My Soul to Keep

RACHEL VINCENT

www.miraink.co.uk

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

“Highly recommended for adults and teens alike.”

—Book Bitch

“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 from Rachel Vincent

Published by

Soul Screamers

MY SOUL TO TAKE

MY SOUL TO SAVE

Coming soon …

MY SOUL TO STEAL

Visit www.miraink.co.uk

To Amy, Michelle and Josh. My memories of you from high school make the nonfantasy elements of Kaylee’s life feel so real to me …

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks most of all to No.1, who takes over so many real-life duties so I can live and work in my own little world.

Thanks to Rinda Elliott, for one honest opinion after another, to the Deadline Dames, for camaraderie, and to Jocelynn Drake and Kim Haynes, for friendships I grow more grateful for every year.

Thanks, as always, to my agent, Miriam Kriss, for making things happen.

And thank you to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, and to Elizabeth Mazer and everyone else behind the scenes. Without your patience and enthusiasm, this book would never have made it on to the shelf.

1

THE WHOLE THING STARTED with a wasted jock and a totaled car. Or so I thought. But as usual, the truth was a bit more complicated… .

“So, HOW DOES IT FEEL to be free again?” Nash leaned against my car, flashing that smile I couldn’t resist. The one that made his dimples stand out and his eyes shine, and made me melt like chocolate in the sun, in spite of the mid-December chill.

I sucked in a deep, cold breath. “Like I’m seeing the sun for the first time in a month.” I pushed my car door closed and twisted the key in the lock. I didn’t like parking on the street; it didn’t seem like a very safe place to leave my most valuable possession. Not that my car was expensive, or anything. It was more than a decade old, and hardly anything to oooh over. But it was mine, and it was paid for, and unlike some of my more financially fortunate classmates, I’d never be able to afford another one, should some idiot veer too close to the curb.

But Scott Carter’s driveway was full long before we’d arrived, and the street was lined with cars, most much nicer than mine. Of course, they all probably had more than liability coverage… .

Fortunately, the party was in a very good section of our little Dallas suburb, where the lawn manicures cost more than my father made in six months.

“Relax, Kaylee.” Nash pulled me close as we walked. “You look like you’d rather gouge your own eyes out than hang for a couple of hours with some friends.”

“They’re your friends, not mine,” I insisted as we passed the third convertible on our way to the well-lit house at the end of the cul-de-sac, already thumping with some bass-heavy song I couldn’t yet identify.

“They’d be yours if you’d get to know them.”

I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure the glitter-and-gloss throng is waiting for me to give them a chance.”

Nash shrugged. “They know all they need to know about you—you’re smart, pretty, and crazy in love with me,” he teased, squeezing me tighter.

I laughed. “Who started that vicious rumor?” I’d never said it, because as addictive as Nash was—as special as he made me feel—I wasn’t going to toss off words like love and forever until I was sure. Until I was sure he was sure. Forever can be a very long time for bean sidhes, and so far his track record looked more like the fifty-yard dash than the Boston marathon. I’d been burned before by guys without much staying power.

When I looked up, I found Nash watching me, his hazel eyes swirling with streaks of green and brown in the orange glow from the streetlights. I almost felt sorry for all the humans who wouldn’t be able to see that—to read emotion in another’s eyes.

That was a bean sidhe thing, and easily my favorite part of my recently discovered heritage.

“All I’m saying is it would be nice to get to hang out with my friends and my girlfriend at the same time.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Oh, fine. I’ll play nice with the pretty people.” At least Emma would be there to keep me company—she’d started going out with one of Nash’s teammates while I was grounded. And the truth was that most of Nash’s friends weren’t that bad. Their girlfriends were another story.

Speaking of bloodthirsty hyenas …

A car door slammed in the driveway ahead and my cousin, Sophie, stood next to Scott Carter’s metallic-blue convertible, her huge green eyes shadowed dramatically by the streetlight overhead. “Nash!” She smiled at him, ignoring me in spite of the fact that we’d shared a home for the past thirteen of her fifteen years, until my dad had moved back from Ireland in late September.

Or maybe because of that.

“Can you give me a hand?” As we stepped onto the driveway, she rounded the end of her boyfriend’s car in a slinky, sleeveless pink top and designer jeans, a case of beer clutched awkwardly to her chest. Two more cases sat at her feet, and I glanced around to see if any of the neighbors were watching my fifteen-year-old cousin show off an armload of alcoholic beverages. But the neighbors were probably all out, spending their Saturday evening at the theater, or the ballet, or in some restaurant I couldn’t even afford to park near.

And most of their kids were at Scott’s house, waiting for us to come in with the beer.

Nash let go of me to take the case from Sophie, then grabbed another one from the ground. Sophie beamed at him, then shot a haughty sneer at my plain jacket before turning on one wedge-heeled foot to strut after him.

I sighed and picked up the remaining box, then followed them both inside. The front door opened before Nash could pound on it, and a tall, thick senior in a green-and-white-letter jacket slapped Nash’s shoulder and took one of the cases from him. Nash twisted with his empty arm extended, clearly ready to wrap it around me, but found Sophie instead. He sidestepped her—ignoring her plump-lipped pout—and took the case from me, then stood back to let me go in first.

“Hudson!” Scott Carter greeted Nash, shouting to be heard over the music. He took one of the cases and led us toward a large kitchen crowded with bodies, scantily clad and shiny with sweat. In spite of the winter chill outside, it was hot and humid indoors, the hormone level rising with each new song that played.

I took off my jacket, revealing my snug red blouse, and almost immediately wished I could cover myself back up. I didn’t have much to show off, but it was all now on display, thanks to the top Emma had picked out for me that afternoon, which suddenly seemed much more daring than it had in the privacy of my own room.

Nash set the remaining case of beer on the counter as Scott slid the first one into the refrigerator. “Kaylee Cavanaugh,” Scott said when he stood, having apparently noticed me for the first time. He eyed me up and down while I resisted the urge to cross my arms over my chest. “Lookin’ good.” He glanced from me to Sophie, then back, while my cousin tried to fry me alive with the heat of her glare. “I’m starting to see the family resemblance.”

“All I see is you,” Nash said, pulling me close when he realized Sophie and I weren’t happy with the comparison.

I smiled and kissed him impulsively, convinced by the slow churn of colors in his irises that he meant what he said.

Scott shoved the last case of beer into the fridge, then slapped a cold can into Nash’s hand as I finally pulled away from him, my face flaming. “See? Family resemblance.” Then he headed off into the crowd with Sophie, popping the top on a can of his own. Three steps later they were grinding to the music, one of Scott’s hands around his drink, the other splayed across my cousin’s lower back.

“Wow, that was … unexpected,” Nash said, drawing my gaze from the familiar faces talking, dancing, drinking, and … otherwise engaged. And it took me a moment to realize he meant the kiss.

“Good unexpected, or bad unexpected?”

“Very, very good.” He set his can on the counter at my back, then pulled me closer for a repeat performance, one hand sliding up my side. That time I didn’t pull away until someone poked my shoulder. I twisted in Nash’s arms to find Emma Marshall, my best friend, watching us with an amused half smile.

“Hey.” Her grin grew as she glanced from me to Nash, then back. “You’re blocking the fridge.”

“There’s a cooler in the other room.” Nash nodded toward the main part of the house.

Emma shrugged. “Yeah, but no one’s making out in front of it.” She pulled open the fridge, grabbed a beer, then popped the can open as she pushed the door shut with a toss of one shapely hip. It wasn’t fair. Emma and her sisters inherited crazy curves—a genetic jackpot—and all I got from my relatives was a really gnarled family tree.

There were times when I would gladly have traded all my bean sidhe “gifts”—did a glass-shattering screech and the ability to travel between the human world and the Netherworld even count as gifts?—for a little more of what she had. But this was not one of those times. Not while Nash’s hands were on my waist, his taste still on my lips, and the greens and browns in his eyes swirling languorously with blatant desire. For me.

Em drank from her can, and I grabbed the car keys dangling from her hand, then showed them to her before stuffing them into my hip pocket, along with my own. She could stay the night with me, and I’d bring her back for her car in the morning. Emma smiled and nodded, already moving to the music when someone called her name from the living-room doorway.

“Hey, Em!” a voice called over the music, and I turned to see Doug Fuller leaning with one bulging arm on the door frame. “Come dance with me.”

Emma smiled, drained her can, then danced into the living room with Doug’s hands on her already swaying hips. Nash and I joined them, and he returned greeting after greeting from the glitter crowd writhing around us. But then he was mine. We moved with the music as if the room was empty but for the stereo and the heat we shared.

I had stolen Nash from a room full of his adoring devotees with nothing but the secret connection we shared. A connection no other girl could possibly compete with.

We’d combined our bean sidhe abilities to bring my best friend back from the dead and to reclaim a damned soul from the hellion who’d bought it. We’d literally saved lives, fought evil, and almost died together. No mere pretty face could compete with that, no matter how much gloss and mascara she applied.

An hour later, Em tapped my shoulder and pointed toward the kitchen. I shook my head—after a month without him, I could have danced with Nash all night—but after Emma left, Nash kept glancing at the kitchen door like it was going to suddenly slam closed and lock us out.

“Need a break?” I asked, and he smiled in relief.

“Just for a minute.” He tugged me through the crowd while my heart still raced to the beat, both of us damp with sweat.

In the kitchen, Emma drank from a fresh can of beer while Doug argued with Brant Williams about a bad call during some basketball game I hadn’t seen.

“Here.” Nash handed me a cold soda. “I’ll be right back.” Then he pushed his way through the crowd without a backward glance.

I looked at Emma with both brows raised, but she only shrugged.

I popped open my Coke and noticed that Doug and Brant’s argument had become a whispered conversation I couldn’t follow, and Emma hadn’t even noticed. For

several minutes, she prattled about her sister refusing to lend her a blouse that made Cara look lumpy, anyway.

Before I could decide how to respond, someone called my name, and I looked up to find Brant watching me. “Yeah?” Obviously I’d missed a question.

“I said, ‘Where’s your boyfriend?’“

“Um … bathroom,” I said, unwilling to admit that I wasn’t sure.

Brant shook his head slowly. “Hudson’s falling down on the job. You wanna dance till he gets back? I won’t bite.” He held out one large brown hand for mine, and I took it.

Brant Williams was tall, and dark, and always smiling. He was the football team’s kicker, a senior, and the friendliest jock I’d ever met, not counting Nash. He was also the only other person in the house I would dance with, other than Emma.

I danced with Brant for two songs, glancing around for Nash the whole time. I was just starting to wonder if he’d gotten sick when I spotted him across the room, standing with Sophie in an arched doorway leading to a dark hall. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, then leaned closer to be heard over the music.

My chest ached like I couldn’t breathe.

When he saw me looking, he stepped away from Sophie and scowled at my partner, then waved me over. I thanked Brant for the dance, then made my way across the room, dread building inside me like heartburn. Nash

had ditched me at a party, then showed up with Sophie. Deep down, I’d known this day would come. I’d figured he’d eventually look elsewhere for what he hadn’t had in the two and a half months we’d been going out. But with Sophie? A flash of anger burned in my cheeks. He may as well have just spit in my face!

Please, please be imagining things, Kaylee… .

I stopped five feet away, my heart bruising my chest with each labored beat. Yes, Sophie had a boyfriend, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to take mine.

Nash took one look at my face, at my eyes, which were surely swirling with pain and anger I couldn’t hide, then followed my gaze to Sophie. His eyes widened with comprehension. Then he smiled and grabbed my hand.

“Sophie was just looking for Scott. Right?” But then he tugged me down the dark hall before she could answer, leaving my cousin all alone in the crowd. “We can talk in here,” Nash whispered, pressing me into a closed door.

The full body contact was promising, but I couldn’t banish doubt. “Were you talking to her the whole time?” I asked around the hitch in my breath as his cheek brushed mine.

“I just went outside to cool off, and when I came back in, she cornered me. That’s it.” He fumbled for the handle near my hip, and the door swung open, revealing Scott’s dad’s posh office.

