Breathing hard now, I took a second to get myself back together, then I started walking again. The storage closet was right around the corner from the bathroom. Surely I could make it that far.
But I’d only taken a couple of steps when a commanding, glacier-cold voice sent chills the length of my body. I froze.
Avari. He was right around the corner.
Damndamndamn! What were they all doing here? The school had been empty just weeks before! Sabine’s life expectancy had just shrunk to a matter of minutes from the time I got back to the human world. Assuming that actually happened.
Riding a fresh wave of fear, I raced down the hall—toward the sound of his voice—and ducked into a bathroom niche, thick with shadows. The walls were blessedly free of vines, but covered with a thick, smelly, slowly oozing fluid.
I pressed as close to the wall as I could get without actually touching it, and stared out at the empty hall from the shadows hopefully hiding me.
“…very close now…” Avari said from around the corner, as I sucked in a silent breath tasting of fear and smelling of my own sweat. “When you have yours, and I have mine, this affiliation is over. You will slink back to your own corner of oblivion, and we shall see each other no more. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said a second voice, smooth and seductive, like the first sweet taste of a chocolate-dipped pepper, before the fire inside it roasts you alive. “I shall have the lovely Nightmare child, and you shall have your little bean sidhe, and we shall feast on their souls for all of eternity….”
24
AS THEY ROUNDED the corner, I breathed shallowly through my mouth to keep from smelling whatever oozed down the wall behind me. Wishing with every single cell in my body that I was anywhere in the world but where I stood in that moment.
Avari stepped into sight, and I willed my heart to stop beating for a few seconds, afraid that even that small noise—plus the stench of my terror—would give me away. But he never even glanced at the restroom alcove. Evidently the flood of human emotion from the blitz in progress disguised my individual fear. And he was obviously too irritated at the creature who walked on his other side to bother checking the shadows for humans accidentally stranded in the Nether.
Lucky me.
The woman with him was shorter than Avari, and very thin, her hands a tangle of swollen joints and skeletal fingers beneath the tattered sleeves of a black velvet dress. Her cheeks were sharply pronounced, the hollows beneath them dark and deep. Her black orb eyes reflected a faint green glow in the little available light, and since she had no obvious pupils or irises, I couldn’t tell whether or not she was even looking in my direction.
But her most prominent feature by far was her hair—an ever-dripping flow of noxious liquid, streaming over her head and down her back in distinct currents and waves. The flow was thick and black, except where the light overhead gave it a dark green tint. As I watched, she brushed a streaming strand back from her hawkish face and several drops splattered on the floor at her back, sizzling in green-tinted fizz on the grimy tiles.
I’d never seen anything like her river of hair, and I had no doubt that if it splashed me, the drops would eat the flesh right off my bones.
I shivered in my shadows, fighting to keep my teeth from chattering, but the two hellions just walked on slowly, talking, and I strained to hear every word.
“My beautiful Nightmare is ripe for the plucking—so full of luscious envy,” the woman said, her words sliding over me like the seductive warmth of a fireplace. Suddenly I wanted her voice for myself, to replace the screeching abomination my own throat spewed into the world. Why should a monster like that get such a beautiful voice, when I got a shriek that could drive grown men home to their mommies? “And I would pluck her now,” she continued, oblivious to how badly I wanted to rip her voice box from her emaciated throat and stomp it into the ground, to deny her what I couldn’t have for myself.
The thought that I might be capable of such a violent act should have shocked and scared me, but it didn’t. It felt…justified. Why should someone else—anyone else—have something I couldn’t have?
“Your impatience is tiresome, Invidia,” Avari said, drawing my thoughts from the wrong I ached to right. “I’ve readied both hosts, but pushing them into slumber in the same moment is rather an exact science, and one rash act could bring this whole tower tumbling down on top of us.”
“Nonsense.” Invidia tossed her hair again as she passed out of my sight, and several vines shrank away from the drops sizzling on the tiles. “You exhausted them for just this purpose, and this flow of youthful energy will not last forever. We should strike now, while the iron is hot, lest our hosts have time to cool their heels.”
“Soon, Invidia. I give my word, it will be soon….”
I didn’t release my breath until I was sure they’d turned the next corner and passed out of both sight and hearing range. Their conversation played over in my head as I tried to make sense of antiquated phrasing, using what little I knew of the Netherworld and the continuing catastrophe my school had become.
The “flow of youthful energy” seemed the most obvious: the increased bleed-through of human life force the blitz provided. But as for the rest…I needed a second, more enlightened opinion. All I knew for sure was that Avari and this Invidia—clearly a fellow hellion—were planning to somehow claim me and Sabine, body and soul, with the help of a couple of preselected “hosts.” And we didn’t have much time to defend against whatever they were about to throw at us.
Considering the seemingly steady flow of traffic in the Netherworld version of my school hall, I decided to risk crossing over in the bathroom instead of pressing on to the storage closet, which may or may not be locked from the outside in the human world.
I eased the door open slowly, and when I saw no sign of any Netherworldly occupants, I slipped inside and let the door close behind me. The row of sinks looked just like the sinks in my world, except that the one in the middle was steadily dripping a viscous-looking yellow fluid in place of water.
