The Soul Keepers Series, Book 1 Read online

  Maybe it had been a sudden, too-early death for him. But to think about all the good that he’d done with it, all the good he could still do with it, was comfort enough to make it okay.

  Rhett held the scythe out to Basil, who just looked back, confused.

  “Use it,” Rhett said. “On me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Basil said. “I’m not sure I got that. Because all I heard was fucking bollocks!”

  Rhett pulled the scythe toward him, laying it against his chest.

  “Think about it,” Rhett said. “Urcena came after me first. She can’t do anything with the souls in the tank without me. You heard Mak—only a syllektor can get into it, and the Harbinger is sinking anyway. Let it. Even if the psychons could somehow get the tank off the ship in time, there’s no way that Urcena would let them have any of the souls until she’s done with them. We make it as hard as we possibly can for her to get her hands on the tank, and in the meantime, we get me and … and whatever it is I can do as far out of her reach as we can. This is the fail-safe.”

  Mak was still on the floor, staring at a dark knot in the wood.

  “So you want us to ghost you,” she said, “and let the ship take the containment tank down with it.”

  “Exactly,” Rhett replied. “It was stupid for me to come here in the first place. If I’m gone, Urcena can’t use this power that I have. Defend the tank for as long as you can. Once the psychons realize they can’t get to it without drowning themselves, they’ll give up and regroup. Then you two and whoever else is still on board can abandon ship.”

  Basil took a step back, taking the scythe with him but letting it fall to his side.

  “And go where?” he asked. “Do what? What are we supposed to do with the rest of the souls?”

  Rhett could only blink at him. “The rest…?”

  Basil chuckled. “Just because the Harbinger sinks, mate, doesn’t mean that people are going to stop dying.”

  From the trapdoor, they heard more clashing. The girl who had fallen onto the ladder had managed to get herself back up into the tunnel, but the fight was still close, and there was no way of knowing how many psychons were still trying to get through.

  Rhett wasn’t paying any attention to the fight, though. He ran a hand through his hair. Now that he was standing still, he could focus on it. It wasn’t nearly as strong or insistent as it had been earlier in that impossibly long day, but it was here, nagging at the edges of his mind: the invisible lasso. The push.

  Basil was right. Nothing that was happening here had any effect on the real world. There were people out there who were still dying, who still needed their souls protected.

  He looked from Basil to Mak, then back again.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” he whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter what happens to us, mate,” Basil said. “If there aren’t any syllektors to gather the souls of the dead, then the psychons win anyway. They get a feast one way or the other.”

  “What about Urcena?” Mak said, finally standing again. “We can’t just pretend she doesn’t exist. Rhett’s right. She needs him and the tank if she wants control over anything. And whatever she has planned is going to be way worse than anything a bunch of psychons are capable of.”

  “So that’s it?” Basil asked. His voice rose, cracked a little. “We’re just supposed to give up? I already had to ghost one of my teammates today. I … I can’t take another one. I just can’t.”

  “Once you guys are safe,” Rhett went on, a strange certainty overwhelming him, “you can find me. Captain Trier said that the part of my soul that’s still attached to the living world will go back there. Find me. We can fix this.”

  “Fix it?” Basil cried. “Mate, this ship is dead!” He pointed at the containment tank, which was turned almost completely on its side now. “They are dead! You’ll be dead! Like, dead dead! And nobody can—”

  “I can,” Rhett said, cutting him off. “I can. I don’t know how or why, but I know it the way that I know my parents loved each other, that they loved me even as we all died together. I know it the way that I know you love Mak. I have the power to fix all of this. All I need is a chance.”

  Basil looked at Mak. She reached out and squeezed his hand, then she reached out with her other hand and squeezed Rhett’s. Rhett was surprised but comforted. He was also afraid.

  “That power is what Urcena wants,” Mak said. “We won’t let her have it.”

  The ship was canted at a sharp angle. The three of them struggled to even stand up straight. The walls continued to groan and flex. Water began to seep through the cracks in them and drip from the ceiling. The battle in the tunnel seemed to fade for a moment and then came back full force. Rhett could see the movement in the shadows through the trapdoor.

  He leaned down and grabbed Basil’s hand, the one that was holding the scythe, completing the circle of their grips. He lifted the hand. He leveled the point of the blade at his chest.

  Mak and Basil stood in front of him, their eyes red and wet and angry and sad.

  “We’ll find you,” Mak said. She opened her mouth, as if there was something more she wanted to say, then closed it again.

  “I’ll be the one that looks like a ghost,” Rhett replied. And, somehow, they all choked out a little bit of laughter.

