Assuming he had a job to return to.
“Where’d he go?” The security guard stumbled to a stop in front me. He was bent in half, wheezing with both hands propped on his knees.
I stood, brushing my hands on the ruined skirt of Sophie’s dress. “Where’d who go?” I asked, my eyes wide in innocence as the astonished lampade gaped at me.
The guard scowled, thick forehead furrowed. “The…boy. Who was pulling her…”
“There’s no one here but us,” Alec said, wiping tears of joy on his sleeve. He looked like he’d almost laughed himself to death.
“Are you okay?” the other guard asked Luci, and she could only nod, no doubt stunned by events on both sides of the gray fog, which she could see simultaneously.
“I’m f-fine,” she stuttered, her voice high and clear.
“Thank you.”
“Let us know if he shows up again,” the first guard said, then the pair waddled off toward the carnival again, shaking their heads in confusion. When they were gone, the motley members of our odd gathering could only eye one another warily, bean sidhe, former proxy, and lampade each equally stunned by our near capture.
“He’ll send us after them again,” Luci said finally, glancing briefly at Nash as if he held no interest to her at all. As if she didn’t care one way or another which world he occupied.
“Yeah, but if you take Nash and my father back to Avari—if you give him anyone else strong enough to power his little human generator—you may as well put a gun in your mouth. And your sister’s, too.”
Luci frowned, and I realized I had truly captured her attention for the first time. “What does that mean?”
“He would have killed you both,” I said as I pulled Nash closer with one arm. He came willingly, but made no move on his own. “Avari was going to bleed you both until you died powering his pedestrian bridge to nowhere. And he still will, if you give him a chance.” I held Nash tight as he began to chatter, his freezing skin leaching the warmth from my own.
Luci only blinked at me, her stunned expression edged by distrust. “You’re lying.”
I shrugged. “Fine. Believe what you want. But we both know Tod could have killed you if he’d wanted to. Twice. And I’m sure he was tempted, considering you kidnapped his brother. But he didn’t so much as bruise your arm dragging you away from certain death. What does that tell you about who means you harm and who doesn’t?”
Luci’s frown deepened, and true fear flitted across her face. But she hadn’t so much as glanced at Nash in regret, and had yet to ask about my father.
“Look, I don’t care where you go or what you do, so long as you stay away from us. And if you want to live, you should get your sister and stay away from Avari, too.”
And finally, Luci nodded. She was still nodding when Alec and I walked off with Nash wobbling between us.
“Kaylee Cavanaugh, you bitch!” A shrill voice called as I pulled open the front door of my rental car minutes later.
“That’s a six-hundred-dollar gown, and you ruined it! What the hell are you doing in my dress?” Sophie demanded, flanked by two other Snow Queen contestants in long formal gowns, while she still wore jeans and an angora sweater beneath a pink quilted down jacket.
“Saving the day,” I said, closing Nash’s door as Alec settled himself into the backseat. I crossed in front of the car and sank into my own seat, tucking the voluminous, ruined skirt in around my legs. “You’re welcome.”
Then I slammed my door and drove off, leaving Sophie and her friends to stare after us in astonishment.
26
MY HAND SHOOK as I turned off the car and pulled the key from the ignition. Nash’s front porch light shone through the windshield, highlighting his face, but all I could think about was how he’d kept me in the dark, fighting an evil he’d already embraced. He leaned against the passenger’s-side window, staring at his unlit house. His mother was out, and hopefully blissfully ignorant of what we’d gone through. That wouldn’t last long; we’d have to tell her everything soon, because if we didn’t, my father would.
But for the moment, this private, temporary reprieve from chaos was too valuable to waste.
For lack of any place else to take him, I’d left Alec at my house with my dad and my uncle when I’d gone in to change clothes. My dad was worried about me, furious with Nash, and understandably scared by the whole thing, though he covered it with almost believable bravado.
