“Is that...?”
“Yeah. She said not to touch it until you dilute it. We’re supposed to use this.” He dug in his other pocket and came up with a small plastic medicinal dropper. “But for the record, I don’t approve of you ingesting Netherworld substances. Especially untested Netherworld substances. So I really have no choice but to hang out until the effects have completely worn off. To make sure you’re safe.”
I laughed. “My dad and Em are here.”
He lifted one pale brow. “And, naturally, you’re going to tell your dad what you’re up to...?”
I tugged him closer until I could whisper against his cheek. “I thought we agreed there were some things he doesn’t need to know about....”
“We did.” His hand slid beneath the hem of my shirt, and the dropper grazed my side. “Those are my very favorite things.”
“You know, when it’s silent in there, I get suspicious!” my dad called from the living room. Em laughed. Tod groaned.
He held me for another second and I breathed in his scent, then let him go and took my water glass from the desk, where I’d set it. I stared down into it, then at the vial. “This is not going to mix well.” I pulled out my rolling chair—it wouldn’t go far, with Em’s bed in the way—and sank into it, then set the glass down again while Tod worked the plug from the vial.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“No. But I can’t give it to Sophie if I’m not willing to try it myself.”
He stuck the tip of the dropper into the vial and drew up a quarter of an inch of murky green gunk. “My mom calls that the baby food test.”
“Baby food?”
“Yeah. When we were little, she wouldn’t give us anything to eat until she’d tasted it herself. Which is why she started baking. Evidently baby food is vile.”
I watched as he dropped into a squat, so that he was eye level with my glass. “So you really did grow up on cookies and cake. I knew it.”
“That’s why I’m so sweet now. I have no idea what went wrong with Nash.” He carefully squeezed the bulb at the top of the dropper, and a single drop of concentrated liquid envy plopped into my glass. For a second, it hung suspended in the water. Then tiny threadlike feelers of dark, dark green stretched out from the drop in all directions, bleeding slowly into the rest of the glass while Tod squirted the rest of what he’d sucked up back into the vial.
In seconds, the drop was gone and my water was an uneven green, paler than the concentrated color. Like an old bruise.
“Yuck.” I held the glass up to the light, and the green grew paler. “Maybe we should have mixed it with soda.”
Tod opened his mouth, and I took the first sip before he could offer to drink it for me. To test it on himself. The last thing I needed was for him to develop an irrational envy. The only person he could possibly be jealous of was Nash, and it had taken me forever to get the two of them back on speaking terms. Backward momentum was not okay.
“Yuck!” I made a face and wished for a cookie to rid my mouth of the foul film. “Envy tastes bitter.”
Tod laughed. “I could have told you that without even trying it. You gulp that, and I’ll get you something sweet to chase it with.”
“Thanks.”
I made myself drink the whole glass while he was gone, then made a mental note to warn Sabine to put it in something dark and sweet. Definitely coffee or soda. Or artificially sweetened diet protein shakes.
As I was swallowing the last mouthful, Tod reappeared in my room with a clear plastic cup of pink lemonade from my favorite burger place, a block from school. “Thanks.” I set the empty glass down and gulped a quarter of the lemonade through the straw without even taking the cup from him. “Much better.”
He set the drink on my nightstand, then sank onto my bed and scooted back until he could lean against the wall. I sat in front of him, my back pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me. “Feel anything yet?”
“Just this.” I threaded my fingers between his in my lap. But I was already starting to regret volunteering for our little experiment. The more I thought about it, the easier it was to remember how I’d felt with Invidia spewing envy into the air at my school, poisoning us, amplifying whatever benign envy we felt on a daily basis until it poured from us in bitter, violent waves.
If she hadn’t been there—if we hadn’t been under the influence of more jealousy than any normal sixteen-year-old could handle—would Sabine and I have fought over Nash? Or would I have seen what was right in front of me sooner?
I didn’t have the answer, and thinking about it—about being out of control of my own emotions—made me angry. So I snuggled closer to Tod, determined to distract myself from my fears. “Have you ever been jealous of anyone? Like, really jealous?”
“Is that a serious question?”
Something in his tone made me pull away just enough that I could turn and see his face.
“Nash?”
The blues in his irises twisted for a second before he got his emotions under control.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Let me see. Please.”
Tod frowned. Then he closed his eyes, and when they opened, the shades of blue they held were churning like a storm at sea, cobalt twisting through thin, fragile shades of glacial ice, then rolling over bold streaks of cerulean.
“That bad, huh?” I couldn’t completely hide the satisfaction in my voice. It was nice to be wanted. It was even better to be needed, and I could feel how much Tod needed me every day. He needed me almost as much as I needed him.
“It wasn’t just jealousy, Kaylee. I coveted you. It was all biblical and forbidden.”
“Tell me.”
He hesitated just for a second. “I hated seeing you with him, but I couldn’t stay away because I knew that if I wasn’t there, you two would do things you’d never do with me in the room, and then I’d be all alone imagining that—imagining my brother touching the girl I was meant to be with for the rest of my afterlife—and then... Well, then things would get worse. But it’s not like I could say anything. Not as long as you wanted to be with him.”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
“It’s not funny.” He frowned, and even his frown was beautiful. “It was torture.”
