“I don’t think there’s anything else you can do,” I whispered. “It’ll just take time. And for now, this is nice.” I tried on a small smile and held up our linked hands, but Nash only frowned.
“Nice is good, but it’s not enough. I want you back for real. I want to talk to you at lunch, instead of staring at you while you eat. I want to see the smile on your face and know I put it there. I want to hear your dad’s voice get all low and pissed off, like it only does when I’ve stayed over too late.”
I grinned. No one could piss off my dad like Nash.
Except for Tod.
“You know why he sounds like that, don’t you?” Nash asked. “It’s because he knows how I feel about you, and it scares him. He knows that he’s missed most of your life, and you’re not a little girl anymore, and I’m proof of that. He knows what I know, and what you’ll let yourself know some day—that you love me. And it scares the shit out of him.”
I couldn’t breathe around the fist-size lump in my throat. That lump was all the words I was dying to say but shouldn’t, all rolled up into one word clog, refusing to move. I couldn’t let them out—couldn’t expose so much of what I really felt while I still wasn’t sure I could completely trust him—but I couldn’t swallow them, either. Not anymore. Because whether I wanted to say them or not, whether they would actually change anything or not, they were true.
“Kaylee?” Nash’s focus shifted between my eyes, searching for something inside me. “You can’t tell me there’s nothing left for me in there. I know there is. I can see it in your eyes.”
“No fair peeking,” I mumbled, and he chuckled.
“Nothing about this is fair.” He hesitated, swallowing thickly, like he needed something to drink all of a sudden. “I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I’m asking for one. Let me prove how serious I am. Just one more chance.”
I stared at him, studying his eyes. And all I found in them was sincerity and heart-bruising need. He meant it.
So instead of answering, instead of thinking, I leaned forward and kissed him. For once in my life, I let my heart lead the way, while the rest of me held on tight, helpless and scared, along for the ride.
Nash kissed me back, and it was like we’d never broken up. And for the first time, it seemed possible that we could just pick up where we’d left off and forget all about that messy little pit stop on the path to forever.
But that wasn’t right, was it? Was forgetting even possible?
In that moment, I just didn’t care about roadblocks thrown up by my brain—my heart and my body were committed to crashing through them. So I set the hard questions aside and focused on Nash. On the way he tasted, and the way he felt. Of the warmth of his fingers wrapped around mine and his free hand sliding up my arm and over my shoulder to cup the back of my head.
My mouth opened against his, and I welcomed him back, while my body welcomed back the heat he awoke in me, which had lain largely dormant over the past three weeks. But Nash was very careful, his eagerness very controlled. He was hyperaware of my boundaries, and reluctant to even approach them after what had happened the last time.
His caution was both blessing and curse. It was like trying to scratch an itch with gloves on—his passive caresses only made me want more. And maybe that was the point. Maybe he was leaving it all up to me, how far we went and when. Which would have been awesome, if I weren’t trying to quench a thirst for him which had been building for the past twenty-one days.
“Nash…” I groaned, when his mouth finally left mine to travel down my neck.
“Too fast?” He started to pull back, but I wouldn’t let him.
“No. I just wanted to say your name without being mad.”
He grinned and leaned with his forehead against mine. “That’s my favorite way to hear it. But this is too fast. We have to slow down, or we’re going to wind up in the same position again—without the frost. Or the Influence,” he added, when I frowned.
“But you’re not…”
“Kaylee, I need to slow down.”
“Oh.” I tried to banish disappointment from my voice, but he heard it, anyway, and I think that made it worse for him—knowing that I wanted more. But he was doing the right thing, and so should I. “Um…okay. I’m gonna get a Coke. You want one?” I stood, straightening my shirt.
“Yeah. There’s some in the fridge.”
I’d made it halfway across the room when a car rumbled to a stop outside, and a wash of bright light traveled across the living room through the front window. “Must be the pizza.” Nash stood, already digging his wallet from his back pocket, and I shoved open the swinging door into the kitchen, pleasantly surprised by the quick delivery.