  There was a strange pressure pushing against him—not like the push, but something nearly as strong. He pushed back, and when he looked down, the curved blade of the scythe was buried in his chest, slipped between his ribs to the left.

  “See you soon, mate,” Basil whispered.

  All around them, the floor began to get soft, began to crumble into liquid tendrils that floated into the air. Rhett watched them burst into tiny fragments and continue floating up. Beneath the floor and behind the walls, there was only solid black.

  As the world disintegrated around him, Rhett saw a psychon leap down through the trapdoor. Mak let go, pulling her dagger out. When he lost his hold on her, Rhett fell to his knees. Basil sank down with him and then Mak was there again, and they were both staring at him. Mak ran a hand through his hair, and he was sure that she was crying now, unable to keep the force of her emotions at bay, the way he’d been unable to keep his emotions back that night on the bridge, when he told the captain about his parents.

  The blue light from the tank darkened, plunged into a deep hue, somehow bright and dark at the same time, an antishadow. And under that light, the ship continued to break apart into those atomlike pieces and float away into the nothing.

  For a while he could still see Mak’s and Basil’s faces. And then they were Theo’s and Treeny’s faces, and then they were his parents’ faces. They were talking to him, saying his name, the way they’d been trying to communicate with him from the tank where their souls now lived. They were still in there. He knew that he would save them somehow. If he had nothing else to fight for, he had them.

  The last specks of reality funneled themselves away, vanishing into the wide-open black. He wondered if this was what being in space felt like. Probably not. At least in space there would have been the stars to keep him company. When the two faces in front of him broke apart and disappeared, Rhett Snyder was alone.

  In the great distance, a circle of intense, almost blinding light appeared. It grew and grew. It consumed the black and turned it white. As it drew closer, preparing to swallow him, all he could think was Finally. Then it washed over him—the light, the warmth.

  And all the world was brilliance.

  EPILOGUE

  From where he stood, the house was clearly visible.

  It might have been painted blue at one time, but the sun had beaten all the color out of it. It leaned under the firm and constant hands of weather and gravity. Some of the windows were boarded up; others were just missing. Roof tiles had peeled away like ancient scabs, leaving sagging spots in the wood underneath. The chimney stood tall, even if the top of it had eroded slightly, but it had been years since any smoke had co
me curling out of it.

  The field stretched away from the house in all directions, making it look small and lonely. There was a wall of brown, leafless trees not far behind the house. Above it, the faint specter of a daytime moon hung like a cradle in the pallid sky.

  He stood in the grass, surrounded by dwindling patches of snow, while the others fussed with the crate. They were just a few that he’d brought with him, quiet and cooperative. They shimmied the crate across the bed of the truck.

  He waited patiently, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his overcoat, the collar turned up to cover his ears. The effects of the ship had gradually been wearing off, something that they hadn’t seen coming. He could feel the cold, he could feel the pain in his numb fingertips. The longer they stayed in the physical plane, the worse it was going to get. Time was catching up with them, and eventually, when it came nose-to-nose, they would all know what real death felt like. They would be nothing.

  He worried for them and for himself. Their last hope was inside that house.

  A few more minutes passed. The gray day seemed to linger in a constant, pale light. There were no clouds, but he was sure it was going to snow some more.

  The crew got the crate down off the truck and started carrying it across the field to the house. The brittle grass crunched under their feet. One of them—Jon—slammed the tailgate shut and then came up beside him.

  “Captain Winthrop,” Jon said. “That was the last of it.”

  “Good,” Basil replied. “Everything else is already in place?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jon had a red baseball hat in his hands that he wrung like the neck of some small animal. The color was jarring against the paleness around them.

  They watched the other guys lug the crate up the front steps. After a moment Jon cleared his throat.

  “Captain, sir?” he said.

  “Yes, Jon.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking … I mean, if it’s something you’re able to share…”

  “You want to know what all this is about.” It wasn’t a question. Basil kicked at the hard earth with the toe of his boot.

  Jon hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”

  Basil waited, scratching at his chin, pondering his words. Somewhere over beyond the tree line, a crow called out.

  “What do you remember about the day the Harbinger sank, Jon?” Basil finally asked.

  Jon thought about it. “Not a hell of a lot, sir. It happened so fast.”

  Basil nodded. “We lost a lot of good people. Good syllektors.”

  “It was awful,” Jon murmured, his focus suddenly distancing, the memories of that day playing back behind his eyes.

  “How long has it been?” Basil knew the answer, but he was trying to make a point.

  “A long time,” Jon replied. “Years.”

  “Yes.” Basil licked his lips. “We lost something else when the ship went down. Something very important.”

