* * *
That night, Tod, my dad, and I made a conscious effort to keep our own emotions in check, so we wouldn’t accidentally trigger Emma’s as-yet-uncontrollable syphon ability. Which wasn’t so much an ability at that point as a constant trial.
I think we did pretty well. Until around ten-thirty, when Em was doing homework on her bed and Tod and I were stretched out on my bed, not doing my homework. After about ten minutes of what I would categorize as PG-rated not-quite-adult content, she threw a balled-up pair of socks at us and said if we didn’t go away she would jump my boyfriend herself.
Evidently we weren’t very good at keeping those emotions in check. And since I did not want my best friend syphoning anything quite that intimate, we took the party to Tod’s place.
Tuesday morning, Emma was in much better spirits. We picked up coffee on the way to school and met Nash and Sabine in one corner of the cafeteria, as far from the breakfast eaters as we could get.
“Here.” I passed out lattes, and Em snatched a napkin dispenser from an empty table.
“What’s the occasion?” Sabine looked suspicious. I couldn’t blame her. We’d reached an understanding—she could have Nash, and I could never again touch him, for any reason whatsoever, so long as we both shall live. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds. Nash and I had made serious strides toward actual friendship, which was more than I could say for him and his brother. Sabine and I would never be like sisters, but we had definitely reached something akin to friendship.
And that was good, considering that the alternative always seemed to involve her trying to kill me, with little regard for the fact that I was already dead.
“I need some information.” I took the lid off my cup and blew over the top of my latte. “From Nash.”
“What’s up?” He dumped a packet of sugar into his open cup, then realized he had nothing to stir with.
“I need you to make a list of everyone you know who tried frost, back when Doug was, um, distributing to your teammates.”
Emma flinched at the mention of her ex, and I felt guilty all over again. Both of her most recent boyfriends had died because of me and my otherworldly complications.
“I don’t have a list.” Nash scowled at the powder that refused to mix with the foam on top of his coffee. “In fact, I don’t know a single name for sure. I didn’t even know Doug was using, until that party. The night he hit your car.”
“You don’t have a single name? Seriously? Not even an educated guess?”
He shrugged and put the lid back on his cup. “I can tell you who I saw him with at that last party, when his dealer showed up.”
“Was Marco Gutierrez one of them?”
“Yeah.”
“Good enough.” I pulled a notepad from my bag and pushed it across the table toward him. Em added a pen. “Write down all you can remember. Please.”
“Is this about what happened with Marco yesterday?” Sabine sipped from her cup while Nash scribbled on the notepad.
“Yeah. He was just possessed, so it was pretty easy to get rid of Avari, but I’d like to avoid a repetition. Or at least see it coming ahead of time.”
“So, where do we stand with Sophie and the liquid envy?” Em cradled her cup in both hands.
Sabine’s smile looked almost euphoric. Which kinda scared me. “I gave her the first dose this morning, in her coffee. Had to dump in extra sugar to cover the taste.”
“Half a drop?” Em said. “Because Kaylee went bat-shit crazy on a full drop.”
“I did not—”
“Yeah. Half a drop, as instructed.” Sabine spoke over me. “But I’m telling you, this whole thing would be much more entertaining—and would go a lot faster—if you’d let me really dose her.”
“No. I know you enjoy your work, but the object isn’t to drive her nuts.”
Sabine huffed. “Speak for yourself.” Then she shrugged. “At least I’m getting a decent bedtime snack out of this.” Because she was feeding from Sophie’s relevant fears as part of the process.
Em chuckled, staring into her cup. “I can’t believe you put real sugar in her coffee. She’d kill you if she knew it wasn’t calorie-free sweetener.”
“Here.” Nash slid the notepad back to me. “That’s all I can remember.”
I glanced at the list. “That’s only three names.”
He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “If I had more, I’d give them to you.”
