My Soul To Steal
Rachel Vincent
SOMETIMES DREAMS DO COME TRUE… AND THAT’S THE LAST THING KAYLEE NEEDS Working things out with Nash – her maybe boyfriend – is hard for Kaylee. She’s already coping with being a teenage banshee. Worse, Nash’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend just transferred to their school. Sabine’s no ordinary girl. She’s a mara, a real-life walking nightmare.Draining people’s energy through their darkest dreams sustains Sabine…and makes her Kaylee’s top suspect in a cluster of super-creepy deaths. To win back Nash, Kaylee’s determined to unearth the truth. But Sabine knows the deathly secrets of Kaylee’s subconscious – and she’s not afraid to use them to get whatever and whoever she wants…‘Vincent is a welcome addition to the genre’ Kelley ArmstrongSOUL SCREAMERS The last thing you hear before you die
Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author
RACHEL VINCENT
“Twilight fans will love it.” —Kirkus Reviews on My Soul to Take
“A high-octane plot with characters you can really care
about. Vincent is a welcome addition to this genre!”
Kelley Armstrong on Stray
“I liked the character and loved the action. I look
forward to reading the next book in the series.”
Charlaine Harris on Stray
“Fans of those vampires will enjoy this new
crop of otherworldly beings.”
—Booklist
“My Soul to Take grabs you from the very beginning.” —Sci-Fi Guy
“Wonderfully written characters … A fast-paced,
engrossing read that you won’t want to put down.
A story that I wouldn’t mind sharing with my
pre-teen … A book like this is one of the reasons that
I add authors to my auto-buy list.
This is definitely a keeper.”
—TeensReadToo.com
Also available fromRachel Vincent
Published by
Soul Screamers
MY SOUL TO TAKE
MY SOUL TO SAVE
MY SOUL TO KEEP
Coming soon … IF I DIE
My Soul
to Steal
Rachel Vincent
www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)
To all the real life couples, exes, and unrequited romantic interests, tangled up in love and nightmares. Sometimes that frayed knot is the best lifeline in the world. Other times, it works more like a straitjacket …
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks first of all to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, who knew just what this book needed. Her suggestions challenged me to find better solutions, and the book is so much better for it.
Thanks to Natashya Wilson, for so much enthusiasm and support.
Rinda Elliot, for the lightning-fast critique, and for being the first to love Sabine.
Thanks to #1, who made fajitas and helped me figure out how to hurt a hellion.
Thanks to Ally, Jen, Melissa, Kelley, and everyone else in the YA community for advice, camaraderie, and for making me feel so welcome.
And most of all, thank you to the readers who have given Kaylee and her friends a place in this world. Without you, none of the rest of it would matter.
1
BY THE TIME the second semester of my junior year began, I’d already faced down rogue grim reapers, an evil entertainment mogul, and hellions determined to possess my soul. But I never would have guessed that the most infuriating beast of all, I had yet to meet. My boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend was a thing of nightmares. Literally.
“I WON’T BITE.” Nash looked up at me with a green bean speared on his fork, and I realized I was staring. I’d stopped on the bottom step, surprised to see him at school, and even more surprised to see him sitting alone at lunch, outside in the January cold, where I’d come to get away from the gossip and stares in the cafeteria.
Obviously he’d had the same idea.
I glanced over my shoulder through the window in the cafeteria door, looking for Emma, but she hadn’t shown up yet.
Nash frowned when he noticed my hesitation. But I wasn’t worried about him. I was worried about me. I was afraid that if I got within touching distance of him—within reach of the arms that had once been my biggest comfort and those gorgeous hazel eyes that could read me at a glance—that I would give in. That I would forgive, even if I couldn’t forget, and that would be bad.
I mean, it would feel good, but that would be bad.
The past two weeks had been the most difficult of my life. In the past few months alone, I’d survived horrors most sixteen-year-old girls didn’t even know existed. But a couple of weeks without Nash—our entire winter vacation—had nearly been enough to break me.
Whoever said it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved was full of crap. If I’d never loved Nash in the first place, I wouldn’t know what I was missing now.
“Kaylee?” Nash dropped his fork onto his tray, green bean untouched. “I get it. You’re not ready to talk.”
I shook my head and set my tray on the table across from his, then sank onto the opposite bench. “No, I just … I didn’t think you’d be here.” I hadn’t gone to see him, because that would have been unfair to us both—being together, when we couldn’t really be together. But I knew he’d been very sick from withdrawal, because my father, of all people, had called regularly to check on him.
And based on his brief reports, withdrawal from Demon’s Breath—known as frost, in human circles—was hell on earth.
“Are you … okay?” I asked, poking at runny spaghetti sauce with my own fork.
“Better.” He shrugged. “Still working toward okay.”
“But you’re well enough for school?”
Another shrug. “My mom was giving me a sedative made from some weird Netherworld plant for a while, to help with the shakes, but it just made me sleep all the time. Without dreams,” he added, when he saw my horrified expression. The hellion whose breath he’d been huffing had communicated with Nash through his dreams sometimes. And through me, the rest of the time. By hijacking my body while I slept.
I’d been willing to work through the addiction with Nash—after all, it was my fault he’d been exposed to Demon’s Breath in the first place. But his failure to stop the serial possession of my body—or even tell me it was happening—was the last straw for me. I couldn’t be with him until I was sure nothing like that would ever happen again.
Unfortunately, what my head wanted and what my heart wanted were two completely different things.
“I still don’t have much appetite, but what I do eat is staying down now.” Nash stared at his full tray. He’d lost weight. His face looked … sharper. The flesh under his eyes was dark and puffy, and he hadn’t bothered to artfully muss his hair that morning. The bright, charismatic Nash I’d first met had been replaced with this dimmer, somber version I barely recognized. A version I was afraid I didn’t know on the inside, either. Not like I’d known my Nash, anyway.
“Maybe you should have stayed home a little longer,” I suggested, slowly twirling noodles around my plastic fork.
“I wanted to see you.”
The fissure in my heart cracked open a little wider, and I looked up to find regret and longing slowly twisting the greens and browns in his irises. Humans wouldn’t see that, even if we’d had company. But because Nash and I were both bean sidhes—banshees, to the uninformed—we could see the colors swirling in each other’s eyes, and with a little practice, I’d learned to interpret what I saw in his. To read his emotions through the windows of his soul—when he let me see them.
“Nash …”
“No pressure,” he interrupted, before I could spit out the protest I’d practiced, but hoped not to have to use. “I just wanted to see your face. Hear your voice.”
Translation: You didn’t visit me. Or even call.
I closed my eyes, trying to work through an awkwardness I’d never felt with Nash before. “I wanted to.” More than I could possibly express. “But it’s just too hard to …”
“To see, but not touch?” he finished for me, and I met his rueful gaze. “Trust me, I know.” He sighed and stirred a glob of mass-produced peach cobbler. “So, what now? We’re friends?”
Yeah. If friends could be in love, but not together. In sync, but out of touch. Willing to die for each other, but unable to trust.
“I don’t think there are words for what we are, Nash.” Yet I could think of at least one: broken.
Nash and I were like the wreckage of two cars that had hit head-on. We were tangled up in each other so thoroughly that I could no longer tell which parts of us were him and which were me. We could probably never be truly untangled—not after what we’d been through together—but I had serious doubts we could ever really recapture what we’d had. “I just … I need some time.”
He nodded, and his eyes shone with the first flash of hope I’d seen from him in ages. “Yeah. We have time.”
In fact, we had lots and lots of time. Bean sidhes age very slowly from puberty on, so while I’d likely be carded until I was forty, if Nash and I actually managed to work things out, we’d have nearly four hundred years together, barring catastrophe.
Although actually barring catastrophe seemed highly unlikely, considering that since the school year began, my life had been defined by a series of disasters, barely held together by the beautifully strong thread of Nash’s presence in my life. At least, until recently. But now I was clinging to the wreckage of my existence, holding the pieces together on my own, trying to decide if I would be helping us both or hurting us by letting him back in.
“So, how’s Em?” Nash asked, his voice lowered as he glanced at something over my shoulder.
I twisted to see Emma Marshall, my best friend, heading toward us across the nearly deserted quad. Everyone with half a brain—or nothing to hide—was eating inside, where it was warm. Em carried a tray holding a slice of pizza and a Diet Coke, content to eat with us outside, not because she couldn’t face the crowd ready to judge her, but because she didn’t care what they thought.
“Em’s strong. She’s dealing.” And though she didn’t know it, in many ways, Emma was my hero, based on her resilience alone.
Doug Fuller, Em’s boyfriend of almost a month, had died from an overdose of frost two weeks earlier, and though they’d been connected at the crotch, rather than at the heart, she’d been understandably upset by his death. Especially considering that she couldn’t comprehend the Netherworld origin of the drug that had killed him.
Nash lowered his voice even further as she walked toward us. “Did you go to the funeral?”
“Yeah.” Doug had been one of Eastlake High’s starting linebackers. Practically the whole school had shown up at his funeral—except for Nash. He’d been too sick from withdrawal to get out of bed. And Scott, their third musketeer. Scott had survived addiction to frost—but at a devastating price. He’d suffered brain damage and now had a permanent, hardwired mental connection to the hellion whose breath had killed Doug and mortally wounded my relationship with Nash.
“Hey.” Emma came to a stop on my right and glanced from me to Nash, then back before taking a seat next to me. “Someone bring me up to speed. Are we making up or breaking up? ‘Cause this limbo is kind of driving me nuts.” She grinned, and I could have thanked the universe in that moment for the ray of sunshine that was Emma.
“How low can you go?” I asked, then crunched into a French fry.
“Lower than you know …” Nash replied, with a hint of an awkward grin.
Em rolled her eyes. “So … more limbo?”
Nash looked just as ready for my answer as she did. I exhaled heavily. “For now.”
He sighed and Emma frowned. Like I was being unreasonable. But she didn’t know the details of our breakup. I couldn’t tell her that he’d let a hellion take over my body and play doctor with him—to Nash’s credit, he hadn’t known it wasn’t me that first time—without even telling me I was being worn like a human costume.
I couldn’t tell her because the same thing had happened to her, and for her own safety and sense of security, I didn’t want her to know that her body had been hijacked by the hellion responsible for her boyfriend’s death. Her friendship with me had already put her in more than enough danger.
“Oh, fine. Drag out the melodrama for as long as you want. At least it’ll give everyone around here something else to talk about.” Something other than Doug and Scott.
If they hadn’t already had two weeks to deal with grief and let off steam, the whole school probably would have been reeling from the double loss. The looks and whispers when we passed in the hall were hard enough to deal with as it was.
“So, did you see the new girl?” Emma asked, making a valiant attempt to change the subject as she tore the crust from her triangle of pizza.
“What new girl?” I didn’t really care, but the switch in topic gave me a chance to think—or at least talk—about something other than me and Nash, and the fact that there was currently no me and Nash.
“Don’t remember her name.” Emma dipped her crust into a paper condiment cup full of French dressing. “But she’s a senior. Can you imagine? Switching schools the last semester of your senior year?”
“Yeah, that would suck,” I agreed, staring at my tray, pretending I didn’t notice Nash staring at me. Was it going to be like this from now on? Us sitting across from each other, watching—or pointedly not watching—each other? Sitting in silence or talking about nothing anyone really cared about? Maybe I should have stayed in the cafeteria. This isn’t gonna work….
“She’s in my English class. She looked pretty lonely, so I invited her to sit with us.” Emma bit into her crust and chewed while I glanced up at her in surprise.
First of all, Em didn’t have other girlfriends. Most girls didn’t like Emma for the same reason guys couldn’t stay away from her. It had been just the two of us since the seventh grade, when her mouth and her brand-new C-cups intimidated the entire female half of the student body.
Second of all …
“Why is there a senior in your junior English class?” Nash said it before I could.
Emma shrugged while she chewed, then swallowed and dipped her crust again. “She got behind somehow, and they’re letting her take two English classes at once, so she can graduate on time. I mean, would you want to be here for a whole ‘nother year, just to take one class?”
“No.” Nash stabbed another green bean he probably wasn’t going to eat. “But I wouldn’t want to read Macbeth and To Kill a Mockingbird at the same time, either.”
“Better her than me.” Em bit into her crust again, then twisted on the bench as footsteps crunched on the grass behind us. “Hey, here she comes,” she said around a full mouth.
I started to turn, but stopped when I noticed Nash staring. And not at me. His wide-eyed gaze was trained over my head, and if his jaw got any looser, he’d have to pick it up off his tray. “Sabine?” he said, his voice soft and stunned.
Emma slapped the table. “That’s her name!” She twisted and called over her shoulder. “Sabine, over here!” Then she glanced back at Nash. “Wait, you’ve already met her?”
Nash didn’t answer. Instead, he stood, nearly tripping over his own bench seat, and when he rounded the table toward the new girl, I finally turned to look at her. And instantly understood why she wasn’t intimidated by Emma.
Sabine was an entirely different kind of gorgeous.
She was a contrast of pale skin and dark hair, where Em was golden. Slim and lithe, where Em was curvy. She swaggered, where Emma glided. And she’d stopped cold, her lunch tray obviously forgotten, and was staring not at me or her new friend Emma, but at my boyfriend.
