Read Online My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent - Free Book Online Page B

for balance. Trying to stay above
    water as wave after wave of confusion crashed over
    me. I sank into the first empty chair I found and buried
    my face in my hands. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t quite
    remember…
    People were talking all around me, whispering
    phrases I couldn’t make sense of. Names I didn’t quite
    recognize. So I latched on to the first familiar thing I
    saw: a jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table by the
    window. That was my puzzle. I’d been working it
    before something bad happened. Before…
    Cold hands. Dark fog. Screaming. Bleeding.
    I’d placed three puzzle pieces when two aides
    rolled a stretcher past the nurses’ station and out the
    main door of the unit. “Another one?” the security
    guard asked, as he held the door open.
    “This one’s still breathing,” the aide in purple said.
    This one? But the harder I tried to remember, the
    blurrier the images got.
    I’d only placed two more pieces when someone
    called my name. I looked up from my puzzle to see
    another aide—her name was Judy; I remembered
    70 / My Soul to Lose
    that—standing next to my uncle. Who stood next to
    my suitcase.
    “Kaylee?” Uncle Brendon frowned at me in
    concern. “Ready to go home?”
    Yes. That much was clear. But my relief came with
    a bitter aftertaste of guilt and sadness. Something bad
    had happened. Something to do with the girl on my
    bed. But I couldn’t remember what.
    I followed Uncle Brendon through the main door—
    the one you had to be buzzed through—then stopped.
    Two men leaned over a stretcher in front of the
    elevator, where a girl with dark hair lay motionless.
    One man was steadily squeezing a bag attached to a
    mask over her face. A smear of blood stained her
    cheek. Her eyes were closed, but in my fractured
    memory, they were bright green.
    “Do you know her?” Uncle Brendon asked. “What
    happened to her?”
    I shuddered as the answer surfaced from the haze in
    my head. Maybe someday I would know what it
    meant, but in that moment, I only knew that it was
    true.
    “She took too much.”
    ***
    Will Kaylee ever understand what happened? Find out
    in
Rachel Vincent’s
    MY SOUL TO TAKE,
    August 2009 from Harlequin Teen.

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH KAYLEE
    CAVANAUGH
    She doesn’t see dead people, but…
    She senses when someone near her is about to die.
    And when that happens, a force beyond her control
    compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.
    Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention
    of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard
    to come by when Nash seems to know more about her
    need to scream than she does. And when classmates
    start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only
    Kaylee knows who’ll be next…

SOUL SCREAMERS
    The last thing you hear before you die
    “Folklore, mystery, and romance swirl together in a
    story unlike any other out there. I thoroughly enjoyed
    it.” --Melissa Marr, New York Times bestselling
    author of Wicked Lovely
    Turn the page to read a preview…
    My best friend Emma danced her way down the hall
    and into the main room, hands in the air, hips swaying
    with the pulse of the song. I followed her, keyed up by
    the energy of the Saturday-night crowd from the
    moment I saw the first cluster of bodies in motion.
    We worked our way into the throng and were
    swallowed by it, assimilated by the beat, the heat, and
    the casual partners pulling us close. We danced
    through several songs, together, alone, and in random
    pairs, until I was breathing hard and damp with sweat.
    I signaled Emma that I was going for a drink, and she
    nodded, already moving again as I worked my way
    toward the edge of the crowd.
    Behind the bar, Emma’s sister Traci worked alongside
    another bartender, a large, dark man in a snug black
    tee, both oddly lit by a strip of blue neon overhead. I
    claimed the first abandoned bar stool, and the man in
    black propped both broad palms on the bar in front of
    me.
    “I got this one,” Traci said,