I was well into a six-inch turkey sub, and Nash was half done with some combination of provolone, ham, pepperoni, and a couple of meats I didn’t recognize. But it smelled good.
I’d already dripped mustard on Carter’s gearshift, and vinegar on the front seat. Nash had just laughed and helped me mop it all up.
If I was dying, I’d decided to spend every single day I had left eating at least one meal with Nash. Talking to him made me feel good, even when everything else in my life was totally falling apart.
I swallowed a big bite, then washed it down with a gulp from my soda. “Promise me that if I do have a brain tumor, you’ll bring me sandwiches in the hospital.”
He eyed me almost sternly, peeling paper away from his bread. “You don’t have cancer, Kaylee. At least, that’s not why you’re having premonitions.”
“How do you know?” I bit another chunk from my sandwich, chewing as I waited for an answer he seemed reluctant to provide.
Finally, after three more bites and two false starts, Nash wrapped the remains of his sandwich and stuffed it between our drinks on the console, then took a deep breath and met my gaze. His forehead was wrinkled like he was nervous, but his gaze held steady. Strong.
“I have to tell you something, and you’re not going to believe me. But I can prove it to you. So don’t freak out on me, okay? At least not until you’ve heard the whole thing.”
I swallowed another bite, then wrapped the rest of my sandwich and set it in my lap. This didn’t sound like the kind of news I should get with food in my mouth. Not unless I wanted to check out earlier than I’d expected, with a chunk of turkey wedged in my throat.
“Okaaay. Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than brain cancer, right?”
“Exactly.” He ran his fingers through deliberately messy hair, then met my gaze with an intensity that was almost frightening. “You’re not human.”
“What?” Confusion was a calm white noise in my head, where I’d expected fear or even anger to rage. I’d been prepared to hear something weird. I was intimately acquainted with weird. But I had no idea what to say to “not human.”
“Either your aunt and uncle don’t know, or they don’t want you to know for some reason, which is why I didn’t tell you yesterday at breakfast. But you’re killing me with this whole brain cancer thing.” He was watching me carefully, probably judging from my expression how close I was to flipping out on him.
And honestly, if I’d had any idea what he was talking about, I might have been pretty close.
“I think if they knew you thought you were dying, they’d tell you the truth,” he continued. “It sounds like they’re going to tell you soon anyway, but I didn’t want you to think I was lying to you too.” He flashed deep dimples with a small grin. “Or that you have cancer.”
For a moment, I could only stare at him, struck numb and dumb by an outpouring of words that contained no real information. And I have to admit there were a couple of seconds there when I wondered if maybe I wasn’t the one in need of a straitjacket.
But he’d believed me when I told him about Heidi, as crazy as the whole thing sounded, and had talked me through two different premonitions. The least I could do was hear him out.
“What am I?” The very question—and my willingness to ask it—made my heart pound so hard and so fast I felt like the car was spinning. My arms were covered in goose bumps.
Fading daylight cast shadows defining the planes of his face as he squinted through the windshield into the sun, now a heavy scarlet ball on the edge of the horizon. But his focus never left my eyes. “You’re a bean sidhe, Kaylee. The death premonitions are normal. They’re part of who you are.”
Another moment of stunned silence, which I clung to—a brief respite from the madness that each new word seemed to bring. Then I forced the pertinent question to my lips, fighting to keep my jaw from falling off my face as my mouth dropped open. “Sorry, what?”
He grinned and ran one hand over the short stubble on his jaw. “I know, this is the part where you start thinking I’m the crazy one.”
As a matter of fact…
“But I swear this is the truth. You’re a bean sidhe. And so are your parents. At least one of them, anyway.”
I shook my head and pushed my hair back from my face, trying to clear away the confusion and make sense of what he’d said. “Banshee? Like, from mythology?” We’d done a mythology unit in sophomore English the year before, but it was mostly Greek and Roman stuff. Gods, goddesses, demigods, and monsters.
“Yeah. Only the real thing.” He took a drink from his cup, then set it in the holder. “There’s a bunch they don’t teach you in school. Things they don’t even know about, because they think it’s all just a bunch of old stories.”
“And you’re saying it’s not?” I found myself scooting closer to the door, until the handle cut into my back, trying to put some space between myself and the only guy in the world who could make me sound normal.
“No. Kaylee, it’s you!” He watched me intently, expectantly, and while I wanted to wallow in denial, I couldn’t. Even if Nash was one grape short of a bunch, there was something compelling about him. Something irresistible, even beyond the sculpted arms, gorgeous eyes, and adorable dimples. He made me feel … content. Relaxed. Like everything would be okay, one way or another. Which was quite a feat, considering his claim that I was unqualified to run in the human race.
“Think about it,” he insisted. “What do you know about bean sidhes?“
I shrugged. “They’re women in long, wispy gowns who walk around during funerals, wailing over the dead. Sometimes they wail over the dying, announcing that the end is near.” I sipped watered-down soda, then gestured with my cup. “But, Nash, banshees are just stories. Old European legends.”
He nodded. “Most of it, yes. They spell it wrong, for starters. The Gaelic is B-E-A-N S-I-D-H-E. Two words. Literally, it means ‘woman of the faeries.’”
My eyebrows shot halfway up my forehead as I dropped my cup back into the drink holder. “Wait, you think I’m a faerie? Like, with little glittery wings and magic wands?”
Nash frowned. “This isn’t Disney, Kaylee. ‘Faerie’ is a very broad term. It basically means ‘other than human.’ And forget about the wispy gowns and following funerals. All that went out of style a long time ago. But the rest of it? Women as death heralds? Sound familiar?”
Okay, there was a slight similarity to my morbid predictions, but. “There’s no such thing as bean sidhes, no matter how you spell it.”
“There are no premonitions either, right?” His hazel eyes sparkled in the fading light when he grinned, refusing to be derailed by my cynicism. “Okay, let’s see how much of this I can get right. Your dad. He looks really young, right? Too young to have a sixteen-year-old daughter? Your uncle too. They’re brothers, right?”
Unimpressed, I rolled my eyes and folded one leg beneath me on the narrow leather car seat. “You saw my uncle an hour ago—you know he’s young. And I haven’t seen my dad in a year and a half.” Though as a child, I’d always thought he looked young and handsome. But that was a long time ago….
“I know your uncle looks young, but that means nothing to a bean sidhe. He could be a hundred.”
That time I laughed. “Right. My uncle’s a senior citizen.” Wouldn’t it piss Aunt Val off to think he could be more than twice her age and still look younger!
Nash frowned at my skepticism, his face darkening as the last rays of daylight slowly bled from the sky. “Okay, what about the rest of your family? Your ancestors are Irish, right?”
I