I handed her a tissue from a box on the end table. “That’s not a phrase you hear very often from girls.” I forced a smile, but my joke landed like a brick dropped from a skyscraper.
I knew exactly how she felt.
“I’m serious.” She dabbed at her fist, then dropped the tissue on the coffee table. “What’s the point of knowing someone’s going to die if you can’t do anything about it? How can you stand this?” she demanded. “All this death? How can you stand knowing about it before anyone else does?”
I took my shoes off and lined them up with the others in the front closet, then sank onto the couch beside her, leaning my head on her shoulder. “Have you ever known anyone who died?” Her parents had divorced when Em was only four, but I was pretty sure her dad was still alive. Somewhere.
“Just Roger.”
“Who’s Roger?”
“The hamster we had when I was seven. Does he count?”
“I don’t think so.” I almost smiled, but held it back when I realized she might be offended. For all I knew, she and Roger had been very close.
“Then, no.” She folded one leg beneath the other and twisted to face me. “And I’ve certainly never had to look at someone, knowing he’d be dead soon. How can you stand this?” she asked again. And in that moment, I came very close to telling her the truth: that I couldn’t. Not without Nash.
“It’s not easy.” I stood and pulled Emma up by both hands.
“In fact, it sucks. Do you have ice cream?”
“Yeah.” She wiped fresh tears from her face and gestured vaguely toward the kitchen. “Traci’s boyfriend dumped her yesterday. Fourth one this year.” Which made no sense to me. The Marshall girls were gorgeous beyond all reason. “There’s a pint of Phish Food in the freezer.”
“Great. Pick out a movie while I get the ice cream.”
Emma nodded hesitantly, then crossed the living room toward the rack of DVDs to the left of a slim, simple entertainment center. “Bring two spoons!” she shouted over her shoulder as she knelt to scan the titles.
For the first half hour of the movie—a lighthearted, predictable romantic comedy—Emma shoveled ice cream into her mouth and glanced regularly at my cell lying on her nightstand, obviously willing it to ring with an update from Nash.
But my phone never rang.
By the time the credits rolled, Emma had fallen asleep, her spoon still dangling from one hand, several drops of chocolate ice cream dotting the front of the shirt she’d borrowed from me. When I got up to turn off the movie, her spoon thumped to the floor, so I rolled carefully off the bed and took both spoons and the empty ice cream container into the kitchen, yawning so hard my jaw ached.
The clock on the microwave read a quarter to one, and I wondered idly how late Ms. Marshall would be out. I had no frame of reference for adult dating.
I grabbed a Coke from the fridge, then padded back to Emma’s room, intending to call Nash. But when I reached for my phone from the nightstand on Emma’s side of the bed, her eyes popped wide-open, as if some unseen clasp holding them closed had just been released.
Startled, I squealed and jumped back. “Em, you okay?” But even when she finally blinked, her face still pressed into the pillow, her eyes didn’t lose that sleep haze, nor did they focus on me. Or on anything else. “Em?”
She snapped upright in a single, eerily stiff motion and blinked at me, then glanced around her room like she’d never seen it before—easily one of the weirdest things I’d seen in my entire life.
In either world.
“Emma?” I backed slowly away from the bed, my phone clenched in my left hand, as a strange, heavy, fluttery feeling settled into my stomach. Like I’d swallowed a swarm of iron butterflies.
“Not exactly…” A low, scratchy, unfamiliar voice said as my best friend’s mouth moved.
My heart rate exploded and my pulse roared in my ears. “Who, then, exactly?”
“I am Alec. As presented through Emma Dawn Marshall.”
As presented…?
Whoa…
“Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my best friend?” I backed farther from the bed, my empty hand stretched behind me to warn me before I bumped into anything. Part of me—most of me, in fact—wanted to make a break for the door. But I couldn’t leave Emma alone with…whatever was talking through her. Possessing her. Because that’s obviously what this was.