My kind-of boyfriend. Or whatever.
“Sabine?” Nash whispered this time, and his familiar, stunned tone set off alarm bells in my head.
“Nash Hudson. Holy shit, it is you!” the new girl said, tossing long dark hair over one shoulder to reveal a mismatched set of hoops in her double-pierced right ear.
Nash rounded the table and walked past me without a glance in my direction. Sabine set her tray on the nearest table and ran at him. He opened his arms, and she flew into them so hard they spun in a tight circle. Together.
My chest burned like I’d swallowed an entire jar of hot salsa.
“What are you doing here?” Nash asked, setting her down, as she said, “I can’t believe it!”
But I was pretty sure she could believe it. She looked more thrilled than surprised. “I heard your name this morning, but I didn’t think it would really be you!” “It’s me. So … what? You go to school here now?” “Yeah. New foster home. Moved in last week.” She smiled, and her dark eyes lit up. “I can’t believe this!”
“Me, neither.” Em stood and pulled me up. “What is it we’re not believing?”
And finally Nash turned, one arm still wrapped casually around Sabine’s waist, as if he’d forgotten it was still there. “Sabine went to my school in Fort Worth, before I moved here.”
“Yeah, before you ran off and left me!” She twisted out of his grip to punch him in the shoulder, but she didn’t look mad.
“Hey, you left first, remember?” Nash grinned. “Not by choice!” Her scowl was almost as dark as her grin was blinding.
What the hell were they talking about? I’d already opened my mouth to say … something, when Tod winked into existence on my left. Fortunately, I was still too confused by the arrival of Nash’s old friend—please, please just be a friend!—to be surprised by the sudden appearance of his mostly dead grim reaper brother.
“Hey, Kaylee, you …” Tod began, running one hand through pale blond curls, then stopped when he saw Sabine and Nash, still chatting like long-lost relatives, while the rest of us watched. “Uh-oh. I’m too late.”
“Too late for what?” Emma asked, but I could tell from the lack of a reaction from either Nash or Sabine that Em and I were currently the only ones who could see Tod. Selective corporeality was one of several really cool reaper abilities, and now that Emma knew about him, Tod rarely appeared to me alone. For which I was more than grateful—Em was one less person who thought I went around talking to myself when I was really talking to the reaper.
“To warn you,” Tod continued. “About Sabine.”
“She comes with a warning label?” Em whispered.
I crossed my arms over the front of my jacket. “Well, it can’t be sewn into her clothes, or we’d see the outline.” Sabine’s black sleeveless top was so tight I could practically count her abs.
Emma raised one brow at me. “Catty, much?”
“Well, look at her!” I whispered, both relieved and very, very irritated that neither Nash nor Sabine had given us a second look. A strip of bare skin showed between the low waist of her army-green carpenter pants and the hem of her shirt—an obvious violation of the school dress code—and she wore enough dark eye shadow to scare small children. And—most grating of all—the look worked for her. And it obviously worked for Nash. He couldn’t look away.
“I don’t think it’s her you have a problem with,” Emma whispered. “It’s them.”
I ignored her and turned to Tod. “I take it they were involved in Fort Worth?”
Tod nodded. “Yeah. If you’re into really dramatic understatements.” Great.
“Hey, you two, care to introduce those of us on the periphery?” Emma called, betraying no hint of Tod’s presence. She was a fast learner.
Nash looked up in surprise. “Sorry.” He guided Sabine closer. “I’m guessing you’ve already met Emma?” he said, and the new girl—his old girl—nodded. “And this is my …” Confusion flashed in Nash’s swirling eyes, and he dropped his hand from Sabine’s waist. “This is Kaylee Cavanaugh.”
Sabine truly looked at me for the first time, and I caught my breath at the intensity of her scrutiny. Her eyes were pools of ink that seemed to see right through me, and in that moment, the certainty—the terror—that Nash would want nothing to do with me now that she’d arrived was enough to constrict my throat and make my stomach pitch.
“Kaylee …” Sabine said my name like she was tasting it, trying to decide whether to swallow me whole or spit me back out, and in the end, I wasn’t sure which she’d chosen. “Kaylee Cavanaugh. You must be the new ex.”
Resisting the overwhelming urge to take a step back from Sabine, I shot Nash a questioning look, but he only shrugged. He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t even known she was there until she walked into the quad.
“I …” But I didn’t know how to finish that thought.
Sabine laughed and fresh chill bumps popped up on my arms, beneath my jacket. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Happens to the best of us.” Then she turned—pointedly dismissing me—and grabbed her forgotten tray in one hand and Nash’s arm in the other. “Let’s eat. I’m starving!”
He glanced back at me then, and a flicker of uncertainty flashed in the swirling greens and browns of Nash’s irises before he turned with her and headed for our table.
As they sat, I turned to find Tod watching them warily. “How long ago did they break up?” I asked, without bothering to whisper. Nash and Sabine no longer knew we existed.
“Well …” Tod hesitated, and I frowned at him. Like Emma, he was usually blunt bordering on rude. “What?” I demanded.
Tod exhaled heavily. “Technically speaking, they never did.”
2
“SO, HOW SERIOUS were they?” I handed change and a receipt to a balding man in his forties. He shoved them both into his front pocket, then took off toward the north wing of the theater with a greasy jumbo popcorn.
“You sure you want to hear this?” Tod sat on the snack counter in his usual jeans and snug white tee, invisible and inaudible to everyone but me and Em. Not that it mattered. Monday afternoons were dead at the Cinemark. But then, so was Tod.
Emma leaned over the counter next to him. “I’m sure I want to hear it.” She was on a break from her shift in the ticket booth, but Tod and I were obviously much more entertaining than anything going on in the break room.
“I didn’t come to rub your face in it,” the reaper insisted, watching me as he snatched a kernel from Emma’s small bag of popcorn.
“No, you came because you’re bored, and my problems obviously amuse you.”
Tod had just switched to the midnight-to-noon shift reaping souls at the local hospital, and since reapers didn’t need sleep, he was now free every afternoon to bug his still-living friends. Which consisted of me, Em, and Nash.
Tod shrugged. “Yeah, that, and for the free food.” “Why are you eating, anyway?” Emma pulled her paper bag out of his reach. “Can you even metabolize this?”
Tod raised one pale brow at her. “I may be dead, but I’m still perfectly functional. More functional than ever, in fact. Watch me function.” He reached around her and grabbed another handful of popcorn while she laughed. “And that’s not all I can do …”
“Can we save the live demo for later, please? Bean sidhe in angst, here.” But the truth was that it felt good to laugh, after what we’d all been through in the past few months. “Seriously, tell me about Sabine.”
Emma grinned. “Does she have a last name, or is she a superstahh? Like Beyoncé, or the pope?”
I threw a jelly bean at her, from the open box I kept under the counter. “You know that’s not his name, right?”
Em threw the jelly bean back.
“Anyway …” Tod began. “Vital stats—here we go … Her name is Sabine Campbell, and she’s probably seventeen by now. She likes long walks down dark alleys, conspicuous piercings, and, if memory serves, chocolate milk—shaken, not stirred.” Tod paused dramatically, and the good humor shining in his eyes dulled a bit. “And she and Nash were the real thing.”
My grape jelly bean went sour on my tongue, and I had to force myself to chew. But he’d said were. They were the real thing. As in, past tense. Because I was Nash’s present tense. Right? We were taking a break so he could get clean, and I could come to terms with what had happened, but that didn’t mean he was free for the taking!
“Wait, the real thing, like hearts and candy and flowers?” Em asked, wrinkling her nose over the cupid cliché.
Tod started to laugh, but choked off the sound with one look at my face. “More like obsession and codependence and … sex,” the reaper finished reluctantly.
I rolled my eyes and poked through my box of jelly beans for another grape. “I know he’s not a virgin.”
“Well, he was when he met Sabine.”
“Ohh,” Emma breathed, and I dropped my jelly beans into the trash.
“Okay, so what?” I opened the door to the storage closet and grabbed the broom. “So she was his first. That doesn’t mean anything.” I swept up crushed popcorn kernels and smooshed Milk Duds in short, vicious strokes. “She didn’t save lives with him. She didn’t risk her soul to rescue him from the Netherworld. Whatever they had can’t compete with that, right?”
“Right.” Emma watched me, her eyes wide in sympathy. “Besides, we don’t even know that she’s still interested in him. They were probably just surprised to see each other.”
I stilled the broom and raised both brows at her.
Emma shrugged. “Okay, she’s totally still into him. Sorry, Kay.”
“It doesn’t matter. So long as he’s not into her.” I resumed sweeping, and accidentally smacked the popcorn machine with the broom handle.
Tod hopped down from the counter and held one blessedly corporeal hand out. “Hand over the broom, and no one will get hurt.” But I found that hard to believe. Sabine was making me doubt everything I’d thought I knew. And I’d spent less than fifteen minutes with her.
I gave Tod the broom and he put it back in the closet. “He hasn’t seen her in more than two years. Give him a chance to get used to her being here, and everything will go back to normal.”
Normal. I could hardly even remember what that word meant anymore. “You really think so?”
Tod shrugged. “I give it a fifty-fifty chance.”
“Doesn’t that mean I have a better chance of being struck by lightning at least once before I die?”
Em laughed. “Knowing your luck? Yeah.”
I pulled a plastic-wrapped stack of large cups from under the counter and began restocking the cup dispensers. “So, what’s the deal? How did they hook up?”
“I was limited by real-world physics at the time, so I don’t know the whole story,” Tod said, leaning back with his elbows propped on the counter.
“Just tell me what you do know.”
The reaper shrugged. “Nash was only fifteen when they met, and still coming into his full bean sidhe abilities—Influence doesn’t come on full-strength until puberty.”
“Really?” Emma said, a kernel of popcorn halfway to her mouth. “I didn’t know that.”
I hadn’t, either. But I was tired of sounding ignorant about my own species, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Yeah. Otherwise, the terrible twos would turn any little bean sidhe boy into a tyrant. Can you imagine Nash ordering our mom around from the time he could talk?”
Actually, I could, having had a taste of what out-of-control Influence looked and felt like.
“So, anyway, Nash was coming into his own, but he didn’t have our dad around to teach him stuff, like I did, so he was kind of mixed up. Sabine was abandoned as a kid, and she’d been through a bunch of foster parents. When they met, she had it pretty rough at home, and she’d gotten into some trouble. She had a temper, but nothing too serious. She and Nash just kind of fell into each other. I think he thought he could help her.”
Yeah, that sounded like Nash and his hero complex. We’d gotten together the same way.
I stared at the gritty floor, trying not to feel sorry for Sabine. Something told me she wouldn’t welcome my sympathy any more than she’d welcome my currently undefined presence in Nash’s life.
“Did Harmony like her?” I asked, unable to deny the queasy feeling my question brought on. I didn’t want Nash’s mother to like any of his exes better than she liked me, but the new fear went beyond that. Harmony and I shared bean sidhe abilities. We’d bonded beyond our mutual interest in Nash, and I wanted her for myself, just like I wanted Nash.
Tod shrugged. “Mom likes everyone. The two of them together scared the shit out of her, though, the same way you and Nash being together probably gives your dad nightmares.”
“So what happened?” Em asked, while I was still trying to process the fact that Nash and Sabine’s bond had been strong enough to worry Harmony.
When Tod didn’t answer, I looked up and he shrugged again. “I died.”
Emma blinked. “You … died?” She knew he was dead, of course, but that didn’t make his proclamation sound any more … normal.
“Yeah. I died, and Mom and Nash didn’t know I’d be coming back in my current incarnation.” He spread his arms to indicate his existence as a reaper—and his completely unharmed-by-death physique. “So they moved for a fresh start, just like we did after my dad died. We’d lived around here when Nash and I were kids, so this probably felt a little like coming home for my mom. It made everything harder for Nash, though. Because of leaving Sabine.”
“And he and Sabine never broke up?” I moved on to the jumbo plastic cups, fascinated in spite of myself by Tod’s story.
“He couldn’t get in touch with her. She was kind of … in state custody at the time. No email. No phone calls, except from family. Which she doesn’t have.”
Emma stood straight, brown eyes wide. “She got arrested?”
“I told you she got into some trouble.” “Yeah, but you didn’t mention that she was a criminal.” I shoved the cups down harder than was probably necessary. Nash’s ex-girlfriend—his former “real thing”—was a convict? That’s not scary or anything.
Obviously at some point his tastes had changed. Dramatically.
“What’d she do?” Emma said, asking the question I most wanted answered, but refused to ask myself.
Tod shrugged. “Nash never told me. But she got probation and a halfway house instead of prison, so it couldn’t have been too bad.”
“I’m guessing that’s a matter of opinion.” I twisted the end of the cellophane around the remaining cups and shoved them under the counter. “Maybe I should call him after work.”
“What are you gonna say?” Emma asked. “‘I’m not sure I want you back, but I’m sure I don’t want your ex-con ex-girlfriend to have you, either’? Yeah. That’ll start this little triangle off on the right foot.”
