My Soul To Keep

“He’s taking Demon’s Breath,” I whispered with a nervous glance at the closed door, hoping his mother was still in the kitchen. “How is that none of our business?”

“It has nothing to do with us.” He stood and snatched a shirt from the back of his desk chair.

“Don’t you want to know where he got it? He could have killed someone last night. And if he takes any more of it, he’ll probably kill himself.”

Nash sank into his desk chair. “You’re overreacting, Kaylee.”

“No, you’re underreacting.” I scooted to the edge of his bed. “What happened to looking out for your friends?”

“What am I supposed to do?” He shrugged, frustration clear in the tense line of his shoulders. “Go up to Fuller and say, ‘Hey, man, I’m not sure where you’re getting secondhand air from a demon you don’t even know exists, but you need to lay off it before you kill yourself’? That’s not gonna sound weird.” He kicked a shoe across the room to punctuate his sarcasm.

I crossed my arms over my chest, struggling to keep my voice low. “You’re worried about sounding weird in front of a guy who’s getting high off someone else’s breath?”

“Why do you care, anyway?” Nash demanded. “You don’t even like Fuller.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to watch him die.” Especially considering that his impending death would send me into an uncontrollable, screaming bean sidhe fit, forcing us to decide whether or not to try to save him. “And I won’t let him take Emma with him.”

Nash’s scowl wilted, giving way to confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“They were all over each other last night, Nash. While he was high on Demon’s Breath. And it probably wasn’t the first time. She could be accidentally inhaling what he exhales.”

Horror flitted across Nash’s face, greens and browns twisting in his irises, then he closed his eyes and reset his expression before I was even sure of what I’d seen, effectively locking me out of his thought process.

I leaned against his headboard and fiddled with his pillowcase. “Tod says it’s highly addictive and ultimately deadly to humans. What if she gets hooked on it, too? What if she already is?”

Nash sighed and sank onto the bed, facing me. “Look, we don’t even know that Fuller’s actually addicted, okay? We just know he took some last night. And to even be exposed, Emma would have had to suck air straight from his lungs, right after he inhaled. And the chances of that are almost nil. Right?”

“How do you know? He was still exhaling enough for me to smell it on him, and they’ve been all over each other for the past two weeks. Are you sure she couldn’t have gotten even a tiny bit by kissing him? “

“I seriously doubt it, Kaylee.” But before he regained control of his eyes, I saw the truth in the nervous swirl of color. Nash wasn’t sure. And he was scared.

He exhaled heavily, then met my gaze again. “Okay, we’ll find out if he knows what he was taking and where he got it. But if he doesn’t know, don’t tell him what it is, okay? No more full disclosures to friends. Emma was plenty.”

“Fine.” I wasn’t exactly eager to tell anyone else I wasn’t human, anyway.

“You have to be at work at noon?” I nodded, and he pulled off the shirt he’d just put on, then tossed it at his open hamper like a basketball. “We’ll leave as soon as I get out of the shower.”

“After breakfast,” I corrected on my way to the door, smiling over my victory. “Your mom’s making muffins.”

In the kitchen, I waited for Nash in a rickety chair at the scratched, round table, watching Harmony wash dishes.

“So are you enjoying your freedom?” She glanced at me over her shoulder as she set a metal bowl in the dish drainer.

I shrugged. “I haven’t experienced much of it yet.”

She dried a clean, plastic-coated whisk, dropped it into an open drawer, then leaned against the counter and eyed me in blatant curiosity. “Was it worth it?”

“Was it worth being grounded?” I asked, and she nodded. “Yes. And no. Getting Regan’s soul back was totally worth it.” Four weeks of house arrest were nothing compared to the eternity she would have suffered without her soul. “But there was nothing we could do for Addy.” And every time I thought about that, my stomach pitched like I was in freefall, a mixture of guilt and horror over my failure.

“Do you still hear from Regan?” Harmony asked when I didn’t elaborate.

“Not very often. I think it’s easier for her to try to forget about what happened with Addy.” About the fact that her sister had been damned to eternal torment because she died without her soul. With nothing to release upon her death but a lungful of Demon’s Breath.

