Authors: Rachel Vincent
We were feet from my dad and Tina when Sabine tried to take the
knife from me. “No,” I said, so that only she and Tod could hear me. “We have to
be sure.” What happened to Alec couldn’t happen to anyone else. I couldn’t let
it.
“I
am
sure,” the
mara
hissed as we stopped feet from my dad and her
foster mother.
“Sure about what?” My dad frowned with one look at our
faces.
Before any of us could come up with an answer, Tina pulled
something from her pocket and swung low at my dad. He backpedaled, but her fist
connected with his thigh, and he screamed and collapsed to the ground.
Nash tried to tackle Tina, but she dodged him, then laughed
when he hit the ground rolling. I raced for my father, still clutching the
dagger, and dropped to my knees at his side, staring in shock at the pocket
knife sticking out of his thigh.
Harmony screamed and her footsteps pounded toward us. My dad
grabbed my hand. “Run,” he said as Sabine pulled the dagger from my other hand.
When I only shook my head, he looked past me to Tod. “Get her out of here.”
But when Tod reached for me, I shot him a warning look. “Help
me with him.” I wasn’t leaving my father, or the rest of our group. So we each
took one of my dad’s arms and pulled him away from the demon in the foster-mom
suit.
Tina laughed as the
mara
faced off
against her, feet spread wide, double-bladed dagger held ready. “One down,” the
imposter said, glancing at my dad. “One to go.” Her gaze flicked up to focus on
Harmony, who’d almost reached us. “I find the adults just get in the way, don’t
you?”
“Nash!” Tod tossed his head toward his mother as we pulled my
dad toward the nearest car, in spite of his protests. Nash rolled onto his feet
and ran to intercept Harmony.
“How did you know?” Tina asked as Tod joined Sabine and they
herded the hellion away from me and my father, who was still bleeding on the
ground.
Sabine shrugged. “You knew stuff Tina would never know. Like my
name and whereabouts. Also, FYI, very few twenty-first-century foster parents
use the word
forbade.
”
The demon nodded, like she was actually interested. “I shall
keep that in mind.”
“Tod!” Harmony shouted, and I twisted to see Nash physically
holding his mother back from the action, while she watched her other son help
confront a hellion who’d already stabbed my dad.
My father pushed me back and started to get to his feet, knife
and all. I could see where this was headed—more blood loss and heroics—so I
grabbed his hand and blinked us both to the other side of the pavilion, then
blinked myself back to Tod and Sabine before my dad could even wrap his head
around what had happened.
“Kaylee!” he shouted, but we all ignored him.
Sabine rushed the imposter, and fake Tina kicked her in the
chest, with more strength and speed than any normal foster mother would have.
Sabine flew backward—her feet actually left the ground—and crashed to the earth
several feet away. A grunt of pain exploded from her throat with the impact and
the dagger fell from her hand.
“Bitch broke my arm!” she shouted.
I grabbed the dagger and blinked onto the grass at Tina’s back
while Tod held her attention in the other direction. On my periphery, Harmony
knelt next to Sabine to examine her arm and Nash raced to a halt at my side,
irises twisting with fear and fury. Before I realized what he meant to do, he
took the knife from me and grabbed Tina’s left shoulder from behind. Then he
shoved my dagger into her right side.
Tina collapsed to the ground and rolled awkwardly onto her
back, her eyes wide with shock, one hand hovering uselessly over the knife still
protruding from her side. Nash dropped onto her legs and shoved the heel of his
palm against the hilt of the dagger, driving it deeper, and I realized that with
the hellion-forged steel still inside her, she couldn’t just disappear. She was
trapped with us, until her borrowed form died. “Who are you?” he demanded
through clenched teeth, while I watched in shock.
Tod pulled him off Tina and the imposter’s mouth widened in a
cruel smile when Sabine stopped at her side. The
mara
clutched her left arm to her chest as foggy wisps of her foster
mother’s soul curled around the hilt of the knife still in the monster’s side.
“You’re a clever one…” the demon said. Then her body melted into nothing,
leaving my bloody dagger on the ground.
On the grass where Tina’s head had been a moment earlier lay
the eighties’ vintage banana clip that had secured her thick hair on one side of
her skull.
“What the hell just happened?” Harmony demanded, one arm around
my dad, who was limping toward us from the pavilion, a stack of paper napkins
pressed to the wound in his leg.
“Hellion sneak attack,” Tod said.
“Who do you think it was?” Nash asked, studying Sabine’s
injured arm, and she shrugged, her jaw clenched in pain.
