I couldn’t feel her. But I couldn’t feel the presence of a reaper, either, and that surely had to be a good sign.
“Do you think you can help her?” a deep voice asked.
I jumped, and my gaze flew to the father. Before I could answer, Fay said, “This is my husband, Steven.”
I nodded. I didn’t need to know his name to understand he was Hanna’s father. The utter despair in his eyes was enough. I swallowed heavily and somehow said, “I honestly don’t know if I can help her, Mr. Kingston. But I can try.”
He nodded, his gaze drifting back to his baby girl. “Then try. Either way, we need to know what to do next.”
I took a deep, somewhat shuddering breath, and blinked away the tears stinging my eyes once more.
I could do this. For her sake—for their sake—I could do this. If she was in there, if she was trapped between this world and the next, then she needed someone to talk to. Someone who could help her make a decision. That someone had to be me. There was no one else.
I forced my feet forward. The closer I got, the more I could feel … well, the oddness.
Pain and fear and hunger swirled around her tiny body like a storm, but there was no spark, no glimmer of consciousness—nothing to indicate that life had ever existed within her flesh.
It shouldn’t have felt like that. And if death was her destiny, then there would have been a reaper here waiting. But there wasn’t, so either the time for her decision had not arrived or she was slated to live.
So why couldn’t I feel her?
Frowning, I sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up her hand. Her flesh was warm, though why that surprised me I wasn’t entirely sure.
I took a deep breath and slowly released it. As I did, I released the awareness of everything and everyone else, concentrating on little Hanna, reaching for her not physically, but psychically. The world around me faded until the only thing existing on this plane was me and her. Warmth throbbed at my neck—Ilianna’s magic at work, protecting me as my psyche, my soul, or whatever else people liked to call it pulled away from the constraints of my flesh and stepped gently into the gray fields that were neither life nor death.
Only it felt like I’d stepped into the middle of a battleground.
And it was a battle that had gone very, very badly.
Fear and pain became physical things that battered at me with terrible force, tearing at my heart and ripping through my soul. My chest burned, breathing became painful, and all I could feel was fear. My fear, her fear, all twisted into one stinking mess that made my stomach roil and my flesh crawl.
And then there was the screaming. Unvoiced, unheard by anyone but me, it reverberated through the emptiness of her flesh—echoes of agony in the bloody, battered shell that had once held a little girl.
Her soul wasn’t here, but it hadn’t moved on.
Someone—something—had come into the hospital and ripped it from her flesh.
THE REALIZATION HIT LIKE A HAMMER AND I began to shake.
Someone had stolen her soul.
Why
would someone do that?
How could someone do that?
Surely it wasn’t the reapers. They were charged with the protection and guidance of souls. They couldn’t be capable of anything like this.
Could they?
Hands suddenly grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me away. My fingers were torn from the little girl’s and it was as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over my face. The darkness, the fear, the pain all sluiced away, and suddenly I could breathe again.
I took several gulps of air, then, with a shaky hand, swiped at the tears that were on my cheeks—tears I hadn’t even felt until then.
When I opened my eyes, I met Fay Kingston’s gaze. She knew. The knowledge of death was right there in her shadowed, tear-filled eyes and stricken expression.
I can’t do this. I can’t say the words that will destroy her world.