“This is not a triangle. This is—” a disaster “—nothing. Exes turn into friends all the time, right?” Emma and Tod exchanged a glance. “Right?” I demanded, when neither of them answered.
“I don’t know, Kay.” Emma crumpled her empty popcorn bag and tossed it into the trash can from across the counter. “But on the bright side, according to Mrs. Garner, the triangle is the most stable geometric shape. That has to count for something, right?”
“This is not a triangle,” I repeated, turning my back on them both to check the number of nacho cheese containers lined up beneath the heat lamp. I couldn’t afford to let my decision about me and Nash be influenced by Sabine’s arrival. Or her criminal record. Or her prior claim on my boyfriend.
When I turned back around, Em was still watching me. “Maybe you shouldn’t start grilling Nash about his ex until he’s back on his feet for sure.”
“Yeah.” Except by then she could have swept him off of them. Or knocked them out from under him. Either way, Nash off his feet would be bad.
“Marshall, your break’s over!” the new assistant manager called from across the lobby, fleshy hands propped on his considerable gut. “Back in the ticket booth!” His name was Becker, but when she made fun of him after work, Em replaced the capital B with a P. She’d called him Pecker to his face once, by accident, and he’d been yelling at her ever since.
Emma rolled her eyes, pushed the remainder of her soda toward Tod, and headed backward across the lobby. “See you after work.” We’d ridden together, as we usually did when we had the same shift. But now, more often than not, we had a third carpooler.
As if he’d read my mind—not a reaper ability, as far as I knew—Tod glanced around the snack bar as a group of junior high kids came through the front door, wearing matching aftercare shirts. “Where’s Alec?”
Tod, Nash, and Harmony were the only ones—other than my dad—who knew the truth about Alec, that he’d spent a quarter of a century enslaved by a hellion in the Netherworld. Until we’d rescued him in exchange for his help saving my dad and Nash from that same hellion.
I glanced at the clock. “He’s on his break, but he should be back any minute.” I’d given him my keys so he could eat a bag of Doritos in the car, by himself. Alec had grown comfortable with me and my dad, but the same could not be said for the rest of the general populace.
For the most part, Alec had adjusted well to being back in the human world. He was fascinated with the internet, DVDs, and laptops, none of which had been around in the eighties, when he’d become Avari’s Netherworld proxy—a weird combination of a personal assistant and snack food. I hadn’t even seen my iPod in days.
But he was still sometimes overwhelmed by crowds, not because of the numbers—he’d regularly faced large groups of terrifying monsters in the Netherworld—but because of the culture shock. He was getting to know the twenty-first century at his own speed through TV, news-papers—evidently people still read them in his day—and all the movies he saw for free at the Cinemark. But he got nervous when he had to actually interact with groups of people who didn’t understand his cultural handicap. So far, “Medium or large?” and “Would you like butter on your popcorn?” were the most we’d gotten out of him at work.
“Want me to find him?” Tod asked, as the gaggle of kids descended on Emma in the ticket booth. But before I could answer, Alec rounded a corner into the lobby, tucking his uniform shirt into his pants.
“Sorry. Fell asleep,” he said, then ducked into a small hall leading to the break room and service entrance. When he stepped into the snack bar a second later, scruffing one brown hand over short-cropped, tight curls, 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 started shouting 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 medium popcorn 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 on our couch while he saved up enough money for a place of his own and some online college classes.
When I turned back to Alec, I found him leaning with his palms on the counter, staring at the ground between his feet.
“Alec? You okay?” I put one hand on his shoulder, and he jumped, then stared at me like I’d appeared out of nowhere. He shook his head like he was shaking off sleep, then blinked and looked around the lobby in obvious confusion.
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night. What were you saying?”
“I said you have to look at the ticket. You can’t just serve everyone an extralarge.”
Alec frowned and picked up the ticket on the counter in front of him. “I know. I’ve been doing this a week now, Kay. I got this.”
I grinned at his colloquialism. He only used them on his good days, when he felt like he was fitting into the human world again. And honestly, in spite of his fleeting moments of confusion, some days, Alec seemed to fit into my world much better than I did.
3
THE HALLWAY IS COLD and sterile, and that should be my first clue. School is always cluttered and too warm, but today, cold and sterile makes sense.
I walk down the hall with Emma, but I stop when I see them. She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t notice anything wrong, but when I see them, I can’t breathe. My chest feels too heavy. My lungs pull in just enough air to keep me conscious, but not enough to truly satisfy my need for oxygen. Like satisfaction is even a possibility with them standing there like that. In front of my locker, so I can’t possibly miss the act.
I can’t see her face, because it’s sucking on his, but I know it’s her. It’s her hair, and her stupid guy-pants that look hot on her the same way his T-shirts probably look hot on her when that’s all she’s wearing. And I know she’s worn his shirts. Hell, she’s worn him, and if theyweren’t in the middle of the school, she’d probably be wearing him now. She practically is, anyway.
I stop in front of them so they can’t ignore me, and she peels herself away and licks her lips, like she can’t get enough of the taste of him, and I know that’s true. My teeth grind together, and when I glance around, I realize there’s a crowd.
Of course there’s a crowd. Crowds gather for a show, and this is one hell of a show.
I say his name. I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to acknowledge him and what he’s doing, but I can’t stop myself. It won’t be real unless he says it, and part of me believes he won’t say it. He’ll say the right words instead. He’ll say he’s sorry, and he’ll look like he’s sorry, and he’ll be sorry for a very long time, but then everything will be okay again.
Instead, he shrugs and glances around at the crowd, grinning at the faces. The faces leer and blur together. I can’t tell them apart, but it doesn’t matter, because the crowd only has one face. Crowds only ever have one face. Et tu, Brute? It’s the mob mentality, and I am Caesar, about to be stabbed.
Or maybe I’ve already been stabbed, and I’m too stupid to know I’m bleeding all over the floor. But I know I’m dying inside. He’s killing me.
“Sorry, Kay,” he says at last, and I hate him for using my nickname. It sounds intimate and friendly, but he just had his tongue in her mouth, and now I want to cut it out of his head. “Sorry,” he repeats, while my face flames, and my world blurs with tears. “She knows what I like. And she delivers … “
They’re laughing now, and even though the crowd only has one face, it has many jeering voices. And they’re all laughing at me. Even Emma.
“I told you,” she says, shaking her head as she tries to hold back a giggle, and I love her for trying, even if, in the end, the laughter can’t be denied. It’s not her fault. She’s just playing her part, and the lines must be spoken, even if each word burns like an open wound.
“I told you it wasn’t worth saving. You can’t win the game if you won’t even play. You have to deliver….”
4
I SAT UP IN BED, sweating and cold, my heart beating so hard it practically bruised my sternum. I took a deep breath, threw the covers back, and stepped into my Betty Boop slippers, then padded silently down the hall and into the living room, where Alec lay on the couch with the blanket pulled over his head. His exposed feet were propped on the armrest at the opposite end, brown on top, and pale on the bottom. When I walked past him, his toes twitched, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
In the kitchen, I got a glass of water, and I was on my way back across the living room when Alec folded the blanket back from his head and blinked up at me.
“Okay, that’s starting to get creepy,” I said, as he sat up.
“What?”
“You. Lying there awake but covered.” I sank into my dad’s recliner and tucked my feet beneath me. “It’s like watching a corpse sit up in the morgue.”
“Sorry.” He ran one hand absently over his smooth, dark chest. Twenty-six years in the Netherworld may have scarred him on the inside, but his outside still looked good as new. “I can’t sleep. Can’t get used to the silence.”
“What, did Avari sing you to sleep in the Netherworld?”
“Funny.” Alec leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his head sagging on his shoulders. “Once you get used to all the screaming at night, it’s hard to go to sleep without it. Not that I actually slept every night.”
“Are you serious?” The fresh crop of chill bumps on my arms had nothing to do with my bad dream, and everything to do with his living nightmare.
Alec shrugged and sat up to meet my gaze. “Hellions don’t sleep, so I passed out whenever I got a chance. Whenever Avari was busy with someone else.”
I started to explain that I was horrified by the screaming, not by his irregular sleep patterns, then decided I didn’t want to know any more about either. So I kept my mouth shut.
“What about you?” he asked, as I sipped my water. “Bad dream.” I set the glass over the existing water ring on the end table.
“What about?”
My exhale sounded heavy, even to me. “I dreamed Nash dumped me for his ex-girlfriend, in front of the whole school, after eating her face in front of my locker.”
“Literally?” Alec frowned, and I realized that where he’d spent the past quarter century, literal face eating might have been a real concern.
“No. That might actually have been better.”
He leaned back on the couch, arms crossed over his bare chest. “I thought you dumped him.”
“I did. Kind of.” Nash and I were too complicated for simple explanations, and something told me that would only get worse, with his ex suddenly in the picture.
“But now you want him back? Even after what he did?”
Alec knew exactly what Avari had done with my body when he’d possessed me, because he’d been there in the Netherworld with the hellion when it happened. I couldn’t blame Nash for what Avari had done, but I couldn’t help blaming him for not telling me. And for not even trying to stop it from happening again. And again. And for lying to me about taking Demon’s Breath. And for using his Influence against me.
Alec knew all of it—even the parts Emma and my dad didn’t know—because I’d needed to talk to someone who knew about things that go bump in the Netherworld, but who wouldn’t hate Nash on my behalf before I’d decided how I felt about him myself. Alec had been my only option for a confidant. Fortunately, he’d turned out to be a good one.
“Well, yeah. I never stopped wanting him.” Trust was our new stumbling block, and as much as Nash meant to me, I couldn’t truly forgive him until I knew I could trust him again. I sighed and ran one finger through the condensation on the outside of my glass. “And I guess I kind of assumed that when we were both ready, we’d get back together. But now, with Sabine back in the picture …” I swallowed a bitter pang of jealousy. “It hurt to see them together.”
They shared a history I hadn’t even known existed. A connection that predated my presence in Nash’s life and made me feel … irrelevant. And it wasn’t just sex. She’d known him before Tod died. That was practically a lifetime ago. Was Nash very different then? Would I have liked him?
Would he have let a demon possess Sabine, when they were together? Would he now?
“And the dream …” But I couldn’t finish. Being publicly humiliated and rejected like that by someone who claimed to love me—that was a whole new kind of terror, and even the memory of the dream left me cold.
“Tod says they were, like, obsessed with each other, and now she’s back, and it turns out they never really broke up. She’s not just gonna bow out gracefully, is she?”
Alec shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t have a lot of experience with human girls—you’re the first one I’ve really talked to in twenty-six years. But I do know a bit about obsession—you might recall Avari’s ongoing quest to possess your soul?”
“That does ring a bell …” My hand clenched around my glass, and I gulped from it, trying to drown the pit of lingering terror that had opened up in my stomach.
“Well, whether she’s obsessed with him or actually in love with him—or both—she’s probably not gonna just walk away,” Alec said, when I finally set my glass down. “But really, that’s a good thing, in a way.”
I gaped at him. “In what universe does Nash’s ex wanting him back qualify as a good thing?”
Alec leaned back against the cushions. “Think of it as a second opinion on his value. If he wasn’t worth the fight, wouldn’t she just let him go? Wouldn’t you?” Hmm … Would I? Should I?
“How did you get so wise? You’re like a giant Yoda, minus the pointy ears and green skin.” I hesitated, eyeing him in curiosity. “They had Star Wars in the eighties, right?”
Alec laughed, and his deep brown eyes lit up. “Only the original trilogy. You sure know how to make a guy feel old.” Then he frowned. “But I guess that makes sense. It’s weird.” He met my gaze again. “Physically, I’m still nineteen. But I’m old enough to be your dad.”
I shook my head and grinned. “No way. My dad’s a hundred and thirty.” Though he didn’t look a day over forty. “Why? Do you feel forty-five on the inside?”
Alec shook his head, holding my gaze with a serious, heavy sadness. “I feel way older, most of the time. Every day in the Netherworld was like a year, and I was there for something like twenty-six years. Doesn’t even seem possible. Then, suddenly I’m out, and I’m here, and everything’s different and fast and hard and shiny. I’m old and wise, according to some—” his eyes flashed in brief good humor on my behalf “—and in some ways, I feel ten thousand years old, because after everything I’ve seen, and everything I had to do to survive, shiny new Blu-ray disks and stereos that fit in your pocket seem so … irrelevant.”
Alec shrugged again, looking lost. “But then sometimes I feel like a little kid, because these shiny bits of irrelevance are everyday parts of my life now, and half the time, I don’t have a clue what they do.”
“Wow.” I grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “That was deep.”
He returned my grin and raised a challenging eyebrow. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“You’re sayin’ I should listen to my elders?”
His smile died, and he glanced at the hands clasped in his lap, then back up at me. “I’m saying I wish I wasn’t your elder.” Another sigh. “I wish I hadn’t lost twenty-six years of my life, and I wish to hell that it wasn’t so hard to take advantage of what I have left.”
Unfortunately, everyone he’d known before he left the human world was a quarter century older now, so he couldn’t just show up on old friends’ doorsteps—assuming he knew where to find them—with a smile and a suitcase. My dad and I were all Alec had at the moment, and we had no intention of cutting him loose.