“Has to be someone who knows a little about me. Avari or
Invidia.”
“Or anyone they’re working with,” Tod said.
My father limped to a stop next to me, one arm around Harmony’s
shoulders. “I assume you all know what this means.”
“Other than the fact that my foster mother is dead and I’m
homeless?” Sabine handed me the bloody dagger, and I took it between my thumb
and forefinger, reluctant to get yet more blood on my hands.
“She was trying to get rid of the adults,” I said, staring at
the place where the demon had died on the ground. “That means Avari’s finally
finished setting up whatever game this has all been leading to. Now he’s ready
to play.”
20
“OKAY.” I TOOK
a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts, and sank onto a picnic bench
beneath the pavilion. “Whoever that was impersonating Tina, he’s down now, but
not out. He’ll be back, and there’s no telling what he’ll look like.” Or she.
The hellion could have been female.
“So, what’s the plan?” Sabine asked, her face lined in pain as
she laid her injured arm on the picnic table in front of her.
“Well…” my father said from the opposite side of the table. He
was naked from the waist up, his leg stretched out straight on the bench beneath
him, pressing his shirt to the wound, like Harmony had shown him. “I’m sorry
about your birthday party, Kaylee, but I think we all need to go. Now.”
“Agreed.” I scanned the shoreline, looking for Em and Jayson,
and Sophie and Luca. They’d paired up on opposite sides of the lake—no doubt for
privacy—and were out of earshot. Fortunately, they’d missed the demon slaying.
“Harmony, can you drive Sabine and my dad to the hospital? We’ll get the others
and follow you.”
“No…” my dad started to object. But I cut him off.
“You’re bleeding all over the place. We’ll be right behind you,
I swear. I’m not looking for any more hellion interaction today, of all
days.”
“You
are
still losing blood…”
Harmony said, and my father sighed.
“You swear you’ll be right behind us?”
I nodded. “You’ll probably be able to see us in the rearview
mirror.” When my father finally gave in, Tod and I helped Harmony get him into
her car while Nash helped Sabine buckle her seat belt beneath her broken—and now
swollen—arm. Then Nash headed to the pavilion to pack up the lunch stuff. Tod
and I were about to blink to opposite sides of the lake to gather the rest of
the troops when Luca came running toward us from the shore.
“Kaylee!” he shouted, and all three of us turned. An instant
later, and Tod and I would have been gone.
“What’s wrong?”
“Dead guy. Or dead girl,” Luca said. “Either way, someone here
is deader than either of you.”
A jolt of fear shot up my spine, followed by an echoing bolt of
anger.
Not again…
“It’s probably Tina’s body,” Tod said, while Nash filled Luca
in on what had happened, and I was almost ashamed by how relieved that thought
made me. As awful as it was to think that Sabine’s foster mother had been hauled
around in her own car by the demon who’d killed her and stolen her soul, that
was better than the alternative—yet another death. “Where?” I asked.
“Over there somewhere.” Luca nodded toward the parking lot, and
my relief swelled. If Tina’s body had arrived with her car, that would explain
why Luca hadn’t sensed it before.
“Show us,” I said, and we followed him away from the covered
eating area toward the parking lot, with spaces for just six vehicles. Four of
the spaces were occupied by cars we’d driven: mine, my dad’s, Tina’s, and
Jayson’s.
Luca stopped in front of our row of cars, then veered to the
right, past my car, like he was being physically tugged that way. “Here.” He
started down the aisle between Tina’s car and Jayson’s, and my heart pounded so
hard my chest ached. I didn’t want to think about Sabine’s foster mother lying
dead in her own car. I didn’t want to think about anything. I wanted this moment
to be over, before it had even begun.
At the end of the aisle, Luca turned to the right—away from
Tina’s car. He stepped slowly, hesitantly toward Jayson’s trunk, his eyes
narrowed in concentration, and I could feel my own brow wrinkle in confusion.
“It’s in there. Dead. Not rotting yet, so it’s very recent.”
“What? No,” I said, frustrated by the fact that logic and the
truth didn’t seem to line up. “Why would someone put a body in Jayson’s car? He
doesn’t know anything about any of this.”
“No, but his trunk obviously made a convenient delivery
system.” Tod peered over the roof, and I followed his gaze to the shore, where
Em and Jayson were two indistinct forms near the edge of the water, enjoying
their normal day, and their normal lives, with no idea how much macabre horror
had hitched a ride in Jayson’s normal car. “He’s not looking. I’m going to pop
the trunk.”
