If I Die. Rachel Vincent

once, and won. I’d been saved, at the expense of my mother’s life. As badly as I wanted to live, it hardly seemed fair for me to cheat death again. No one else I knew had even had one second chance, much less two.

      Then there was the other problem. The big one: extending my lifeline—again—would mean killing someone else instead. Again. And I couldn’t live with that.

      “Of course we’re going to fight it!” my dad insisted. “There are ways around death, at least temporarily. We know that better than anyone. We’ve done it, once.”

      “That’s the problem,” Tod said softly, his grin notably absent. “One of them, anyway.”

      My father scowled at the reaper. “What does that mean?”

      “The rules are very clear about second extensions.” He hesitated, and I heard what he was going to say next before he even formed the words. “There are none.”

      For a long moment, there was only silence, and the deep, cold terror that settled into my chest was like hands of ice massaging my heart. In spite of my determination not to let anyone else pay for my continued existence, the death of that possibility echoed into eternity, like no fear I’d ever felt.

      “There have to be exceptions,” my father insisted, as usual, the first to recover his voice after severe systemic shock. “There are always exceptions.”

      Tod shook his head slowly, and a single unruly blond curl fell over his forehead. “Not for this. I already asked around, and … well, it just doesn’t happen. It can’t.”

      “But you’re a reaper!” My dad stood, his voice thundering throughout the room. I felt like I should do something. Make him stop yelling, or at least try to calm him down. “What good are you if you can’t even help out a friend?”

      “Dad …” I protested, uncomfortably aware that he’d never referred to Tod as a friend before. But I guess that’s what they say about desperate times …

      “Kaylee, this is your life we’re talking about,” my father said, and a chill raced through me when I realized his hands were shaking. “We’re not going to let this happen. We’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

      And suddenly I understood what he was saying. He’d tried to give me his lifeline before, and he’d do it again without a second thought.

      “No, Dad …” I whispered, fear and shock rendering my voice a pathetic whisper.

      My father ignored me and turned to look at Tod. “But I can’t do it without help.” The blues in my dad’s eyes churned with desperation, the strongest emotion I’d ever seen displayed there, and I was only seeing it now because he couldn’t hide it. He’d lost control, and that scared me more than anything. “Please, Tod.” My dad sank onto the opposite end of the couch, elbows on his knees, scrubbing his face with both hands. “I’m begging you. I’ll do whatever you want. Please make an exception for my daughter.”

      Tod looked almost as stunned as I felt. I’d never heard my father beg for anything, not even for his own life, when Avari dragged him into the Netherworld, using him to get to me.

      “Mr. Cavanaugh, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” Tod looked so earnest and frustrated that I wanted to comfort him. Especially when he turned those sad blue eyes on me, silently begging me to believe him. “Kaylee, I’d do it if I could. You know that. But it’s not up to me. I’m not your reaper.”

      For one surreal moment, I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or upset about that.

      “They don’t let rookies reap under special circumstances. They’ll call in an expert. I don’t even know what zone you’re actually supposed to be in when … when it happens,” he finished miserably.

      I sucked in a deep breath, trying to process everything I’d just heard. Trying to push past the tangle of frighteningly useless words and grasp something I could actually use. “Who?” I said at last. “Who will they bring in? Libby?”

      Libitina was the dark reaper—one of the oldest in existence—who’d come to execute Addison’s death and dispose of the Demon’s Breath that had kept her alive in place of the soul she’d sold. Libby had done what she could to help us return Addy’s soul, but in the end, she’d also done her job. She’d taken Addison’s life and damned her disembodied soul to eternal torture.

      I wouldn’t find leeway with Libitina.

      “I don’t know,” Tod said. “If the reaper’s been chosen, I haven’t heard about it.”

      But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about Tod killing me, which seemed like an odd thing to be grateful for.

      “How?” I set the sweating soda can on the end table and clasped my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking. “Do you know how it’ll happen?” I asked, not sure that I really wanted to know. Knowing too much could make me paranoid—would I walk around staring up to avoid anvils falling from the sky?

      But Tod shook his head. “We never know that, because the method isn’t predetermined. Sometimes there’s an obvious choice. Like, if it’s an old man with a weak heart, the reaper will just let his heart stop beating. But with young people, it’s usually an accident, or an overdose, if there’s no preexisting illness. We work with what we have. It’s easier for the family and the coroner if they have something to blame it on.”

      “Wow. You make death sound so courteous.”

      Tod exhaled slowly. “We both know it’s not.”

      Yeah. I knew.

      “So …” I stared at the floor between my feet, and I couldn’t stop my leg from jumping as I worked my way up to the question I’d been avoiding.

      “Do you know when? Does the list at least tell you how long I have?”

      I was avoiding my father’s gaze—my own fear was hard enough to swallow at the moment—but I could see in my peripheral vision that he was watching Tod closely, waiting for the answer just as nervously as I was.

      Tod cleared his throat, avoiding the question.

      “Tod …?” My father’s voice was barely a whisper.

      “Next Thursday,” the reaper said finally, looking right into my eyes. His irises roiled with a sudden maelstrom of pain and distress, and I was pretty sure he was watching the same storm rage in mine. “You’re going to die in six days.”

      3

      I stood so fast the room spun around me, and it felt like my head was going to explode.

      Is this how I go? A stroke in my own living room, when the stress of knowing I’m going to die becomes too much? Could knowing I was going to die actually bring about my death? And if so, did that make it Levi’s fault? Or Tod’s? Or my dad’s, for letting him tell me?

      But the truth was that it was no one’s fault. I’d overstayed my welcome, and death had finally caught up to me. There was no more natural, more necessary part of life than this end to the whole thing. Yet I was overwhelmed by the need to stomp my feet and pound my fists and shout it’s not fair! at the top of my fearsome bean sidhe lungs.

      “Kaylee …?” Tod repeated, when I didn’t answer my dad.

      Six days …

      I headed down the hall and into my room, where I pulled my shirt over my head without remembering to close the door. They both followed, and when my dad realized I was changing, he stepped out of the doorway and shoved a very corporeal Tod farther down the hall.

      “Kaylee, say something,” he called, but I couldn’t. I barely even registered his voice. All I could hear was the raucous clamor of panic in my own head, insisting I do something—anything—to take my rapidly fracturing mind off the fact that I had less than a week to live.