“Thanks.” I turned to Em. “What about you? Did you see Doug hang out with anyone in particular?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Half the school. But I never even saw him with a balloon.” Which is what they’d used to store frost in. Which was kind of...my idea. Though I’d never intended to contribute to the ease of drug trafficking when I’d thought of it.
“Hey, Kaylee, can I talk to you for a minute?” I twisted in my chair to see Chelsea Simms holding a green paper folder.
“Sure.” I shoved the notepad into my bag, picked up my coffee, and stood. “I’ll see you guys at lunch.” Sabine, Nash, and Emma nodded, and I followed Chelsea into the hall.
She opened the folder as we walked in the general direction of our first-period math class, then pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to me. “I just wanted to show you this.” It was a screen print from some kind of layout program. “It’s for her memorial page in the yearbook.”
In the center was a candid shot of Emma at a football game, from the fall semester. Her cheeks were red from the cold and she wore a green scarf; her thick, golden hair was flying over her shoulder in the wind. She looked happy.
She looked alive.
In that moment, I understood what Emma had lost, beyond her family, her clothes, her car, and the future she’d always assumed she’d have. She’d lost herself.
I’d met Emma in the third grade, and in all the time I’d known her, I couldn’t remember her ever lacking confidence or self-esteem before I’d exposed her to truths about the world no human should have to deal with. She’d always known who she was and where she fit into the world. She’d known what she wanted to do with her life—even if that changed on a monthly basis—and exactly what she was capable of.
She had none of that now, and even if I spent my entire afterlife trying to make that up to her, I could never give her back what she’d lost. Ever. The best I could do was help her adjust to the life she had now. Show her that she still had her friends, and that this new life could still be a good one.
But I couldn’t do that with Avari always two steps behind us. I couldn’t honestly tell her that life was still worth living if we were always looking over our shoulders to evade death and eternal torture. I had to get rid of Avari and the rest of the hellions not just to avenge Em’s death, and those who’d gone before her, but to make sure that the life she had left was more than just the constant struggle to hold on to it.
“Do you think she’d like it?” Chelsea asked, and I realized we’d stopped walking several doors away from our classroom. And that my hand was clenched around the printout, my knuckles white from the strain.
“Yeah. It’s beautiful. I think she’ll love it.”
Chelsea gave me a confused look, and it took me a second to realize I’d referred to Em in present tense. Again.
“I mean, if she were still here. Which she’s not, obviously. Because she died. But if she hadn’t, I have no doubt that Emma would love this yearbook memorial page.”
Chapter Six
“I hate it.” Em set the memorial page printout on the picnic table and pinned it with her soda can.
“Hate what?” Nash put his tray down, Sabine set hers next to it, and they sank onto the bench across from me and Em.
“My yearbook memorial page.”
“That’s what Chelsea wanted to show me this morning.” I leaned across the table and took an apple wedge from Nash’s tray. I wasn’t hungry, but if I never ate anything at lunch, people would start to notice, and he rarely bothered with the fruit
anyway.
Sabine unscrewed the top on a bottle of flavored water from the vending machine. “What’s wrong with it?”
Emma rotated the page beneath her can so they could see it. “The layout is simplistic and too symmetrical, the quote they picked says nothing about me, and I’d complain that the picture’s too small, except that it’s a horrible shot of me anyway.”
“What are you talking about? You look great!” I frowned, studying her. “Are you channeling someone’s anger again?”
“Not that I know of. Anyway, I’m not mad. I just hate that picture.”
“Oh, that may be my doing,” Sabine said around a bite of cheese-slathered corn chip. “Em’s afraid she’ll never look that good, so I thought this might be a good time to amp up her insecurity and vanity by feeding that fear. Tastes pretty good, too.” She washed her bite down with a gulp of water. “Want me to stop?”
“No. It’s fine.” Em sat with a pout and turned the printout over, so she couldn’t see her own face. Her own former face. And suddenly I felt bad for showing it to her. I’d thought it would make her feel better to know how much people cared. How much they missed her. Instead, I’d reminded her of what she’d lost. Again.