But deep down, we all three knew that we couldn’t replace his real family any more than my aunt and uncle had been able to replace my parents.
“I just wish I could turn back the clock and undo everything that went wrong.”
I knew exactly how he felt.
TUESDAY MORNING, the second day of the spring semester, I was waiting in front of Nash’s locker when he arrived, walking down the hall alone for the first time since I could remember. His two best friends were gone, and we’d broken up. He was alone and probably miserable. And I couldn’t help wondering how he’d gotten to school, considering he didn’t have a car and no longer had anyone to bum a ride from.
Surely he hadn’t taken the bus with the freshmen.
“Hey.” His voice was casual, and completely Influence free, but his eyes swirled slowly in genuine pleasure. He was happy to see me.
My pulse spiked a little at that knowledge, and I resisted a relieved smile, trying to think of a way to ask him about Sabine without admitting that I wanted to nail her into a crate and ship her to the South Pole. Even though I’d just met her. “Hey. Can we talk?”
“Yeah.” Nash opened his locker, then unzipped his backpack. “Actually, I need to tell you something. I wanted to say this yesterday, but then we got interrupted, and …” He set his bag down without taking anything out of it and looked right into my eyes, so I could see the sincerity swirling in his. “Kaylee, I just want you to know that I’m clean. It sucks, and it’s hard, especially when I’m home by myself with nothing else to think about. But I’m totally clean. And I’m going to stay that way.”
My heart ached. Part of me wanted to hug him and forgive him and take him back right then, because I was afraid that if I didn’t, I’d lose my chance. Sabine would move in, and the time-out that was supposed to give Nash a chance to get better and me a chance to deal with what happened would only end up giving her a way into his life.
But I couldn’t just forget about everything he’d done. If I took him back before I was sure we were both ready, we could fall apart for real. Forever. Rushing in could ruin everything for both of us.
Of course, so could Sabine.
“I’m glad. That’s really good, Nash,” I said, hating how lame I sounded. Did Hallmark make a card for former addict ex-boyfriends who were trying to stay clean?
“So … what did you want to talk about?” he asked, as I clung to the strap of my backpack like a life preserver. Why was I so nervous?
“I just …” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then made myself look at him. “How worried should I be about Sabine?”
At the mention of her name, Nash’s irises exploded into motion, swirling so fast I couldn’t interpret what he was feeling. And with sudden, frightening insight, I realized that was because he didn’t know what he was feeling. Probably several conflicting emotions. But whatever they were, they were strong.
“Worried about her?” His irises went suddenly still, as he slammed the lid shut on his emotions, blocking me out. I couldn’t blame him. Who wants to walk around looking like a giant mood ring? But I was desperate for a hint of what he really felt about her. And about me. I needed to know where I stood. “Why would you …”
But before he could finish, she was suddenly there, down the hall, shouting his name like she didn’t care who heard. Or who turned to stare.
Sabine was fearless.
“Nash!” She jogged down the hall toward us, bag bouncing on her back, low-cut khakis barely hanging on to her hips. As she came to a stop, she reached into her hip pocket and pulled out a cell phone. Nash’s cell phone. “You left this in my car. You know, you should really set it to autolock. Otherwise, all your information’s just there for the taking …” Instead of handing him the phone, she stepped close and slid it slowly into his front left pocket, letting her fingers linger until he actually had to pull her hand from his pocket. Right there in the hall.
My face flamed. I could feel my cheeks burning and could see a scarlet half-moon at the bottom edge of my vision.
“Um … thanks,” Nash said.
“Anytime,” she purred, then finally seemed to notice me standing there. “Hey, Katie, what’s up?” Her black eyes stared into mine, and I flashed back to my dream from the night before. Chill bumps popped up beneath my sleeves, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the fluorescent light overhead flickered just to cast deep shadows beneath her eyes.
It was everything I could do not to shudder. Something was wrong with her. How could Nash not see it? Looking into Sabine’s eyes was like taking a breath with my head stuck inside the freezer.
“It’s Kaylee,” I said through gritted teeth, forcing the words out when what I really wanted was to excuse myself and walk away. Fast. “And we were talking.”
“Oh, good!” She turned back to Nash, grinning like she’d just made a clever joke and I was the punch line, and I was ashamed of how relieved I was to no longer be the focus of her attention. “What are we talking about?”
“It’s private,” I said, my hand clenching around my backpack strap.
“Oh. Speaking of private, I actually slept pretty well last night, for once. I think I just needed to be really worn out to make it happen, you know?” She raised one brow at me, and I fought another chill as she turned to Nash. “Good thing your mom works nights now.”
I reeled like I’d been punched in the gut. My breath deserted me, and my lungs refused to draw in more air.
“Kaylee …” Nash tried to reach for me, but I pushed him away and stumbled backward into the lockers. When I could finally breathe, I looked right into his eyes, silently demanding that he let me see the truth.
“You were with her last night?”
“More like early this morning,” Sabine said casually, like she couldn’t tell I was upset. But she knew exactly what she was doing. I could tell from the way she watched for my reaction, rather than his. She was studying me. Sizing up the competition. And deep inside, I knew I should have been happy about that—that she considered me serious competition.
But closer to the surface, I was thoroughly pissed. Warm flames of rage battled the chill that resurged every time I glanced at her, until I felt half frozen, half roasted, and thoroughly confused.
“We had a lot to catch up on,” she added, while Nash’s jaw clenched. “That’s not a problem, is it? I mean, you guys broke up, right? That’s what Nash said …”
“Sabine,” he said at last. “I’ll see you at lunch. I need to talk to Kaylee before the bell.”
She shrugged and smiled like she hadn’t just ruined my whole day. Or like she’d meant to. “I gotta head to class, anyway. I’m trying out this punctuality thing. The guidance counselor says it’s all the rage.” She winked at him—actually winked!—then turned to squint at my cheek, like I’d suddenly grown a wart. “Hold still, Kay …” My pulse spiked at her unwelcome use of my nickname. “You’ve got an eyelash …”
Sabine reached out and brushed one finger slowly, deliberately across my cheek, but her gaze never left mine. In fact, it strengthened, as if she was trying to see through my eyes into the back of my skull.
I wanted to pull away, but I couldn’t. I could only stare back as that instant stretched into eternity, and I stood frozen.
And for a second—just a single moment—her eyes suddenly looked darker, and that horrified, humiliated pain from my dream flashed through my head and throbbed miserably in my heart.
“Sabine …” Nash whispered, in the warning tone he usually saved for Tod.
She blinked, then smiled. “There. Got it.” She held her finger up, then let her hand drop too fast for me to see the alleged eyelash. “Later, Kay …” she said, and I stood in shock as she sauntered down the hall without a glance back.
For a moment, Nash and I just looked at each other. I couldn’t think past the surreal second that his ex-girlfriend’s finger had lingered on my cheek. “What the hell was that?”
Nash sighed. “She’s … Kaylee, Sabine’s had it pretty rough. She doesn’t remember her real parents, and she’s been in more than a dozen foster homes, and she’s never had many friends, so—”
“Maybe that’s because she’s a creepy bitch!” I spat, and Nash’s eyes widened. He was almost as surprised by my snap judgment as I was. It usually took much longer than that for me to decide I didn’t like someone, but Sabine had definitely found a shortcut.
“She’s rough around the edges, I know, but that’s not her fault.”
“Tod told me her sob story,” I snapped. “He also said she’s a convicted criminal.”
He frowned and his eyes narrowed slightly. He was looking for more. “He say anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said, and Nash’s eyes swirled in panic. “He said she was your first, and you two practically shared the same skin for, like, a year.”
“Oh.” Nash sagged against his locker, but he looked oddly relieved. “That was years ago, Kaylee. I haven’t seen her since the summer before my sophomore year.”
“You were with her last night,” I reminded him, hating the warble in my voice.
“We were just talking,” he insisted. “I swear.”
“All night?”
He shrugged. “We had a lot to catch up on.”
“Like, her latest felony and your latest conquest? Did you two laugh about me?” My heart throbbed, and suddenly I was sure that’s exactly what they’d done. They’d laughed at me all night long. “Am I your little inside joke? ‘Poor, frigid Kaylee has to be possessed before she’ll let anyone touch her.’”
I started to walk away, tears forming in my eyes in spite of my best effort to stop them. But Nash grabbed my arm. “Kaylee, wait.” He pulled me back, and I let him because I wanted him to deny it. Desperately.
What the hell was wrong with me? I wanted to be wrong, but I was terrified I was right. So scared of the truth that I could hardly breathe.
Nash looked down into my eyes, like he was looking for something specific in the shades of blue that were probably twisting out of control at the moment. “Damn it, Sabine …” he mumbled. Then, to me, “I’ll talk to her. She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just habit.”
“What’s habit?” I was obviously missing something.
He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Nothing. Never mind.” When he looked at me again, his eyes were infuriatingly still. “Look, Sabine and I haven’t seen each other in a long time, and we were just getting caught up. Nothing happened, and nothing’s going to happen. I know I messed up with you, but I’m trying to make it right, and I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that. Not even Sabine. Okay?”
“I …” I wanted to believe him. But I was so scared that he was lying. And if he was, I’d never know it. “Yeah. I just … I have to get to algebra.”
“I’ll see you at lunch?” he asked, as I walked away.
“Yeah.” But he’d see her, too.
I dropped into my chair in Algebra II and stared at the wall, trying to ignore the whispers around me. No one knew the truth about what had happened to Doug and Scott, but they all knew that Nash and I had been involved. And that we’d broken up. And half of them had probably seen him getting out of Sabine’s car.
Emma thought our classmates’ theories were hilarious, and probably much worse than what had actually happened. But she was wrong. They couldn’t begin to imagine anything as awful as how Doug had died. How Scott was now living.
After wallowing in unpleasant thoughts for a while, I looked at the clock. Class should have started eight minutes ago, but Mr. Wesner hadn’t shown up. And neither had Emma. But just as I glanced toward the door, Emma came in from the hall, eyes wide, cheeks flushed.
She dropped into the chair next to mine, and I started talking, eager to share my misery with someone I knew I could trust. “You’re not going to believe what just happened,” I said, leaning in so no one else would hear.
“You’re not going to believe this, either,” she interrupted. “Mr. Wesner’s dead. The custodian found him this morning, slumped over his desk.” She turned and pointed toward the front of the class. “That desk.”
5
AT FIRST, I JUST sat there. Stunned. Staring at Mr. Wesner’s desk. And before I could ask for details, a crowd had formed around us, everyone looking at Emma.
“Wesner’s dead?”
“He died here?”
“No way,” one of the girls from the pom squad—Leah something or other—insisted. “I was here early to sell raffle tickets, and I didn’t see anything. No police. No ambulance. No body. It’s just a stupid rumor.”
Em shook her head and gestured for silence. “It’s true. I heard Principal Goody telling Mr. Wells in the office when I went in for a late slip. One of the custodians came in at six this morning to let a repairman into the cafeteria before breakfast, and he found Mr. Wesner. Right there.” She pointed at the desk again, and every head pivoted, all voices silenced now, except for Emma’s.
“Goody said the custodian called her, and the ambulance was already here by the time she got here at, like, dawn. They took him before any of us got here, but they’re still in the office scrambling for a sub.”
“Damn,” someone said from behind me, and while I watched, the same stunned, vaguely frightened expression seemed to spread from face to face.
“How’d he die?” Brant Williams asked, clutching the back of my chair.
Emma shrugged and glanced at the desk again, and again, all eyes tracked her gaze. “I don’t know. A stroke or something, I’m guessing. He was probably here all night.”
“Ugh. That is so morbid,” Chelsea Simms said, yet never paused in the notes she was taking for the school paper. But I couldn’t help wondering if they’d actually let her run the story.
“This whole year has been morbid,” Leah added, eyes round and a little scared, and everyone else nodded.
You have no idea….
Ironically, Mr. Wesner’s stroke, or heart attack, or whatever, was the only normal death our school had experienced so far. Yet it was the one that most creeped people out.
Before anyone could ask any more questions, Mr. Wells, the vice principal, came in and officially announced Mr. Wesner’s unfortunate, unexpected demise, then said that he’d be watching the class until a substitute could be found.
Wells seemed disinclined to dig through Mr. Wesner’s desk for his lesson plan, though, so he gave us a free period. Which meant we were free to spend the period imagining Mr. Wesner slumped over the desk our vice principal obviously didn’t want to sit behind.
“Can you believe this?” Em whispered, scooting her desk closer to mine. “Yesterday he was fine, and today he’s dead. Right here in his own classroom.”
“Weird, huh?” And I couldn’t help wondering why Tod hadn’t told me someone was scheduled to die at my school, just as a courtesy. If I’d been there when it actually happened, I’d have been compelled to sing—or scream—for his soul.
“And sad. Makes me feel bad about not bothering with homework for most of last semester. Do you think he was grading midterms when he died?”
I frowned when I realized she was serious. “Emma, your test did not give him a stroke.”
“I think you underestimate my incomprehension of sign, cosign, and tangent,” she said, obviously trying to lighten the mood. And failing miserably. Her eyes narrowed as she watched me. “Everyone else is completely weirded out by this. Why isn’t this freaking you out, Kaylee?”
