Alec scowled like he’d snap at me, then just nodded and turned toward the popcorn machine without a word.
I took several orders and filled the cups, but when I turned to grab popcorn from Alec, I found him staring at the machine, holding an empty bucket, like he’d rather wear it on his head than fill it.
“Alec…” I took the bucket from him and half filled it. “This is really not a good time for a breakdown.” I squirted butter over the popcorn, then filled it the rest of the way and squirted more butter. “You okay?”
He frowned again, then nodded stiffly and grabbed another bucket.
I handed popcorn across the counter to the first customer and glanced up to find Emma jogging across the lobby toward me. “Hey, Pecker sent me to bail you out,” she said, and several sixth graders giggled as she hopped up on the counter and swung her legs around to the business side. She thumped to the floor, and I started to thank her—until my gaze fell on four more extralarge buckets of popcorn now lined up on the counter.
What the hell?
I turned the register over to Emma and picked up a medium paper bag, stepping close to Alec so the customers wouldn’t hear me. “They’re not all ordering extralarge, Alec. You have to look at the ticket.” I handed him a ticket for a medium popcorn and a large Coke, then scooped kernels into the bag. “Didn’t they have tickets in the eighties? Or popcorn?”
Alec frowned. “This job is petty and pointless.” He dropped into a squat to examine the rows of folded bags and stacked buckets.
“Um, yeah.” I filled another bag in a single scoop. “That’s why they give it to students.” And forty-five-year-old cultural infants.
Alec had been nineteen when he crossed into the Netherworld—the circumstances of which he still wasn’t ready to talk about—but hadn’t aged a day while he was there.
“What’s his problem?” Emma asked, as I handed her the medium bag.
“He’s just tired.” Em didn’t know who he really was, because I didn’t want her to find out that he’d once possessed her body in a desperate attempt to orchestrate his own rescue from the Netherworld. She thought he was a friend of the family, crashing on our couch while he saved up enough money for a place of his own and some online college classes.
When I turned back to Alec, I found him leaning with his palms on the counter, staring at the ground between his feet.
“Alec? You okay?” I put one hand on his shoulder, and he jumped, then stared at me like I’d appeared out of nowhere. He shook his head like he was shaking off sleep, then blinked and looked around the lobby in obvious confusion.
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night. What were you saying?”
“I said you have to look at the ticket. You can’t just serve everyone an extralarge.”
Alec frowned and picked up the ticket on the counter in front of him. “I know. I’ve been doing this a week now, Kay. I got this.”
I grinned at his colloquialism. He only used them on his good days, when he felt like he was fitting into the human world again. And honestly, in spite of his fleeting moments of confusion, some days, Alec seemed to fit into my world much better than I did.
3
THE HALLWAY IS COLD and sterile, and that should be my first clue. School is always cluttered and too warm, but today, cold and sterile makes sense.
I walk down the hall with Emma, but I stop when I see them. She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t notice anything wrong, but when I see them, I can’t breathe. My chest feels too heavy. My lungs pull in just enough air to keep me conscious, but not enough to truly satisfy my need for oxygen. Like satisfaction is even a possibility with them standing there like that. In front of my locker, so I can’t possibly miss the act.
I can’t see her face, because it’s sucking on his, but I know it’s her. It’s her hair, and her stupid guy-pants that look hot on her the same way his T-shirts probably look hot on her when that’s all she’s wearing. And I know she’s worn his shirts. Hell, she’s worn him, and if they weren’t in the middle of the school, she’d probably be wearing him now. She practically is, anyway.
I stop in front of them so they can’t ignore me, and she peels herself away and licks her lips, like she can’t get enough of the taste of him, and I know that’s true. My teeth grind together, and when I glance around, I realize there’s a crowd.
Of course there’s a crowd. Crowds gather for a show, and this is one hell of a show.
