“The problem with your soul lies in the fact thatyou, my dear, do not possess all of it.”
“I don’t…? How is that even possible? Are you saying someoneelseowns my soul?”
Xaphan paused in mid-stroke, the wet wipe poised over his grimy right hand. His head tilted to one side in contemplation. “Have you knowingly and intentionally sold any portion of your soul in exchange for compensation of any kind?”
“No. Why the hell would I do that?”
“The damned have their reasons…”
My spine stiffened in indignation I could never have explained. “I amnotone of the damned.” I couldn’t be. Could I?
My head spinning, I sank back into my chair, twisting to sit properly so I could lean back. My stomach churned. Roadside scenery flew by in red-tinged blurs. My limbs felt heavy, and unreal. Goose bumps sprouted over every inch of my skin, in spite of my coat and the heater blowing full blast.
I was going into shock. I was freaking-the-fuck-out at eighty-five miles an hour in a rented Corolla, surrounded by a hellhound, a water nymph, and a psychotic djinni. Not exactly how I pictured my future when I was ten. Or even one hundred and ten.
“If you haven’t sold any portion of your soul, then no, officially no one else owns it,” Xaphan spoke up from the backseat. Then, before I could get my hopes up, he continued. “But possession, as they say, is nine tenths of the law.”
“What?!” Blood rushed to my cheeks, fury scalding me as I twisted to face him again. “‘Finder’s keepers’ doesnotapply to souls! Right?” I glanced at Cale, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. His were busy staring at the road, his brows drawn low over them in concentration. Or maybe in confusion.
Questions tumbled through my mind, tripping over each other to claim my attention. But I couldn’t concentrate on any one thought, except the terrifying, mind-numbing idea that I mightactuallybe one of the damned. For all of eternity.
Suddenly, every risk I’d ever taken with my body—every time I’d taken a bullet to the leg, a blade to the gut, or a hit to the head—came roaring to the front of my memory, taunting me with the knowledge of how incredibly close I’d been—on multiple occasions—to dying again. To losing my physical form.
The prospect hadn’t seemed so bad at the time. Any of the times. Surely with my body gone, my soul would be free to pursue the afterlife I so desperately wanted. There were even times I’d wished for the courage to effect such a change myself.
But what if my afterlife turned out to require SPF 1,000,000 sunscreen, rather than Band-Aids on my fingers, from all the harp-plucking?
Or worse, what if, without my soul intact, I couldn’t achieve either option? What if, when my body died, my soul—however much was left of it—became stranded here? Would I become a wraith, a non-corporeal spirit forever haunting the earth with no way to act upon it? Like John Allen at the pit? And like the thousands of other wraiths who lacked the mental capacity to communicate or even comprehend their own existence. Or lack thereof.
Panic clawed the inside of my throat, a scream desperate to break free.
How many times had I been a hairsbreadth away from physical death and non-corporeal perpetuity?
“How much?” I asked, surprised to hear the croaky quality of my own voice, as if holding back shrieks of rage and panic had led to an actual physical consequence.
The backseat creaked, and the car swayed slightly as Xaphan repositioned himself. “Pardon?”
“How much? How much of my soul is missing? Hell, how much isleft?”
“That is difficult to quantify…”
“Which means he doesn’t know,” Cale interjected, veering smoothly into the left-hand lane to pass a minivan full of teenagers. “Or that he doesn’t want to tell.”
“That isnotwhat it means,” Xaphan growled, only acknowledging Cale to argue with him.
I rested my forehead in my hand, my fingers rubbing my temple. I was getting the beginnings of my first headache in decades. “How much, then?”
“Not enough to break the bond between your soul and your body, but enough for me to sense something missing the moment I first saw you. I cannot be more precise than that, because there is no exact measurement.”
What, my soul couldn’t be calculated with a scale or a ruler? Why couldn’t there be a pint of soul, if there was an ounce of prevention and a pound of cure? Or was that a pound of flesh?
“I can’t restore your soul unless you actually wish for it,” Xaphan said, shattering my disjointed thoughts like a sledgehammer through a pane of glass. He leaned forward so that his chin brushed my shoulder. “That is a necessary part of the process, unfortunately.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, unpleasantly aware that I actuallydidsound sorry. “But I’m not making a wish.”
Xaphan sighed into my ear, his lip brushing my cheek, his breath stirring my hair. I threw my left fist up and back, intending to smash his nose—but it was no longer there. “You lack foresight, my dear,” he said, from my other side this time. “You’ve had no use for your soul thus far, so you foolishly assume you never will. But you are wrong.”
My heart throbbed in my chest, and my throat tightened. Something important was coming. I could feel it.