I could only shrug. “It is. It’s just that …” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to her. “I’ve seen a lot of death in the past few months, and every bit of it has been weird and wrong. After all that, it’s actually kind of good to know that Mr. Wesner died at his own time and that his soul isn’t being tortured for all of eternity. For once, death worked the way it was supposed to, and honestly, that’s kind of a relief.” Even if it did happen at school.
“I guess I can understand that,” Emma said at last. But I had my doubts. “Okay, enough of this. I’m depressing myself.” Emma shook her head, then forced her gaze to meet mine. “So … what were you going to say earlier?”
My news didn’t seem quite as catastrophic as it had before I’d found out my algebra teacher died, but the very thought of Nash and Sabine alone at his house still made my blood boil. “Nash spent most of the night with Sabine.”
“With her? Like, with her, with her?”
I shrugged. “He says they were just talking, but she’s on the prowl, I swear. She actually reminded me that Nash and I broke up. Like that gives her some prior claim or something.”
“Well, yeah, technically. You’re both his exes now, so …” Em hesitated, obviously wanting to say something I wouldn’t want to hear. “Does he seem interested in her again?”
“His mouth says no, but his eyes … His irises churn like the ocean every time I say her name. There’s definitely something still there, but I can’t tell exactly what it is. It’s strong, though. And she was spewing innuendo like some kind of gossip geyser, saying how great it is that Nash’s mom works nights. She’s making up for more than just lost time. Plus …” I felt like an idiot, saying it out loud, but it was the truth. “She’s creepy.”
“What do you mean, creepy?”
I scratched at a name carved into the corner of my desk. “I don’t know. She gives me chills. I think there’s something wrong with her. And Nash knows about it, whatever it is. He told me he’d talk to her. Like, he’d take care of her. I think she’s seriously unstable.”
Em raised both brows at me, and I rolled my eyes. “I know, that sounds hypocritical coming from me.” Usually I was hypersensitive to references to mental instability, because I’d spent a week locked up in the mental health ward a year and a half ago. “I don’t mean she’s crazy. I mean she’s … unbalanced. Dangerous. She’s a criminal, Em.”
Emma shrugged. “Tod says she did her time.”
“Yeah. A few months in a halfway house. I’d hardly call that paying for her crimes.”
“You don’t even know what her crimes are.”
“I’m guessing theft. She probably stole someone’s boyfriend.”
Emma laughed, and I gave in to a grin of my own. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Kaylee. Whatever they had can’t compare to what you and Nash have been through together. I mean, she’s human, right? How well can she possibly know him?”
I sat a little straighter. Emma was right. Sabine was a nonissue. I’d faced down two hellions in the past four months, not to mention assorted Netherworld monsters. Compared to all that, what was one stupid ex-girlfriend?
Right?
BY LUNCHTIME, news of Mr. Wesner’s death had already been chewed up and regurgitated by the masses so many times that it bore little resemblance to the story Emma originally reported. In any other school, during any other year, a teacher’s death would have been a headline all on its own. But we’d already lost four students, and the yearbook’s In Memoriam page was getting regular updates. So while some of the snippets of conversation I overheard were flavored with either disbelief or morbid curiosity, most people sounded kind of relieved that life now made a little more sense than it had the day before.
After all, Mr. Wesner was pretty old and overweight enough that he’d wheezed with practically every breath. In a weird way, his death seemed to be giving people a sense of security, as if the world had somehow been shoved back into alignment with the natural order of things, wherein old, unhealthy people died, and young people talked about it over nachos and cafeteria hamburgers.
I paid for my food, then grabbed a Coke from the vending machine and made my way outside, where I found Nash sitting at a table on the far side of the quad. Alone. Again.
I felt bad for him. With the rest of the football team still reeling from their double loss, no one seemed to know what to say to the last surviving musketeer. But Nash’s solitude was a definite advantage to me. I headed his way, hoping Emma would be late again and that Sabine would walk off the edge of the earth so he and I could talk.
His eyes lit up when I sat on the bench across from him, and some of my tension eased. “Hey, did you hear about Mr. Wesner?” he asked. “Don’t you have him this year?”
“First period.” I twisted the cap off my bottle. “Em’s the one who broke the story.”
After that, he seemed at a loss for what else to say. I knew exactly what I wanted to say—what I wanted to know—but I questioned the wisdom of actually asking. What’s that they say about beating a dead horse?
But after a few sips of my soda and a lot of awkward silence from Nash, my curiosity overwhelmed my common sense. “So … what’d she do?”
“What’d who do?” Nash asked, around a mouthful of burger.
“Sabine. What’d she get arrested for?” Nash groaned and swallowed his bite. “Kaylee, I don’t want to talk about Sabine. Not again. Not now.”
“Well, you sure had plenty to say to her.” And in that moment, I hated Sabine for turning me into a paranoid, desperate shrew. Even more than I already half hated her for coming between me and Nash. But that wouldn’t stop me from asking what I needed to know. “How late was she at your house?” I’d never been there past midnight when his mom wasn’t home. If she was there after one, I was going to lose it. You don’t stay at your ex’s house alone with him past one in the morning to talk.
Nash exhaled, long and low. “Burglary and vandalism.”
It did not escape my notice that he’d answered my first question, rather than the latest one. Not a good sign.
“What’d she steal?” I took the top bun off my hamburger and squirted ketchup onto the naked patty, just to have something to do with my hands.
“Nothing, really.” Nash hesitated, poking his limp fries with a fork. “She took a baseball bat, but she didn’t actually leave with it.”
“What does that even mean?” I dropped the bun back onto my burger and tried to pin him with my glare. “She took something, but she didn’t really take it. What happened? She hit someone with it?” The poor, defenseless girlfriend of some guy she had a crush on, maybe?
“Not a person. A car. Thus, the vandalism charge.”
“She beat up someone’s car? Why?”
Nash dropped his fork onto his tray, exasperated. “Kaylee, that’s really her business. If you want to know any more, you’ll have to ask her.” He hesitated again, then met my gaze across the table. “Only don’t, okay? That’s all in her past, and she’s seriously trying to make a fresh start here. You wouldn’t want some stranger asking questions about your week in mental health, would you?”
Damn.
“Okay, fair enough. So long as she didn’t assault someone. I mean, if your ex hates me and is dangerous, you’d tell me that, right?”
Nash flinched, and my stomach pitched.
“What? I thought she just beat up a car?”
He set the remaining half of his burger down. “The assault charge came later, when she got picked up for violating probation.”
“She hit a cop?” My horror knew no bounds. Why on earth would he have ever gone out with a creepy, violent thief and vandal, much less slept with her?
“No!” He leaned forward and lowered his pitch when the cafeteria door opened behind me and new voices came into the quad. “Kaylee, you’re making this into a much bigger deal than it really is. Some asshole from our school in Fort Worth tried to make her do something she didn’t want to do. If she’d told me about it, I’d have taken care of him.”
The flash of pure fury in Nash’s eyes told me how badly he wished he’d had that chance.
“But she’s stubborn—like someone else I know—and she wanted to handle it herself. So she pounded on his car with his own bat. She got probation for that, but a few months later she missed curfew and was picked up for violating her parole. While she was in the detention center, waiting to see the judge, some idiot picked a fight with her in the cafeteria. Sabine broke her jaw with a lunch tray.”
Words utterly deserted me. Concepts were even a bit iffy for a minute there. Then, suddenly, I couldn’t speak fast enough.
“She broke someone’s jaw with a lunch tray.” I leaned forward, whispering fiercely. “She hates me, Nash—I can see it when she looks at me—and in case you haven’t noticed, we all share a lunch period. Where there happens to be an abundance of lunch trays.”
“She’s not …” Nash stopped, closed his eyes, then started over. “She doesn’t hate you, Kaylee. She’s jealous of you. But she’s not gonna hit you. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t, because she knows that’d piss me off.”
“Exactly what part of that is supposed to make me feel better?” Though, honestly, hearing that she was jealous of me did make me feel a teeny, tiny bit better.
He shrugged, but still looked pale and miserable. “I’m just answering your questions. What more do you want?”
What did I want? I wanted Nash. The old Nash, who’d loved me and wanted to protect me, and had risked both his life and his soul to help me. But I didn’t know—couldn’t believe—he’d had time to truly get himself back together. I wanted Sabine to transfer back to wherever she’d come from. I wanted to turn back time and make things right again.
“This isn’t about what I want,” I said at last. When in doubt, change the subject. “This is about what she wants. She wants you, Nash. You know that, right? Or is there some kind of testosterone-powered mind shield that prevents you from seeing her for what she is?”
Nash frowned and let a moment pass in tense silence before he answered. “I know what she wants, Kaylee. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to get it.”
I should have been relieved. I should have been dancing on the table in joy. But something in his eyes said my celebration would have been premature. “She will if you keep letting her hang out in your room till two in the morning.” Please, please correct me. Say she wasn’t there that late.
But no correction came.
“You’re not going to stop hanging out with her, are you?” My voice held a numbing combination of anger and disbelief.
For a moment, he watched me, studying my expression. “Are you asking me to?”
Damn it, why is this conversation so hard? I didn’t have any right to tell him who not to hang out with! How pissed would I be if he told me to stop hanging out with Emma or Alec?
The answers were there, and they were clear, but I didn’t like them.
“Nash, I just … I can’t see any way for this to play out without one of the three of us—or maybe all three of us—getting hurt.” And possibly actually injured.
Nash exhaled heavily and stared at the table for several seconds before finally dragging his gaze up to meet mine. “Kaylee, I still love you, and I still want you back. I miss you like you wouldn’t believe, and I swear that not seeing you for the past couple of weeks—not even hearing your voice—hurt worse than the nausea and headaches combined. It kills me to sit here knowing I no longer have the right to lean over this table and kiss you. I want to be the first person you call the next time something goes wrong. I want to know that you’re eventually going to be able to forgive me. And I’m not gonna do anything to jeopardize that possibility.” He took a deep breath and held my gaze. “But Sabine needs me …”
“No …” I shook my head, but he spoke over me, refusing to be interrupted.
“Yes, she does. You may not like it or understand it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. And right now, I need her, too.”
“You need her?” My nightmare came roaring back like a train about to run me over, and suddenly I wondered if it was more premonition than dream. I summoned anger to disguise the deep ache in my chest. “In what way do you need her exactly, and do not tell me she scratches the right itch, or I swear I will walk away right now, and this time I won’t look back, Nash.”
He exhaled again and his features suddenly looked heavy, like he couldn’t have formed a smile if he’d wanted to. “I’m not sleeping with her, Kaylee. I swear on my soul.”
I would have been relieved by his admission—and the confirmation I saw in his slowly swirling eyes—but I was too confused to process much of anything in that moment. “Then why would you possibly need her?”
Nash closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Then he met my gaze over our forgotten lunches. “I’m two weeks clean, and every single day feels like starting all over. It never gets any easier, but yesterday truly sucked for me. Seeing you and not being able to touch you—hardly getting to talk to you … That made everything harder. Including willpower. Last night, I was one breath away from paying someone to cross me into the Netherworld.”
I opened my mouth to ask who he could possibly have hired as a Netherworld ferry, but he continued before I could.
“Don’t ask. There are places you can go. People—kind of—who will do it for the right price.”
Fresh chill bumps crawled over my skin, followed by a bitter wash of revulsion. I hated it that he even knew things like that.
“But my point,” Nash continued, “is that I was trying to talk myself out of it when she showed up on my porch. And we just talked. I swear that’s all that happened, but it was enough. She gave me something to think about, other than how badly I wanted a hit, or an hour alone with you.”
“So she’s a substitute for me?” Suddenly my throat felt thick and hot. Bruised by the words I made myself swallow. How was I supposed to trust the two of them alone together, knowing that? “That’s not fair, Nash. I can’t …”
“I know. You’re not ready to be alone with me, and I understand that. I deserve it. But I need someone, Kaylee. I need a friend. And in case you haven’t noticed, no one else is exactly beating down the door to talk to me right now.” His wide-armed gesture took in the entire table, still empty except for us.
“They just don’t know what to say,” I insisted. “People never know what to say when someone close to you dies, and it’s even worse this time, thanks to the rumors about Scott.” Half the student body thought he and I were cheating on Nash and my cousin, Sophie, and that we’d been caught the day of Scott’s infamous breakdown.
“I know, but that doesn’t change anything. I’ve been alone and sick from withdrawal for two weeks, and when I get back to school, people just stare at me and whisper.”
“I get it.” How could I not? But I had Emma and Alec to help distract me from Nash’s absence. And even Tod had been coming around more lately … “What about Tod?” I asked, as the thought occurred to me. “Why can’t you just hang out with your brother?”
“Because he won’t talk to me. I haven’t even seen him since that night. After the Winter Carnival.” When he’d punched Nash for letting Avari possess me over and over. “Since he can’t do anything else for Addy, he’s decided that he’s your white knight, and I don’t think he’s going to forgive me until you do.”
Wow. “I had no idea.”