“Swear?”

“Do I really need to?” Nash stepped back so I could see his eyes in the dim light of the desk lamp, and I saw the truth swirling in them. He didn’t want Sophie, no matter what she might do that I hadn’t.

I felt myself flush. “Sorry. I just thought—”

Nash closed the door and cut my apology off with a kiss. He tasted good. Like mint. We wound up on Mr. Carter’s burgundy leather couch, and I had just enough time to think that psychiatrists made waaaay too much money before Nash’s mouth found mine again, and thinking became impossible.

“You know I’m not interested in Sophie,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t do that to you or Scott.” He leaned down and kissed me again. “There’s only you, Kaylee.”

My entire body tingled in wave after wave of warm, exhilarating shivers, and I let my lips trail over the rough stubble on his chin, delighting in the coarse texture.

“Oh, blah, blah, blah,” a jaded voice said, drenching our privacy with a cold dose of sarcasm. “You love him, he loves you, and we’re all one big, happy, sloppy, dorky family.”

“Damn it, Tod!” Nash stiffened. I closed my eyes and sighed. The couch creaked beneath us as we sat up to see Nash’s undead brother—fully corporeal for once—sitting backward in Mr. Carter’s desk chair, arms crossed over the top as he watched us in boredom barely softened by the slight upturn of his cherubic lips. “If you don’t quit it with the Peeping Tom routine, I’m going to tell your boss you get off watching other people make out.”

“He knows,” Tod and I said in unison. I straightened my shirt, scowling at the intruder, though my irritation was already fading.

Unlike Nash, I had trouble staying mad at Tod lately because I considered his recent reappearance a good sign. We hadn’t seen him for nearly a month after his ex-girlfriend died in October—without her soul. And when I say we’d not seen him, I mean that literally. As a grim reaper, Tod could choose when and where he wanted to be seen, and by whom.

But now he was back, and up to his old tricks. Which seemed to consist entirely of preventing me and Nash from having any quality alone time. He was almost as bad as my dad.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I ran one hand through my long brown hair to smooth it.

Tod shrugged. “I’m on my lunch break.”

I lifted both brows. “You don’t eat.”

He only shrugged again, and smiled.

“Get out,” Nash growled, tossing his head toward the door. Like Tod would actually have to use it. One of the other perks of being dead, technically speaking, was the ability to walk through things. Or simply disappear, then reappear somewhere else. That’s right. I got swirling eyes and the capacity to shatter windows with my bare voice. Tod got teleportation and invisibility.

The supernatural world is so far from fair.

Tod stood and kicked the chair aside, running one hand through short blond curls that not even the afterlife could tame. “I’m not here to watch you two, anyway.”

Great. I scowled at the reaper, my eyes narrowed in true irritation now. “I told you to stay away from her.” Emma had met him once, briefly, and we’d made the mistake of telling her what he really was. He’d been watching her covertly before, but after Addison’s death and his obvious heartbreak, I’d assumed that had stopped.

Tod mirrored his brother with his arms crossed over his chest. “So you won’t let me go near her, but you’ll let her get in the car with some drunk jock? That doesn’t even kinda make sense.”

“Damn it.” Nash was off the couch in an instant and I followed, whispering a thank-you to Tod as I passed him. But he’d already blinked out of the office.

I trailed Nash down the hall and through the packed living room, accidentally bumping a beer from a cheerleader’s hand on the way. We ran out the front door and I wished I’d stopped to find my jacket when the frigid air raised goose bumps all over my skin.

We paused at the end of the walkway, and I spotted Emma near the mouth of the cul-de-sac, a brief glimpse of long blond hair. “There.” I pointed and we took off again. We got there just as Doug pulled his passenger’s side door open. He had Em pressed against the side of the car, his tongue in her mouth, his free hand up her shirt.

Emma was totally into it, and though I didn’t think she’d have gone so far in public if not for the beer, that was her business. But getting in the car with a drunk crossed the line from stupid into dangerous.

“Em,” I said as Nash slapped one hand on Doug’s shoulder and pulled him backward.

“What the hell, man!” Doug slurred as his hand pulled free from Emma’s bra hard enough that the elastic slapped her skin.

“Kaylee!” Emma smiled and fell against me, and I glared at Doug. She didn’t know what she was doing, and he was being a complete asshole.

“Em, you know how it goes.” I wrapped one arm around her waist when she stumbled. “Come together, stay together …”

“… leave together,” she finished with a wide-eyed, pseudo-serious expression. “But we didn’t come together, Kay …”

“I know, but the last part still applies.”

“Fuller, she’s drunk.” Nash angled him so that Doug fell into his own passenger’s seat. “And so are you.”

“Noooo …” Emma giggled, blowing beer breath at me. “He’s not drinking, so he gets to drive.”

“Em, he’s wasted,” Nash insisted, then glanced at me and tossed his head toward the house. “Take her back in.”

I started walking Emma up the sidewalk, trying to keep her quiet as she told me how nice Doug was. She wasn’t just drunk, she was gone. I should have watched her more closely.

A minute later, Nash caught up to us as I was lowering Emma onto the porch. “Did you get his keys?” I asked, and Nash frowned. Then, as he turned to head back toward Doug’s car, an engine growled to life and a sick feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. Nash took off running and I leaned Emma against the top step. “Tod?” I called, glancing around the dark yard, grateful there was no one around to see me talking to myself.

“What?” the reaper said at my back, and I whirled around, wondering why he always appeared behind me.

“Can you sit with her for a minute?”

He scowled and glanced at Emma, who stared up at us, blinking her big blue eyes in intoxicated innocence. “You told me to stay away from her.”

“Hey, I remember you,” Emma slurred, loud enough to make me wince. “You’re dead.”

We both ignored Em. “I know. Just watch her for a minute, and don’t let her get into any cars. Please.” Then I raced after Nash past the entrance to the cul-de-sac, confident Tod would watch Emma. That he’d probably been doing it all night, though he’d catch hell for missing work.

Ahead, streetlights shone on the glossy surface of Doug’s car, gliding past like a slice of the night itself. Then, as I caught up to Nash, Doug leaned suddenly to one side, and his car lurched forward and to the right.

There was a loud pop, followed by the crunch of metal. Then the crash of something more substantial.

“Shit!” Nash took off running again and I followed as that sick feeling in my stomach enveloped the rest of me. “Oh, no, Kaylee …”

I knew before I even saw it. The street was lined with expensive, highly insured cars belonging to people who could easily afford to replace them. But the drunk jock had hit mine. When I got closer, I saw that he’d not only hit it, he’d rammed it up onto the sidewalk and through a neighbor’s brick mailbox.

My car was crunched. The driver’s side door was buckled. Bricks and chunks of mortar lay everywhere.

Behind us, Scott’s front door squealed opened and voices erupted into the dark behind me. I glanced back to find Tod—now fully corporeal—ushering Emma away from the crowd pouring into the yard. When I was sure she was okay, I turned to my poor, dead car.

Until I noticed that Doug Fuller had yet to emerge from his.

Crap.

“Help me with him,” Nash called, and I rounded the car as he pulled open the completely unscathed driver’s side door of the Mustang. Doug’s head lolled on his shoulders, and he was mumbling drunk nonsense under his breath. “… with me. Somebody else in my car, dude …”

Nash leaned inside to unlatch the seat belt—what kind of drunk remembers to buckle up?—but he couldn’t fit between his friend and the steering wheel, which had been shoved way too close to Doug’s chest. “Kay, could you get the belt?”

I sighed and crawled across his lap, wedging my torso between the wheel and his chest as I felt around for the button. “Scared the shit out of me …” he mumbled into the hair that had fallen over my ear. “He was just there, outta nowhere!”

“Shut up, Doug,” I snapped, seriously considering leaving him in the car until the cops arrived. “You’re drunk.” When I had the belt unlatched, I backed out of the linebacker’s lap and he exhaled right into my face.

I froze, one hand braced against his thigh, and that sick feeling in my stomach became a full-body cramp. Ice-cold fingers of horror clenched my heart and shot through my veins. Emma was right. Doug hadn’t been drinking.

Somehow, Eastlake High School’s completely human first-string linebacker had gotten his big, dumb hands on the most dangerous controlled substance in the Netherworld.

Doug Fuller absolutely reeked of Demon’s Breath.

2

“ARE YOU SURE?” Nash whispered, brows drawn low as, behind him, a big man in a grease-stained coat hooked the front of my smashed car up to the huge chain dangling from the back of his tow truck.

“Yes. I’m sure.” He’d already asked me four times. I’d only had two brief whiffs of Demon’s Breath a month earlier, but that bittersweet, biting tang—more like an aftertaste than a true scent—was emblazoned on my brain, along with other memorial gems like the feel of nylon straps lashing me to a narrow hospital bed.

“Where would he even get it?” I murmured, zipping the jacket Nash had gotten for me as a motor rumbled to life on the street and the big chain was wound tighter, raising the front of my poor car off the ground.

“I don’t know.” Nash wrapped his arms around me from behind, cocooning me in a familiar warmth.

“Humans can’t cross into the Netherworld and hellions can’t cross into ours,” I murmured, thinking out loud while no one else was close enough to hear me. “So there has to be some way to get Demon’s Breath into the human world without bringing the hellion who provided it.” Because the name was a very literal description: Demon’s Breath was the toxic exhalation of a hellion, a very powerful drug in the Netherworld. And evidently a hell of a high in our world, too.

But Demon’s Breath could rot the soul of a reaper who held it in his lungs for too long. Did the same hold true for humans? Had Doug breathed enough of it to damage his soul? How had he gotten it in the first place?

“I’m gonna take a look around,” I whispered, and Nash shook his head.

“No!” He stepped closer to me, so everyone else would think he was comforting me over the loss of my car. “You can’t cross over. Hellions don’t like to lose, and Avari’s going to be out for your soul for the rest of your life, Kaylee.”

Because I’d escaped with mine when we’d crossed over to reclaim the Page sisters’ souls.

“I’m just going to peek.” Like looking through a window into the Netherworld, instead of actually walking through the door. “And anyway, Avari won’t be there.” I frowned. “Here.” Or whatever. “At Scott Carter’s party.”

The Netherworld was like a warped mirror image of our own world. The two were connected at certain points, wherever the bleed-through of human energy was strong enough to anchor the Netherworld to ours, like a toothpick through layers of a sandwich.

“Kaylee, I don’t think—”

I cut him off with a glance. I didn’t have time to argue. “Just stand in front of me so no one can see me. It’ll only take a second.”

When he hesitated, I stepped behind him and closed my eyes. And I remembered death.

I thought back to the first time it had happened—at least, the first time I remembered—forcing myself to relive the horror. The certainty that the poor kid in the wheelchair was going to die. That dark knowledge that only I had. The shadows that churned around him. Through him.

The memory of death was enough, fortunately, and the scream began to build deep in my throat. A female bean sidhe’s wail heralds death and can suspend the deceased’s soul long enough for a male bean sidhe to redirect it. But my wail would also let me—and any other bean sidhe near enough to hear me—see into the Netherworld. To cross into it, if we wanted to.

But I had no desire to go to the Netherworld. Ever again.

I held the scream back, trapping it in my throat and in my heart so that Nash heard only a thin ribbon of sound, and no one else would hear a thing.

Nash took my hand, but I could barely feel the warmth of his fingers around mine. I opened my eyes and gasped. Scott Carter’s street had been enveloped by a thin gray film, like a storm cloud had settled to the ground. My world was still there—police, tow trucks, an ambulance, and a small crowd of onlookers.

But beneath that—deeper than that—was the Netherworld.

A field of olive-colored razor wheat swayed in a breeze I knew would be cold, if I could have felt it, the brittle stalks tinkling like wind chimes as they brushed together. The sky was dark purple streaked with greens and blues like bruises on the face of the world.

It was both beautiful and terrifying. And blessedly empty. No hellions. No fiends. No creatures waiting to eat us or to breathe toxic breath on Doug Fuller, even if we’d found some kind of hole in the barrier between worlds.