But when I pulled open the fridge, a familiar, disembodied voice spoke to me from the other side of the door. “It’s not the pizza,” Tod said, and I slammed the door shut without grabbing the cans. But the kitchen was completely empty.
“Where are you?” I demanded in a whisper, as the front door creaked open from the living room. “And how do you know it’s not the delivery guy?”
Tod suddenly appeared between me and his mom’s small kitchen table, wearing a royal blue polo with a stylized pizza—missing one slice—embroidered on the left side of his chest. “Because I have your pizza right here, and I didn’t drive.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. An undead reaper was one thing. But an undead pizza delivery driver? The jokes wouldn’t stop coming.
“It’s not funny!” Tod snapped. “This was your idea.”
“I was joking!” I hissed, opening the fridge again.
“Well, I wasn’t. Being dead doesn’t have to mean mooching off all my friends, right?” he said, and I shrugged, pulling two cold cans from the top shelf. “Plus, you were right about the free pizza.”
I couldn’t resist another grin. “So…is there a family discount?”
“Hell, no. Nash is paying full price. Plus tip.”
Before I could reply, hushed voices from the living room caught my attention. “Who’s that?” I demanded, setting the sodas on the table. I headed for the swinging door, but Tod grabbed my arm before I’d made it two steps.
“It’s her, isn’t it? That’s Sabine’s car? You saw her?”
He nodded reluctantly, brushing a curl from his forehead. I started forward again, and again he pulled me back. “Let go. What, you’re on her side now?”
“I’m just trying to keep this from going bad, fast.”
“Shh…” I said, when I realized I could make out words from the other room.
“Kaylee’s here?” Sabine said, obviously refusing to be shushed by Nash. And it’s not like she didn’t know I was there—my car was in the driveway! “I thought it was just going to be us.”
“I didn’t think she’d come. Bina, please go before she hears you.”
I couldn’t hear what came next, so I snuck closer to the door. Tod clenched his jaw, but let me go.
“Sabine, no! I’ll make it up to you, but you have to go n—”
Then there was no more talking from either of them, and my blood boiled.
I shoved open the swinging kitchen door and froze with my foot holding it open, unable to truly process what I saw. Sabine Campbell had her shirt off, and she’d latched onto Nash like the parasite she really was. She had him pressed against his own front door, her tongue surely halfway down his throat. But the worst part…
He held her shirt, dangling from one fist—and he was kissing her back.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even form a coherent thought until Tod cleared his throat at my back, and Sabine reluctantly peeled herself off my boyfriend.
Nash’s face flamed, but Sabine only grinned. “Hey, Kay. Sorry I’m late to the party, but the more the merrier, right?”
“You two look merry enough without me,” I snapped through clenched teeth. Then I stepped forward and let the kitchen door swing through Tod, who barely seemed to notice.
“Kaylee, wai
t…” Nash pushed Sabine away from him. “I didn’t… She…”
“I know. She was all over you like a tick on blood.” But I also knew that he hadn’t pushed her away. He may not have started it, but he’d let it happen, and I couldn’t help wondering, if I hadn’t been there, how much farther he would have let it go.
I glanced pointedly at the shirt he still held in one hand, and his cheeks flushed nearly scarlet.
Nash whirled on Sabine and shoved the shirt at her and she took it, reluctantly covering herself. Then he pulled open the front door, grabbed her arm, and shoved her onto the porch, still clutching the material to her chest. “Don’t come back,” he growled, an instant before slamming the door in her face.
“Kaylee…” He turned to face me, leaning against the door.
“You didn’t stop her.”
“I was about to…”
“Yeah. You can tell from how far down her throat your tongue was…” Tod said, sarcasm threaded boldly through each word.
Nash turned on him. “This is none of your business. What are you even doing here?”
“You owe me $15.99. Plus tip.”