Nash leaned forward and crossed his arms over the table, staring directly into my eyes. “I’m not making a play for your sympathy. I know I got myself into this. But I need someone to talk to—someone to just hang out with—and I know you’re not ready to play that role for me yet. But Sabine is. And she needs me for the same reason. She’s new here, and she doesn’t know anyone else, and she’s trying to pull herself together. Just like I am.”
I held his gaze, my next question stalled on my tongue, where I wanted it to wither and die. But I had to know. “Did you love her, Nash?”
His pause was barely noticeable. But I noticed. “Yeah. We were only fifteen, but yeah, I loved her.” He blinked, then met my gaze again, letting me see the truth swirling in his. “But that was years ago. She’s just a friend now, Kaylee.”
My leg bounced under the table, uncontrollably. “Have you told her that?”
“Yeah. And eventually, it’ll actually sink in. Look, I know she makes you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry about that. And if it’s going to mean losing my second chance with you, I’ll tell her to go away. But I’m asking you not to make me do that.”
I bristled. “I can’t make you do anything, Nash.” Though the same could not be said for him and his Influence.
He frowned. “You know what I mean.”
“You want my blessing to strike up a friendship with your ex-girlfriend. The first girl you ever slept with, who’s still in love with you and doesn’t even deny it. Does that sum it up?”
Another long exhale. “Yeah. I think that covers it.”
If I said yes, I’d be giving him permission to spend time with his hot, willing ex. If I said no, I’d be denying him what he needs to work through his addiction.
How did I even get into this mess?
He’d left me no real choice, unless I was ready to let him go. Or willing to pretend that the past six weeks of my life had never happened. And I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to. Not yet.
“Fine. Hang out with Sabine. But if this thing goes beyond friendship and support—”
I’ll what? Leave him to find solace in her arms? Or her bed? That’s exactly what she wanted, and in spite of Nash’s good intentions, it wouldn’t take him long to get over me, considering the kind of comfort she’d offer. I had no doubt of that.
“It won’t,” Nash insisted, saving me from grasping for a viable threat, and I hated the sudden surge of relief in his eyes. How could he not see what she was really like?
“Whatever. But don’t expect me to spend time with the two of you.” Though maybe Tod would, if I asked him. He couldn’t watch them every second, but surely he’d see enough to report back on the true nature of their relationship …
Great, now I’m spying on Nash. I should have been ashamed. Instead, I was just … scared. Scared of losing him—even though I’d pushed him away—because now she was there to catch him.
“Just … be careful, okay? You may be looking for some kind of Netherworldly AA sponsor, but she’s looking for trouble. I saw it in her eyes.”
Nash’s brows shot up, and a smile tugged at one side of his mouth. “That’s not what you saw in her eyes. There’s something else we need to talk about, but I don’t want to do it here.”
However, before he could elaborate, footsteps sounded at my back. A second later, Sabine appeared on my right, then settled onto the bench next to Nash. Her silverware clattered as she dropped her tray on the table.
“I don’t know how you guys can eat this shit. It’s an open campus, right? Let’s go get some real burgers.”
“It is an open campus,” Nash said, both brows raised. “I almost forgot.” The prohibition against off-campus lunch—the result of a wreck in the parking lot the second week of school—had expired with the fall semester.
“There’s only twenty minutes left in lunch.” It was all I could do to speak to her civilly. Every time I looked at her, I saw her making out with Nash in front of my locker, and that bitter, acrid fear from my dream sloshed around in my stomach, rotting the remains of my breakfast.
“Yeah, but you have study hall next, right?” Sabine said, ignoring me in favor of Nash. “And a decent burger would totally be worth a tardy in Spanish.”
Nash glanced at me for an opinion, but I only shook my head. I couldn’t afford another tardy in English. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said at last, and Sabine scowled.
“Fine. But I’m not going to eat this crap.” She shoved her tray across the table, and one corner of it knocked my open soda over. Coke poured from the bottle and splash-fizzed all over the front of my shirt. I jumped up to avoid getting drenched, and Sabine stood, too.
“Here, take my napkin.” She plucked a single, thin cafeteria napkin from her tray and dropped it onto the table, where it was instantly soaked.
I glared at Nash and would have been appeased a bit by how miserable he looked—if I weren’t busy blotting my shirt, while Coke pooled where I’d sat a second earlier.
“I’ll get more napkins,” he muttered, then jogged toward the cafeteria, leaving me alone with Sabine.
“Sorry about the mess.” Sabine stepped calmly around the table and added Nash’s napkin to the puddle on my bench seat, apparently oblivious to everyone else in the quad now staring at us. “I just needed a chance to talk to you, girl-to-girl,” she said, stepping too close to me so no one else would hear. “I figure it’s best to get this out in the open.”
“What?” I couldn’t think beyond the cold, sticky spots on my shirt.
“It’s cute, how he still thinks he loves you. Very chivalrous. Very Nash. But if you’re not gonna make your move, don’t blame me for making mine.” She shrugged, and I saw that dark flash of … something in her eyes again. “Love, war, and all that. Right?”
Was she serious? Was this an open declaration of her intent to take my boyfriend? My kind-of boyfriend? Just like that?
My mouth opened and closed. Say something! I couldn’t let her have the last word—that first little victory.
“So … which is this?” I asked, frustrated to realize that I sounded shell-shocked. “Love, or war?”
Sabine’s smooth forehead wrinkled in surprise. “Both!” She smiled, a glaring ray of sunshine beneath storm-cloud eyes. “When it’s good, it’s always both. And Nash is so very, very good.” Her eyes widened in mock regret, like she’d just let some vital secret out of the bag. “Oh, but you wouldn’t know, would you?”
My face flushed. “He told you …?” Hadn’t he already humiliated me enough?
Sabine shook her head slowly, exaggerating a show of sympathy. “He didn’t have to. You may as well have a shiny white V stamped on your forehead.”
Suddenly I hated her. Truly hated her, in spite of my generally forgiving temperament and everything Nash swore she’d been through.
Unfortunately, my abject hatred saw fit to express itself in utter speechlessness.
“Anyway, I don’t have many girlfriends, so when this is all over, if you wanna hang out, I’m totally willing to let bygones be … well, bygone.” She watched me expectantly—completely seriously—and I could only stare until Sabine blinked and shrugged again. “Or not. Either way, good luck!”
She reached out with her right hand and shook mine before I recovered the presence of mind to jerk away from her grip. When my skin touched hers, Sabine blinked, and her eyes stayed closed just an instant too long. When they opened and focused on me, her smile swelled, her irises darkened, and my chill bumps returned with a vengeance.
I pulled away from her and almost backed into Emma. “What happened?” Em asked, holding out a handful of napkins.
“I knocked her Coke over,” Sabine said, as Nash jogged across the grass toward us. They soaked up the mess while I carried the soggy remains of my lunch to the trash can against the wall, desperate to put some distance between me and my new least favorite person in the whole world. In either world.
At least Avari’d never invaded my school.
“What the hell was that?” I whispered under my breath, as I dumped my empty bottle and my ruined hamburger into the can.
“That was Sabine,” Tod said from my left, and I jumped, nearly dropping my sticky tray.
“Something’s wrong with her,” I whispered, when I’d recovered from the surprise. “If she wasn’t human, I’d swear that …”
“Human?” Tod’s brows rose. “She’s not human, Kay. Not even close. Nash didn’t tell you?”
Crap. He’d tried to tell me something about Sabine. Tried twice, but she’d suddenly shown up to prevent him both times. “What is she?” I said, turning to watch the cleanup effort under way at our table as my heart tried to sink into my stomach.
“She’s your worst Nightmare, Kaylee,” Tod said, his frown widening. “Literally.”
6
I STOMPED THROUGH the empty hall, each step putting the cafeteria farther behind me. But I couldn’t outrun anger and humiliation.
Sabine wasn’t human. The one advantage I’d thought I had over her was that Nash and I had bonded through a mutual lack of humanity, which set us apart from everyone else at school. I knew what he really was and what he could do. I knew things about him that he could never tell anyone else.
But evidently, so did she. And Nash hadn’t bothered to tell me.
Oh, he’d started to a couple of times, but I couldn’t help thinking that if he’d really wanted me to know, he wouldn’t have let Sabine’s timely interruptions stop him.
Tod had started to tell me everything, but I’d cut him off. I wanted to hear it from Nash, when we had enough time and privacy for me to demand real answers. I needed to yell at him, but I didn’t want to do it in front of Sabine. I couldn’t let her know that her declaration was getting to me, nor was I willing to let her see me mad at Nash. She would only take that wedge and drive it deeper.
I turned the corner and stomped past two open classroom doors, ignoring the chair squeaks and whispers from inside as my thoughts raced, my cheeks flaming with anger. The door to the parking lot called to me from the end of the hall. There were only five minutes left in lunch, and then I could escape into my English class, where no one could challenge me, lie to me, or threaten to take my boyfriend.
I had both hands on the door’s press bar when Nash shout-whispered my name from behind. “Kaylee, wait!” I froze, then turned slowly. So much for escape.
He jogged to catch up with me and I crossed both arms over my chest, displaying my anger, in case he hadn’t picked up on it yet.
“She’s not human?” I demanded softly, when he came to a stop inches away. “Is that what you were going to tell me?”
“Along with some specifics, yeah.” He shrugged apologetically. “I tried to tell you earlier, but …”
“Sabine got in the way, right? I have a feeling that’s about to become routine.”
Nash exhaled slowly. “Can we go somewhere and talk? Please? I want to explain everything, but I need to be able to speak to you alone for more than a few minutes at a time.” And from the frustrated twist of color in his eyes, I knew he wanted to talk about more than just Sabine’s species. We hadn’t really spoken—not like we used to—in more than two weeks. I missed talking to him.
“Please,” he repeated. “Skipping one English class won’t hurt anything.”
Talking to him without Sabine around was exactly what I needed. I opened my mouth to say yes—then snapped my jaw closed before I could form a single word, terrified by the sudden, familiar thread of pain and primeval need winding its way up my throat.
No!
“Kaylee?” Nash whispered, while I glanced around the hall frantically. It was empty, but the dark panic inside me continued to swell. Someone nearby was going to die. Soon, based on the strength of the scream clawing its way up my throat.
I clamped one hand over my mouth and aimed a wide-eyed, desperate look at Nash. He knew the signs. His brow furrowed and his irises began to swirl with brown and green eddies of distress. “Who is it? Can you tell?”
I rolled my eyes and gestured with one hand at the empty hall at his back, trying to swallow the raw pain scraping its way toward my mouth as the scream demanded its exit.
Nash whirled around, and when he reached for my free hand, I let him have it. We raced past first one closed classroom door, then another, stopping to peek through the windows, but found nothing unusual. Until we got to the third door. I peered through the glass over Nash’s shoulder to see Mrs. Bennigan slumped over at her desk, where she’d obviously fallen asleep during her lunch break. Her back rose and fell with each breath.
“Is it her?” Nash whispered, but I couldn’t tell with the closed door separating us. So he pushed it open softly.
Shadows enveloped the sleeping teacher like a cocoon of darkness, where there’d been nothing a second before. Panic crashed over me, cold and unyielding. The scream reverberated in my head with blinding pain. A thin ribbon of sound began to leak from between my sealed lips, then spilled between the fingers covering them.
My hand clenched Nash’s. Mrs. Bennigan was going to die. Any minute. And there was nothing we could do without condemning someone else to her fate instead. Because while Nash and I—a male and a female bean sidhe—could work together to restore a person’s soul, we couldn’t save one life without taking another.
“Come on.” Nash took off down the hall, and I let him tug me all the way into the parking lot, one hand still clamped over my mouth. The urge to scream faded a little with each step, but even when the school door closed behind us—locking us out—the demand was still there, the unvoiced scream still scratching the back of my throat and reverberating in my teeth.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I shook my head, clenching my teeth so hard my jaw ached. Of course I wasn’t okay. Someone was dying—another teacher—and there was nothing I could do but wait for her soul to be claimed by whichever reaper had come for her, so the screaming fit would pass.
“Can I …? Will you let me help?” He stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the hall through the glass door, but I shook my head again. He couldn’t help without using his Influence, and I couldn’t let him do that to me again. Even with the best of intentions.
And anyway, I didn’t need any help. I’d been handling it on my own just fine.
But when he pulled me close and silently wrapped his arms around me, I let him hold me. He felt so good. So warm and strong, as I battled the dark need trying to fight its way free from my body. So long as he didn’t talk, holding me was fine. Holding me was good. It reminded me of the way things used to be between us, and that gave me something to think about, other than the fact that Mrs. Bennigan sat alone in her empty classroom, dying. And no one else had any idea.
The bell rang while Nash still held me, and for a moment, the shrill sound of it battled the ruthless screech still ringing inside my head. He pulled me to one side, out of sight from the hall, and I twisted in his grip to peek through the door.
The hall filled quickly, but I saw no faces. I couldn’t tear my focus from that open doorway, waiting for someone to go inside and find her. And finally, as the excruciating pain began to fade in my throat and my jaw began to loosen, someone did. A freshman girl I knew only by sight stepped into the classroom.
I opened my mouth and inhaled. Nash’s grip on me tightened from behind, offering wordless comfort. And maybe taking a little for himself.