“Okay, it’s clear. Let it go,” Nash whispered, and I swallowed my scream.

The gray began to clear and the wrong colors faded, leaving only the upper-class suburban neighborhood, somehow less intimidating to me now that I’d seen what lay beneath. The Netherworld version of Scott’s neighborhood looked just like mine.

I wrapped my arms around Nash, discomforted by the glimpse of a world that had once tried to swallow us both whole. “However he got it, it didn’t come straight from the source,” I said, then I let go of Nash to face the real world.

Only a few brave—and sober—partyers had stayed once word got out that the police were on their way, and the stragglers were gathered around Scott on his front lawn, watching the cleanup from a safe distance. The cops knew there’d been a party, and they obviously knew Scott had been drinking. But so long as he stayed in his own yard and didn’t try to get behind the wheel, they were clearly willing to look the other way, thanks to his elite address and his father’s considerable influence in the community.

Emma wouldn’t be so lucky. She and Sophie had taken refuge four doors down, in Laura Bell’s living room. Laura—Sophie’s best friend and fellow dancer—had only let Emma in because Nash used the male bean sidhe’s vocal Influence to convince her.

But just in case, we’d sent Tod to watch out for Emma. Invisibly, of course.

Nash’s arms tightened around me as a uniformed policeman clomped across the street toward us. “Miss—” he glanced at the notebook in his hands “—Cavanaugh, are you sure you don’t need a ride?”

“I have one, thanks.” I let him think Nash was my ride so I wouldn’t have to mention Emma or her car.

The cop glanced at Nash, and my heart fell into my stomach. He’d finished his one drink hours earlier, but suddenly I was afraid the cop would make him walk the line or breathe into something. But when Nash didn’t flinch beneath the appraisal, the cop’s gaze found me again.

“You want me to call your parents?”

I hesitated, trying to look like I was seriously considering that option. Then I shook my head decisively. “Um, no thanks.” I waved my cell for him to see. “I’ll call my dad.”

He shrugged. “They’re hauling your car to the body shop on Third, and the guys there should have an estimate for you in a couple of days. But personally, I think an angry word from your lawyer could get this Fuller kid’s parents to buy you a new one. He looks like he can afford it—” the cop shot a contemptuous glance over one shoulder “—and I’m willing to bet a year’s pay that kid’s baked hotter than an apple pie. They’re taking him to Arlington Memorial, so make sure your lawyer gets a look at his blood-test results.”

I nodded, numb, and the cop glanced at Nash over my head. “Get her home safely.”

Nash’s chin brushed the back of my head as he nodded, and when the cop was out of hearing range, I twisted to find Nash’s irises swirling languidly with none of the urgent fear skittering through me.

“Do you think the blood test will show anything?”

“No way.” Nash shook his head firmly. “There’s not a human lab built that can detect a Netherworld substance, and that cop lacks the necessary equipment to do it himself.” He tapped my nose and smiled reassuringly, and for a moment, I felt like a supernatural bloodhound. “You ready to go?”

“I guess.” I stared as the tow truck pulled away with my car, and a second one backed slowly toward Doug’s Mustang.

Doug sat on the floor of the ambulance, legs dangling over the edge, and as I watched, another officer held out a small electronic device with a mouthpiece on one end. Doug blew into the breathalyzer, and the cop glanced at the reading, then smacked the device on the palm of his hand. Like it wasn’t working.

It probably showed at least one beer, but nowhere near enough to account for his current state. Nash was right; neither humans nor technology could detect Demon’s Breath. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy about that, or scared out of my mind.

We knocked on Laura Bell’s door as the ambulance pulled away, followed closely by the second wrecker pulling Doug’s car. Laura led us through a large, tiled foyer and into a sunken living room full of dark colors and expensive woods.

Emma sat in a stiff wingback chair, looking lost and half-asleep. When I reached to help her up, Tod popped into view a foot away and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Would I never get used to that?

“She’s fine,” Tod said as I knelt to look into Emma’s heavy-lidded eyes, and I knew by the lack of a reaction from anyone else—including Nash—that no one else could see him. “She just needs to sleep it off. And to get away from these squawking harpies you call friends.”

In fact, I did not call Sophie and Laura friends, but I couldn’t explain that without looking crazy to everyone who didn’t see the invisible dead boy. So I scowled at the reaper as I helped Emma up, and Nash wrapped her other arm around his neck.

“Hey, Sophie, do you want a ride?” I asked as we passed my cousin, standing with her hand propped on one denim-clad hip.

She sneered at me with shiny pink lips. “Didn’t Doug just wrap your rolling scrap pile around a mailbox?”

“In Emma’s car,” I said through gritted teeth.

Sophie sank onto the couch and crossed one skinny leg over the other. “I’m staying with Laura.”

“Fine.” They deserved each other. “Thanks for watching her,” I said to Tod.

“Someone had to.” But before I could answer, the reaper popped out of existence again, presumably gone back to the hospital, where he was no doubt overdue.

“Just get her out of here before my parents get home,” Laura said, assuming I was talking to her. “They don’t like me hanging out with drunk sluts.” I bit back a dozen replies about the irony of her friendship with Sophie and settled for slamming the door on our way out.

I called my dad on the drive home, but he was working overtime again, and I got his voice mail. I hung up without leaving a message, because somehow “my car got rammed by a linebacker high on Demon’s Breath” just seemed like the kind of thing he’d want to hear in person.

It was almost midnight—my official curfew—when I pulled into my driveway, and Emma had fallen asleep in her own backseat. Nash carried her inside and put her on my bed. I took off her shoes, then curled up next to Nash on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a sci-fi channel broadcast of the original Night of the Living Dead—a holiday classic if I’d ever seen one.

My front door opened just as the first zombie ripped its way into the farmhouse on-screen, and I jumped, dumping popcorn everywhere.

My father trudged through the door in faded jeans and a flannel shirt, an entirely different kind of zombie thanks to shift after shift on an assembly line, trying to keep us both clothed and fed. Then he stopped and backed onto the porch again, and I knew exactly what he was looking for.

“Where’s your car?” Dread warred with the exhaustion in his voice as he tossed his jacket over the back of a living room chair.

I stood while Nash began dropping stray kernels into the bowl. “Um, there was a little accident, and—”

“Are you okay?” My dad frowned, eyeing me from head to toe for injuries.

“Yeah, I wasn’t even in the car.” I stuffed my hands into my back pockets because I didn’t know what else to do with them.

“What? Where were you?”

“At a party. When Doug Fuller left, he accidentally … hit my car.”

My dad’s dark brows furrowed until they almost met. “Were you drinking?”

“No.” Thank goodness. I wouldn’t put it past him to whip out a plastic cup and demand a urine sample. I swear, he would have been a great parole officer.

My father studied me, and I could see the exact moment he decided he believed me. And with that settled, his gaze fixed behind me, where Nash now stood with the bowl of spilled popcorn. “Nash, go home.” The most common words in his verbal arsenal.

Nash handed me the bowl. “You want me to take Emma home?”

“Emma …?” My dad sighed and ran one hand through his thick brown hair. “Where is she?”

“In my bed.”

“Drunk?”

I thought about lying. I had no idea how he would react, even if I wasn’t the one drinking. But Em smelled like beer; my lie would never float.

“Yeah. What was I supposed to do, toss her the keys and wish her luck?”

My dad sighed. Then to my complete shock, he shook his head. “No, you did the right thing.”

“So she can stay?” I couldn’t believe it. He didn’t even sound mad.

“This time. But next time, I’m calling her mother. Nash, I’m sure we’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.” Nash squeezed my hand, then headed for the door. He would walk to his house, two streets away, like he’d done every time he’d come over since I’d been grounded. Including several times when my father’d had no idea he was there.

“What happened?” My dad locked the door behind Nash, then sank into his favorite armchair as I settled onto the couch, trying to decide whether or not to tell him the whole truth. About the Demon’s Breath. He was being pretty cool so far, but the Netherworld element was guaranteed to push him over the edge.

“I told you. Doug Fuller hit my car.”

“How bad is it?”

I sighed, mentally steeling myself for an explosion. “He wrapped it around a neighbor’s brick mailbox.”

Air whistled as he inhaled sharply, and I flinched.

“He was drinking, wasn’t he?” my father demanded, and I almost smiled in relief. Part of me had been sure he’d know about the Demon’s Breath from my posture, or my expression, or some kind of weird bean sidhe parenting telepathy I didn’t know about. But he thought it was just regular teenage drama, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he looked a little relieved, too.

I was not going to burst his bubble. “I don’t know. Maybe. But he is about as smart as a tractor.”

“Where’d they take the car?”

“To the body shop on Third.”

My dad stood and actually smiled at me, and I could almost taste his relief. He was thrilled to finally be faced with a normal parent’s problem. “I’ll go look at it in the morning. I assume this Fuller kid is insured?”

“Yeah. The cops gave me this.” I held out the form with Doug’s contact information and his insurance company’s number. “And he said his dad would pay for it.”

“Yes, he will.” My father took the form into the kitchen, where the light was better. “Go get some sleep. You and Em are working in the morning, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” From noon to four, we’d be selling tickets and serving popcorn at the Cinemark in the never-ending quest for gas money. Which we spent going to and from work. It was a vicious cycle.

Dismissed, and feeling like I’d just been pardoned from death row, I changed into my pj’s, brushed my teeth, and lay down next to Emma in the bed. And as I listened to her breathe, I couldn’t help thinking about how badly everything might have turned out if she’d actually gotten into that car.

I’d already lost Emma once and had no intention of losing her again anytime soon. Which meant I’d have to find out how her boyfriend got his human hands on Demon’s Breath—then make sure that never happened again.

3

“KAYLEE, COME ON IN!” Harmony Hudson brushed blond curls back from her face and held the door for me as I stepped into her small, neat living room, stuffing my freezing hands into my jacket pockets. “Do we have a lesson this morning?”

“No, I just came to see Nash.”

“Oh!” She smiled and closed the door, cutting off the frigid draft. “Then you must have served out your sentence.”

“As of yesterday.”

Nash had been grounded, too, but he only got two weeks, to my four. I think he would have gotten more if he’d still been underage, but it’s hard to ground an eighteen-year-old. And punishing Tod wasn’t even an option, considering he was fully grown and technically dead, and had unlimited access to the Netherworld. She couldn’t even keep him in one room—not to mention corporeal—long enough to yell at him.

“He’s still asleep. What did you guys do last night, anyway?”

I dropped my duffel on the faded couch, going for nonchalance, though I hated withholding information from her even worse than from my father. “Party at Scott’s house. Doug Fuller rammed my parked car with an ‘08 Mustang.”

“Oh, no!” Harmony stopped in the kitchen doorway, holding the swinging door open with one palm. “You’re insured, right?”

“Liability only.” That’s all I could afford, working twelve hours a week at the Cinemark. “But Doug’s parents are loaded, and there’s no way they can say I’m at fault. I wasn’t even in the car.”

“Well, that’s good at least, right?” I nodded, and she waved one hand toward the short hallway branching off from the opposite side of the living room. “Go wake up van Winkle and see if you can get him to eat something. I’m making apple-cinnamon muffins.”

Harmony was always baking something, and always from scratch. She was really more like a grandmother than a mom, in that respect, though she looked more like Nash’s older sister. She was eighty-two years old, with the face and body of a thirty-year-old.

So far, slow postpuberty aging was the only real advantage I’d discovered to being a bean sidhe. My father was one hundred thirty-two and didn’t look a day over forty.

Nash didn’t answer when I knocked, so I slipped into his room, then closed the door and leaned against it, watching him sleep. He looked so vulnerable in his boxers, one side of his face buried in the pillow, one leg tangled near the bottom of his sheet.

I knelt by the bed and brushed thick brown hair from his forehead. The room was warm, but his skin was cool, so I started to cover him up, but before I could, his face twisted into a grimace, his eyes still squeezed shut.