Nash looked confused until he noticed Tod’s uniform. “I’ll owe you,” he finally snapped. “Get out.”
“I’m going, too.” I headed for the door as Sabine’s car started in the driveway.
“Kaylee, wait.”
“Where’s her bra?” I asked, my hand already on the doorknob.
Nash closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, miserably. “She wasn’t wearing one.”
18
“KAYLEE!”
Someone grabbed my shoulder and my head flopped forward as he shook me.
My eyes flew open. Alec stood over me, his hair rendered even darker by the halo of light shining around his skull from the fixture overhead. His brown eyes were wide and worried, his generous lips thinned into a tight frown.
“What?” I wasn’t even dreaming, much less having a nightmare. In fact, he’d interrupted the first almost-peaceful sleep I could remember getting in the past few days.
And even as that thought faded, I realized the problem—I was supposed to be watching him, not dozing. I’d insisted that he take the first shift sleeping under the assumption that my dad would get back from my uncle’s house—where they were conferring about the sudden spike in the teacher mortality rate at Eastlake—while Alec was still asleep. That way I could explain about Avari’s murder-by-proxy without having to break my promise to Alec to his face.
Obviously I’d underestimated my own exhaustion.
“Sorry.” I sat up and wiped an embarrassing dribble from the corner of my mouth. “Is my dad home yet?”
“No,” Alec said, and I glanced at my alarm clock in surprise. It was just after midnight. “Kaylee, this isn’t going to work.” He sank onto the edge of my rumpled bedspread, broad shoulders sagging in frustration and obvious fatigue. “How are we supposed to watch each other if neither of us can stay awake?”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, standing to stretch. “I just need some coffee.”
“If you guzzle caffeine, you won’t be able to sleep when it’s your turn, either, and that’ll just make everything worse.” Alec hesitated, and I read dread clearly in his expression. “You’re gonna have to tie me up.”
“What? No.” I sat on the edge of my desk and pushed tangled hair back from my face, hoping I’d heard him wrong. “I’m not going to tie you up, or down, or any other direction!”
“Kay, I don’t think we have any choice. Avari’s just waiting for a chance to get back into my head, and how happy do you think Sabine’s going to be with you, after her little stunt tonight failed?”
I’d given him the short version of my visit with Nash, skipping my promise to fill my dad in on everything.
“If either of us falls asleep at the wrong time, things are going to get a whole lot worse.”
My tired brain whirred, trying to come up with a viable alternative, but in the end, I was too worn out to think clearly, much less argue. Survival and a good night’s sleep trumped my deep-seated aversion to restraints—born of my week-long stay in the mental health ward—so I finally relented and trudged into the garage for the coil of nylon rope looped over a long nail on the wall.
In my room again, I turned my stereo on and cranked the volume, hoping the noise would keep me awake. Then Alec helped me cut the rope into workable sections and showed me how to tie a proper knot. Evidently he’d had practice restraining…things…for Avari in the Netherworld.
I bet the hellion never thought that particular skill could be used against him, and that thought made me smile, in spite of encroaching exhaustion, and the disturbing reality of what I was about to do.
The plan was for me to tie Alec to the chair in one corner of my room—the one I’d woken up in—but the back was one solid, padded, curved piece of wood, with nothing to tie his hands to. The desk chair was no better, and since I wasn’t willing to tie him up in the living room, where my dad would see him before I’d had a chance to explain, our only other option was my bed.
I cannot begin to describe my mortification—or the flames burning beneath every square inch of my skin—when I knelt at the head of my bed to secure Alec’s right arm to my headboard. “It’s okay, Kaylee,” he insisted, head craned so he could watch me while he voluntarily submitted to something that would have sent me into a blind panic. “This’ll keep us both safe.”
“I know.” But I didn’t like it, and my revulsion didn’t fade when I tied his other hand, or bound his first foot to the metal frame beneath the end of my mattress. I had trouble with the final knot, but had almost secured his right ankle when a sudden hair-prickling feeling and a subtle shift in the light told me that someone was behind me.