Tod disappeared, and an instant later he reappeared in Jayson’s
driver’s seat.
My hands shook and my mind raced. Who was in the trunk? It had
to be someone I knew. Someone close to me. The pattern was escalating—Avari had
said that himself. A stranger. A classmate. A friend.
This time it was a relative. It had to be. Except that all of
my relatives were alive and accounted for.
Except for Uncle Brendon.
“No…”
My uncle had cared for me like a father when my own father
hadn’t been able to deal with my mother’s death. Uncle Brendon had been there on
every first day of school and every trip to the doctor. He’d turned on the
bathroom light when I was scared of the dark and thrown away the steamed
broccoli I hated, when Aunt Val wasn’t looking.
But whatever he’d been to me, he was more to Sophie. He was all
she had left. And no matter what she’d said and done to me in the past, she
didn’t deserve this.
Tod leaned forward in the driver’s seat and something popped
inside the car. The trunk lid rose a couple of inches, but I only stared at it.
I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see.
“Kaylee?” Luca said, but I shook my head.
“I need a minute.” How was I going to tell my dad that his
brother was gone? How was I going to tell Sophie that her father was dead? And
that it was my fault?
“Kay?” Tod appeared at my side and his arm wrapped around me
from behind.
“I can’t do it. It’s Uncle Brendon. Am I a total coward if I
don’t look?”
He squeezed me, then let me go and lifted the trunk. I turned
my head. I didn’t want to see my uncle dead, and I especially didn’t want to see
him dead in the trunk of Emma’s boyfriend’s car.
Luca made a sound, deep in his throat, and for a second, I
thought he’d choked on horror. I’d come close myself, several times. “What the
hell?” the necromancer said. “I don’t understand.”
“Kaylee,” Tod said, and something in his voice set off alarms
in my head. He seemed to be calling me forward and warning me back at the same
time. “It’s not your uncle.”
Chill bumps sprouted all over my arms, and finally I looked,
because I had no other choice. But at first, I couldn’t process what I was
seeing.
Tod was right; it wasn’t my uncle. This man was younger,
thinner, with unruly brown hair and…
My hands clenched around the edge of the trunk and I looked up
at Tod, my eyes wide. He nodded in response to the question I couldn’t voice.
“He said he brought you a gift.”
Yes, that’s exactly what Jayson had said. Except it couldn’t
really have been Jayson speaking, because Jayson was dead in the trunk of his
own car.
“So, who’s that with Emma?” Luca asked, and I glanced up in
horror, searching the shoreline for her and for not-Jayson. I had to squint to
see them clearly. They were a quarter of the way around the lake, standing in
the sand. Em’s shoes dangled from the fingers of one hand. And she was
kissing…him. She was kissing not-Jayson.
My best friend was kissing the demon wearing her boyfriend’s
stolen soul.
“That son of a bitch played us.” And now he had Emma within his
grasp. Literally.
Tod saw my intent before it could possibly have surfaced in my
eyes. “Kaylee, wait!”
But I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t let him have her.
Frantic with rage and impatience, I turned and stomped toward
the picnic table, where my dagger lay, still smeared with blood. “Kaylee.” Tod
followed me. “We need a plan.”
“I have one: kill him, before he lays another hand on
Emma.”
“That’s not a plan, it’s a goal. Plans have steps, and
forethought, and—”
I grabbed the dagger, but Tod stood his ground, blocking me in
between the table and the grill. “Step one. Kill him. Step two. Repeat as
necessary.” I turned to Nash and Luca. “Will you guys go get Sophie?” When they
nodded, I turned back to Tod. “You comin’?”
Then I blinked out, without waiting for his reply. An instant
later, I stood on the sand behind the Jayson-thing. Over his shoulder, Em saw my
knife and gasped.
Jayson turned and laughed out loud. “I wondered how long that
would take.”
“About this long.” I swung the knife at him, but he turned at
the same time, with Emma in his grip. Em screamed. I tried to abort my swing,
but the dagger sliced through the side of her blouse as he swung her around like
a human shield. The blade scored her skin in an arc, just above her right
hip.
She screamed again, and I gasped, almost frozen by my own
horror and regret. “Em, I’m so sorry!”
“Ow, shit! What the
hell,
Kaylee?”
Em slapped one hand over the wound, but Jayson nearly pulled her off balance
when he dragged her backward, away from me.
“Let her go,” I said, trying to divide my focus between his
face and the blood seeping between her fingers.