  “The cube,” Jon said. At the house, the other guys were sliding the crate, a big, tall, rectangular box, through the front door. “We lost the containment tank. It went down with the ship.”

  “Correct,” Basil said, nodding again. “And the world’s a different place now because of it.” The images of everything that had happened after, of fighting their way up out of the steam room, of fleeing the ship through the last active door they could find, the dead psychons, the ghosted syllektors. By the time it finally went under, the Harbinger had been so full of ash that it was more like a giant urn than a ship. Maybe that was fitting. But the thought of that cube, still packed with souls, lost out in the water somewhere, had unnerved him from the second they left it behind.

  “With all due respect, Captain,” Jon continued. “What does all that have to do with what we’re doing now?”

  He’d asked himself that question, too. Maybe they didn’t need to go through any of this to accomplish what they wanted to. It had taken long enough to get here, enough searching and fighting and hiding to bring them to this doorstep, nowhere near New York City, not even in the same state. For what? This whole plan had been built on nothing but what-ifs. And Basil had another one for Jon.

  “What if we could get it all back?” he said.

  Jon looked at him with his eyes narrowed. When he decided that Basil was serious, he said slowly, “Is that possible?”

  “Maybe,” Basil replied. “That’s what we’re here to find out.” He nodded at the house, at the empty doorway that led to more shadows and more dust. “There’s a ghost in there. He’s my friend,” he said. “And he’s coming out alive.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When you write a book, you do most of that part by yourself. When you publish a book, you’re suddenly part of a team. And I’m lucky enough to have the most amazing, genuine, hardworking group of people on my side at Swoon Reads and Macmillan. Swoon Reads as an imprint wouldn’t even exist without its legendary creator, Jean Feiwel, and its fearless director, Lauren Scobell—a huge thanks to them for overseeing not just the imprint but also this amazing community of writers and readers. And this book wouldn’t exist without the work of my brilliant, hilarious, and immensely patient editor, Emily Settle. She’s had my back since Day One. She’s also the queen of including appropriate GIFs in her emails.

  To everyone else at Swoon Reads who read and loved and supported my book, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  When my book was selected for publication, I was welcomed into a group of amazingly supportive and courageous authors, some of whom went out of their way to offer their help and friendship, including (but not limited to) Tarun Shanker, Melinda Grace, Maggie Ann Martin, Danika Stone, and my fellow Season 10 authors, Tiana Smith, Caitlin Lochner, and Dee Garretson.

  I swung for the fences when I posted the original manuscript for this book on the Swoon Reads website—I didn’t let anybody else read it. So to all the readers on Swoon who aren’t related to me in any way and haven’t known me for several years, who read the book and rated it and offered their invaluable feedback, a huge thank-you.

  There’s also a massive support system of family and friends behind me, and I owe many of them a debt of gratitude that I can never hope to repay:

  My friend of many years, Cait, who officiated my wedding and is one of the most inspirational people I know.

  My sister-in-law, Morgan, who’s a friend (and babysitter) whenever she’s needed, and my brother-in-law, Michael, who can slap a set of brakes and a new radio into a car without breaking a sweat.

  My siblings, Kaydance, Chloe, Marcus, Shane, and Brandon, who are never too far away to inject some fun and love into my life.

  My in-laws, Dynel and Eric, who never say no and always put everyone else before themselves.

  My stepmom, Michele, who wouldn’t let me quit on this dream and was one of the only people to patiently read the 108-page poem I wrote in high school.

  My mom, Mylinda, who’s seen some of the darkest corners life has to offer and still has the wherewithal to be a pillar of support and positivity in her kids’ lives.

  My dad, Brian, who taught me more about the art of storytelling than he probably realizes.

  My astounding and beautiful wife, Kelsey. This book is dedicated to her because she exists as much within these pages as I do.

  And to my daughters, Rylan and Norrie, thank you for giving me a reason to laugh every day and for smiling the best smiles I’ve ever seen in my life. I love you.

  If I left you out, I promise it’s not because you don’t matter. There’s more to come from here, and there’s a place for you in those books if you’re willing to make the journey with me.

  With love,

  Devon

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Devon Taylor was born in Las Vegas, Nevada and currently lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two daughters. His day job consists of sneaking around the house with ninja-like stealth to avoid waking up his kids. When not writing, reading, or tediously typing out text messages with all
the correct spelling and punctuation, he spends his time with his family. The Soul Keepers is his debut novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Devon Taylor

  A Swoon Reads Book

  An imprint of Feiwel and Friends and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  swoonreads.com

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at [email protected].

  First trade hardcover edition, 2018

  eBook edition, 2018