If I Die. Rachel Vincent

you know.”

      I nodded, like I’d really known.

      “Brain-dead from the moment she arrived, but she keeps breathing, and as long as they keep feeding her—” Nolan ran one hand gently over the tube protruding from Mrs. Sussman’s left arm “—she’ll be here just like this.”

      “How awful …” At least my mother’d had a clean death. This was … I didn’t even have words for what this was, though it had to come close to my own aunt’s eternal torture. “Thanks, but I … I have to go.” I backed away from the bed, suddenly grateful for the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to linger like this. At least, not for more than six days.

      In the hall I jogged for the elevator, running away from pain and anguish that put my own into startling perspective, and ran right into Tod. Literally.

      “You okay?” he said, and I knew without asking that no one else could see or hear him, though he was fully corporeal for me.

      “What are you doing here?” I whispered, tugging him toward the elevator, grateful that Nurse Nolan had evidently found something to do in Mrs. Sussman’s room.

      Tod dug for something in his pocket while I jabbed the call button. “Your dad asked me to find you. You forgot your phone.” He handed me my cell, and when my fingers brushed his, there was a sudden swell of color in his eyes—not quite a swirl, but … something. “And that’s not all you forgot….”

      “Huh?” I stepped into the elevator, and he stepped in after me, grinning, the teasing light in his eyes comfortable for its familiarity when everything else around me now felt cold, and foreign, and sharp.

      “You forgot your date.”

      Crap! I closed my eyes, cursing myself silently. I’d forgotten all about Nash.

      4

      “What were you doing at the hospital?” Tod asked, as I shifted into Reverse and backed out of my parking space.

      “Trying to distract myself from the fact that next week, my address changes from a house number to a plot number.” But that distraction had proved temporary, and without Danica’s problems to occupy my mind, my own tumbled back in, clamoring for attention like a dog willing to howl until it’s fed.

      Tod chuckled, and oddly enough, coming from a reaper, laughter in the face of death didn’t seem terribly inappropriate. “Yeah. Been there.”

      And suddenly, as I pulled out of the lot and onto the street, I realized Tod was the only person I knew who might possibly understand how I felt.

      I glanced at his profile as I braked for the stop sign at the corner. “Did you know you were going to die before it actually happened?” My voice was barely a whisper—a trembling reflection of the quiet terror lurking at the back of my mind, leaping into the spotlight every time a failed distraction left me vulnerable.

      “Only for about five minutes.”

      “Were you scared?” Because I felt like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, ticking toward my last seconds, dizzy from the motion, but unable to stop….

      “Like I’ve never been, before or since.”

      I had a million other questions, but his answers wouldn’t help me. They probably wouldn’t even be relevant, because my death wouldn’t mirror his, or anyone else’s. I was on my own, in death. I knew that, if little else.

      “Kaylee?” Tod said, as I turned the corner into my neighborhood.

      “Yeah?” I was hardly listening now, lost in my own thoughts, and the effort not to think them.

      “I’m scared now.”

      Something in his voice made me look at him, in the fading glow from a passing streetlight. Then something in his eyes made me pull over, two streets from home, in front of a house I didn’t recognize.

      “Why are you scared?” I asked, and suddenly the night seemed so quiet, beyond the soft rumble of the engine.

      “Because I can’t fix this.” He swallowed thickly, one hand braced on the dashboard. “There’s nothing I can do, and that’s hardly ever true for me, and I hate how helpless and useless it makes me feel. But at the same time, that makes me feel human, and I haven’t felt human much lately, either.”

      “Because Addison’s gone?”

      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.