And suddenly I had an idea. “Do you think Regan will be okay? Because of the Demon’s Breath, I mean. Tod said it’s really dangerous.”

Harmony nodded absently, opening the oven door to check the muffins. “It certainly can be. Demon’s Breath decays your soul. It rots the parts of you that make you you.”

Okay, that’s not terrifying… .

“But on the surface, it acts a bit like a very strong hallucinogenic drug. It’ll make you see and hear things that aren’t there.”

Which would explain why Doug thought someone had been in the car with him.

Harmony continued, sounding every bit like the nurse she was. “It’s also highly addictive, and even if it doesn’t kill you quickly, long-term use can lead to brain damage and psychosis.”

I swallowed the huge lump that had formed in my throat and hoped my voice sounded normal. “Psychosis, like, insanity?”

“Simply put, yes. A complete loss of contact with reality.” She used a pot holder to pull the muffin pan from the oven, then kicked the oven door closed. “And withdrawal is even worse. It sends the entire system into shock and can easily be fatal, even to someone who survived the substance itself.”

“Great …” I whispered. So cutting off Doug’s supply might kill him even faster than the Demon’s Breath would.

“Oh, no, hon!” I looked up to find her watching the horror surely growing on my face. “Don’t worry about Regan. She wasn’t huffing Demon’s Breath for a high—she was sustained by it in the absence of her soul. That’s a totally different ball game. Still very dangerous, for obvious reasons,” she conceded with a shrug. “That whole sell-your-soul thing. But very little risk to her, physically.”

“Because she didn’t have a soul …” My mind was racing. “But if she inhaled Demon’s Breath now that her soul’s back in place …”

Harmony frowned. “She’d be in very serious trouble.”

AN HOUR LATER Nash turned his mother’s car onto a brick driveway in front of a huge house with a coordinating brick-and-stone facade. And I’d thought Scott’s place was crazy. Whatever Doug Fuller’s parents did, they made some serious cash.

“You think he’s home?” I asked, and Nash pointed at the spotless, late-model sports car in the driveway, with a rental sticker on the rear windshield.

He turned off the engine and stuffed the keys into his pocket. “Let’s get this over with.”

Doug answered the door on the third ring in nothing but the sweatpants he’d obviously slept in, then backed into a bright, open entryway to let us in. We followed him to a sunken den dominated by a wall-size television, where a video game character I couldn’t identify stood frozen with a pistol aimed at the entire room.

“Sorry about your car.” Doug plopped onto a black leather home theater chair without even glancing at me.

“Um.” But before I could finish the nonthought, he waved off my reply and picked up a video controller from the arm of his chair.

“My dad’ll pay for the damages. The rental place is supposed to deliver your loaner this afternoon. I got you a V6.”

Just like that? Was he serious? I got weird death visions and a supersonic shriek, and Doug Fuller got unreasonable wealth. That was a serious imbalance of karma.

“Trust me—it’s a step up.”

My fists clenched in my coat pockets. How could Emma stand him?

“Um, thanks,” I said, for lack of anything even resembling an intelligent reply. I looked at Nash with both brows raised, silently asking what he was waiting for. He dropped onto a black leather couch and I sat next to him.

“So was your dad pissed about the drug test? You must have been high as a satellite to hit a parked car.” Nash slouched into the couch, sounding almost jealous, and that must have been the right approach because Doug grinned and paused his game.

“Dude, I was in orbit.” He set the remote on the arm of his chair and grabbed a can of Coke from the drink holder. “But the test came out clean, other than a little alcohol. The E.R. doc told my dad I was probably euphoric from shock.”

“What the hell were you taking?” Nash leaned forward and took two Cokes from the minifridge doubling as an end table.

“Somethin’ called frost. It’s like huffing duster inside a deep freeze, but then you’re high for hours… .”

Chill bumps popped up all over my skin and I shuddered at the memory of dozens of creepy little fiends crawling all over one another in the Netherworld, desperate for a single hit of Demon’s Breath—preferably straight from the source.

Nash handed me a can and raised one brow to ask if I was okay. He’d noticed the shudder. I nodded and popped the top on my Coke.

“Where’d you get it?” Nash leaned back on the couch and opened his own soda.

