LITMIR.BIZ

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with shaking hands.

      Emma blinked up at me, and her forehead furrowed in confusion. “Why am I… on the floor?”

      I opened my mouth to answer, but the residual pain in my throat reminded me I’d lost my voice. Nash shot me a grin of total, exhilarating triumph and answered for me. “You’re fine. I think you passed out.”

      “She had no pulse.” The round woman sat back from Emma, her face flushed in bewilderment. “She was. I checked. She should be.”

      “She passed out,” Nash repeated firmly. “She probably hit her head when she fell, but she’s fine now.” To demonstrate, he held out his hand for one of hers, then pulled her upright, her legs stretched out on the floor in front of her.

      “You shouldn’t move her!” the principal scolded from my side. “She could have broken something.”

      “I’m fine.” Emma’s voice was thick with confusion. “Nothing hurts.”

      A quiet murmur rose around us, as the news spread to those too far back to have seen the show. Whispered words, like “died” and “no pulse” set me on edge, but when Nash reached across Emma’s lap to take my hand, the anxiety receded.

      Until a second scream shattered the growing calm.

      Heads turned and people gasped. Emma and Nash stared in horror over my shoulder, and I twisted to follow their gaze.

      The crowd still surrounded us, but through gaps between the bodies, I saw enough to piece together what had happened.

      Someone else was down.

      I couldn’t see who it was, because someone was already bent over her, performing CPR. But I knew by the straight black skirt and slim, smooth calves that it was a girl, and I knew from the pattern that she would be young and beautiful.

      Nash’s hand tightened around mine, and I glanced up to find his face as tense with regret as mine surely was. We’d done the unthinkable. We’d saved Emma at the expense of someone else’s life. Not one of ours—an innocent, uninvolved girl’s.

      I arched both eyebrows at him, asking silently if he was willing to try it again. He nodded gravely but looked less than confident that we could carry it off. And in the back of my mind, tragic certainty lingered: if we saved another one, the reaper would simply strike again. And again. Or he’d take one of us. Either way, we couldn’t afford to play his game.

      But I couldn’t let someone else die for no reason.

      I opened my mouth to scream—and nothing came out. I’d forgotten my voice was gone, and this time so was the urge to wail. There was no panic. No fresh pain clawing up the inside of my throat.

      Horrified, I looked to Nash for advice, but he only frowned back at me. “If you can’t sing, she’s already gone,” he whispered. “The urge ends once the reaper has her soul.”

      Which was why my song for Meredith had ended as soon as she’d died—we’d made no bid for her soul.

      Devastated, I could only watch as people scurried around the dead girl, trying to help, trying to see, trying to understand. And in the middle of the confusion, one of the onlookers caught my eye. Because she wasn’t looking on. While everyone else was focused on the girl lying on the gym floor, one slim arm thrown across the green three-point line, one woman stood against the back corner, staring at…me.

      She didn’t move, and in fact seemed eerily frozen against all the commotion surrounding us. As I watched, she smiled at me slowly, intimately, as if we’d shared some kind of secret.

      And we had. She was the reaper.

      “Nash.” I croaked, and groped for his hand, hesitant to take my eyes from the oddly motionl ess woman.

      “I see her.” But he’d barely spoken the last word before she was gone. She blinked out of existence, as silently and suddenly as Tod had, and in the bedlam, no one else seemed to notice.

      Frustration and fury blazed through me, singeing me from the inside out. The reaper was taunting us.

      We’d known the possible consequence and had taken the risk anyway, and now someone had died to pay for our decision. And the reaper had probably known all along that we couldn’t stop her.

      And the worst part was that when I looked at Emma, who had no idea what her life had cost, I didn’t regret my choice. Not even a little bit.

       17

      OVER THE NEXT FEW minutes, details filtered back to us through the crowd, now thankfully focused on the other side of the room. The girl was a junior. A cheerteader named Julie Duke. I knew the name and could call up a vague image of her face. She was pretty and well liked, and if memory served, more friendly and accepting than most of the other pom-pom-wavers.

      When Julie still had no pulse several minutes after she collapsed, adults began herding the students toward the doors, almost as one. Nash and I were allowed to stay because we were Emma’s ride, but the teachers wouldn’t let her leave until the EMTs had checked her out. However, Julie was the top priority, so when the medics arrived, the principal led them directly to the cluster of people around her.

      But it was too late. Even if I hadn’t already known that, it would have been obvious by their posture alone, and the unhurried way they went about their business, and eventually wheeled her out on a sheet-draped gurney. Then a single EMT in black pants and a pressed uniform shirt walked across the gym toward us, first-aid kit in hand. He examined Emma thoroughly, but found nothing that could have caused her collapse. Her pulse, blood pressure, and breathing were all fine. Her skin was flushed and healthy, her eyes were dilating, and her reflexes were …reflexing.

      The medic concluded that she’d simply fainted, but said she should come to the hospital for a more thorough exam, just in case. Emma tried to decline, but the principal trumped her decision with a call to Ms. Marshall, who said she’d meet her daughter there.

      When I was sure Sophie had a ride home, Nash and I followed the ambulance to the hospital, where the triage nurse put Emma in a small, bright room to await examination. And her mother. As soon as the nurse left, closing the door on his way out, Emma turned to face us both, her expression a mixture of fear and confusion.

      “What happened?” she demanded, ignoring the pillows to sit straight on the hospital bed, legs crossed yoga-style. “The truth.”

      I glanced at Nash, who’d pulled a rubber glove from a box mounted on the wall, but he only shrugged and nodded in her direction, giving me the clear go-ahead. “Um.” I croaked, unsure how much to tell her. Or how to phrase it. Or whether my still-froggy voice would hold out. “You died.”

      “I died? “ Emma’s eyes went huge and round. Whatever she’d expected to hear, I hadn’t said it.

      I nodded hesitantly. “You died, and we brought you back.”

      She swallowed thickly, glancing from me to Nash—who was now blowing up the disposable glove—and back. “You guys saved me? Like, you did CPR?” Her arms relaxed, and her shoulders fell in relief——she’d obviously been expecting something … weirder. I considered simply nodding, but no one else would corroborate our story. We had to tell her the truth—or at least one version of it.

      “Not exactly.” I faltered, raising one brow at Nash, asking him silently for help.

      He sighed and let the air out of the glove, then sank onto the edge of Emma’s bed. I sat in front of him and leaned back against his chest. I’d barely broken physical contact with him since singing to Emma’s soul, and I wasn’t looking to do it anytime soon. “Okay, we’re going to tell you what’s going on—” However, I knew when he squeezed my hand that he wasn’t going to tell her everything, and he didn’t want me to either. “But first I need you to swear you won’t tell anyone else. No one. Ever. Even if you’re still living ninety

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