“I apologize for contacting you through an intermediary, but my options are pretty limited at the moment,” Emma said with Alec’s voice, and the effect was disjointed, like a bad voice-over in a foreign film. Except the actor and the voice were both speaking the same language. “I promise your friend won’t remember any of this. She might wake up sleepy and disoriented, but none the worse for wear.” He extended his borrowed arms, like he was testing the fit of a new shirt.
My stomach roiled at the casual gesture and the gruesome image that accompanied it, and my mind raced, trying to make sense of what I was seeing and hearing. Without much luck. Emma was speaking to me in someone else’s voice. She was being used as a human microphone—this “Alec’s” intermediary.
And suddenly a horrifying understanding clicked into place in my nearly scrambled brain. The blood seemed to drain from my face, leaving me cold.
Nash had said Avari contacted him through an intermediary—by possessing someone in our world. And several times in the past few weeks I’d fallen asleep with Nash, only to wake up disoriented and unsure where I was, even during his few covert visits while I was grounded. In the past week alone, it had happened on the way to work, then in the school parking lot during my lunchtime nap….
Nooo!
My hands clenched into fists at my sides, and I had to force my grip on my phone to loosen. Anger and fear rolled through me like thunder across the sky, dark, and low, and threatening. And accompanied by a vicious, white-hot bolt of betrayal that singed every nerve in my body.
I’d played intermediary between Nash and Avari. The hellion had used me as his own personal walkie-talkie.
And Nash had let it happen.
18
“GET OUT!” I GLANCED around Emma’s room for a weapon—until I realized I couldn’t hurt the hellion without hurting Emma, too. “Get out of her! She has nothing to do with any of this!” Whatever “this” was. “Emma’s human, and she knows nothing about hellions, or the Netherworld, or Demon’s Breath, or anything else to do with your warped, twisted, toxic hellhole of an alternate dimension.”
Keeping Emma in the dark about everything that went bump in the night was supposed to protect her from those bumps. So why was she now speaking to me with a hellion’s voice? What kind of “connection” could she possibly have to this Netherworld possessor? For that matter, what connection did I have to Avari?
My best friend’s carefully arched brows rose in surprise. “My warped, twisted…?” Then comprehension washed over her face. Alec grinned with Emma’s mouth, and I was floored by how unlike Emma that look was, considering that she smiled at me all the time with those same features. He swung both of her denim-clad legs over the edge of the bed. “You think I’m a hellion.” It wasn’t a question, and Alec sounded every bit as surprised as Emma looked.
He shook her head slowly, and their shared smile faded into a bittersweet melancholy. “I’m human. Only I have the misfortune to be stuck in the Netherworld.”
Surprised, I gripped the edge of Emma’s desk to anchor myself to the only thing that made sense while I tried to puzzle through Alec’s maze of misinformation.
He started to stand in Emma’s body, but I threw one hand out, fingers splayed. “Stay there!”
She shrugged and sank back onto the mattress. “If that makes you more comfortable…”
Like comfort was even a possibility.
“You’re lying.” I forced my other hand to relax around my phone, to keep from bringing it to his attention. “You’re not human.” He couldn’t be, because humans can’t survive i
n the Netherworld with both soul and body intact.
Which meant that Alec was either lying or soulless. Or that there were big things going on in the Netherworld. Things I didn’t understand well enough to fully grasp.
Knowing my luck, it was all three.
“Not solely human, no,” Alec admitted, tilting Emma’s head so that a strand of straight blond hair fell over her shoulder. “But I swear to you that I mean neither of you any harm.” I huffed in disbelief and he continued, furrowing the delicate lines of Emma’s forehead. “If I wanted to hurt her, I could have already fed her a bottle of pills or made her cut her own throat.” Alec drew one of Emma’s own long fingernails slowly across her slim neck, and terror crawled over me like an army of spiders marching up my spine. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
Somehow, I wasn’t very comforted.
“What else are you? Other than human?” I wanted both my hands empty, in case I had to defend myself. Or Emma. But I was reluctant to put down the phone—my security blanket and only connection to the rest of the world. The human world, anyway.
