Authors: Rachel Vincent
Emma glanced at me, and I motioned for her to sit again. She
sank onto the edge of the bed and scooted back to lean against the wall. Then
she crossed her arms over her chest and watched the counselor in silence. She
wasn’t pouting. She wasn’t throwing fits. She just...wasn’t participating.
That was the best I could hope for, considering the state of
the resident next door.
The counselor gave it several more minutes, while we sat there
in silence—okay, I stood—and the girl next door whined. Then she sighed and left
the room, patient file in hand.
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. Angri
er,
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...
And because I was terrified of losing him. Of losing any of
them. I wasn’t willing to take risks with my friends’ lives like I was with my
own, because I loved them. All of them. Even the ones I didn’t always like. I
couldn’t give Nash the means to get himself killed via hellion bargain any more
than I could hand him a loaded gun and watch him point it at his own head.