I say his name. I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to acknowledge him and what he’s doing, but I can’t stop myself. It won’t be real unless he says it, and part of me believes he won’t say it. He’ll say the right words instead. He’ll say he’s sorry, and he’ll look like he’s sorry, and he’ll be sorry for a very long time, but then everything will be okay again.
Instead, he shrugs and glances around at the crowd, grinning at the faces. The faces leer and blur together. I can’t tell them apart, but it doesn’t matter, because the crowd only has one face. Crowds only ever have one face. Et tu, Brute? It’s the mob mentality, and I am Caesar, about to be stabbed.
Or maybe I’ve already been stabbed, and I’m too stupid to know I’m bleeding all over the floor. But I know I’m dying inside. He’s killing me.
“Sorry, Kay,” he says at last, and I hate him for using my nickname. It sounds intimate and friendly, but he just had his tongue in her mouth, and now I want to cut it out of his head. “Sorry,” he repeats, while my face flames, and my world blurs with tears. “She knows what I like. And she delivers…”
They’re laughing now, and even though the crowd only has one face, it has many jeering voices. And they’re all laughing at me. Even Emma.
“I told you,” she says, shaking her head as she tries to hold back a giggle, and I love her for trying, even if, in the end, the laughter can’t be denied. It’s not her fault. She’s just playing her part, and the lines must be spoken, even if each word burns like an open wound.
“I told you it wasn’t worth saving. You can’t win the game if you won’t even play. You have to deliver….”
4
I SAT UP IN BED, sweating and cold, my heart beating so hard it practically bruised my sternum. I took a deep breath, threw the covers back, and stepped into my Betty Boop slippers, then padded silently down the hall and into the living room, where Alec lay on the couch with the blanket pulled over his head. His exposed feet were propped on the armrest at the opposite end, brown on top, and pale on the bottom. When I walked past him, his toes twitched, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
In the kitchen, I got a glass of water, and I was on my way back across the living room when Alec folded the blanket back from his head and blinked up at me.
“Okay, that’s starting to get creepy,” I said, as he sat up.
“What?”
“You. Lying there awake but covered.” I sank into my dad’s recliner and tucked my feet beneath me. “It’s like watching a corpse sit up in the morgue.”
“Sorry.” He ran one hand absently over his smooth, dark chest. Twenty-six years in the Netherworld may have scarred him on the inside, but his outside still looked good as new. “I can’t sleep. Can’t get used to the silence.”
“What, did Avari sing you to sleep in the Netherworld?”
“Funny.” Alec leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his head sagging on his shoulders. “Once you get used to all the screaming at night, it’s hard to go to sleep without it. Not that I actually slept every night.”
“Are you serious?” The fresh crop of chill bumps on my arms had nothing to do with my bad dream, and everything to do with his living nightmare.
Alec shrugged and sat up to meet my gaze. “Hellions don’t sleep, so I passed out whenever I got a chance. Whenever Avari was busy with someone else.”
I started to explain that I was horrified by the screaming, not by his irregular sleep patterns, then decided I didn’t want to know any more about either. So I kept my mouth shut.
“What about you?” he asked, as I sipped my water.
“Bad dream.” I set the glass over the existing water ring on the end table.
“What about?”
My exhale sounded heavy, even to me. “I dreamed Nash dumped me for his ex-girlfriend, in front of the whole school, after eating her face in front of my locker.”
“Literally?” Alec frowned, and I realized that where he’d spent the past quarter century, literal face eating might have been a real concern.
“No. That might actually have been better.”
He leaned back on the couch, arms crossed over his bare chest. “I thought you dumped him.”
“I did. Kind of.” Nash and I were too complicated for simple explanations, and something told me that would only get worse, with his ex suddenly in the picture.
“But now you want him back? Even after what he did?”
Alec knew exactly what Avari had done with my body when he’d possessed me, because he’d been there in the Netherworld with the hellion when it happened. I couldn’t blame Nash for what Avari had done, but I couldn’t help blaming him for not telling me. And for not even trying to stop it from happening again. And again. And for lying to me about taking Demon’s Breath. And for using his Influence against me.