He was breathing too fast. Almost panting. His teeth ground together, then he made a helpless mewling sound. His arms tensed. He clenched handfuls of the fitted sheet.

I watched Nash’s nightmare from the outside, trying to decide if I should wake him up or let the dream play out. But then his eyes flew open and he gasped, his gaze still unfocused. He scuttled over the mattress, bare chest heaving, and stood against the far wall, staring across the bed at me. His irises churned in terror for several seconds before recognition settled into place and by then my own heart was racing in response to his fear.

“Kaylee?” He whispered my name, like he wasn’t sure he could trust his own eyes.

“Yeah, it’s me.” I stood as his breathing slowed and he started to calm down. “Nightmare?”

He rubbed both hands over his face, and when he met my gaze again he was calm, back in control of his expression. And of his eyes. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What was it about?”

“I don’t remember.” He frowned and sank onto the mattress. “I just know it was bad. But the waking up part is good so far …”

Nash pulled me onto his lap. “So, what’s with the personal wake-up?” He swept my hair over one shoulder and suddenly I was acutely aware that he was half-naked and now very close. “Phone calls just aren’t as satisfying anymore?” he whispered, trailing feather-soft kisses down my neck.

He leaned us both back, and before I even realized what had happened, I was lying on his bed, his weight pressing me into the mattress. His lips trailed down my neck again and his hand roamed over my shirt, and all I could think was that I didn’t want to stop him. He’d waited long enough. I wanted to just let it happen …

My next exhale was ragged, and I couldn’t control my racing pulse.

“I, uh.” What was I saying? What did he ask? Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter… .

His hand slid beneath my shirt, but his fingers were freezing on my skin, and the shock woke me up. Irritated, I pulled Nash away and sat up to frown at him. “Are you Influencing me?”

He shrugged, a heated grin turned up one side of his mouth. “Just helping you relax.”

“Don’t Influence me, Nash!” I stood, struggling to sustain my anger with his voice still slithering through my mind. “Don’t ever do that to me when I’m not singing for someone’s soul.” Sometimes his voice helped me quiet my bean sidhe wail, but that’s not what this was. Not even close. “I hate losing control. It’s like falling off a cliff in slow motion.” Or being sedated. “And that’s not what I came in here for,” I insisted, waving one hand at the bed.

Nash scowled, and that tremendous, irresistible false calm deserted me, leaving only the chill of its sudden absence and his obvious irritation. “How am I supposed to know that? I wake up and you’re in my bedroom with the door closed. What was I supposed to think? That you want to play Scrabble?”

“I …” I frowned, unsure how to finish that thought. Had I sent him some kind of signal? Was I wearing my “I’m done with my virginity, please get rid of it for me” T-shirt? “Your mom’s in the other room!”

“Whatever.” He sighed and pulled me closer by one hand. “Forgive me?”

“Only if you promise to play nice.”

“I swear. So, what’s up?” He leaned back on a pillow propped against his headboard, hands linked behind his skull, putting himself on display in case I changed my mind.

“You said you’d give me a ride.”

His eyes swirled with mischief, and my cheeks blazed when I realized what I’d said. “Um … you’re the one who said no.”

“A ride to work.” I’d just discovered the cause of spontaneous combustion. Surely I’d burst into flames any moment.

“I guess I could do that, too.”

“I’m serious!” But not too serious to let my gaze wander. After all, I was being invited to look. “I need a lift to work, and I was hoping we could make a stop first.”

“Where?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Doug Fuller’s.”

“Kaylee …” he began, and I could already hear the protest forming. He sat up and I let one leg hang off the bed. “Whatever Fuller’s into is none of our business.”

“He’s taking Demon’s Breath,” I whispered with a nervous glance at the closed door, hoping his mother was still in the kitchen. “How is that none of our business?”

“It has nothing to do with us.” He stood and snatched a shirt from the back of his desk chair.

“Don’t you want to know where he got it? He could have killed someone last night. And if he takes any more of it, he’ll probably kill himself.”

Nash sank into his desk chair. “You’re overreacting, Kaylee.”

“No, you’re underreacting.” I scooted to the edge of his bed. “What happened to looking out for your friends?”

“What am I supposed to do?” He shrugged, frustration clear in the tense line of his shoulders. “Go up to Fuller and say, ‘Hey, man, I’m not sure where you’re getting secondhand air from a demon you don’t even know exists, but you need to lay off it before you kill yourself’? That’s not gonna sound weird.” He kicked a shoe across the room to punctuate his sarcasm.

I crossed my arms over my chest, struggling to keep my voice low. “You’re worried about sounding weird in front of a guy who’s getting high off someone else’s breath?”

“Why do you care, anyway?” Nash demanded. “You don’t even like Fuller.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to watch him die.” Especially considering that his impending death would send me into an uncontrollable, screaming bean sidhe fit, forcing us to decide whether or not to try to save him. “And I won’t let him take Emma with him.”

Nash’s scowl wilted, giving way to confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“They were all over each other last night, Nash. While he was high on Demon’s Breath. And it probably wasn’t the first time. She could be accidentally inhaling what he exhales.”

Horror flitted across Nash’s face, greens and browns twisting in his irises, then he closed his eyes and reset his expression before I was even sure of what I’d seen, effectively locking me out of his thought process.

I leaned against his headboard and fiddled with his pillowcase. “Tod says it’s highly addictive and ultimately deadly to humans. What if she gets hooked on it, too? What if she already is?”

Nash sighed and sank onto the bed, facing me. “Look, we don’t even know that Fuller’s actually addicted, okay? We just know he took some last night. And to even be exposed, Emma would have had to suck air straight from his lungs, right after he inhaled. And the chances of that are almost nil. Right?”

“How do you know? He was still exhaling enough for me to smell it on him, and they’ve been all over each other for the past two weeks. Are you sure she couldn’t have gotten even a tiny bit by kissing him? “

“I seriously doubt it, Kaylee.” But before he regained control of his eyes, I saw the truth in the nervous swirl of color. Nash wasn’t sure. And he was scared.

He exhaled heavily, then met my gaze again. “Okay, we’ll find out if he knows what he was taking and where he got it. But if he doesn’t know, don’t tell him what it is, okay? No more full disclosures to friends. Emma was plenty.”

“Fine.” I wasn’t exactly eager to tell anyone else I wasn’t human, anyway.

“You have to be at work at noon?” I nodded, and he pulled off the shirt he’d just put on, then tossed it at his open hamper like a basketball. “We’ll leave as soon as I get out of the shower.”

“After breakfast,” I corrected on my way to the door, smiling over my victory. “Your mom’s making muffins.”

In the kitchen, I waited for Nash in a rickety chair at the scratched, round table, watching Harmony wash dishes.

“So are you enjoying your freedom?” She glanced at me over her shoulder as she set a metal bowl in the dish drainer.

I shrugged. “I haven’t experienced much of it yet.”

She dried a clean, plastic-coated whisk, dropped it into an open drawer, then leaned against the counter and eyed me in blatant curiosity. “Was it worth it?”

“Was it worth being grounded?” I asked, and she nodded. “Yes. And no. Getting Regan’s soul back was totally worth it.” Four weeks of house arrest were nothing compared to the eternity she would have suffered without her soul. “But there was nothing we could do for Addy.” And every time I thought about that, my stomach pitched like I was in freefall, a mixture of guilt and horror over my failure.

“Do you still hear from Regan?” Harmony asked when I didn’t elaborate.

“Not very often. I think it’s easier for her to try to forget about what happened with Addy.” About the fact that her sister had been damned to eternal torment because she died without her soul. With nothing to release upon her death but a lungful of Demon’s Breath.

And suddenly I had an idea. “Do you think Regan will be okay? Because of the Demon’s Breath, I mean. Tod said it’s really dangerous.”

Harmony nodded absently, opening the oven door to check the muffins. “It certainly can be. Demon’s Breath decays your soul. It rots the parts of you that make you you.”

Okay, that’s not terrifying… .

“But on the surface, it acts a bit like a very strong hallucinogenic drug. It’ll make you see and hear things that aren’t there.”

Which would explain why Doug thought someone had been in the car with him.

Harmony continued, sounding every bit like the nurse she was. “It’s also highly addictive, and even if it doesn’t kill you quickly, long-term use can lead to brain damage and psychosis.”

I swallowed the huge lump that had formed in my throat and hoped my voice sounded normal. “Psychosis, like, insanity?”

“Simply put, yes. A complete loss of contact with reality.” She used a pot holder to pull the muffin pan from the oven, then kicked the oven door closed. “And withdrawal is even worse. It sends the entire system into shock and can easily be fatal, even to someone who survived the substance itself.”

“Great …” I whispered. So cutting off Doug’s supply might kill him even faster than the Demon’s Breath would.

“Oh, no, hon!” I looked up to find her watching the horror surely growing on my face. “Don’t worry about Regan. She wasn’t huffing Demon’s Breath for a high—she was sustained by it in the absence of her soul. That’s a totally different ball game. Still very dangerous, for obvious reasons,” she conceded with a shrug. “That whole sell-your-soul thing. But very little risk to her, physically.”

“Because she didn’t have a soul …” My mind was racing. “But if she inhaled Demon’s Breath now that her soul’s back in place …”

Harmony frowned. “She’d be in very serious trouble.”

AN HOUR LATER Nash turned his mother’s car onto a brick driveway in front of a huge house with a coordinating brick-and-stone facade. And I’d thought Scott’s place was crazy. Whatever Doug Fuller’s parents did, they made some serious cash.

“You think he’s home?” I asked, and Nash pointed at the spotless, late-model sports car in the driveway, with a rental sticker on the rear windshield.

He turned off the engine and stuffed the keys into his pocket. “Let’s get this over with.”

Doug answered the door on the third ring in nothing but the sweatpants he’d obviously slept in, then backed into a bright, open entryway to let us in. We followed him to a sunken den dominated by a wall-size television, where a video game character I couldn’t identify stood frozen with a pistol aimed at the entire room.

“Sorry about your car.” Doug plopped onto a black leather home theater chair without even glancing at me.

“Um.” But before I could finish the nonthought, he waved off my reply and picked up a video controller from the arm of his chair.

“My dad’ll pay for the damages. The rental place is supposed to deliver your loaner this afternoon. I got you a V6.”

Just like that? Was he serious? I got weird death visions and a supersonic shriek, and Doug Fuller got unreasonable wealth. That was a serious imbalance of karma.

“Trust me—it’s a step up.”

My fists clenched in my coat pockets. How could Emma stand him?

“Um, thanks,” I said, for lack of anything even resembling an intelligent reply. I looked at Nash with both brows raised, silently asking what he was waiting for. He dropped onto a black leather couch and I sat next to him.

“So was your dad pissed about the drug test? You must have been high as a satellite to hit a parked car.” Nash slouched into the couch, sounding almost jealous, and that must have been the right approach because Doug grinned and paused his game.

“Dude, I was in orbit.” He set the remote on the arm of his chair and grabbed a can of Coke from the drink holder. “But the test came out clean, other than a little alcohol. The E.R. doc told my dad I was probably euphoric from shock.”

“What the hell were you taking?” Nash leaned forward and took two Cokes from the minifridge doubling as an end table.

“Somethin’ called frost. It’s like huffing duster inside a deep freeze, but then you’re high for hours… .”

Chill bumps popped up all over my skin and I shuddered at the memory of dozens of creepy little fiends crawling all over one another in the Netherworld, desperate for a single hit of Demon’s Breath—preferably straight from the source.

Nash handed me a can and raised one brow to ask if I was okay. He’d noticed the shudder. I nodded and popped the top on my Coke.

“Where’d you get it?” Nash leaned back on the couch and opened his own soda.

“From some guy named Everett. I think that’s his last name. I got a physical next Tuesday, and he swore this frost shit wouldn’t show up in a blood test.” Doug’s focus shifted to me. “Hey, Kaylee, do you know if Em’s working tonight?”

