I slammed the gearshift into Reverse, anger at Avari burning bright beneath aching fear for my cousin and my best friend. I backed down the driveway and onto the road, then shifted into Drive and took off, dialing as I drove.
Nash answered on the third ring.
“Mmm… Hello?” He sounded groggy, and bedsprings creaked as he rolled over.
“Wake up, Nash. I need help.” I ran the first stop sign, confident by the lack of headlights that no one else was on the road in my neighborhood at two-thirty in the morning.
“Kaylee? Are you in the car?”
“Yeah. I need you to call Sophie and make sure she’s okay.” She wouldn’t answer the phone if she saw my number on the display, especially in the middle of the night.
“Avari?”
“He found the handcuff key, knocked my dad out, and left me this stupid, cryptic riddle about breaking a ‘fair maid.’ I’m on my way to Emma’s to check on her. So can you please call Sophie?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you right back.”
I got to Emma’s two minutes later, driving way over the suburban speed limit. There were two cars in the driveway and another parked at the curb, and I recognized them all. One was Emma’s, one her mother’s, and the third belonged to one of Em’s two older sisters. I saw no sign of Alec, or Avari, or evil of any kind.
I closed my car door softly and studied Emma’s house. The front rooms were dark, except for the lamp they always left on, and since I didn’t have a key, I wouldn’t be able to get in without waking someone up. But then, neither would Avari, unless Alec had some kind of walk-through-walls power I didn’t know about.
I practically tiptoed across the lawn and onto the front porch, where my hand hovered over the doorknob. An un locked door would mean that Avari had beat me there. But a locked door didn’t eliminate that possibility—he could have gone in through the backdoor or a window.
Holding my breath, I twisted the knob. It turned, and the door creaked open.
Uh-oh.
I stepped inside, and my blood rushed so fast the dimly lit living room seemed to swim around me. A few steps later, I could see down the hall, where a thin line of yellow light shone beneath the second door on the right. Emma’s room.
My sneakers made no sound on the carpet as I crept toward her door, and when I was close enough to touch it, I heard voices whispering from inside, one deep and soft, the other higher in pitch.
Wrapping determination around myself like a security blanket, I turned the knob and pushed the door all the way open. Then blinked in surprise.
Emma sat on her bed in a tank top and Tweety print pajama bottoms, her straight blond hair secured with an old scrunchy. Alec sat in her desk chair, pulled close to her nightstand. Neither of them looked surprised to see me.
“’Bout time!” Emma said, waving me inside. “Shut the door so we don’t wake my mom up.”
Bewildered, and more than a little suspicious, I closed the door, but hovered near it, unwilling to move too far from the exit until I was sure it was safe. I studied Alec, looking for any sign that he wasn’t…himself. “What color was my first bike?” I asked, and Emma laughed.
“You guys are obsessed with this game!”
But Alec knew it was no game. “White, with red ribbons,” he said, right on cue, and only then could I relax. Kind of.
“What’s going on?” My eyes narrowed as I ventured a little farther into the room. Even if he was Alec now, he’d been Avari when he planted those notes and left my house. Something felt wrong. How on earth had he explained this to Emma?
But before either of them could answer, my phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket and flipped it open when I saw Nash’s number. “Your cousin’s not a morning person,” he said, before I had a chance to say hi. “But she’s fine.”
“Thanks. I found Alec, and he and Em both seem okay. Do you think you could run over to my house and…look for that key?” Without it, I wasn’t sure how we’d ever get my father out of the cuffs. “If my dad wakes up, tell him I’ll be back in a few minutes, and I’m fine.”
“Yeah. See you in a few.”
I flipped my phone closed and slid it into my pocket, then looked up to find Emma watching me.
“Alec came to check on me,” she said, in answer to my question. “He said you’d be right behind him, and here you are. He brought ice cream, though.” She gestured to two spoons and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s on the nightstand. One of the very pints she’d left in my freezer, no doubt. “Just FYI, Kay, if you’re going to wake me up in the middle of the night for my own protection, then refuse to explain exactly what I’m in danger from, bringing ice cream is a good way to soothe my sleep-fuddled anger.”
