As soon as the counselor was gone, I made myself corporeal enough to close Emma’s door. The moment it clicked home, she flew off the bed and hugged me so hard I wouldn’t have been able to breathe even if I’d needed to. “Get me out of here. Please. I can’t stay here. This place makes me feel...bad.”
“I know. It did the same thing to Lydia. I think she syphoned every psychosis in the whole damn place.” I blinked us both into my living room—with a stop in an empty parking lot on the way, because I couldn’t go that far in one shot. The best moment of the day was the moment my feet landed on my own carpet.
Styx perked up from her sleeping spot on my dad’s chair and barked in greeting.
“Holy crap, this has been the worst day ever.” Emma collapsed on the couch and threw her head back against the cushion. Then she winced and suddenly looked guilty. “Well, for me, anyway. I’m sure your dad had a really crappy yesterday.”
And his suffering had no doubt continued, which made me feel guilty for being in my own home, out of immediate danger and in no pain.
I went into the kitchen, and Styx followed when she realized I was headed for the fridge. “Are you okay?”
“Traumatized, but yeah.” Emma exhaled dramatically. “Half an hour in that place felt like an eternity. I don’t know how you made it a week.”
“Me, neither.” I opened the fridge and pulled out a plastic container of still-bloody venison.
“They thought I was Lydia.” She sat up and frowned at me from the living room. “I am Lydia. Except that I’m also Emily Cavanaugh. And Emma Marshall, at least a little. Asking me if I know who I am? Most complicated question in history.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure what we’re going to do about that.” I set the last hunk of meat in Styx’s dish, then dropped the bowl into the sink and washed my hands while Styx scarfed down her dinner. “The hospital knows you as Lydia, who just escaped from a locked mental ward. Again. But the school knows you as Emily Cavanaugh, the niece and legal ward of my father. Who can’t be contacted at the moment, due to the fact that he’s been taken hostage by a demon in another realm.”
“Speaking of—any news about your dad, and Harmony and Brendon?”
I dried my hands on the towel hanging from a drawer handle, then grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge. “No. But we’ll get them back, and when we do, hopefully a combination of my dad’s Influence and your brown eyes will be enough to convince people that you can’t possibly be Lydia. I mean, people’s eyes don’t just change color, right?”
“Blue to green, maybe. Or brown to hazel, depending on the light. But not blue to brown. That just doesn’t happen.” She looked relieved by her own conclusion.
I handed her a bottle, then sank onto the couch next to her, trying to ignore the visceral chomping sounds coming from the kitchen. “Plus, we have the paperwork Tod...procured. Together, that should be enough to firmly establish your new identity.” I hope. But I didn’t let her see my doubt. She obviously had plenty of her own. “So, what happened at school? Please tell me you were faking memory loss for the psych ward counselor.”
“No, that was real. I don’t know what happened, and I think that’s the scariest part of this.” She collapsed against the back of the couch again and blew hair off of her forehead. “Why don’t we ever have normal problems anymore?”
“I’ve been asking myself that for months.” I cracked the top on my water bottle, then scooted over to make room for Styx, who seemed determined to burrow into the few inches between us now that she was finished eating. “So, you fell asleep during third period and...?”
“And...I woke up in a bed in the E.R. My throat hurt like I’d been screaming and I had a headache, but other than that, I felt normal. Well, as normal as I’ve ever felt in this body. I’d been there for maybe five minutes when the nurse who came in to take my vitals recognized me. Well, she recognized Lydia. Then there was a whirlwind transfer to Lakeside—they actually pushed me across the parking lot in a wheelchair—and the next thing I knew, I was a confirmed mental patient.”
“We prefer to be called residents. Remember, ‘crazy’ is not a diagnosis.”
“Whatever.” She actually smiled, then twisted the lid from her own bottle. “Evidently the fact that Lydia never actually checked out the first time led to me being fast-tracked for admission today. That place is scary efficient.”