“From some guy named Everett. I think that’s his last name. I got a physical next Tuesday, and he swore this frost shit wouldn’t show up in a blood test.” Doug’s focus shifted to me. “Hey, Kaylee, do you know if Em’s working tonight?”

“Yeah. I think she’s closing.” Actually, we’d both be off by four in the afternoon, but I didn’t want her hanging out with Doug until I was sure he wasn’t going to freeze-dry her lungs with every kiss.

Nash set his can on the minifridge. “You have any more of this frost?”

“Nah. I had an extra balloon, but I sold it yesterday.” One corner of his mouth twitched twice, and my stomach flipped. The fiend we’d met in the Netherworld had twitched just like that, from withdrawal. “And I huffed the last of mine last night.”

“It comes in a balloon?” Nash frowned and his irises suddenly went still, like he’d flipped the off switch on his emotional gauge.

“Yeah. Black party balloons, like the kind we used to pop in the back of the class to watch Ms. Eddin’s substitute jump. Remember, back in eighth grade?”

Nash nodded absently.

“What friend?” I demanded, my hands both clenched around my Coke. “Who did you sell the other balloon to?” But I knew the answer before Doug even opened his mouth. Because that’s just the kind of luck I had.

Doug picked up his game controller, his hand twitching around the plastic. “Scott Carter.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. I was right. He’d sold his other balloon to my cousin’s boyfriend. And Sophie was cold enough on her own, without exposure to secondhand frost.

4

“THAT’S JUST GREAT!” I buckled my seat belt as Nash shifted into Reverse. “Doug exposes Emma, then sells half his supply to Scott, who’s just going to turn around and drag Sophie into the whole mess. It’s an epidemic. How are we supposed to stop an epidemic?”

“It’s not an epidemic.” Nash twisted in his seat to check behind us while he backed down the driveway. “It’s two guys who have no idea what they’re into.” The car rocked as the tires dropped from the brick driveway onto the smoother surface of the road, then Nash settled into his seat facing forward. “And I really don’t think they could expose Emma or Sophie to secondhand Demon’s Breath. Or would that actually be thirdhand?” He tried on a halfhearted grin to go with his joke, but couldn’t pull it off.

“But you don’t actually know that, right? You can’t know for sure that they haven’t been exposed.”

“No, but I don’t think—”

“Why are you trying to brush this off? This isn’t like having a drink at a party or lighting up behind the shop building. We’re talking about humans inhaling the toxic life force sucked out of a demon from another world.” Quite possibly the weirdest sentence I’d ever said aloud … “And according to your mom, if they survive addiction—and that’s a big if—their scrambled brains’ll make Ozzy Osbourne look rational and coherent.”

And as far as I was concerned, insanity—including the risk of being locked up in some mental ward—was worse than death, which would simply put an end to the terminal drama and angst of human existence. Unless you were stupid enough to sell your immortal soul like Addy had.

Nash’s silence drew my gaze, and I found him staring at me, rather than at the road. “You asked my mother about Demon’s Breath?” His voice held a hard quality I’d rarely heard from him before, like his words formed the bricks in a wall I was destined to crash into.

“In reference to Regan.” I rubbed my palms over the denim covering my legs. “I didn’t mention Doug or Emma.” At least, not in the same sentence as Demon’s Breath. “I’m not stupid, Nash.”

“Neither is she!” His palm slammed into the steering wheel and I jumped, then a sharp jolt of anger skittered up my spine. “She knows. You ran your mouth off, and now she knows everything. Great, Kaylee. Thanks.”

“She doesn’t know. What is wrong with you?” I demanded, fighting to keep from shouting.

“Even if she doesn’t know yet, if this gets as bad as you seem to think it will, she’s going to figure out why you were asking, and then we’re both going to be in serious trouble, Kaylee!”

I rolled my eyes. “If this gets as bad as I know it will, having your mother mad at us will be the least of our problems.” I paused, waiting until my point had a chance to sink in, and when his grip on the wheel eased, I continued, trying to ignore his clenched jaw and tense posture. “We need to know if Scott’s tried it yet.” Thus, whether Sophie was in any potential danger. “And we have to get that balloon away from him, then figure out where this Everett guy is getting his supply.”