Alec crossed Emma’s arms beneath her breasts, looking physically comfortable for the first time since he’d claimed her body. Yet her expression spoke of long-term anger and resentment. Of a grudge that had been allowed to fester. “I am a proxy to a hellion in the Netherworld.”
“A proxy?”
Alec’s frown deepened as his obvious self-loathing swelled.
“I’m used as a servant and energy storage unit. Like an assistant you can eat.”
“Eat?” I didn’t bother to hide my horror, and Alec nodded, pushing back a strand of Emma’s hair when it fell into her eyes.
“Not literally, of course. Well, not like we eat, anyway.” Emma’s shoulders shrugged within the borrowed shirt. “Many hellions do consume flesh. Fortunately, the one I serve does not. He uses me like a sports bottle,” Alec continued. “An emergency drink when there isn’t enough human energy bleeding over from your world.”
Eewww! No wonder Alec’s grudge was festering.
“Sorry about the whole human Gatorade thing,” I said, glancing at the alarm clock on the nightstand—1:08 a.m. What were the chances that Ms. Marshall would stay out long enough for me to get rid of Emma’s visitor? “But what does that have to do with Emma?”
“Nothing. It has to do with you.” He smiled, like I should have been flattered. “Emma was the closest available intermediary.”
“She wasn’t available!” I snapped, indignation on her behalf bolstering my courage. “She was asleep.” But then something new occurred to me, when I remembered passing out as Nash drove me to work on Sunday. “Did you make her fall asleep?”
Alec shook Emma’s head somberly. “That’s beyond my ability. The most we can do is give someone who’s already tired a little push toward slumber. During sleep, the mind is more susceptible to sharing space in the body.”
“So you pushed Emma out of her body?”
“No.” He chuckled. The talking “boost” actually laughed! “She’s still in here. I just pushed her over a bit.” He shrugged, looking almost as unconcerned by his violation of her free will as Tod was by his regular violation of closed doors. “She was almost asleep, anyway.”
My next breath was an exasperated huff. I’d had it with people—and non-people—taking liberties with moral norms! Personal boundaries—whether body, mind, or home—were not up for negotiation!
“Get out of Emma, and don’t ever ‘push her over’ again!” I propped both hands on my hips, hoping to look threatening, though surely he knew I wouldn’t hurt my best friend, even to hurt him. “Pick another intermediary. Or better yet, stay out of my friends and away from me!”
Alec’s sigh slipped through Emma’s lips. “I would gladly use another body—preferably one without breasts…” My best friend glanced down at her own chest as if she didn’t know what to do with such generous curves. “Unfortunately, you don’t surround yourself with many potential intermediaries.” A hint of desperation leaked through onto Emma’s features. “But I swear to you, on both my life and my soul, that if you help me—if you let us help each other—my need for an intermediary will soon be a thing of the past.”
I blinked at Emma/Alec in disbelief. “You’re asking me for a favor?”
Emma’s head nodded steadily. “And offering one, as well.”
Curiosity overwhelmed me, in spite of my desperation to put Emma back in control of her body. “What could you possibly do for me?”
His smile widened on her face, and Emma’s straight white teeth seemed to taunt me. “Return your damaged lover.”
My what?
Confusion must have shown clearly on my face, because Emma/Alec raised both brows in a rather masculine look of amusement. “Your boyfriend. Nash. I assume you remember him. Or does the heart forget so soon?”
Terror shot through me in a jolt of white-hot adrenaline, then settled into my gut like lead. My free hand gripped the back of Emma’s desk chair and I sank into it, stunned. “What are you talking about?”
Emma’s smile faded and her forehead furrowed as he stepped closer, moving stiffly in the unfamiliar body. “My boss has your boyfriend in the Netherworld. I can help you get him back—in exchange for passage into your world.”
Vertigo crashed over me and I wobbled on the chair as Alec’s claim truly sank in. “No.” I shook my head so hard Emma’s bedroom swam wildly. Nash couldn’t be in the Netherworld. I’d left him at the party less than two hours ago.
