I thought it was another dramatic transition to the next song, so when her head fell forward, I assumed she was counting silently, ready to look up with those hypnotic, piercing black eyes and captivate her fans all over again.
But then the other dancers noticed, and several stopped moving. Then several more. And when the guitar solo ended, Eden still stood there, silent, a virtual vacuum sucking life from the background music.
Her chest heaved. Her shoulders shook. The microphone fell from her hand and crashed to the stage.
Feedback squealed across the auditorium, and the drummer stopped drumming. The guitarists—both lead and bass—turned toward Eden and stopped playing when they saw her.
Eden collapsed, legs bent, long, dark hair spilling around her on the floor.
Someone screamed from behind me in the sudden hush, and I jumped, startled. A woman raced past me and onto the stage, followed by several large men. My hair blew back in the draft created by the sudden rush, but I barely noticed. My gaze was glued to Eden who lay unmoving on the floor.
People bent over her, and I recognized the woman as her mother, the most famous stage parent/manager in the country. Eden's mom was crying, trying to shake her daughter awake as a member of security tried to pull her away. "She's not breathing!" the mother shouted, and we all heard her clearly, because the crowd of thousands had gone silent with shock. "Somebody help her, she's not breathing!"
And suddenly neither was I.
My hand clenched Nash's, and my heart raced in dreadful anticipation of the keening that would rip its way from my throat as the pop star's soul left her body. A bean sidhe's wail can shatter not just glass, but eardrums. The frequency resonates painfully in the human brain, so that the sound seems to rattle from both outside and within.
"Breathe, Kaylee," Nash whispered into my ear, wrapping both arms around me as his voice cocooned my heart, his Influence soothing, comforting. A male bean sidhe's voice is like an audio-sedative, without the side effects of the chemical version. Nash could make the screaming stop, or at least lower its volume and intensity. "Just breathe through it." So I did. I watched the stage over his shoulder and breathed, waiting for Eden to die.
Waiting for the scream to build deep inside me.
But the scream didn't come.
Onstage, someone's foot hit Eden's microphone, and it rolled across the floor and into the pit. No one noticed, because Eden still wasn't breathing. But I wasn't wailing, either.
Slowly, I loosened my grip on Nash and felt relief settle through me as logic prevailed over my dread. Eden wasn't wearing a death shroud—a translucent black haze surrounding the soon-to-be-dead, visible only to female bean sidhes. "She's fine." I smiled in spite of the horrified expressions surrounding me. "She's gonna be fine." Because if she were going to die, I'd already be screaming.
I'm a female bean sidhe. That's what we do.
"No, she isn't," Tod said softly, and we turned to find him still staring at the stage. The reaper pointed, and I followed his finger until my gaze found Eden again, surrounded by her mother, bodyguards, and odd members of the crew, one of whom was now giving her mouth-to-mouth. And as I watched, a foggy, ethereal substance began to rise slowly from the star's body like a snake from its charmer's basket.
Rather than floating toward the ceiling, as a soul should, Eden's seemed heavy, like it might sink to the ground around her instead. It was thick, yet colorless. And undulating through it were ribbons of darkness, swirling as if stirred by an unfelt breeze.
My breath caught in my throat, but I let it go almost immediately, because though I had no idea what that substance was, I knew without a doubt what it wasn't.
Eden had no soul.
CHAPTER 2
"What is that?" I whispered frantically, tugging Nash's hand. "It's not a soul. And if she's dead, how come I'm not screaming?"
"What is what." Nash hissed, and I realized he couldn't see Eden's not-soul. Male bean sidhes can only see elements of the Netherworld—including freed souls—when a female bean sidhe wails. Apparently the same held true for whatever ethereal sludge was oozing from Eden's body.
Nash glanced around to make sure no one was listening to us, but there was really no need. Eden was the center of attention.
Tod rolled his eyes and pulled one hand from the pocket of his baggy jeans. "Look over there." He pointed not toward the stage, but across it, where more people watched the spectacle from the opposite wing. "Do you see her?"
"I see lots of hers." People scrambled on the other side of the stage, most speaking into cell phones. A couple of vultures even snapped pictures of the fallen singer, and indignation burned deep in my chest.
But Tod continued to point, so I squinted into the dark wing. Whatever he wanted me to see probably wasn't native to the human world so it wouldn't be immediately obvious.
And that's when I found her.
The woman's tall, slim form created a darker spot in the already-thick shadows, a mere suggestion of a shape. Her eyes were the only part of her I could focus on, glowing like green embers in the gloom. "Who is she?" I glanced at Nash and he nodded, telling me he could see her too. Which likely meant she was letting us see her…
"That's Libby, from Special Projects." An odd, eager light shone in blue eyes Tod usually kept shadowed by brows drawn low. "When this week's list came down, she came with it, for this one job."
He was talking about the reapers' list, which contained the names and the exact place and time of death of everyone scheduled to die in the local area within a one-week span.
"You knew this was going to happen?" Even knowing he was a reaper, I couldn't believe how different Tod's reaction to death was from mine. Unlike most people, it wasn't my own death I feared—it was everyone else's. The sight of the deceased's soul would mark my own descent into madness. At least, that's what most people thought of my screaming fits. Humans had no idea that my "hysterical shrieking" actually suspended a person's soul as it leaves its body.
Sometimes I wished I still lived in human ignorance, but those days were over for me, for better or for worse.
"I couldn't turn down the chance to watch Libby work. She's a legend." Tod shrugged. "And seeing Addy was a bonus."
"Well, thanks so much for dragging us along!" Nash snapped.
"What is she?" I asked as another cluster of people rushed past us—two more bodyguards and a short, slight man whose face looked pinched with professional concern and curiosity. Probably a doctor. "And what's so special about this assignment?"
"Libby's a very special reaper." Tod's short, blond goatee glinted in the blue-tinted overhead lights as he spoke. "She was called in because that—" he pointed to the substance the female reaper now was steadily inhaling from Eden's body, over a twenty-foot span and dozens of heads " — isn't a soul. It's Demon's Breath."
Suddenly I was very glad no one else could hear Tod. I wished they couldn't hear me, either. "Demon, as in hellion?" I whispered, as low as I could speak and still be heard.
Tod nodded with his usual slow, grim smile. The very word hellion sent a jolt of terror through me, but Tod's eyes sparkled with excitement, as if he could actually get high on danger. I guess that's what you get when you mix boredom with the afterlife.
"She sold her soul…." Nash whispered, revulsion echoing within the sudden understanding in his voice.
I'd never met a hellion—they couldn't leave the Netherworld, fortunately—but I was intimately familiar with their appetite for human souls. Six weeks earlier, my aunt had tried to trade five poached teenage souls in exchange for her own eternal youth and beauty, but her plan went bad in the end, and she wound up paying in part with her own soul. But not before four girls died for her vanity.