Uncle Brendon was relieved that everyone had survived and that Sophie hadn’t been sucked into the Netherworld. And he didn’t give a damn about the ruined pageant gown. He’d promised to work on calming down my dad while I took Nash home.
But taking him home was as far ahead as I’d planned.
When I dropped the keys in my lap, Nash twisted in his seat to face me. “What now?” His skin was pale and damp with sweat, in spite of the temperature, but his eyes were clear. He was coherent, and withdrawal hadn’t set in yet. If we were going to talk, this was the time.
“I don’t know.” I fiddled with the key bauble, trying to bring my scattered thoughts into focus. But they didn’t want to focus. They wanted to remain mercifully blurry, so I wouldn’t have to come to terms with what I’d almost lost. What I might still have to give up.
“Kaylee…”
“Inside.” I shoved open my car door without looking at him. “I don’t want to do this here.” In the driveway. Within sight of any neighbors who happened to peek out the window.
I locked the car while he unlocked the house. He held his front door open, then closed it behind me after I brushed past him into the living room. I followed him down the hall and into his room—we both knew the way, even in the dark—then closed the door at my back. I didn’t think Harmony would mind this time, even if she’d been home. My plans for the evening included neither Nash’s hands, nor his bed.
Nash kicked his shoes into the corner, then pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. He collapsed onto the bed, leaning against his headboard, but for once I wasn’t tempted by the display. Nash looked like hell.
Avari had nearly drained him.
I pulled out his desk chair and sat, swiveling to face him. Without taking off my coat. “Nash, I don’t know where to st—”
“I’m sorry. Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” He looked like he wanted to touch me, but knew better than to try. “I don’t even know how to tell you how sorry I am.” He watched me, studying my reaction, but I could only stare at my hands in my lap, blinking away unshed tears. “But that’s not enough, is it?”
Two months earlier, it would have been. Nash had been the sun lighting up the horizon of my life, outshining everything else in my world. I’d thought once that he was too good to be true.
Turns out I was right.
“Kaylee?” he asked, and his voice was like thin, brittle glass. One heavy word from me, and he would shatter.
“I don’t know.” I made myself look at him, though the pain and regret swirling in his eyes bruised me, deep inside. I didn’t want to be the cause of so much suffering. But I didn’t want to feel it, either, and he wasn’t the only one hurting.
“You lied to me.”
“I know. I lied to everyone.” His voice echoed with shame, but it wasn’t enough. Regret couldn’t fix what he’d broken. Apologies couldn’t bring back what he’d lost. What we’d lost.
“But you lied to me, Nash.” I swallowed more tears and cleared my throat. “You said you loved me. Then you lied to me, you Influenced me, you tried to make me sound crazy in front of my dad, and you let Avari possess me and do—I can’t even imagine what—with my body.”
“Kaylee, I’m…”
I sat straighter, anger overwhelming everything else for the moment. “Don’t say you’re sorry. That won’t fix this.” I wasn’t sure anything could fix this—now.
But if I’d been paying more attention… If I’d thought more about Nash and less about being grounded, I’d have seen what was happenin
g before it got so bad. If I’d watched him as closely as I’d watched his loser friends, who’d started using of their own free will… If I’d told my dad earlier… If I’d never taken those stupid balloons to the Netherworld in the first place…
There were a million what-ifs that could have stopped the whole thing. A million things I wished I’d done differently. But in the end, I was left with what actually happened. With my mistakes and his.
And with the question of which mistakes I could live with.
“How many times?” I demanded, so soft I barely heard my own words. I picked at my cuticles because I couldn’t stand to watch him struggle for an answer. “How many times did you let him…use me?”
Nash sighed, and the bed creaked as he moved closer, but I didn’t look up. “I don’t know. I wasn’t counting. I was trying to forget.”
You should have been trying to stop him. “Make a guess.” I rolled away from the bed until the chair back hit the desktop.