“What in the hell are you doing?” my father demanded, his voice low and dark.
I whirled around so fast I fell onto one knee, and the end of the rope trailed through my fingers to hang slack. My dad stood in my doorway, his irises swirling furiously in some perilous combination of anger and bewilderment.
The music had covered his footsteps, and evidently the sound of his car.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Alec mumbled at my back, and my father’s harsh laugh sounded more like an angry bark.
“Considering your current predicament, I’m betting that’s the first smart thing you’ve said all night!”
“This isn’t what it looks like.” I frowned and shoved myself to my feet, then glanced back at Alec, who could only stare at me in humiliation. “Actually, I’m not sure what it looks like,” I admitted, turning back to my father. “It’s to keep us both safe…” I ended lamely, wishing I could just melt into my bedroom carpet and disappear.
“Safe from what?” my father demanded softly.
“From…” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then met his stare again and started over. “I was gonna tell you everything when you got home. Nash made me promise.”
Behind me, Alec shifted on the bed—as best he could, with three limbs bound to it—and I could practically taste his anxiety.
“What does Nash have to do with you tying Alec to your bed?” But honestly, he looked like he didn’t really want to know the answer to that.
I perched on the corner of my desk and turned off my stereo. “I’m assuming you want the short version….”
“That would be good.”
So I sucked in another deep breath, then spat the whole thing out. “Avari’s been possessing Alec and killing my teachers—we have no idea why he picked teachers—so we’ve been sleeping in shifts for the past couple of nights, to stop it from happening again. But now I’m so tired that I can’t stay awake—” no need to tell him about Sabine just yet, since she wasn’t immediately relevant to the hellion or the dead teachers “—so Alec thought I should tie him up, in case I fall asleep and Avari gets back into his body. You know, to keep everybody safe.” I shrugged miserably, then watched my father, waiting for
the fireworks.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. But he got over that pretty quickly. “Avari’s the one killing teachers?” he said, and I nodded. “And he’s using Alec to do it?” Another nod from me. “And you’ve known this for two days without telling me?”
“I was afraid you’d kick him out. And even if it were okay to do that to a friend—and it’s not—if you kick him out, there won’t be anyone around to make sure Avari can’t use him as a murder weapon again,” I finished, proud of my own coherence, considering how incredibly tired I was.
For several moments, my father stood mute, obviously thinking. Then his focus shifted from me to Alec. “Those teachers died without a mark on them,” he said, and I could see in the angry, frustrated line of his jaw that he’d come to the right conclusion, with far fewer clues than I’d needed. “What are you?”
“I’m half hypnos.” Alec met my father’s gaze unflinchingly—his species wasn’t his fault, after all—but looked genuinely sorry for the danger he’d involuntarily exposed us all to.
“Please tell me your other half is human,” my father said, and Alec and I both nodded.
My dad sighed and pulled a folding knife from his back pocket. “Well, Kaylee, you’re right about one thing—we can’t leave him on his own. Not unless we want the next blood spilled to fall on our hands.”
My relief was almost as strong as my confusion when he strode forward purposefully and cut Alec’s left ankle free.
“Mr. Cavanaugh, it’s not safe to let me sleep free,” Alec insisted, as my father rounded toward the head of the bed.
“Which is precisely why you won’t be sleeping in my daughter’s room.” He slashed the rope around Alec’s left arm, then leaned over him to repeat the process with the remaining knot. “Ever.”
A few minutes later, we all stood in the living room, my father unwinding a new rope he’d produced from a pile of not-yet-unpacked cardboard boxes in the garage. Alec sank into my dad’s recliner and positioned a pillow beneath his head, then my father tied his feet to the metal frame of the foldout ottoman. While I spread a blanket over our poor houseguest, my dad pulled Alec’s arms toward the back of the recliner, where he tied his wrists to each other, linked by a taut length of nylon spanning the back of the chair.