“Yeah. I think she’s closing.” Actually, we’d both be off by four in the afternoon, but I didn’t want her hanging out with Doug until I was sure he wasn’t going to freeze-dry her lungs with every kiss.

Nash set his can on the minifridge. “You have any more of this frost?”

“Nah. I had an extra balloon, but I sold it yesterday.” One corner of his mouth twitched twice, and my stomach flipped. The fiend we’d met in the Netherworld had twitched just like that, from withdrawal. “And I huffed the last of mine last night.”

“It comes in a balloon?” Nash frowned and his irises suddenly went still, like he’d flipped the off switch on his emotional gauge.

“Yeah. Black party balloons, like the kind we used to pop in the back of the class to watch Ms. Eddin’s substitute jump. Remember, back in eighth grade?”

Nash nodded absently.

“What friend?” I demanded, my hands both clenched around my Coke. “Who did you sell the other balloon to?” But I knew the answer before Doug even opened his mouth. Because that’s just the kind of luck I had.

Doug picked up his game controller, his hand twitching around the plastic. “Scott Carter.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. I was right. He’d sold his other balloon to my cousin’s boyfriend. And Sophie was cold enough on her own, without exposure to secondhand frost.

4

“THAT’S JUST GREAT!” I buckled my seat belt as Nash shifted into Reverse. “Doug exposes Emma, then sells half his supply to Scott, who’s just going to turn around and drag Sophie into the whole mess. It’s an epidemic. How are we supposed to stop an epidemic?”

“It’s not an epidemic.” Nash twisted in his seat to check behind us while he backed down the driveway. “It’s two guys who have no idea what they’re into.” The car rocked as the tires dropped from the brick driveway onto the smoother surface of the road, then Nash settled into his seat facing forward. “And I really don’t think they could expose Emma or Sophie to secondhand Demon’s Breath. Or would that actually be thirdhand?” He tried on a halfhearted grin to go with his joke, but couldn’t pull it off.

“But you don’t actually know that, right? You can’t know for sure that they haven’t been exposed.”

“No, but I don’t think—”

“Why are you trying to brush this off? This isn’t like having a drink at a party or lighting up behind the shop building. We’re talking about humans inhaling the toxic life force sucked out of a demon from another world.” Quite possibly the weirdest sentence I’d ever said aloud … “And according to your mom, if they survive addiction—and that’s a big if—their scrambled brains’ll make Ozzy Osbourne look rational and coherent.”

And as far as I was concerned, insanity—including the risk of being locked up in some mental ward—was worse than death, which would simply put an end to the terminal drama and angst of human existence. Unless you were stupid enough to sell your immortal soul like Addy had.

Nash’s silence drew my gaze, and I found him staring at me, rather than at the road. “You asked my mother about Demon’s Breath?” His voice held a hard quality I’d rarely heard from him before, like his words formed the bricks in a wall I was destined to crash into.

“In reference to Regan.” I rubbed my palms over the denim covering my legs. “I didn’t mention Doug or Emma.” At least, not in the same sentence as Demon’s Breath. “I’m not stupid, Nash.”

“Neither is she!” His palm slammed into the steering wheel and I jumped, then a sharp jolt of anger skittered up my spine. “She knows. You ran your mouth off, and now she knows everything. Great, Kaylee. Thanks.”

“She doesn’t know. What is wrong with you?” I demanded, fighting to keep from shouting.

“Even if she doesn’t know yet, if this gets as bad as you seem to think it will, she’s going to figure out why you were asking, and then we’re both going to be in serious trouble, Kaylee!”

I rolled my eyes. “If this gets as bad as I know it will, having your mother mad at us will be the least of our problems.” I paused, waiting until my point had a chance to sink in, and when his grip on the wheel eased, I continued, trying to ignore his clenched jaw and tense posture. “We need to know if Scott’s tried it yet.” Thus, whether Sophie was in any potential danger. “And we have to get that balloon away from him, then figure out where this Everett guy is getting his supply.”

Nash exhaled heavily and answered without looking at me. “Yeah. You’re right.” But he didn’t seem very happy about it.

The rest of the ride was quiet and uncomfortable. I was mad at him for getting mad at me, and I didn’t know how to deal with any of that. We’d never had a real fight before.

So we rode in silence and I got lost in my own head, trying to figure out how Demon’s Breath had gotten into the human world in the first place, and how best to wrestle it from the privileged, demanding hands of the

Eastlake football team without turning both of us into social rejects.

I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep until I woke up in the Cinemark parking lot with my face against the cold passenger’s side window. Confused, I blinked and sat up to find Nash watching me, frowning, his hands clenched around the wheel again.

“You okay?” He looked upset, but made no move to reach for me across the center console.

“Yeah.” I stomped on the floorboard, trying to ease the tingling in my left foot, which hadn’t woken up along with the rest of my body. “Just worried about this whole frost mess.” I glanced at the dashboard clock, surprised to see that my shift started in ten minutes. “And tired, I guess.”

Nash nodded, but his worried look held. “Hey, I’m sorry I got mad. I’ll find out if Scott’s tried it yet.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, determined to take him at his word. I didn’t understand his change of heart, but I’d take it.

“You need a ride home?” he asked as I opened the car door and hauled my duffel into my lap from the rear floorboard.

“Em said she’d take me. I’ll call you when I get home.”

His grin that time looked more natural. “Is your dad still working overtime?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll bring pizza if you pick up a movie.”

“Deal.”

He leaned in for a kiss, and I kissed him back, trying to believe everything would be okay. “Don’t worry about Scott’s balloon,” he said as I got out of the car. “I’ll take care of it.”

I CHANGED INTO my ugly red-and-blue polyester uniform in the bathroom, then pulled my hair into a ponytail and met Emma in the box office, where she was already counting the cash in her drawer. Somehow she’d scored us matching shifts selling tickets, which almost never happened. Usually one or the other of us got stuck scooping popcorn or emptying trash cans.

I counted my own drawer in silence, trying to decide whether or not to tell her to stay away from Doug. And what to cite as the reason.

I wasn’t sure if she knew what he was taking, and even if she did, I couldn’t tell her what frost really was. Not without scaring the crap out of her, anyway. And my policy on Emma and Netherworld stuff was to keep the two as far apart as possible, for as long as possible. How was I supposed to know Netherworld trouble would find her all on its own?

Finally, after two hours, a steady stream of customers, and a snack break during which I’d done little more than nod along with her chatter, she went suddenly silent on the stool next to mine, sitting straighter as she aimed a bright smile through the window in front of us. I looked up to find a familiar face halfway down the line across from Emma’s register.

Doug Fuller.

I had to nudge Emma into giving change to an elderly lady taking a small child to see a PG-13 comedy. Emma slid the change and receipt under the window, then glanced at me as her next customer ordered two tickets for a Japanese horror flick. “Doug’s here,” she whispered.

I ran a debit card through the scanner, then dropped it into the dip in the counter beneath the pane of glass. “I see him.” And I didn’t like what I saw.

Oh, I understood the attraction. He was tall, and dark, and undeniably hot, and was just edgy enough—he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, including his own friends—to intrigue Emma. But Doug wasn’t just “she’s so drunk she doesn’t know what she’s doing” dangerous. He was “spend the rest of your life in a padded cell” dangerous. And that was the best-case scenario.

“I knew I should have waited to take my break.” Emma slid three tickets and a receipt beneath the glass to her next customer, glancing at Doug every chance she got.

“Em, what do you see in him? I mean, other than the obvious.” Because for a short-term, nontoxic, casual good time, the obvious would have been plenty.

She shrugged and slid two more tickets under the glass. “I don’t know. He’s hot and he’s fun. Why does it have to be deeper than that? We’re not all looking for a lifetime commitment at sixteen, Kay.”

“I’m not.” I started to argue, then gave up. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for from Nash, but it definitely wasn’t short-term fun. “Em, I don’t think you should—”

“Shhhh!” she hissed as Doug stepped up to the counter, his lopsided grin showing off just one dimple, and I knew I’d lost her. She smiled and leaned forward on the counter, and somehow her uniform clung to her curves, where mine only hung from my angles. “Hey.”

“Hey. So, you wanna come over after you close?” he said, and the people in line behind him started grumbling.

I slid a debit card beneath the glass on my side of the counter and tried not to groan out loud.

Reason number eighteen that Kaylee should not lie: she never gets away with it.

Em frowned. “I’m not closing—it’s a school night. I get off in two hours.”

“But Kaylee said.” Doug glanced at me, and I stared at the counter, relieved when the customer behind him moved into my line, giving me something to do.

“She was wrong.” Em was mad. Of course she was mad. “Meet me at five?”

“Uh, I gotta do something first.” His hand jerked on the counter, and my stomach pitched. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Okay.” Emma smiled for him, but didn’t even look at me until he’d stepped out of line, already heading down the steps toward the parking lot. She served her next customer in silence while I handed back change, then both lines were empty for the moment.

Emma turned on me while Doug veered toward the rental I’d seen in his driveway, now double-parked in two handicapped spots on the front row. “What the hell, Kaylee?”

I twisted on my stool, brainstorming damage control that would not come. “I’m sorry. I just. I don’t think he’s good for you.”

“Because he hit your car? That was an accident, and I’m sure he’ll pay for it.”

“Yeah. He already got me a loaner.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

I sighed, grasping for some way to explain without … well … explaining. My urge to protect her from all things Netherworld was overwhelming, and my gut was all I had to go on at the moment. “He’s not safe, Emma.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want safe. I want fun, and Doug is fun.”

“Yeah, he’s so fun he tried to haul you off while you were drunk. What do you think would have happened next, Em?”

“Nothing I didn’t want to do.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “What? You think Nash is perfect?”

My pulse spiked and I thought about him Influencing his way up my shirt that morning. But Em didn’t know about that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Emma sighed and leaned with both elbows on the counter, watching through the glass as Doug unlocked his car. “I’m just saying guys only come in a couple of models, and Nash didn’t exactly break the mold. So lay off my boyfriend until you’re ready to take a closer look at yours.”

I had no idea what to say to that. So Nash was getting a little pushy. That was nothing compared to Doug breathing toxic fumes all over her.

In the lot, Doug’s arm twitched as he pulled open his car door. Emma didn’t even notice, but I knew what those twitches meant, and I was pretty sure I knew what he had to do before he picked her up. I had to tell her something—had to at least warn her, if I couldn’t keep her away from him.

I took a deep breath and twisted on my stool to face her as Doug pulled out of the lot. “Emma, Doug’s into something new. Something really bad. It’s called frost.”

She frowned, ignoring the customer who stepped up to her window. “What are you talking about?”

“Just listen. Please. It comes in a black balloon, and it will kill him. And if you inhale any of it, it could kill you, too. Or drive you insane. For real.”

Emma’s frown deepened. “You’re serious?”

“So serious.” I looked straight into her brown eyes, wishing she could see the sincerity surely swirling in mine. “Nash and I saved your life once and I’m trying to do it again. If you see Doug with a black balloon or even if he just starts acting weird, go home. Okay? Whatever you’re doing, just stop and go home.”

The man in front of the glass knocked on the window, but we both ignored him.

Emma’s eyes widened and she clutched the counter. “Kaylee, you’re kind of creeping me out.”

“I know.” I took both of her hands when she started to turn toward the window. “But you have to promise you’ll go home if he starts acting weird. Swear.”

“Fine, I swear,” she said as the man knocked harder and a second customer appeared in front of my window. “But I gotta tell ya, you’re the one acting weird right now, Kay.”

I knew that, too. But at least my brand of weird probably wasn’t going to get anybody killed. No one other than me, anyway.

“YOU WANT THE GOOD news, or the bad?” Nash asked as soon as I opened the front door. I took the pizza from him and he pulled the door shut as he stepped inside.

“Bad first.” Because I was a “get it out of the way” kind of gal. I set the pizza box on the coffee table and headed into the kitchen for a couple of sodas. He tossed his jacket over one of the chairs around the table in our eat-in kitchen.

