My Soul to Steal Read Online Free Page A

I couldn’t help noticing that he still looked only half-awake.
    “Just in time. We’re about to get hit hard.” I pointed to the swarm of tweens, and his dark eyes widened. “Don’t worry, kids usually get Slurpees, candy, and some popcorn. Nothing complicated.”
    Alec just stared at me as I dumped a bag of popcorn seeds into the popper, careful not to burn myself. “Hey, you missed the inside scoop on Sabine.” Em and I had told him about her on the ride to work, but his confused frown said he obviously hadn’t been paying attention. Not that I could blame him. After twenty-six years spent serving a hellion in the Netherworld, high school drama probably felt trite and irrelevant.
    But Sabine was anything but irrelevant to me.
    “It turns out she’s an ex-con. Or something like that. Tod doesn’t know what she did, but…” I turned around to look for the reaper and wasn’t surprised to realize he’d disappeared. I think the temptation to put a couple of the prepubescent punks out of their misery was a little too strong.
    “Anyway, she definitely wants Nash back, and…” But before I could finish that thought, the kids descended on the snack bar, and my pity party was swallowed whole by the universal clamor for sugar and caffeine.
    I pointed to the other register. “You take that one, and I’ll cover this one.”
    Alec nodded, but when the first of the tween mob startedshouting orders at him, he stared at his register screen like he’d never seen it before.
    Great. Awesome time to succumb to culture shock . He’d been fine taking orders twenty minutes earlier, when there was no crowd. “Here. I’ll take orders, you fill them.” I stepped firmly between him and the register and shoved an empty popcorn bucket into his hands.
    Alec scowled like he’d snap at me, then just nodded and turned toward the popcorn machine without a word.
    I took several orders and filled the cups, but when I turned to grab popcorn from Alec, I found him staring at the machine, holding an empty bucket, like he’d rather wear it on his head than fill it.
    “Alec…” I took the bucket from him and half filled it. “This is really not a good time for a breakdown.” I squirted butter over the popcorn, then filled it the rest of the way and squirted more butter. “You okay?”
    He frowned again, then nodded stiffly and grabbed another bucket.
    I handed popcorn across the counter to the first customer and glanced up to find Emma jogging across the lobby toward me. “Hey, Pecker sent me to bail you out,” she said, and several sixth graders giggled as she hopped up on the counter and swung her legs around to the business side. She thumped to the floor, and I started to thank her—until my gaze fell on four more extralarge buckets of popcorn now lined up on the counter.
    What the hell?
    I turned the register over to Emma and picked up a medium paper bag, stepping close to Alec so the customers wouldn’t hear me. “They’re not all ordering extralarge, Alec. You have to look at the ticket.” I handed him a ticket for a mediumpopcorn and a large Coke, then scooped kernels into the bag. “Didn’t they have tickets in the eighties? Or popcorn?”
    Alec frowned. “This job is petty and pointless.” He dropped into a squat to examine the rows of folded bags and stacked buckets.
    “Um, yeah.” I filled another bag in a single scoop. “That’s why they give it to students.” And forty-five-year-old cultural infants.
    Alec had been nineteen when he crossed into the Netherworld—the circumstances of which he still wasn’t ready to talk about—but hadn’t aged a day while he was there.
    “What’s his problem?” Emma asked, as I handed her the medium bag.
    “He’s just tired.” Em didn’t know who he really was, because I didn’t want her to find out that he’d once possessed her body in a desperate attempt to orchestrate his own rescue from the Netherworld. She thought he was a friend of the family, crashing