Free My Soul to Keep by Rachel Vincent

arm around Emma, his hand splayed over the band of bare hip visible between the hem of her tee and the low waist of her jeans.
    I scowled. “My point exactly.”
    “Hudson, your girlfriend’s too serious.” Doug dropped his duffel and ran one hand through a wavy mop of thick dark hair, pulling Emma closer.
    “She can’t help it,” a familiar, cold-edged voice said from behind me, and I turned to find Sophie and Laura Bell leaning against the lockers, malice glinting in their eyes like sunlight off the point of a sharp knife. “The staff in the psycho ward shocked the fun right out of her.”
    Simultaneous waves of anger and humiliation surged through me, and for just a minute, I considered letting her take a hit from her boyfriend’s balloon. Why was I trying so hard to save someone who would rather see me dead than return the favor?
    “Don’t look now, Sophie, but your insecurity’s showing like the roots on a bad bleach job.” Emma smiled sweetly, then glanced pointedly at Sophie’s hairline. Then she turned onone wedge-heeled foot and headed down the hall toward the parking lot exit. Laughing, Doug jogged to catch up with her.
    Nash and I trailed them while Sophie stood speechless. “You know, she loves it when you let her piss you off.”
    “Gee, thanks, Dad,” I snapped, bending beneath the weight of my own sarcasm. “You think if I just ignore her, she’ll go away?”
    “No.” Nash’s hand tightened around mine and I glanced up to find him eyeing me steadily. “I think she’s going to be a bitch no matter what you do. But you don’t have to make it so easy for her. Make her work for it.”
    “Yeah.” But that was a lot easier for him to suggest than for me to do. “It kills me that she has no idea that we saved her life. Or that she’d be just like me, if not for winning the genetic lottery.” Sophie’s father—my dad’s younger brother—was a bean sidhe, and because her mother was human, Sophie could have been born like either of her parents. Fate, or luck, or whatever unfair advantage ruled her privileged life, had given her the normal, human genetic sequence, and a snottier-than-thou disposition that seemed to grow more toxic by the day.
    “There’s nothing you can do about that, Kaylee.” Nash pushed open the door into the parking lot and a cold gust of wind blew my hair back as I stepped outside. “And anyway, considering that her mother died and her boyfriend’s spending a small fortune to get high off someone else’s bad breath, I’d say Sophie’s next in line for therapy. At least you know who and what you are,” he pointed out with an infuriating rationality. “Sophie knows there’s something we’re not telling her. Something about her family, and how her own mom died. And she may never find out the truth.”
    Because Uncle Brendon didn’t want her to know that her mother had stolen five innocent lives and souls—including Sophie’s, by accident—in exchange for eternal youth.
    Nash shrugged. “For me, knowing that I actually feel sorryfor her makes it a little easier to put up with the shit she’s shoveling.”
    A warm satisfaction filtered through me at the realization that it did help to think of her as an object of pity: a prospect that would horrify my pampered cousin to no end.
    “And Kaylee, I’m sorry about last night. I can wait. You know that, right?”
    “I know.” He was calmer and happier now. Less intense than he’d been the night before. He’d obviously gotten plenty of sleep and backed off the caffeine.
    “Thank you.” I stood on my toes for a mint-flavored kiss—a better kiss than what he usually got on school grounds—and only pulled back when shouting from the other end of the parking lot caught our attention.
    Scott had just discovered his frost was missing.
    “Come on…” Nash took off and I held my backpack strap in place while I raced after him. My boots clomped on the concrete as we tore past my loaner, Doug’s loaner, and