“Okay, Carter has tried the balloon, and I think he was still flying pretty high when I got there this afternoon. He was talking fast and leaping from one subject to the next. I could hardly keep up with him.”

“But Doug didn’t act anything like that. He was slurring and reacting kind of sluggish. And seeing things.”

“I know.” Nash flipped open the pizza box and sank onto the couch. “It seems to be affecting them both differently. But the good news is that Sophie’s at the Winter Carnival committee fundraiser, so the chances of her inhaling anything from him tonight are pretty slim. If that’s even possible. She’s probably safe until tomorrow.”

“This good news isn’t sounding so good.” I set a Coke can on the end table nearest him.

“Okay, then how ‘bout this …” He pulled me onto his lap, and my unopened soda fell from my hand to roll under the coffee table. “I talked him into bringing the balloon to school tomorrow, so I can ‘try’ it.”

My smile reflected his own. “And we’re gonna get rid of it before he has a chance to share, right?”

Nash’s grin widened, and he kissed me before lowering me to the couch next to him. “That’s the plan.”

“Okay, I like that part. So, how are we going to get the balloon? Ask Tod to pop in and snatch it for us?”

“Even better.” He leaned to one side and dug in his hip pocket, then pulled out a single key with an electronic lock on a plain silver ring.

I frowned. “You stole Scott’s car key?” Yes, it was convenient, and meant we wouldn’t have to actually break into the car, which was equally illegal. Still.

Nash shook his head. “I just borrowed it from the kitchen junk drawer. He won’t notice it’s gone until he locks himself out of his car again, and with any luck, I’ll have it back way before then. How else are we supposed to get into his car?”

“Tod can do it without stealing a key.”

He raised a brow in challenge, pulling one slice of pizza free from the others. “Does that make it morally acceptable?”

“No, that makes it easier and safer. Tod won’t get caught, and we won’t be connected to a B and E on school grounds.”

“Tod got in trouble for missing too much work,” Nash said around a mouthful of pepperoni. “So he’s working for the next forty-eight hours straight, with no breaks. Evidently some poor old lady lingered on the wrong side of a second heart attack when the first should have done the job.”

Great …

“So unless you know how to pop a car lock, this is our best bet.” Nash held up the key, and his nonchalance made me distinctly uncomfortable. Unfortunately, he was right.

Was unlawful entry really any worse than theft, anyway? And did confiscating a toxic Netherworld substance even count as theft?

I nodded reluctantly, and Nash slid the key into his pocket. “You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not about trust. I don’t want to get caught breaking into Scott’s car.”

“We’re not gonna get caught. And if we do, he won’t get mad. No one ever gets mad at me, Kaylee. I have a way with words… .” He leaned closer, teasing me with a short kiss, his mouth open just enough to invite me in. Just enough so that I missed his lips the moment they were gone.

“I got mad at you this morning,” I whispered as he angled us back on the couch, reaching down to lift my right leg onto the cushion.

He pulled my left leg up on his other side, bent at the knee, then leaned over me, propped up on his elbows. “Yeah, but you got over it.” Nash kissed me, and I got lost in him. I wanted to be lost in Nash, to forget about fear, and danger, and death, and everything that wasn’t him, and me, and us. Just for a few minutes, to forget about everything else. Nash made that possible. He made that inevitable.

He made me feel so good. Beautiful, and wanted, and needed, in a way I’d never been needed before. Like if he didn’t have me, he wouldn’t have anything.

And I wanted him to have me. I wanted to have him.

But I couldn’t. Because what if Emma was right? What if he was like all the others, and once I’d been had, he’d need someone else?

His tongue trailed down my neck and my head fell back on the throw pillow, my mouth open. My eyes closed. His hand slid beneath my shirt and I gripped the cushion under me. I could feel him through our clothes. Ready. Needing.

But Nash was right before—I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t, because if he wasn’t perfect, I didn’t want to know about it. Not yet. I wanted to sleep with Nash, but that’s not what I needed.

I needed him to break the mold.

“Wait.”

“Hmmm?” But then he kissed me before I could repeat myself. His hand slid farther, his cold fingers crawling over my ribs. His mouth sucked at mine, and I couldn’t talk. I could hardly breathe.

When his other hand found the waist of my jeans, I turned my head and shoved him with both hands. “I said stop.”

He frowned. “What’s the problem? I’m not using any Influence.”

“I know. Just … slow down.”

He sat up and frowned while I tugged my shirt back into place. “If we go any slower, we’ll be moving back in time. You’ve been teasing me for months, Kaylee. Anyone else would already have walked away.”

My face burned like he’d slapped me. “I’m not a tease, but you’re starting to sound like a real jackass. If you wanna walk, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding someone a little more cooperative.”

Nash sighed, scrubbing his face with both hands. “I don’t want someone else. I want you.”

Yeah. More of me than I was ready to give. But I wanted him, too. “Let’s just watch the movie, okay?”

“Fine.”

The ache in my heart eclipsed the other aches I was trying to ignore, but before I could figure out what to say to make it better without giving in, he stood and crossed the room to start the DVD.

I ran my hands through my hair, searching for a change of subject to act as a reset button on the entire evening.

“Doug showed up at the Cinemark this afternoon,” I said, grabbing my Coke from the floor. I tapped the top to settle the bubbles. “He’s picking Emma up tonight, so I made her promise to go home if he starts acting weird.” Hopefully she wouldn’t think twice about taking his rental, since she wouldn’t have her car.

Nash turned to look at me, his eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell her …”

“What frost really is?” I shook my head. “I just told her that he’d gotten ahold of something bad.” I searched his eyes for disapproval, but found only leftover frustration. “I had to tell her something.”

“I know.” Nash grabbed the remote from the top of the TV and changed the input. “How did Fuller look?”

“Twitchy.” I turned and dropped my feet onto his lap when he sank onto the opposite end of the couch, universal remote in hand. “I think he’s picking up another balloon tonight.” I made a mental note to call and check on Emma before bed, to make sure she sounded like herself and that Doug hadn’t gone all psych ward on her.

I sipped from my soda as thoughts—dark possibilities, really—sloshed in my mind like murky swamp water. “Did Scott say anything about Everett? Does he know him?”

“Nope.” Nash grabbed the slice of pizza he’d already started on and handed another one to me. “He’s never met the guy. He thinks Fuller’s holding out on him.” He tore a bite from his pizza and spoke around it. “So what do you think a party balloon goes for on the street these days?” Nash grinned, trying to lighten the mood, but the idea of some creepy Pennywise peddling balloons full of Demon’s Breath on the corner scared the crap out of me, and I struggled to purge the visual.

What if we’d discovered the problem too late? What if Doug’s dealer had already been peddling his product all over central Texas, or worse, all over the state? Or the entire south? After all, what were the chances that we happened to go to school with the only human in the area who huffed Demon’s Breath?

No, my inner logic insisted. If people were dropping dead or being admitted to mental hospitals in record numbers, we’d have heard about it. This was just starting, which meant it was still fixable. It had to be.

I took a deep breath, then another drink from my can. “I think the real question is, what is Everett? If he’s human, where’s he getting his supply? And if he’s not, what is he doing here?”

Nash shrugged. “Evil, would be my guess. That’s kind of a Netherworld specialty.”

“Okay, but as far as diabolical Netherworld schemes go, getting a bunch of human teenagers high, hooked, then dead is kind of lame.” I looked at my pizza, but couldn’t bring myself to actually eat it. “I mean, how good can the repeat business be if the customers are all gonna die?”

Nash chewed some more, apparently giving the idea some serious thought. “Nobody’s dead yet.”

But we both knew that was only a matter of time.

Or was it?

I dropped my uneaten slice into the box and grabbed the remote, poking the pause button until the image on the screen froze. “Maybe no one’s going to die from this. You can’t die if it’s not your time, right? If you’re not on the list?” The reaper’s list, which contained the names of everyone whose soul was scheduled to be collected on a given day. Tod talked about the list like it was scribbled by the hand of Fate herself, thus could not be changed.

Of course, being driven insane wasn’t much better than death. But at least I wouldn’t have to scream for those hauled away in straitjackets.

But Nash didn’t look very relieved.

“Kay, it doesn’t work like that. Demon’s Breath is a Netherworld element. It trumps the list, just like actually crossing into the Netherworld.”

My heart hurt like it was being twisted within my chest, and my throat felt almost too thick to breathe through. “So, even if we got in touch with Tod and he got his hands on the master list, he couldn’t tell us who’s most at risk from this. Or how far it’s going to spread.”

Nash shook his head slowly. “There’s no way to track this, and no way to know who’s going to die from it. Not until …”

He didn’t have to say it. I knew.

“Not until I start screaming.”

5

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU two today?” Emma speared a cherry tomato in her salad. Which was really just a mountain of iceberg lettuce dotted with croutons and smothered in cheese, ham, and ranch dressing. Emma didn’t do health food, and I’d always respected that about her. “You look like you’re waiting for a bomb to go off.”

Not a bomb. A football player. We’d seen Scott Carter in the hall before first period, and his eyes had a familiar fevered look, yet his breath was too-sweet and cold, like he’d been chewing ice. He was high. On frost. At school.

Maybe having him bring it with him wasn’t such a good idea, after all… .

Before I could come up with an answer, Emma’s gaze strayed over Nash’s shoulder and her eyes flashed with something like desire or anticipation, only stronger. More fervent. I twisted on the bench to see Doug pushing his way through a huddle of freshmen in front of the pizza line.

Emma smiled at him, and I wanted to break my own skull open on the white brick wall behind her.

Around us, the cafeteria buzzed with conversation, individual words and voices muted by the steady swell of sound. Our school was a closed campus for the entire first semester, thanks to a fender bender in the parking lot the second week of school, so nearly a third of the student body was crammed into four rows of indoor picnic-style tables. For most of the year, Em and I ate outside in the quad, but in December, even Texas was too cold for all but the truly hardy—and those in desperate need of a secret smoke—to brave the winter chill.

“So, I take it last night went well?” I dipped a corn chip into my cheese sauce, but couldn’t bring myself to eat it as I watched her closely for some sign that her attraction to Doug went beyond the usual hormonal tidal wave. But I saw nothing but the hair tosses and challenging eye contact she usually saved for guys old enough to drink. Or at least date her college-age sisters.

“Does she really like this ass-wipe?” Tod said, appearing suddenly on the bench beside me.

The corn chip in my hand shattered, but for once I managed not to jump and look like an idiot in front of Nash and Em, who clearly couldn’t see the reaper this time. Wasn’t he supposed to be a virtual prisoner at Arlington Memorial for another day or so?

But I couldn’t ask without looking crazy in front of half the varsity football team sitting at the other end of the table.

“So well.” Emma’s voice went deep and throaty, and I glanced briefly at Tod with one raised brow, silently asking if that answered his question.

He scowled, then blinked out, and I wiped cheese sauce from my fingers with a paper napkin. I knew what I had against Doug, but why did Tod care who Emma liked? I’d assumed he’d let go of his crush on her when Addison had stepped back into—then quickly out of—his life a month ago.

Evidently, I was wrong, and the implications of that settled into my gut like a brick in a bucket of water. How would a grim reaper—someone no longer bound by the limitations of mortal existence—deal with the potential competition Doug Fuller represented?

Oh, crap!

Someone was selling Demon’s Breath in the human world, and Tod had on-demand access to the Netherworld. Doug had sworn someone had appeared in his passenger’s seat on Saturday night when he’d hit my car, and Tod had the infuriating habit of popping in anywhere he wanted, whenever he wanted, to whomever he wanted… .

Was it possible?

No. I almost shook my head before I realized no one else knew what I was thinking. Tod wouldn’t do that. Not that he’d hesitate to sabotage the competition if he ever decided he was serious about Emma. But he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his job—because an unemployed reaper was a dead reaper—or Emma, one of the few humans he actually cared about.

Still … I made a mental note to mention the possibility—however slim—to Nash the next time we were alone.