And only seconds after she’d entered the room, the girl raced back into the hall. Her shout was muted by the glass between us and was only a fraction of the shrill sound I could have produced, but the crowd in the hallway froze. The dull static of gossip went silent. Everyone turned to look.
Nash pulled me away from the door as the first teacher came running, and I slid down the brick wall, my jacket catching on the rough edges. For the first time, I noticed the cold, and that my nose was running. “Are you okay?” he asked again, dropping to the ground in front of me, and that time I could answer.
“No. And neither is Mrs. Bennigan.”
“What are the chances that this is a coincidence?” he asked, and I sucked in a deep breath, as if I’d actually emptied my lungs on the unvoiced scream.
“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Not anymore. “And even if I did, this is too much. Two teachers in one day? Something’s wrong.” I looked up to find a steady, tense swirl of green snaking through his irises. “Any idea what?”
He shook his head. “And I’m not sure I want to know. We’ve had enough to deal with this year, and I’m not …” His voiced faded into pained silence and he blinked, then started over. “Besides, this has nothing to do with us. Something’s obviously going on, but it could be bad bean dip in the teachers’ lounge, for all we know. Or some weird virus Wesner passed to Bennigan. Don’t they sing in the same church choir, or something?”
I nodded slowly, trying to convince myself. Just because we’d lost four classmates to Netherworld interference didn’t mean Mr. Wesner’s and Mrs. Bennigan’s deaths involved any extrahuman elements, right? Surely I was just letting my own fears and past experiences color my perception.
Please, please let me be overreacting….
But what if I wasn’t?
“We better go in,” Nash said, shoving himself to his feet.
“Yeah.” Still half-stunned, we started around the building toward the cafeteria doors, which were kept unlocked during all lunch periods. And it wasn’t until nearly an hour later, as I sat in my English class, that I remembered what Nash and I had been discussing when my bean sidhe heritage got in the way.
Sabine’s species.
We’d been interrupted again.
AFTER SCHOOL, I STOOD in the parking lot next to my car with my keys in my hand, dialing up my courage as I waited for Nash to come out of the building. Most of my afternoon teachers had been reeling from the death of two colleagues in one day, and they’d made no attempt to actually involve students in their lesson plans. Which gave me plenty of time to avoid thinking about Mrs. Bennigan by planning my first move in Sabine’s sadistic little game of love and war.
She’d laid down the challenge, and I could either rise to it or slink home alone and call Nash later for the scoop on his ex’s inhuman specifics. And after the day I’d had, I just didn’t feel like slinking anywhere.
I knew I’d made the right decision when they came through the double glass doors together. Sabine was laughing and Nash was watching her, and even from across the lot, I recognized the light in his expression. That was the way he used to look at me. I got into my car—newly made over by the local body shop, after Doug Fuller had totaled it a week before his death—and dropped my books onto the rear floorboard. Then I cranked the engine and took off across the lot as fast as I dared, one eye on potential pedestrian casualties, the other on Nash and Sabine, as he said something I couldn’t hear. Something that made her laugh harder and made him watch her even more closely.
My car squealed to a stop in front of them as they hit the end of the sidewalk, two feet away. Nash looked surprised, but Sabine actually jumped back, and a tiny granule of bitter satisfaction formed in the pit of my stomach, like a grain of sand in an oyster. If I nourished it properly, would it grow into a pearl?
I didn’t have automatic windows, so I had to shift into Park and lean across the passenger seat to shove the door open. The awkward movement dulled the sharp edge of my dramatic gesture, but I made up for that when Nash leaned down to see me beneath the roof of the car. “Get in,” I said, and he raised one brow. “He came with me,” Sabine said, before he could make up his mind.
“And I’m taking him home. Get in the car, Nash. We need to talk.”
Sabine looked impressed in spite of herself, until he glanced from her to me, then back to her. “What did I miss?”
“This is about what I missed,” I said, shifting into Drive while the engine idled. “Get in the car.”
Nash turned back to Sabine. “What did you do?” His voice held a single blended note of caution and curiosity, which made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He wasn’t even surprised to know she’d done something.
She grinned, one hand propped on a half-exposed hip that evidently felt no cold. “You don’t really want the answer to that. Not yet.”
“What do I really want?” Nash asked, humoring her, whereas I wanted to roll my car over her foot.
“You want to know why Kaylee’s suddenly grown a pair.”
He frowned. “Enlighten me.”
She twisted one mismatched earring and shrugged. “I laid the cards out on the table. It’s only fair that she knows the stakes, right?”
Except she’d left one of those cards out of her disclosure. They both had.
“Damn it, Bina.”
“What?” She rolled her eyes, like I was the one being unreasonable. “I told her the truth. You can’t get mad over the truth.”
Oh, yes, we could. The truths between me and Nash hurt as badly as the lies.
Nash dropped his bag on my passenger’s side floorboard and turned back to Sabine. “I’ll see you later.”
Sabine—Bina? Really?—scowled, then leaned in with one hand on the roof of my car, wearing an ironic, almost respectful smile. “Well played, Kaylee.”
Nash got in and closed the door, and I drove off, leaving her standing there alone.
“I’m not playing her game, no matter what it looks like,” I said, as I turned left out of the parking lot.
“Good. The only way to win is by refusing to play. Trust me.” But he was smiling as he said it, like she was a toddler whose antics were still cute and harmless.
I did not find Sabine cute. Or harmless.
“Advice from your days in Fort Worth?”
Nash ran one hand through his thick brown hair, leaving it tussled in all the right places. “Based on observation, not experience. She doesn’t play games with me. She doesn’t need to.”
“She’s been back in your life for one day, and you sound like she was never gone.” I braked at a red light, and unease crawled up my spine. How deep must their connection have been, if they could pick up right where they’d left off more than two years before?
He exhaled heavily. “How am I supposed to answer that?”
“It wasn’t a question.”
Nash twisted in his seat to face me, and his expression made my stomach churn. “We got caught up last night. And I’m sure once she gets used to the fact that I want you in my life, she’ll—”
“No, she won’t.” I’d just met her, and I understood that much. My hand tightened on the wheel and I took a right at the next light. “She threw down the gauntlet, Nash. Like I’m gonna fight her for you.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Kay. But it’s not a physical fight she wants.”
“What do you want?” I demanded, taking the next curve a little too fast. “You want us to fight over you? You get off on this—two girls, no waiting?”
He sighed and stared out his window. “Days like this I wish I had a car.”
I rolled my eyes, though he wasn’t watching. “Days like this I wish you’d tell me the whole truth for once, instead of leaving little bits of it lying around for me to follow like a trail of bread crumbs.”
A moment passed in silence, except for the growl of my engine. Then he exhaled slowly and turned to look at me. “I’m guessing Tod told you?”
“He shouldn’t have had to.”
“I know. I tried to tell you, but Sabine …”
My pulse spiked in irritation. “You’re going to be saying that a lot now, are you? ‘But Sabine …’?”
“Do you want to talk, or are you just going to throw barbs at me?”
I exhaled deeply as I turned the car into his driveway. “I haven’t decided. How’s my aim?”
“Dead-on.” He pushed his door open and hauled his backpack out of the car, and I slammed my own door, then followed him into the house. I hadn’t been there in two weeks, but nothing had changed, except that someone had taken down the holiday decorations.
“You want something to eat? Mom made blondies.” Nash dropped his backpack on the worn couch, then pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
“Just a Coke.” I followed him into the kitchen, where Harmony Hudson glanced up from the breakfast table in surprise.
“Kaylee!” She crossed the small kitchen and wrapped her arms around me in a warm hug, her soft blond curls brushing my face. “I’m so glad you’re back.” Then she pulled away from me, frowning with her hands still on my shoulders. “You are back, aren’t you?”
Nash groaned with his head stuck inside the fridge, then emerged with two cans. “Laissez faire parenting, Mom. We talked about this.” He handed me a soda, and Harmony let me go to scowl at her son.
“That was before I spent two weeks nursing you through withdrawal from a substance more dangerous and addictive than anything the human world has ever even seen. I think that’s earned me a little latitude, even if you are old enough to vote.”
“Fine.” Nash’s jaw clenched in irritation, but he’d never disrespect his mother. That much had not changed. “Kaylee’s just here to talk. Let’s try not to scare her away.”
Harmony gave me a hopeful smile, then handed me a paper plate piled high with blondies and shooed us out of the kitchen.
I followed Nash to his bedroom, where he sat on the bed and leaned back on the headboard, leaving the desk chair for me.
“Was Sabine in here?” I set the plate on his nightstand, glancing around his room as if I’d never seen it.
Nash popped open his can, his posture tense and expectant. He watched me like I was a bomb about to explode. “Does it really matter?”
“Yeah.” I set my can on his desk and faced him, fighting through suspicion and fear so I could focus on my anger. “Your ex-girlfriend just told me she has no problem going through me to get to you. So yes, Nash. It matters where you were when you talked to her until after two in the morning.” Because that’s as far as I’d narrowed it down so far. She was here until after two. When I was sound asleep, and probably already dreaming about them making out in front of my locker.
Nash closed his eyes, then opened them and took a long drink from his soda. Then he met my gaze. “Yeah. We were in here.”
My chest ached. I don’t know why finding out where they’d been made it worse—I knew they’d only talked. But knowing they’d been in his room made it more personal. Made it sting more.
“On the bed?” I asked, when I’d recovered my voice, hating how paranoid I sounded.
“Damn it, Kaylee, nothing happened!”
“Right. I heard. But did this ‘nothing’ happen on the bed?” I couldn’t breathe, waiting for his answer. “Was she on your bed, Nash?”
“For the last time, she’s just a friend,” he said, his voice low, the wet can slipping lower in his grip. “She’s the only friend I have right now who knows more about me than my football stats from last season.”
I knew more about him than that. I knew a lot more. But I hadn’t come to see him even once while he was working his way through withdrawal, because I couldn’t deal with it. The wounds were still too fresh. Too raw. When I thought about Nash, I thought about Avari, and the things they’d each let the other do to me, when I wasn’t in control of my own body.
In the painful silence, I popped open my Coke, just to have something to do with my hands. “So … what is she?”
Nash looked up, obviously confused. “I thought Tod told you …”
“He just said she’s my worst nightmare. Whatever that means.” But frankly, any girl openly trying to steal Nash from me would qualify as my nightmare. “So … what is she?” I repeated, hoping I wouldn’t have to say it again. “Siren? Harpy?” I raised both brows at him in sudden comprehension. “She’s a harpy, isn’t she? She acts like a harpy.” Not that I’d ever met one.
Nash laughed out loud. “She’d probably get a kick out of that.” But I had my doubts. “She’s a Nightmare, like Tod said. Only that’s kind of an antiquated term. Now, they’re called maras.”
“There’s a politically correct term for Nightmares? Would that make me a death portent?” I joked to cover my own confusion and ignorance, and Nash laughed again to oblige me.
“Sure. We could start a movement. ‘Rename the bean sidhe.’ You make picket signs, I’ll call the governor. It’s gonna be huge.”
“Funny.” Only it wasn’t. “So what exactly is a mara?”
Nash leaned forward and met my gaze with a somber one of his own. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise not to freak out. Remember, it was weird finding out you were a bean sidhe at first, too, right?”
Weird didn’t begin to describe it. “Nash, I just found out she was on your bed at two o’clock this morning. With you. How much worse could this be?”
He gave me an apprehensive look, but didn’t deny that they’d been on his bed together, and another little part of my heart shriveled up and died.
“Maras are a rare kind of parasite, and unique in that they aren’t native to the Netherworld. At least, according to my mom.”
“Did she and your mom get along?”
“Yeah.” Nash shrugged. “Sabine didn’t know what she was when I met her, and I’d figured out she wasn’t human, but that’s as far as I’d gotten. But my mom narrowed it down pretty fast. She wanted to help her.”
Of course she had. Harmony’s heart was too big for her own good. She wanted to help me, too, and I was definitely starting to see a pattern. Nash and his mother shared their hero complex—I should have seen that coming, considering that she was a nurse—and so far, only Tod seemed immune to the family calling to help people.
He killed them instead.
“So she’s a parasite? That sounds … gross. If I get in her way, is she going to attach herself to my back and suck me dry like a tick? Or a vampire?”
Nash rolled his eyes. “There are no vampires. And no. Maras don’t feed physically. They feed psychically. Off of human energy.”
Alarms went off in my head. “She eats human energy? Like Avari?”
“No.” Nash frowned, like he was mentally organizing his thoughts, and it was a struggle. “Well, kind of. But she’s not a hellion. Hellions thrive on pain and chaos, and they’re strong enough to take it from the bleed-through of human energy between worlds. Parasites are nowhere near that strong. They have to feed through a direct connection, of one sort or another. And maras, specifically, feed from fear.”
I blinked. Then blinked again, grasping for a nugget of comprehension from the words he seemed to be throwing at me at random. “She’s a fear eater?” I said at last. “So … as long as I don’t show her any fear, she can’t feed from me?”
Nash took another long drink from his can, then set it on his nightstand. “Not exactly. There’s a reason they used to be called Nightmares.”