“Yeah. They’ll bend over backward to get you in, then they’ll move heaven and earth to keep you there.”
And for the first time, it occurred to me that Lakeside and the Netherworld weren’t so very different—given a chance, either one of them would steal your soul.
Chapter Nineteen
“That place was hell.” Em sipped from her water bottle. “It was like walking around in the opposite of a sensory deprivation chamber. I was in sensory overload. Like being assaulted by everything everyone there was feeling. It was crazy—pardon the expression. Those people are angry, and sad, and frustrated, and confused, and...lost.” She stroked Styx’s fur absently. “I can’t go back there, Kaylee. I can’t.”
“I know. You won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” Styx climbed into my lap, trying to make herself the center of my attention. My dog was a fascinating contradiction. She was fierce and deadly, with jaws that opened wider than I would have thought possible and could snap a human long bone in a single bite. But in the absence of danger, she was almost...cuddly.
Though I was surprised that she was comfortable enough to nap in a house full of—
I sat up, suddenly startled to realize what should have been obvious the moment we’d blinked into the house. “Where’re Sophie and Luca?”
Em frowned. “I don’t know. But I’d check your room before you panic. Look for a sequined headband around the doorknob.”
“Ew!” Yet I was off the couch in an instant and down the hall two seconds after that. But my room was empty, except for the furniture, including one unmade bed, which told me Nash and Sabine had slept curled up together on my twin mattress.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and started to autodial my cousin, suddenly glad I’d programmed her number into my phone, in spite of my general disinterest in speaking to her. But my battery was still dead.
“Em, I need your phone!” I called, plugging my own into the charger by my bed. Em brought me her cell, and I dialed Sophie’s number from memory. She answered on the second ring. “Yes?”
I was so relieved to hear her voice that I didn’t even yell at her for the rude greeting. “Where the hell are you? Is Luca with you?”
“I’m at home. And, yes, he’s here. Why? What’s up?”
“What’s up? There are forces of evil hunting us, Sophie. They may already have your dad. Do you think it’s too much to ask for a warning before you disappear next time?” I sank onto the edge of my bed, fervently hoping Nash and Sabine had only slept there. “You scared the crap out of me.”
Luca said something in the background, but all I could make out was “Nash.”
“Yeah,” Sophie said into my ear. “We texted Nash before we left. How is it my fault you two communicate like you both have bananas in your ears?”
“You...?” Nash hadn’t told me, which was no surprise, considering that I’d been communing with demons and he and Sabine had been dealing with Em’s...breakdown. Not to mention the fact that my phone was dead. “What are you doing there?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I live here. All my clothes are here. My television is big enough to actually see from across the room, and my food isn’t full of sugar and carbs. My dad’s missing, Kaylee. Is it too much to ask that the rest of my life not be missing right now?”
I exhaled slowly, grasping for control of my temper. Reminding myself that she and I didn’t think about things the same way, and that I’d done my fair share of not checking in before I’d realized how badly I’d probably scared my father. Over and over.
“Fine,” I said finally. “Just...stay with
Luca, and head back this way as soon as you’ve had your fill of Sophie-land. We really do need to stick together. Em fell asleep this morning and got possessed, then admitted to Lakeside. There’s too much going on for us to be spread out and out of reach. Okay?”
Sophie started to object, but I heard Luca in the background, talking sense into her like no one else ever seemed able to.
“Fine. We’ll come back as soon as the movie’s over.”
“Thank you.” I ended the call and looked up to find Emma standing in my bedroom doorway, a half-eaten apple in one hand.
“They’re okay?”
“Yeah.” I gave her back her phone. “Clueless as usual, in Sophie’s case, but fine.”
Em took another bite from her apple and slid her cell into her pocket. As I followed her into the hall, the front door opened.
“Kaylee? Emma?” Nash called. We stepped into the living room as he slid his key—I’d given him an extra—into his pocket and Sabine pushed the front door closed. “Oh, good, you got her. Is she...okay?”
