If I Die

His soul was cloudy and streaked with dark ribbons of smut, and as Tod answered his phone with a greeting I didn’t have the strength to answer, Beck’s soul seemed to soak into the hilt of the dagger until a second later there wasn’t a trace of it left.

“Hello?” Tod said again. “Kaylee? Are you all right?”

I opened my mouth but what came out wasn’t a real word. I could only manage a hint of sound riding a pain- laden sigh. Then my eyes closed, and I was alone with the sound of my own irregular breathing.

“Kaylee?” Tod sounded closer now, and when his hand brushed hair back from my face, I would have jumped, if I’d had the strength. “No…! Kaylee, wake up. Please wake up.”

Tod was crying. I’d never heard him cry before.

I forced one eye open, and there he was on his knees by the bed, still clutching his own phone. “So sorry,” I mouthed, but the words carried no sound. I was so sorry for what I’d done to Nash, but I couldn’t tell him. And that meant he couldn’t tell Nash.

“You’re gonna be okay.” Tod dropped his phone and slid one arm beneath my shoulders, the other beneath my knees. “Can you put pressure on the wound?”

But I couldn’t even shake my head in answer. I couldn’t move.

“I’m taking you to the hospital, but I can’t go that far in one shot carrying you, so we’ll have to stop a couple of times on the way. Okay?”

I couldn’t answer, but that didn’t matter. I closed my eyes, then opened them almost immediately when something cold and wet fell on my face. It was raining softly, and I was outside, in a parking lot I didn’t recognize. The lot faded, and the next instant Tod stood in a park, still clutching me to his chest, still crying.

My eyes fell shut again, and a second later, a familiar, antiseptic scent burned my nose, while bright lights rendered the world red and veiny through my closed eyelids.

I blinked, and the hospital came into view. A hallway, full of beeps, and voices, and the steady metallic clink of carts wheeled on linoleum. Tod laid me on a stretcher and pressed something to my stomach. It didn’t hurt anymore, and that should have scared me, but nothing scared me more than seeing him cry.

Reapers don’t cry. They don’t. But I’d made Tod cry. And he didn’t even know what I’d done yet.

“They’re going to fix you, Kaylee,” he said, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “I promise.”

I shook my head, but Tod stepped back anyway, pulling his hand out of mine. He glanced down the hall, toward the source of most of the noise. “Hey, somebody help! This girl’s bleeding!”

“My dad…” I mouthed, when I couldn’t force any more sound, and Tod nodded. Then he disappeared.

A second later, footsteps pounded toward me, and the first nurse appeared from around the corner, clad in Looney Tunes–print scrubs. “Holy—” She yelled something else I couldn’t focus on, and more people came running. They wheeled me past a long desk and into a room full of equipment, and someone started cutting my remaining clothes off.

Minutes later—or seconds; I’d lost all sense of time—Tod reappeared with my father in tow.

“Kaylee!” my dad shouted, and a man in scrubs held him back. “That’s my daughter!”

“Sir, how did you get in here?”

My dad threw one punch, and the nurse hit the floor. In the next instant, he was at my side, and someone was yelling that he could stay, if he stayed out of the way.

“Kaylee…” Tears trailed down his face as he brushed hair back from my head. Someone pushed him aside and an oxygen mask was lowered over my face, then he was back and Tod was with him.

They watched me, tears standing in their eyes, and every time I blinked, it became a struggle to open my eyes again. I didn’t hear the questions, the slosh of liquids, or the crackle of sealed packages being opened. I didn’t feel the needles, or the sterile solution, or the pulse monitor clipped over my finger. I only saw Tod and my dad. The men who loved me. I wished I could tell them how sorry I was that I’d ruined everything.

Then I blinked, and the world dimmed. And suddenly a little redheaded boy was there, completely out of place in an E.R. operating room. He pulled Tod away from the bed and said something I couldn’t hear.

Levi.

It was time. Levi had come to reap my soul.

But instead, he handed Tod a slip of paper, watching solemnly as he read it, and Tod gaped at him. Then shook his head. Levi repeated whatever he’d said, then gestured to me with one open hand. Tod crossed his arms over his chest and held his ground. And finally I understood.

Levi wasn’t my reaper. Tod was. By bringing me to the hospital, Tod had put me on his own reaping list. And he was refusing to kill me.

I glanced up at my dad, but he was still crying, still stroking my hair, and he saw nothing else.

The boy frowned up at Tod, like he was waiting for something. For the reaper he’d recruited and trained to concede logic and give in. But Tod only shook his head, one last time.

Levi’s frown deepened, and he reached up toward Tod’s chest with one small hand. Tod’s blue eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. His soul streamed out of his body and curled around Levi’s tiny fist like a handful of incorporeal cotton. Tod glanced at me and blinked once. Then he disappeared.

He was just…gone.

No…! I screamed, but no sound came out. The pain in my heart swallowed the pain in my stomach like the ocean devours a single drop of rain. Thoughtless, wordless agony washed over me, a loss like I’d never felt before. I was hollow, empty of everything but pain, and the ghost memory of blue eyes watching me, seeing me like no one else ever had. Those eyes would never look at me again. They would never blink, or swirl, or shine. They were gone. Tod was gone.

My entire world was pain.

I couldn’t see through my tears, and when they finally fell, Levi stood next to my father, heedless of the nurses and doctors who stepped through him to get to me. “I’m so sorry, Kaylee,” he said. “He didn’t give me any choice.”

Then he placed one hand over my eyes, and the world went black.

I don’t know what happened while the world was gone, but when it came back, the light was too bright to bear, even with my eyes closed. I blinked, and that brightness intensified beyond my threshold for pain, like a bolt of lightning through my brain. I blinked again, and my eyes began to adjust.

And my brain finally caught up.

“What the hell…?” I whispered, surprised by how rough my voice sounded, until I remembered what happened.

“This isn’t hell, Kaylee. Far from it.”

I jerked in surprise, then sat up so fast my head swam. A woman stood in front of me, wearing a brown suit jacket and skirt. Her hair was short, and her nose was long. Before I had a chance to ask her anything, I realized I was naked from the waist up. And sitting on a cold, metal table.

Mortified, I grabbed the plain white sheet that had fallen when I sat up and clutched it to my chest. Then I stared at the wall of stainless-steel drawers to my left. And the three other metal gurneys on my right.

I was in the morgue.

“Did I die?” I asked, my voice virtually toneless with shock.

“Yes,” a familiar voice said from behind me, and I turned to watch Levi circle my table. “But Madeline has asked for an audience with you. Please give her your full attention.”

Before I could process that, Madeline cleared her throat, and I glanced at her automatically. “Kaylee, we’d like to offer you the opportunity to—”

“No.” I clutched the sheet tighter and stared her right in the eyes. “I don’t want to be a reaper.” Not after what had happened to Tod. How could they ever think I’d work for them after they killed him?

Her left brow arched dramatically. “That’s not what we want, either. I work for the reclamation department, and we could use your services.”

“Doing what?” I frowned, glancing from Madeline to Levi, then back to her.

“Reclaiming souls from those they don’t belong to.”

“Stolen souls? From hellions?” Shouldn’t my heart be pounding? The very thought terrified me. But my heart refused to beat. Because I was dead.

“No, you would be working here, in the human world. As a female bean sidhe,