“I’m not laughing. I’m just feeling very, very lucky.”
“Is it possible that this liquid envy has some kind of osmosis effect? Like maybe it’s leaking out through your pores, and I’m breathing most of it in? Because I’m reliving the worst envy of my entire existence, and you seem just fine.”
I shrugged. “I have nothing to be jealous of.”
His pale brow rose again, and I realized I’d accidentally laid down a challenge. “I’m perfectly covetable, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I’m grateful every single day for the fact that you’re invisible to everyone else most of the time, so I’m the only one looking at you.” And I looked at him a lot. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “So I don’t have to beat girls off of you.”
“Would you?” He looked intrigued. “Would you fight for me?”
“Would you make me?”
“No. There will never be anyone else for me, Kay.” He grinned that evil reaper grin, and I knew what was coming before the words even left his tongue. “But there were a few before you....”
“La la la!” I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, pretending I couldn’t hear him. But the seed had already taken root in my brain.
He pulled one hand away from my ear. “How are we supposed to evaluate the strength of this essence of envy if you refuse to explore your own jealousy?”
I opened my eyes and dropped my other hand. “Fine. Point taken.” But I didn’t have to like it. “How many?”
He frowned again. “How many what?”
“How many girls? Before me?”
His frown deepened. “That’s not what I was getting at. It’s not a competition....”
“I know. It can?
??t be a competition, because I can’t compete. Because I’ve never been with anyone but you. But you can’t say that, can you?” He flinched and I felt sorry for him for a second. Just one second. “How many, Tod?”
“I think we’re losing track of the point, here.”
“Addison? Were you with her? Like, with her?”
I saw it in his eyes, and my chest ached like I’d been punched. Like someone had tried to rip my heart out through my rib cage. “She was your first.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to swallow, but my throat didn’t want to work right.
“Kaylee.” His hands slid down my arms, and my eyes flew open again.
“What is it with you Hudson boys and your first loves? She was a rock star. A TV star. And she would have burst right out of any one of my bras. How the hell am I supposed to compete with that?”
“You’re not. Addison’s dead, Kaylee. Not just dead.” Because I was dead, and he was dead. “She’s gone.” Her soul had been disintegrated and scattered throughout both worlds two weeks before, and it could take centuries for it to slowly reform.
“I know, and I’m sorry about that, but honestly, I’m a little less sorry than I was a second ago.”
His eyes widened, and he looked...surprised.
Crap. What the hell was I saying? Addison had never been anything but kind to me. She’d put herself between me and Avari so I could escape the Netherworld, and she’d suffered horribly for it. Of course I was sorry she was gone. But...
“Her memory. Sabine was right. You can never really compete with the memory of a tragically deceased lover.”
“You don’t need to compete.” He lifted my chin so that I had to look into his eyes. “I love you, Kaylee. I love you like I have never loved anyone else. Like I will never love anyone else.”
I knew that, but... “After her?” I didn’t want to know, but suddenly I had to ask. “After Addy? How many? Were they pretty? Were they...good?”
His eyes flashed in panic. “Okay, you see that this is the envy talking, right, Kay?”
“I know.” But I didn’t care. “How many, Tod? When you touch me, how many other girls are you remembering?”
“None. Look at me.”
I looked at him, but I could hardly see him through tears. When had that happened?
“When I touch you, I’m not thinking about anyone but you. When I look at you, I can’t remember what any of the others looked like. When I hear your voice, I can’t even remember their names.”
“Really?” My tears fell, and he wiped them away with his bare hands.
“Really. Compared to you, they’re all nameless. Like...Thing One and Thing Two. And Thing Three. And...okay, that’s not helping.” His gaze searched mine, and his forehead furrowed. “This sucks. How can I help?”
“I don’t...” But I did know. “I think I need you to kiss me.”
His features relaxed, and his grin came back slowly, like he expected me to change my mind. When I didn’t, he pulled me into his lap, and I tucked my legs around him. “My pleasure.”
He kissed me, and my hands slid behind his neck. I wanted to devour him. I really did. And the beauty of being dead and in love is that you don’t have to come up for air.
I don’t know how long we sat there kissing, tangled up in each other and nearly desperate for more, but I know we didn’t stop until Emma came in to get ready for bed. And I only know when that happened because she pretended to gag in the doorway.
“I can’t even see you, but I know what you’re doing.”
“No, you don’t,” Tod said to her, his lips still pressed against mine. “We’re still dressed.”
I laughed and concentrated on being visible on the human plane.
Em sank onto the edge of her bed, and I climbed off Tod’s lap. “Better?” he said, and I nodded, my face flaming.
“Sorry. That was intense.”
“That?” Em waved one hand at the two of us, grinning. “Or the test dose?”
“Both,” Tod and I said in unison. He was only partly kidding when he continued, “Tell Sabine to give Sophie a half dose.”