“Hey.” Doug dropped onto the bench next to Emma, straddling the seat with his left thigh against her backside. He reached across the table to slap Nash’s hand in greeting, then turned to me. “How’s the loaner working out?”

“Fine.” I dunked another chip and tried to hate Doug quietly, so Emma wouldn’t notice. It would be hard to protect her if she wasn’t speaking to me.

Doug ran one hand slowly up and down Emma’s back. “What are you doing after school?”

“Working. But then I’ll be home. Alone.”

“Want some company?”

“Maybe …” She bit into a cube of ham speared on her plastic fork, and Doug’s hand moved slowly beneath the table, probably working its way up her thigh. Then something behind me caught his eye, and he tossed his head at someone over my shoulder.

I turned to find Scott Carter making his way across the cafeteria toward us, a tray in one hand, his other arm around Sophie’s thin shoulders. Scott set his tray down and sank onto the bench next to Doug. Sophie took a bruised red apple from Scott’s tray and bit into it, chewing in angry silence while she tried to avoid my eyes.

Or maybe she was trying to avoid being seen with me.

“We still on for this afternoon?” Scott asked Nash, twisting the lid on a bottle of Coke, then tightening it before it could fizz over. “I’m parked on the west side, near the gym.” His eyes looked a little clearer, and I could no longer smell the Demon’s Breath on him. He was coming down from his initial high, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before he’d need another fix. And what that need would look like on him.

Would Sophie notice something was wrong? Would his teachers? His parents were still out of town… .

“Yeah.” Nash shoved the last bite of his cafeteria hamburger into his mouth and picked up his own soda. “I’ll be there right after the last bell.”

But Scott’s stash would not.

“You still have what I gave you?” Doug glanced anxiously between Nash and Scott, having caught on to the subject.

“What you sold me,” Scott corrected.

“Whatever.” Doug finally removed his hand from

Emma’s thigh and leaned closer to Scott. I chewed, pretending not to listen while Sophie and Emma exchanged rare twin looks of confusion. “I need to buy it back, but I can replace it this weekend.”

Scott squirted a mustard packet on his hamburger. “I thought you were gonna have more today?”

Doug shook his head. “Didn’t pan out. Sell me yours. I’ll pay extra.”

“No way.” Scott shook his head and picked up his burger. Sophie and Emma weren’t even pretending to eat anymore. “But you can have a hit after school with Hudson—” he nodded in Nash’s direction “—if you give me your guy’s name and number.”

Doug’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “I already gave you his name, and there is no number. But I’m gonna see him this weekend for sure. I can get you another one then, if you pay up front.”

Nash stiffened next to me, and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking. Everett. This weekend. That was our best chance.

“Same as last time?” Scott asked, and my stomach twisted in on itself as Emma glanced at me, brows arched in question.

“Yeah,” Doug said, and Sophie rolled her eyes, glossy pink fingernails digging into the skin of her apple.

“I’m bored,” she whined. “You guys are like walking sedatives.”

“You got something more interesting to talk about?”

Scott snapped, dipping a limp French fry in ketchup. “And don’t say the Winter Carnival.”

Sophie pouted, gesturing with her apple. “It’s on Saturday, and you guys promised you’d help with the booths this afternoon.” They all had their afternoons free, since football season had ended with a loss to the new Texas state AA champions.

“I’m not feelin’ it, Soph.” Scott raised one brow and his frown grew into a lecherous grin. “But maybe you could convince me …” He pushed his tray across the table and leaned back, watching her expectantly.

Sophie went from shrew to succubus in less than a second, straddling Scott so boldly that I glanced around, sure there would be a teacher stomping toward us from somewhere, intent on peeling her off.

But no teacher came. The two on duty were busy trying to confiscate a cell phone from some senior rumored to be showing off naked pictures of his girlfriend.

Sophie performed like a trained seal, and I was humiliated for her—because she didn’t have the sense to be—but I couldn’t look away from my cousin’s spectacle. Until Scott’s hand inched down from her waist toward the back of her overpriced jeans.

“Sophie, that’s enough. Sit down before you get suspended.”

The look she shot me could have frozen Satan’s crotch, but she slithered off her boyfriend’s lap, licking her lips like she could still taste him, while Doug, Scott, and the rest of the team watched her like she’d just danced around a pole. I shot Nash a “why the hell do you hang out with these jackholes” look, but he was unavailable to receive my withering glance. Because he was watching my cousin. But Emma was watching me, I told you so written clearly in her expression.

I frowned and elbowed Nash while Sophie reapplied her lipstick with a compact mirror. “So.” She snapped the compact closed and dropped it into her purse. “Any volunteers?”

“I’m in,” Scott said, and I understood that Sophie’s show was actually a preview of things to come. Was that how she got everything she wanted? “You guys got a couple of hours to spare this afternoon?” Scott glanced around the table for more volunteers.

Nash nodded, but Emma leaned around Doug to answer for us both. “Kaylee and I have to work.”

“Oh, well.” Sophie shrugged, and the bitch was back. “We’ll miss you.” her mouth said, but as usual, her eyes said something entirely different.

When the bell rang, everyone got up to dump their trays, but Nash and I headed into the quad against the flow of smoke-scented traffic into the building, his cold fingers intertwined with mine. When the late bell rang eight minutes later, we sneaked around the outside of the school—the gym side, where there were no windows—and into the parking lot, ducking to run between the cars until we spotted Scott’s. Fortunately, he’d parked out of view from the building exit.

The top was up on Scott’s shiny, metallic-blue convertible, and through the rear window I saw nothing but a spotless interior; the car was so clean he probably made Sophie take off her shoes before getting in. On the back passenger’s side floorboard sat a large green duffel bag. “It’s either in there, or in the trunk,” I whispered, though there was no one else around to hear us.

Nash dug in his left pocket and pulled out Scott’s key. “Then let’s get this over with.”

He slid the key into the lock—presumably to avoid the telltale thump of the automatic lock disengaging—and glanced toward the building to make sure we were alone.

With the driver’s door open, he reached through to unlock the back door, then pulled it open and gestured toward the rear seat. “Be my guest.”

Rolling my eyes, I crawled into the backseat and tugged the bag into my lap. My heart thumped as I unzipped it, and I was suddenly sure Scott had put the balloon in his trunk. But there it was, a solid black balloon, next to a football and on top of a pair of green gym shorts, which weren’t exactly fresh. I pulled the balloon out with both hands and gasped at the chill that sank immediately through my fingers. The balloon was so cold ice should have glazed its surface, flaking off to melt on my skin.

Yet, other than the temperature and the weighted black plastic clasp holding it closed, the balloon felt just like any other latex party balloon. It was only half-inflated and I wondered how full it had been, and how much of the contents Scott had already inhaled. When I squeezed it gently, my fingers dimpled the surface and the rubber seemed to grow even colder.

“It’s cold,” I whispered, without taking my eyes off the balloon. “Freezing …”

Nash nodded. “There’s a reason they call it frost. Don’t you remember what Avari did to that office when he got pissed?”

I did remember. When the hellion had gotten mad, a lacy sheet of ice had spread across the desk beneath him and onto the floor, inching toward our feet, surging faster every time his anger peaked.

“Okay, zip the bag up and let’s g—”

“Hudson?” A booming voice called from across the parking lot, and my blood ran as cold as the balloon.

Coach Rundell, the head football coach.

Nash waved his hand downward, inches from my head, and I dropped onto the backseat, bent in half over the balloon. On the way down, I glimpsed the coach between Scott’s leather headrests. The middle-aged former jock stomped toward us from the double gym doors, his soft bulk confined by a slick green-and-white workout suit, bulging at the zipper.

“You’re not allowed in the parking lot during the school day, Hudson,” the coach barked. “You know that.”

That ridiculous rule was supposed to stop kids from sneaking cigarettes or making out in backseats, and to prevent the occasional car break-in. Which we were committing, at that very moment.

Panicked now, as the cold from the balloon leached through my shirt and into my stomach, I craned my neck to see Nash digging frantically in his hip pocket. “Sorry, coach. I left my book in here this morning, and I need it for class.”

“Isn’t that Carter’s car?”

Nash shrugged. “He gave me a ride.”

Actually, Nash had ridden with me, in my new loaner. But Coach Rundell wasn’t going to question his first-string running back. Even if he didn’t believe Nash.

“Well, get what you came for and get back to class. You need a pass?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Nash said, and I rolled my eyes as he bent into the backseat behind the headrest, where the coach couldn’t see him clearly.

That figures. The football player steals a friend’s key and breaks into his car, and he winds up with a free hall pass for his trouble. I’d probably be expelled.

Nash pressed Scott’s car key into my hand. “Wait until we go in, then lock the balloon in your trunk. Got it?”

I shook my head, pocketing the key reluctantly. “I’m just going to pop it. That way no one else can get ahold of it.”

Sudden panic whirled in Nash’s irises. “You can’t pop it, Kaylee. What if you accidentally breathe some of it in?”

My pulse raced at the thought, fear chilling me almost as badly as the balloon I was trying not to crush. “Is it … as dangerous to bean sidhes as it is to humans?” I whispered.

Nash sighed. “No, but.” He stopped and shook his head sharply, as if to clear it. “I don’t know. It’s a controlled substance for a reason. It has to be disposed of carefully. I’m going to give it to Tod to take to the disposal facility in the Netherworld. Okay?”

I nodded grudgingly. “Fine.”

Nash kissed me quickly on the cheek, then leaned past me to grab the chemistry book I’d brought to lunch. “I’ll give it back to you after school.” Hopefully the coach wouldn’t know Nash was taking physics this year… .

He backed out of the car, held the book up for the coach’s benefit, then closed the door, leaving me alone in the quarterback’s car, with his stolen key and his stash of a rare, expensive inhalant.

No pressure, Kay.

I peeked between the headrests until Nash and the coach disappeared around the corner of the gym, then I sat up and shoved the frigid black balloon off my lap and onto the floor. I zipped Scott’s duffel and put it back exactly where I’d found it, then glanced around the lot again before easing the door open. When I was sure I was alone, I grabbed the balloon, lurched out of the car, and shoved the door closed, then clicked a button on the key to lock it. Then I raced across the lot holding the balloon by its clip, to keep the unnaturally cold latex from touching my skin.

On my way across the asphalt, I slid Scott’s key into my back pocket, then dug my own from my hip pocket, holding it ready as I skidded to a stop behind the rental. I jabbed the key into the trunk lock and twisted, relieved when the trunk popped open an inch on the first try. I’d never opened it and, according to Murphy’s Law—which they might as well rename after me—it would malfunction when I needed it most.

I dropped the balloon into the carpeted compartment, glad when it sank with the weighted clip. Then I slammed the trunk closed and made myself walk toward the building, concentrating on regulating my breathing and heartbeat with each step.

The last thing I needed was to arrive for class flushed and out of breath.

Although now that I thought of it, that would give me an interesting alibi. Everyone would assume Nash and I had been occupied, and had missed the bell.

I smiled at that thought, and the smile stayed in place until I opened the door to my fifth-period English class, where every head in the room swiveled to look at me. And that’s when I realized I’d forgotten to stop by my locker for my book.

“Miss Cavanaugh,” Mr. Tuttle said, perched on the edge of his desk with one sockless loafer dangling a foot from the floor. “How nice of you to join us. I don’t suppose you have a late pass? Or a textbook?”

I shook my head mutely and felt myself flush. So much for avoiding rumors.

“Well, now you do have detention.”

Naturally. Because detention seems like an appropriate reward for someone trying to save her school from a deadly Netherworld toxin, right?

6

“DETENTION FOR YOUR FIRST tardy?” Nash looked skeptical as he slammed his locker and tossed his backpack over one shoulder. All around us, other lockers squealed open and clanged closed. The hall was a steady din of white noise—the constant overlap of voices. The final bell had rung three minutes earlier and the entire student body had split into two streams: most of the underclassmen flowing toward the front doors and a line of long yellow buses, and most of the upperclassmen toward the parking lot.