Alec knew all of it—even the parts Emma and my dad didn’t know—because I’d needed to talk to someone who knew about things that go bump in the Netherworld, but who wouldn’t hate Nash on my behalf before I’d decided how I felt about him myself. Alec had been my only option for a confidant. Fortunately, he’d turned out to be a good one.
“Well, yeah. I never stopped wanting him.” Trust was our new stumbling block, and as much as Nash meant to me, I couldn’t truly forgive him until I knew I could trust him again. I sighed and ran one finger through the condensation on the outside of my glass. “And I guess I kind of assumed that when we were both ready, we’d get back together. But now, with Sabine back in the picture…” I swallowed a bitter pang of jealousy. “It hurt to see them together.”
They shared a history I hadn’t even known existed. A connection that predated my presence in Nash’s life and made me feel…irrelevant. And it wasn’t just sex. She’d known him before Tod died. That was practically a lifetime ago. Was Nash very different then? Would I have liked him?
Would he have let a demon possess Sabine, when they were together? Would he now?
“And the dream…” But I couldn’t finish. Being publicly humiliated and rejected like that by someone who claimed to love me—that was a whole new kind of terror, and even the memory of the dream left me cold.
“Tod says they were, like, obsessed with each other, and now she’s back, and it turns out they never really broke up. She’s not just gonna bow out gracefully, is she?”
Alec shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t have a lot of experience with human girls—you’re the first one I’ve really talked to in twenty-six years. But I do know a bit about obsession—you might recall Avari’s ongoing quest to possess your soul?”
“That does ring a bell…” My hand clenched around my glass, and I gulped from it, trying to drown the pit of lingering terror that had opened up in my stomach.
“Well, whether she’s obsessed with him or actually in love with him—or both—she’s probably not gonna just walk away,” Alec said, when I finally set my glass down. “But really, that’s a good thing, in a way.”
I gaped at him. “In what universe does Nash’s ex wanting him back qualify as a good thing?”
Alec leaned back against the cushions. “Think of it as a second opinion on his value. If he wasn’t worth the fight, wouldn’t she just let him go? Wouldn’t you?”
Hmm… Would I? Should I?
“How did you get so wise? You’re like a giant Yoda, minus the pointy ears and green skin.” I hesitated, eyeing him in curiosity. “They had Star Wars in the eighties, right?”
Alec laughed, and his deep brown eyes lit up. “Only the original trilogy. You sure know how to make a guy feel old.” Then he frowned. “But I guess that makes sense. It’s weird.” He met my gaze again. “Physically, I’m still nineteen. But I’m old enough to be your dad.”
I shook my head and grinned. “No way. My dad’s a hundred and thirty.” Though he didn’t look a day over forty. “Why? Do you feel forty-five on the inside?”
Alec shook his head, holding my gaze with a serious, heavy sadness. “I feel way older, most of the time. Every day in the Netherworld was like a year, and I was there for something like twenty-six years. Doesn’t even seem possible. Then, suddenly I’m out, and I’m here, and everything’s different and fast and hard and shiny. I’m old and wise, according to some—” his eyes flashed in brief good humor on my behalf “—and in some ways, I feel ten thousand years old, because after everything I’ve seen, and everything I had to do to survive, shiny new Blu-ray disks and stereos that fit in your pocket seem so…irrelevant.”
Alec shrugged again, looking lost. “But then sometimes I feel like a little kid, because these shiny bits of irrelevance are everyday parts of my life now, and half the time, I don’t have a clue what they do.”
“Wow.” I grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “That was deep.”
He returned my grin and raised a challenging eyebrow. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“You’re sayin’ I should listen to my elders?”