Nash exhaled heavily and answered without looking at me. “Yeah. You’re right.” But he didn’t seem very happy about it.

The rest of the ride was quiet and uncomfortable. I was mad at him for getting mad at me, and I didn’t know how to deal with any of that. We’d never had a real fight before.

So we rode in silence and I got lost in my own head, trying to figure out how Demon’s Breath had gotten into the human world in the first place, and how best to wrestle it from the privileged, demanding hands of the

Eastlake football team without turning both of us into social rejects.

I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep until I woke up in the Cinemark parking lot with my face against the cold passenger’s side window. Confused, I blinked and sat up to find Nash watching me, frowning, his hands clenched around the wheel again.

“You okay?” He looked upset, but made no move to reach for me across the center console.

“Yeah.” I stomped on the floorboard, trying to ease the tingling in my left foot, which hadn’t woken up along with the rest of my body. “Just worried about this whole frost mess.” I glanced at the dashboard clock, surprised to see that my shift started in ten minutes. “And tired, I guess.”

Nash nodded, but his worried look held. “Hey, I’m sorry I got mad. I’ll find out if Scott’s tried it yet.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, determined to take him at his word. I didn’t understand his change of heart, but I’d take it.

“You need a ride home?” he asked as I opened the car door and hauled my duffel into my lap from the rear floorboard.

“Em said she’d take me. I’ll call you when I get home.”

His grin that time looked more natural. “Is your dad still working overtime?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll bring pizza if you pick up a movie.”

“Deal.”

He leaned in for a kiss, and I kissed him back, trying to believe everything would be okay. “Don’t worry about Scott’s balloon,” he said as I got out of the car. “I’ll take care of it.”

I CHANGED INTO my ugly red-and-blue polyester uniform in the bathroom, then pulled my hair into a ponytail and met Emma in the box office, where she was already counting the cash in her drawer. Somehow she’d scored us matching shifts selling tickets, which almost never happened. Usually one or the other of us got stuck scooping popcorn or emptying trash cans.

I counted my own drawer in silence, trying to decide whether or not to tell her to stay away from Doug. And what to cite as the reason.

I wasn’t sure if she knew what he was taking, and even if she did, I couldn’t tell her what frost really was. Not without scaring the crap out of her, anyway. And my policy on Emma and Netherworld stuff was to keep the two as far apart as possible, for as long as possible. How was I supposed to know Netherworld trouble would find her all on its own?

Finally, after two hours, a steady stream of customers, and a snack break during which I’d done little more than nod along with her chatter, she went suddenly silent on the stool next to mine, sitting straighter as she aimed a bright smile through the window in front of us. I looked up to find a familiar face halfway down the line across from Emma’s register.

Doug Fuller.

I had to nudge Emma into giving change to an elderly lady taking a small child to see a PG-13 comedy. Emma slid the change and receipt under the window, then glanced at me as her next customer ordered two tickets for a Japanese horror flick. “Doug’s here,” she whispered.

I ran a debit card through the scanner, then dropped it into the dip in the counter beneath the pane of glass. “I see him.” And I didn’t like what I saw.

Oh, I understood the attraction. He was tall, and dark, and undeniably hot, and was just edgy enough—he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, including his own friends—to intrigue Emma. But Doug wasn’t just “she’s so drunk she doesn’t know what she’s doing” dangerous. He was “spend the rest of your life in a padded cell” dangerous. And that was the best-case scenario.

“I knew I should have waited to take my break.” Emma slid three tickets and a receipt beneath the glass to her next customer, glancing at Doug every chance she got.

“Em, what do you see in him? I mean, other than the obvious.” Because for a short-term, nontoxic, casual good time, the obvious would have been plenty.

She shrugged and slid two more tickets under the glass. “I don’t know. He’s hot and he’s fun. Why does it have to be deeper than that? We’re not all looking for a lifetime commitment at sixteen, Kay.”

“I’m not.” I started to argue, then gave up. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for from Nash, but it definitely wasn’t short-term fun. “Em, I don’t think you should—”

“Shhhh!” she hissed as Doug stepped up to the counter, his lopsided grin showing off just one dimple, and I knew I’d lost her. She smiled and leaned forward on the counter, and somehow her uniform clung to her curves, where mine only hung from my angles. “Hey.”