Chapter Four
“So? Do we have any classes together? Let me see....” I pulled Emma’s new schedule from her hands as the office door swung shut behind us. “Crap.” I scanned the schedule again, hoping I’d misread. “There are only a couple hundred juniors in this school. How can we only have one class together?”
French. With Mrs. Brown. The only class “Emily Cavanaugh” and I shared was Em’s least favorite.
She leaned in to whisper, staring out at a sea of faces she’d known most of her life, none of whom recognized her. “If we were going to make up my age anyway, why the hell didn’t we go with eighteen instead of seventeen? Or twenty-one. That would have been nice.”
“You have to finish high school, Em.”
“Why? What’s the point?”
I’m sure there were several dozen good answers to her question, but I couldn’t think of any of them in that moment; I didn’t want to be there, either. So I gave her a little taste of the motivation I was clinging to. “Justice. This is where Avari and the other hellions hang out, remember? Invidia could be exactly where we’re standing right now, on the other side of the world barrier. She could be sniffing us out as we speak. How are you going to draw her into a trap if you’re not here?”
“Valid point. But frustratingly ironic. They hang out here to be close to us. To feed from our emotions. And now that I don’t have to be here if I don’t want to, I’m stuck here anyway, to stay close to them.”
“Welcome to my afterlife. Where’s your first class?”
Emma studied her new schedule as we ambled aimlessly down the hall, and I tried to ignore the stares focused on us—no, focused on me. I didn’t figure out what the whispers were all about until some idiot underestimated his volume.
“I can’t believe she came to school today. Her best friend’s been in the ground less than twenty-four hours, and she doesn’t even look upset.”
Oh. They’d expected me to still be mourning Emma, which had never occurred to me because Emma was standing right next to me. It had been much easier to pretend to grieve during the week and a half before she’d come back to school, when we were still waiting for the police to release her body so we could bury her. Without her next to me, I’d had no trouble remembering that she was supposed to be dead.
“Two-oh-four.” Em looked up from her schedule and frowned. “I’m headed upstairs. See you at lunch?”
“Yeah.” At least that much hadn’t changed.
First period math was weird without Emma. The stares continued all the way through class, and I actually had to do math during the last five minutes of class, when we were supposed to be starting our homework, since I had no one to whisper with.
But there were plenty of people whispering about me.
I was the center of attention when I’d secretly died, yet somehow I was still the center of attention now that Em had secretly lived. I couldn’t win for losing.
“Hey, Kaylee.” Chelsea Simms sat next to me—uninvited—at my empty lunch table in the quad, and I silently cursed myself for showing up early.
“Hey.” I had no third period class, so I usually spent the hour there, knowing that if Tod had a break at work, that’s where he’d look for me.
Chelsea pulled a notebook from her bag. “Do you mind if I ask you a few things about Emma? I’m working on a memorial article for the school paper.”
Oh, yeah. Journalism was also third period. Just my luck.
“Sure.”
She frowned, studying my expression. “If this is a bad time, I can...?”
“No, go ahead. I don’t mind talking about Em. Feels like I’m keeping her memory alive.” How’s that for quotable?
“Great. Em was a junior, right?” Chelsea said, and I nodded. “And she had two sisters?” Another nod, and I noticed that though her notebook was open, she wasn’t taking notes. Whatever she really w
anted to ask obviously required courage she hadn’t yet worked up.
“And...was she a good student?”
I turned to face her directly, looking right into her eyes. “Chelsea, just ask whatever you really want to know. Otherwise, this sounds like it’ll take all day.”
She blinked, surprised, then nodded. “Okay.” She sat straighter and actually picked up her pen, ready to write. “Do you really think it’s a coincidence that Emma Marshall and her boyfriend died on the same day? Just one day after Brant Williams died in his car, here on campus?”
I swallowed, trying to hide my own surprise. Obviously our classmates were just as suspicious as the police had been, but I hadn’t expected anyone to actually ask that question. And I certainly hadn’t expected anyone to expect me to have an answer.
“Do I think it’s a coincidence?” I bought time to think by repeating the question. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t see how it could be more than that. They died at different times, in different places, in different ways.” Sort of. Neither Brant nor Jayson had any obvious cause of death, so the coroner had labeled them both with the generic “heart failure.” Which wasn’t exactly common in teenagers.
“Were you there when Emma died?” Chelsea asked, her gaze glued to me. Watching closely for my reaction.
“Yeah. A bunch of us were. We took the day off for my birthday.” The tears in my eyes were real—I was lying, but the truth was no less traumatic. “We were just goofing off on the swings. At the lake. But Em went too high.” I sniffled. “She was showing off. Then she let go and just... She just fell out of the swing. She landed on her back, but she must have hit her head first, and...”
I stopped there, with another sob. A real one. Picturing Em’s actual death helped. Seeing Belphegore’s hand on her neck. Hearing the gruesome crack. Seeing Emma crumple to the ground.
In my memory, it all happened in some kind of horrible slow motion. That was the only way I’d gotten through the police interview, and I’d seen no sign that they doubted any of my story.