LITMIR.BIZ

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empty eyes filled with tears again, and I couldn’t remember ever being scared of a crying eighth-grader before. But I was scared then. The incongruity of her very human tears with those distinctly inhuman eyes gave me chills in places I didn’t even know I could get cold. “Will they stay like this?” She turned hesitantly toward the mirror again, then away before she could possibly have really seen herself. “Why do they look so … empty?”

      “Because they’re empty,” Tod said, and we all spun around at the sound of his voice. Tod stood near the kitchen doorway, next to a small redheaded boy who barely came up to the reaper’s shoulders. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, and without your soul, there’s nothing for them to reflect.”

      Dekker’s pet reaper went stiff on the edge of the room. Was Tod really that scary?

      “Do you have another brother?” I whispered, standing on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “And did your dad have red hair?”

      “That’s Levi,” he whispered back, and the little boy nodded politely at me, shrugging with his hands in the pockets of a baggy pair of khakis.

      “Levi-the-reaper?” I asked, a little embarrassed when my voice went high with surprise. After all the truly weird stuff I’d seen since discovering I was a bean sidhe, a freckle-faced little-boy reaper shouldn’t have fazed me in the least. But it did. “Tod’s boss, Levi-the-reaper?”

      “The one and only.” Levi shot me a disarmingly sweet smile. One his eyes didn’t match. Then he turned a ferocious glare on the rogue reaper. “Bana.”

      She froze with that one syllable—her own name, spoken in a child’s high, soft voice—and her fingers twitched nervously at her sides. She looked like she wanted to run, but couldn’t.

      “I wasn’t sure who to expect, but I must admit your name never occurred to me.” Levi strolled forward like a kid in the park, and I had the absurd thought that he should have been carrying a baseball bat on his shoulder, or a skateboard under one arm. He stopped several feet from Bana and her boss, and gave John Dekker only a fleeting glance, as if he didn’t recognize one of the most famous faces in the world.

      Which struck me as especially ironic, considering the reaper’s apparent age.

      “Who is this?” Dekker asked, but before Bana could answer—and I seriously doubt she would have—the boy pulled his freckled right hand from his pocket.

      “Levi Van Zant. Senior reaper in this district. I’ve come to relieve Bana of her duties. And her soul.”

      Bana’s arms went stiff in anticipation, and I realized she was trying to blink out of Addy’s house, and out of Levi’s reach. My breath caught in my throat. We were going to lose her. But did it even matter? We were too late to stop her from ferrying Regan to the Netherworld.

      But despite her obvious effort to disappear, she remained fully corporeal.

      And before I could release my breath—before Bana could even suck one in—Levi’s small hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. His fingers barely met on the back of her arm, but any doubt I had about the strength of his grip was put to rest with one look at her face, twisted in agony, as if his very touch burned.

      “Bana, look at me.”

      She tried to refuse. Her free hand clawed uselessly at the wall behind her, scratching the Sheetrock, resistance etched into the terrified, angry lines of her jaw and forehead. But she couldn’t resist. Nor could she blink out. Somehow, Levi was blocking her abilities. Guaranteeing her cooperation.

      Would Tod ever have that power?

      “Look at me, Bana.”

      Her eyes flew open, and a cry leaked from her mouth. She looked straight into Levi’s green eyes, which seemed to … shine. To glow with a bright, cold light.

      We watched, every one of us fascinated. Including Dekker, but especially Regan Page, who was getting her first terrifying glimpse of the world she’d just entered. The world she’d sold herself to.

      Bana’s shoulders slumped and her eyelids fluttered, as if they’d close. Levi’s grip on her arm tightened visibly. Dekker stepped back and the reaper went suddenly stiff. Her eyes opened again, but began to dull immediately. To simply … go dark.

      And that’s when the panic hit. My heart pounded, bruising the inside of my chest. Sweat formed between Nash’s hand and mine. The cry rose in my throat, clawing me from the inside out, demanding an exit. An audience. Bana’s soul song wanted to be heard.

      I clenched my jaw against the wail, my mind whirring with questions.

      A soul song for a reaper? It made sense—she did have a soul—yet somehow I’d never expected to actually wail for a reaper. Did that mean that Nash and I could save her if we wanted to? But why would we want to? And if we did, would someone else be taken in her place? Did doomed reaper souls require an exchange?

      Surely not. Tod had said reaper souls were much rarer than human souls, so if we were to save Bana, would another reaper have to die? Because one human soul wouldn’t be enough, would it?

      The kernel of an idea I’d had earlier exploded in my head so violently it felt like my skull would split wide open. Because it wasn’t just an idea. It was an idea. The kind of idea that could change lives.

      Or save souls.

      My hand clutched Nash’s, and he tore his gaze from Bana to look at me in surprise, at almost the exact moment the scream leaked from my sealed lips. Just a sliver of sound at first, sharp and painful, but controlled. For the moment.

      “Bana?” he whispered, hazel eyes wide, forehead crinkled.

      I nodded and let another slice of sound slide from me.

      Tod noticed then, and shot a questioning glance at Nash, who could only shrug. “You can make it stop, Kaylee,” he said finally, his lips brushing my ear, his peaceful Influence brushing my heart. “I’ve seen you do it. Bring it back. Hold it in.”

      But I twisted away from him, shaking my head adamantly. I didn’t want to hold it in. I wanted to let it go. Let my shriek pierce every skull in the room and rattle the windows. And let it capture Bana’s filthy soul.

      The rogue reaper was about to pay for her part in Dekker’s soul-trafficking ring, and I was going to personally wring the recompense from her.

      Addy and Regan watched me now, rather than Bana and Levi, and their stares made me nervous. Broke my concentration.

      I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them along with my mouth. Sharp spikes of sound burst from me, washing over the room like a wave of glass shards. Addy, Regan, and Dekker flinched as one, as their brains were pierced by the evidence of my intent. Their hands flew to their ears. Their eyes squeezed shut. Their noses wrinkled in displeasure bordering on pain.

      Levi shuddered, but his concentration never faltered. Bana was in too much pain from the brutal removal of her soul to even notice what I was doing. But Nash and Tod each wore odd smiles, their faces almost slack in pleasure. They heard my wail as a beautiful, eerie song, a melody without equivalent in the human world. A gift from the female bean sidhe, which only the males of our species could experience.

      Even the undead males, apparently.

      The panic ebbed inside me, riding the sliver of sound out of my core and into the room. With that pressure released, I was able to focus on my part in the plan I was forming. And to somehow communicate Tod’s part to him.

      An instant later, the last ember of light died in Bana’s eyes, and her soul rose from her body. It looked exactly like a human soul—pale and formless. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it. Shouldn’t a reaper’s soul be different, somehow? And if it wasn’t, would my plan even work?

      Only one way to find out …

      I sang for her soul. Called to it, suspending it in the air like a thick fog as

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