I deferred to Em, who shrugged. “‘Okay’ is a relative term at this point.”
“Tell me about it.” I dropped onto the couch again next to Styx. My head felt like it weighed fifty pounds, and my heart was even heavier. “They mistook her for Lydia and put her in Lakeside.”
“Oh, shit.” Sabine sat on the arm of my dad’s chair. “That complicates things. She just escaped again, I assume?”
I nodded.
“And now they know they can track her through the school,” Nash added.
“I’m not going back.” Em’s hand clenched around her apple. “I’m not crazy. Swear you’ll get me out over and over, if that’s what it takes.”
“I swear. But it won’t come to that. My dad can fix this.” Surely he could, with the whole eye-color defense, plus the forged paperwork. “Sometimes completely unrelated people look a lot alike, and it’s not like they have your fingerprints on file.” Though they may have blood samples.
I decided not to worry her with the extremely unlikely possibility that the court could order a DNA analysis if Lydia’s parents pressed the issue. Which they wouldn’t, because my dad would talk them out of it. He was good at talking people out of things.
“So, what the hell happened?” Nash helped himself to a bottle of water from the fridge.
“I think she was possessed.”
“No shit.” Sabine leaned into Nash when he sat in the chair she’d claimed the arm of. “We could have told you that from what she was shouting.”
“What was I saying?” Em looked like she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
“Mostly you kept yelling that you wanted to talk to Kaylee, and that you weren’t Emily.” Nash fidgeted with the cap of his bottle but didn’t open it. “Then, when they let me try to calm you down, you grabbed my hand and said ‘ticktock.’”
“Ticktock?”
“Yeah.” He finally cracked the lid. “The creepy thing is that you said that part in Avari’s voice.”
“That would have been good to know from the beginning,” I said, scowling at Sabine.
The mara shrugged. “You left before I could tell you. If you want the whole story, stick around until the end.”
“I think, ‘Hey, Kay, your best friend’s been possessed by a hellion’ would have been the ideal way to start that conversation.” I pushed Styx out of my lap and stood. I suddenly needed to move, to combat the feeling of helplessness. The certainty that there was nothing I could do to prevent...whatever else was coming. And something was definitely coming. I could feel it crawling like flies beneath my skin. “So, he spoke in Emma’s voice until you got close enough that no one else would hear, then he said ‘ticktock’ in his own voice?”
Nash nodded. “I assume that’s a warning intended to light a fire under us....”
“Warning us about what?” Em said as Styx curled up next to her, following my apparent abandonment.
“That time is running out, obviously.” Sabine took Nash’s water bottle and drank from it. “But...time for what? To find Brendon and Harmony? To rescue Aiden?”
“No.” I leaned against the half wall between the kitchen and living room, rubbing my forehead, thinking how unfair it was that dead girls could still get headaches. “He doesn’t expect us to do either of those. He’s warning us that time’s running out for me to turn myself in. That’s why Emma—Avari—was asking for me.”
“Wait, why can he use my voice?” Em frowned. “I thought he couldn’t do that very much. Didn’t you say he could only use Alec’s because he knew him so well?”
“That was my theory, yes.” Thinking about Alec and how he’d died—how Avari had manipulated me into killing him—made me angry all over again, on Alec’s behalf and my own. “But for all we know, he possessed Lydia once a week. We know he was familiar with Lakeside because Scott was there, and he regularly possessed Scott. So he probably knew who and what Lydia was. Or...maybe he’s getting better at that in general?” I shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Where were you?” Sabine asked, and everyone turned to look at me. “Where were you during third period, when we were all looking for you?”
I stared at the floor for a second, then made myself look up. “I kind of...summoned Ira in the kitchen of the empty doughnut shop down the street from the school.” I held my arm out so they could see the fresh bandage near my elbow, which was visible since I’d taken off the cardigan.
“Again?” Nash said. “Sounds like it’s getting serious. Does Tod know about this?”