“Hey. So, you wanna come over after you close?” he said, and the people in line behind him started grumbling.

I slid a debit card beneath the glass on my side of the counter and tried not to groan out loud.

Reason number eighteen that Kaylee should not lie: she never gets away with it.

Em frowned. “I’m not closing—it’s a school night. I get off in two hours.”

“But Kaylee said.” Doug glanced at me, and I stared at the counter, relieved when the customer behind him moved into my line, giving me something to do.

“She was wrong.” Em was mad. Of course she was mad. “Meet me at five?”

“Uh, I gotta do something first.” His hand jerked on the counter, and my stomach pitched. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Okay.” Emma smiled for him, but didn’t even look at me until he’d stepped out of line, already heading down the steps toward the parking lot. She served her next customer in silence while I handed back change, then both lines were empty for the moment.

Emma turned on me while Doug veered toward the rental I’d seen in his driveway, now double-parked in two handicapped spots on the front row. “What the hell, Kaylee?”

I twisted on my stool, brainstorming damage control that would not come. “I’m sorry. I just. I don’t think he’s good for you.”

“Because he hit your car? That was an accident, and I’m sure he’ll pay for it.”

“Yeah. He already got me a loaner.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

I sighed, grasping for some way to explain without … well … explaining. My urge to protect her from all things Netherworld was overwhelming, and my gut was all I had to go on at the moment. “He’s not safe, Emma.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want safe. I want fun, and Doug is fun.”

“Yeah, he’s so fun he tried to haul you off while you were drunk. What do you think would have happened next, Em?”

“Nothing I didn’t want to do.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “What? You think Nash is perfect?”

My pulse spiked and I thought about him Influencing his way up my shirt that morning. But Em didn’t know about that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Emma sighed and leaned with both elbows on the counter, watching through the glass as Doug unlocked his car. “I’m just saying guys only come in a couple of models, and Nash didn’t exactly break the mold. So lay off my boyfriend until you’re ready to take a closer look at yours.”

I had no idea what to say to that. So Nash was getting a little pushy. That was nothing compared to Doug breathing toxic fumes all over her.

In the lot, Doug’s arm twitched as he pulled open his car door. Emma didn’t even notice, but I knew what those twitches meant, and I was pretty sure I knew what he had to do before he picked her up. I had to tell her something—had to at least warn her, if I couldn’t keep her away from him.

I took a deep breath and twisted on my stool to face her as Doug pulled out of the lot. “Emma, Doug’s into something new. Something really bad. It’s called frost.”

She frowned, ignoring the customer who stepped up to her window. “What are you talking about?”

“Just listen. Please. It comes in a black balloon, and it will kill him. And if you inhale any of it, it could kill you, too. Or drive you insane. For real.”

Emma’s frown deepened. “You’re serious?”

“So serious.” I looked straight into her brown eyes, wishing she could see the sincerity surely swirling in mine. “Nash and I saved your life once and I’m trying to do it again. If you see Doug with a black balloon or even if he just starts acting weird, go home. Okay? Whatever you’re doing, just stop and go home.”

The man in front of the glass knocked on the window, but we both ignored him.

Emma’s eyes widened and she clutched the counter. “Kaylee, you’re kind of creeping me out.”

“I know.” I took both of her hands when she started to turn toward the window. “But you have to promise you’ll go home if he starts acting weird. Swear.”

“Fine, I swear,” she said as the man knocked harder and a second customer appeared in front of my window. “But I gotta tell ya, you’re the one acting weird right now, Kay.”

I knew that, too. But at least my brand of weird probably wasn’t going to get anybody killed. No one other than me, anyway.

“YOU WANT THE GOOD news, or the bad?” Nash asked as soon as I opened the front door. I took the pizza from him and he pulled the door shut as he stepped inside.

“Bad first.” Because I was a “get it out of the way” kind of gal. I set the pizza box on the coffee table and headed into the kitchen for a couple of sodas. He tossed his jacket over one of the chairs around the table in our eat-in kitchen.

“Okay, Carter has tried the balloon, and I think he was still flying pretty high when I got there this afternoon. He was talking fast and leaping from one subject to the next. I could hardly keep up with him.”