“Your dad snuck out of my house at two this morning,” Nash said. I glanced up in confusion to find my cousin and her necromancer boyfriend only a few feet away, carrying their lunch. Sophie looked sick.
“Whoa, really?” Luca glanced from Nash to Sophie, who scowled and dropped her tray on the table so hard that her orange bounced into a plastic cup of cottage cheese. “This is the man who threatened to make sure I could never sire children if he ever caught me at your house past nine o’clock?”
“The very same.” Sophie sat and started scraping cheese off her orange with a plastic spork. “And that wasn’t an idle threat. Turns out I also have three older half brothers—like, way older—who would cut off anything you let dangle if they knew half of—”
Luca put a hand over her mouth, and I swear he looked suddenly pale. “Well, then let’s not tell them.” He frowned and dropped his hand. “Wait, what do you mean, it turns out you have older brothers?”
She shrugged. “My dad couldn’t tell me about them until I knew he was a bean sidhe, because they’re in their sixties but they look, like, twenty-five. Like they could be my uncles. But they all have grandkids.”
“Wait a minute.” Sabine scowled at Nash, and the sun seemed to fade a little. “I can’t stay the night at your place, but Sophie’s dad can? How is that fair?”
“How’s what fair?”
Tod appeared out of nowhere and sat next to me on the bench. He slid one arm around my waist, and it took all the self-control I had not to lean over and kiss him. Which I couldn’t do without looking crazy to the hundred or so other students in the quad who couldn’t see him.
Em leaned forward to fill him in. “Your mom’s sleeping with Sophie’s dad, and Sabine thinks—”
“Whoa...” Tod clamped both hands over his ears. “I don’t ever need to hear that sentence again. No need to finish it, either.”
“At least we agree on something,” Nash mumbled, ripping the crust from a slice of cafeteria pizza.
Sabine planted both palms flat on the table. “My point is that it isn’t fair that he can come and go as he pleases—no pun intended—”
Everyone at our table groaned in unison, and Nash looked more than a little nauseated.
“—but—and I am not kidding—I now have a nine o’clock curfew. Seriously. Nine o’clock! I am a creature of the night! You can’t impose a curfew on a living Nightmare! What am I supposed to do for the ten hours after lockdown? Maras only need four hours of sleep. Who the hell is he to tell me when I can and can’t leave the house?”
“Your legal guardian.” Sophie sank her thumbnail through the skin of her orange and began to peel it. “Officially, as of eleven this morning. He called to tell me when he finished Influencing the juvenile-court judge over brunch. I was supposed to tell you, but you know.” She shrugged. “I didn’t.”
Sabine’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened, no doubt ready to spew several inventive and highly entertaining threats aimed at Sophie, but before she could say anything, Luca cleared his throat and smiled at Emma. “Your hair looks nice today. All smooth and shiny.”
“Thanks.” Em’s eyes lit up, and her smile made me want to smile back. It was a very nice change from the previous day’s lunch.
Sophie glared daggers at her. “Keratin treatment and some Frizz-Ease. It’s not rocket science.”
I glanced at Sabine in silent question, and she nodded. She was amplifying Sophie’s fears to heighten her envy of...anyone Luca so much as looked at.
“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” a new voice said, and we all turned to see a sophomore whose name I couldn’t remember standing at the end of our table, holding a slip of paper out to me. “Are you Kaylee Cavanaugh?”
“Yeah.” As if she didn’t know. Everyone in school knew who I was. Everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew who I was. I was the girl stabbed in her own bed by her evil math teacher. Not that most people knew Mr. Beck was actually evil, instead of just your average psychotic pedophile.
“They want you in the counselor’s office.”
Crap. “Okay. Thanks.” I took the slip of paper from her—my official summons—and when the sophomore walked away, I turned back to the rest of the table. “I completely forgot my appointment.” Turns out that when you’re nearly fatally stabbed, then lose your best friend in a freak park-swing accident less than a month later, the school guidance counselor likes to keep tabs on you.