“Huh?” Considering the time, my lack of sleep, and the fear-laced adrenaline still half buzzing in my system, that was as articulate a response as I could manage.
Alec leaned back in his chair. “Emma, would you mind bringing another spoon?”
Em frowned, then glanced from me to Alec. “You know, if there’s something you don’t want me to hear, you can just say, ‘Em, there’s something we don’t want you to hear.’”
He smiled, and I could practically see my best friend melt beneath the full power of his attention. “Em, there are things we don’t want you to hear. Also, we need another spoon.”
Emma sighed, but stood. “Whisper fast,” she said, then headed into the hall.
“There are notes all over my house and car from Avari,” I whispered as softly as I could, the minute her footsteps faded. “What the hell happened?”
“It sounds like he found the key.” Alec sat up straight, facing me as I sank onto Emma’s bed. “I was here, alone, not ten minutes ago. Then she came in with two spoons. Evidently he brought her ice cream, but I’m not fool enough to believe that’s the only reason for this little excursion.”
“You told her I’d be coming, too?”
Alec shrugged. “He must have said that…before.”
“So…he left notes for me and brought ice cream for Emma.” I closed my eyes, trying to think through exhaustion, anger, and an encroaching headache. “How did you get rid of him?”
Alec shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“He vacated on his own…” I mumbled, as Em’s muted, bare footsteps echoed toward us. “He never planned to kill her. He’s just playing some kind of twisted game.” But why?
Emma came back into the room before he could answer, but even if she hadn’t, I doubt he’d have had anything to say. Though he’d lived with the hellion for a quarter of a century, he seemed no more privy to Avari’s thought process than I was.
“So…what’s up?” Emma asked, handing me the spoon. She sank onto the bed and pulled the lid from the carton of ice cream. “What’s the latest cloud on the horizon of my pathetic existence?”
“Dramatic, Em?” But I had to grin. Nothing ever seemed to get Emma down. Even being told she was in danger from some mysterious force she probably would never understand.
“It’s poetic. I like it,” Alec said, and I swear I saw Emma flush, which hadn’t happened much since the night she’d snuck into my room at one in the morning to tell me all about losing her virginity.
“You’re not pathetic, and you’re not in danger.” Anymore… “We had a scare, but it seems to be over.”
“A scare of the Netherworld variety?” Emma’s smile faltered. She knew just enough about the non-human side of my life to be scared senseless every time it was mentioned. And I intended to keep it that way. If she was scared, she was much less likely to dig for information. Her fear was keeping her safe. Or at least safer than she’d have been otherwise.
“Yeah, but it’s fine now.” I stood, eyeing Alec. “You ready?”
“Wait!” Em waved the spoons at him slowly, like she could hypnotize him with the lure of shiny metal. “Stay and have some ice cream.”
“Em, it’s almost three in the morning.” And I had to get back to my dad.
“Hey, you two w
oke me up from some very pleasant dreams. The least you can do is mollify me with ice cream.”
One look at Em—who only had eyes for Alec—and I knew I was fighting a losing battle. So I stayed for just a few bites, if only to keep her from making any beyond-friendship overtures toward a man three times her age.
Then Alec and I headed home, where I cleaned my father’s head wound while Nash called his mom at the hospital and asked her to send Tod to the police station for another handcuff key.
We never found the one Avari had taken.
22
AFTER ANOTHER MOSTLY sleepless night and an early breakfast spent watching Harmony stitch the gash on my dad’s head, I held my breath as I walked into the school on Tuesday morning, half-afraid of what I’d find. I knew better than to believe that yesterday’s campus chaos had faded into the ether.
I was right.
I’d made it halfway to my locker when the door to the girls’ bathroom flew open and slammed against the wall right in front of me. I lurched out of the way as two bodies stumbled into the hall and collided with a stretch of lockers, ringing the metal doors like a gong. Hair flew, too wild and fast for me to identify either of the fighters as I scrambled out of the immediate impact zone.