His smile died, and he glanced at the hands clasped in his lap, then back up at me. “I’m saying I wish I wasn’t your elder.” Another sigh. “I wish I hadn’t lost twenty-six years of my life, and I wish to hell that it wasn’t so hard to take advantage of what I have left.”
Unfortunately, everyone he’d known before he left the human world was a quarter century older now, so he couldn’t just show up on old friends’ doorsteps—assuming he knew where to find them—with a smile and a suitcase. My dad and I were all Alec had at the moment, and we had no intention of cutting him loose.
But deep down, we all three knew that we couldn’t replace his real family any more than my aunt and uncle had been able to replace my parents.
“I just wish I could turn back the clock and undo everything that went wrong.”
I knew exactly how he felt.
TUESDAY MORNING, the second day of the spring semester, I was waiting in front of Nash’s locker when he arrived, walking down the hall alone for the first time since I could remember. His two best friends were gone, and we’d broken up. He was alone and probably miserable. And I couldn’t help wondering how he’d gotten to school, considering he didn’t have a car and no longer had anyone to bum a ride from.
Surely he hadn’t taken the bus with the freshmen.
“Hey.” His voice was casual, and completely Influence free, but his eyes swirled slowly in genuine pleasure. He was happy to see me.
My pulse spiked a little at that knowledge, and I resisted a relieved smile, trying to think of a way to ask him about Sabine without admitting that I wanted to nail her into a crate and ship her to the South Pole. Even though I’d just met her. “Hey. Can we talk?”
“Yeah.” Nash opened his locker, then unzipped his backpack. “Actually, I need to tell you something. I wanted to say this yesterday, but then we got interrupted, and…” He set his bag down without taking anything out of it and looked right into my eyes, so I could see the sincerity swirling in his. “Kaylee, I just want you to know that I’m clean. It sucks, and it’s hard, especially when I’m home by myself with nothing else to think about. But I’m totally clean. And I’m going to stay that way.”
My heart ached. Part of me wanted to hug him and forgive him and take him back right then, because I was afraid that if I didn’t, I’d lose my chance. Sabine would move in, and the time-out that was supposed to give Nash a chance to get better and me a chance to deal with what happened would only end up giving her a way into his life.
But I couldn’t just forget about everything he’d done. If I took him back before I was sure we were both re
ady, we could fall apart for real. Forever. Rushing in could ruin everything for both of us.
Of course, so could Sabine.
“I’m glad. That’s really good, Nash,” I said, hating how lame I sounded. Did Hallmark make a card for former addict ex-boyfriends who were trying to stay clean?
“So…what did you want to talk about?” he asked, as I clung to the strap of my backpack like a life preserver. Why was I so nervous?
“I just…” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then made myself look at him. “How worried should I be about Sabine?”
At the mention of her name, Nash’s irises exploded into motion, swirling so fast I couldn’t interpret what he was feeling. And with sudden, frightening insight, I realized that was because he didn’t know what he was feeling. Probably several conflicting emotions. But whatever they were, they were strong.
“Worried about her?” His irises went suddenly still, as he slammed the lid shut on his emotions, blocking me out. I couldn’t blame him. Who wants to walk around looking like a giant mood ring? But I was desperate for a hint of what he really felt about her. And about me. I needed to know where I stood. “Why would you…”
But before he could finish, she was suddenly there, down the hall, shouting his name like she didn’t care who heard. Or who turned to stare.
Sabine was fearless.
“Nash!” She jogged down the hall toward us, bag bouncing on her back, low-cut khakis barely hanging on to her hips. As she came to a stop, she reached into her hip pocket and pulled out a cell phone. Nash’s cell phone. “You left this in my car. You know, you should really set it to autolock. Otherwise, all your information’s just there for the taking…” Instead of handing him the phone, she stepped close and slid it slowly into his front left pocket, letting her fingers linger until he actually had to pull her hand from his pocket. Right there in the hall.
My face flamed. I could feel my cheeks burning and could see a scarlet half-moon at the bottom edge of my vision.