Swallowing my disgust, I knelt to peek beneath the doors of the two closed stalls, glad most of them stood open. On the human side of the crossing, the second to last stall was out of order. The toilet had been broken since we got back from the winter break, and a sign hung on the outside of the locked door.
That stall held my best chance of crossing over without being seen.
The door on this side of the barrier was open, so I went in and closed it, then stepped up onto the slimy-looking toilet seat to keep a set of feet from suddenly appearing in the human world version of the stall when I crossed over. I braced my hands on either side of the stall, careful not to slip. I did not want to land in the goopy yellow liquid putrefying in the bowl beneath me.
Then I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, concentrating on the memory of death to summon my bean sidhe wail and my intent to cross back over.
I thought about Doug dropping the clip from Nash’s bright red balloon, the night of his own party. He’d inhaled as I raced toward him, but I was too late; that one hit was all it took. Doug’s eyes had rolled back into his head and he’d collapsed to the ground. The balloon had fallen with him, and I’d nearly choked on the scream trying to rip free from my body.
And with that memory, the wail came again, as real and as painful as it had been the first time. My throat burned like I’d swallowed fire. The scream bounced around in my skull and in my heart, demanding to be set free. Pain echoed everywhere the trapped wail slammed into me, but I clenched my jaw shut, letting only the thinnest thread of sound out, desperately hoping it would be enough.
I closed my eyes and clung to the sides of the stall when the fog began to roll in, roiling around the base of the filthy toilet and over my ankles, though I couldn’t feel it. I ignored the intense need to open my mouth, to scream for that remembered soul—one I hadn’t been able to help, in real life.
And now, in memory, Doug and his soul would help
me. They would send me back so I could save myself and Sabine from eternal torture, and the rest of the school from the energy blitz that would soon be its ruin.
When I heard water running—the first sound not produced by my tortured throat—I glanced down to find the toilet beneath me clean and white, the water in its bowl clear and odorless. Only then did I let that thread of sound recede within me, like winding up an unrolled ball of twine. A very thorny, scalding ball of twine.
“What was that?” a girl’s voice asked from outside the stall, and I nearly groaned out loud. The broken stall was empty, which I’d been counting on, but the bathroom itself was not. Either someone was skipping class, or I’d crossed over between bells.
“What was what?” another voice asked.
I considered hiding out until they left, but I had to find Sabine and Nash before they made it to sixth period, or I might not get another chance until it was too late.
Bracing myself for embarrassment, I hopped down from the toilet and unlocked the stall. When I stepped out, all four girls in front of the mirror turned to stare at me.
“Can’t you read the sign?”
“Gross. That one’s out of order.”
“That’s Sophie Cavanaugh’s sister.”
“Cousin,” I corrected on my way into the hall, and before the door closed behind me, the fourth girl made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “Ew! She didn’t even wash her hands!”
“Or flush!”
I speed-walked through the hall, sidestepping students and teachers alike, scanning dozens of familiar faces for the two I needed. I couldn’t stop Avari and Invidia on my own. I needed Nash and Sabine.
But what I found was Tod. Where I least expected him.
After glancing into Sabine’s sixth period classroom with no luck, I ducked into the first-floor girls’ restroom in search of her. I’d checked three of the four stalls and found them all empty when Tod suddenly appeared in front of the door to the fourth.
I shrieked a shrill profanity and jumped back so hard my elbow slammed into the third stall. “You can’t be in here!”
Tod stuck his head through the last stall door, then backed up and shrugged. “It’s all clear.”
“Well, it might not be for long. What are you doing here?”
“Nash called me.”
He had? Emma must have told him I’d disappeared from fifth period.
“Oh. Well, thanks, but I’m more than capable of sneaking around the Netherworld on my own for a few minutes.” Even if I almost got devoured by man-eating plants and carnivorous kindergarteners… “So you can go polish your shining armor for someone else to admire.”
I might have been a little irritated at him for telling me to give up Nash.
Tod frowned and brushed a curl from his forehead. “You went to the Netherworld? Why the hell would you do that?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I propped my hands on my hips, impatient to continue my search, but I wasn’t going to be seen talking to an invisible friend in the hall. Not so soon after the recent bathroom weirdness. “Sabine took her anger issues out on me when I fell asleep in French.”
“Hell hath no fury like a mara falsely accused.”
“Nash told you? What’d he do, call you at work?”
Todd shook his head and pulled a small, slim phone from his back pocket. “Mom put me on her cell plan, now that I can pay for the additional line. Got it a couple of days ago.”
“And you didn’t give me the number?” I swallowed a bitter, unexpected wash of disappointment.
The reaper grinned and leaned with one hip on the nearest sink. “I was waiting for you to ask.”
A flash of irritation burned in my cheeks. “That might have actually happened, if I’d known you had a phone.”
His brows arched in surprise. “I figured Nash would tell you.”
“Well, he didn’t,” I snapped.
Tod slid the phone back into his pocket. “So…you’re still mad about the other day?”