“I didn’t see you very often when you were grounded. So…maybe once a week. Until the last week of school.”
“Twice that week?” I asked, and Nash nodded miserably.
“So, six times?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
“What did I do?” I demanded, far from sure I really wanted the answer.
“Kaylee, you don’t want to—”
“No, you don’t want to,” I snapped. Because the guilt was killing him. I could see that. But I needed to know. “Tell me.”
“Most of the time, he just talked through you. Told me where and when to meet Everett. Made me remember things, so he could take his payment.” A concept which horrified me to no end.
“But it was more than that once, right?” Unless Avari was lying. Please, please let him be lying…
Nash closed his eyes and let his skull thump into the headboard. “The first time.” He opened his eyes and met my gaze so I could see the earnest colors swirling in his irises. The brutal honesty. “I didn’t know what was going on, Kaylee. I swear, I had no idea. I didn’t even know it was possible.”
“What happened?”
“Your dad was at work, and I came over with a movie. You fell asleep on the couch, and I was gonna let you sleep. But then you woke up, and we started…kissing.”
“That’s it?” I could tell that wasn’t it. The thought of Avari kissing him with my mouth was revolting, but it wasn’t bad enough to account for the crimson flush of shame in his cheeks.
“No. You… He let me…touch you. He took your shirt off. I should have known it wasn’t you, but I—”
“Yeah, you should have!” My head was a maelstrom of rage and humiliation, spinning fast and hard enough to make me dizzy. I pulled my jacket closed over my shirt, as if that could somehow block what he’d already seen. What he’d touched. But I couldn’t undo it. It was done when I couldn’t stop it, and he didn’t stop it.
I stood, breathing too fast. Terrified by the thought that I could have been so out of control of my own body. I can’t do this. It was too much.
I whirled on him, anger burning deep inside me. “You can’t remember what our real firsts felt like, and I wasn’t even there for this one. How am I supposed to deal with that?” I scrubbed both hands over my face. “I’m lost, Nash. What happened while I wasn’t here—what you thought you were doing with me—may have been no big deal to you, but it would have been special to me. Something I was supposed to give to you, but someone else gave it to you instead, and now it’s ruined. And I want it back, but you can’t give it back to me…” I blinked away more tears, struggling to cling to anger instead.
Nash stood, too, but gave me space. “Kaylee, I swear I had no idea what was going on.”
“You didn’t want to know! You saw what you wanted and took it, and it didn’t occur to you that something wasn’t right until…” I stopped, my focus narrowing on him as my stomach pitched with a sudden horrifying certainty. “When did you know? Did you stop on your own? Did you figure it out, or did he tell you?”
Nash dropped his gaze. His hands curled into fists, and he shoved them into his jeans pockets. “We were… He said something, and it wasn’t your voice.”
The churning in my stomach grew into full-fledged nausea. “So he stopped you, probably only because cluing you in would be more fun. How far would you have gone if he hadn’t? Would you have stopped at all?”
Had Nash Hudson ever waited three months for anyone to give it up before? Could he even be expected to have that kind of willpower, when I wasn’t saying no?
Nash read the fear on my face. “Kaylee, no. I would have figured it out.” He stepped forward, and I backed up until my spine hit the wall, and I had nowhere else to go. He stopped, begging me silently to listen. To try to understand. “I know your limits. I know you. I would have figured it out. I would have stopped.”
“Why should I believe you?” I felt used. I felt cheated and dirty, and though I knew that wasn’t entirely Nash’s fault, I couldn’t help hating him a little bit, for letting it happen. “You called me a tease. You said anyone else would have walked away already. But would you have, if I seemed willing? You’ve already tried to Influence me out of my clothes.”
“Kaylee, that’s not fair. I wasn’t thinking. I was…”
“High?” I raised both brows, and he nodded miserably.
“Yeah. You were. And you’re right—it wasn’t fair. So why should I believe you now?”
