Marg? I hadn’t told Aunt Val about seeing the reaper, or that she was, in fact, female. And I hadn’t even known the reaper’s name. Until now.

And suddenly I understood. Aunt Val knew the reaper’s name because she had hired her.

No! Denial and devastation pinged through me. I couldn’t believe it. Aunt Val was the only mother I’d known for the past thirteen years. She loved me, and she certainly loved Sophie and Uncle Brendon. She would never do business with a reaper, much less bargain with the souls of the innocent.

But the drinking, and the questions…She’d known all along why the girls were dying!

“This wasn’t part of the deal!” my aunt screamed, hands clenched into fists, shaking in either fear or fury. Or both. “Show yourself, you coward! You can’t do this!”

But that’s where she was so very wrong.

CHAPTER 21

Aunt Val’s shriek had yet to fade from my ears when Sophie’s legs collapsed beneath her. As she fell, she smacked the back of her head on the edge of an end table. She hit the floor with a muffled thud, and blood trickled from her hair to stain the white carpet.

Neither of her parents saw. Uncle Brendon was scanning the bright room obsessively, as if the reaper might be hiding behind an armchair, or in one of the potted plants. Aunt Val still stared at the ceiling, shouting for Marg to appear and explain herself.

As if reapers hailed from above.

But the moment Sophie died, her soul song forced itself from my throat, and I nearly choked, trying to hold it back out of habit.

Aunt Val noticed me retching and whirled around to look for her daughter. “No!” she screamed, and I’d never heard a human voice come so close to my own screech until that moment.

She dropped to her knees on the floor. “Wake up, Sophie.” She stroked loose blond curls back from her daughter’s face, and her fingers came away smeared with blood. “Marg, fix this! This wasn’t the deal!”

“Sophie!” Uncle Brendon joined his wife beside his daughter’s lifeless body, as Nash and I looked on in horror, too shocked to move. Then my uncle looked at me over his wife’s shoulder, but I couldn’t understand what he wanted. I was too busy holding back the scream.

Nash dropped into a squat by my chair and took my hands, his gaze piercing mine with quiet strength and intensity. “Let it out,” he whispered. “Show us her soul so we can guide it.”

So I sang for Sophie.

I sang for a soul taken before its time, for a young life lost. For childless parents, and for a girl who would never get to decide who and what she wanted to be. For my cousin, my surrogate sister, whose quick tongue would never be tempered by age and experience.

As I screamed, the lights dimmed, though I could see no noticeable difference in any one bulb. The entire room began to gray, like the gym had earlier, and I glanced hesitantly around the room, suddenly terrified of finding dark, misshapen creatures skulking around my own house.

There were none to be found. I was clearly seeing the Netherworld, but it was…empty, somehow.

But even more disconcerting than that was the sound. Or rather, the absence of sound. While I sang, I heard nothing else around me, as if someone had pushed the mute button on some cosmic remote control. After a few seconds, I couldn’t even hear myself scream, though I knew from the fire in my throat and lungs that I was, in fact, still screeching at the top of my inhuman lungs.

Nash stayed with me, his fingers linked through mine on the arm of the dining-room chair, completely unbothered by the ungodly screech clawing its way from my mouth. My father stood still, staring at my cousin’s soul, a pale, pink-tinged amorphous shape hovering several feet above her body, bobbing like a kite tethered to the ground in a brisk wind.

Her soul had risen higher than Emma’s had, and some part of me understood that that was my fault. Because Nash had to prompt me to release the wail for Sophie.

Uncle Brendon stood with his arms stiff at his sides, his hands fisted, exposed forearms bulging with great effort. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined it looked like Nash’s, when he’d guided Emma’s soul: red and tense, and damp with sweat.

Aunt Val had collapsed over her daughter, crying inconsolably now. She was the only one in the room who couldn’t see Sophie’s soul, and some distant part of me found that unbearably tragic.

Uncle Brendon’s shoulders fell, and he turned to me in exhaustion. “Hold her,” he mouthed, and I nodded, still screaming. I would do my best, but my throat was still sore from singing Emma’s song that afternoon, and I wasn’t sure how long I could hold on to Sophie.

My uncle gestured to my father. I didn’t catch all of what he said, but the gist of it was clear: he couldn’t do it alone. For some reason, he couldn’t budge his daughter’s soul.

My dad nodded, and they both turned back to Sophie, working together now.

Aunt Val knelt with her hand on her daughter’s sternum, facing the rest of the room. But she wasn’t looking at any of us. She was talking, evidently, to the room in general. Her face was splotched with tears, and flushed with both grief and guilt. I couldn’t understand much of what she said, but I made out two words based on the familiar motion of her lips.

“Take me.”

And then I got it. She was talking to the reaper—Marg—begging her to spare Sophie’s life in exchange for her own.

And that’s when everything changed. The feel of the room abruptly shifted, as if all the angles had changed, the proportions recalibrated. It was like watching a movie with the screen ratio all messed up.

A slim, dark figure appeared in the middle of the weird-looking living room, only feet from my father and uncle, across the room from Sophie’s body.

I recognized her instantly from Meredith’s memorial. Marg. She still wore the same long black sweater, cut to accentuate her slight figure, and soft ballet-style slippers, now half-sunk into my aunt’s thick pile carpet.

The reaper spared me a glance and frowned, then dismissed me and turned toward Aunt Val. I could see only a sliver of the reaper’s face now, but that was plenty. “Are you sure?” she asked, her voice like molten metal, smooth and slow-flowing, but hot enough to singe at a touch.

I was so surprised to hear her that I almost stopped singing, and Sophie’s soul began to drift toward Marg. Then Nash squeezed my hand and my voice strengthened. Sophie’s soul steadied once more.

The reaper didn’t seem to notice. She was watching my aunt, who was saying something else I couldn’t hear. I could only hear Marg, which meant the reaper hadn’t forgotten about me—that for some reason, she wanted me to hear what she was saying.

Aunt Val nodded firmly in response to the reaper’s question, her lips moving rapidly.

The reaper studied her for a moment, then shook her head, and what little I could see of her mouth curved into a slow, malicious smile. “Your soul will not suffice,” Marg said, her voice trailing over me with an almost physical presence. “You promised Belphegore young, beautiful souls, and like your body, your soul is aging and blemished. She will not accept it.”

My aunt was speaking again, gesturing angrily, and her husband flinched all over at something she said, fists still clenched in effort. Again I desperately wished I could hear both sides of the argument.

“We reached no agreement on the specific souls to be harvested,” the reaper said, and chills popped up on my arms. Just listening to her was going to kill me. “I have collected the first four, in spite of piddling interference from your young minions—”

Minions? She did not just call me a minion!

“—and I’ll have the fifth when I tire of this game. I will have your money, Belphegore will have her souls, and you will have youth and beauty like you never imagined.”