Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

I couldn’t help but wonder.

      “Dekker took the contract into another room. When he came back, he had a woman with him. She was tall and pretty, but she looked at me weird. Like she was hungry and I was dinner.”

      I shifted uncomfortably on the couch until Nash took my hand again, squeezing gently. The feel of his skin against mine did almost as much as his voice to calm me. “What did the woman do?” he asked.

      Addy cleared her throat and continued, eyes still pinched closed. “She held my hands and I started to feel dizzy. I closed my eyes and when I opened them—” she opened her eyes to look at us then, as if acting out her memory “—Dekker’s office was gone.”

      Both brothers met my gaze, confirming my suspicion. Dekker had a rogue reaper in his pocket.

      “Where were you?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. I’d peeked into the Netherworld several times, but had never actually been there.

      “I don’t know.” Her eyes went distant as she sank back into her own memory. “We were standing on a white marble floor in a room so big I couldn’t see the walls, but I could tell from the echo that there were walls. And there was this weird gray haze over everything for a minute or so. Then that cleared all at once, like it was never there. But I know I saw it….”

      Nash glanced at Tod, and something unspoken seemed to pass between them. I elbowed Nash, hoping for an explanation, but he only held up one finger, asking me to wait. I nodded reluctantly, then sipped silently from my can as he continued. “What happened next, once the haze cleared?”

      “Nothing, at first.” Addy’s eyes regained focus, and her gaze held mine for a moment before sliding to Tod. “Then I heard footsteps on the marble, and saw someone walking toward us from behind the woman.”

      “That was the hellion?” Tod asked, his words clipped in anger. Or was that fear? “What did he look like? Tell us everything you can think of.”

      Addy closed her eyes again in concentration. “He looked pretty normal. Like any businessman. He wore a plain black suit and had brown hair. He didn’t look very scary, so I started to relax. But then I saw his eyes. They had no color. At all.” Her eyes opened then, glazed with fear so fresh I could almost taste it. “They were just solid black balls stuck in his head, with no pupils or irises. It was … weird. I couldn’t tell if they were moving, and didn’t know whether or not he was looking at me.”

      Tod and Nash looked at each other again, then back at Addy. “What did he do?”

      “He kissed me.” Addison’s voice broke on the last word, and she began to tremble all over. When Tod stood and crossed between her chair and the couch, her eyes caught his movement and were drawn back into focus.

      “Are you okay?” I asked as Tod slid the closet door into the wall and pulled a blanket from the bottom shelf.

      “Yeah.” She smiled in thanks when Tod draped the blanket over her lap and tucked it around her sides. “I just don’t want to think about what I did. About what I let him do.”

      I nodded sympathetically, and Nash cleared his throat. “Okay, so he kissed you …?”

      “Yeah, only it wasn’t really a kiss.” Addison leaned forward to sip from her can, then set it on the table and pulled the blanker tighter around herself. “His mouth opened, and he … sucked on me.”

      “He sucked on you?” I repeated, confused by her phrasing. “Isn’t that kind of what a kiss is?” Unless I’ve been doing it all wrong …

      Her teeth began to chatter, and it took obvious effort for her to speak clearly. “He sucked on me like I was a human Popsicle, and it felt like I’d swallowed a hurricane. Like he’d stirred something up, and I could feel it whipping around inside me. Then it just went. through my lips and into him.”

      Wow. Hellions suck. Literally.

      “When it was over, I was cold on the inside. I was shaking so badly I could hardly stand. I felt so empty I thought my body would collapse in on itself, like I was a vacuum that couldn’t be filled. I knew then that I’d made a mistake. But it was too late.”

      Addy leaned forward to pick up her can again, but it shook violently in her hands and sloshed soda over the sides. She set it down in disgust and pressed her hands together between her knees, trying in vain to stop shivering. “The man—the hellion—just stepped back and licked his lips, like I tasted good. He smiled at me, and I felt dirty. Like I could scrub for hours and never get rid of his filth.” Her hands rubbed at her jeans again, pressing so hard her fingers went white. “Then he leaned down and kissed me again, only this time he exhaled into my mouth, and his breath felt thick and heavy.”

      She paused and closed her eyes, rubbing her face roughly as if to wipe the memory from her mind. But it wouldn’t go. I knew that from experience. The worst memories stick with us, while the nice ones always seem to slip through our fingers.

      “I’d thought I was cold before, but that was nothing compared to being filled with his breath. Filled with him. The demon took part of me and left part of himself in its place. I could feel him rolling through me. Exploring me from the inside, so cold he burned every part of me he touched. The first few times I exhaled, my breath was white, like in the middle of winter. My teeth chattered for two days afterward. But the worst was the chill.” She shuddered and clutched the blanket tighter. “That awful, hollow cold, swallowing me from the inside out.”

      “When did that go away?” I asked, my voice so soft and horrified I barely heard it.

      Addison looked at me and smiled softly, her expression empty, and all the creepier for that fact. Then she reached up with one hand and pulled her left eyelid up. With her free hand, she pinched the front of her eye, and something fell out onto her palm.

      “When did the chill fade?” She blinked then, and when she looked at me, I saw that without her contact lens, her left eye was solid white, with no pupil and no iris. “It never did.”

       8

      “WHOA.” Nash leaned closer for a better view, as my heart leaped into my throat. And if I weren’t busy being horrified by Addison’s featureless eye, I might have been surprised by his fearless curiosity. “The demon did that to your eye?”

      Addison nodded. “Both of them.” She held out her hand so we could see the small, curved, plastic disk cradled in her palm. It was too big to be a regular contact lens, and she must have seen my confusion. “Demon technology. Dekker provides them, to make us look normal.”

      My pulse still racing uneasily, I leaned over for a better look and noticed that the lens was detailed with the specifics of a human eye. Addison’s eerie pale blue iris was right there in her palm, surrounding a pinpoint black pupil.

      “The pupils even dilate and constrict, depending on the amount of light in the room.” She smiled bitterly and blinked with a creepy, mismatched set of eyes. “Don’tcha just love foreign technology?”

      I had no answer for that, and hoped she was being ironic. I wasn’t particularly fond of technology that allowed elements of the Netherworld to hide in our world. But I did have questions. “Why did he do that? Wouldn’t it be in the hellion’s best interest to avoid making you stand out?”

      “He had no choice.” Tod scowled. “It’s a side effect of the process. You know how they say the eyes are the windows to the soul?” he asked, and I swallowed thickly before nodding. I didn’t like where this was headed. “Evidently they mean that literally. Once the soul is gone, there’s nothing to see through the windows.”

      Nash whistled softly. “That has to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” And that meant a lot coming from a bean sidhe.

      “You want me to put the contact back in, don’t you?” Addison cocked her head and gave