“Want me to come?” Tod ran his hand up my back, over my shirt. “If you keep her busy, I could convert the filing system from ‘alphabetical’ to ‘most deserving of psychiatric help.’” He leaned closer, and I knew no one else would hear whatever came out of his mouth next. “I’ve been meaning to make some special notations in Nash’s file anyway. Imagine the level of help he could receive if they knew the root of his recent academic decline was a deep-seated fear of the letter Q.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And though everyone else at the table looked curious, no one asked what Tod had said. They were finally starting to learn. “Thanks, but it’s hard enough to take grief counseling seriously without you singing ‘Living Dead Girl’ at the top of your lungs behind the counselor’s back.”
“You mock one grief counselor, and you’re branded for life,” he mumbled. “Er...afterlife. I have a shift at the pizza place this afternoon, but I’ll pop in when I get a chance.” Tod kissed my cheek—the most we could get away with while only one of us was invisible—then disappeared. I grabbed my bag, said goodbye to my friends, then headed for the counselor’s office.
Our school had two counselors, one for the first half of the alphabet and one for the last half. During lunch, the waiting room they shared was nearly empty.
“You can go in,” the student aide said when the outer door had closed behind me. “She’s been waiting for you.”
Because I was eighteen minutes late.
I trudged into Ms. Hirsch’s office, trying to summon an expression appropriate for someone who’d just lost her best friend. Nuance was important. My grief had to fall somewhere between “sobbing, devastated heap” and “Emma who?” I knew from experience that either of the extremes would only get me sentenced to more counseling.
“Hey, Ms. Hirsch. Sorry I’m late.” I closed the door, then slouched into one of the chairs in front of her desk. But Ms. Hirsch only watched me from across the desk.
I set my bag on the floor and stared at my feet for a second, riding out the silent treatment—was that supposed to pressure me into talking on my own? But when I looked up, she was still watching me. No, studying me. Like she’d never seen me before.
“Ms. Hirsch? You okay?” Was she in shock? Was I going to have to counsel her?
“You’re smaller than I expected,” she said. Only she said it with someone els
e’s voice. She said it with a man’s voice, deep and smooth, and...rich, somehow. And totally out of place coming from Ms. Hirsch’s slim, delicately curved feminine form.
She was obviously possessed, presumably by a hellion, but I didn’t recognize the voice.
My pulse spiked and chill bumps popped up on my arms, but beneath that an angry flush began to build inside me. I knew I should be scared—I was sitting across my guidance counselor’s desk from a hellion I couldn’t identify—but since my untimely death, I’d discovered that there was a limit to my capacity for fear. I could only be threatened, stalked, intimidated, manipulated, possessed, and actually killed so many times before I began to acclimate to the constant state of fear. Before terror lost its punch, like a scary movie watched too many times.
Anger, though... My capacity for anger at the Netherworld and at the host of Nether-creatures that had turned my afterlife into a living hell...that seemed to know no limits.
Much like hellions themselves.
My hands clenched around the arms of the chair. “Who the hell are you?”
Ms. Hirsch’s left brow arched. “You don’t know?” At the sound of his voice, that warmth inside me spread, not comforting, but seditious. Like a fierce flame burning within me, demanding action.
“Should I?” The fact that he couldn’t use her voice probably meant he hadn’t been in her body often enough to learn how to work all the gears and levers. Hopefully, he’d never been in her body before. I hadn’t even known she was eligible for possession....
“Not officially, but I’m a big fan of your work.”
“My work?” I should have been terrified, but what little fear I felt wasn’t because my guidance counselor had been possessed, or because whoever was possessing her had obviously known when and where he could get to me through her. I was scared for Ms. Hirsch. Of what he might do to her—or make her do to herself—if he didn’t get whatever he wanted from me.