Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

replaced by a cold, heavy feeling of regret. Of mounting guilt. “So not only did I fail to warn Meredith, I let her die, when we could have saved her. Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t stop the flash of anger that realization brought. Meredith would still be alive if I’d known how to help her!

      “No, Kaylee.” Nash tilted my chin up until I saw the dark regret swirling in his eyes. “We can’t just go around shoving souls back into dead bodies. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t even warn someone of his own death. It’s physically impossible, because you can’t do anything else while you’re singing a soul’s song. Right?”

      I nodded miserably. “It’s completely consuming …” Though I still couldn’t imagine that horrible screech sounding like the song he’d described. “But there has to be a way around that.” I sidestepped him on the wobbly bridge and took the steps two at a time. My mind was racing and I needed to move. “We could work out some kind of signal or something. When I get a premonition, I could point, and you could go warn the …um …predeceased.”

      Nash caught up with me, already shaking his head again. He caught my arm and pulled me to a halt, but let go when I stiffened. “Even if you could warn someone, it wouldn’t change anything. It would just make the poor guy’s last moments terrifying.” I started to shake my head, but he rushed on. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Kaylee. You can’t stop death.”

      “But you just said we could.” I leaned against the side of a green plastic twisty-slide, frowning up at him. “Together, we could have saved Meredith. Maybe even Heidi Anderson. Doesn’t it bother you that we didn’t even try?”

      “Of course it does, but saving Meredith wouldn’t have stopped her death. It would only have prolonged her life. And reanimating someone whose time has come carries serious consequences. And believe me, the price isn’t worth

      p^ayⁱⁿg.”

      “What does that mean?” How could saving someone not be worth the price?

      Nash’s gaze burned into me, as if to underline the importance of what he was going to say. “A life for a life, Kaylee. If we’d saved Meredith, someone else would have been taken instead. Could be one of us, or anyone nearby.”

       Ouch.

      I sank onto the rubber mat at the base of the slide, my eyes closed in horror. Okay, that was a high price. And even if I’d been willing to pay it myself, I had no right to make that decision for an innocent bystander. Or for Nash. Yet I couldn’t let the issue go. No matter what he said, no matter how logical the arguments, letting Meredith die felt wrong, and I couldn’t stand the thought of ever having to do that again.

      Nash sighed and sank onto the mat with me, his arms propped on his knees. “Kaylee, I know how you feel, but that’s the way death works. When someone’s time comes, he has to go, and you’ll only drive yourself crazy looking for loopholes in the system. Trust me.” The anguish in Nash’s voice resonated in my heart, and I ached to touch him. To ease whatever grief lent such pain to his words.

      “You’ve tried, haven’t you?” I whispered. He nodded, and I leaned over to let my mouth meet his, lingering when the contact shot sparks through my veins. I wanted to hold him, to somehow make it all better. “Who was it?”

      “My dad.”

      Stunned, I leaned back to see his face, and the hurt I found there seemed to leach through me, leaving me cold with dread. “What happened?”

      Nash exhaled slowly and leaned back against the side of the slide. Light from the streetlamp above played on his hand when he rubbed his forehead, as if to fend off the memory. “He fell off a ladder trying to paint the shutters on a second-story window and hit his head on some bricks bordering my mom’s flower bed. She was pruning the bushes when he fell, so she saw it happen.”

      “Where were you?” I spoke softly, afraid he’d stop talking if my voice shattered his memories.

      “In the backyard, but I came running when she screamed. When I got there, she was crying, holding his head on her lap. There was blood all over her legs. Then my dad stopped breathing, and she started singing.

      “It was beautiful, Kaylee.” His words grew urgent and he sat straighter, like he was trying to convince me. “Eerie and sad. And there was his soul, just kind of hanging above them both. I tried to guide it. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I had to try to save him. But he made me stop. His soul. I could hear it. He said he had to go, and I should take care of my mom. He said she would need me, and he was right. She felt guilty because she’d asked him to paint the shutters. She hasn’t been the same since.”

      I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I had to take the next one. “How old were you?”

      “Ten.” His eyes closed. “My dad’s was the first soul I ever saw, and I couldn’t save him. Not without killing someone else, and he wouldn’t let me risk my own life. Or my mom’s.” He opened his eyes to stare at me intently. “And he was right about that too, Kaylee. We can’t take an innocent life to spare someone who’s supposed to die.”

      He’d get no argument from me there. But. “What if Meredith wasn’t supposed to die? What if it wasn’t her time?”

      “It was. That’s how it works.” Nash’s voice held the conviction of a child professing belief in Santa Claus. He was a little too sure, as if the strength of his assertion could make up for some secret doubt.

      “How do you know?”

      “Because there are schedules. Official lists. There are people who make sure death is carried out the way it’s supposed to be.”

      I blinked at him, eyes narrowed in surprise. “Are you serious?”

      “Unfortunately.” A breeze of bitterness swept across his face, but it was gone before I was even sure it was there in the first place.

      “That sounds so …bureaucratic.”

      He shrugged. “It’s a very well-organized system.”

      “Every system has flaws, Nash.” He started to disagree, but I rushed on. “Think about it. Three girls have died in the same area in the past three days, each with no known cause. They all just fell over dead. That’s not the natural order of things. It’s the very definition of ‘unnatural.’ Or at least ‘suspicious.’”

      “It’s definitely unusual,” he admitted. Nash rubbed his temples again and suddenly sounded very tired. “But even if they weren’t supposed to die, there’s nothing we can do about it without getting someone else killed.”

      “Okay.” I couldn’t argue with that logic. “But if someone isn’t meant to die, does the penalty for saving him still apply? ”

      Nash looked shocked suddenly, as if that possibility had never occurred to him. “I don’t know. But I know someone who might.”

       10

      “SO WHO’S THIS TOD?” I slurped the last of my soda, watching as passing headlights briefly illuminated his features, then abandoned him to short stretches of shadow. It was like rediscovering him with each beam of light that found his face, and I couldn’ t stop watching.

      “He works second shift at the hospital.” Nash flicked his blinker on as he made a left-hand turn.

      “ Doing what?”

      “ Tod’s …an intern.” He took another left, and Arlington Memorial lay before us on the right, the mirrored windows of the new surgical tower reflecting the streetlights back at us.

      I gathered the wrappers from our meal and shoved them into the paper sack on the floorboard between my feet. “I didn’ t know interns had set schedules.”

      Nash turned into the dimly lit parking