“Kaylee, put the knife down,” the Jayson-thing said. His voice
was full of trepidation and fear, but his expression didn’t match. His grin was
creepy and irrepressible, but Emma couldn’t see that with him at her back. He
leaned down to speak directly into her ear. “I always heard she was crazy, but I
didn’t think she was
violent.
”
And that’s when I understood the game—the hellion was still
playing his role.
“Kaylee?” Emma’s face was white with pain, and her hands were
red and slick with her own blood. She was breathing too hard. Too fast.
“I’m so sorry, Em. I was aiming for him.” My focus shifted to
his eyes, sparkling with new pleasure over her head. “Let her go. This isn’t
about her.”
“What is she talking about?” Jayson’s voice asked, practically
shaking with fake fear, while his eyes shined in malicious pleasure. “And why is
she armed?” He pulled her farther away from me, pretending to protect her, when
he was really shielding himself.
“What’s going on?” Em demanded, and the strength in her voice
gave me hope. Surely if the wound was very bad, she’d weaken quickly. Right?
“Don’t mean to scare you, Em,” Tod said, appearing on the left
edge of my peripheral vision. “But there’s a better than average chance you may
be dating a demon.”
She glanced at him, then back to me. “What the hell is he
talking about?”
“That’s not Jayson. Jayson’s dead in his own trunk.”
“What does that mean?” the Jayson-thing said. “They’re crazy,
Em. How could I be standing here right now, if I were dead?”
Tod made an exasperated sound. “Oh, let me count the ways…
.”
“Emma, listen to me, please.” I stepped forward, but he dragged
her back again. “Jayson is dead. He’s in the trunk of his own car, in the
parking lot. The thing holding you is Avari, and he’s not protecting you from
me, he’s using you as a human shield.”
“No…” Em flinched and pressed her hand harder against her
wound. But she’d seen and survived too much to let fear and disbelief—or even
pain—blind her to the dangerous truth. That was one of the things I liked best
about her. “Jayson’s dead?”
“The word
doornail
comes to mind,”
Tod said.
I nodded and gestured toward the thing still clutching Emma to
its chest. “Ask him. Hellions can’t lie.”
Tears spilled from Emma’s eyes and trailed down her cheeks, and
I couldn’t tell which hurt her worse: her bleeding cut or the thought that her
new human boyfriend—innocent, and ignorant of the danger he’d walked into—had
been killed by a monster. “Are you Avari?” Her words were halting, half choked
with her own tears. “Did you kill Jayson?”
The Jayson-monster’s brows rose at me over Emma’s head. “No, to
both questions.” He was challenging me. Daring me to prove him wrong.
But… Hellions couldn’t lie. Of course, they weren’t supposed to
be able to cross over, either. What was I missing?
“Okay. I believe you,” Em said, holding my gaze with a teary
one of her own. She was talking to me, but he was supposed to think she was
talking to him. “But I’m hurt, Jayson. Let me go, so they can take me to the
hospital.”
“I will.” He glanced over my shoulder toward the pavilion,
probably making sure no one else had noticed the trouble yet. “As soon as she
puts the knife down.”
But I couldn’t do that.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “Obviously you’re a hellion. Someone
working with Avari.” But no self-respecting hellion would help out another
without something to gain from the favor. Was Emma the payment? If so, why not
just take her? Why would the Jayson-thing practically
tell
me he’d left something in his car for me, then walk down the
shore with Em in plain sight, instead of just crossing over with her?
“Belphegore?” I said. “Invidia?”
“Oh, now you’re just guessing,” the hellion said. And with
that, the charade was over.
“Let me go,” Em said, her voice deep with hatred, haggard with
pain. “Let go of me, you murdering, soul-stealing demon bastard!”
Jayson laughed. “I like this one. Easy on the eyes and even
better on the tongue.” He bent toward her ear again. “Do you think they’ll save
you?” he stage-whispered loud enough for me and Tod to hear. “If she has to kill
you to get to me, do you think she’ll even hesitate?”
Fresh rage blossomed inside me, fire shooting up my spine. He
was playing on old fears that I would let her die. On doubt that I would be able
to save her a second time.
“Kaylee would never hurt me. On purpose,” she amended as blood
continued to seep slowly between her fingers.
“Tell her what really happened to Alec,” the hellion said, and
my rage was drenched in a cold wash of dread as he met my gaze again. “Don’t
your friends deserve the truth?”
“I don’t want the truth.” Emma’s voice was weaker now from
blood loss, and fear, and maybe from confusion. “I just want to go to the
hospital. Please…”