Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

I didn’t know how to deal with a crying father. I barely knew how to deal with a normal one.

      “Um, anyone else hungry? I didn’t get any supper.”

      “I could eat,” Nash said, and I was sure he’d picked up on my need to break the tension.

      Or maybe he was just hungry.

      “Is macaroni and cheese okay?” I asked, already halfway out of the room by the time he nodded. Nash and my dad followed me through the dining room and into the kitchen, where I knelt to dig a bag of elbow pasta from the back of a bottom cabinet.

      I’d thought I was ready. That I could deal with whatever he had to say. But the truth was that I couldn’t just sit there and watch my father cry. I needed something to keep my hands busy while my heart broke.

      “You can cook?” My father eyed me in surprise as I pulled a pot from another cabinet, and a block of Velveeta from my uncle’s shelf in the fridge.

      “It’s just pasta. Uncle Brendon taught me.” He’d also taught me to hide the occasional bag of chocolate behind his stash of pork rinds, which Aunt Val would never touch, even to throw away in a frenzied junk food purge.

      My father sat on one of the bar stools, still watching as I turned the burner on and sprinkled salt into the water. Nash settled on a stool two down from him and crossed his arms on the countertop.

      “So what do you want to know first?” My dad met

      my gaze over the cheese I was unwrapping on a cutting

      board.

      I shrugged and pulled a knife from a drawer on my left. “I think I have a pretty good handle on the whole bean sidhe thing, thanks to Nash.” My father cringed, and I might have felt guilty if he’d ever made any attempt to explain things himself. “But why did Aunt Val say I was living on borrowed time? What does that mean?”

      This time he flinched like I’d slapped him. He’d obviously been expecting something else—probably a technical question from the How to Be a Bean Sidhe handbook, my copy of which had probably gotten lost in the mail.

      My father sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “That’s a long story, Kaylee, and one I’d rather tell in private.”

      “No.” I shook my head firmly and ripped open the bag of pasta. “You flew halfway around the world because you owe me an explanation.” Not to mention an apology. “I want to hear it now.”

      My father’s brow rose in surprise, and more than a hint of irritation. Then he frowned. “You sound just like your mother.”

      Yeah, well, I had to inherit a backbone from someone. “Wouldn’t she want you to tell me whatever it is you have to say?”

      He couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d punched him. “I honestly don’t know. But you’re right. You’re entitled to all the facts.” He closed his eyes briefly, as if gathering his thoughts.

      “It all started the night you died.”

       19

      “WHAT?” MY HAND fisted around a cube of cheese, and it squished between my fingers. My pulse pounded so hard in my throat I thought it would explode. “You mean the night Mom died.”

      My father nodded. “She died that night too. But you went first.”

      “Whoa.” Nash leaned forward on his stool, glancing back and forth between me and my father. “Kaylee died?”

      My dad sighed, settling in for a long story. “It was February, the year you were three. The roads were icy. We don’t get much winter weather in Texas, so when it does come, no one quite knows how to handle it. Including me.”

      “Wait, I’ve heard all this before.” I dumped the pasta into the now-boiling water, and a puff of steam wafted into my face, coating my skin in a layer of instant dampness and warmth. “You were driving, and we were broad-sided by another car on an icy road. I broke my right arm and leg, and Mom died.”

      My father nodded miserably, then swaltowed thickly and continued. “We were on our way here, for Sophie’s birthday party. Your mother thought the weather was too bad, but I said we’d be fine. It was a short trip, and your cousin adored you. The whole thing was my fault.”

      “What happened?” I asked, my cheesy hand forgotten.

      My father blinked slowly, as if warding off tears. “There was a deer in the road. I wasn’t going that fast, but the road was icy, and the deer was huge. I swerved to avoid it, and the car slid on the ice. We wound up sideways in the road. An oncoming car smashed into us. Near the rear on the passenger’s side. Your car seat was crushed.”

      I closed my eyes and gripped the countertop as a wave of vertigo threatened to knock me over. No. My mother had died in that accident, not me. I’d been pretty banged up, but I’d lived.

      I was living proof of that!

      My eyes opened, focusing on my father instantly. “Dad, I remember parts of that. I was in the hospital for weeks. I had two casts. We still have pictures. But I’m alive. See?” I spread my arms across the countertop to demonstrate my point. “So what happened? The paramedics brought me back?”

      The truth was looming, a great, dark cloud on my mind’s horizon. I could almost see it, but I refused to bring it into focus. Refused to acknowledge the coming storm until it broke over my head, drenching me with a cold, cruel wash of the answers I’d thought I wanted.

      I no longer wanted them.

      But my father only shook his head. “They didn’t get there in time. The man driving the other car was a doctor, but his wife hit her head on something, and he was trying to wake her up. By the time he came to help us, it was all over.”

      “No.” I stirred the pasta so hard boiling water slopped onto the stovetop, hissing on the flat burner.

      Nash’s hand landed softly on mine, though I hadn’t heard him move, and I looked up to meet his sympathetic gaze. “You died, Kaylee. You know it’s true.”

      My father nodded again, and when his eyes squeezed shut, two silent tears trailed down his stubbly cheeks. “I had to go in through the driver’s side and pull the whole car seat out. When I picked you up, you didn’t make a sound, even though your right arm and leg were bent all out of shape.” His eyes opened, and the pain swirling there held me captive. “I held you like a baby, and you just looked at me. Then your mom crawled out of the car and took your good hand. She was crying, and she couldn’t talk, and I could see the truth on her face. I knew we were going to lose you.”

      He sniffled and I stood still, afraid that if I moved, he’d stop talking. And even more frightened because part of me really wanted him to stop. “You died, right there on the side of the road, with snow melting in your hair.”

      “Then why am I still here?” I whispered, but I already knew the answer. “It was my time, wasn’t it?” I flicked on the faucet and held my hands under the warm water, scrubbing cheese from between my fingers as I eyed my father. “I was supposed to die, and you brought me back.”

      “Yes.” His voice cracked on that one syllable, and his face was starting to flush with the effort to hold back more tears. “We couldn’t stand it. She sang for you, and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I could barely see, I was crying so hard. But then I saw you. Your soul. So small and white in the dark. It was too soon. I couldn’t let you go.”

      I turned off the water and grabbed a towel from a drawer near my hip, dripping on the floor as I dried my hands, then leaned over the bar and stared at him. “Tell me how it happened.”

      He didn’t hesitate this time. “I made your mother look at me, to make sure she understood. I told her to take care of you. That I was going to bring you back. She was