“Because he never fooled me again.” Nash made eye contact and held it, letting me see the truth. “I know you. I love you, Kaylee. I know you probably can’t forgive me—hell, I don’t think I can forgive myself—but I swear on my life that it’ll never happen again. Any of it. No more frost. No more lies. No more Influence. Please, just give me a chance to prove it. Will you give me one more chance?”
“I…”
But before I could come up with an answer, Tod appeared in the desk chair, where I’d sat minutes earlier. “Hey. Am I interrupting something?”
“Yes,” Nash said. “Get out.”
But Tod was watching me, and I could tell from the angry line of his jaw that he’d been listening long before he showed himself. He’d heard what Avari had done to me. What Nash had let him do.
“You want me to go?” Tod asked me, his back to his brother.
Nash implored me silently to say yes. Tod waited patiently.
“No,” I said, looking right at Nash. He scowled, and his shoulders sagged.
“Good.” Tod stood and kicked the rolling chair out of his way. “I just checked on your friend in the straitjacket. But first…” The reaper swung before either of us realized what he intended to do.
Tod’s very solid fist slammed into Nash’s jaw. Nash’s head snapped back. He stumbled into the wall. Tod shook his hand like it hurt. “That’s for what you let him do to Kaylee.”
Nash shoved himself away from the wall, swinging at his brother. But his fist went right through the reaper’s incorporeal head, and Tod only frowned, turning back to me while his brother seethed.
I gaped at them both, surprised beyond speech.
Tod pushed the rolling chair toward me, and I sat. Nash sank onto his bed, glaring at his brother and rubbing his jaw. “How’s Scott?” I asked, still trying to absorb the abbreviated fistfight and avoid answering Nash’s last question. “Still hearing voices?”
“Just that one voice,”
Tod said. “According to the chatter at the nurses’ station he’s been much worse tonight. I figure Avari’s been throwing fits ever since we crossed over.”
And if Avari was taking his rage out on Scott, I didn’t want to know what he was doing to Addy.
“How does he look?” Nash asked, staring at the floor rather than look at his brother.
“Crazy.” Tod shrugged. “He stares at the walls like they’re going to swallow him, and they’re keeping the room lit from all four sides to eliminate shadows. Even at night. Otherwise, he screams until they
have to sedate him.” The very thought of which triggered memories of my own time strapped to a bed. “They seem to think his fear of shadows is part of his neurosis.”
But we knew the truth: the shadows really were out to get Scott Carter.
Because Avari was in the shadows.
“Mom says they’re connected now. Because Scott inhaled so much of his breath, Avari has a permanent, hardwired connection to his brain. The bastard’s playing with the shadows, and probably planting thoughts directly in his head.”
I swallowed true horror.
“That won’t happen to me,” Nash insisted, obviously having read the fear on my face. Or in my eyes. “If Avari could have spoken to me directly, he would have.” But he couldn’t. Avari’s serial possession of me was proof of that.
I nodded. Nash seemed to be immune to the connected-consciousness thing by virtue of being a bean sidhe.
“So…you talked to Mom?” Nash frowned at his brother.
“Yeah. I didn’t tell her everything, but I had to tell her you crossed over. She’s on her way here.” Tod raised one brow at his brother. “Consider this your heads-up.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Nash stood to show Tod that his presence was no longer required. He was still pissed over being punched, but obviously realized that fighting the reaper would do no more good than trying to argue with him.
Tod glanced at me in question.
I sighed and nodded. I couldn’t avoid Nash’s question forever. “Thanks, Tod,” I said. Then, acting on impulse, I stood and gave him a hug before he could blink out. I wasn’t sure whether I was thanking him for helping save Nash and my dad, or for watching over Scott, or for giving a damn what happened to me. Maybe it was all three.
But more than any of that, I was thankful for the possibility he’d shown me: that a man really could love a woman enough that he’d do anything to protect her. That’s how much Tod loved Addy.