then you will install both in the body of this young woman—” Avari gestured to Lydia “—so that I can come and go from your world at will. There is one for each of us.”

“What?” I frowned at the hellion. “I don’t even know what that means. You want to live in Lydia’s body? Forever?”

“Of course not.” He frowned like my guess was preposterous. “Only until her body wears out. Then I will select another.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Nash asked. But no one had an answer.

“You will do as I instructed,” Avari said. “I will have a reusable body to use in the human world, and your men will go free. Or… I will kill every single one of you and feast on your souls for eternity.”

“That’s not possible!” I insisted. “And even if it were, I can’t do that. I reclaim souls, not reinstall them.”

“You can do both,” Invidia insisted. “Just like Madeline.”

“Madeline?” I asked, and Luca’s gaze fell to the ground and stayed there. I was missing something.

“Madeline reinstalled your soul,” Avari said. “After her nephew reanimated your body.”

“What? Luca can’t reanimate dead people! He just finds them.”

“Of course he can.” Belphegore laughed out loud. “What did you think the anima part of necroanima meant?”

“I don’t know what any of that means! He’s a necromancer. Right? Luca?” I demanded, and finally he met my gaze.

“Over here, they call me a necroanima. Which is technically more accurate. Madeline was afraid that knowing too much would put you in danger, so she wouldn’t let me tell you what I can really do. Or what you can do.”

“I can install souls? Into corpses?” As a bean sidhe, I’d only been able to help put them back into their own not-yet-truly-dead bodies.

He nodded. “All extractors can.”

“But you’re more special than that, aren’t you?” Avari reached out to touch my cheek, and Tod pulled me out of reach. After that, I didn’t want to let his hand go. But I did, because I couldn’t afford to look weak.

“How? How am I more special?” And why the hell was I the last to know?

“It takes the combined skills of both an extractor and a bean sidhe to bind a human soul to a non-human life force,” Avari said. “There hasn’t been one of those—one of you —in nearly a century, by the human calendar.”

“What does that mean? It’s actually possible?” I asked Luca, because even though Avari couldn’t lie, I didn’t trust him.

“In theory,” Luca said. “It’s never been done with a hellion, but it was done once with a lesser Nether- creature, so he could cross over and give testimony. The binding was done by a restored female bean sidhe. Just like you.”

No. No. Where the hell was my copy of History of the Nether? Shouldn’t that have been issued to me upon my death?

“That is the only reason I let your necroanima leave the Nether when he and your cousin crossed over by mistake,” Avari said. “So that he could reanimate you. If you’d stayed dead, I would have