Tod hesitated for a moment, as if considering. Then he nodded. “My boss is this really old reaper named Levi. He’s been around for a while. Like, a hundred fifty years.” He crossed his arms over his chest, getting comfortable against the back wall of shelves. “Levi said something like this happened when he first became a reaper. Everything was a lot less organized back then, and by the time they figured out someone was taking people not on the list—they wrote the whole thing by hand back then, can you imagine?—they’d already lost six souls from his region.”

“You’re serious?” Nash wrapped one arm around my waist, and I let him pull me close. “Or are you just making all this up to impress Kaylee?”

Tod shot him a dark scowl, but I thought it was a totally valid question. “Every word of this came straight from Levi. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him yourself.”

Nash stiffened, and muttered something about that not being necessary.

“So why were they dying?” I asked, drawing us back on subject.

The reaper’s eyes settled on me again, and he lowered his voice conspiratorially, blue eyes gleaming. “Their souls were being poached.”

“Poached?” I twisted to glance at Nash with one brow raised, but he only shrugged, his mouth set in a hard line. “Why would anyone steal souls?”

“Good question.” Tod fingered a box of disposable thermometer covers. His grin widened, and I was reminded of the way movie-goers sometimes cheer during murder scenes, secure in the knowledge that they’re seeing fake blood and movie magic. “There’s not much use for detached souls in this world….” The reaper left his last word hanging, and a sick feeling twisted deep in my stomach.

“But there is in the Netherworld?” I finished for him, and Tod nodded, evidently impressed that my newbie roots were no longer showing.

“Souls are a rarity on the deeper plane. Something between a delicacy and a luxury. They’re in very high demand, and every now and then a shipment goes missing in transit.”

“A shipment of souls?” A bolt of dread shot through me at the very thought. “In transit from where? To where?”

Nash answered, looking simultaneously pleased to know the answer and annoyed at having to provide it. “From here to where they’re…recycled.”

“Reincarnated?”

“Yeah.” Tod stood straighter and bumped his head on an upper shelf, then rubbed it as he spoke. “But sometimes a shipment doesn’t make it, so those souls aren’t passed on. They’re replaced with new ones, which is one of the reasons you’ll run into a brand-new soul sometimes.”

I made a mental note to ask later how one might identify a new soul. “So these poached souls are going to the Netherworld?” I asked, trying to simply stay afloat in the current of new information.“You mean Meredith, and Julie, and the others were killed so some monster in another realm could make a midnight snack out of their souls?” I gripped a shoulder-height shelf for balance as my head spun. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what I’d just said.

“That’s Levi’s theory.” Tod picked up a roll of sterile gauze and tossed it into the air, then caught it. “He said the last time this happened, they were being collected as payment to a hellion.”

My hand clutched the shelf and a protruding screw cut my finger, but I barely noticed because of the dark dread swirling in me like a dense fog. “A hellion?”

Nash exhaled heavily. “Humans would call them demons, but that’s not exactly right, because they have no association with any religion. They feed on pain and chaos. But they can’t leave the Netherworld.”

“Okay…” My pulse raced, and I flashed back to the gray creatures I’d seen during Emma’s soul song. Were those hellions? “Payment for what?”

The reaper shrugged. “Could be anything. Sometimes deals are struck. Under the table, of course. Levi’ll take care of it, as soon as he finds the reaper responsible.” He caught the gauze one more time and shrugged, having evidently given us everything he knew. Which was much more than I’d expected. “So…what about this reaper you saw?”

“Tell Levi he’s looking for a woman.” I shifted closer to Nash and accidentally bumped a shelf. Several boxes of medical tubing fell over, spilling their contents like clear plastic worms.

“A woman?” Tod’s eyes widened, and I nodded.

“Tall and thin, with wavy brown hair,” Nash said. “Sound like someone you know?”

Tod shook his head. “But Levi knows every reaper in the state. He’ll take care of it.” He hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to say the next part. “But he thinks you’re going to get your own souls poached before he can get everything back under control.”

“Is that what you think?” I wasn’t sure why his opinion mattered to me, but it did.

Tod shrugged, fingering his makeshift ball. “I’d say that’s a very real possibility. Especially if you keep wiggling your fingers in front of the tiger’s mouth.”

“We had no choice.” I bent to restack the boxes I’d spilled. “The tiger was about to eat my best friend.”

“You’re something else, Kaylee Cavanaugh,” Tod whispered, and I knew from Nash’s blank, angry expression that he hadn’t heard that part either, though he’d clearly seen the reaper’s lips move. “It could have been you, instead of that cheerleader. It might be, next time. Or it might be him.” His gaze flicked to Nash and back, and his irreverent expression darkened.