Sabine elbowed him, and I nearly threw my own water bottle at his head. “Ha ha. It was a total waste of time, though. Except I did confirm that he was the one who tied Sabine to the ground with crimson creeper.” Which we were already virtually certain of. “And that he may or may not know where my uncle and your mom are.”
Nash’s hand clenched around his bottle. “He may know where my mom is?”
“He was going to charge me to find out whether or not he knows, then again, presumably, to find out where they actually are.”
“And, what, the price was too high?” Sabine looked confused.
“Well, yeah.” I shrugged. “By virtue of the fact that I was dealing with a hellion. That’s never a good idea.”
“But you deal with hellions all the time!” Nash insisted. “You were willing to make out with one to help your dad but not to help my mom?”
“No, I...I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have let him manipulate me—in the end it was all for nothing anyway.” Instead of finding my dad, we’d lost his mom and my uncle. “Besides, I’m pretty sure the price would have gone up this time.” I didn’t even want to know what came after a kiss. A bite? A sip of my blood, straight from the fount? A pound of flesh? Something worse?
“You’re pretty sure?” Nash demanded, and I realized I’d accidentally led him to an accurate conclusion. “You didn’t even ask? You just decided my mom should sit tight in the Netherworld—where she’s obviously unconscious and probably still bleeding—because you weren’t even willing to listen to the offer on the table?”
“Wait, you think she should have made a deal with a demon?” Em demanded, while I stared at him, trying not to get angry. Angrier, anyway.
“No, that’s not...” Nash scrubbed both hands over his face, and I could practically feel his frustration. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t want you to put yourself in any more danger, but we have to get my mom back. She’s hurt, and I have no idea how badly. She’d do anything for me and Tod—and for any of you—and there’s nothing we can do to help her without making a deal with a hellion.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll make the deal.” Sabine shrugged. “I’m not giving up my soul, but other than that, I’m flexible. How bad could it be?”
I stared at her in horror. “That’s the scariest question I’ve ever heard.”
Em frowned. “Sabine, he already tried to kill you.”
“Actually
, he wasn’t trying to kill her,” I admitted, reluctantly aware that they might misinterpret that as my support for her kamikaze mission. “He was trying to piss us all off.”
“That’s not the point.” Nash took Sabine’s hand. “I don’t want any of you putting yourselves in danger. She’s my mom. This is my responsibility. I’ll do it.” He let go of Sabine and stood, facing me. “Kaylee, how the hell do you summon a hellion?”
“I can’t...” I took a deep breath, then started over—he wasn’t going to like my answer. “Nash, I can’t tell you that. I can’t let you summon Ira.” He’d get himself killed, and it would be my fault.
His eyes churned with swift currents of brown and green, with flashes of anger like lightning splitting the storm. “Does it give you some kind of perverse pleasure to tell me no? Because that’s all I ever hear from you anymore. Actually, that’s all I’ve ever heard from you.”
“Okay, stop it, Nash.” My gaze clashed with his, and I wondered what he saw in my eyes. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“Who appointed you defender of mankind? I don’t need your protection! None of us do!”
“I do, kind of,” Em said, but no one was really listening. “Sometimes...”
I stood, facing Nash across the coffee table. “I’m not going to let you summon a hellion, especially when you’re so desperate to find your mother that you’d give him whatever he wants.”
“That’s my call. You have no right to stand in my way.”
“I may not have the right, but I have the responsibility. You’re my friend—you’re more than a friend—and you have a less-than-stellar record with human-to-hellion interactions. I’m not going to give you what you need to make another mistake, and, frankly, I don’t think it’s fair of you to ask me to, considering that if something happens to you, we’ll all have to put ourselves in even more danger to rescue you. Don’t you think we’re missing enough loved ones already?”
Yes, I was aware of my own hypocrisy, even as the words left my mouth. But putting myself in danger was different than letting him do the same thing, because Nash was a hellion addict. And because he was too emotional to think clearly. And because he’d never even met Ira. And...