“Wouldn’t you be mad if I told you to give up on someone you care about? Just…hand her over to someone who doesn’t even deserve her?”
Tod gave me a strange, sad look I couldn’t interpret, and the blues in his irises shifted subtly for a moment before he got control of them. “Yeah. I guess I would.”
And obviously that was as much of an apology as I was going to get.
“Anyway, if you didn’t come to rescue me from the Netherworld, what are you doing here?”
Tod blinked, and I could almost see him refocusing on the crisis at hand. “Nash just called to tell me that Sabine sensed someone sleeping in the hall—you know maras can feel slumber, like we’d feel heat from a fire, right?”
I nodded, creeped out by the comparison. “So what?”
“So there was no one sleeping in the hall. Everyone was up and moving, on the way to class.”
“So maybe her spidey senses are all messed up.” I shrugged. “Karmic payback for sending me to the Netherworld in my sleep.”
“I doubt it’s that simple. Or that satisfying,” he said. So did I. “The only way I know of for a sleeping person to function like he’s awake is if he’s…”
“Possessed,” I finished for him, as the implication began to sink in and dread settled through me like lead, pinning me in place. Avari had taken control of his “host.” Or maybe Invidia had taken control of hers. “Did Sabine mention the lucky victim’s name?”
Tod shrugged. “She said the hall was too crowded and no one was snoring.”
“Great. She’s always so much help.” I closed my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts, then looked up at him. But before I could tell him what I’d overheard in the Netherworld, the sixth period bell rang, and I nearly jumped out of my shoes.
“You gonna be in trouble?” Tod asked, glancing at the ceiling like he could actually see the bell.
I reached for the door and gripped the handle. “Nowhere near as much trouble as we’ll all be in if Avari gets his way. He’s playing with a friend this time, and they’re up to something big.”
“You mean the blitz?”
“The blitz is just a means to an end. He and his partner are trying to drag me and Sabine into the Netherworld, and they’ve each picked out a body here in the human world to give them hands-on involvement in the process. We have to find out who they’ve possessed before they can make their move.”
There weren’t many possibilities to choose from. A person had to have some connection to the Netherworld to even qualify for hellion possession, and I couldn’t think of a single eligible party, other than me, Nash, and Emma.
And Sophie…
Shit!
Tod’s blue eyes went hard and angry on my behalf—and probably on Sabine’s. “What can I do?” He followed me into the hall, where I lowered my voice to avoid notice by the stragglers still making their way to class.
“Find Sophie and make her talk. If she doesn’t sound like herself, knock her out. Then meet me in the quad.”
Tod’s lips turned up in a grim smile. “You know I never pass up an opportunity to smack your cousin.”
25
TOD DISAPPEARED, and I headed straight for the gym, where Nash hung out during last period, now that football season was over.
I scanned the bleachers, glancing over several groups of students talking and watching the basketball team practice, but Nash found me before I spotted him. “Hey,” he called, and I turned to see him walking toward me from the boys’ locker room. “What happened?” he asked, falling into step with me when I gestured for him to follow me toward the gym doors, where we wouldn’t be overheard. “Emma said you disappeared during French. Like, literally disappeared.”
“Unscheduled trip to the Netherworld, courtesy of everyone’s least favorite mara.”
“Damn it, Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” He ran one hand through his hair in frustration. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged, trying not to show how pissed off I wa
s, or how scared I’d been. Like it was no big deal that his ex had nearly gotten me killed. A lot.
“A little sticky…” I plucked at the drying gunk stuck to the back of my shirt. “But still in one piece. And I did accuse her of trying to incite a school-wide riot. Though for the record, I think the interdimensional field trip constitutes gross overkill.”
“I’ll talk to her…” he said, shrugging his backpack higher on his shoulders, and suddenly it felt weird for me to be whispering to Nash in the middle of class, carrying nothing but the weight of my own guilt and fear. I’d left my stuff in French class, after my involuntary departure from the human world.
“Don’t bother. We have bigger hellions to fry, before one of them drops me into the hot oil. Or Sabine.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain when we find Sabine,” I said, leaning back against the side of the bleachers. “For now, please tell me you found the sleepwalker.”
“Not even close.”
“Great.” I shoved a flyaway strand of hair back from my face. “Well, now we’re looking for two puppets. One will sound like Avari, the other like this demon chick named Invidia. I heard them plotting when I crossed over. I’m guessing she’s a hellion of envy.”
Nash’s brows arched halfway up his forehead. “Based on…?”
“Based on the fact that she’s obsessed with Sabine, because of the amount of jealousy she’s evidently festering with.”
“Envy. Shit,” Nash said, leaning against the wall by the first set of doors, and I could practically read his thoughts on his face as he put the puzzle together for himself. “So…this Invidia helped power the blitz?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged and glanced through the glass door into the hall, itching to get moving. But discussing Netherworld business in the empty school halls in the middle of last period would not only get us in trouble, it might just get us committed. The noisy gym was a much better place to go unnoticed. “My guess is that the power she shoved into our world to get the ball rolling came through as violent jealous impulses.”