If I Die

He nodded slowly, like there was more to it than that, but he wasn’t ready to elaborate. “I did everything I could for her, but sometimes everything you can do isn’t enough, and you just have to…let go.”

“I’m not ready to let go of life,” I whispered.

“I’m not either—for you or for me. But knowing I have no power over death this time makes me feel terribly, wonderfully normal. And some deep part of me likes that. And that scares me.”

I blinked, trying to make sense of the tangle of words that had just tumbled from his mouth. “You hate feeling useless, but you like that feeling useless makes you feel human?” I asked, fairly certain I’d missed something.

Tod thought about that for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Does that make any sense?”

I could only shrug. “Right now, nothing makes much sense to me, so I may not be the best judge.” I stared at my hands, tense around the wheel. “I don’t expect you to fix this, Tod. It doesn’t make any sense for you to put your job—” and thus his afterlife “—in danger, when I’m going to die no matter what you do.”

“Kaylee…” he said, but I interrupted, determined to have my say.

“I heard what you said earlier. And I totally respect the ‘no second exchanges’ policy.” Even if it killed the only ray of hope trying to shine on what remained of my life so far. “But my dad doesn’t. I need you to promise me that you won’t let him trade. Because he’s going to try. And if you let him, I swear I’ll haunt your afterlife for all of mine.”

“It’s not going to be an issue,” Tod assured me. “He’ll never even see your reaper. No dark reaper worth his job would ever appear to a grieving relative.”

“Good.” At least I could stop worrying about that part of it.

I shifted into Drive again, and Tod’s hand landed on mine, still on the gearshift. “Kaylee,” he said, and I turned to meet his gaze. “If there was anything I could do, I would do it.”

“I know.” And in that moment, that was about all I knew.

Styx lifted her head from Nash’s lap when I opened the front door. Some guard dog. But then, she was supposed to guard me from hellion possession, not boyfriends I’d forgotten about. He stood, and Styx hopped down from the couch and trotted toward me, half Pomeranian, half Netherworld…something or other. And all mine. We’d bonded while she was an infant—she wasn’t much more than that now—and she would obey no one else’s orders until the day I died.

Which had seemed like a much better deal, a couple of hours earlier.

“Hey,” I said, and Nash folded me into a hug so tight, so desperate that I couldn’t breathe.

“Are you okay?” He finally let me go, but only to stare into my eyes, looking for more than he should have been able to see there.

“They told you?” I bent to pick up Styx, petting her frizzy fur out of habit.

“I thought you’d want us to,” my dad said, and I looked up to find him in the kitchen doorway, cradling a steaming mug of coffee, in spite of the late hour.

Did I? Did I want Nash to know? There was nothing he could do, and I couldn’t imagine keeping a secret that big from him. But now he was looking at me like I would break if he so much as breathed on me. Like I was fragile and must be protected.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, to keep from hurting my dad’s feelings.

The front door closed at my back, and I turned to thank Tod for bringing my phone—but he was gone.

“You hungry?” my dad asked, and I could only stare at him for a moment, until I understood what he was doing. He was taking care of me, the only way he knew how. He couldn’t save my life—not this time—but he could solve my hunger.

“No. Thanks, though.” I set Styx down, and she hopped onto my dad’s chair and stared out at the room, on alert from this new height.

“No popcorn for the movie?”

“I’m not really in the mood for a movie anymore.” A sappy tearjerker just wasn’t a good way to follow the news that you’re going to die. “I think we’re just going to hang out in my room.” I tugged Nash toward the hall and he came willingly, but looked like he couldn’t decide whether I’d just come to my senses or lost them completely.

“Leave the door open,” my dad said, the second most common warning in his arsenal. Right behind, “Nash, go home.”

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. I had six days to live, and he was worried about an unsupervised visit with my boyfriend?

I dropped Nash’s hand and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to figure out how best to say what needed to be said. “Dad, this is no slight against your parenting skills, which are seriously formidable. No worries there. But I’ve only got six days to live. I’m never going to turn eighteen. I’m never even going to turn seventeen. The only part of my adult life I’m going to get to experience is the part I can claim in the next week. So I’d kinda like to spend these next six days—my last six days— as an emancipated minor.” Or at least an honorary adult.

“Kaylee…” His voice was deep with warning, yet a little unsteady.

“I’m not talking about moving out, Dad,” I insisted, hoping to avoid a parental meltdown—I really didn’t want his last memories of me to include a temper tantrum. “I’m just saying I don’t want to spend my last week on earth following a bunch of rules that don’t even really apply to me anymore. I mean, would you tell an eighty-year-old woman with terminal cancer to leave her door open?”

“You’re not going to die, Kaylee.” My dad was scowling now, his arms crossed to mirror my own.

I lifted both brows in challenge. “You know somethin’ I don’t?”

“I know I’m going to find a way around this, and we’re going to laugh about it when you’re a very old woman. And yes, if you’re still living here when you’re eighty, I will damn well tell you to leave the door open.”

My chest ached fiercely and I had to swallow to speak past the lump in my throat. “I tell you what—if I’m still alive on Friday morning, you can consider me happily un-emancipated.”

My dad’s frown deepened and his irises churned slowly in a rare display of fear and frustration, but he didn’t object when I tugged Nash down the hall and into my room. Where I closed the door behind us. Then had to open it again to let Styx in.

Nash sank into my desk chair looking up at me, and though his irises held steady—obviously a struggle—his eyes were…shiny. “Why’d you let your dad tell me? Why didn’t you tell me yourself?”

I blinked, surprised by the amount of pain in his voice. “He beat me to it. I would have told you.” But I’d needed some time to process the information myself before I had to consider anyone else’s reaction.

“This is messed up, Kaylee.” He pulled me closer and wrapped his arms around my waist, clutching the back of my shirt, his face pressed into my stomach. “Scott, and Doug, and now you… Why is everyone leaving me? What the hell am I going to do without you?”

He was going to lean on his mom, and Tod. And Sabine. The three of them would do anything to protect Nash, and they’d be there for him when I couldn’t be. I was much more worried about my father….

“Don’t think about that right now,” I said, talking to myself as much as to Nash. I stepped back so that he had to look up at me. “Think about all the privacy I just bought us. Too bad I waited until the week I’m gonna die to join the teenage resistance, huh?”

“That’s not funny.” Nash frowned as I sat on the edge of the bed.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Your dad thinks he can stop it.”

“Yeah, well, Tod says he can’t.” I leaned back on the bed and let my legs dangle over the side while I studied my ceiling. How had I never noticed that crack, directly over my pillow? How often had I stared at that very spot and never noticed it?

Nash swiveled toward me and the chair creaked. “And you believe him over your dad?”

“Do I believe the reaper with insider’s knowledge on how death works over the desperate bean sidhe? Yeah. I do.”

“Why are you acting like this?” he demanded, walking the rolling chair forward until his knees hit the mattress.

I rolled onto my side to watch him. “My expiration date didn’t come with instructions. What am I supposed to be acting like?”