A crowd formed quickly—a living boxing ring—as each girl tore at the other’s hair and clothes, clawing at exposed skin. They screeched and grunted, a primal racket of pain and rage, punctuated with just enough profanity-riddled half sentences for me to understand the cause.
They were fighting over a guy. Someone’s boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or stupid, unwitting crush.
A couple of teachers came running to break up the fight, already haggard before eight in the morning, and as I bypassed the action, I noticed two of the school’s larger coaches hauling a boy apiece down the hall in my direction. The student on the left had a split lip and a black eye. The one on the right was bleeding from a head wound and a totally crunched nose.
In spite of their injuries, it was everything the coaches could do to keep them apart.
“Did you hear?” Emma asked, when I finally slid into the seat next to her in algebra.
“About the fights in the hall? Caught the live show and nearly got flattened. It’s like going to school in a war zone.”
“Not that.” Emma looked just as put together as always, in spite of her interrupted sleep. Obviously middle-of-the-night ice cream was the cure for dark under-eye circles. “They took Coach Peterson away in handcuffs this morning. The custodian caught him trashing Rundell’s office, shouting that he would have been the head football coach if Rundell hadn’t married the superintendent’s daughter.” Emma leaned closer to me, not that it mattered. Everyone else was busy passing the same news. “I swear, Kaylee, the entire school’s gone insane!”
Yeah. Including the teachers, which was a new development.
By third period, there had been four more fights and another teacher removed from school grounds, for undisclosed reasons. Whatever she’d done, she’d done in the teachers’ lounge, and the rest of the staff wasn’t talking. Which left us to interpret her crimes as we saw fit. And there was no shortage of rumors.
After third period—my free hour—I headed across the deserted gym toward the cafeteria, but stopped short when I heard a screech from the girls’ locker room. “Sophie, no!”
I dropped my books on the polished wood floor and raced for the locker room, then threw open the door and froze in surprise at what I saw.
In one hand, Sophie held a huge pair of metal scissors with jagged blades. The ones she’d been using for her Life Skills project—pinking shears, Aunt Val had called them. In the other hand, my cousin held a thick chunk of Laura Bell’s long, shiny brown hair.
Laura was bawling hysterically, her face already red from the effort, one hand clutching the back of her scalp.
“I’m…I’m so sorry!” Sophie screeched, her hand shaking violently, and a second later, she burst into tears, too.
“Give me that!” I jerked the scissors from her grasp by the closed blades, then spun Laura around to assess the damage. The center section of her hair had been clipped so close to her head I could see scalp showing through.
Great. A half-bald beauty queen. Laura was going to need therapy—I could already tell.
“Go to the office and have them call your mom,” I said, unsure if Laura could even hear me over her own snot-strangled tears. “I’m sure they can get you some kind of emergency salon appointment. Or something.”
Not that there was anything they’d be able to do for her, short of shearing the rest of it to match.
Laura wiped tears from her face with one sleeve, then wandered out of the bathroom in a traumatized daze, rendered virtually useless by a bad haircut. Not that I couldn’t sympathize.
“Sophie, what the hell?” I demanded, as soon as the door closed, but my cousin just stood there, clutching a handful of her best friend’s hair.
“I don’t know!” she screeched, her words so painfully high-pitched I wanted to slap both hands over my ears. Maybe she was part bean sidhe, after all… “She was working on her hair, going on and on about being Snow Queen, and I just kept thinking that she never should have won. Then I just…snapped, and the next thing I know, I’m holding half her hair, and she’s screaming, and all I can think is that it should have been me. It would have been me, if you hadn’t trashed my dress. I didn’t even get to compete after that!”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed in sudden understanding. And fury.
“This is your fault. I would have been Snow Queen if you hadn’t ruined everything, like you always do! Luck of the Irish, my ass. You’re like an agent of darkness. I swear, you have horns growing under all that stringy hair.”
