Echo Soul Seekers

soul as stake.
    Still, there’s no price too high to save Daire.
    Besides, I have no intention of losing.
    As soon as it’s done, I’ll cast out my brother’s shadow and return to myself.
    Only better.
    Purer.
    For I will have confronted the very worst of men and lived to tell the tale.
    I lift my head, watching as my brother ambles toward the vortex. The sight causing my blood to cool, my pulse to regulate, and when he bursts through the wall, our connection is severed.
    All except for the piece of him lodged deep within me.
    I stand before Leandro’s door, stealing a few moments to center myself. And when I’m back to being the Dace everyone knows and expects, or at least on the surface anyway, I push inside and take my brother’s place before Leandro’s desk.

 
    forty
    Daire
    “What’s this?” I pause just shy of the entrance. Peering down the alleyway at a throng of people standing before a wall plastered with pictures, flickering tapered candles clutched in their hands.
    “Candlelight vigil for the missing.” Lita chases the words with a groan. “As if this town isn’t depressing enough.”
    I glance among the photos, recognizing many of the faces from Cade’s bogus job fair, as Lita steers Xotichl and me away from the crowd and inside the club. Easing into her usual smiling, waving, air-kissing routine, she turns to us and in a mocking voice says, “Hello-hello! Kiss-kiss! Wave-wave!” She frowns and shakes her head. “What am I—the freaking welcome wagon?” Spying Jacy and Crickett waiting in the usual place, she purposely veers the opposite way. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep it going. I’m so freaking sick of this scene that for the first time ever, I’m actually considering early retirement. If Phyre’s so eager to replace me, let her. She can be the new queen, for all I care.”
    “You sure you want to give up the crown?” Xotichl teases. “Without so much as a fight?”
    “Being this popular is a total energy suck.” Lita sighs. “You have no idea. I have literally known these people all of my life, yet I’m still expected to act overjoyed whenever I see them. If we could just get some more new students at Milagro—ones that aren’t girls—I might reconsider. But look at them…” She motions toward a group of boys sharing the same table as Crickett and Jacy. “I’ve kissed every one of those dorks, and trust me when I say they got way more out of it than I did.” She makes a face, turning to me as she adds, “If you go to LA to visit Jennika, you have to promise to take me with you. Seriously. I’ll curl up in your carry-on—I’m so not joking. Think of it as a rescue mission. Only you’ll be rescuing me from the very real risk of dying of boredom.”
    I try to picture Lita in LA, deciding she’d probably like it so much I’d end up returning to Enchantment without her.
    “We can spend our days shopping and going to the beach, and at night you can take me to all the celebrity hot spots. How does that sound?”
    “Better in your head than in reality,” I say, my gaze drifting, on the lookout for Cade but catching a glimpse of Dace instead. And while I’m happy to see him up and about, the fact that he’s here doesn’t bode well for my plans. Now more than ever, I need to get to Cade before Dace can make good on the scheme he hinted at.
    I force myself to turn away and focus on my friends, knowing better than to keep my attention on Dace. Though it’s only a moment later when Lita taps my shoulder and says, “Uh, maybe you should go break up that party. I trust that girl about as far as I can fling her.”
    She gestures toward the place where Dace stood by himself just a few seconds earlier, only now Phyre is with him. Inching toward him. Crowding his space. Not seeming to notice or care how he leans away, purposely sways from her reach. And while part of me longs to march right over and demand to know what she’s up to, the other part, the smarter part, stays rooted in place.
    “Seriously.” Lita nudges me, a little harder this time. “Aren’t you going to do something to stop her from stealing your man?” She shoots me a look of outrage. “Why are you acting so passive? I don’t get it. It seems so unlike you.”
    I’m just about to respond, when Xotichl speaks for me. “You can’t steal another person, Lita. They either go willingly or they don’t. And if they do go willingly, then good riddance—you’re better off