But before he could continue, movement from across the room caught my eye and I looked up to find Tod scowling at me. “You really think this is smart, after what he did?”
Nash obviously could neither see nor hear his brother, but he’d seen me stare off into space often enough to interpret the silence. “Damn it, Tod.”
I sighed, glancing from one brother to the other. “I needed answers.”
“I would have given them to you.” Tod crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Nash, who stared at nothing, two feet from the space Tod actually occupied.
“He owes them to me.”
“Show yourself or get out,” Nash said, finally tired of being ignored. “Better yet, just get out.”
Tod’s eyes narrowed and he stepped forward, clearly stepping into sight, just to spite his brother. “Did you tell her about the dreams?”
Nash’s frown deepened. “I was about to.”
Dreams. Nightmares. Parasite. Sabine kissing Nash in front
of my locker. No! But the pieces of the puzzle fit, so far as I could tell, and there was no denying the picture they formed. “She feeds during nightmares? She fed from me, during my sleep last night?”
“Probably,” Tod said, while Nash asked, “What did you dream?”
I wasn’t going to answer, but they were both looking at me, obviously waiting for a response. “I dreamed you and Sabine were making out in front of my locker. And you dumped me for her, because she ‘delivers.’”
Nash flinched, while the reaper only shrugged. “Yeah, that sounds like Sabine.”
“I’m sorry, Kay.” Nash looked miserable. “I’ll make sure she stops.”
“Yeah. You will.” I didn’t even have words for how repulsed and scared I was by the fact that she’d been there while I slept, sucking energy from me through my dream. A very personal, horrifying dream.
“Kay, she didn’t just feed from your nightmare,” Tod explained, lowering his voice, as if that might soften whatever blow was coming. “She gave you that nightmare.”
Huh? “What does that mean? How do you give someone a nightmare?” Other than scaring the living crap out of them. Which, come to think of it, fit Sabine to a T.
Nash tapped his empty can on the nightstand. “Sabine creates nightmares from a person’s existing fear. It’s a part of what she is, just like singing for people’s souls is a part of who you are.”
I felt my eyes go wide, as indignation burned deep inside me. “Yeah, but when I sing, I’m not sucking people dry! I’m trying to save their lives! That’s the opposite of parasitic. Sabine and I are polar opposites!”
“Trust me, I know,” Nash said. And if that was true, how could he possibly claim to love me, when he’d once loved her?
“Did you tell her how they feed?” Tod crossed the room to sit on the edge of the desk, taking his place at my side like an ally. And I’d never felt more like I needed one.
“Get out, Tod,” Nash snapped. “I can handle this myself.”
Tod scowled. “I’m not here to help you.”
“How do they feed?” I demanded, when they both seemed more interested in measuring testosterone levels.
“Are you familiar with astral projection?” Nash asked, and I nodded.
“That’s when someone’s consciousness leaves the body and can go somewhere else, fully awake. Right?”
“Basically. What Sabine does is similar to that, except when her consciousness goes walking—she calls it Sleepwalking—she crafts people’s fears into nightmares while they sleep. She says it’s like weaving, only without physical thread.” He shrugged. “Then she feeds from the fear laced into the dreams she’s woven.”
“By sitting on her victim’s chest,” Tod added, looking simultaneously satisfied and disgusted with his contribution to the explanation.
“Sitting on their …?” On my chest. My stomach churned. My horror knew no bounds. “You cannot be serious. While I was sleeping—minding my own business—she came into my room and sat on my chest, weaving some kind of metaphysical quilt out of fears she took right out of my own head?” That sentence sounded so crazy I was half-afraid men in white coats would burst through the door to drag me back to mental health.
“Not all of her. Just the part that was Sleepwalking,” Nash insisted miserably.
“Is that supposed to make this any better? How could you not tell me this the minute she showed up at school?” I demanded, and when he had no answer for me, I turned around and stomped out of his room, through the house, and out the front door.
“Kaylee, wait!” he shouted, but I didn’t wait. I got in my car and drove straight home, so angry my vision was tinged in red.
Sabine wants a nightmare?
That’s exactly what she’s gonna get …
7
NASH IS ON THE floor watching me. He’s not in the bed, and I don’t understand why, because he looks sick. His face is pale, and beads of sweat dot his forehead and his bare chest. He should be resting.
Instead, he’s staring at me, and his eyes hold accusation and pain and shame. His irises swirl with it all, so fast I can’t separate one emotion from the others. They blend together, writhing violently, until the definitions no longer matter, because they’re all aimed at me. Whatever’s wrong with him, it’s my fault.
My stomach clenches around nothing and suddenly I’m cold. I cross his bedroom and sink onto my knees in front of him, in the corner. His eyes are unfocused. Half-closed. I take his hand, and it’s freezing.
No! This can’t be happening. Not again. He quit!
Then I see it. In the corner, the opening pinched between his fingers. A single red balloon, half-deflated. Ihate that balloon. In that horrible, irrational moment, I hate all balloons.
“Kaylee …?” he whispers, reaching for my face. His other hand stays around the balloon, but that’s not safe. Not with him like this. If he lets go, he’ll pollute the whole room and probably kill us both.
I take the balloon from him, careful not to let the deadly vapor leak out. I twist the end into a knot, gritting my teeth as the unnatural chill seeps into my hands. My knuckles ache with the cold and my fingers are stiff. But the knot holds.
“I’m so sorry….”
Nash is gone. His body is here and his mouth keeps moving, keeps apologizing, but Elvis has left the building. Abandoned it to the toxin I hate. The poison that is rotting his soul, and corrupting him, and killing us.
“I tried,” he whispers, and I need to move closer to hear him better. But I can’t. I won’t. I don’t want to breathe what he’s exhaling, and I can smell it from here. “I tried,” he repeats. “But it was too hard on my own. You didn’t come….”
Tears form in my eyes. He’s right. I didn’t come see him while he was getting clean. I didn’t help. I could hardly look at him without remembering, and now he hasn’t just fallen off the wagon, he’s been run over by it.
And it’s all my fault.
I want to get mad. I want to yell at him and scream, demanding to know why he can’t just stand and shake it off. He’s so strong in every other way. Why can’t he do this one thing?
But I can’t yell. I can’t cling to my anger—not when
everything I know is falling apart along with Nash. Anger is great. It’s powerful, when you need something to hold you up. Something to steel your spine. But in the dark, when you’re alone with the truth, anger can’t survive. The only thing that can live in the dark with you is fear.
And I’m swimming in fear. I’m afraid of Nash when he’s like this. Afraid of what he’ll do or say. Afraid that he won’t listen. That he won’t stop. And I’m terrified of Demon’s Breath. Of the vapor he loves more than he loves me.
Because that’s the crux of it. The dark truth. I’m not enough for him. I can’t keep him safe from Avari. Safe from himself. He doesn’t care enough about me to let me try.
“It’s okay,” I whisper back. “It’s gonna be fine.” But I can’t say it with any strength, because it’s a lie.
“They’re empty,” Nash says, as I sink onto the floor next to him, trying to warm his hand in both of mine. But that’s a useless battle. His chill comes from within, and I can’t fight it.
“What’s empty?” I ask, and he’s shaking now. Not shivering. More like tremors. His bare feet bump into each other over and over, and his empty hand flops on the floor.
Convulsions. He took too much. I want to get rid of the balloon, but I can’t pop it without polluting the entire room.
“Memories …” His head rolls against the wall to face me. “They’re empty. Numb.”
My heart beats too hard. It’s going to rupture. Nash
has sold the emotions in his memories to pay for this high, and even if he survives, he can never get those feelings back.
“Which memories?” I don’t really want to know. But I have to ask.
“You.” His hand tightens around one of mine, but only a little. That’s all the strength he has left. “He only wants memories of you.”
My throat closes and I can’t breathe. It’s all gone. He can never again look back on our history together and feel what he felt about me then. If there’s no memory of love, can there still be love?
Finally, I suck in a deep breath, but it tastes bitter. Is this what I’m worth? A single latex balloon full of poison? If someone who loves me could sell me for so little, what value could I possibly have to anyone else?
My next breath comes before I can spit the last one out, and the next comes even faster. I’m hyperventilating. I know it, but I can’t stop it.
I drop Nash’s hand, and he stares at it blankly. Then he blinks and turns away from me, reaching for the balloon while I gasp and the room starts to go gray.
“It’s a relief, really,” he says, and I can hear him better now. Somehow he’s stronger now, without me. “You’re so needy, and clingy, and sealed up tighter than a nun. Too much work for too little payoff.”
My tears run over, blurring him and the room and my whole pathetic life. His words burn like acid dripped onto my exposed heart. But he’s sitting straighter now, like he draws strength from this. The truth is supposed toset you free, but it’s killing me. And it is the truth. I can see that in his eyes, and his eyes don’t lie. They can’t.
I truly have no worth. And I don’t think I can live with that.
“Go ahead and cry.” Nash picks at the knot I tied, trying to loosen it. “Your tears are worth more than my memories, anyway. Wonder what I could get for the rest of you? Kaylee Cavanaugh, body and soul. Probably be enough to keep me high for life. Guess you’re worth something, after all….”
8
I SAT UP IN BED, sticky with sweat. My pillow was damp from tears, and lingering fear pulsed through me, throbbing with each beat of my heart. I wasn’t worth loving, or even remembering. I tried too hard, but gave too little. Nash had wasted his time on me, and selling me to Avari was the only way to recoup his loss.
My worst fears, ripped from my own soul and left bleeding like an open wound.
Then the room came into focus through my tears, and I shook off sleep. With awareness came logic. And anger.
Fury, like I’d never felt.
“Sabine, get the hell out of my room!” I snapped through clenched teeth, remembering not to yell at the last minute, to keep from waking my dad. “Stay out of my head and out of my dreams, and stay away from Nash, or I swear your last semester of high school will make you homesick for prison!”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t even sure she was still there. But I had no doubt she had been. She’d given me the new nightmare, playing on my own fears. And that was the worst part.
Sabine was a horrible, cruel, emotional parasite, but she couldn’t have played architect in my dreams if I hadn’t given her the building material. The fears were real. Deep down, I was terrified that Nash wouldn’t stay clean. That he didn’t love me enough to even try. Because I wasn’t worth loving. Why else would my father have left me with his brother and let me be hospitalized?
My resolve wavered again, and I clutched at it like a life preserver, refusing to give in. Refusing to wallow in my own fear, which was no doubt what Sabine wanted.
I threw back the covers and grabbed my cell from the nightstand, pacing back and forth on my rug while the phone rang. My alarm clock read 2:09.
“Kaylee?” Nash sounded groggy. “What’s wrong?”
“Is she there?” I demanded, stomping all the way to my closet, then turning to stomp the length of my bed.
“Is who here?” As if he didn’t know!
“Sabine. Is she there with you? Tell me the truth.”
His bedsprings creaked. “You woke me up in the middle of the night to ask if Sabine’s with me?”
“It’s not like that’s a stretch, considering how late she was there last night.”
Nash groaned and I heard him roll over. “I sent her home hours ago. Before midnight,” he added. “Why?”
“Because she just gave me another nightmare, Nash. She was feeding from me in my sleep, like a great big flea!” Which made me feel a bit like a dog and gave me a huge case of the creeps. “I don’t want her in my head, or in my dreams, or in my room.” Or in my life, or in his. “If you don’t do something about her, I will.”
I had no idea what I would do, but I’d come up with something. Fortunately, Nash didn’t press for details.
“I will. I’ll take care of it, Kaylee. I swear.”
“What on earth did you guys talk about? ‘Cause it obviously wasn’t the fact that she is not allowed to stalk my dreams!”
“Kay, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not.” Sabine had invaded my most private thoughts. “It’s almost as bad as having you in my head.”
Nash’s sigh sounded like it had completely deflated him. “I don’t …” He stopped and started over. “I said I was sorry about that. So sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Because he’d been high when he’d tried to Influence me into his bed. “It’ll never happen again. Can we please just move on from that? Please?”
“You can, obviously. Forgive me if I’m having a little more trouble with that. Especially with your new girlfriend playing dreamweaver in my sleep!”
“She’s not my girlfriend, Kaylee.”
I sank onto my bed, clenching one fist around a handful of my comforter. “Well, she’s not much of a friend to you, either, if this is how she treats your … people you care about.”
He sighed again. “You have her at a disadvantage. She thinks she has to use her entire arsenal just to even the odds.”
“I have her at a disadvantage? Tod says the two of you were attached at the hip. Or was it the crotch?” Yes, I was being petty and unreasonable. That may have had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t getting any sleep, and I’d just had my psychic energy drained by my ex-boyfriend’s leech of an ex-girlfriend.
Nash’s bedsprings creaked again, and the soft click told me he’d just turned on his bedside lamp. “Are you mad at me because I slept with someone else two and a half years ago? Before I even met you?”
“Yes!” I stood again and rubbed my forehead, well aware that my lack of logic wasn’t helping my case. But I couldn’t help how I felt, and he wasn’t doing much to alleviate my worries. “And don’t say that’s not fair, because ‘fair’ isn’t even in the equation anymore. What you let happen to me wasn’t fair, either. And I’m sure Scott would agree.”
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