“Sounds like you found the family resemblance.” I scowled and stepped closer to her, and Sophie backed up until her hip hit the sink. “I ought to cut your hair to match hers, and if you open your mouth one more time, that’s exactly what I’ll do.” With that, I dropped her shears into the big covered trash can and stomped out of the locker room, leaving Sophie to her guilt and tears.
I was almost out of the gym—Sophie had yet to emerge—when a familiar voice shredded my remaining self-control like wood through a chipper.
“So you actually died, and she just…let it happen?”
Sabine. My pulse spiked with irritation. What the hell was she doing?
“Well, I don’t think she could have stopped it…” another, softer voice said, and my anger was a white-hot ball of fury flaming in my gut. Emma. Sabine had Emma, and they were talking about…things they shouldn’t be talking about.
“But you don’t know for sure, right? I mean, you don’t actually know what she’s capable of, do you? All you really know is that she’s not human and she screeches louder than a police siren. Right?”
I spun silently, trying to pinpoint the voices, but the gym looked empty.
“Yeah, I guess…” Em finally answered, and confusion slowed her words, like the first drink of the night.
“Don’t you ever worry about the next time? I mean, being best friends with a bean sidhe should come with hazard pay, right? You’re always in the line of fire, thanks to her.”
“Actually…yeah. Something went down last night, and she and Alec wouldn’t tell me what. Again.” She paused as I crossed one corner of the basketball court quietly. “But everything turned out fine.”
“But what if it hadn’t? What if you’d become collateral damage again? Do you ever worry that she might…”
“Just let me die?” Emma asked, and I could hear the fear in her voice. My blood boiled. Sabine was goading her, reading and manipulating her fears with every word, but the actual fears were all Em’s. Things she’d never told me about.
“Yeah,” Emma continued. “Kaylee and Nash can’t save someone without letting someone else die. One of these days, it’ll be my time to go, and I’m afraid that Kaylee will just…let it happen. Or that they’ll save someone els
e and end up killing me by accident.”
“It could definitely happen,” Sabine said, as I rounded the edge of the bleachers to see her smiling at me over Emma’s shoulder. She’d known I was there the whole time. My hands curled into fists and my jaw clenched so hard my whole face ached.
“Sabine, what the hell are you doing?” My voice sounded lower and darker than I’d ever heard it.
“Just getting to know Em a little better.”
Emma was watching me now, a familiar edge of irritation in her narrowed eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me Sabine isn’t human? And don’t tell me this is more bean sidhe business—she’s not a bean sidhe. And why do you and Alec have Netherworld secrets now? Are you just using any excuse to lock me out of your life?”
I raised a brow at Sabine. Clearly I was late to the conversation—Em had obviously confided several fears.
Sabine only shrugged and grinned, so I turned back to Emma, my arms crossed over my chest.
“Did she tell you what she is?”
“More than you told me. She’s a mara.”
I nodded. “And did she tell you what that means?”
Emma frowned. That’s what I thought. “She’s a Nightmare, Em. Literally. She reads people’s fears and exploits them for her own entertainment.” Or nutrition. I was still a bit fuzzy on that detail. “And that’s what she’s doing to you right now. Exploiting your fears.”
And that’s when it hit me. The school chaos. The fights and jealousy. They had nothing to do with Avari—what did he care if a few kids got arrested or expelled?
It was Sabine. All of it. I’d heard her talking to Sophie and Laura about the Snow Queen title last week. She’d chatted with the basketball team at lunch. And now she was moving in on Emma. She was feeding from their fears and insecurities. And it had to stop.
I took a deep breath, then faced my best friend, without letting Sabine out of my sight. “Em, I swear I’m not going to let you die. No matter what. Your life is definitely a priority, so you can stop worrying about that.” I closed my eyes, weighing pros and cons in my head, then met Emma’s suspicious gaze again. “And I’m going to tell you everything. I promise.” It wasn’t fair for me to keep her in the dark—I, of all people, should have known that. “But right now, I have to deal with the mess Sabine’s gotten us all into. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria, okay?”