“No, you won’t cross me over, or no, you don’t believe me?”
“No, Nash can’t be in the Netherworld.” Confused and horrified, I stood and spun away from him, my gaze skipping around the room in search of answers Emma’s clothes and furniture could never provide. “He can’t cross over.”
How did Alec know I could cross over?
“Oh, he had help,” Alec said, ducking Emma’s head to catch my gaze.
Help? Not Tod. He would never intentionally do anything that could hurt Nash.
Except take him to the Netherworld to repay a favor, no questions asked…
Tod, if you’re involved in this, I’ll kill you! Except you can’t kill someone who’s already dead. But I could get him fired….
Assuming Alec was telling the truth, which was a big assumption. He could be lying about the whole thing.
Then where was Nash? Why hadn’t he called or answered the two text messages I’d sent?
“You actually saw Nash there? Tonight?”
Emma’s head nodded, and Alec said, “Not ten minutes ago, my time.” Because in the Netherworld, time was not a constant. It sped up at odd intervals, depending on how closely a specific place was tied to its equivalent location in our world.
“What was he wearing?”
Emma’s eyes rolled, and she sank onto the bed again. “Jeans and a T-shirt, with a green-and-white jacket. And I have to tell you, jeans have changed since I last bought a pair.”
My eyes widened before I could regain control of my expression. He’d bought jeans? Unless the Netherworld had recently become active in the retail market, Alec must have been topside at some point. I couldn’t help wondering how long ago that had been, considering his odd mix of hellion-formal and human-colloquial language.
But then, on the tail of that momentary surprise, came a more devastating near-certainty. Alec had seen Nash that night. Not necessarily in the Netherworld—he could easily have seen Nash in our world, through another hijacked body—but I wasn’t willing to take that chance.
If Nash had crossed over, I had to get him back.
“So, all I have to do is cross over and bring you both back? Just like that?” It sounded too easy.
“Well…” Emma hedged with Alec’s voice. “It may not be quite that simple.”
Aaaand here comes the catch… “Why not?”
“Because Nash is with my boss right now. But once he’s alone, I can get to him.”
I closed my
eyes, trying not to let frustration and the incredibly small chance I had of ever seeing Nash alive again get me down. “Your boss, the hellion? Nash is with that boss?”
“That’s the one.”
“Why?” I demanded, standing so quickly Em’s chair thumped against the desk behind me. “Why is he in the Netherworld? What does your boss want with him?”
Alec shrugged, pulling my T-shirt tight across Emma’s chest. “I don’t know. Another proxy, maybe?”
Nash, as a demon’s proxy? “Why does your hellion need two?”
Emma’s bright brown eyes rolled, and Alec leaned her back on the mattress, propping her up on one elbow like a life-size doll. “You’re asking the wrong man. I don’t think he needs any proxies, but he’s had as many as eight at a time.” She shrugged again. “What can I say? He’s a hellion of greed.”
Greed? No…
I drew in a deep, slow breath, wishing I didn’t have to ask. “Your boss? Is his name Avari?”
Emma’s eyes widened to anime proportions. “You know him?”
I sighed and dropped onto the chair again. “We’ve met, but I doubt he’d consider me a friend.”
Emma snorted, and I couldn’t resist a small smile. That was the first sound Alec had made that truly sounded like my best friend. “Friendship isn’t a popular concept here.”
No surprise there. Everything in the Netherworld was food for something else, and no one was safe except those at the top of the food chain: hellions. And in the three short months I’d known about my species and the existence of the Netherworld, I’d managed to piss off two of them.
But they’d pissed me off, too. “How soon can you get Nash alone?”
Alec stared at the comforter he—they—lay on. “That’s the hard part. He’s Avari’s new toy, and the boss won’t want to let go for a while.” If I’d had any doubt that Emma was not in control of her body, that doubt died when his gaze met mine. My best friend was not the one staring at me with those big brown eyes. “But there’s this thing tomorrow night. A sort of party. I can get to him then with no problem.”