“It was my third,” I admitted, turning with Nash as he wrapped his free arm around my waist. “I was late twice last month, since somebody thought it would be fun to take a private tour of the gym equipment closet while Coach Rundell was out for lunch.”

Nash looked pleased with himself, rather than penitent. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“I bet you weren’t counted tardy for either of those, were you?”

He shrugged. “No one cares if you’re late to study hall.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not so long as you’re wearing a green-and-white jacket.”

“You want to borrow it?” He grinned and made a show of pulling one arm from his sleeve. He seemed much more relaxed now that we’d relieved Scott of his Netherworldly burden.

“No thanks. I have too much self-respect.”

“For school spirit?” He frowned, but his eyes still sparkled with mischief.

“For being the unmerited exception to the rules the rest of us plebeians have to follow.”

“What rules?” Doug Fuller walked toward us with one arm around Emma, his hand splayed over the band of bare hip visible between the hem of her tee and the low waist of her jeans.

I scowled. “My point exactly.”

“Hudson, your girlfriend’s too serious.” Doug dropped his duffel and ran one hand through a wavy mop of thick dark hair, pulling Emma closer.

“She can’t help it,” a familiar, cold-edged voice said from behind me, and I turned to find Sophie and Laura Bell leaning against the lockers, malice glinting in their eyes like sunlight off the point of a sharp knife. “The staff in the psycho ward shocked the fun right out of her.”

Simultaneous waves of anger and humiliation surged through me, and for just a minute, I considered letting her take a hit from her boyfriend’s balloon. Why was I trying so hard to save someone who would rather see me dead than return the favor?

“Don’t look now, Sophie, but your insecurity’s showing like the roots on a bad bleach job.” Emma smiled sweetly, then glanced pointedly at Sophie’s hairline. Then she turned on one wedge-heeled foot and headed down the hall toward the parking lot exit. Laughing, Doug jogged to catch up with her.

Nash and I trailed them while Sophie stood speechless. “You know, she loves it when you let her piss you off.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad,” I snapped, bending beneath the weight of my own sarcasm. “You think if I just ignore her, she’ll go away?”

“No.” Nash’s hand tightened around mine and I glanced up to find him eyeing me steadily. “I think she’s going to be a bitch no matter what you do. But you don’t have to make it so easy for her. Make her work for it.”

“Yeah.” But that was a lot easier for him to suggest than for me to do. “It kills me that she has no idea that we saved her life. Or that she’d be just like me, if not for winning the genetic lottery.” Sophie’s father—my dad’s younger brother—was a bean sidhe, and because her mother was human, Sophie could have been born like either of her parents. Fate, or luck, or whatever unfair advantage ruled her privileged life, had given her the normal, human genetic sequence, and a snottier-than-thou disposition that seemed to grow more toxic by the day.

“There’s nothing you can do about that, Kaylee.” Nash pushed open the door into the parking lot and a cold gust of wind blew my hair back as I stepped outside. “And anyway, considering that her mother died and her boyfriend’s spending a small fortune to get high off someone else’s bad breath, I’d say Sophie’s next in line for therapy. At least you know who and what you are,” he pointed out with an infuriating rationality. “Sophie knows there’s something we’re not telling her. Something about her family, and how her own mom died. And she may never find out the truth.”

Because Uncle Brendon didn’t want her to know that her mother had stolen five innocent lives and souls—including Sophie’s, by accident—in exchange for eternal youth.

Nash shrugged. “For me, knowing that I actually feel sorry for her makes it a little easier to put up with the shit she’s shoveling.”

A warm satisfaction filtered through me at the realization that it did help to think of her as an object of pity: a prospect that would horrify my pampered cousin to no end.

“And Kaylee, I’m sorry about last night. I can wait. You know that, right?”

“I know.” He was calmer and happier now. Less intense than he’d been the night before. He’d obviously gotten plenty of sleep and backed off the caffeine.

“Thank you.” I stood on my toes for a mint-flavored kiss—a better kiss than what he usually got on school grounds—and only pulled back when shouting from the other end of the parking lot caught our attention.

Scott had just discovered his frost was missing.

“Come on.” Nash took off and I held my backpack strap in place while I raced after him. My boots clomped on the concrete as we tore past my loaner, Doug’s loaner, and dozens of other cars still parked in the lot. We had to be there to look surprised by Scott’s loss.

Doug and Emma were huddled together in the empty space to the left of Scott’s car, hands stuffed into their jacket pockets against the cold. Doug scowled, almost as angry as Scott over the loss. Next to him stood Brant Williams, who’d obviously been promised a sample, too. Other students watched all over the lot, curious but uninvolved.

And suddenly I was really glad we’d taken the balloon, in spite of the risk. This crowd was too big. How were we supposed to protect the entire school?

“Are you sure you brought it?” Doug tugged his duffel higher on his shoulder and his hand twitched around the strap.

“Hell, yes, I’m sure.” Scott punched the back of his front seat, which he’d folded forward for more room in the backseat. “I took a hit this morning before I got out of the car, then stuffed it in my gym bag. And now it’s gone.”

“What happened?” Nash asked as I wandered to the edge of the small crowd to stand with Emma. She tucked a long blond strand of hair behind one pierced ear, then shrugged to say she had no idea what was going on.

“Somebody broke into my car and stole my shit,” Scott snapped, and I wasn’t the only one surprised by the sharp edge of fury in his voice. Not just anger, or frustration, or disbelief. Scott’s words dripped with rage, laced with some dark, desperate need no one else seemed to understand. Not even Doug. But as his hand convulsed around the edge of the open car door, I understood.

Scott was going into withdrawal. For real. He wasn’t just itching for another hit—he was physically, psychologically, maybe even soulfully, addicted. He couldn’t function without frost now.

But that couldn’t be right. He’d only had one balloon, and it was still half-full. How could this happen so fast?

With that thought, a new fear twisted in my stomach. Had we made everything worse by taking the balloon? Harmony had said withdrawal could be just as deadly as Demon’s Breath itself… .

But what were we supposed to do, give the balloon back, with our blessings? Let him sink into insanity and brain damage, and possibly drag Sophie along for the ride?

“Dude, calm down,” Doug said, sniffling in the frigid wind, and I was relieved by the composed—if stuffy—quality of his voice. Somehow, though he’d been on frost longer than Scott and had taken more of it, he was obviously much less dependent on it. “Unless you want to explain to Coach what you’re yelling about.”

Scott only scowled and ducked into the backseat again, digging in the green-and-white duffel. But the volume of his anger and denial dropped low enough to avoid notice by the teachers monitoring the parking lot from near the west school entrance.

Nash dropped his bag at my feet, and I was impressed by how steady his cold-reddened hands were as he knelt to examine Scott’s driver’s side door, concentrating on the seal at the base of the window. “It doesn’t look like it was forced, but all that would take is a coat hanger or a slim jim …” He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans, then opened the door wider and fiddled with the automatic lock to demonstrate that it still worked. “There doesn’t seem to be any damage… .”

But Scott wasn’t listening. He was still digging in his bag, anger exaggerating his jerky movements, like he might somehow have overlooked a half-filled black latex balloon among the sweaty sports equipment.

I glanced around the lot for Sophie and found her watching with a couple of her dancer friends, all bundled up as they unloaded several gallons of paint and new brushes from Laura’s trunk. Presumably to be used on the booths for the Winter Carnival.

“What’s wrong with him?” Emma whispered, still staring at Scott’s breakdown. “He’s really freaking out.”

I shrugged and shoved my frozen hands into my pockets. “I guess frost is pretty hard to come by.”

Em huffed, and a white puff of her breath hung on the air. “What is it, anyway? Some kind of inhalant?”

“I don’t know.” I felt bad about lying to Emma, even if it was for her own good, so I compensated with a little bit of the truth. “But it’s not good, Em. Look what it’s doing to Scott.”

Scott’s anger simmered just shy of the boiling point. Fortunately, the small crowd had dispersed—all but the central players—and there weren’t many people left to watch as Doug and Nash tried to talk him down. Less than a minute later, their efforts failed.

“Screw this!” Scott threw his bag into the car, where it smacked the passenger’s side window, then tumbled to the floorboard. “I can’t be here right now.” He dropped into the driver’s seat and shoved his key into the ignition. Then he slammed the door and gunned his engine before taking off straight across the parking lot. Bright winter sunlight glinted on his rear fender as he raced between two parked cars, sending students scrambling out of his way.

Across the lot, the teachers on duty scowled and crossed their arms over their chests, but there was nothing they could do, except be grateful no one was hit. And possibly recommend that the principal suspend his parking pass.

With Scott gone, and Nash and Doug conferring softly in the space he’d just vacated, my gaze settled on Sophie, who now stood alone in front of her friend’s car, a bucket of paint hanging from each clenched fist. Her mouth hung open, her nose red from the cold, and I got a rare glimpse of pain and disappointment before she donned her usual arrogant scowl and marched across the lot in a pair of trendy flats, as if she couldn’t care less that her boyfriend had just bailed on his promise to her without a word.

And everyone knew it.

“YOU SURE SCOTT’S OKAY to drive?” I asked as Nash placed his palms flat against my temporary car, on either side of me. I was trapped, but willingly, deliciously so, and when he leaned in for a kiss, I stood on my toes to meet him.

“Yeah, he’s fine.” Nash’s mouth pressed briefly against mine, then he murmured his next sentence against my cheek, near my ear, which lent his words a tantalizing intimacy, in spite of the subject matter. “He’s pissed, not high.” Another kiss, this one a little longer and a lot deeper. “And I’ll check on him when we get done here.” He and Doug were going to stay and help the carnival committee, to honor their friend’s promise in his time of … withdrawal. “Call me when you get off work?”

I ran my hand up the cold leather sleeve of his jacket. “Yeah. My dad’s working late, and I think I might need help with my anatomy.”

Nash’s brows shot up. “You’re not taking anatomy.”

I grinned. “I know.”

The next kiss was longer, and ended only when Sophie made a rude noise in the back of her throat, wordlessly calling on Nash to help carry the five-gallon buckets of white paint. He waved her off without turning away from me. “Leave them here, and I’ll bring them in a minute.”

Sophie stomped off, obviously irritated, but silent for once.

“Here, let me get the balloon before you go.” Nash glanced around the lot to make sure no one was within hearing range as he unzipped his nearly empty backpack.

“Why don’t you just come over and get it tonight?” I said, reaching to open the driver’s door.

Nash frowned. “Has your dad checked out the loaner yet?”

“No. He passed out right after dinner last night.”

“So what if he gets off early today and decides to take a look? You want him to find that in your car?”

“He’s not gonna search the trunk, Nash.”

His gaze hardened. “Just give me the balloon, Kaylee,” he snapped.

I stepped back, surprised. “What’s wrong with you? You’re being a dick.” And whatever was wrong with him was about more than a couple of strung out friends. It had to be.

Nash sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want you driving around with that in your car. Please let me take care of it, so I won’t have to worry about you.”

“Fine.” It was not fine, but I didn’t want to argue. Again. “Give me your bag.” I rounded the car and opened the trunk, standing ready in case the weighted balloon somehow rose and escaped. It did not. Instead of handing me his bag, Nash leaned into the trunk with it and shoved the balloon inside, then zipped it before anyone could see what he was doing. “Don’t get caught with that,” I warned. None of the teachers would know what it was, but anyone who’d seen Scott’s meltdown might. “And don’t forget to put his key back.”

He grinned, good mood intact once again. “I’m a big boy.”

“I know.” But on the drive to work with Emma, all I could think about was Nash walking around with a balloon full of Demon’s Breath in his backpack, where anyone might find it.

So after a later-than-expected shift at the Cinemark, I called him as I was getting ready for bed—I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I knew he’d safely disposed of the balloon. He assured me he had given it to Tod, and we talked for about half an hour, until my dad knocked on my door and told me to hang up and go to sleep.

Rolling my eyes, I said good-night to Nash and turned off my lamp. But even once I’d curled up with one leg tossed over my extra pillow, I couldn’t stop the slideshow playing behind my eyes.

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